503: A Fun And Profitable Side Hustle That No One’s Talking About (No Traffic Required) With Liz Saunders

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You’re listening to the My Wife, Quit or Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into what strategies are working and what strategies are not with their businesses. Today, I’m thrilled to have my good friend, Liz Saunders on the show. And in this episode, we’re going to talk about a cool new side hustle that can make you over $100,000 per year that does not involve any investment in inventory or advertising. And in fact, you don’t even have to learn how to drive any traffic at all. And I’m sure you’ll find this episode super interesting.

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But before we begin, wanted to let you know that tickets for the 2024 Seller Summit are now on sale over at SellersSummit.com. The Seller Summit is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. And unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level BS, is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their business

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entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods, and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. I personally hate large events, so the seller summit is always small and intimate. Every year, we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast, and we’ve sold out every single year for the past eight years. Now, if you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur making over 250k or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers.

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The Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 14th to May 16th of 2024. And right now, this is the cheapest the tickets will ever be. Also, if you haven’t picked up my Wall Street Journal bestselling book, The Family First Entrepreneur Yet, it’s actually available on Amazon at 38 % off right now. My book will teach you how to achieve financial freedom by starting a business that doesn’t require you to work yourself to death. Plus, you can still grab all my free bonus workshops on how to sell print on demand.

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and how to make passive income with blogging, YouTube, and podcasting when you grab the book over at mywifequitterjob.com slash book. Go to mywifequitterjob.com slash book, fill out the form, and I’ll send you the bonuses right away. Now onto the show.

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Welcome to the My Wife, Her Job podcast. Today I’m thrilled to have my good friend Liz Saunders on the show. Liz is someone who I’ve known for over a decade now, and she actually helped Tony and I launched Seller Summit way back in the day. She was the former chief of staff over at Jungle Scout. But today we are going to talk about a company that she recently started called Fluencer Fruit that helps to facilitate a pretty cool side hustle that involves making money from Amazon.

02:44
that does not require any upfront investment in inventory, doesn’t require any money for advertising. And you can just pick up your phone and get started right away. And you can make a couple thousand dollars a month or more. I think I’m sure Liz has some case studies where there people making a lot more than that. But with that, welcome to show Liz how you doing today. Hey, Steve, I’m doing great. Thanks for inviting me. It’s kind of fun to hear you like lay out our history like that. It’s like, oh, yeah, like it’s been a long time. And we’re doing a lot of fun stuff.

03:14
I mean, I just remember those early seller summit days when we didn’t know what the hell we were doing. And you had a background in event planning. So was very helpful. Yeah, yeah. And it’s fun, Tony. And I have kind of like leapfrogged like working in and around and like on each other’s events. And so that was a it was a good fit. Liz, you had a pretty sweet gig at Jungle Scout. Yes. And so I am curious, how did your entrepreneurial journey led to where you are today? Because you could have just kept that really sweet gig.

03:43
and lived a pretty cushy life. So it was really funny because a mutual friend of ours, right after I told them that I had left, sent me a text and he was like, congratulations, that’s so exciting. I won in. Whatever you decided that you would leave that cushy spot at Jungle Scout for seems really exciting. And I was like, yeah, I did this. And then I was like, oh my gosh, I left a really cushy spot at Jungle Scout to do this. It was like that moment of like, what did I do?

04:13
So when I started at Jungle Scout though, it actually like I met Greg at seller summit, right? So we can draw it all back to, you you Tony and seller summit. But when I met him, I was running my own company. So like from the entrepreneur side, right? I was doing like event logistics. I had a booking agency for sellers. I had just started selling on Amazon after taking your course and

04:38
You know, so when I started with Jungle Scout, that was where I was at. Like I did that because the season of my kids truthfully was in a season where I needed to come in off the road and I needed like a little bit more stability to my income. Right. And so spent six years at Jungle Scout and loved every minute of it. Like it’s such a cool team. was so much fun to be there from like person number 30 until like over 300. Like it’s very cool season to be there.

