#307 – Leveraging User-Generated Content For Amazon Brand Growth with Ian Sells
In episode 307 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin and Ian discuss:
- 01:44 – How Kevin And Ian Sells Met
- 02:59 – What Was Selling On Amazon Like Back Then?
- 03:35 – Ian’s Backstory And How He Got Started In The Space
- 05:30 – What Is MDS (Million Dollar Sellers) Group?
- 07:50 – Selling Then Versus Selling Now
- 10:00 – The Creation Of RebateKey And The Challenges Along The Way
- 13:50 – The Aftermath Of Amazon TOS Changes
- 16:00 – How Are We Supposed To Launch Products Now?
- 17:27 – Talking About UGC (User-Generated Content)
- 22:00 – How To Start Promoting Products As A Content Creator
- 23:30 – Brand Owners Can Pick Their Content Creators
- 26:26 – Who Owns The Content?
- 27:30 – The Advantages Of User-Generated Content
- 29:00 – Where Are The Best Places In Amazon To Use This Content?
- 30:50 – Using Videos In The Q&A Section Of Your Amazon Listing
- 31:30 – Case Study: How To Go Viral On TikTok
- 33:00 – Next Week’s Guest Is A Specialist In Creating Viral Videos
- 34:15 – What Type Of Content Should Your UGCs Be?
- 37:12 – Benefiting From Viral Products On TikTok
- 39:00 – In Content Creation, Consistency Is Key
- 39:30 – A Software That Uses AI To Create Images And Tests Your Videos
- 41:00 – You Always Needs To Be On The Cutting Edge
- 42:00 – What Is The Biggest Channel For UGCs Right Now?
- 44:28 – This Week’s Golden Nuggets Of Wisdom From Kevin
Transcript
Kevin King:
Welcome to episode 307 of the AM/PM Podcast. In this episode, my guest is Ian Sells. Ian has been selling on Amazon since before it was a popular thing to do. He goes back to 2012. I think it was like so 10 years ago, he actually started selling on Amazon and with a buddy of his ended up selling a couple of businesses along the way. And he’s had a major influence in the space whether it be with a Million Dollar Sellers group or his latest adventure, which is all about User-Generated Content, which is one of the big hot topics right now on driving traffic and awareness to your brand on Amazon. We’re gonna be talking about all of that and more in this episode, enjoy it. Ian Sells, welcome to the AM/PM Podcast. How are you doing, man?
Ian:
I’m so good. Thanks for having me Kevin it’s Friday. So I can’t complain too much.
Kevin King:
I know it’s a Friday. Who knows when they’re listening to this, but today it’s a Friday and I know we both have obligations to our wives right after this podcast.
Ian:
That’s right.
Kevin King:
But you know, we can’t miss an opportunity to talk shop that’s right. So this is always a lot of fun. How are you doing, man?
Ian:
I’m doing good. Yeah. just busier than ever. A lot of irons in the fire and just trying to get around and, and help out sellers basically.
Kevin King:
I think we met, I’ve known about you. I think I first knew about you in 2016, or 2017 because I tried to join something called MDS, which stands for Million Dollar Sellers and I got rejected. I like went into there and I like tried to sign back then, I think it was even free. And there was this website, sign up, we’re gonna do this vetting call with you or something. And like, I filled it out. And then I was like, I got this email back saying, sorry you’re not allowed you are like a teacher in the space and we only want sellers. And I was like, man, this looks like a pretty awesome group. And then I remember meeting you a few months after that. I think we’re in Orlando at a party. And I was like, that’s the dude and you’re so cool. You’re like, man, I’m just sorry. We don’t allow people that have courses or anything into the group. We wanna keep all the content together. And then I remember meeting you, and I think Eugene, I think might have been there too at this. It’s like a click-funnels event or something at some party that Athena was throwing or something at there.
Ian:
That’s right. Yeah.
Kevin King:
There were a lot of cool people in that house. And I got to know you and I like this pretty cool guy, man. So no hard feelings at all for not being allowed to join.
Ian:
Totally. It was an interesting time, you know, that was the wild west of Amazon. Almost anything goes at that time, it was getting reviews was easy as pie. Launching products was 99% off coupon codes. It was just like finding any product as long as they had a 4x margin. Doesn’t matter what it is. There was no brand needed. You just launched a product and you got some reviews and you’re off to the races. I don’t even think PPC was around then.
Kevin King:
Yeah. There was just a little bit of PPC, but yeah, everything was just it was crazy. That was the wild wild west days. I remember those well. So you got into this space, you were a seller, right? I mean, so when did you start actually selling on Amazon?
Ian:
So I actually started selling with a friend of mine in like 2012.
Kevin King:
Oh, wow.
Ian:
So I was my background in real estate, so I was doing that and I was just investing in a buddy’s business from college and you know, we quickly blew it into something and then had a good product. And we went to China together and all that stuff, but he was running most of the Amazon stuff and I was trying to help us get into retail. Cause at the time it was like, yeah, you need a patent to go into retail, raise money. That was the strategy back then. And we had even had some advisors that were like, oh yeah, you need to do all these things and get your pitch deck and all that stuff. And you know, I wish we didn’t listen to that advice back then. Cuz it was like, that was the glory days. We were selling speakers and battery packs and solar charges before the anchor was.
