Mastering Amazon Selling: Strategies for Success with Vanessa Hung

And now your hosts , serial entrepreneurs David Shomer and Ken Wilson .

Vanessa fell in love with Amazon while working as an account manager for e-commerce , where she single-handedly scaled one client to seven figures in just one year .

Her expertise in flat files and fascination for the unsexy side of Amazon has made her an outstanding public speaker and a trusted expert to anyone facing seller issues or willing to learn more about the industry . She's also a community ambassador for Carbon 6 , a premier ecosystem for e-commerce sellers . Welcome to the show , Vanessa .

After that , I started freelancing , consulting , and then started an agency , hired my first assistant and then the second assistant and then the third , and by the time I was three months in , I already had a full staffed agency . That's kind of what the experience looked like .

Because of my interest in all of the backend world that Amazon entails , like Seller Central and how the system is built , how it interacts with information and data I got really passionate about the backend and I started creating content .

So I found a huge opportunity in the industry , because not a lot of people talk about what I call the unsexy stuff , which is the account management , listing , troubleshooting , seller support , troubleshooting , account health stuff .

Those are things that are often overlooked in the education world , where we see a lot of content around how to launch a product , how to do product research , how to do PPC more of what I think are the sexier areas of this business , but it is kind of rare to hear somebody just talk about how to appeal to an Amazon compliance issue .

So I saw that and I said like , ok , this is probably the most important part of the business , because without a strong foundation or trying to being able to fix issues , then you will encounter problems get your account suspended in the worst cases .

So I started creating content and that took me into a path of now , I think , the role that I like the most from what I do right now . It's an Amazon expert and educator . I love talking to podcasts and public speaking and creating content around those areas that most people don't understand .

So , yeah , that entails account health inventory catalog , some brand registry issues . I love it . I can geek about that . I can geek about this stuff all day long , so I'm excited .

You mentioned specializing in three main areas on Amazon catalog , inventory and account health , and so what I think is going to be really helpful today for the audience is we're going to discuss each one of these in a little bit more depth and give the audience some actionable steps .

When they're done with this podcast , they can walk away from here and have some very actionable steps to help improve their business . So let's start with a catalog . What are three things an Amazon seller can do to improve their catalog ?

But , starting with the catalog , we understand for the people that are beginning , they don't know anything about the catalog .

Amazon's catalog is an interesting system , probably the most complex system of all , and one thing that I recommend you to do if you're starting creating your first listing , make sure that you familiarize yourself with the policies around your particular category , and what I mean by this is understanding what language you can or cannot use when it comes to create the

copy for your listing . So a lot of people don't know , especially the ones that are entering the space , is that there are specific keywords that trigger the system for restrictions . Pesticide keywords are the perfect example .

A pesticide keyword is something that entails that your product prevents , like bacterias , or fights mold or anything around that area , like killing pests , right , basically .

So if you put a keyword on your listing that you're creating and you say that this is antimicrobial or hypoallergenic , you will automatically trigger a war complaint , a suspension , a restriction that will require you to upload the certifications for a pesticide registration number .

So if you are not certified for this type of products , then you will encounter issues , and I think this is the most common mistake that I see a lot of sellers making and that's probably a very specific niche on the pesticide part .

But sometimes I see it which is more common when people make claims in their listings that are against their policies and for example we're talking about a huge brand that I was helping lately they have in their fifth bullet point of every single listing they have a content saying that this is a pet supplement .

It's something like if your dog doesn't like our product , we will give you your money back , no questions asked . That's something that is against the policies . They had like a trigger warning in the account health and then didn't notice . Get familiar with that . Prevent . This will make you prevent issues in the future and it's not that hard .

The policies are public in Seller Central . You can go to the async creation policy if you look at the top bar in Seller Central and it kind of tells you a broader explanation of what is it's regulated . What you cannot say . The reality is that they don't have transparent policy that says exactly what's the keywords that are restricted .

A lot of learning in the communities , asking an expert or finding that information type on a search will be the best idea . So that's kind of on the basic side .

