#320 – 0 To $40K A Month Using Project X Strategies

There are a lot of resources out there to help you learn and start your Amazon selling journey. Helium 10 has award-winning resources like Freedom Ticket, Project X, and more! But what are the benefits of actually consuming this content and executing it? In this episode, Bradley talks with Kseniia Reidel about her eCommerce journey and how she’s crushing it on Amazon. Selling her first 1,000 units in only three weeks and now selling over $40K a month!

In episode 320 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Kseniia discuss:

• 02:30 – Kseniia’s Story And How She Got Started In E-commerce
• 03:30 – Selling Collectibles From Russia In The US
• 06:00 – Starting With Retail Arbitrage On Amazon
• 08:00 – How Kseniia’s First Product Failed
• 09:30 – Freedom Ticket And Project X Helped Her Find A Winning Product
• 13:30 – You Don’t Need To Be An Expert On Your Potential Product
• 15:00 – Finding A “Project X-like” Product
• 15:30 – Use A PPC Test Listing To Validate Your Ideas
• 18:30 – Using A General Name For Her Brands For Future Use
• 21:00 – Marketing And Validating Her Products Using Facebook Groups
• 26:00 – A Six-Figure Product And Tons Of Opportunity
• 30:00 – Family Support Matters
• 31:30 – Kseniia’s Goals For 2022
• 32:00 – Using Follow-Up And New Features Of This Tool
• 33:30 – Find Kseniia On The Prosper Show And In Helium 10’s Sell And Scale Summit

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today, we’re gonna talk to somebody whose Amazon journey started with just learning how to sell from Project X. And now she is selling over $40,000 a month and sold out of her first thousand units in only three weeks. How cool is that? Pretty cool I think.

Bradley Sutton:

Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s a completely BS-free unscripted, and unrehearsed, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the Amazon, Walmart, or e-commerce world. We’ve got a serious seller on the line right now. I’ve only met her briefly at a conference. And I was like, all right, I just heard a little bit about your story. Don’t tell me anymore. I wanna wait until I can get the full story, like on a podcast. So Kseniia hope I’m pronouncing your name, right? Welcome to the show. How’s it going?

Kseniia:

Hi. Good. How are you? Thank you for inviting me.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. So which show was it that we met? Was it like White Label Expo?

Kseniia:

Yeah, it was White Label in Las Vegas. Yeah. In September.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, cool. So now I didn’t ask too much about your background at that time. So where are you now? And then, like, where were you born and raised?

Kseniia:

Well, I was born in Russia originally, now, I live in Texas. Yeah, well, I was in a hotel industry for about five years back in Russia and then I got a job in the US, so I moved to the US to work in a hotel industry.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. All right. And so what part of Russia are you from?

Kseniia:

St. Petersburg.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Excellent. That’s on my bucket list to visit. All right. So how many years were you doing that? There in Texas.

Kseniia:

Oh, no, it was originally when I moved to the US, I was in Vermont and then I got married and I had to move to a different state. And while on that transition, moving to a different state, I had like a six months where I was changing my legal status in the US, so I couldn’t work. So I took that time to think what I wanna do next after that.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. And then that’s when you moved to the hotel industry, or this is after you were working

Kseniia:

No, I worked a year at the hotel, and then I got married and I moved to Texas and then where I didn’t work for about six months. And then when I decided to go into all the e-commerce things.

Bradley Sutton:

How did you first discover that? Were you just like Googling, you know, work from home jobs or?

Kseniia:

Yeah, kinda well, I was doing eBay before as a hobby, so I started doing eBay full-time basically. And then I thought that–

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, you’re selling on eBay?

Kseniia:

I was buying collectibles from Russia that was selling the US.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Did you ever look at the addresses and names that you were sending to were like they mostly, Russian names or were they mostly American people buying that? No,

Kseniia:

No, It was mostly American and it was American, Canadians. So I sold, it was like Latin America, like Chile, Argentina, they like to buy like a soccer memorabilia basically.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. And you made enough money to make it a full-time for yourself?

