Features
Cameron Scot
In this video, I sat down with KDP seller Janice Papworth , who increased her Q4 sales by 66% year over year with the help of Amazon ads. Janice, thanks so much for coming on our channel. Really excited to have you here.
Janice Papworth
Thank you for having me Cameron, and I'm really excited to be talking to the real person.
Cameron Scot
Absolutely. Let's just jump right in. Maybe it'd be helpful for everybody watching this, if you could just kind of tell us a little bit about your Amazon journey.
Janice Papworth
What happened was, I always brought up my children and didn't work work property work. And so when they got a bit older, and I had a bit more time, I decided to start a blog because I wanted to do something from home that were kind of make money. And I wanted to monetize it. And I thought, what can I blog about? What do I know about I'm obviously about mums stuff, but everybody's doing that. And my husband's, he's a railway expert, really, he's very big on railways. So we started a railway blog. And I did all the SEO, and the Facebook and the Twitter. And he did the actual writing the articles because he knew all about heritage railways and that sort of thing. And then I went on a Facebook course with Rachel Miller. I don't know if you've heard of her, but she's a big Facebook guru. Okay. And she had Jacob topping on as kind of as a guest. And he said, of the most easiest thing to sell anyone is a T shirt, and he started talking about Merch by Amazon. And I thought that's good. Southern Railway T shirts, because not many people are doing that. And it's UK. And, you know, it's not the same in America. So we made some railway T shirts. We got accepted into Merch, that was the first thing.
Cameron Scot
What about what time period? How long ago was that?
Janice Papworth
It was that April 2018.
Cameron Scot
Okay, we started about the same time I was, I think I was around March or April as well. So...
Janice Papworth
That's interesting, isn't it? Yeah. That's, um,
Cameron Scot
I'm not on KDP, which will, I'm sure we'll talk about a little bit. So maybe, you know, probably some balance there.
Janice Papworth
So I started making railway shirts and selling them through the blog. And then I thought, What am I doing, you know, I'm waiting for him to write the next blog. And he's off doing something else or working or I could be doing T shirts on anything. So I started doing other T shirts, really. And that's how I got into Merch. And then I joined the Facebook groups, things like that. I do things quite thoroughly. And I joined the Merch Girl boss group. And Amy, I can't pronounce her surname, Amy, Tetsuka something like that.
Cameron Scot
I'm not familiar.
Janice Papworth
Amy, she was talking about KDP. So I started looking at that as well. And then I picked up on people like Kelly Publish and Richard Harrison sons really got into KDP. And that worked out better for me than Merch. But I still do Merch. I did them both. And then found out about Merch Jar because I've always followed RJ. And I think he did an interview with RJ on YouTube.
Cameron Scot
Yep, I've been on his channel a few times.
Janice Papworth
Yeah, so I've always followed RJ and Matt. And I was in their secret group for a bit but then they got a bit more Etsy based. And I didn't want to do Etsy because it involves a lot of customer service and everything and I'm not in the US. So I I didn't want to be with the time difference and having to deal with people wasn't the point of doing the passive income really, the passive income was so that I could cope with family issues. Or we could go and travel we could go away or whatever without having to worry about somebody's T shirts and arrived and they want it now.
Cameron Scot
Yeah, absolutely. I don't boy, I'm in the US and I don't want to deal with the people here at customer service. So that's that's pretty amazing. So you're you're on Merch, you're on KDP been selling on merch since 2018. And you started KDP was at the same year? Is that that come a little bit later?
Janice Papworth
I started in October of 2018. Yeah, okay.
Cameron Scot
So same year, so pretty close together. When it comes to KDP and Merch what marketplaces are you selling on? Is it UK and US? Are you in some of the other marketplaces as well?
Janice Papworth
Yeah. You US merch is definitely the biggest, but I find I can pick niches in the UK that are not being covered in the US. So that helps me quite a lot. And then I've done some European ones, but nothing major. Really. Okay, gotcha dappled. Some things I thought was suitable things that didn't have words on them. Okay. I've never got too involved with pop sockets or throw pillows or tote bags. You can't do everything. You've got to stick to what you know. Really?
Cameron Scot
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I think most people find that you want to find a niche that works for you to just kind of, you know, accelerate that pour gasoline on that. And you said KDP was working. You had you had more success with KDP than with Amazon.
Janice Papworth
Yeah, much more. I did start splitting my time initially. And I had a big love the T shirts kind of fun I sort of almost resented how to get to KDP? But then I realized KDP I'm like, What am I doing? You know, I'm looking at my sales. And I've sold five t shirts today. But there's so many books before I woke up this morning. Because obviously, the sales come in overnight for me. So when I wake up, that's when I've sold stuff.
Cameron Scot
That's the best feeling ever is no one making money sleeping. That's, for me. That's like one of the best things just wake it up. And you see how much money you made? That's amazing. Yeah, as far as like KDP. Because KDP is kind of just a different beast than Amazon or Merch by Amazon all together, where I mean very, versus just very much a graphic, which you'd have that with KDP you got your cover, but then you have everything else inside the book, which you don't have to do with Merch. So it's a lot more involved. Could you tell us so you don't have to go into like detail of niches or anything like that whatever you want to share? Are you doing more of like, low content? This is just based on my like reading because I'm in some KDP groups, I just tried to say I have a KDP account. Just I think I have one book on there just from testing. Are you doing more like low content? Or are you doing some more of the higher content? Are you writing books yourself that you should just share some information on what kind of kind of products I suppose you're selling there. So it's it's a little broader than just hey, T shirts on Amazon?
Janice Papworth
I started out with tangent templates, and they've got very basic templates. So graph paper and lines. But that quickly became saturated. I mean, what was interesting was in December 2018, I went to, or it might have been January 2019. Actually, I went to the Merch UK conference, the first and only one because the next one got cancelled with COVID. COVID, yeah. And I asked everybody there there was about, I don't know, 60-70 people there. And I kept saying to them, are you doing KDP as well. And they were like, No, we're not doing KDP which is strange, because I'm doing quite well on KDP. But people haven't got into it from the Merch side. So I was following more traditional people that had always been KDP and never done Merch. And so I started out with a very basic stuff. But as the Merch people came in, that became just so saturated, and a lot of it was just absolute rubbish. And one thing Amazon is big about I'm big about to is that you give the customer value. I don't want to buy something or found this and that and get it and think that's rubbish. I've just sent it back. And KDP and not taking our returns office at the moment like Merch, but I think they will at some point. Because I've never seen a return in my dashboard ever. Yeah, it must be sending them back.
Cameron Scot
I would imagine I can't imagine Amazon not accepting your return. Like that blows my mind if Amazon just Yeah, except for return on basically anything since they're so customer centric. I mean, if anybody has been that's watching this has been selling on Amazon, they know the customer is the only thing Amazon cares about us as resellers. They don't at all. So if you're anybody watching this is new. That's that's what it is. Amazon only cares about the customer, not the sellers. So that's really interesting.