Let's talk about the intermediate people that are already selling but they feel that they haven't mastered their catalog and that , in my opinion , is the base that holds all of the growth and all of the things that happen in your Amazon business . So my recommendation is to get familiarized with a tool called the Category Listing Report . This is my specialty .

I love flat files . Those are the things that I need and read every day and I do a lot of content around that . If you want to learn more about it , I have a lot of public videos on YouTube . So if you search my name and the keyword flat files , you will find like at least 10 different videos where I explain what a flat file is .

But I'm assuming that you know what they are . So download your category list to report . This can be done in the report section If you go to South Central reports , inventory and account health in the drop down menu . If you don't see it . You request access to it through seller support .

But once you download it , you will see all of the data that you have inputted into your listings and you will also see some attributes . Those are the columns that you could potentially have information on your listing , but they're empty . So if any particular cell is empty , it means that you have an opportunity to optimize that with information .

I've always talked about the importance of doing that optimization in the backend , meaning filling out the information , because of two things . The first one is that you protect yourselves from hijack . If there is something that is open in the system , somebody else could come in and add information there , because the system is built to prioritize contributions .

The system as a technology , don't understand if somebody is a bad actor or the owner of the brand or the one that knows about this product . So if they have a field that's empty , they will take any contribution that comes in . And if you have a lot of fields that are empty , you're more prone to have hijackers .

Especially when you get to a certain size , when you start drawing attention to your listing , other sellers can get in and input information . So you want to protect yourself by having information . When you have information . You are locking that field because you , as a brand owner , are the first one that is , you know inputting information there , so you're protected .

And the other reason is that these attributes in the backend give you the power of using the real estate space to add more keywords into your listing , and those are keywords that are not going to be shown in the pro detail page . It's not the title or the bullet points of the description .

These are backend technical attributes that will help you with the indexation and the ranking . You know it's something that is extremely important . So that's my recommendation .

And for the advanced sellers that are listening , now that you understand this , because I'm assuming that if you're advanced , you have already all of your catalog really optimized in the backend One thing that is coming up that is new is the impact of the AI into the catalog .

The catalog is looking , or is shifting from a keyword model to a context-based model where , yes , your keywords , as an explanation of what your product is , will still be extremely important , but this is more about the context that you say about your product rather than how many keywords you have in the backend .

And for that , one of the things on the tactics that I'm using right now to double check if Amazon's AI or system understand what my listings are is . You go to seller central , you click on the menu catalog and then you go to add a product .

So you're going to add a product from scratch , like a product that doesn't exist on Amazon's catalog , like from zero , and you're going to use the AI generator , the listing generator that you're going to see at the top in that dashboard , which is the AI generator for listings that Amazon developed internally for sale , and what you're going to do with this is that

you're going to upload your images to that AI generator . You're going to take your main image , you're going to upload it there and you're going to hit generate content . Once you click that , the system will give you the content of your product , your title , your bullet points and your description .

And what you're looking for there in this exercise is answering the question does the AI understand what my product is about ?

And I have proven in many , many examples you know , in live webinars and multiple events where when I uploaded an image , the system was telling me that this particular product had a different feature that I didn't , that it didn't like it didn't have at all .

So you need to start thinking about how you explain what your product is through your images , because that's what's giving a lot of context for these large language models , which is the AI that Amazon is using . So double check that .

Hopefully , the majority of the result in this exercise will come back positive , meaning the system is explaining or describing my product as is , exactly as is . But in some scenarios I've seen some gaps . So in one example , I uploaded the images of a listing that is a towel .

I uploaded the towel and the AI was telling me that this towel had a handle and it created several parts of the content in the description bullet points and the title where it was saying this is a handle for it created several parts of the content in the description bullet points on the title where it was saying this is a handle for easy carrying convenient

things that were like , but my towel doesn't have a handle . So those are the things . It's so small , but it is very important because this system , this AI , will be the thing that will start understanding our ASINs for content or listings for content , and will start prioritizing things . So look for the gap . That's on a more advanced way .

Unfortunately , the tool can only work with one image at a time , so I do recommend to run all of your images through the content listing generator so you get a better picture of what it thinks it is .