Kevin King:
Were you selling before even Amazing came up?
Ian:
Yeah.
Kevin King:
So you were actually, you predated them.
Ian:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean I wasn’t helping other people at the time, I was just trying to find a new niche for myself and I liked the Amazon space, and my buddy discovered it essentially. But I have a background in computer science and stuff from, you know, earlier years building websites and stuff. So it was right up my alley and I was able to make money while I was sleeping, which I couldn’t do in my real estate career.
Kevin King:
That’s awesome. So are you still running that business now or have you moved on from that?
Ian:
We sold that initial business and me and him split ways and kind of started our own things and he kept going. He now has a really nice agency called Sunken Stone. I’ll give him a shout-out there. And I started up MDS as a group just, you know, trying to learn from other people who are doing the same thing as me and I started another brand, which is a fitness brand, which I later sold to Thrasio just before COVID.
Kevin King:
Awesome. Have you started another brand since selling that one or are you just concentrating on the other stuff that we’ll talk about?
Ian:
Yeah. I’ve still got a couple of brands that I’ve had for like legacy and I love being a part of it and keeping up with what’s going on and plus, because Million Dollar Sellers, I always have to know what’s going on with our software, they were doing so, yeah, I’ve got a couple of other brands and different niches that I had and then just kind of cruising. They have lots of reviews and I do about one hour a week on it, so it’s nice.
Kevin King:
So MDS or Million Dollar Sellers is like this little kind of like a secret group that a lot of people have probably never heard of they’re listening to this podcast. So tell me how that came to be. How did that actually start and actually what is it now?
Ian:
Yeah. Well, I mean, we’re not a secret group by any means. We just don’t do any marketing or advertising. And it’s funny because a lot of the way we got members, in the beginning, was our members would be in MDS and they’d be also in Helium 10’s group and also in Scott’s group and also in, you know, every group out there. Right. And they were contributing to both groups essentially. And then they would reference MDL. Yeah. We talked about it in MDS and those other Facebook groups. And so people be like, what’s MDs and then they’d say, and then the members would tell other people about it. So it was interesting cuz now a lot of people just go, well, I don’t check any other groups. I just go to MDS and that’s kind of where we get the high-level information. That’s kind of where we share ideas. And so we don’t have a lot of presence anymore, which is interesting. And so it’s all referral only, and everybody is pretty much referred in by somebody else.
Kevin King:
So to get into it, you have to be doing seven figures. Yeah. So you have to go through like a vet vetting process. You can’t be like an educator or a service provider or something like that. It’s like for sellers only, and for sellers only to share high-level information with each other and like this private group, right?
Ian:
Yeah. It’s a bit more than that. I mean, we’re really trying to build the most business professional e-commerce organization that has prestigious notoriety that people respect. And we have now we’re 520 members and collectively the group does about 6 billion in revenue. So technically MDS is the biggest aggregator of Amazon sellers out there. But we have a really unique process. We only let in eight to 10 people a month, so we’ve never like opened the floodgates. Even if we have a backlog, we make them wait another month just cause we like to keep it very consistent. So we’re not trying to grow super fast, but we interview everybody for core values and make sure they fit the mold and go through two personal interviews and make sure that we understand the person and what their goals are. And then once you’re in the community, we have events, we have investments. We have a life group where people talk about depression or things that are bothering them. And we just really stimulate engagement at a high level.
Kevin King:
And you’re talking earlier about the old days of launching on Amazon, you go back to 2012. That’s let’s just talk about the journey for those of people that are, maybe they started in 2019, they don’t realize how different things selling was in 2012, 2015, 2016, basically like from about 2012 to 2015. You could just find anything on Alibaba, just stick your logo on it. You didn’t have to change anything and just throw it up on Amazon. Then head to the beach basically is that pretty much fair to say back in those early days?
Ian:
You call a couple of buddies, and say, Hey, buy this product, leave me a review, right? Friends and family, obviously it was easy to get 20 reviews. There were no ads, so it was all organic ranking. They were pushing listings that had good reviews. So you just really had to have a quality product and good customer service. And I had some background in Facebook ads and things like that. So we were able to drive some additional awareness and it was off to the races. You were just selling and it was growing, but you could see the competition come, you could see it getting harder and you could see Amazon making changes. And so that’s why like, it was really important to have a network.
Kevin King:
I remember around 2015, or 2016, it was like you said, it was Zanblast or Viral Launch, or I Love to Review and you could get reviews in exchange for a product. It was fine. Remember you could even write that. Until I remember the date, it’s almost like you know, certain dates in history. Do you remember? And I remember October 3rd, 2016, that was the day that it was like, the day. I remember Manny calling me the AM/PM Podcast was his podcast back then because he was still growing it. And he was like, dude, you gotta come on. You gotta come on, you hear the news? I’m like no what happened? He said, Amazon just banned incentivized reviews starting today, effective immediately. We gotta do an emergency podcast. And then everything started changing. It became a lot of Black Hat stuff. People were buying reports from people in Asia where you could actually buy reports of other listings and see their PPC. And you could see all this backend stuff. Now, a lot of it’s public.
Ian:
All data leaks. Yep.
Kevin King:
Yeah. All the data leaks and a lot of Black Hat and add-to carts and just people were going crazy. And then something else came around that time to help people get the word out there about their product. It wasn’t for reviews or anything like that. But it was something that I think the Million Dollar Seller group actually had a big role and they, they pulled together some resources and, and created something called RebateKey. Was that correct?
