Maximizing E-Commerce Success: Supercharge Sales with Amazon's Ranking Strategies with Alina Vlaic

Ranking is one of the most important things. During a product launch, after a product launch, anytime you need to be ranked. If I search for blue pencil on Amazon or Walmart and my pencil isn't there in page one. Somebody said one time that where's the best place to bury a body and, or to hide a body and the answer was like page two on Amazon, nobody goes past page one. So you have to be page one. Now the ways of getting to page one are multiple, depending on the budget, depending on the product itself. It's one thing to launch a pencil and a different thing to launch a supplement, very different thing. So ranking will be not on top of the list and 2023 is all about content. You have to be continuously creating content like the real content, not rendering, not Photoshop, just like me talking about this blue pencil that I just bought yesterday. That kind of content, people are liking it better. And I'm saying it generally, not just e-com real life. They can identify themselves with the person behind the screen. Welcome to super entrepreneurs podcast. I'm your host Shahid Durrani. Today we have with us Alina Blake. Alina is the founder of AZ rank, an agency that helps sellers on e-commerce platforms, including Amazon, Etsy, Walmart, eBay, and Shopify successfully launched their products and crushed their sales by top ranking their products. They have launched and scaled revenues for 4,000 plus products on Amazon in USA, Europe, and Canada and 500 plus products on Walmart, Etsy, and eBay. Within 98.7 success rate. Alina is also an Amazon and Walmart seller with three private label brands earning seven plus figures in revenues annually. Thank you so much for coming on our show, Alina. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having me. That's quite an intro. Oh, my pleasure is great to have you part of the show today and as well just serving because I think anybody that's selling anything is really touching e-commerce, for example, in any industry. There is some form of selling online for them to survive in today's day of doing business, correct? Correct. Totally agree. And this I think is not just today. I mean, it is today and it's growing, but it's been there for a few years now. You don't exist if you're not on any e-com, be it even the old school Facebook, Facebook marketplace or whatever other platform, but in my opinion, in our opinion, we've been here some years now, 2017 was our first contact, my husband and I with e-com at this level, we've been doing e-com here in Romania for, I don't know, I lost count of years, but around 12 or something ever since it started and we've seen the evolution, but in this kind of e-commerce, the Amazon type and the Walmart and all the other huge global marketplaces, yeah. You have to be there just a little tiny bit in order to be able to grow from something and with all the successes that you have experienced, there's always failures of the business world or entrepreneurship in general requires the lessons to be learned through failures and successes. Can you share experience you had with your failures and more of the lessons that you have learned where anybody that's looking to get into this or are involved in e-commerce could look out for? I think mine is the best example for, I don't know, for any person getting to a place where maybe they find it difficult or they face challenges or stuff of that kind, but we started as Amazon sellers in 2017, only in Europe, it was UK back then, but UK was a part of EU, we said, okay, we know a little bit about e-commerce so we realized, my husband and I, that Amazon is not that easy, it's a complex marketplace and it has to be, you have to learn it in order to succeed, not just throw some products out there and wait to make millions overnight. Yeah, we started, we tried some of our own products that we already had in our warehouse here from a different business. So, okay, let's see how this works. Let's go through all the phases. And we did, and we had little success, I say, over two seasons in Europe. And I say, and we said, okay, so this is how it goes. We pretty much know the basics. Now let's move forward. Now we're ready. Now we know how to do stuff. So we're ready for the big Amazon, the .com, where all the money fly. We created our first private label brand, which was in baby, baby category, it was a baby product, I just had my second child, so I was a new mom. So why don't we go in babies, right? Because we know what babies need. Yeah, that was the big failure in terms of money, in terms of time spent. There were a lot of mistakes. I won't go into all the details, but long story short, if that wouldn't happen, if that failure hadn't happened, I would not be here today. The agency wouldn't, the agencies wouldn't be here today. My brands wouldn't be here today. So it was my, I think it was one of the best things that ever happened in my life, actually. Because it made me learn. That was the number one thing, maybe learn and figure out, okay, if other people did it and I failed, what happened, right? Step-by-step, it doesn't happen overnight. Step-by-step, there's a lot of work to do, but eventually it can be done. And if you're