Janice Papworth
As creators, we have to care about the customer as well. Because sooner or later, Amazon will crack down on that rubbish they're bound to, they're bound to start charging for every book you upload like Etsy do or they or they're going to start reviewing accounts where they've got thousands of books, well, they're going to start limiting us on how many books we can upload. So I do more. I do quite a variety of books, whatever kind of fires my interest that week. And I tend to do, I wouldn't say they're low content, but I don't write reams and memes because I don't get interested in that. I quite like the visual side of things. So I enjoy the covers the most. But I also do a lot of research into the keywords. And I try and do things that are a bit different or first to market or so not necessarily research on Amazon itself and following the herd. For instance, I like watching my local news and I live in quite a low crime area. I live in the southwest of England it's quite beachy is quite low crime. I'm so they have to fill the local news up with what people are doing. And they, they sometimes have the most interesting things on there. And I think all those people could do with a little book to help them along. I mean, Magnet Fishing, for example, I haven't done it because I don't think there's that big of demand. But apparently, people are going with magnets to fish in rivers, and see what they can pull up. And of course, they're pulling up, you know, little grenade that somebody's left there for 20 years and having to call the bomb squad out. But people are actually doing this as a hobby, they're going out with a magnet on a fishing line and fishing metal things out of canals and rivers.
Cameron Scot
That's amazing. Yeah, and you could just let you know, I survived the grenade, whatever of 2020. That's, I mean, that's a really interesting approach. And I think, especially for anybody that's just getting started with these kinds of things is that using your own knowledge and interest to find products to sell, because there's, I mean, we you mentioned saturation, and there is a lot of that, especially with Merch, I'm sure I'm sure a lot of that was just, hey, take this teacher, all my T shirt designs, we're just going to throw these on journals and try to sell them and see what happens and sticks. But there's still so many different niches or what your boy you said, just like these small stories or whatnot, that can become products, and like that's infinite, there's no end to that. Especially if you can bring a unique spin to it. And not just what you said, just kind of follow the crowd and do whatever you think everyone else is doing just because you see it selling.
Janice Papworth
And the other thing is, if you make a book that's got more interior, it's very hard to copy. So on Merch all my designs have been just copied everywhere. And it's so disheartening when you go and look for something and your best sellers there and you report it, and they have to report it again. And again. It's just really disheartening. But on Merch on KDP it's much harder to copy an entire book unless they buy it and somehow scan it in.
Cameron Scot
I have okay if you buy it, at least you're getting something out of it, Merch, just a button to download.
Janice Papworth
I've seen it where they've copied my cover and front page. But the inside is just lines, which is not the point. And then I've also seen it where they've actually done the look inside pages. And they've copied mine. And then I found it they they'd actually pinched pages from other people's books, and mesh them all into one book. And so I was writing to Amazon and saying this is these two pages are from my book. But the other pages I bought their book in the end to see what mesh they've made of it. But the other pages are from so-and-so's book and the X pages from so-and-so's book. And I could reverse image search them or I could see other writing, I could search that and find which books they stolen the interior pages out of because they could only use them look inside pages. So consistent through the whole book, they'd have to use four or five books and mesh them together.
Cameron Scot
I haven't heard of that. But that's it doesn't surprise me I guess like any of that copying and stuff doesn't surprise me anymore. But that's you actually bring up a really good point is with just the barriers to entry were Merch has virtually none. As far as like stealing a product or copying a product versus somewhat something like a private label product that you might be selling on Seller Central, where you have a manufacturer designing a product that's kind of on the opposite end of Merch, then there's KDP kind of like in between there, where there's more barrier to entry, it's you're developing more of a product, but not quite as much as you know, finding a manufacturer and having to deal with shipments and so forth. So it's kind of KDP has a nice middle ground. Between that where you don't have to worry as much about, I guess, competition, I'd imagine there's less competition just because of it. And I know for me, I haven't gotten too much into KDP myself just because of those barriers to entry personally. It's a little more, I guess, intimidating.
Janice Papworth
Yes. I mean, the simpler your interior is the easier is to stay a listener.
Cameron Scot
So when it comes to your KDP and Merch, the Merch platforms, and your sales distribution, how many products do you have on each of them? You'd like to share that and do you see that most of your revenue is made comes from just one or two or a few products or is that more kind of evenly distributed across all of your products?
Janice Papworth
Why hasn't this look on Merch? I've got just over 2000 designs, which I mean I don't do a lot of work on my merch account at the moment. You know I'm more doing KDP so that's t shirt designs, not pop sockets or anything. On KDP I've got 1600 Your books, okay, less. But I've got only got 10 that have sold over a thousand. Wow. But there's 1600, I looked to see how many had sold in 1000 of them have sold. So 600 have never ever sold. And they're probably the ones I did at the beginning that when I was learning the process and learning about keywords and things like that, because I've never gone back and beefed him up, change the keywords or anything. Sure, I've got one hero product which sold over 100,000
Cameron Scot
Whoa, that's amazing. That's absolutely amazing. So, congratulations. When was that book upload? Is that one that's been up for a while? Or is that one that just kind of took off like gangbusters right away?
Janice Papworth
I did it in October 2019.
Cameron Scot
That's absolutely amazing. And I guess one thing I want to point out with, to our audiences, if you haven't had a product reach some of these higher ranks really low BSRs is how many sales the top rank products are getting versus the ones that are I mean, it's not just kind of a linear curve to it, where it's like, oh, there's probably selling you know, I'm selling like 10 A month or price on like 100 a month is like no, it's it's a hockey stick where it just goes straight up the top tiers are getting far more impressions and clicks and sales then just even products are ranking a little bit lower. And I think that really highlights it.
Janice Papworth
Yeah, I mean, the first year it's so the first quarter four and you just saw the most in quarter for it so well in America. And then I realized that he had reasonably good rank in the UK and Canada as well. And I started pushing it then in the other two markets too. But the thing is that if you can use ads to push a book in KDP then Amazon actually kind of rewards you because in KDP what you're looking for is also to get into the autobots and into the person who looked at this looked at this that's like free advertising from Amazon. And once you start getting into the charts as well and they also have Christmas gift guides that you can get into so you can get the Christmas gift guide badge and then you appear in the Christmas gift guides that Amazon run then then that's what you're looking for really. So you're out advertising is helping to sell them but what you're trying to do is get Amazon's attention get Amazon to notice that book and get it into the not just the best seller badge but your Christmas gift guide badge or your Amazon chart badge or your when person buys this they also buy this because then you're getting free advertising from Amazon they send emails out saying we noticed you looked at this How about buying this you want to get into those emails and once your book starts to convert and sell then Amazon push it as well. Um the advertising keeps it in that.
Cameron Scot
Feedback loop right we're just kind of snowballs just from you know the ads and you know that kind of snowballs into like those different badges and I haven't heard of some of those since they're not available and Merch pretty much get what Amazon's Amazon choice or whatever is the only ones I've really seen over on the Merch side so that's really interesting that.
Janice Papworth
Oh they're all there in that Christmas the southern Christmas gift guides only Christmas obviously. But if you go I looked on Amazon US is still there. I don't think...
Cameron Scot
Well I'm just not familiar I guess with books as much in general but it's it makes sense. I mean, books are kind of like the OG Amazon product right like that's what they started with and what's been up the longest versus Merch which is relatively new. You know all things consider it's only a few years old, compared to books they've been selling for since their inception. But I when it comes to the ads, just kind of throw this in how would you describe like your strategy? Would you say you're like pretty aggressive with ads? Are you more conservative? If Do you have like a? What does that kind of look like? Or how would you describe yourself when it comes to running ads?