That's , I think , my answer for the three things that you can do on your catalog to make sure that you are protected , current and active to the changes that are going to start happening on a more broader spectrum in the platform .

So to improve the catalog for basic sellers is to understand your category and keywords not to use , and so , like Vanessa mentioned , you can go onto Seller Central and search for there . There's a list that Amazon publishes of keywords that you cannot use , like non-toxic pesticide , things like that .

For us , one of my brands that we manage is we sell pesticide devices , so it's an extremely difficult category to be in and there's bots that scan and will shut your listing down or remove bullet points or whatever .

And so this is very crucial If you get out in front of ahead of this one and just don't put , just have that list of keywords not to use and just don't use them . One question that I have and it says I wonder why Amazon just doesn't allow us to put the keywords in there , Like why wouldn't they just take that list and say , oh , we don't allow those ?

I was always curious about that .

Every time they post something out in the world and say like these are the official keywords that cannot be used , that they're liable for those things , and and you know I can give you several examples of products on amazoncom right now that have pesticide keywords and are not a pesticide device , that don't have a registration number , but they're still they .

There are , they are still , so they are liable for these things . There is no , there are some in the policy , there are some outlines on the keywords that you cannot use . You cannot use you know name of drugs or sexual content , or you know advertising language like free guarantee , best product , like those things are very clear .

But then the other ones , more kind of subjective I'll say those are not public and unfortunately I've learned them the hard way , meaning because of my agencies were shut down and then I had to work with Amazon first . Now this is the most complex part of the process of reinstatement is learning , which is the keyword that is triggering the system .

And not only that , it's learning where it is , because sometimes you can say like , but I don't have any keywords on the title , bullet points or description , but it happens that you have it in the metadata of the fifth image in the Italian marketplace and you're like , oh my goodness , that's what it makes it so hard and that's the best advice for somebody that

is starting you should cover your back with these things because they're painful . If this thing goes down , it could take you days or weeks to solve it .

Fill it out completely because you know , like you mentioned , vanessa , adding any of the extra keywords and information into there , I will allow Amazon to learn what your product is and it will also protect you from bad actors to inject keywords and stuff in there and get your listing flagged .

One question on that I had as a follow-up is say , for example , this is something that we do in our businesses .

We go in and we fill out as much information as we can in the category of listing report , but some of them let's say we're selling water bottles and let's say it's in like a food category or something and there's columns in there that have like volume or whatever they have things that are not pertaining to a water bottle Do you recommend sellers put like NA

in those boxes or leave them blank , or what is your recommendation ?

So that's why you will see columns in there that for your bottle of water won't make sense . For example , flavor , like that's irrelevant , and 99% of the time you will see that those cells and those attributes are grayed out like they're in gray and technically you cannot input information there .

So for things that are completely out of the scope of what your product could be , I used to say that putting NA what's the way to go ?

Right now I don't think that's either useful or necessary , because things or attributes that are not directly related to your category as a whole let's say , for example , in the example of the bottle of water that bottle of water might be into a home and kitchen category and in the home and kitchen category flavor is not a valid attribute .

So in that regard , even if you put an A , you might be triggering an issue with an error in the flat find and I'm not getting any benefit from it because it's not relevant for that specific category .

But let's say that I'm in the home and kitchen category , all of my catalog is in the home and kitchen category and I have things that are a bottle of water , silverware set and you know some , you know reusable napkins . Those are all in the same B category . Browse no . But then they're each in individual specific subcategories .

This is what I call sibling or cousin categories . They're not directly the same but they're related somehow and in those cases you can borrow , quote , unquote , the attributes from those categories . So in that case , let's say you have the bottled water and you borrow one of the attributes from the silverware set , that is , I don't know , material , for example .

Let's assume that material is not an attribute that is in the bottle of water file . So material you can borrow and in those cases you can input information and if something is not relevant , I'll say that I , right now , instead of putting NA , I like to put my best selling key or my most important keyword will be stainless steel bottled water . Why ?