Ian:
Yeah. It’s a funny story because I just randomly had that idea. I used to work at Circus City when I was a kid and we’d, I was selling like printers and stuff like that, and you’d have a mail-in rebate, you know, and I was driving to my office one day and I was like, wow, Amazon’s gonna like block coupons. Like, of course, like any 99% off coupon, they’re gonna be like, no ranked juice. That makes no sense. Probably everything over 50%, And coupons were all the rage, right? That we had ZonJump, which was made by my partner, Leo in software stuff. You have SixLeaf and you had Viral Launch. Casey, they were just pumping coupons. And I just said, this, this can’t last, like Amazon’s not making money.
Ian:
And in those days we’d always say like, what will do what’s best for Amazon? Cause Amazon always thinks about themselves. And so it was like, well, they’re not making money. So this is silly. And so I just posted a group, like what if we had a rebate program where we could like help shoppers discover our products and get a rebate, you know, for doing that and taking a leap of faith on our new product. And I chalked it up to like how consumers test new products, right? You go to the market or Costco, they’re handing you out free samples, right? There’s no way to do that on the internet. So how do you get a product in the hands of somebody so they can try and go, oh yeah, I like this product?
Ian:
I would recommend it to a friend. And so this is what rebate, this is actually why rebates exist and manufacture rebates have been around forever. And it’s pretty sad that Amazon changed their terms of service to go against literal rebates that exist everywhere. You know you can buy a car, you get a manufactured rebate, you can go buy wine and get a rebate at the market. You have a little hang tech. So I think they crossed the line there, but we, I put up the idea, and then all of a sudden, everyone was like, that’s a great idea. Let’s do it. And within like a day we had raised a hundred thousand dollars and started building it as a side project. And then it quickly became the biggest rebate platform out there essentially.
Kevin King:
And then, yeah. Rebates have been around forever. I mean, I remember as a kid just collecting box tops from cereal and sending ’em in, you get a $5 coupon or something. Or even sometimes I could be buying best buy. I could be buying a TV. And it says, if you buy the speakers with the TV, we’ll send you a $50 gift card from a visa or whatever. So there’s nothing wrong with rebates and the way you guys were doing, what’s it just Amazon, you, you could do it on Walmart. You could do it everywhere. This wasn’t some like just way to skirt around some rule on Amazon or something. It was just rebates. There’s nothing wrong with it.
Ian:
And everybody was against it too. All everybody was saying, well, coup they rebates don’t work better. And eventually, the tunes changed. Right. And rebates became the defacto way. And the funny thing is that RebateKey was approved by Amazon to be in their app store as a rebate service. So they allowed it. And that was actually beneficial for us in the beginning because people didn’t know if you’re always wondering, is this okay with Amazon? And so by being in the Amazon app store, it gave us the clout to say, Hey, Amazon approved this. You guys can use it. And that really helped us take off a lot too. And so Amazon changing terms of service and just yanking that out was pretty bad on their part. I mean, to this day, I wish they would just come back and, and allow the right type of rebates because what happened is rebates were started getting abused by, you know, other people and using them from manipulation tactics and paying additional money on top of it and all that kind of stuff. So I get why they stopped it, but they didn’t, I don’t think did it in the right way.
Kevin King:
Yeah. It became, there were a lot of knockoffs. It led to like a lot of ManyChat things and search, find, buys and all these other companies popping up, and some of them were skirting the good intent of rebates, and that caused a lot of problems. So what happened, it grow so big, and then you just had to basically shut it down?
Ian:
No, I mean, we never needed Amazon in the first place to operate so RebateKeys still exists. People still use it for different reasons. And service works just fine. And as well, obviously, we experienced a giant drop in growth and things like that. And, you know, took a big hit, but we’re looking to revamp it eventually and bringing it into something else, cuz really the idea was to become the biggest deal site coupon site for third party merchants there’s a Rakuten for, you know, enterprise level, but there’s nothing that supports the small and medium size. And we have tons of consumers looking for great deals. So we still think that there’s opportunity there. We just waiting for the right time. But you know, I wish Amazon would reverse their decision on that with the rebates because we were doing everything right. We never talked about launching or we launch a platform. We didn’t allow reviews. We were just a third-party rebate service. We helped people get great deals and tons of consumers would be like, oh man, this was the best Christmas I ever had because I got free toys or nearly free toys on, on rebate keys, so.
Kevin King:
So how did, how did that work? Someone would buy. So if I was a seller, I would list a product. I’d say, Hey, I’m willing to give a rebate. If some people will try out my product, gimme some feedback, or whatever I would list it. And then I would either offer some sort of 50% or a hundred percent or whatever the number was. And then I would go buy the product and then people would prove some way that you bought the product. And then like 30 days later I’d get a check in the mail for whatever the rebate was or something. Is that kind of–
Ian:
Yeah, that’s exactly how it works. And we had the order ID from Amazon or Walmart or whatever is your key, you’re basically your coupon key for the consumer. And so they put it on our platform. And when we had a connection with Amazon, we used that to automatically check and make sure the order wasn’t canceled or, you know, like some people try to scam, right? So they’ll, they’ll try to return the products, you know, 30 days after they buy it to try and get the rebate and then get the cash and not have to be out, you know? And so we would catch those things and that’s why we need that. We wanted that connection. So now you have to just do it manually, but that was the whole point was Amazon. We operate outside of it and it wasn’t specifically designed for Amazon or for any purpose just to provide an e-commerce rebate platform.
