How to Turn Unsuccessful Amazon Products into Winners

Learn to turn your unsuccessful Amazon products into winners. In a live interview with Ben and Charity DeVries, Amazon sellers learn how to identify whether or not their unsuccessful product is actually viable. The DeVries share that by answering a few questions about a product’s previous visibility and conversion rate, the viability of the product can be decided.

Has your product been visible since its launch? Does your product have a good conversion rate?

If so, your product may be dud. If not, watch as the DeVries share how you can increase visibility and conversions to help a viable product meets its full potential.

DON’T MISS OUR BONUS OFFER! Write “download” in the comment section on Facebook to get instant access to the bonus Product Viability checklist by our expert Amazon sellers, Ben and Charity DeVries! (YOUR FREE GIFT!) 

Who are the DeVries?

Charity and Ben DeVries are physical product business owners, consultants, and course instructors for the SellerPro Membership by Amazing. The DeVries joined Amazing Selling Machine 6 and gained the tools they needed to get their physical product business off the ground. 3 years later, with the financial freedom they had found through ASM, Ben was able to quit his day job and the DeVries were able to buy an RV to travel the US with their kids—working from wherever they go. 

SellerPro Membership by Amazing – Special Discount

SellerPro Membership courses are taught by current sellers who have proven Amazon success, just like the DeVries. Many instructors have developed strategies using techniques that work well. They create courses to help fellow Amazon sellers on their path to success.  For a limited time, you can get your first month half off. Learn more about our special SellerPro Membership promo of 50% off now! 

Turn Product Duds into Winners – Full Video Transcript

Kristin:              Hello, Amazon sellers. Thanks for tuning in with us today. If you remember last week, I mentioned that we were going to be interviewing Ben and Charity DeVries, and they’re here with us today to talk a little bit about how to identify if you have a viable product or a dud. They’re going to be giving us some great information on how to do that. Hi, Ben and Charity. It’s great to see you. Before we-

Charity:            Hey.

Ben:                 Hello.

Charity:            Thanks for having us.

Kristin:              Thank you for being here. Before we dive in, I wanted to talk a little bit about your success story. You’ve been phenomenally successful Amazon sellers, and I’ll let you talk to that a little bit. How did you get started and what really helped you get things off the ground at first?

Charity:            We got started, probably like maybe some of the people that are watching this, with the Amazing Selling Machine course. We took the Amazing Selling Machine version six, and that was about three years ago. That was super-instrumental in getting us off of the ground. It pretty much just set us up for success, so much so to where we are huge advocates of the Amazing Selling Machine just because we know that it really was the thing that set us up for success.

It gave us all of the pieces that we needed. That was super-instrumental in helping us in the process. Then we’ve been selling now on Amazon for three years total, and we’ve been doing seven figures consistently for the last two years. Our first year was like our get your feet wet, figure this whole thing out, and then we just threw everything in and said there’s no turning back. Our next big goal will be when we hit that eight figure a year mark, but for right now we’re just consistently on the seven figures and working our way up.

Kristin:              Just seven figures, that’s okay.

Charity:            Just seven figures. That’s all.

Kristin:              That is absolutely phenomenal, and I’m so grateful that you have taken that success and are now turning it around to share that with other people in SellerPro with the courses that you’ve started building for us. Those are really interesting and really helpful courses. We’re going to talk a little more about those in a minute. I think it’s great that you want to share your knowledge that you’ve earned over time figuring out what works, what doesn’t.

I always like to tell people that one of the things I love about SellerPro is our instructors, because they’re really down to earth people who this is what they do every day. This is your business. You guys know what’s happening and what’s changing and you stay on top of that. That way we can really tell people, “No, this isn’t theory. It’s practice. It’s real and it’s right there.” That information is available.

You have reached this extraordinary level of success selling seven figures, and I know you didn’t get there by accident. You had vision. You had purpose. You had clarity around what it was you were trying to achieve, because that’s a lot of what goes into reaching those levels of success. I know it wasn’t about really the money for you, although that’s nice, but what was really driving you behind your decision to sell on Amazon and really reach for those levels of success? What was that for you two?

Charity:            I’ll let Ben take that one.

Ben:                 Our biggest thing really was about six months ago I was in cubicle land, so I worked a 9:00 to 5:00 day job, and I really wanted to get out of that. I wanted to build our own dream, build our own empire. That was my big why. I also had another thing on our vision board of one day getting an RV and traveling the United States with our kids during the summer while they’re out of school.