Kseniia:

No. No, it wasn’t a full-time. Yeah, it was making money, but it was not enough to live in a full-time.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. How did you come up with that idea?

Kseniia:

I don’t know. Just, I worked at the Olympic games before and I saw those things. So I knew that they have value and I just looked up if it’s selling on eBay and how much is it selling for? I realized you can make profits on it, selling that stuff.

Bradley Sutton:

So did you have contacts still in Russia where you could get it for like, you know? In a way that just the normal person couldn’t, you know, couldn’t get it like people.

Kseniia:

Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay.

Kseniia:

Well, I mean, I had friends and I hired a person who was buying well, so there’s a thing in Russia. That’s basically a Russian eBay. So I was looking it up there finding it, and then the person there was going checking it if it’s in a good condition and I was transferring money and they were open it from Russia to all the customers like in the US and all other countries.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, almost like drop shipping then.

Kseniia:

Well, yeah. Kind of, yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Well, that’s interesting because, you know, I always like talking about unique ways of making money. You know, it doesn’t have to be Amazon, you know, it could be Etsy. We just had an episode recently, we talk about Facebook shops and that could be interesting. Like, let’s say, somebody, you know, comes from another country. They might have connections that the average you know, American, or whatever country they’re in don’t have, well, you know, go check, you know there’s people buying collectibles, and then maybe if you have a way to drop ship it fast, you know, maybe it’s from Japan, maybe it’s from Argentina, wherever, that could be interesting way to build up some money in order to start your, like your own private label business. So you were doing that on eBay and then during that is when you discovered the Amazon opportunity.

Kseniia:

Yeah. I just realized, no, you could have made enough money to live on eBay, but the problem is that like you had to sell it’s managing it all. So it, every single thing you had to sell, you had to connect it with the person who would go pick it up. So it’s much harder. So I was looking at other options and I found Amazon, and then first I started doing the retail arbitrage on Amazon, so, it seems easier to me and the first five or six months I was doing that and kind of learning the system, but then I fast realized that it’s not the way how you’re gonna make money on Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

It was almost the same thing from the eBays, like a lot of work, right. Like, were you going to stores and buying and then selling it on Amazon?

Kseniia:

Yeah. I was going to Walmart. Yeah. I was going to Walmart and finding things at Walmart and selling on Amazon. Yeah. It’s you have to pick up the box and take all that stuff and you know, I just that’s realized that’s not what I wanna do.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. And then what was the next step?

Kseniia:

Well, the next step was a lot of YouTube, a lot of YouTube videos to discover the private label. Then I realized that’s what I need to do to actually make money. I found my first product. It’s kind of funny story. I can say what’s the first product is I’m not selling anymore. It’s not a good product to sell right now. So it was a machine-washable paper towels. I’m sure you never heard that.

Bradley Sutton:

I’ve never even heard of that.

Kseniia:

Yeah. It’s almost like a burrito blanket. But actually, it wasn’t a shark thing. I discovered later that wasn’t a shark thing. Yeah, so I started selling that and it was about five or six months before all the pandemic started and, you know, what happened with all the paper towels thing during the pandemic stuff. So I started selling it about five or six months before, and it seemed like a good product. It was making, I don’t know, about 3,000 to 5,000 a month in sales, which for the first product’s not that bad. And then of course it got crazy during all the 2020 stuff around March.

Bradley Sutton:

And so like, why, why did it fail then?

Kseniia:

Well, so people saw how much demand it has during a coronavirus. And then, so I sold all the inventory in like two, three weeks that was back in March 2020. And then it was–

Bradley Sutton:

Was that 500 a thousand or how many units?