persistent, it can be done. Some people make more money, some people make less money, like life, but it can be done, that I can guarantee. Yeah. And life is filled with those lessons. We just go about each and every day experiencing failures, successes, but at the end of the day, they're basically just lessons. Yes. As long as our mind gets to that point when we can see them as lessons, some people have problems with this and say, okay, I failed, I'm useless, I won't be able to do anything with my life, you know, blah, blah, blah. Those are actually lessons, I think. And as you said, it happens every day, not just business, life, family, fun, whatever, you can always find something that you can consider a lesson. There was that, I have a bad memory with book names and author names, but I remember stuff from the books. So it was that thing that you have to be 1% better every day. That's one of my morals in life. Just tiny little bit every day to get better. Having such intense competition when it comes to e-commerce platforms like Amazon, how do you ensure that you get your client's products ranking so high? Is there any tips that you could provide or strategies that won't break the bank? Yeah, that's a hard one, actually. Especially with the not break the bank at the end. I think the most important thing and the thing that makes us still be here after so many years in the industry, we've seen a lot of people come and go in the talking right now about the, on the agency side, which is not big, it's just boutique agency, how people call it these days, but still you have to be on top of things. 2023 is very different than 2022, but a whole different world than compared to 2019. For example, if you go into this business right now and launch a product or a service or I don't know, do wholesale or whatever type of e-comm you want to do and start learning based on years ago information, that's going to be hard in terms of not working, not being efficient and also money wise. My personal approach, this is, I'm not saying that you have to do this 100%, but my personal approach would be to go to people that know how to do stuff, outsource what you don't know how to do as much as possible to experts. Now, this is a very interesting, a lot of people agree with me, a lot of people disagree with me. I would never go to somebody who can teach me about Amazon, but is not selling on Amazon or Walmart, but is not selling on Walmart. So for us, for example, being sellers for all this time and actually seeing, feeling in the bank or in the time and in everything, what Amazon means and what it happens over there has been tremendously helpful because I really want to help people. I don't want to shut their phone, shut down my phone because I'm afraid somebody, one of my clients would be calling me after a couple of months saying, Hey, you messed up my stuff. I'm that type of person. I want to go to somebody who does, who knows both sides of the coin, let's say. That's one thing. So outsourcing, actually, this is the second thing, outsourcing, but be careful who do you outsource to and don't try to do everything perfect. That's another thing. As long as you want to do everything perfect, like I did with my baby thing, my baby product, everything had to be perfect. I done a photo shooting 50 times and changed the photos 100 times on Amazon. It didn't help. That would get you any faster to a point where either you realize it's going to be, it's going to work or it's not, but at least you don't waste time and money in the process. In terms of technical stuff on Amazon or Walmart, yeah, we do a lot of stuff. There are a lot of strategies, but I, again, what I tell you now didn't work maybe two months ago and won't work two months later. Just in general lines. Yes. Ranking is one of the most important things during a product launch, after a product launch, anytime you need to be ranked. If you're not ranked on, if I search for blue pencil on Amazon or Walmart and my pencil isn't there in page one, a lot, a few people would actually pass page one. There was a saying, somebody said one time that what's the best place to bury a product and to bury a body. Sorry. Where's the best place to bury a body and or to hide a body? And the answer was like page two on Amazon. Nobody goes hence page one. So you have to be page one. Now the ways of getting to page one are multiple depending on the budget, depending on the product itself. It's one thing to launch a pencil and a different thing to launch a supplement or a car or I don't know, a toilet paper, very different thing. But yeah, so ranking is, has been, is, and will be not on top of the list and content, 2023 is all about content and it will be there from now on. You have to be continuously creating content, new or people around you or friends, influencers, micro-influencers, whatever, depending on the budget. Again, if you have money, get the credations. If you don't, but yeah, content is very important. And all this marketplaces have been starting to give more value and more space for us sellers to put content there. On Amazon, for example, there are a lot of more sections that you can fill in with your own content. Not a lot of sellers know this and use this, but you should. We have, we have something we have. I