Two things Most times this attribute is not going to . I'll say 99% of the times . These attributes that are not designed for this specific category will never show up in the product detail page , right . But if there is any information in the backend , I prefer that to be my main keyword what my product is rather than NA .

Because if this and I don't know , but if this gives you any kind of power in the backend , any kind of help for indexation and ranking , I prefer to be bidding on those keywords rather than NA . Na doesn't mean anything and that will never be shown to the customer . So in that way you're safe . But yeah , I think that's a long answer to your question .

And if it doesn't , go and fix your image , try this on your main image , try them on all your images and then sharpen that up a bit , because Amazon is moving towards AI and learning products and things based off of that , and so , yeah , those are awesome , cool . Let's move into inventory management .

What are three things Amazon sellers can do to improve their inventory management ?

So inventory management on the FBA world means that you need to comply with all of the requirements that Amazon has right now to be part of the net and with this , the game that we used to play , not even like years and years ago , it's maybe in 2022 , 2023 , it's a little bit different . And there is one , two new fees that are started .

Well , there are actually three that will be implemented in 2024 . Two already rolled out , which is the inbound placement fee . It's the fee that charges you to send inventory to Amazon . So this is like a pay-to-play model from an inventory perspective . In order to get to that fee , you need to pay an inbound fee .

Then you have the low inventory fee , which penalizes you to run because of running out of inventory . So that's something that it wasn't there before and it is impacting a lot of sellers in the , especially the ones that are doing a reselling model , like wholesale arbitrage and those type of models .

And then the last one that will start or that will drop in June 1st is the high return processing fee . So Amazon released a chart in May 1st with the rates , the percentages of return rates in specific categories . So , for example , the home and kitchen is 8.7% and you know electronics is like 12.3% . And these are examples .

I'm not sure if these are the correct numbers but you can find the information in SellerCent . If any of your products are above that number , you will get charged a return processing fee every time somebody returns your product . And when you see the fees for this or the charges for this fee , it gets really scary .

Like a regular , like small or sorry larger Sundar , between one pounds and one and a half pounds , it's almost five dollars .

So to get to get a return Right and we are assuming that that return comes back unsellable , so you are not going to be able to sell again and then you're going to get charged for the removal order if you decide to bring it back home . This is where inventory management is the most important part of the adjustments that seller will need to do in 2024 .

And it comes down to unit economics . So everything that you knew on your unit economics from the last year it's not going to be true this year . So you need to go down and do the unsexy work of , you know , filling out a sheet and making sure that you understand how much Amazon is charging you per SKU for all of these new fees .

So for very beginners , I do think that the most important piece of the whole success of your business and your journey in the ecosystem is that you understand your numbers . So in the past I think a lot of the content was around you know , buy low , sell high . You know you buy for 20 , you sell for 50 , and that's it .

If you're using FBA and you buy for $20 and sell for $50 , you're probably losing $10 on that product if you're using FBA , just like that . So don't be , I guess , taken by the idea or their gross numbers .

You need to go to the net and see exactly how much you are paying for each specific part of this business , and for that there is an Amazon revenue calculator . It's a public . You can actually use it without having a seller central account . So if you go to Google and input Amazon revenue calculator , you will find it .

If you have an ASIN already that exists , then you can input the ASIN . Or if you are launching a new product , you can add the dimensions and the weight and it will give you the estimation of how much you're going to pay . It accounts for the inbound placement fee , which is really interesting .

It doesn't account for the low inventory or the high processing fee , though , so you really need to make sure that you understand those movements and pieces when you get into a plot .

So , for the intermediate sellers , well , there is a lot of things that will make you uncomfortable , like in this year , but if I can say one thing and it's probably not as tactical , it's a lot about mindset is this the FBA vertical on Amazon as a part of the business , was a part of the business that was losing money since the moment that they created .

So they created FBA in the 2000s , I think , and since then it was a part of the business that lost money every single year , year over year , and the reason is because Amazon was subsidizing the operations of the network , transferring internally and moving inventory from one part of the country to another one to fit the promise of the two-day , one-day delivery and

things like that . Andy Jassy , the CEO , decided you know well , guys , he decided that in 2022 , and you can see it in the shareholders letters of 2023 , he said , like we're going to turn around the FBA business and we're going to make it profitable , and profit doesn't just like materialize itself .