Janice Papworth
I try and keep them in profits. The first thing to do is to know what your ACOS is for profit, where your breakeven is really okay. I tend to run the lottery campaign since I found out about those from you this year. So I run t shirt lottery. I've got a pop socket last lottery although I don't have many sockets. I've got a book lottery obviously and I' ve got to Amazon clothing not t shirts like sweat shirts and stuff, lottery. Okay, I've got those running in US, UK and Canada, kind of just any books, obviously, we haven't got.
Cameron Scot
Okay, so you're doing lotteries for the KDP products as well. Yeah. And then you'd have to segment those by market, it's not like you can have like your Canadian and US into one campaign just waiting Amazon ads works, they split that up. And for anybody watching this not familiar with lottery campaigns, that's essentially just a campaign with a single ad group with all of your product segments or some segment of product. So like, if it's just t shirts, so there's a lot of different varieties, we have a video on lottery campaigns and how to get those started and what those are, I will link that in the description of this video. So you have that as well.
Janice Papworth
Once they start to sell, if they're selling for something seasonal, so the shirts are often seasonal. Sure, I'll run their own campaign, choosing your method I'm not very good at so you have to tell me what to do Cameron, and but I watched the videos and I study it very carefully, I make notes. And I think, oh, I should be doing that. And if it's really complicated, I think I can't cope with that I just, um, just on the light version, you know that keep it simple. So I do the three ads, I run the auto first on the individual product, if that's stopped selling, then I run the testing and the performance ads. And I use Merch Jar to take the keywords from the auto ads into the testing and performance. Now that's new for me this year, I haven't done that before. I knew it should kind of be doing it because our...
Cameron Scot
Work it's so much work to do by hand.
Janice Papworth
And RJ kept banging on about it, the shirts and I really can't face that I just leave the automatic running it be fine. And...
Cameron Scot
When you work, I know a lot of people are kind of or some people are with auto ads some they can have that stigma. It's like, well, it's Amazon doing it. It's their algorithm. So they must not work. It's all manual all day. And maybe some of the like older school PPC advertisers, it's always better like with Google ads, like no, you don't want to auto it's all manual. And that's kind of carried over from what I've seen. But auto ads work right. Like they've that's how I started with Amazon ads and just seeing that success and especially with how easy they are to to run, especially versus other platforms like a Facebook ads, for example. But so you mentioned your auto ads you've seen success with right?
Janice Papworth
Yeah. And then I didn't realize things like you shouldn't turn them off. So I would turn them off each year and then start a new one the following year. Okay, I've learned this year to just turn them down and not turn them off. So nothing has been turned off. They're all still there.
Cameron Scot
And are you seeing a difference in that over the last year? Because it kind of these changes in strategy that you've had? Have you noticed a difference in your ad performance?
Janice Papworth
I think it's the turning them off thing has got to come round again. Because things mostly are the things that take off a seasonal rather than evergreen. Okay, particularly with the T shirts. So I'm looking forward to I started about May was Merch Jar, okay. But what I think has made a difference is because I'm harvesting the keywords now. I'm getting much more, the sales have increased. And that's the the only difference I can see.
Cameron Scot
That's the one that matters, right? For sales, the sales, that's at the end of the day, that's the only thing that matters.
Janice Papworth
I can see that on the T shirts, you know, some of the things I've done on the T shirts this year where I've harvested the the key words using the auto the test and the exact, just as you told me and I've got my little card here, I make little notes on how to do it. This is my crib sheet. If I lose that I'm stuffed, I've got to watch your video again. And I did it on the hero book this year as well. So I actually increased my sales like that 60s Well, I increase my profit actually by 66%.
Cameron Scot
Year over year. Wow. Oh, just Okay, over so Q4 this past 2021 versus Q4 2020. Oh, that's amazing.
Janice Papworth
The hero book. Yeah.
Cameron Scot
I'm looking forward to Yeah, I mean, I'm honestly in the same boat, like I have hundreds of thousands of products but like 95% of my revenue comes from two products. And that's same same boat where it's because of when you rank a product and it's at the top of the rankings. It's just such a massive difference where it's out sells, uh, you know, hundreds of 1000s of other books or in my case t shirts, but just because of that sales volume. So it's it's crazy. So I'm looking forward to hearing your results Q4 This year, and maybe another 60% increase.
Janice Papworth
I'll be in the Bahamas, but then
Cameron Scot
we'll do another video you'll be on the beach.
Janice Papworth
Unless Amazon was scoping me for some reason, somehow I didn't know how
Cameron Scot
We won't talk about that. So knock on wood. Did they think so you said that set up this campaign structure, the auto testing performance. And I'll link a video to that as well to alive I did pretty recently that kind of goes over that structure. And kind of my current structure that I'm using that Janice is using as well. Did anything surprising come from that hero product that any keywords that came up that were surprising to you that were selling and working that you want to have thought of?
Janice Papworth
Oh, I thought of an example for you, because he doesn't give away what I did. So if you imagine you're the person who's got to buy Christmas presents, I mean, I am that person in my family, you might be in yours. But there's some people that are really hard to buy for. So my dad, he's 87, and he's really hard to buy for, he doesn't leave the house. But every year I buy my tin of biscuits. And every year I buy him a sudoku book. And what was happening was people were searching for tin of biscuits on Amazon. They weren't, I mean, this is just a sample. And then they were finding my book because Amazon was serving it to them somehow. And because they were buying it, tin of iscuits was showing up in my keywords. I thought that's weird, because I'm not selling tin of biscuits. But everybody who's buying the tin of biscuits is buying the Sudoku book. And so it's worth advertising against the tin of biscuits, even though it's nothing to do with the book, nothing to do with it. People are buying these things together, on enough of them are buying them together, that Amazon put that into the auto campaign. And then it got picked up by the keywords. That's quite, you know, it's quite, it's quite good value to advertise against the tin of biscuits, because nobody's thought of it.
Cameron Scot
Yeah, 100%. So that could be I mean, depending on the other competition for tin of biscuits, it could be a low cost per click for that search term.
Janice Papworth
And also, if it converts, as well, I understand that Amazon, you don't have to bid so high, because it's converting well, Amazon don't make you that it's not solely on bid where Amazon shows you, the, shows the advert it's also on conversions, because it's converting and gets to biscuits, you're not having to pay so much.
Cameron Scot
That's so that's actually a good point. And no one really knows how the Amazon ad or any of Amazon's algorithms work, I don't even think most people that work there. And work on these algorithms know exactly how they work, because there's so many different moving parts to them. But it is pretty well speculated that there is some sort of hidden quality score to your ads based on conversion rates and how well they convert similar to like a Google ads, which is a little more documented, but it's again, heavily speculated the Amazon ads works. Very similarly, with having some kind of hidden metric where you don't have to pay as much when you have relevancy and convert high conversion versus someone that doesn't, they're going to have to pay a little bit more for the privilege of getting their ad serve. That's a really interesting point. The other thing I want to point out is with this tin of biscuits example where it's like something you never even thought of is every single search term on that customers are typing on an image that has some level of traffic on it, that is coming through that search term. And the more search terms that you can appear for whether it's, you know, incredibly relevant, you know, or hyper relevant to your product, or it's not, it's like the tin of biscuits, that's just more traffic going to your product, and the more traffic, the more orders and sales generally. So having that broad approach, even if it's something you might not expect, or even is maybe something that doesn't convert as well, as you know, maybe this tin of biscuits example that sounds like it does convert really well, even if it doesn't, as long as you're getting some kind of conversions off it, you can do that profitably at whatever bid pricing. You're just increasing your sales overall, across all these different search terms that are just focusing on just a couple.