Kevin King:
So people are always saying, as we just talked about the way to launch products or the way to get visibility or the way to get people trying your products, whether it’s Amazon or Walmart or whatever marketplace it is, has been changing. And so people are now asking, so Kevin, so if we can’t do a search, find, buy, or rebate, how are we supposed to launch our product or get some visibility on Amazon? And a lot of people are just ramping up their PPC. Some people are still doing things that they shouldn’t be doing, I’m sure. And now Amazon has said, look, we, we like this outside traffic. And we noticed a lot of sellers are using that. They’re using Facebook, they’re using social media, they’re using other platforms to drive traffic over to us. Why don’t we even reward that, encourage that because these people might not buy the person’s product that’s doing a promotion?
Kevin King:
They might remember they need some toilet paper or they need something else and they’ll buy it. So why don’t we give ’em a little kickback? So they introduced the 10% basically, Referral Bonus for outside traffic. In the old days, people were like, I need to create a really nice video. I need to spend a lot of money on marketing to really have this polish, like a professional-looking commercial, as you’d see on TV. And I think a lot of people are realizing, no, that’s not actually what works. It’s everyday people, it’s everyday consumers. It’s people like me and you, that can relate to where it doesn’t look like it’s produced. It doesn’t look like it’s something the company’s behind and that’s becoming a big way for people to actually promote themselves and to launch their brands and products. Some people call it UGC or User-Generated Content. That could be anything from a video on an Instagram to TikTok to whatever. And so you’re kind of doing something in that space now. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Ian:
Yeah. So we don’t stop over here at building software, right? We really saw the need and of course, I have a good ear of like, what’s going on in the market cuz of MDS and myself obviously still a seller, but like one of the issues that we saw was how does a brand actually get their customers to give them pictures and videos of themselves using their products? Right? You sold many hundreds of thousands of units, but how many people are actually sending you an image going, Hey, I love this product, giving you a testimonial. So what brands were doing was having a VA or a team member too, like reaching out to people on TikTok on Instagram and trying to track them down and get them to do a video for you, whether it’s in exchange for money or for a free product or what have you, depending on their influence and then, you know, negotiating the contract and making payments. And, and, and also another thing we could talk about is content, right? Who owns the content, right? So you have to have all these things in play to actually do it properly. And that’s where we came up with the idea of JoinBrands, which is our new platform that basically connects brands and content creators, and micro-influencers to help scale up their content needs also eventually we’re gonna launch the TikTok module that allows people to push their products out into TikTok.
Kevin King:
There’s been stuff like this for a while. There’s fame bit was one of the early ones there I was using some of these in 2016, and 2017, where I could go up and say, I’m willing to pay $200. And I want a beauty influencer, I’m gonna send you my makeup brush set that I’m selling. I want you to do a review of it and make a little video for me and send that to me that I can use on my social media, or maybe go post it on different marketplaces or whatever. What is different about what you’re doing now versus what’s out there? There are hundreds of these platforms.
Ian:
Yeah, there’s, there’s a lot of them. A lot of them, the good ones are focused on the enterprise. So like a company like Grinis one of our competitors, but like $3,000 a month to access and they’re not as simplistic as ours. What we’ve been able to do is really make a marketplace easy for both buyer and seller. We did it on RebateKey. Now we’re doing it to join brands. And basically like, there is no cost to sign up with Join Brands. There’s no cost to create a campaign or to view the creators that apply to your campaign. You only pay for the job once a creator accepts your invitation. So it’s pretty cool how that works. And so you get to see the profiles and all of the things in the past work that these creators have done. And then we also change the game, cuz we’re basically setting initial prices for content. So you can get images done for $15, an image, or videos done for $60 a video. And that’s like the base pricing, but we really make it really easy. And then that’s why we don’t really care necessarily how much following the creators have. Although we’re finding that tons of creators have actually good followings and they want to help promote products on TikTok and Instagram, essentially.
Kevin King:
It’s not big celebrities like you just said, they’re not people that have the necessary hundreds of thousands of followers. These are up-and-coming people that maybe want to have hundreds of thousands of followers at one point or just people that just like trying out new products and like showing themselves on video basically. So they’re everyday people, right?
Ian:
Yeah. The everyday people, but they, I mean, do have followings is the interesting part cuz the content creation is basically there are 50 million people now that consider themselves content creators in the world. And the content creation industry is basically at a hundred billion dollar industry right now. So this is according to Forbes, you can look it up and it’s just interesting, like how not many people are making full-time livings at it, but because it’s hard because you have to find brands to work with. You have to negotiate rates, you have to do contracts, you gotta get paid, you have to redo content. So it became very challenging for a lot of creators. And so our platform is making it very easy to make those connections and then eventually maybe a name, your own price and other things where if you have a following, you know, let’s say you have 5,000 average video views and you get to charge $50 for your video versus, you know, $10 or whatever to promote it. Right. And if you have a hundred thousand following, then you can charge a hundred dollars. So it’ll be based on their followings for that. But we have creators of all different types, not just like people who are stay-at-home moms doing this. We advertise and sign up thousands of, of people who consider themselves content creators.