It comes from somebody , and those are the sellers that are getting squeezed with those fees .

Think about this If you are in the business prior to 2023 , you built a business that was subsidized by Amazon , if you were using FBA , so let that sink and you are going to start understanding why these fees are coming up and that , and since amazon is a business , they are gonna they're in to make money . You can stop complaining .

You can stop saying whatever . Now it's like what is that ? You're gonna do about it ? A few things the inbound placement fee it's there's no way around , and there's a lot of or .

There was , at the beginning of this fee , dropping a lot of softwares claiming that they had the solution and the magic pill to work around this , and you don't pay , and blah , blah , blah . I highly highly recommend you not to engage with those , because if you do , you're not only getting charged for the fee , but you're also getting penalized .

Okay , so make sure you don't do that . Understand that it's a pay-to-play model . The things that you can do , though , are very well I think it's very simple in the bigger scheme of things is make sure that you understand what is your FBA tier , so what is your dimensional weight ? And try to find ways to improve there . So at Carbon 6 , we have a tool .

If you go to Carbon 6 and you go to resources , we have a page full of free tools . One of the tools over there it's the product resizer . So when you input the data of your product , the system will give you recommendations of what you can change to go down a tier in FBA .

Go down a tier in FBA and this is huge because the tier , the sizing tier , that they use for the FBA fulfillment fee is the same tier that they will use for every single other fee that happens right .

So if you are able to go down one , then it's kind of snowballs into all of the other fees the H inventory , the search charge , the fee processing fee and the low inventory fee , like all of them . Go no , sorry , the low inventory . You know it's the same thing . That's a very tactical thing that you could do .

You will be very surprised that it is really possible . It's not that painful to trim a little bit your product , and this is a special call to action for brands or sellers that send inventory to Amazon in irregular packaging like Polybag . You should avoid Polybag , and I learned this pretty recently .

Really , the shape of the Polybag when it's scanning the Amazon machine in the cubic scan is a laser thing . The irregularities of that Polybag will determine the dimensions of your problem . So imagine that you have I don't know a t-shirt Well , probably not a t-shirt , let's say I don't know a bottle of water in a polybag .

You can visualize that the bottle of water is like a ceiling there , but the polybag is kind of like a rectangle around the bottle of water . That little space between the bottle of water and the polybag , which is the little corner , will add to like half an inch , quarter of an inch , to your dimensions .

And now Amazon is charging you more , but your product is not really that big . So if you switch packaging , this is a huge savings and I've been able to see how much sellers are saving because of this little change . We're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars a year .

And for my advanced people , well , I think that thinking about the possibility of inserting yourself in a program like AWD or the Seller Fulfilled Prime will really help you save up money . When it comes to the inbound placement fee , which is probably the most painful fee of all , awd is great for brands that move a lot of inventory .

This is not a good fit for people that send one box of 20 SKUs every three months . But if you send to pallets , if you're used to that kind of volume , then it's a good option because it kind of avoids the inbound placement fee . And the other one is the seller fulfilled prime , which is a tough program , very , very tough program .

But I discovered pretty recently on a webinar with a partner that there are services that will give you all of the seller fulfilled prime privilege without you managing , without you managing . So these are 3PL businesses like the logistics centers that will fit the promise of Prime and fulfill for you as Prime .

So to fulfill Prime without the amount of fees that FBA costs , it's interesting to evaluate and I believe for the advanced sellers planning ahead and really saying , okay , operating at the rate that we're operating right now , it will cost us at the end of 2024 , let's say , $2.5 million , right , if this is a business of I don't know 10 million .

But using this type of services , either AWD or the seller from Full Prime , will cost us 2 million and 300,000 . That's a saving a year of $200,000 . So maybe that's something that you want to consider looking into it , because the change is not as painful and the reward and the upside is bigger .

Plug your numbers in there . Make sure , especially at the beginner level , as you go up more and you don't want to make your mistakes at the beginner level because they're much smaller mistakes than if you make them when you're selling for a while . The intermediate level understanding the FBA fees and try to improve packaging size . I like that .