was very surprised last year when I, so we have with the agency, we have over 20,000 people, let's say in our buyers pools, and some of them are very talented content creators. So now we started using them, creating content, that type of a real, like real content, like not rendering, not Photoshop, just like me talking about this blue pencil that I just bought yesterday, and which I love, that kind of content is people are liking it better. And I'm saying it generally, not just e-com, in real life, they can identify themselves with the person behind the screen or the phone or the TV and not seeing only movie stars and perfect people. Real and organic. Yes. Real, genuine, organic people in pajamas talking about drinking coffee and talking about, Hey, I just got this yesterday. It is great. Try it. Stuff like that. Yeah. That's actually what we do on the show too. We just try to keep it very human, very real, just conversational based and see how we can add value both on the guest side and on our side, at the end of the day, we're just putting what we have within, taking it out into the world and to see if it can make a difference and same with products, when they're actually talking about the product, genuinely how their experience has been, you feel connected to the person and the product that they're speaking about. Exactly. And I think it's where we're heading. It's so much competition out there. It's so much everything out there. People want real. Yeah. Less and less are real. And now people are realizing that and going back to the real part. Now, the funny thing is that we have AI now, we have our friends from ChatGPT and other people which are counterbalancing the real life, but. It's just evolution. But even ChatGPT can be used just like Google. It can just provide a support in what you're trying to say, give ideas, give information, but you always want to put your own genuine spin to it or your style, right? Your style, yeah, your voice, but yes, in finding information and even I use it sometimes just for throwing ideas and English is my second language, especially for, maybe I, so just throwing ideas and give me a funny professional, whatever tone of voice you want to use for this email or for this presentation or stuff like that. Yeah. It was normal to get here actually. It was, sorry? It was normal that we would get here to this AI after all of this. This is part of it. Yeah. Who knows where we're going ahead of this, but it's definitely going to make the life of a human being easier and easier. Yeah. And you had a really good point about the content, right? And the other part is content, genuine content, real content. And the key part is consistency. Like you mentioned, you just want to keep adding content. Yes. So as an entrepreneur, you launched, scaled many products. Can you share some effective strategies that you would recommend to grow other than what you shared to grow both through Amazon and off Amazon? How would you balance that? You actually, that's a very good point. The off Amazon thing is something that a lot of people, sellers, don't pay enough attention to, in my opinion. There is life off Amazon. Believe it or not. Believe it or not, there is. Yeah. Well, and there are money to be made out there. Now it's a very sensitive topic because the other marketplaces are not like so general and so big, so huge as Amazon. So maybe some categories, some product categories will perform very well on Etsy. And a lot of them are. Etsy is an amazing, if you guys that are listening or watching have any arts and crafts or handmade or supplies for this category, gardening, all these type of products, just try it. If you don't believe you, maybe you're just starting looking into e-commerce now and Etsy is a very good platform to learn how this works, to create a store, to create a listing, to add some photos, to do stuff and you'll see how that can go. For example, Etsy is good at that stuff, right? Walmart, on the other hand, is not good at that stuff. It won't sell that much. Walmart is good for, let's say common goods. Right? So people, stuff that people are using every day in their homes. But anyways, not to go into too many details, expand and look outside Amazon. If after a proper research, your product category allows it. I always like to say that I would rather recommend or advise people to go wide rather than go deep. This is something that I, I use and I advise people for Amazon launching and ranking in a category. So I would rather go wide and have 20 products selling 10 a day. So I make 20, 100, 200 sales a day, rather than one product selling 200 units a day for multiple reasons. Of course, if that product fails, it's end of story. You might, you may, you may bother some of your competitors when they see doing it so well, but when you have 20 doing a medium, nobody, nobody would care. This is something that I believe in. Go deep and not go wide and not deep. Valid on Amazon and off Amazon as well. So try to go deep. There are lots of ways. In terms of launching and ranking on Amazon, let's see. So content, this is also coming to my mind. There are, for example, the Q&A section. It's, it can be used successfully with videos. So you can actually answer questions with videos. There are less than 0.5%. I think