Kseniia:

I think about it was over a thousand. Yeah. It was over a thousand units. And I was thinking about selling it, should have been selling for like three months instead of two weeks, you know? Yeah. So I got out of stock for about two or three months with everything that started going on, you know, the factory’s been closed and stuff like that. And then by the time I was able to get back in stock, of course, all the competition, like from five sellers, it got to like 40. And because you couldn’t differentiate that much because I mean, it’s basically paper towels that you can machine wash. What you can do is change the color in an amount that you’re selling. Yeah. So all those Chinese sellers came in and they started dropping the price. And so it just didn’t make any sense to, because you couldn’t change anything. So I just decided to quickly sell out and just get the money back and I made the money on it. I didn’t lose any money, but. I just realized it’s not a good time. It’s not a good product to sell

Bradley Sutton:

How did you find that product? Like how did you find something that at the time there was only like three or four sellers or maybe even less, you know, that was when you launched it?

Kseniia:

Yeah, no, it was about five sellers when I started the same YouTube, you know, strategies as everybody’s teaching. So nothing new, just looking for keywords, looking for products.

Bradley Sutton:

So at this point, you didn’t even invest any money in courses or anything like that. You were just from free information out there. You were able to. Okay. I like it. All right. So then you’re like, ah, man, this product failed, you know, the competition is very high. So what made you not give up? And then how did you choose your next product then?

Kseniia:

Well, then I came to watching the Freedom Ticket actually, because I’ve been using Helium 10 from the beginning, but I was like, and I was looking at the FreedomTicket. I was like, oh, it’s so many hours. You really have to watch all those hours. You know, I think all the people, like all the people I told about–

Bradley Sutton:

I don’t know how this is coming out to the audience, but it almost seems like it’s Kseniia you’re kind of a lazy person, like, oh, this eBay thing is too much, oh this arbitrage. Oh, Freedom Ticket. It’s free, but it’s like 40 hours. Oh, no, I’m just playing. But I see a trend here, but Hey, there’s nothing wrong with that. Like, that’s why that’s one of the reasons why I love you know, entrepreneurial life. You get to control how much or how little you wanna work. So I like it.

Kseniia:

Yeah. But I realize that it’s probably the good thing. I read reviews and start watching it. And then I discovered the Project X, and then I thought, well, if those guys can do that, why can’t I do that? So I just started following everything you’ve been talking about on Project X to find that product.

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent. So you, you actually discovered project X from freedom ticket as opposed to just randomly on YouTube then?

Kseniia:

Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So then what was it, and I think you might have mentioned this and that’s why it piqued my interest. Was it the Project X, like method of how you launched your second product?

Kseniia:

Yes, it’s exactly. I just started from zero, basically from the beginning. I forgot everything that I knew before and started following you what you were saying on Project X is looking not for the product, but looking for the keyword. And that’s how I discovered the product or a keyword from my product.

Bradley Sutton:

Do you remember, like what kind of filters you were using? Like, were you looking for something with a certain search volume or a certain categories or with low reviews or, I mean, I know that’s, maybe a year or two ago now, but do you remember at all? How you?

Kseniia:

Yeah, well, the first I wanted to focus on looking at the home and kitchen category because I wanted to sell something that I know people use every day. And I know that I can understand the use of that product, you know, instead of selling something that I don’t know what I’m doing, or I don’t know how to use it, or if I can’t use it. So for me, that was the main goal. And of course, finding something that has less reviews and not a very big search volume. So I was looking around like 5,000 searches a month. But no more than that.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. That’s an interesting point that she brought out guys like it doesn’t mean that before you even pick the product, you have to be an expert in it. But I mean, that’s the most ideal, like if you know, right off the bat Hey, I know exactly how to use this. I mean, that’s amazing, but it’s very rare that would be something that you know that is the opportunity, but you know, like me with a Project X and Tim, like, we didn’t know nothing about coffin shelf, market or Gothic decor, but guess what, you know, I made myself become an expert. I studied it. I was like, okay, how would people use this? You know, oh, some people, you know, put on a countertop, some people hanging on the wall, what kind of things are people are gonna put inside?