You mentioned the poly bag . We actually had that hit on one of our products and we were being charged not only at the higher FBA fee but the storage value fee and in Q4 , that's like times four and so if you get hammered with that it's you know the poly bag .

Ours were full with air and so when they scanned it it was like twice the size of what the actual product was .

What we did was we had the supplier bundle it down and do a wrap on it and kind of squeeze it it , and the way he's doing that is by pushing off the liability onto the sellers and taking the profit out of there , which , as a business owner , you got to do something .

But yeah , there's only so much of the pie left , and so when you get to the piece of pie that's not left there , then Amazon won't have any sellers , but until then they're still chipping away at fees and kind of stacking them on top where sellers are feeling the pain , and I think one of them is the inventory placement fee , the low-level inventory fee that

they just announced . They're kind of pigeonhol . Compared our free forwarding fees to AWD and we've done the entire business case on that , and AWD is cheaper by far than using a free forwarder and having to pay the placement fees . And then also you're getting caught with the low level inventory fee now , and so you know AWD and then Seller Fulfilled Prime .

I didn't know that there was three P's out there that were offering the services for Sellerfulfilled prime . So that's a good option if you can find one and you're doing enough value . That makes sense for you . So those are excellent , all right . Last one that I've got here account health .

So what are three things that sellers can focus on to improve their account health ?

Because even when , let's say , you build a listing and this was so true in the past where people were building listings with such a hype and claims and you know like I will say , lying to the customer , in a sense like selling smoke and then they get the product and the you know the product underperformed , then before in the past when somebody complained it's

like , oh , this product does a horrible damage or whatever , the impact in the account health wasn't as strong as it is right now .

So again , going back to the catalog , if you really match your product with the expectations , with the quality , you build quality products and quality listings , you are going to avoid any kind of claims like these products sold on a damaged condition or things like that . And unfortunately , again it's not like you can improve account health rating .

You can prevent not to have issues and , on the preventive side , again , familiarize yourself with the policies I'm seeing like right now and for the past year and a half , when really the FTC started looking into Amazon as a business and all of the lawsuits that were going on Amazon's way because customers were getting hurt with pros sold on the platform is that

they are really serious about being not liable for our products as sellers , so they're protecting themselves in every possible way .

So right now , something like a customer saying that they got a product and they were not satisfied and they put in the drop-down menu when they returned it that it was damaged , it could trigger an account health complaint , saying that you're selling unauthentic products or the product condition is faulty or things like that .

So now you need to create you don't create plan of actions anymore . That's one thing . This is a new update . That happened in 2024 . Right now it's just a different system where you need to click different options and send specific documents to prove your options , to back up your selection . So whose fault is it and how are you going to solve it ?

So on a beginner level , I'll say really familiarize yourself with the regulations , both internally like Amazon level , and there is a dashboard for that . By the way , it's called compliance compliance section , compliance compliance reference . I believe if you go to the account health dashboard , you will see compliance reference when you put there your import number .

What's the name of that ? Can I forgot like the HS code ?

To be honest , they don't really do a good job at promoting this . It's a phenomenal tool for you to proactively understand what you need . Go there , use it , familiarize yourself with it , especially on the catalog side . What are the things that could trigger any restrictions ?

Then , on an intermediate level , right now , you don't need POAs , you don't need plans of actions , so what you are required to upload are documents proving your selection when you are appealing to a complaint , and those are invoices .

Those are documents from the manufacturer saying how they're updating processes internally in the manufacturing facility , saying that now they're complying with specific quality control processes . That's not a poa , like it's not like you're gonna put your root cause and the reason . No , no , it's just . This is a report from our manufacturer .

This is when it's gonna get implemented . This is what we're gonna do to change and this is the quality control we're doing right now . Images are super important and make sure .

Also another thing for beginners and this is so crazy when sometimes I see very big sellers that still don't have this nailed down the format that you send invoices to Amazon , because most of the time an account health invalid and Amazon will reject automatically your appeal and they don't tell you why . But you need to guess .