Janice Papworth
And it makes me think that next year, I might actually run ads against those products. So I might look at the fancy tins of biscuits that you're going to buy your dad for Christmas, and run that.
Cameron Scot
And just like Merch Jar or handle all that because that's all you can automate that whole thing with the product ads and and that's one of my favorite things about automatic campaigns. So if anyone's still on the fence about using automatic campaigns, it's full or the product targeting. So whenever you see in your search terms that ASIN, that appears, means you're you're showing up on this product, and getting impressions and clicks for it. So that's just more traffic and you're stealing sale, especially if it's a competitor. There's also the complementary products and so forth. So it's just more ways to get traffic. And from what I've seen, just with how many different products are on Amazon, if you look at your placements on your automatic campaigns, I would bet most of those, the product placement, so when your ads on those products is getting far more impressions than your rest than just your search result, rest search are top top of search results. That's why it's been in my case. So I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case for most automatic campaigns. So definitely, I would recommend product ads and they can work extremely well. One of my best in this past Q4 for my hero product was competing products to mine, and not just directly related to mine, especially with gift giving holidays like Christmas, people aren't necessarily looking like, Okay, I'm looking for a fishing shirt. And then I'm only I'm only looking at fishing shirts. No, they're looking at kind of like a bunch of different stuff. Because people do have a lot of different hobbies and so forth. And then when they see something they like, they purchase, you can watch like the tin of biscuits, you can sounds like a sale. I don't know how annoying it can really get because it means you're making money. So it's...
Janice Papworth
My aim was to get to the point where my husband came in and went, that was really annoying. Can you turn it off? And I'd be like No, sorry.
Cameron Scot
So even if it's not relevant, so like my hero product, product targeting did prefer it was one of my best performing campaigns, it was targeting products that weren't even related to the product I was selling. They were just other products that were also selling pretty well. And they performed and you know, I'm taking sales from these other ones. And you know, that leads to your ranking versus taking down some of their ranking and all those different parts. So product targets is definitely something to explore, I would say for everybody.
Janice Papworth
So I need to know how to do that on Merch Jar, Cameron, please, can I have another video?
Cameron Scot
It's in video in the live that I did has the product targeting in there. So the product checkboxes that you'll see in the promotions feature? That is the product targeting ads, so it isn't that live. So definitely check that out. And I'll link that in the video for everyone else at home as well. So how long have you been running ads for when did you get started with that for each of the different platforms?
Janice Papworth
Well, I started as soon as they allowed us to. They gave us a code, didn't they? And we...
Cameron Scot
For Merch?
Janice Papworth
Yeah.
Cameron Scot
Okay. So you're one of the first it was bad. It was 2018 I believe because that's when I got started with the little code at the bottom of your dashboard. Yep. Okay, so you probably have two accounts now.
Janice Papworth
I have quite a lot of accounts, because I've got one for each country and each products each, you know, so I've got Merch, you know, UK? Yep. US. What have they got? And then I've got the European ones France, Italy, Spain, Germany. We haven't...
Cameron Scot
You might find an extra US account in there if you take a look. And I have to okay, yeah, I do too. Which is good, especially if you end up scaling out because I'm actually running into campaign limits and or more ads limits now with lottery campaigns, but having a backup ad account for that for your Merch products isn't the worst thing. So getting in early has its perks for sure.
Janice Papworth
That's one of the things when I got Merch Jar I tried to link them all in get them all into Merch Jar. But I did that, that you did answer all my questions at that point.
Cameron Scot
We don't know what the deal is with. We've we've tried working with Amazon I don't know what it is with. It's it seems to be the the European markets or the I guess the non-US ones for whatever reason have trouble syncing. So we got to do some fiddling to kind of force that sync to the the APIs so we can read all that data. But for the most part, I haven't ran into anybody that hasn't been able to get them to sync at the end of the day. But so if anyone is watching Merch Jar user that is having problems syncing them, just shoot us a message in our in app support, and we'll we'll help you out with that. So we've we've kind of nailed down some weird troubleshooting networks for some reason, so we don't know why. But so you've been running Merch by Amazon ad since end of 2018. I think I think it was like October November, I think was when I started. So I would imagine you were probably around that same time. KDP What about when did you start with them?
Janice Papworth
I think it helps out straight away soon as I started. So I must have I must have put automatic campaigns on. Once I saw stuff selling.
Cameron Scot
Probably around the same time then. Okay, awesome. And that's another benefit for anybody that's not is interested in KDP or hasn't heard of it, you get access to advertising right away, you're not waiting for tier ups that could eventually happen with Merch by Amazon as well. No one really knows. But they have been rolling out advertising to where I've even seen people at tier 100 on Merch getting access to advertising. And Seller Central gets it right away too. So it's pretty much just Merch that you have to like, move up in order to get that. So every other platform I've seen right away, so you can start promoting your products and launching them.
Janice Papworth
One thing I did was some I did advertise on my own books. My hero books got two other books that kind of sometimes get bought alongside it. So I advertised all three books on the other...
Cameron Scot
Like within the book itself?
Janice Papworth
No, against I have a product case, because I got annoyed because every time I looked at my page, I could see other people's books on my sponsored, you know, the banner? Yeah. And I was like, I can't quite read my book there. Thanks. So I advertised in there as well.
Cameron Scot
That's actually that's a great that's. So that's actually a strategy. I call them blocker campaigns. But it's basically you're targeting your own products, with ads with your own products to block competition from having those slots, and they work really well. So it's the kind of the opposite of like trying to steal competition away from by targeting competing products, you're blocking your competitors from stealing your sales. So with just coming out of Q4, and kind of like how big of a deal Q4 is for I would say I would say the majority of sellers, what would you say is the biggest challenge you face and achieving the success that you did in Q4. And what what were the biggest takeaways that you're gonna bring into this next year's holiday season,
Janice Papworth
Q4 was really important because I didn't realize that my first Q4 that it because what it does is it gives your all your products you sell in Q4 get rank, and they get reviews. And it kind of a rising tide floats all ships, you know, it kind of carries it through into the following year, it gives your book kind of credibility or your T shirt credibility. But the one problem I hit this year, and it's kind of being a victim of your own success was the cash flow. Because I had quite a lot of money in the business, I you know, operates a limited company, I had quite a lot of money in the business, I thought I'd be fine. And in the end, I had to pump in savings. Because you're paying for adverts in November and December. I mean, honestly my billing me pretty much daily in the end and...
Cameron Scot
Or multiple times a day depending on your limit.