Kevin King:
Are these people creating on YouTube or TikTok or Facebook or Instagram or is it all of ’em or is it really focused on one or two of those that are performing the best?
Ian:
No. So we advertise for content creators and influencers. And so we’re getting all different types. And when people, when the creators sign up, we do a pretty rigorous process there too. So there’s a whole application process they go through. They actually have to take a picture of a product in their house, like, and do a product selfie and hold it up as if they were doing it for a brand. And so we can see what there looked like and, and how they present and how they, how their camera looks. Right? So they upload that. And if they pass that process and they get access to our site, so you can’t even access our site unless you’ve done a test project. And then after that, we have six different types of video like a testimonial video versus a product demo video, a selfie photo versus a lifestyle photo, right?
Ian:
So each one of those requires the creator to do another certification, to get access to that job type. So we constantly are making them actually do work. And that’s why we’re having like higher success and higher quality because if you’re reaching out to a bunch of people and you’re asking ’em to do something, Hey, I’ll send you product. What happens? Half of them don’t respond half of ’em you send the product, they don’t respond. And then you get a couple of contents back in there. They’re not always that great fame bit was good. I actually used that and had a really good video from there, back into my old business, but they were like, the creators were setting their own prices. And so for now we decided that we’ll be different by setting really low prices and letting the creators go up in tier. So there’s tier one, tier two, tier three. So as they do jobs, they get reviews like they do on Upwork or Fiverr or whatnot. And every brand will leave a review for that creator. And so by being able to get higher reviews, they can get paid more.
Kevin King:
So how do you make sure that a bunch of brands doesn’t have the same person doing videos for them?
Ian:
So the way it works is that you create a job as a brand, right? And take about five minutes. You fill out all the details, post the job up there, and the creators, see the job and apply to your job. And so then you go log in and you go, oh wow. There are like 50 people that have applied to this. And I get to look at all those creators, pictures, and profiles and choose the ones that you want. So it’s on you. We have an automatic mode where you can just like, say, I want 50 creators and it’ll match instantly with 50 of them. But most people do manual where you basically get to say, okay, I want this person, that person, I like the way this person looks. I like the content this person makes and the creators are making their own profiles as if it was their own sales page, essentially. So it’s pretty unique in that way. And the other cool thing is that we enable creators to basically upsell brands. So what makes us different is that each creator might post an ad, I want a job for, I want a video, right? Well, the creator can upload 10 videos and you can pick one or 10 so they can keep selling you more videos on the content, which is cool. So you’re kind of building your own shutter stock for your brand essentially.
Kevin King:
So are these US-only creators or are they all over the world?
Ian:
The US only currently.
Kevin King:
So you need so to use this, you need to basically ideally be selling in the US, and that way you can easily ship them a product. Maybe from Amazon or Walmart or from your own fulfillment or whatever.
Ian:
Yeah. We have two ways you can do a that you can ship the product to them, or you can do a reimbursement where they buy it on your Shopify store or whatever, and then part of the job and they get reimbursed for that product purchase.
Kevin King:
And how long does it take them to typically turn around a video?
Ian:
Good question. So we have time limits. So when creators have it, they have a certain amount of time. They have to deliver the video. And so it really speeds it along. It takes about maybe five to seven days from once they receive the product to get the video on average.
Kevin King:
And they can do elaborate stuff. Some of this is not just like sitting in your house in front of the mirror. Maybe it’s a dog product, you need to take it out to the lake or the beach or something like that. You can do all kinds of cool settings and scenes, right?
Ian:
Yeah. Seen people set up, and go to the beach with the product. Like you do a whole picnic setup. I mean, they go above and beyond. It’s pretty amazing what these craters are doing and it’s because they take it seriously. They want a career as cognitive creators and they believe in it. So, I mean, I’ve seen people like go to Walmart and buy an inflatable pool to test a pool product. And we got these videos of people like in their backyard in the inflatable pool or people with dogs or people that have kids. They’re like, Hey, I have a kid, I can do a baby product. Or I can do an after-birth product. They saw a lady demonstrating a tummy wrap for her pregnant belly. So like, it’s pretty cool to see, and we have filters, you can search by age or by like ethnicity, and eventually, we’ll add in more filters, like if you have a pet or a kid or whatnot.
Kevin King:
So how are the IP and copyright stuff, work on that. So do I own it? Can I do whatever I want? Or do I negotiate that with them? Or is it built into your contract on your side that says you guys own it and you’re licensing it to me? How does that work?
Ian:
Yeah. So we transfer the copyright to you. Once you purchase, every picture or video you buy, you own the rights to it. So every other video up there, you don’t have any rights to, except for the ones that you purchase, kind of like shutter stock and its unrestricted rights. It’s all part of our terms of service. So you don’t have to do any negotiations or contracts. We already have it on both sides of the platform. And so that really simplifies that process and you can do whatever you want, as long as it’s legal, you can’t do illegal things and doctor up photos and silly stuff like that. But you can use it in your ads, and your marketing and this is an issue because I’ve heard of plenty of brands that have taken the content posted by creators or influencers like on Instagram, right? And then put on their website and then they get sued because you didn’t own the right. You don’t own the right zone, just cuz they’re using your product. Doesn’t mean you get rights to use that content. So you actually have to contact them and negotiate a rate. And this happens all the time. So you gotta be really careful.