05:05
Um, but after I was introduced to Amazon influencer, like 18 months ago, I started seeing like this kind of blue ocean of opportunity still in the Amazon ecosystem, which is something I’m very familiar with. And initially I set it up as like, this is going to be a side hustle. I’ll do a Chrome extension. I can do this on the side. And then I was like onboarding people at seven o’clock in the morning and 10 30 at night. And I was like, Oh, I need to go do this full time. And so.

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Greg and I worked on a transition plan together to go back. And so that’s kind of like the short version of how we got there, but that’s where we’re at. Okay. Well, let’s talk about this side hustle and exactly how it works. Cause I’m sure most of the people listening don’t even know that this business model even exists. So describe the business model first before we get into your tool. Absolutely. So Amazon influencer for the purposes of our conversation, I just always ask people whatever.

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comes to mind when you think of the word influencer, I just want you to put it on a shelf for this conversation because the Amazon Influencer program is an offshoot of the affiliate program. So affiliates being the people pushing traffic to Amazon, but the influencer program lives on Amazon. So it’s content that is created by people who have been approved for this program. And we upload content, shoppable videos about product listings, shoppable photos, vertical shorts,

06:30
Amazon lives, like all of those types of content live inside the influencer program. But the unique thing is Amazon places these UGC content basically on product listings in the inspire feed, in the discover feed, and it’s all about products that exist on Amazon. So influencers aren’t necessarily driving traffic to that product listing, but we’re making

07:00
a small percentage off of traffic that already exists on Amazon. So it’s a pretty unique program. like to think of it like a reverse influencer because Amazon is actually driving traffic to your videos and you are getting paid for it. Correct. That accurate? I think of it as like slightly incentivized UGC. Yes. Yeah. Yes, which is actually becoming big and big bigger and bigger outside of Amazon as well. can just sign up and get paid to

07:28
hold a camera and just promote a product where you don’t have to post it on your own channels. The content is just sold. Liz, I know you were doing this before you started your company, Fluencer Fruit. How much are you making just doing this? You’ve made thousands of videos at this point. I don’t know what the number is. No, so I work with influencers that have done thousands. For my account, I use it more as like a test because quite honestly, like so I’ve done hundreds and my highest month was

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over 1500 somewhere in that ballpark. And I do a lot of testing in my account. like, does it work to work with agents who are, you know, reaching out to you with exchange products? Does it work for vertical shorts or do the shoppable photos turn around? Like that kind of stuff, like which product listings do the best. And for last summer, I took like three months to see how passive of an income it could be. And I didn’t touch the account.

08:26
which is so much fun to play with, right? Like just, there’s so many ways you make money in the Amazon ecosystem that it’s just fun to kind of sit back and like play with it and see like how it all works together. So yeah, we’re at hundreds and a couple thousand in a month. And I’m curious, like for your largest clients, can you, I know you probably don’t have the exact number, but what is ballpark the potential that you can make with this at a passive level? Yeah. So my clients who are doing this full time and

08:55
I can point you to the YouTube channels because they’re even public with their numbers, but the ones who are buying with the intent to review and this is like their focus, they’re pulling between 10 and $15,000 a month right now. Wow. Yeah. That’s nuts. Okay. All right. So that sounds exciting. Yeah, it is. It’s very cool. What do you need to get started? So first of all, how do you even get accepted into the program? Yeah. So

09:21
there’s actually two different ways. And the one is like, if you go to the site, and you’re looking for apply for influencer, it’s a tick tock, a YouTube and Instagram or a Facebook following somewhere, Instagram and Facebook, they have to be a business account. So it can’t be like you and all of your friends, it has to be like something that you’ve built as a business account. But there’s a Facebook though, does a page count? Or does it have to be a group? A page counts, right? A page counts as long as

09:49
So the thing that Amazon is looking for, they don’t tell us like, you need a thousand followers. They tell us that we’re looking at your follower count and your engagement. So like when I look at a lot of pages, most people are not as active on their pages as they are in their groups, right? In your group, I think has to be public so that Amazon can actually see how much engagement there is. So there’s a couple different like things in there where it’s like, this is important, but like even with

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Instagram, when I got approved with like 2700 followers on like my health and wellness food journal Instagram, right? But it’s really active. So like I have a lot of engagement. So it really is. I don’t want say it’s less about your followers because they don’t give us minimums, but we’ve seen people approved with pretty low follower accounts from an over like with the high level number of influencers that we have that have millions and millions, right, of followers.