Bradley Sutton:

What kind of complementary products? You might discover something, you know, using Etsy or using Black Box or whatever that you didn’t even know existed, but you’ve got to be able to make yourself an expert in that. If you don’t understand the product, if you don’t understand the kind of customer that would buy that, it’s gonna be very difficult to be successful. So I like how you’re like, Hey, I need to know, you know, I need to know myself how to use this product before I can figure out how to sell it to others. So you found the opportunity validated it. Was it something you order from Alibaba or just you found your own factory? Or how did you go through that process?

Kseniia:

Yeah, so first, yeah, I found a keyboard and so my product is an accessory to another product. So yeah, I created the listing. I decided to ordered samples and I had to customize it because it’s something that basically for the one product that I wanted to sell, there was a demand. So there was about 2,000 to 3,000 to 4,000 people looking for the month. I mean searches a month, but nobody was selling it. And I thought like, this is weird. Like nobody’s selling it. I mean, there’s 3,000 or 4,000.

Bradley Sutton:

So, when you entered that keyword that you found in Black Box or whatever, in Amazon, the results, it wasn’t even that keyword.

Kseniia:

No. So there was a keyword, so people were searching. So there was about 3,000 to 4,000 or 5,000 searches a month. But when I put it on Amazon, nobody was selling that product.

Bradley Sutton:

So that was like Project X, like the coffin shelf. It was like there may be one coffin shelf. And then the rest were just like random shelves because Amazon didn’t have anything to show. I love that Stretch. Okay.

Kseniia:

Okay. Yeah. So I found that and I thought, well, this is weird. And since it was an accessory to another product, I decided to go on Facebook and I went to Facebook group of the main product, which mine is accessory, you can kind of compare it to like an iPhone, an iPhone case. So, I found an opportunity for an iPhone case, but then I decided to go to Facebook group for the iPhone and see if people are really looking for that product. And I saw that they do, and a lot of people are trying to, you know, make it themselves or something like that because they, nobody was selling it. And I thought, okay, well, this is a good idea. But then when I started digging deeper, I saw that there was actually one person selling it, but they were out of stock for three to four months already in.

Bradley Sutton:

It really was the coffin shelf project. That’s exactly what happened to us for that. Okay. I love it.

Kseniia:

Yeah. Then I created the test listing on Amazon. Well, after I got the samples, of course, I decided to customize it and change it. So it’s different from what my competitor were selling. And when I made a test listing I only had like five, I didn’t make much because I couldn’t because it was custom. But yeah–

Bradley Sutton:

What was it sample? Is that what you used for the Test Listing?

Kseniia:

Yeah. Well, it were samples and I decided to put like almost twice higher to what the price to what I’m selling now. And I sold those units in the first two hours,

Bradley Sutton:

Two hours. Wow.

Kseniia:

Yeah. It was crazy.

Bradley Sutton:

Right. So guys we talked about what that is before, but let’s say you have not watched Project X and you didn’t hear an episode. I would go to he10.com/podcast and type in the search bar. I don’t have the exact number handy here, but type in the search bar PPC Test Listing, and you’ll see either a blog or a podcast we did about this, but you know, 1-minute example of this is kind of like what Kseniia just did. Either find from Etsy, somebody who’s got your product, or you can get like five, 10 samples from a factory. And the cases in which you would do this is when there’s not enough data to validate your idea. So like Kseniia said there’s 5,000 searches, so Hey, there’s demand, but you have like no competitors to look at to.

Bradley Sutton:

You don’t know their sales history because looks like there was one person selling it, but they were out of stock for months. So when you don’t have enough data, and if you’re not feeling confident about your idea and you need to like figure out, Hey, what are the main keywords that people would use for this or things like that. You put up some something with like five or 10 units and put it at a high price and not a great listing unit, just like kind of do a rudimentary listing and then do a kind of like big PPC campaign where it’s a high bid on the keywords that you think, but you have no data on that you think would convert for this. And then basically if somebody would buy your product at two extra, three extra price with a bad listing and just because they see it, then it kind of validates that, okay, what I thought would work is definitely gonna work. And so, you know what, I’m gonna go ahead all in. So again, that’s just a, a fast version of what that is, what she’s talking about, but, but go back to listen to a podcast, we had a podcast episode all about that. All right. So you got, I’m assuming you got really after those two or three hours, like, wow, this is pretty incredible. So what was your next step? Just went ahead and ordered you know, 500,000 units or something.