Janice Papworth
And you know, coming in from different countries as well in different blooming currencies. And then, of course, you're not getting the sales coming into these two months delay on KDP as opposed to one month on Merch. So the bulk of it's not going to come into the end of February. And I've you know, had to fund that. And I'm gonna have to have more money next year to get through that. Otherwise you don't you're not making the profit are you. But what I think is providing your own direct ACOS, of course, you're getting organic sales as well. It's like an ATM a cash machine. If you had a cash machine where you could put five pounds in and they're spitting 10 pounds back, you're gonna keep putting five pounds in aren't you got to have the five pounds to put in, you can't run out of five pounds, otherwise you can't get you 10 pounds back.
Cameron Scot
I love that analogy. And I have a very similar viewpoint on advertising. Where if someone asked me what my advertising budget is, I don't have one, I don't have any sort of advertising budget whatsoever. It's how as much as needed, because if you as long as you're hitting profitable ads, or breakeven, at worst case, I'm gonna put in an unlimited amount of money or as you know, far as reasonably I can do to get those sales out of it due to ranking and so forth. So I love that analogy because that 100% right. Like if, if I said I was gonna give you $2 For every dollar you gave me, you're gonna find every dollar you possibly can to keep making that happen. But for those of those of you that haven't gone through a Q4, or I guess, like not even just Q4, but maybe more. So like having a product that really takes off where you need to keep pumping in ads because one of the worst things you can do especially during the last couple of weeks of that holiday sales period before Christmas, is to stop running ads. That's the last thing you'd want to do and let you know your competitors outrank you and so forth, which then leads into the new year and not achieving the rank that you possibly could have is to keep those ads going and the amount in ad spend increase those last few weeks compared to you know, this time I mean, you're more of a normal sales period is many multiples higher. In my case, personally, and you can speak to yours if you'd like to, as well, I spent in a 30 day timeframe over that, from that Cyber Monday to end of the holiday sales period, probably six or seven times as much as I would in a normal 30 day period. With so it's something you need to account for. When it comes to that cash flow with those delays, which merge is 30ish days, I guess. 30 or 60 from the start of the month to kind of at the end of the month payout. But sounds like KDP is a little bit longer even so even more of a cash flow challenge.
Janice Papworth
Yes, another month. And also there's a delay isn't there. So there's a delay in so with Merch, we know when we've sold a t shirt. That's it, you get that to Ching. But with KDP, you don't find out you've sold it until the book actually ships. So every day what I was doing at the same time, every day from my hero product, I was writing down the BSR in Canada, UK in us. So I could check that my sales was still improving.
Cameron Scot
Interesting. Do you get the data through your Amazon ads? Do you see that that that order data is pretty much why...
Janice Papworth
I think there's a delay there as well. They're known to be unreliable, and there's a delay. So I was checking my BSR to check that because they were still going down. I knew I was selling more than the day before. Checking ACOS as well. But you've got to, you've got that delay.
Cameron Scot
Yeah, that's interesting. As far as like the cash flow challenge, I don't know that I have like great advice for people. I use credit cards for all my Amazon advertising. So just the built in delay with a credit card itself kind of helps offset that. But it can still be challenging for sure, depending on, you know, I've hit credit card limits in the past, and it's something you want to be careful of, and make sure you have another card ready. If that's the case, if you don't have limits that can, you know, hit that high spend if you're expecting it. I don't know if you have any advice, saving up throughout the year to make sure you have kind of a stash for that expected ad spend. But I don't know, do you have any tips or maybe something you'll do different next year?
Janice Papworth
I've never thought about using credit cards. I've only run the business as a limited company in the UK. So we've got a business bank account. My husband, he does a completely different thing. But we're both in the same business account because that's how we started. I'm so we ran out of money. And I had to say to him, you know, we've run out of money, we're gonna have to pump some personal savings in Is that okay with you? And he used his? It's not that I've got to ask my husband before I do things because he trusts me. But it's just respectful, isn't it to say, just about to raid the joint account and pump it all back into the business and we're not going to be paid by Amazon for two months? And he's like, okay. You know, I was just lucky I have the savings that I could do it.
Cameron Scot
Sounds like you're paid off so far to February for sure. I mean, I know everyone on Merch is probably looking forward to the end of this month. I know I am.
Janice Papworth
But my normal ad spend times 10-15.
Cameron Scot
Wow. Okay, so even a bigger increase. So which which happens at those when you have especially like a hero type product that just kind of goes gangbusters because especially during the holidays, the traffic is just so much more immense than what it is during the normal year. So being prepared for that. So yeah, I'd say I guess my two cents be like saving throughout the year. Credit cards can help with that, if that's something which I really like credit cards, I don't know anything about like UK how that works if there's differences with credit cards, but with the cards I have through the businesses, I get up to a 4, basically, it converts to 4.5% back on all my Amazon advertising spend for the first $100,000 I spend every year so it is a significant cashback opportunity as well, depending on what's available, you know, with the banks in your country and so forth. So for anyone here in the US is Chase Sapphire reserve. And it's a personal Chase one I got to do some transferring stuff but ends up working out my buddy turned me on to because he's an Amazon seller and he was doing that but somebody that checkout and consider if you're if you're already spending tens of thousand dollars, tens of thousands on Amazon ads, you know it doesn't hurt to get a few points back on it.
Janice Papworth
So that's interesting. Yeah, cuz I have a personal credit card I do that on. I didn't think of doing it with the Amazon that's that's very interesting.
Cameron Scot
Yeah. And some of it the the way the one I have works, I'm sure it's gonna just be different with depending on what's available, but it's 3% Back on the ads, and then when I transfer it to my personal it's a one and a half percent multiple, so it's like four and a half percent total. So it Definitely an extra four or $5,000 on almost a free vacation per year just from the money I'm spending no matter what. So, something to check out.
Janice Papworth
Yeah. Well, that's a very good tip. Thank you.
Cameron Scot
What impact do you think your success is key for we kind of touched on this a little bit already, we'll have for this year,
Janice Papworth
I'm definitely going to make another book that goes alongside my hero book. And I've got the idea for that. I used A+ content as well to display the other books on the hero book. So I noticed that I was selling probably one in 10. We're buying one of the other books as well,
Cameron Scot
I so I wasn't actually familiar, A+ content was available for KDP. Would you be able just like briefly explain what A+ content is for anyone that's not familiar, doesn't have the option and KDP yet?
Janice Papworth
Yeah, we've we've only just got it actually, we got it around September, October time. So you can display other people had it but not KDP. So traditional publishers had it. And I think people who were doing fulfilled by Amazon had it. But basically, you can add content to your description page for your book. And you can choose what to put on there. So you can put photos on, you can put more text on, you can put photos of the interior of the book, but in the end, and they have another series of books that I do do that in to show what the inside of the book looks like. And I use some mock ups as well with place it. But in the end on this hero book, I put, I literally put the other products on so you can add products on and you can have a little comparison chart between below them. Like this book, Scot, it's hard to say without, I don't want to give my niche.
Cameron Scot
Don't do that. Don't do that.
Janice Papworth
Supposing it was a coloring book, you could be this book's got coloring pictures in and then the next book, Scot hustles in and you put little ticks on what they've got in them, so that people can compare products.
Cameron Scot
That's a great idea is Yeah, so like the A+ content, if you've ever been on anybody watching, if you've ever seen a product page, and you scroll down and their description keeps going, they have really nice pictures and all the different infographic type stuff. That's your A+ content. Now I want to ask with because with if you're selling on Seller Central, so like the FBA, FBM, you need to be brand registered. So you need a trademark and be brand registered to give access to that A+ content as well. Some other benefits as well to be brand registered, but that's one of the bigger ones is having A+ content is that a requirement with KDP?