Kevin King:
So why do users generate content what are some advantages of that versus hiring one of these video companies that are out there that do nice professional videos?
Ian:
Well, there are a couple of reasons. Well, like as you talked about like creating these nice professional videos, it’s like putting all your money on black. It’s like you think what is gonna work and it doesn’t always work. Right. And so you, or you’re trying to copy what some big brand did well in the re in the real world and, and digital markers know this and people who do DTC, they, they spend a lot of time testing ad creatives and different types of ads for different types of audiences and trying to resonate in different ways of doing things. So spending $20,000 on one giant commercial, you know, unless it’s for brand awareness, like don’t expect it to do a whole lot. You really gotta scale up your content. And so we see brands now ordering 10 or 20 images of people holding their products in their hands.
Ian:
So they can like create a collage on their EBC or on their listing that says, oh, we have, you know, thousands of happy customers. Right. A great example. And you know, from our platform getting 10 images is only gonna cost you $150 essentially of actual creator money. Plus the products and our fee is only 10% to brands. But it’s really cool to watch how brands are using the content that they’re getting and getting a lot of content is actually really important to go viral and to figure out the ways to make your brands speak to the audiences that you’re trying to target.
Kevin King:
So where are some great places to use this content? So I’m like, okay, this sounds cool. I would like to have a video made, I just use it in my Facebook ad, or do I use it in my Amazon post? What are some great areas? So some tips where you would recommend people take this and actually use it where it can make a difference in their business?
Ian:
Yeah. We have nine ways just on Amazon alone that we’ve found that you can use it. So, you know, in your listing images, right in your EBC, in your customer reviews in your responses to questions. There are also video ads. So we see people creating like three or four or five videos on our platform and then they’ll create a compilation and turn that into a video ad on Amazon. I just heard that you can also create a video ad that goes on like Firestick and in Twitch ads and all this stuff like you can run instream ads there now through Amazon platforms where some people are getting access to this right now. So video is super important. Amazon post is another great one. This is a thing that we see countless sellers not taking advantage of, which is basically like utilizing the free traffic that you can get from Amazon posts. So I can give out a nine-page PDF on the hacks on joinbrands.com or our blog or something like that, or give it to Helium 10 to post up.
Kevin King:
That’d be great. That’d be great to share.
Ian:
We are happily sharing it. Not just to it’s like we have the SOPs already written out on how to do it, essentially. So happy to share that, but sellers needed to realize that consumers are getting smarter and they want to buy products that they believe they could use. It looks like them. This is where are the trends going on in the fashion industry. Everything’s changing, Kardashians are changing things on how people see themselves and stuff like that. So it’s really important to like have real users because people understand that stock photos with an image slapped on top of it are just like, that’s not real. And so by connecting and building that brand affinity and audience people will actually really resonate with your brand.
Kevin King:
I think one of the cool places you just breeze by it just a second going when you’re saying some of those places, you could use it, but a lot of people don’t realize you could put the video as the answer on the Q and A section on Amazon, you could do it yourself. But a lot of people, they don’t wanna go on camera, but you can answer your customers’ questions there by using a User-generated video, like for someone like yourself and say, Hey, look, I want you to go to your service like yours, say, this is a question someone answered, here’s the answer. Or maybe you give your opinion as well and have them record a video and post that there. And it can do amazing things to your conversion by having that video there.
Ian:
Yeah. And it takes up a lot of space in there. So it really likes stands out. So yeah, I mean, all those little hacks that, you know, you guys probably talk about the billion artist summit, like having good creative is important and I can share some information cause I’m working on a case study for TikTok on how to go viral. And I’m finding some pretty important stuff, and I’m writing up a blog post right now for Joint Brands, but essentially what I’ve found is that it’s, it’s luck to go viral. It’s not really there’s not really a straight strategy. It’s about creating a ton of content and even the same content over and over and over and reposting it until it gets picked up at one point in time and gets explosive. So I have case studies of brands actually putting the same product video, like imagine taking a beach ball and you’re going to different beaches.
Ian:
And, everything is the same. You’re just taking the beach ball and going like this, but you can see the waves and the waves are different in every picture, right? Imagine that times a hundred times on one product page, sorry, one TikTok page on from a brand and one video does a million and a half views and the rest of ’em are doing 5,000 views. So it’s very consistent that like, you’ll just see so much content. So what I guess I’m trying to say is it takes a lot of time and content to go viral. It’s really hard to get lucky the first time you do it, just like anything, it gets harder over time. It used to be easier. I’m sure. But now what I’m seeing is like, you just have to catch that right timing and right music or right hashtag, but generally, they’re all the same. They’re just changing. They’re just adding videos every day. And eventually, the algorithm chooses yours to push out and see if it goes viral.
Kevin King:
Yeah. We have a guest coming on next week on the AM/PM podcast. Manuel Suarez, that’s crushing it right now on viral videos. And he talks about exactly what you just said. He’s like, it’s luck, there are some things you can do to influence that luck with the hashtags and some stuff like that, but he’s like, just throw it out there. You just gotta throw it out there. And you know, sometimes you might take 50 videos before one just goes crazy. He said that’s all it takes, it’s that one to go crazy and then you off to the races.