I've seen a lot of cases where the reason was that they were uploading an invoice that was incorrect . So they have on Amazon in Seller University . This is so basic .

In Seller University they have a video where they tell you exactly what are the things that your invoice need to have , and you will be surprised how many advanced sellers are using invoices that don't have the right format . So go back to that and familiarize yourself with it .

And then , on the advanced level , well , I'll say that if you keep up your good score , you now get into a program called Account Health Assurance , which is basically they tell you if you are a good boy , then we won't suspend you , and I will say my experience is that it's actually a good program .

Like they are really truthful to their claim of they are not going to suspend you until you work , if you work with them in the process . So that's great , great news .

Make sure that for that , you have your latest and most updated phone number in the platform because they can call you on August last year where you know sellers needed to comply with specific rules showing the transparency of the business information , ownership information , things like that Every year you need to recertify every year .

So right now , amazon have it in the dashboard where you can make sure that your information is current and accurate meaning that you didn't change anything in the business , you didn't change ownership or addresses or things like that and re-verify .

If you don't do that within 10 days of receiving that email or that notification in the account health dashboard , your account might get suspended and that's very painful because you're not doing anything wrong . You're just not complying this 10-day policy type of time range . It's not something that it's coming from Amazon , it's part of how the law is written .

So the law says that you need to comply with the requirements within 10 days of getting a notice . So if you're thinking about going on vacation in the summer and you don't have an account manager or an operator looking at your emails , looking at your seller central account in the computer every day .

Make sure that now that you know you , should you know , enforce that if you haven't been prompted to do the recertification for the format .

It's basically , like you mentioned , just familiarizing yourself with the account health dashboard , checking out , like you said , there was a compliance I don't know what it's called compliance central or it's a compliance section where you can go in there and check and see do you need , you know , sds safety sheets ? Do you need any of these things ?

And the account health assurance . We've enrolled in those and those are definitely helpful . And make sure you put a good phone number in there because they will call you and if you don't answer they call a second time and if you don't answer them , it's not very good . Make sure you answer the phone there . And , like you mentioned , the Inform Act .

We saw that pop up I think last week or the week before and , excuse me , it was a big red flag like hey , go do this quick or we're going to shut your account down . And , like you said , if you're out of town or whatever , make sure your team or you have an agency or someone that's monitoring your account .

Otherwise , if it's just idle that you know they could shut it down . So very good stuff .

And if you also go to amazonscience , you will see a lot of white papers coming out about large language models , which is the AI that they're using . So those are like a fragmented pieces of different teams working in different areas of the business , but if you read through them and try to connect the dots , you will find patterns .

That will be what I think is the future of the platform of e-commerce that we know it and the shift that that will have . That's on a broader perspective or kind of 30,000 foot view of what's going to happen Right now . I think staying ahead of the game will come from being in platforms like this one .

You know podcasts where there's successful people , or amazon experts and educators like like giving you this type of content . It is super important because when you are like silo in your basement , like selling , you know a multi-million dollar business . This is where you miss out a lot of the updates and the coming things .

Are you always surprised how many of those people are out there ? I think you know the real engaged community is a fraction of what the whole ecosystem or the whole sellers worldwide . So I think those are really the recommendations . We can have a whole three episodes more about what AI will bring into the platform and how that will change .

You know the way we sell , but I think that for today , I think I gave you enough things for them to think about . I don't want to explode their head , but yeah .

Staying connected is huge Going to conferences , listening to podcasts , listen to the experts , the people that are in the trenches that are working on these things . Listen to them , be open-minded and try and test things , because it's always changing . It's always evolving . Like you mentioned , AI is coming . Just embrace it , Don't shy away from it .

I think it'd be helpful . Okay , cool . So , as we're wrapping up here , are there any AI tools that you're utilizing to help move faster ? Your agency .

So if you don't have AWS , you could get access with your seller central account . So you apply self central and AWS making connection for AWS . You could get access with your Seller Central account so you apply Seller Central and AWS , make a connection for developers and you will get access to that .