Kseniia:

Yeah. I ordered a thousand units for the first cuz that was the minimum order. The problem is I should have been ordered more, but the problem was that it was very expensive to source. So the landing price was about landing cost was about $12. So with the shipping-

Bradley Sutton:

$12 delivered to Amazon.

Kseniia:

Yeah. Delivered to Amazon. So for you looking at like, I think the first I invested around 15,000 together with, you know, pictures and stuff like that. That’s I’ve put it in. So–

Bradley Sutton:

How did you do your images or your pictures?

Kseniia:

Oh, I had a photographer. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Like here or in China?

New Speaker:

No, no. Here in the US.

Bradley Sutton:

So then did you save one of the samples so they do it? Or you had to once you had them produce it, one of the factory products.

Kseniia:

Yeah. I had another sample that I sent to the photographer.

Bradley Sutton:

How much did that cost you the photography?

Kseniia:

I think about 500, for all images.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So they would do like the white background, the lifestyle images, infographics?

Kseniia:

Yeah. Everything. And I just did the A+ content myself, cuz I already was brand registered by that time with my first product.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, okay. So it just happened to be that you could use the same brand as the paper towel one?

Kseniia:

Yeah. Well, when I decided to do the first private label product, I decided that I need to come up with a brand name that will not be attached to any product, you know, just a general name. So that way, because I knew that probably I’m not gonna be staying in the same niche all the time. So I came up with just a general name just of general brand name so I could use in the future. So yeah. I’m still using the same brand name.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Excellent. So you got the units in now you launched it at half the price of your Test Listing?

Kseniia:

Yeah. So I launched it and like I think the first day I sold I don’t remember how many units it was, but it was four thousand dollars. That was the sales and the first day.

Bradley Sutton:

The very first day.

Kseniia:

Yeah, the very first day. How

Bradley Sutton:

Did you get visible on your keywords since you were one of the only ones to have the right, the exact product? Like, did you get on page one on day one just becaus nobody else had it or you had to do some like campaign or something to get on? 

Kseniia:

Well, yeah, of course, I started doing PPC from the first day, but I showed up on the page one. It was somewhere in the middle of page one just because other products were showing up, they were not relevant to what I was selling. But they were just showing up.

Bradley Sutton:

And they didn’t have the keywords and the title?

Kseniia:

No, they don’t

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, that’s more the honeymoon strategy right there. I love it.

Kseniia:

Yeah. I started showing up on probably I think was the middle of page one. So I started running PPC plus I started running PPC on the keywords that, I started doing exactly what you were saying. I started from the lower, so for the keywords that were like five to five to 7,000, probably because there also there were keywords that were attached to the main product, which mine is a accessory for. So I kept those keywords for when I get some reviews because those are like 50,000, 60,000 searches a month. So yeah, I started with the smaller keywords. And what I also did, I thought that I’ll just go ahead to the Facebook groups of the main product. And I just posted that, oh, look, guys, there is a product that just showed up on Amazon. And people just started buying and clicking the link from the Facebook groups starting the first day. And then they just started posting when they got the product and they started posting showing how they use it. And that was crazy because the first batch that I was selling, I almost didn’t use any PPC. I mean, I did, but I didn’t spend any money because a lot of sales were coming in from Facebook groups.

Bradley Sutton:

So wait, so rewind. I was kind of zoning out there. So how did you get that visibility in Facebook group? Was that from the influencers or you already had lined up these Facebook groups?