now less than 0.1% of the listings on Amazon are using that. So that can give you huge leverage and you can put a lot of content in there. Just need to be a little creative on how to bring that answer into your advantage. That's one thing, content. Second thing would be data from Amazon. All of us, including myself are paying a lot of tools, masterminds, whatever, getting a lot of information, getting a lot of learning, not listening to podcasts, not having time to listen to as many and do everything and put into actual life what you, what we've learned, but at the same time on Amazon, they started to provide actual information, real 100% information coming from them. So we don't use tools to make estimations, but we have search query performance. We have brand analytics. We have a lot of stuff in there which are starting to matter and give us data that we need in order to move forward with our business, even reports or be it reports or be it research for our new stuff. Data is crucial. Yes, it is. And now we have it directly from the source and nobody looks at it because we are so used in the last years to having all these other tools doing it. For example, on Walmart right now, there is no data, but there are no, no real tools. There are a few people here and there trying to create some tools, but it's like blind, it's like Amazon in 2014 where nobody had any tools and we were okay. Let's see, how do we make this work? Yeah. It's the adrenaline. Yeah. So Alina, you're also a co-founder of PressX. It's article writing, I believe. Can you elaborate on that and how it helps in the ranking? Yeah, PressX and the PressX is the press articles, as you said, and Photolive is the content one. So these two services we added last year in our portfolio and besides the AZ rank, which is the ranking. It was something that we saw people need content. I explained everything about it. Press came from the need of external traffic. So Amazon says, okay, I have a billion people on my platform every day, but that billion people just goes, types in amazon.com and searches in there. I want people going on Google and searching pink t-shirt or blue pencil and then coming to Amazon because that's how everything happens. So they started and finally admitted in August, 2022, there was a news coming directly from Amazon and they admitted that they are rewarding external traffic. So even if you send a million clicks to this blue pencil with no order, no conversion at all, no purchase, they won't penalize you. They will reward you because you brought people to their marketplace. Of course, we keep it white hat is high quality people, fake, blah, blah, blah. So that's how PressX was born as a service. So what we do in two lines, there's a press article written about the blue pencil. Let's keep the example. And in the article there is, okay, this is an amazing blue pencil, blah, blah, blah. You can find it at www.amazon.com, whatever. The only thing you pay for is the clicks that people do on that link. So the exact clicks from the article to the Amazon, only the traffic, not the article, not the impressions. It's a service. Yes. And what it does, of course it does help you with brand awareness because we work with a pretty high number of very well-known, high domain authority publisher for Cosmopolitan, Refinery29, all kinds of those names. And so besides brand awareness, besides exposure, besides that earned media that everybody aims for, there are also the clicks, the hub tips of our work. So that's what we want. And we get it for that reason. That's excellent, Alina. It was great speaking to you today about all this stuff. It's fascinating. It's definitely an avenue that I feel every business should be having their hands into, especially if they're selling a product and that it can create that wide effect that you mentioned. If they're just on Amazon, not looking at anything else, it might be a good idea to look at those other platforms as well. Increase that reach because at the end of the day, it's all about the daily sales. Yes. Yeah. That's great, Alina. Thank you so much for coming on our show and sharing everything that you've shared today is very interesting. And I'm sure that you're providing awesome service to people, especially rank, page two is not going to get them the sales, so definitely need it, Alina. Keep it up and thank you again. It was great being here and talking to you. Thank you for having me and to see you soon. My pleasure, audience. Thank you so much. Once again, for joining us for another episode with Alina, her information will be in the show notes. Definitely take a look at what she has to offer. If you're looking to rank, definitely she's someone that you want to see what she can do for you guys and just get into e-comm for example, having multiple sources of income is key because you don't want all your eggs in the same basket. So if you're a coach or if you're involved in any other kind of business manufacturing, anything else that you feel that you should be adding another source of income, Amazon store or selling on Amazon or launching a product, a private label is key in having those multiple streams of income. So definitely take a look at all this information. I appreciate you guys for helping us grow. Really do. Thanks.