10:46
you can get in with a pretty low number if your audience is very engaged. What does that mean exactly? What’s a high level? comments, like, we don’t have exacts in this, but I would even venture a guess of like, how much you’re posting. So like, if your last post was six months ago, but it was really engaged, probably still not going to be a fit. Like they want to see regular engagement with your audience.

11:14
What is the lowest number of followers that you’ve heard of someone getting in? So like through the grapevine, I’ve heard people like with a hundred TikTok followers who have had, know it like TikTok right now is the easiest way to get approved. Okay. Like the stories that are coming out of like people who have these TikTok followings that are super engaged. But if you think about it, engagement numbers on TikTok are really high right now. Like if the algorithm hits and finds you your audience, you can have a pretty low follower count.

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and have a ton of comments, a ton of likes, decent number of posts, because it’s not as highly produced as some of the other types of content that are available, right? So, you know, that’s not a guarantee, because we’ve seen people with 100,000 people on a Facebook page get turned down. Huh? So yeah, I mean, 100 followers on TikTok, that’s like one video. Right? Right. Or potentially? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let’s say I have

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you know, one of those accounts, is it just a matter of me applying on the Amazon website? Yeah, it takes like 10 minutes, I think, basically, you go through and you do like a single not a single sign on, but whatever the connection is in the back end. And they will approve you for the program almost instantaneously. So that’s like, in or out is like, as you do the application, basically, they must have some set algorithm then right? For what they look for? Yeah, okay. And do you have to submit one?

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platform or can you submit like a whole bunch? You have to submit one, but you could retry with another if you don’t get in. Okay, got it. Yeah. All right. And then once I’m in, what’s the next step? So once you’re in, this is really interesting because they then you can create your storefront. So if you’re pushing traffic there, you can have a consolidated place for content. But the real money in influencer is made once you’re approved for additional onsite placements.

13:10
And in order to do that, you have to upload three shoppable videos. And then we just tell people like, upload your three and then walk away. You just have to wait for Amazon to approve you because that puts you into the queue to be approved for that. And that’s where you get product listing placement. That’s where you get inspire. That’s where you get discover. They’re now testing external placements. mean, like the placements that Amazon is testing right now is wild. Like you’ll

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just look at something in your app and it’s like, oh wait, there’s my picture. Like it’s awesome. So let’s talk about these first three videos. Do I literally just find something that I’ve bought, pick up my phone and just start talking? Yeah. Yeah. Like I recommend in your like first three, just don’t overthink it. Like if you’ve got something on sitting on your desk that you can talk about, like this is my lion latch. This is what I use it for. And like just talk directly to the camera and like,

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show the product, that’s like the best way to get started. I mean, am I giving it a review or am I just like talking about it? So that’s a great question. And actually people do both. So they don’t call them video reviews anymore. They call them shoppable videos. But if you think about like Amazon’s purpose or Amazon’s focus is always the shopper experience. So if you think about as a shopper.

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What would provide value to you when you were looking at a video from somebody who already has the product? Are they answering a question that you already have or that you have before you buy it? Are they showing you like to scale how big the product actually is in their hand? Like we’ve all bought something on Amazon or somewhere on the internet where it’s like you thought it was going to be bigger or smaller and then it got there, right? Do you just want to see what’s in the box? So people do unboxing videos. People talk about like

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quality, I usually try and include one piece of like, constructive feedback in my videos, just because I think it adds like a little bit of depth to it. It’s not like, oh, I’m just trying to sell you this. It’s like, this is something I wish it did differently, you know, whatever the case is. So it doesn’t have to be a review. I sometimes say like, I recommend this if you’re looking for this type of a product or you know, those sorts of things. So it’s just kind of like any of those things, whatever provides value to the shopper.

15:30
I mean, presumably these first three videos are in place and Amazon is judging you, right? Is it an approval process essentially? Yeah. So this is the time when Amazon looks over your content with like a fine tooth comb. So the less you have in there, the less they have to review, the simpler you can be, the better, right? Like, so give me some guidelines. How long should this video be? So Amazon’s guidelines are anywhere from six seconds and up.