Janice Papworth
No, you put them in books. So if you wanted to sometimes people like collections as well. So if you had, say a notebook with the floor or cover, you might also choose to do your graph paper with the floor or cover. And then you could put your on your A+ content, you can put the other book alongside. So you have your two books together. And then once you've made your A+ content for one book, you copy, you basically take the book she wanted to appear on. So it's the same on all of them. Or supposing we had a book for kids aged two to three, and then you had a bit of follow on. But for kids aged three to four and one for kids aged four to five, you could make A+ content with all three books going across the bottom of your page, and then display it on all the all the books.
Cameron Scot
That sounds great, so that you get the cross marketing. And yeah, that book is something that or something that they're not quite looking for. But it's close, they got other options. So you're still getting the sale or buying multiple as well. I would point out with the A+ as well. One of the big benefits there is how much more room in it for description and keywords, specifically that you have for this for SEO purchase purposes. So you, you just have more opportunity to fill your product with even more keywords to appear on more search terms because Amazon does index, which what I mean by index is that you appear for a search term, that means your index for it if you're appearing for it. So you have an opportunity to appear for even more search terms than you would just because you don't have as much room. So you can do a little bit more. I don't wanna say keyword stuffing, but just you know, more opportunity.
Janice Papworth
Or you might know more than me, but I think Google indexes the A+ content as well,
Cameron Scot
That I'm not sure of, I would assume so I would be surprised if they didn't.
Janice Papworth
Well, we're on keywords. I was going to say of course with KDP. We get seven back end keywords that we can throw out as well. And I think they're absolutely crucial for your auto ads because Amazon's using those to determine who to show your auto ads to in the first place
Cameron Scot
You beat me to it. So I was actually going to ask a question if you could share your best practices when it comes to SEO and kind of how that impacts your advertising. So we'll just kind of jump right into that. So sorry to cut you off. But yeah, let's, uh, well, yeah, let's talk about that. Because I agree like SEO, not as not everybody thinks of advertising and SEO together. And they're very much connected.
Janice Papworth
Well, I've done I've done a free SEO course, when I did the blog, you see, so I had some inkling about SEO. I mean, I wouldn't say I'm an SEO expert, but I could see that the keywords are crucial. So the title and the subtitle of a book really, really matter, and you can't change them once the books gone live. But you can change your back end keywords. And that's where people go wrong. I mean, I think, first of all, they don't fill them up. So you've got a cut, remember, 49-50 characters for each one, and you've got seven boxes, and Amazon mix and matches the keywords within each box. So you need to fill them up, you can't just put a coloring book, you've got to put unicorn coloring book for girls, kids will, it will mix and match them all up so that you've then you're listed for unicorn coloring book, coloring book for girls coloring book for kids, unicorn coloring book for girls, unicorn coloring book for kids.
Cameron Scot
Having a broader... Yeah, search term. So you're appearing on more search terms, because the more search terms you appear on, like we talked about earlier is, the more opportunity the more traffic you have available to your listing.
Janice Papworth
And then there's another putting unicorn coloring book as well, in the second keyword term, you've got to think of something else, which can be tricky depending on the book.
Cameron Scot
Not duplicating your keywords. Because Amazon once a keywords kind of in your listing somewhere like you don't need to keep repeating it necessarily. I guess the one thing I will point out is that the exception would be the title of your what pretty much whatever product, the title has the most SEO juice, it sends the strongest signal to Amazon of hey, this is what this product is. And even further is that first half of the title, whatever comes first is going to have that strongest SEO signal to Amazon and help you rank more for that. Those keywords that you have in that title.
Janice Papworth
I know. So I think people do sometimes forget that we spell things differently in the UK. So if I write you know, humor, I'll also write it with the UK spelling as well, to get both words in. I don't know if found this on works that out itself, but maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.
Cameron Scot
They do like misspellings, I don't know if they consider a misspelling or not. But I have a similar tip. For the US, the US has a lot of Spanish speakers, and where you can have Spanish and you're listening to to index for Spanish search terms, which a lot of people don't do. So if you're looking to kind of increase some of that search term volume, or number of keywords you're indexing for, that'd be an option as well is putting some Spanish in your listing. This was from a podcast, I'm gonna give a shout out to the ad badger podcast even though they're a competitor to us, but they do have a great podcast and I'm a big proponent of just learning from everybody you can just kind of absorbing it and doing what you can with that information. And it was Steven Pope, I believe was on there from My Amazon Guy. He's a Amazon consultant. But according to him the images in your A+ content, like the alternative text form, so it's not a doesn't appear to the customers are on your page, but those index as well. So it's an area where okay, maybe you don't want to like have Spanish in your listing, for example, you can put some Spanish in your all image tags and still gets indexed there. I haven't tested this. So this is just kind of like passing on. Some things I've I've heard, maybe it's a rumor, but Steven Pope is pretty well respected in the space. So I another option as well to increase your footprint for your product. How much time would you say you spend per week managing your campaigns? Or what was your frequency look like when it comes to optimizing your campaigns or bids? Could you tell us a little bit about that?
Janice Papworth
I use smart bid for my testing and performance ads. Although I have a little delve every now and again to check there. Okay, so what I do is I usually run through my ads on once a week on a Monday and I changed the bids myself on the auto ads depending on whether they are within ACOS or not. If the cost is profitable or not basically, then I tweaked them. But I don't use Merch Jar to tweak the auto ads because I was running into problems where it kept turning them down or turning them up, it didn't know when to stop, if that makes sense. Yeah,
Cameron Scot
Yep, it does. It does for smart bids which frame on not using Merch Jar or not using smart bids, smart bids is an automation where it adjust bids really slowly for any target. So like keywords or your auto targeting groups, and for targets that are getting at least a couple orders within a certain timeframe. And regarding like we have ran into, we actually have a pretty big change coming up with this smart bids, just our the way bids are adjusted in general, because we did run into it, where it would keep adjusting low bids, for example, when there wasn't necessarily enough data to make those changes. So we have some upcoming changes that that won't over optimize them so much. So it sounds like once a week, on average, you're jumping in and maybe making some manual changes, and then kind of have some automations with Merch Jar are going with the smart bids for the bid optimization, okay,
Janice Papworth
I've got the smart bids going on the keywords, just not the auto ads, because I knew, you know, in electrical, they weren't doing quite what I wanted. And it could have been the way I set them up. I mean, I you know, I might not have done it, right. But it just wasn't quite working for me. But it is on the keywords. And then as we get nearer to quarter four, that's all I do is ads, really I just check them because if you're spending a lot of money a day, and I, I was spending a lot of money a day, you need to check the shipping times every day to make sure they've stopped shipping, or to wake up in the morning, they'd have run out of money overnight. I was checking them just before I went to bed and to see if they were still in budget. Also to you know, just to make sure they were still profitable. And that Amazon sometimes it picks something very, very generic, you know, Fox stuff or something like that. And then you're thinking, oh my god, it's bidding 31 cents on Fox stuff, I think I might either turn that down or turn that off. Because that's just way too generic. You know, it's costing me a fortune on that one keyword. And then smart bid is not turning it down fast enough. Because it's not this doesn't realize it's just like gift for men or something. It's just bidding way over high on that. Because...
