Wow. It’s been over a year since I’ve posted to this blog. I miss the good old days when everyone was blogging and I used this site constantly in an effort to keep in touch with colleagues. These days Facebook and Instagram seem to have taken over and sadly, people just don’t blog like they used to, in my opinion. (more…)
As an update, I’ve spent the last month talking to a whole lot of people that want help on Amazon. If you know me, you know how much I enjoy helping others and training. But I have not really done any Internet marketing training for the last two years. The reason is that I’ve been focusing on Amazon. But now that I’ve learned as much as I have, I’m happy to be back involved in training.
So if you’re trying to sell on Amazon and need some help and mentoring, please visit www.TheAzonZoo.com to see what I have to offer. There should be a link at the top for “Getting Started” which will show the options we’re offering.
Getting involved at that level actually opens up the ability to work with me as well as my business partner, Ryan Courteau, who is excellent at Amazon financials, taxes, customer service, logistics, and more!
Three years ago, on January 15th, 2013, I announced here that HIPPO Internet Marketing was closing. After ten years, I decided to stop taking clients and focus on my e-commerce sites. Shortly after that, I went to Ephricon as their Director of Client Services for about a year.
Two years ago, after Ephricon became Straight North, I took some Internet marketing clients, but mostly just those that I already had a relationship with already. I never opened up Hippo Internet Marketing in the sense that I started taking clients. But now, after three years of being “closed”…
HIPPO Internet Marketing is Open again!
In fact, I’ve started to redesign our website at www.HippoIM.com!
(I love the fact that my office is the main picture on the home page.)
What happens when you spend most of your time on one business? The other business may start to notice and feel neglected or sad. Well, probably not. But it does seem that way.
For the past six months, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time building up our Amazon business. I’ve been working hard not only on the business itself, but also trying to build up the training needed for a couple of our students and our new sub-business which is run by a partner, but co-owned by our business. If that sounds confusing, it is. It involves lawyers, accountants, and all that fun stuff.
But in the meantime, my fantastic sales people have been very active with my e-commerce business of over 12 years now which sells bellman carts online. But the more you focus on Amazon, the easier it becomes to take your eye off of Google.
Years ago, Google was all I talked about and thought about, practically. When I worked with a few agencies, I wrote about the Google algorithm changes, Google remarketing, and how Facebook likes affect Google.
But the truth is, Amazon is now as much of an opportunity for online marketers as Google is. So we’re focused on both. The trick is spending the right amount of time on both. Both businesses and both platforms, Google and Amazon.
If you read this blog at all, you know I’m spending most my time working with Amazon these days.
Why?
Amazon.com was founded 20 years ago. It now has 209 million users, 89 warehouses, 1,000 warehouse robots, and spends $160 million on Google search ads. Amazon sold $89 billion in 2014 and they sold 426 items per second on Cyber Monday. There are 2 million marketplace sellers and only 7% of Amazon’s sales are come from selling books.
Want to learn how I am taking advantage of this opportunity and growth market?
I’m going to give a lecture and presentation on the topic on April 9, 2015. It will not be recorded. If you’d like to attend, you can sign up on the Charlotte SEO Meetup page. If it shows as full, be sure to join the waiting list. (People generally cancel at the last minute on this group. No biggie.)
Here are some interesting news items about Amazon in January 2015 along with my comments.
In 2014, Amazon’s stock price fell 18% While Nasdaq overall was up 14%.
Nothing too scary here. However, Amazon’s insisting on growth over profits actually resulted in an interesting Q3 in 2014, which ended on September 30, 2014. In that quarter, Amazon posted a $544 million loss on revenue of $20 billion. They (Jeff Bezos in particular) just don’t care about profits as much as growth. In a strange way, that’s good news for those of us trying to grow our businesses on Amazon as well.
See the GigaOm story here which quotes the Reuters story here. (more…)
Recently, my old business partner, Jason Keath of Social Fresh, interviewed me for his new podcast. We ended up talking about my thoughts on SEO and how it has changed. But we also talked about all kinds of other stuff. For example, we ended up talking extensively about selling on Amazon.
You can learn more about Jason Keath here. You can see all of the episodes of his new podcast here.
Here’s the episodethat is the 45 minute interview with me. You can also listen to it here…
For those of us that are working with Amazon to sell products via FBA (Fulfillment By Amazon), a feature is now available that we’ve been wanting for some time. It is the ability to give a coupon code that can only be used once. I just found out about it and I don’t believe it’s been available until just recently. At least my business partner and I did not know of it.
Here are some interesting news items about Amazon in December 2014 along with my comments.
Amazon starts its own line of diapers and baby wipes.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone. Amazon takes the best selling items and just private labels them. Can’t blame them for doing that. By the way, this does not mean money can’t be made doing the same thing for the same product.
See http://recode.net/2014/12/04/amazon-unveils-its-own-line-of-diapers-confirming-partners-biggest-fears/ (more…)
Here are the four pillars to being the best Internet marketer and entrepreneur you can be.
1. Get More Done (time management)
2. Training (the right information from the right people at the right time – see point 1)
3. Networking (with people that can help you) (more…)