16:00
Once you get, like I wouldn’t do a YouTube video, this is not 10 minutes. For your first videos, you definitely wanna be shorter. But I would say 45 seconds is kind of about where I recommend people hit. If you’re like me and you’re verbose, that’s gonna be tough. Just try and be concise and just talk about one thing that you like about the product or whatever the case is. For the people that have been rejected, how did they screw up? So the things that we see most often are like medical advice, like this is eco-friendly, that’s, or,

16:30
I forget what the one phrase is. It’s like eco-friendly or something like that that people get flagged for, even though it’s not medical advice. It’s like bio something. They don’t like those kinds of words. Personal information. Keep your background clear, right? Like as plain as you can be. Cause a lot of times Amazon’s AI like picks up like your address or a QR code or a barcode from like an old Amazon box, like all of that stuff.

16:56
Those are probably like the top two that we see like, and don’t mention pricing. Like it has to be evergreen content. So whatever you paid for it, the remember the seller can always change the price. So you can’t say anything about pricing, discounts, any of those things. How long does it take for them to let you know that you’ve been accepted? So this is so funny. Like, it’s kind of like we’re in that wild period where it just kind of depends. So like,

17:24
Currently when you and I are having this conversation two to three days. Oh, that’s pretty fast. Yeah. When I got approved, it was four weeks. That was a year and a half ago. The beginning of this year, it was eight weeks. It took so long. So, but now it’s like two days. I’m like, everybody should apply immediately and try and like get approved because two days is nothing like in the event that you get rejected. Are you allowed to keep trying until you get in? So

17:53
The onsite placement is a little bit different. Applying to the program, yes, apply as many times as you want. On-site placement, you have three tries and then you are done. So you have to be real cautious. That’s why I always tell people short, sweet, simple, just you and the camera and then one product. What was the other thing there? It’s like, and…

18:17
don’t upload more than three videos because if you upload five videos, then now they’re combing five videos. If you upload three, which is the requirement, they’re only combing three.

18:28
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18:57
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19:09
So you upload your three and then you just wait is what your advice is. Yep. Okay. All right. Let’s get to the fun part. Okay. So let’s say you’ve gotten approved. Okay. Do I just start randomly reviewing everything that I get or is there like a strategy to this? So there’s a couple of strategies, but of course one that I love the most. Um, so initially when you’re getting started, yes, just go around your house and look at like what you’ve got and start creating content. Right? Cause as you know,

19:36
especially if you’ve not done this type of content, you just get more more comfortable as you go. And then as you get better at it, there are things on a product listing page that help you know if that page is set up for a creator content. And so as an example, this really changed the way that I shop for items around my house, right? So if I look at a product listing page, I know that in that upper main carousel,

20:04
there’s the opportunity for a seller to have a product video. If they have a product video, it creates a pop-up video carousel. In that pop-up video carousel, there are six open spaces for sellers and influencers. So if the seller has uploaded that, they basically unlock that upper carousel, my videos that are in that top carousel do eight times better than my other videos. So.

20:31
Number one thing you’re looking for is that upper carousel that’s not full. Okay. And I’ve seen those carousels. They can have like five videos in them, right? Or more. So it’s six between brand and influencer. Amazon is currently also testing customer videos down below. Okay. But those don’t impact that top six spots. So basically if I’m looking at a product and I see that the entire carousel is full,

21:01
Do I pass on that product? Not necessarily. If you already have it in your house, my advice is always make the video. They’re not that long. They don’t take that much. If you’re buying something and you’re comparing two listings and one has a full carousel and one has five open spots on the carousel, I’m going to air towards the side of the one with five open spots. So in the event that the carousel is full, like, can you overtake those spots? Yeah, potentially.

21:31
Yeah. And do you happen to know how that works? No, we have guesses. mean, I can tell you kind of like, sure, anecdotally, I think it depends on how well you convert, right? So Amazon wants the people who are providing the most value for the shopper that gets them to make a buying decision as close to the point of purchase, right? So what we see is sometimes people will call it like the newcomer advantage, like Amazon, if you upload a video will test you.