Just by saying this , probably most people are like what is going on ? I'm not a developer , but you will be surprised that in AWS , a lot of the dashboards that are run with AI are not code , so you can run things there that are not necessarily code . There is one in particular called Amazon Comprehend .

That is the one that analyzes listings and understand what your product is about and give you identities and sentiment and target sentiments and things like that . So that's the one that I'm being playing a lot with .

I'm starting seeing connections between their analysis and what's happening in the platform as Amazoncom and the interaction between the listings and customers . So optimizing listings there . It's really impacting the algorithm in a great way .

Really excited to see where this is going because I know that the new AI kind of rollout for AI into a platform how they understand listings and stuff like that is not completely open for the whole marketplace in the whole world . There's a very few specific niches and I've been testing that out . So Amazon Comprehend . You should get it for sure .

Don't be afraid of connecting your AWS . It's a very simple process and you don't need technical background . I'm not a developer and I can go in and log in and work with that very , very easily .

So let's say that you can make the decision of launching a new line of product . That requires you to create the listing , to set the price , to send inventory , to create promotions , to add some content to the listing and all of that . That takes time and most sellers and most teams spend a lot of their time doing this .

You know kind of tedious , time-consuming work . Now at CarbonSix we merge , or I merge with the CarbonSix ecosystem to create Seller Assist . So Seller Assist is a program that takes off your operational tasks of your to-do list as an Amazon operator , as a brand owner , as a team member even bigger . You know brands . We take over those actions by .

You know performing the actions that need to be done in order to do the desired outcome . So let's say that you and your team meet about specific actions that need to be done , like creating coupons , make new audiences , launch a specific products and inventory or fix some account health issues .

You create a ticket with SellerAssays and we will perform that work for you . So you just need to tell us what it is and we will do it .

It's great for anybody that's looking an extra hand with you know in Seller Central , because what we learn in all of these years experiencing you know in Cellar Central , because what we learn in all of these years experiencing , you know , helping sellers , is that most sellers don't have the time , the patience or the knowledge to keep up with all of the changes

that happen in Cellar Central and the majority learn by doing stuff by you know my listing got shut down . Now I need to learn how to lift a pesticide complaint , for example . This service will really take over those painful points and help sellers to streamline their operations , and that's what we offer .

We operate the actions after you decide what's the strategy that you're going to take your business .

We're now in a beta and we're looking for brands that want to get in to get obviously their operation streamlined , but more in a beta .

And we're looking for brands that want to get in to get obviously their operations streamlined , but more than that , we're looking for partners , because we're building the technology to be , in the future , a solution that is a little bit more proactive , so giving you recommendations and things like that . So we're super excited .

We have a handful of people in the program that have seen us growing from a very basic software or ticketing system to something that is super cool right now and it's only getting better . So if you are interested , apply there .

I see all of the inquiries coming , so I'll make sure to review that and if you're a good fit , I'll send you a calendar invite so we can meet and talk about how we can help .

And when they have trouble merging the gap between those two , that's when they fail or never start or quit at some point . So , aligning yourself , being really truthful of your values and your goals and say , like you know , I do believe fundamentally that not everybody can be an entrepreneur , it's not for everybody .

As you mentioned , it's a very , very long journey . It's painful , like I think we're in a world where the hustle , the grinding , it's so romanticized and you know , it's like in three months you're going to have a Lamborghini . Well , I don't think that's accurate . There are some success , there are cases that are like that , but that's not the norm .

And sometimes you even find people that are at the top of their game , their industry , whatever their niche , and they're , like , extremely unhappy . You know , I think aligning expectations with the reality , it's a work that takes character and strength to really be honest with ourselves about that .

So when we are not honest with ourselves about those two things , that's when we fail , and the people that are strong enough to deal with the truth of what the journey is are the ones that are successful .

That's more like the fun stuff , the cool , like events and all of that things that will give you FOMO , whatever , I don't really care much about that . If you go to either carbon6-cellar6 or , you know , the Online Service Solutions website , which that still exists and is live , you can , you know , go there and find information .

Our blog is really useful and if you ever want to share a message , the email is vanessacarbon6.io .