That actually came to fruition just about six months ago as well, and I quit my day job. Now, this last summer we spent the summer traveling around the US with our kids and we’re going to go ahead and do that again this summer. That was my biggest why is really just being able to hang out with our kids while we’re younger and not aching, and while we’re still cool to them.

Kristin:              Charity, you mentioned something that might actually be highly applicable to Amazon sellers who do want to travel about RV parks and Wi-Fi accessibility that you learned the hard way.

Charity:            Yes. We had this thing, because we were first-time RVers as far as extended travel. We had done some local, like a few hours away RV trips and camping. We were thinking, okay, well, all of these RV campgrounds everybody pretty much has Wi-Fi. We’ll be good to go. We’ll just hook up to the Wi-Fi wherever we go.

Ben:                 You envision yourself sitting there with your coffee, the mountains, your laptop and your computer and perfect Wi-Fi. No. Not so much.

Charity:            It’s not. Yeah. We [crosstalk 00:05:02] learned very fast and we went and we got a MiFi Jetpack within just a couple of weeks of being on the road, because we just had such peaks with the internet. If you were at the RV park during the day when nobody else was there, you’re good, but at night when everybody starts streaming Netflix you have a problem. We learned very fast that if you work online and you want to be able to travel, make your own internet.

Kristin:              Good to know. We’re already starting off with some great information. Make your own internet wherever you go.

Ben:                 There you go. Yeah.

Kristin:              I know that when you first started selling, you were doing pretty well, and then you’ve started doing some things that have really, really caused your business to take off. What were those tipping points for you? What was one of the first things that you realized, “Hey, this is making a huge difference in our sales and conversions”?

Charity:            Well, I think one of the things that we noticed and even just recently it’s been, I don’t know, funny, because I’m a very competitive person. When I look at our competitors, I always am like, “Well, how many units are we selling versus what they’re selling?” Right now, we’re outselling them about three to one.

Really what moved that needle for us and what was that tipping point for us was visibility. We really spent a lot of time and research to find out when somebody searches for a keyword that’s maybe somewhat relevant, or super-relevant to our product, is our product showing up on the first page when they’re searching for that keyword? What we really did is we really started doing a lot of research and a lot of diving in to say how visible are we.

If our goal is to make as many sales as possible, then we need to be as visible in as many places as possible on Amazon. We really just started diving in and saying, okay, if it’s even somewhat relevant to our product we just want to make sure that we’re hitting that first page for all of these different keywords so we have more eyeballs on our products, which then of course netted us more sales.

Kristin:              I think that is a really, really amazing starting place. A lot of it, it sounds like, just starts with awareness and knowing where you’re at.

Charity:            Right. Exactly. The thing is that first of all you can’t really have a good baseline of knowing are you improving or not if you don’t start just looking at where you are and saying, “Here’s a baseline of where we are.” It’s just like anything in life, whether it’s finances, or whether it’s maybe a fitness goal, or wherever, you have to take that baseline and say, “Here’s where the baseline is.” Then if we want to move this forward, then how are we going to move this forward? Then to be able to track that you are making forward progress instead of backwards progress.

Kristin:              I do definitely want to go back to that. I would like to take a minute while we’re here to just give a shout-out to our members and our people who are joining us today. We’re here live with Ben and Charity DeVries who are going to teach us in just a minute a little bit about how to identify whether you have a viable product or a dud. It may be that you have something, a really, really great product and it’s not selling. They’ve got some good ideas on how to identify that to really start increasing your sales and conversions.

They’re live, so if you have a question for them, please enter your question in the comments section, and we can answer it live for you. I can’t necessarily do that, and that’s why I’m here with the experts who can answer all of your questions for you because they have such an extensive background and knowledge in selling on Amazon and what it takes to be successful, as we’ve heard.

Today, what we’re going to be doing is giving away a handout for free to help you identify what your viable products are, whether you have one or not. The way you do that, before I get there, is just type download into the comments section, and then you’ll get signed up to download that handout for free. It has all the information you need.

Ben and Charity, while you’re here, can you start telling and explaining how that works? I have a product I’m selling on Amazon, I love it. I’m passionate about it. I’ve told all my friends and family. It just isn’t moving. Maybe I’m worried that I have a dud. How can I identify whether or not I have a successful product on my hands?