Kseniia:

No. I told you that my product is an accessory to another product. So, the Facebook group from the other product. And from the day one posted on those groups that look guys, there is this accessory that just became available on Amazon and people start clicking and buying from day one and an absolute–

Bradley Sutton:

Did you ask permission to get in like, cuz it’s not, I’m assuming it’s not your Facebook groups or you just did it, but nobody got mad because it was such an amazing thing.

Kseniia:

It was not an official group. It was just group of people that came up together like, you know, oh, we use this product. So it was not an official Facebook group of a brand.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So it’s not like people there’s like these rules where you can’t just advertise or anything like that.

Kseniia:

Yeah. No, it was nothing like that. And then after that, what happened, which was crazy is that people, when they start receiving the product and they start showing how they use it and I could read what they like and what they don’t like about the product.

Bradley Sutton:

In the group?

Kseniia:

Yes. In the group. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

So, I’m assuming you line this up, it’s not like, oh, just on day one of your product, you discovered that there was Facebook groups about it. You had been doing research and like we had a list of some groups.

Kseniia:

Yeah. That’s how I validated the idea. Yeah. Earlier I said that is that when I saw the demand on Amazon, I decided to go on Facebook and see if there is actually a demand. And I checked on those groups that people are trying to make this product themselves. Like they’re trying to do something because there was no availability anywhere for that product.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay. I like that. So see, I don’t think we’ve ever talked about that as far as product research goes, but yeah. You know, maybe the journey starts on, you know, Helium 10 or something like that. But once you get to this validation part, there’s other ways to validate product opportunity. And I haven’t really thought about that. You know, usually, when we think about Facebook groups, it’s kinda like your second stage. It’s like, all right, Hey, Hey everybody, you know take a look at this product, but you even use that to see that, you know, there’s demand for exact product, cuz people are trying to do that on their own. And that is a great way to find a product opportunity as well. Right. So–,

Kseniia:

They were trying to buy a similar product that were showing up for those search results and modified themself, you know, because there was just nothing exactly as they were looking for. And of course, there were so much demand for that product when I posted it and they start buying it from day one. So basically I probably didn’t even need to use any PPC because people were just buying straight from the link and Facebook groups.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. Awesome. So, how long did it take you to sell out that first thousand units?

Kseniia:

About five weeks. Five to six weeks.

Bradley Sutton:

Wow. So that’s like you know, 40 a day. Wow. So that was a pretty great number of sales per day.

Kseniia:

There. Yeah, the first months it did 25,000 in sales.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, so, your retail price was like around $25?

Kseniia:

No, $50.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, that’s right. That’s right. Okay. $50. And then so even though you know, that’s still a pretty decent profit margin even with your landing cost being $12 there.

Kseniia:

Yeah. I was a little bit over 40% because I didn’t use much PPC because I was mostly promoted through the Facebook groups and for the first batch, I didn’t use that much of 3PL so yeah, the profit was about 40%.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So since you’ve got five weeks, I’m assuming you were out of stock for a certain period of time because it takes, you know, longer than five weeks for a new shipment to come in. So how long were you out of stock?

Kseniia:

I think I was out of stock, so I reordered on the week two of selling because I saw that it has sales and it’s actually working, and I sold out in September and I came back in stock end of October. So about a month probably.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So you still were able to get it back before, you know, like the heavy Christmas season, and then now we’re talking about 2020, or?

Kseniia:

It was 2021

Bradley Sutton:

Well, also this is just last year we’re talking about.

Kseniia:

Yeah, yeah. Just last year.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Excellent. Now how much was your second order? Was it more than a thousand units?

Kseniia:

Yeah. Yeah, it was, I think 2,000 or 3,000. I don’t remember already. Yeah. I reinvested everything that I got from the first batch. But the problem was that I started shipping. Like I shipped 600 or 700 of fast shipping so I could get it really, really fast in October. And I got it on time and I sold out of them very fast, but the main shipment that was supposed to be there for like November and December, it got pulled for inspection. I sold out the 600 and about, I don’t know, two weeks, probably in October from like end of October to like mid-November and right before all the craziness started, I was out of stock again.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So you started selling this, the original shipment. Was it like August, September then?