Ian:
Exactly. And I’ve seen some really cool brands and I’ll have links to all that stuff, but it just takes a lot of shots, you know? And that’s, that’s really what it is. It’s like, you can’t hit a home run on your first batting. So good for us. Obviously, the results are coming down well for us because Hey, we could help you create a hundred videos of your products. We could help you actually get creators to post on their TikTok. So that’s the other thing is what I found was, we all think that we need an influencer to do this so they’re the ones that are gonna get lucky for us, cuz they already have a big following. You can go look at tons of TikTok creators. They don’t all go viral either. And so what was cool to find was that actually, brands were posting their own content and if they have a lot of content, some were going viral.
Kevin King:
So what are you finding the difference what are some keys for when these user-generated videos, when they’re creating them, is it more education? Is it more entertainment? Is it a combination of the two? Is it more just, you know, the person needs to look like, like you, and you need to be able to identify with them and relate to them? What are some of the four or five super important things? I, I remember back when I was doing influencer, a lot of influencer stuff in 2016, and 2017, I always wanted people to show their faces because if you just saw their hands touching the product, the conversion rate was less than if you saw a human face in the product. I used to have some influencers, re-shoot. It was like a 32% difference in conversion. So what are some, some things that when you’re working with, with these creators that you wanna look for or hope that they do, or when you’re trying to select, like you said, you might have 50 ’em apply to your job? What are some important things to keep in mind?
Ian:
I mean, it’s a good question. I’m not an expert. I couldn’t, I don’t do enough of that. Right. I’m just doing some research on it, but the videos that I’ve seen, like some of ’em, don’t have people’s faces in them. Right. It’s literally just ice cream, scoop, scooping, ice cream, and every like a hundred videos of ice cream being scooped, and one goes viral because it’s the color of the ice cream or because it was that right day and timing. Right. And it’s just like, people are pleased by, they’re like that’s the smoothest ice cream scoop I’ve ever seen. And so it’s just like, it’s so silly. But then there are ones where it’s somebody being silly or funny and TikTok marketing, we talk about having hooks, right?
Ian:
Or having something happen on the screen. So like, while we’re talking, a cat runs behind me in the first second, so everyone’s like, what’s gonna happen next? Right. So you have to have that hook that catches them. And so, you know, you can think about what your hook’s gonna be. And I think you just need to know what your goals are. Are you trying to do too many things at one time? So I can imagine somebody signing up for Join Brands and creating a video campaign and going, I wanna video testimony and I don’t wanna go viral. Well, no, like those are two different types of videos. One viral video is probably most likely something showing how the product is working in an interesting way. I saw one, there’s a guy that sells these cooler cans.
Ian:
A bag for your cooler, sorry, a bag for your 12-pack of beer. And the video that went viral is him taking one of those rectangular can cases of beer, right? Or like the sparkling water. And he breaks it open on his knee, folds it in half, and sticks it in there. So it was just him showing how to like, put like you can’t fit this rectangular thing in this like 12 pack holder, but he did because he broke it in half and put it in there. So it was just like, and that’s what went viral. And I don’t know if it was timing or, you know, the right video or the right audience, whatever, but the rest of his videos. Didn’t so it’s really interesting. And I think you need to know what your goals are and separate those things out. And then don’t be too scripted with it. But maybe if you have a clever idea, you can get these people to do it. And then you can put that in your campaign.
Kevin King:
And the power of viral is it’s amazing. I remember back in January of this year, I was doing some research for Product Savants. One of the companies and I came across a product that was just crushing it. And I’m like, what the heck? And it was transparent. Post-It notes, transparent post-it notes. And you look at the history like Helium 10 from like November of last year. And most of the sellers were doing about a thousand, $2,000 a month. The top 10 sellers were, I think the top guy was like four or five grand a month or something like that. But then in January, people were doing like $300,000 a month of these transparent post-it notes. And I’m like, what the hell? You know, you’re looking at Google trends and doing all the stuff to try to figure this out.
Kevin King:
As it turns out, I just went to TikTok and search for it. It was a massive viral thing on TikTok. And so all these sellers that weren’t probably even trying to actually do anything they were benefiting because people were seeing these transparent post-it notes and going, and just searching it on Amazon and Walmart and just buying the living crap out of ’em so viral stuff and User-Generated Content, if done right, I think is the next big way. But it is, it is tricky. I mean, you can’t control it. You can say, I’m gonna run a Facebook ad and I’m gonna spend a hundred dollars and I wanna show it to this many people and either convert or you’re not on trying to go viral on TikTok or something like that, you don’t have as much control. I mean, you can do some advertising on TikTok, but it’s a different animal, but I think it is something that’s gonna be huge. And I think it’s something that people need to be paying attention to. And it’s gonna be the next big way to actually get your name out there and get your brand out there.
Ian:
Yeah. I mean, that’s just maximum brand awareness right there for not much money. But like, again, you gotta be consistent and if it costs you, you know, couple videos a week, whatever, that’s what you gotta do and make some videos on your own. But like, it doesn’t, you don’t have to have yourself in there. You don’t have to have any set requirements. There’s no, there’s no framework and specific requirements to go viral or to even like get–, and, and you don’t have to go viral. If you get 5,000 views, that’s pretty good, right? Or 2000, but it, you have to be consistent. And that’s I think what I’m learning from my research is that like, it’s just consistency. It doesn’t happen right away so don’t give up.