Charity:            That’s a great question, and that’s actually a question that people have asked us all of the time. We have done so many just coaching sessions with people, or whatever, where people have asked us, “Should I just start over? Should I just pick a new product and start over?” What it always comes down to and what we see over and over again is there’s two things. One is visibility and two is conversions.

I would answer that question by saying if your product has been on the first page for the majority of your search terms, and if you have a good conversion rate, and you still cannot move that product then I would move on to a different product.

What we found is 99% of the time the answer to both of those questions is no. It’s never been on the first page. It doesn’t have a good conversion rate. Especially for somebody that picked a product using the ASM criteria, there’s a really good safeguard in that knowing that there’s demand for that product, and it comes down to visibility, and it comes down to conversions.

What is it about your listing that makes people want to choose yours over the competitors, and then how visible are you? We have a little joke in our industry, and the joke is where’s the best place to hide a dead body, and it’s on page two of the search results, because nobody’s going to look there. If it’s never been on page one, then it never really had a chance.

Kristin:              What are some ways that people can optimize Amazon product listings, because we want to give away some great information today. We’re all about making sure people are successful in Amazon SellerPro, so what are some ways that people can, a couple of ways that people can optimize their listings maybe to start seeing that shift in their conversions or their sales?

Charity:            For sure. I always like to look at our listing versus our competitors, and I always like to make sure that we’re not leaving any questions unanswered. The biggest barrier that will make people not want to purchase a product is if maybe there’s any sort of question or doubt in their mind about the product.

If you’re leaving any questions unanswered either through your photos or through your infographics, if you’re not trying to answer every single question that somebody might have about your product, then you’re going to not be able to convert as well as maybe say a competitor that’s doing a very good job with answering all of the questions.

We have to remember as online sales we don’t have the advantage of when somebody walks into Target and they can pick it up and they can feel it, and they can touch it, and they can smell it, or whatever. They can use their senses to engage with that product. When you’re online, you have to communicate all of those things through your photos and through your bullet points.

If you’re leaving any questions out there that are not answered, you’re going to have a conversion problem.

Ben:                 We’ve actually found a tool that we go over in the course, but you can actually download all of your reviews. What’s cool with that is you can find actual customer information about what they like about yours or your competitors’ products and what they don’t like. You can find common phrases on what people are saying a lot of that they love or like about the product. You can use that in your bullet points, saying that, “Our product does this. Ours does not do this unlike our competitors.”

Then you can also tell a story with those type of items that you found from the reviews, like a silicone spatula. Love the handle, how it fit in my hand. If 20 people are saying that, you can actually speak to that in your bullets and in your pictures, so you’re actually telling a story in your pictures.

Kristin:              I love that. I know that sometimes we hear about the silicone spatulas. It’s a popular product to reference. Do you guys have any stories of kind of aha moments of one of your products where you experienced something similar where you’re thinking, “Well, this product isn’t selling,” and then you went and looked and said, “Oh my goodness. Here’s a really obvious question that we didn’t answer,” or something that just really stuck out to you as “oops” and then you made that change and saw the [inaudible 00:13:50]?

Charity:            Yeah. Dimensions for us were a big one, because there are customers that want … With our particular product or products, we have several, but they were looking for it to fit in a particular place in their house. We would get a lot of people saying, “Well, it didn’t fit in this particular location.”

For us, we realized very early on, like, “Oh my gosh, we are leaving this information on the table where people aren’t sure really about the dimensions.” They’re just seeing a picture, and even though they might be seeing a picture that’s a lifestyle photo, that still doesn’t give a good frame of reference for how big is the product.

We started putting those dimensions in our photos to where it showed the approximate length, width, height, all of those types of things. What that really did is it helped to prevent any negative reviews as well, question then we weren’t having people that were purchasing our products and saying, “Well, it was bigger than I thought. It was smaller than I thought.”

We were answering right upfront, so where when people before they even ordered it, they had an idea of what it was they were going to get.

Kristin:              That is a really, really good. It seems like such a simple thing to say dimensions, but it’s just not that obvious, so that is an excellent piece of information. Thank you so much for sharing that. One of the things I do want to mention to people who are watching with us today is we have this course from Ben and Charity DeVries in the SellerPro right now. It’s called Listing CEO.