Kseniia:

End of July.

Bradley Sutton:

July. Okay. So then, in the second half, so not even half a year of sales. And then with being out of stock a lot, how much gross revenue did you do?

Kseniia:

I don’t remember total, but I can tell you for the last 30 days. So I came back in stock mid-December and so basically for the January is around $40,000.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. All right. So, this is you know, you’re making definitely a six figure product, and if you stay in stock the whole year, you know, who knows one product could end up being seven figures, but now that you are able to like, have all this momentum, have there been any, you know, other sellers now trying to do what you’re doing or still nobody else has, has launched?

Kseniia:

No. Yeah, there are. So the first, my competitor got back on stock, they have two variations of that product and they’re basically the main seller. So they’re doing with each variation about 50,000 a month. So if I’m doing 40, well, I’m a little bit less than they do, but still about the same. But I have over a thousand reviews. I only do like 110, a little bit over a hundred right now. And there were several small sellers, mostly Chinese that were trying to get into the space right now. But their problem is that they cannot test the product and they cannot modify it perfectly because they don’t have access to the main product, which mine is accessory for because the main product is only sold in the US and Canada. So, I’m kind of a little bit protected to that because they can, but it’s very expensive to get it from the US and they don’t wanna do it. So all their listings that they’re trying to create right now, one even stole my pictures. So they launched similar product and they just literally stole my pictures, but I reported it to Amazon and they removed the listing.

Bradley Sutton:

How did you report it? Like what, what did you select to do that?

Kseniia:

Through the brand registry? They literally just used my pictures, so they got my pictures and they put their product over mine. With like infographics and everything was literally mine. They didn’t even change anything. So Amazon–,

Bradley Sutton:

So you report them through brand registry and then they took them down.

Kseniia:

Yeah. They removed it the same day because they saw that this is crazy what they’re doing.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Now, this product is an accessory of another one is the other, I mean, regardless the known brand name, but you know, I’m assuming that they’re a brand on Amazon. Like, you’re not putting their brand in your listing or can you put it because it’s an official or it’s an accessory, so you can say, Hey, fits with, you know, just, call it Samsung or something like that?

Kseniia:

Yeah. That’s what I’m doing. Yeah. Can’t put like if you’re talking about like iPhone and iPhone cases, I can’t put it’s an iPhone case. I put it at case four iPhone, so I wasn’t.

Bradley Sutton:

Or compatible with or something like that.

Kseniia:

Yes. I was researching that, cuz I didn’t wanna get in trouble with that, but yeah, I do use it on the listing.

Bradley Sutton:

Have you checked, like, did you get the frequently bought together with their product?

Kseniia:

Yeah, it’s showing up on the page of their product, and Amazon it’s showing up in frequently bought together. My product is the first that’s showing up.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So is this still the only product you currently are selling?

Kseniia:

Yes. This is the only product. I’m about to launch another variation of this product. Another style variation it’s already got to them, so it’s, hopefully, we’ll be launched in maybe a week or two weeks. We’ll see how fast it will get to Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So, you know, I know your profit margin probably went down when you had to, you know, do that fast shipping and you know, competition and stuff, but you know, still, you know, probably making at least 25% margin.

Kseniia:

It’s around, it’s around 30$. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Around 30. Okay. have you surpassed, are you showing off to your husband? Like, Hey, look, I’m making more money than you now or what does he think about that?

Kseniia:

Well, not yet because I can’t say that cuz I’m re still reinvesting most of it. With launch in the second product. But yeah, hopefully, this year

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Well, what did he think? You know, so this is a question, you know, regardless you know, whether it’s family, whether it’s husband, whether it’s wife, you know, sometimes people say, yeah, I’m going to, you know, invest $20,000 or $15,000 into selling this weird product on Amazon, the normal person doesn’t really, they’re like, what, what’s wrong with you? Like, what are you doing? Like, did you get support from your husband and family? He says things like you’re crazier.