Cameron Scot
Yeah, there's no context to it, right, like, it's not going to know is like, oh, that's broad, you know, very generic, you know, funny t shirt kind of thing. There's no way to program that. Um, but I think you highlight a good point is like even when you're using automations. Like there's they they can work really well and save a lot of time where you're not having to do all this, like tedious stuff. And they can get you close to kind of what your targets are your tech target ACOS. But I still even if you're running automations, you should still be going into your ad accounts. Once a week is probably pretty similar I do I'm doing maybe a little bit more now with kind of like the restarting of ads in January, just pop in and maybe every few days. And I'm still making some manual adjustments, kind of just kind of correcting the ship a little bit. And making helping kind of speed up that optimization. Because if something's like way off, even if you haven't automation, generally, we recommend any kind of changes to be pretty small, incremental changes. But if you can see you're like way off on something or it's something is like, Hey, I got 5% A costs on this target. And it's got 15 orders, let's bump that bid like up, you know, 30% and just kind of see what happens because it's obviously converting well, or whatever, where that might have taken maybe a couple of weeks to happen with an automation. And the other thing is just kind of like getting familiar with your ad account and what's being targeted for your different products, looking at your search terms, just kind of get a feel for what's going on, the more you get it in into your ad account, you're just going to have a better grasp of just hey, here's what's going on with my Amazon account. And here's what's what's working, here's what's not search terms that are not to mention just the product research opportunities as well, especially for Merch or KDP, where we can create products kind of on the fly and on demand using your search terms to see what people are searching for. And I know I've been able to find search I've seen search terms and there's like oh, I've never thought about that. Let's let's create some products around the search term.
Janice Papworth
Biscuit tins next quarter 4 on Cameron...
Cameron Scot
Yeah, T shirts. Yeah, it's 10,000 other people. So but that's yeah, that's, that's one of the better way. One of the best ways these are search terms as well as Yeah, just like your product research. Like we're in print on demand. So take advantage of that in any way you can and use those search terms like you're paying for that data you're using use it in every way possible. So yeah.
Janice Papworth
Merch Jar did the heavy lifting for me. I was only looking at the outliers really? And then the brilliant thing oh my goodness, Cameron. You saved me so much time because you getting nearer to Christmas. So I've got 101 other things to do, you know, apart from KDP and Merch. And then of course, the shipping stops, I've got to turn the bid stuff fast. Otherwise, we're just spending money because people are clicking on it, and then realizing they're not going to get it in time. And that's costing me money. And so the minute that we got to the shipping, I was able to go into Merch Jar, and dial the budgets down to dial all the keywords down. Just like in seconds, really, I could have been saved for days, I think.
Cameron Scot
Yeah, using if you're using. Yeah, and I did the same thing go in and just an 80% drop in all my bids just across everything, except my hero products. Because what ended up happening with Merch, I don't know if this happened with KDP. But there's almost different prioritization based on your sales volume. So with Merch had, if you had better best selling products, those were selling for almost a week longer than every other product. And I had two that that ended up for, so I could remove. So even though I was kind of doing 80%, across the board, I didn't want to reduce bids on or bid budgets on stuff that was still selling. So I was able to just hey, don't, you know, let's remove these ASINs from our results. And we're going to just cut everything else.
Janice Papworth
I did think it went on later this year, I'd I've kept a note of the BSR last year. And when they stopped shipping, and I also kept I also marked on that because like I said, I checked the BSR every morning, and like marked when I'd got badges and things like that. And everything I said to to my husband, you know, I'm working. I think that was two weeks earlier on everything this year, because of the ads, I think because I was harvesting the keywords. So when I hit, you know, and got a certain badge on it last quarter four I was doing that two weeks earlier this year.
Cameron Scot
That's amazing. So that's another good point. As far as like the way you're doing is pretty manual. I don't know if there's really a great way to track like badges and stuff. Other than that, I do want to point out just with Merch Jar, that we do store all of your search term data on our servers, where on Amazon, if you're just using an console, you can only see the last 65 days of your search term data. So when it comes to this next Q4, you want to be able to go back and look at the Q4 we just went we're in and see what was performing. Because the search terms are going to be different, there's gonna be like kind of holiday specific search terms that aren't performing throughout the whole year that you want to focus on in target this upcoming Q4 in 2022, the things that we're working in Merch Jar makes that easy to just go back to whatever date range you want, and see what the performance was of your search terms or your campaigns, the keywords, and you can take those performing keywords and run campaigns against those are coming as well where they may not perform all year, but they do in the holidays. And the reason I point this out is because of kind of timing with the API is we're able to look at the last 60 days of data. So once we get 60 days out, Mercer can't bring in that data anymore. That's all Amazon gives us. And we're still in that 60 day range for this past holiday season. So you can we can grab all that data for you. We'll save it and we'll just keep adding to it. So you'll always have that data to go back and reference. And not that you can't do that all with Amazon, you there's ways you can do it's just not super easy at the download reports that come in Excel spreadsheets. So there's a lot of manual work that we just take care of for you, which is kind of the whole idea with Merch Jar just saving time. But I was going to ask you, you've actually been one of your one of our earlier Merch Jar users since we were in beta earlier this earlier this year, or last year, I should say. And you've kind of already talked about already, how Merch Jar has helped save you time. Is there any other areas that helped you save your time or manage your campaigns? Or do you have a favorite Merch jar feature?
Janice Papworth
I think the brilliant thing was that I was allowed to try it for 30 days before I had to pay any money because you know there's so many things out there and sometimes I try them I think it's just not working for me or it doesn't you know I don't understand it or doesn't fit me and you know, you can try it for 30 days can't use see how..
Cameron Scot
You can, yep, absolutely free no credit card required. So to make sure absolutely.
Janice Papworth
You've got nothing to lose really. And I've that really you know did like that. I don't think I use it properly. I don't use recipes. I probably don't use any of the fancy features because I need I need some more videos Cameron to explain it to me.
Cameron Scot
It's in progress.
Janice Papworth
I can make myself another little crib sheet because that's what I've got. And I've got you know, I can't do it without that. And I'm just using the basic that I understood what I meant to be doing because you told me you specifically do this and I finally got to Q4. And you were like, This is how to turn down all your ads. I thank goodness for that I show me so and then I'm doing and following along, I've got two monitors, I've got you on one of them. And I'm doing it on the other one. Because otherwise, I haven't got time to learn at to that extent, I do try and learn from traditional authors as well, because when I started KDP, there was the matches weren't doing it. And so I had traditional authors that I followed on YouTube and Mark. And I also found this guy called Robert J. Ryan, who's written a book called Amazon ads unleashed. And although a lot of what he said doesn't apply to people who are KDP is some of its ebooks and where they release a series and that sort of thing. But some of what he says on that is extremely interesting, and not things I've heard before. So for example, he says that Amazon don't take a lot of notice of your ads until you're spending $100 a day. And he talks about if you're targeting a lot of keywords that you need to be spending a reasonable amount of money because otherwise Amazon can't target all those keywords with the budget you've set. Because nutshells let me target a lot of keywords have had to up the budget, which probably doesn't answer your question. I don't tend to use the dashboard very much in Merch Jar because it kind of goes up and down and it looks red, it looks green, I don't know, looks reasonable to me.