Some of the things that you’re hearing today not only about determining your product viability but also how to change that, so knowing you have a viable product, but then optimizing your listing to make sure that you’re optimizing your sales and conversions. You can find that in SellerPro right now along with 40-plus other courses. We’re running a promotion where you can get 50% off your very first month.

I’m sharing the link with you in the comments, so that you can access that promo. It’s all backed by a 30-day money back guarantee. Go in there and check out the membership and see what you love, find out these courses, get this information, because we want to give that to you.

On top of that, there is a comments section in SellerPro where you can ask your questions directly of the instructors. Ben and Charity, you guys have been about fantastic about answering those questions and then checking in and saying, “Hey, did that work?” People really do have access, and you typically respond to them within 48 hours, which is huge. A lot of platforms don’t really do that. In SellerPro it’s our priority to look after the people who are part of that.

I do want to take a moment to say thank you for being so responsive and working so hard with our members to help make them successful. That just makes a big difference.

Charity:            Sure.

Ben:                 Absolutely.

Kristin:              One thing I would like to ask you is it’s a little bit less about product viability, although that is really important. I’m curious, how is your life different today now that you’re Amazon sellers and you’ve been wildly successful? How is it different today than it was several years ago when, Ben, you were in your 9:00 to 5:00 and things just weren’t like they are?

Charity:            It’s vastly different. We spend our time now, I guess, dreaming more often, and even lately, so we live in Colorado, and it’s November or almost December, and it’s getting colder. I always get this little itch to move someplace warmer. The funny part is-

Kristin:              Come to Austin.

Charity:            I know, right? I’ve heard. You all don’t have the ocean. That’s kind of a little bit of a deal breaker.

Kristin:              It’s like three hours away.

Ben:                 Every year I catch her on the computer looking at houses in Florida.

Charity:            I’m always like, “Look at Florida.” The cool thing about that is if we really wanted to do that, that’s possible. This is completely portable. We actually have the ability now to where it’s like if we wanted to pick up and move across the country, we could do that. There’s nothing that would really …

We have our relationships and friends, and things like that, but it wouldn’t be like we have to be tied to a job. Also, I have so many of my friends just in the last year that have moved out of the area due to a job. Even that, we don’t ever have to worry about, “Well, what if we would have to leave because of a job?” That’s just basically a non-issue for us. It’s kind of exciting to be able to have just that time freedom.

Then the other thing that I would say that we’ve gotten really good at and that life is just very different now is we’ve just had opportunity to set boundaries about when we are going to work and when we’re not going to work. When we first started, we were just so gung ho that it was like nights, and weekends, and in between. We just really found ourselves starting to almost get on that cusp of burn out.

We’re like, okay, we have to be able to set these boundaries because it’s like I could check my Amazon app every hour if I wanted to, to just be like, “How are we doing?” We’ve learned to then have a little bit better boundaries so that we’re moving our business forward, but we’re not doing it at the expense of our marriage, at the expense of our family, at the expense of our own health, all of those things that entrepreneurs especially can get wrapped up in really fast. It’s been a great learning experience on that side too.

Kristin:              That is some really, really excellent advice for Amazon sellers, because a lot of Amazon sellers are very passionate about what they do. I think you’re right, it’s important to set those boundaries because isn’t that why people get into it a lot of times is to be able to travel, have that freedom, and then you find yourself a slave to your own drive to succeed in that way. That is really excellent advice.

Speaking of advice, I have one more question for you. Again, we go back to helping Amazon sellers be successful with SellerPro. If you could give an Amazon seller one piece of advice, something they could do today right now at the very end of this interview, what could they do today that would make a huge difference in moving their business forward?

Charity:            The one thing that anybody could do today, anybody that’s selling on Amazon is determine a baseline of where your products are with visibility. How visible are you on Amazon? When you search for your product on Amazon, are you showing up on page one? Are you showing up on page two? Where is it that you’re showing up in the search results? Document that baseline or use a software. There’s software tools out there that are available, but depending upon how you prefer to be able to track things.

Develop a baseline and start tracking and know are you going in a upward trend, are you going in a downward trend. You’re not going to be able to ultimately change what you don’t monitor. I would say anybody that’s selling on Amazon today, develop a baseline right now, November 19th, 2018. Where is your product showing up? Then track that, and then you’ll be able to know am I going in a positive direction, or am I going in a negative direction and I need to change what I’m doing?