Kevin King:
Yeah. Have you seen the do AI stuff that they’re doing now? There are a couple of tools called Dall-e, and another one called Midjourney. And they do imagery, but there’s somewhat, I just saw on Twitter just yesterday. They did a case study where it was a girl and she was just walking down the street and she was able to take combined Dall-e with video and with some of some other animation tool that does a bunch of smoothing. And she was able to have her shirt change out, like as she walked down the street and it looked so freaking real. It was all AI-generated stuff. And you could use that kind of stuff for like testing. You could use that kind of stuff for like, it’s almost like a video PickFu kind of thing.
Kevin King:
It was amazing that she did that. I think that’s the next thing that’s gonna happen with this User-Generated Content, where you’re gonna have someone that creates something and you’re gonna then be able to put into this like AI generator that will like completely change out her shirt or completely change out her hair or completely change out everything. And you’re gonna be able to run split test instantly without the person having to create, you know, 20 different videos. It’s one video and then test it and maybe a hundred, 200,000 different scenarios and find the one that works and run with it. I think that’s where it’s headed with this AI. It’s pretty impressive stuff. Have you seen any of that at all?
Ian:
Yeah. I actually just saw a post on MDS about creating images with AI. It’s pretty cool.
Kevin King:
Yeah. It’s pretty cool stuff. So check that stuff out. We always have to be on the cutting edge, you know, what’s the next cool thing, because you don’t wanna be the last guy. You wanna be the first, but you gotta be careful not to follow too many shiny objects too. There’s a lot of cool stuff and that technology is moving quickly right now, and e-commerce, as we talked about earlier, it’s constantly changing. So you can’t just say, this is how you launch. There’s not just one way to launch products or one way to get your brand out there. It’s constantly evolving and that’s what you have to pay attention to. And user-generated content, I think is one of the big ones right now that’s gonna make a difference for a lot of people.
Ian:
Yeah, exactly. I mean, you gotta keep at it and get videos and you can put a team together and go out there and find it yourself. Or you can sign up for Join Brands and start working with creators today. So it’s pretty cool to be able to offer that service. And in about 60 days, we’re gonna have our TikTok module integration where basically you’ll be able to pay people to help promote your products through TikTok.
Kevin King:
What do you think is the biggest channel out there right now for this? Is it TikTok?
Ian:
I think that’s step one, then it’ll be Instagram. We’re gonna go after all the platforms. So we’ll just have a format for each one, like TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube shorts. So there’s just a lot of opportunity there. I, I want people to, I wanna be eventually able to be a platform where people can run ad campaigns through influencers. You know, on a regular basis on our platform. So imagine having a creator that you contract with for four posts a month, right? So once a week, they’re posting about your product and you can run that through Join Brands as an opportunity, similar to hiring an Amazon influencer, which we also have Amazon live influencers on the platform too. So we’re kind of going at all the angles.
Ian:
We’re not focused on just Amazon. This platform has legs way beyond just creating content, right? Join Brands is kind of like synergistic with like having your best customers, wanting to represent you and share you know, share their love for your brand. I imagine a Starbucks being able to go on our platform and getting, you know, buying photos of people at Starbucks with their stuff. So instead of posting on Instagram where they can’t buy it, post it on Join Brands where a big brand can actually purchase it.
Kevin King:
Awesome. I really appreciate you coming on today and sharing and good luck with everything that you’re working on. It’s always good stuff and always nice to speak with
Ian:
You. Yeah, I really appreciate it too, Kevin, and I’m super impressed with what you’ve been able to achieve over the years and watching you grow and build that relationship with each other. So it’s awesome.
Kevin King:
Awesome, man. Well, I’m sure I’ll be seeing you at some event or someplace soon.
Ian:
Yeah, for sure.
Kevin King:
Take care, man.
Ian:
Have a good one. Bye.
Kevin King:
Ian’s really onto something there with the User-Generated Content and what he’s trying to do to help out sellers generate that kind of content and really get some brand awareness out there. If you like what he had to say, you’ve got to tune into next week’s episode of the AM/PM Podcast because my guest is using this exact strategy with User-Generated Content to generate 75 million per year in business on one of his brands. It’s amazing and he’s gonna be talking about the four different places. You gotta do it, what you gotta do to get stuff, to go viral, some very actionable stuff. So don’t miss next week’s episode of the AM/PM Podcast. We’re gonna extend on this topic and really go into the weeds on it. It’s a great episode you cannot afford to miss. Those of you who are at, or just left the Sell and Scale summit in Las Vegas.
Kevin King:
I hope you had a great time and made some good connections. Don’t forget Helium 10 is here for you with a freedom ticket with Helium 10 elite and with all the greatest tools in space. One last thing before we go is the little words of wisdom I like to leave you with as a parting shot. And this week here it is, “Sinners often speak the truth and saints have led people astray. Always examine what is said, not the one who says it.” Remember “sinners, often speak the truth and saints have often led people astray. Always examine what is said, not the one who says it.” We’ll see you again next week.
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The post #307 – Leveraging User-Generated Content For Amazon Brand Growth with Ian Sells appeared first on AM/PM Podcast.