Kseniia:

Well, he’s actually a business owner too, so he can understand me. He was the one that it was really hard to start mentally because I was scared of putting so much money, you know, with the first product, it was maybe like 2000, 3000. But with this one, it was like 15,000. I was like, this is crazy. I was stopping myself from doing that. But yeah, he was very supportive to that because he knows that you need to put the money to make the money just not gonna just appear from somewhere. You know? And I noticed that it’s much easier to scale with this product because it’s, it costs a lot of competitors because of how much money you need to invest to start. And most of the people who are just starting, they might even see this opportunity, but they will be like, oh, we need to put $15,000 for the first batch and we don’t know how it’s gonna, you know, how it’s gonna go. So most of the people trying to stick with I don’t know the products that will cost them two, $3 to source instead of, you know, $10 or $12.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. All right. So now, I know we’re only a month into you know, 2022, but do you already have goals for the end of the year? Like, you know, how many products you’re gonna have and what gross revenue number that you will be able to hit?

Kseniia:

Yeah. Well with the second one with two product, hopefully, I hope it’s gonna be over half a million a year, but also I’m working on the third one right now, which is in the same niche. It’s the same variation because I just see the demand again from the Facebook groups. I see what people are looking for different styles of this product. So yeah, I’m working a third one. I don’t know how I’ll go with three of them, but with two, hopefully. Yeah. You’d be around a half a million.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. What do you do to get those 1000 reviews in like, you know, with barely selling that much?

Kseniia:

I have only a hundred. 

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, I thought you said a thousand.

Kseniia:

No, no, no. It’s my competitor.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, your competitor had it, okay. Are you doing anything to get those reviews, like using Follow-Up or you have any inserts or anything like that?

Kseniia:

Yeah. Yeah. I started doing a Follow-Up from the beginning. I don’t do any inserts, just the Follow-Up.

Bradley Sutton:

Which Follow-Up are you doing that? Doing the Amazon request review or you’re making your own custom emails?

Kseniia:

My own custom Follow-Up through Helium 10.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Make sure to check, like we just launched it last week or this week there’s a new kind of like widget inside the Follow-Up where you can actually see you know like it’s a graph that compares like your sales with you know, how your reviews go and how many review requests like maybe you can even do some split testing. Like you wanna try a different email and then see if it does better. That’s something that’s brand new if you’re using Follow-Up you’ll be able to check out. So alright, well, this is like very exciting. Now you had given us already one unique or a number of unique strategies, you know, such as the Facebook groups and how you use the PPC, Test Listing, and things. But, you know, we have this thing on the show, we call that “TST” the TST 30-second tips. So are there one or two other things that you think you’re doing that’s kind of unique or maybe just some advice you have for other sellers who are brand new or semi-new, like yourself that you can share with the audience?

Kseniia:

I just think that it’s more like an advice. I think people should treat this business as the real business. Like if you talk about having a restaurant or something like that, instead of, you know, like on YouTube, they promote it as to get rich quick or something like that. So I don’t think people should treat it like that because it’s a hard work. It’s a lot of hours and it’s not as easy as many people would say it is. And just not to be scared to invest the money in it.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. I love it. I love it. All right. So I’ll be seeing you, hopefully, you know, maybe at the prosper show in March or make sure to, you know find out more information about our Sell and Scale Summit in Vegas. In September, it’s gonna be 10 times as big as some of the smaller events out there, we’re really going all in and it’d be great for people, you know, who are listening out there, maybe inspired by you. They can meet you in person and, and you could, you know, some more Shum. Yeah. Some more of your journey out there. All right, Kseniia, thank you so much for joining us. And we’ll see you soon.

Kseniia:

Thank you. Bye-Bye.

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• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business.
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• Helium 10 Chrome Extension: Verify your Amazon product idea and validate how lucrative it can be with over a dozen data metrics and profitability estimation.
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