Ben:                 I would say …

Kristin:              Ben you-

Ben:                 … go ahead and just make sure you know your 80/20 keywords, the highest volume keywords that are going to really give you the most sales, and make sure that they’re in your listing. It’s kind of like a fire hose. The more keywords you have, the higher volume, the more searches and more traffic you’re going to get to your listing.

The second thing I would say is just make sure you belong there on the first page. When you’re looking at all your products, and make sure your pictures and title and reviews. Make sure if you’re looking at it as an end user, is your pricing good compared to your competitors, your product photos as compelling as the other competitors on the first page? If it’s not, if you get it up there on the first page it’s going to fall pretty quickly.

Kristin:              That is excellent, excellent advice from both of you. I know also that in your course, Listing CEO, you’ve included a spreadsheet for download to help people track that so that they don’t get lost, so that they have a really good place to start, a foundation to start with. Is that right?

Charity:            Yeah. Absolutely.

Ben:                 Absolutely. We go over it all.

Kristin:              We do have one question before you go. The question is how long have you been selling on Amazon, how many products have you launched, and as you were getting started on this journey what was your greatest challenge and how did you work through that challenge? Really it’s four questions disguised [inaudible 00:22:45]. Let me break that down a little bit if I can.

How long have you been selling? How many products have you launched and what were some of your greatest challenges and how did you work through them?

Charity:            We’ve been selling on Amazon for three years. We have launched close to probably 20 products. We have let some products go over the years. We’ve had some products to where we were like this just isn’t as profitable. For whatever reason, we’ve chosen to let some products go.

Ben:                 We definitely gave it a chance, made sure it was visible first before we let it go.

Charity:            We made sure we went through our own criteria before we just said, “Let’s move on.” Probably one of our greatest challenges was just being able to find the support that we needed. We got into this journey and really early on it was like where are the other people that can help us answer these questions that we’re not able to just find the answers to in the ASM course or in another particular course, or something like that?

That was probably one of our biggest challenges was being able to find community. Within the amazing.com community, there was just so many other mentors and so many other people that were able to help answer those questions, or even if they weren’t able to answer those questions, just even having some empathy and commiserating. It’s like, “I was on the phone with seller support for three hours today,” and they’re like, “Hey, I’ve been there too.” Just feeling like you’re not alone in the journey.

I love the community that is built around the ASM community and around amazing.com, because there’s just such a great community of other Amazon sellers that even if you don’t maybe get an answer that you’re looking for, you at least get some empathy.

Kristin:              I love that, because that community is so important. By any measure of success, most people are going to tell you, “I did not get here alone. I had support along the way.” I love that you are so supportive inside of SellerPro. I kind of mentioned earlier that people can ask questions underneath the course and that you’ve answered them, and you consistently do so.

I do want to wrap this up by just telling people we have a promo going right now. You can find out what you love about SellerPro for 50% off the first month’s membership, and it’s backed by a 30-day money back guarantee. Just click the promo link in the comments section, and that’ll give you that access. You can take the DeVries’ course, Listing CEO. You can see the other courses that are there to help you move your business forward, and you’ll always have that support of our instructors and the community there to help you when you’re facing these challenges.

At the end of the day, it’s about your success. Go to amazing.com today, or click the link so you can take advantage of the promo and get 50% off that first month’s membership, so you can make sure that it’s right for you. I wanted to say, Ben and Charity, it has been an absolute pleasure talking with you today, getting all of this incredible for the people who are watching. Thank you so much for just how much you’ve shared with everybody and for having such a great time while we were doing it.

Charity:            Yeah. Glad to do it.

Ben:                 Absolutely. Thank you.

Kristin:              Well, we will see you in SellerPro, and everybody who’s watching have a fantastic day.

Ben:                 Bye.

Kristin:              You guys are amazing.

*DISCLAIMER: The claims presented on our website are not represented as predictions or forecasts that anyone who joins will experience success. Concerning future performance or results, no guarantee of any kind is implied and some may experience no success at all. Individual results will vary depending on many factors outside our control, including the degree of effort made by each individual and the time, skill and ability they can devote to the business. Although these claims are truthful statements about results obtained by our customers, the results obtained by our customers are not necessarily typical.