Cameron Scot
Honestly, it sounds like you're using like the most important features. Because I mean, we have all these like features and recipes, is our big flagship feature that we're building out that that is a newer one, that we're still building out that functionality. I don't do a ton with recipes, I have a few that I run, but you're kind of using the most important ones like the promotions where it's automatically moving those keywords from one campaign to another, I would say that's probably the most time saving feature in Merch Jar in my opinion, just because of how tedious it is to do that in AD coms. Because I have done that before we even we had that feature, because when we watched your beta that didn't even exist. To do that it was pretty much just bulk, your bulk actions of changing your your bids, but yeah, it sounds like you're doing all the right things already. So you don't have to complicate I think that speaks to the like, you don't need to do like the most complicated things with Amazon ads to find success with it.
Janice Papworth
I'm quite interested in the recipes, because I don't really understand what I'm doing with them. But what you're letting people do is people who do understand what they're doing with them, you're letting them create recipes on those that I can then use.
Cameron Scot
Yep. So recipe worlds, we just launched that a week or two ago, not too long ago. But that's exactly that where people can submit recipes. And I'll put a link to where you can submit recipes through we're actually running a contest as well, which I'm going to bring up until the end of the month for everybody that submits a recipe and every one that we publish, because we're going to review to make sure it's not something we've duplicated, or it's something that's functional works. Everyone that we publish, you're going to get credit to your Merch Jar account. And whoever's recipes, they submit that we like the most, by the end of the month, we're going to give you a 25,000 coin credit, which is $150 value.
Janice Papworth
People who know more about us than me who are clever in that aspect, that I can use their knowledge. And this is what, what I enjoy about this is you can take knowledge from different people. So I'm hoping people will have some YouTube up that says this is my recipe, this is how it works my recipes on that show. And I'll say, oh, that's exactly what I need, I can use their recipe from Merch Jar. And I don't have to think it up myself.
Cameron Scot
That's 100% what we envision is kind of that collaborative, and social sharing. So you know, someone like an RJ that you mentioned, can have their own recipe collection that you can download right from our recipe world is what we're calling it. And you can import those right into your account. So that's 100% what we're doing.
Janice Papworth
It's like having your own advertising manager who's an expert in advertising without having to pay them so much, you know.
Cameron Scot
That's honestly a great point hiring someone to run your ads usually it's off of some percentage of sales and it's really hard to justify when you're not spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per month and advertising so for and that's that's 100% what we wanted to build his hat and base our pricing off of is just having it accessible to everybody, no matter their budget.
Janice Papworth
I mean, it's worth it, isn't it because I think that sales have increased enough to justify the cost of well easily to justify the cost of Merch Jar.
Cameron Scot
We appreciate that. Yeah, that's 100% of all everything goes right back into Development every single dollar we get to development and servers to make the best product that we can and to provide the value that, you know, that we're asking for. So if we're asking for money, we definitely want to, and you're paying for our service, we want to make sure that service over delivers, that's 100% our goal at this point site can be right for everybody, depending on what exactly you need. But that's why we give the 30 day free trial to make sure it is. But if you do want to support Merch Jar, or subscribing buying or coin bundles, definitely the best way to do it. And that's going right back into the developments, we can keep building out these features and make it more flexible, and more powerful.
Janice Papworth
It's not just something that's selling, you know, thousands a day, it's some of the T shirts that I've used and harvested the keywords on the ones that have particular occasions, they've sort of doubled their sales as well. And so if you're making, I don't know, $200 on it, but then you make it $400 It's worth it, isn't it? Because all those extra dollars add up?
Cameron Scot
They do. Yeah, that's the kind of aggregate and kind of where a lottery campaigns kind of the idea with that comes in as well. It's just kind of having, you know, a large product base that sells you know, on an individual level, one product only sells maybe once every three months, every six months or whatever, but in aggregate, and you're running ads to all these, it really adds up.
Janice Papworth
And that was interesting in quarter four, because you see something sell, but it's on the T shirts and the books. And I say, well, goodness, that's never so before I forgotten, I made that. And then I said, Oh, it must be that lottery campaign. And again, have a look at it was.
Cameron Scot
For those people that are just getting started. For the first time? What advice would you give them?
Janice Papworth
I think you have to start small, I would pick a product that's already selling and preferably one that's already got reviews. And start with that you start with an auto campaign at $5-$10. You don't start big by any stretch of imagination, because you've got to see what works and what doesn't. It is a learning process. And it's a testing process. Really, you can't just jump in with 100, at $100 a day ad, can you? The lottery campaign, I would say to start with those as well, because they are low cost. And they're low bids as well. We start at five cents, don't we? That's what you told me to do. That's what I did.
Cameron Scot
Yeah, it's exactly what I would say, you've definitely watched my videos.
Janice Papworth
So I just do what I'm told, because I'm making books, really, and you're my advertising manager aren't you. So we start the five cents, we start at the $10 a day or whatever, and see what happens. And then those products that do sell that have got reviews, or you know, you know, in your head, if you've already got an established account, what your best sellers are, you must do. I mean, I know I've got one coming up for Valentine's Day and and so I've already got that one on the auto the testing under performance campaigns. That's how you start and you start even those you start low with a with a budget, and then see how it goes. And once you've got it into profit below your your ACOS is below your what it should be, then you wrap your budget.
Cameron Scot
Last question for you. How was your success on Amazon changed your life or your plans for the future.
Janice Papworth
I've got, I've got Well, young adults now. And you know, I've been a stay at home mums. So as they've got older, when I used to do contests actually to keep my brain going when they were younger. You know, you couldn't contest and even America competitions, I used to win things. And we didn't pay tax on it in the UK. So that was quite good. But it just kind of put a bit of icing on the family cake. And so I was looking for something I could do from home that will keep my brain going, that will put a bit of icing on the family cake. But this is like really put a lot of icing on the cake. And so I'm able to help help my son's more and I'm also but I'm able to work when I want and that's the thing. If you know if it's a sunny day and I want to go to the beach, I can do that. Or if you know my dad's got problem and I've got to go and help him then I I'm not having to explain to somebody or can I have an hour off this afternoon to go do so and so I didn't have to do that and the money is still coming in. I don't have to worry about that. And it gives you such freedom in your life to live your life the way you want to live it really want to be able to help your family around you. And that's what this has given me Merch and KDP and I'm so grateful and every Christmas I email KDP and I email Merch and I say thank you for giving me this opportunity because it's amazing. And you can't learn about Amazon really because, you know they've given us this amazing chance to earn money from home as and when we want working as someone we want. And that's incredible.
Cameron Scot
Well congratulations on Your Q4 success. Thanks so much for taking the time to do this with me. I think this is going to be incredibly valuable for our audience. I look forward to doing this this time next year and hear about your Q4 success this year and just blown it out of the water seeing you on the beach to do that, again. Thank you so much.
Janice Papworth
Thank you, Cameron for having me. It's been very interesting. And I really love Merch Jar. I'm going to keep on using it because it's helping me loads.
Cameron Scot
Thanks so much.