21:59
this is what it appears like will test you against the other influencers that are in that carousel. And if you convert better, you’re, you know, they will keep you up there. So there are ways to do it, especially if you create really quality content and you can provide that value for the shopper better than somebody else. I think that’s how you win the carousel. So when you first publish a video, you will get some exposure, even if all the carousel spots are occupied.

22:29
It’s a possibility. I have to say that because Amazon controls all of the placements. So 99 times out of 100. Yes, I get an initial placement that sometimes I keep and sometimes I lose, right. But there are a couple like even that I uploaded on Saturday that it’s like I uploaded 17 and of the ones that had placement like, or had the ability to be placed, like eight out of 10 of them had placement the next day.

22:58
Right. Okay. So it just kind of depends. But then I have a my best performing is my hero skew, right? My best performing products. I’ve been on that upper carousel for the better part of 18 months now. Is that the tent? It’s the tent. It’s my shade tent. But I will check occasionally I fall out of the carousel. But then I have so far been consistently put back, I think because I convert really well there.

23:28
So let’s talk about the exact content then, because I imagine there’s like a strategy for creating the content that converts. Do have any tips there? My best tip is to be yourself and to answer questions that you had before you bought the product. Right. OK. Because ultimately, like if you try and push everybody into like some like do these eight things like it kind of like then that’s when we start seeing like, oh, people are playing the system. This stopped working.

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right? Whereas if you just show up and you answer questions, or you speak to an FAQ on the page, or something that like, you know, different this differentiates this product from like another one that you looked at. That’s where it really becomes authentic. And I think that’s what Amazon is going for is they want that UGC of people who use the products. So do you want to be opinionated then? Or do you just want to be neutral? I would be neutral. Okay.

24:24
I think you can say things that you like. Like I will give my opinion, but I wouldn’t, I guess I would say yes, you want to have an opinion. I think when you say opinionated, I think of somebody who’s like, this is the best thing ever as opposed to like, this has been- Well, that’s what I was getting at because if you want someone to actually buy the product, right, then you’d probably want to focus on the positives and say, throw in a negative there, right, to get them to buy it. Does Amazon continue to monitor the quality of your videos after the initial approval?

24:55
So yes, they do. So like I still get occasionally when I got the other day was rejected because I didn’t realize like there was a license plate in the background, right? I had to go edit that out, right? So there’s still screening for those types of things. There are things that are terms of service non-compliant that we are seeing people get away with right now. And so I will say like, there are things that I think the AI misses, but I believe in Amazon form,

25:25
Kind of like when we see on the seller side, it will be like, oh, terms of service around written reviews, and they’ll do like a big sweep, right? I think we probably have a couple big sweeps coming to the influencer program for some of those things that like people are getting away with, but are not terms of service compliant. So yes, and there are still ways that people are getting around it. I mean, what I’m getting at is there’s no way to get unapproved, right? Once you get approved.

25:52
So we have seen people have their accounts suspended, but for terms of service violations, not for like, not for anything else at the moment. Okay. You have to be trying as far as I’m concerned, like just blatantly. Right. Okay. And then I’ve noticed when shopping on Amazon that sometimes the videos are horizontal. Sometimes they’re vertical. What are the guidelines there? So Amazon has in the past,

26:21
pushed for like the horizontal full commentary on the product. know, those videos that I would say just stereotypically land between that like one and five minute mark. But then in December of last year, they rolled out the Inspire feed in the shopping app. And when they did that, because it’s intended to be on your phone, right? Like they started asking for vertical short content. content that is under 30 seconds, so between that six and 30 second mark, and that’s shot vertically.

26:51
So now they ask for both, but for different purposes, but you’re still seeing both types of content surfaced in all of the different locations. My guess is that when Amazon has enough content to fully populate all of the different placements, that they’ll start pulling that apart where your horizontal content will only show up on your product listing pages and your vertical shorts will only show up in like the inspire feed.

27:19
So can I just film a horizontal clip in 4K and then just cut it to be vertical and submit the same exact video? Okay. And that works fine. Yeah. I would say if you were going to do that, that you just want to make the vertical one shorter. So you want it to clip so that it moves a little bit faster for like, if you think of like scrollable shopping, like TikTok, Instagram style. Right. Okay. All right. So I did want to ask you this because this is what Fluentz or Fruit is all about. Like, how do you find these options?

27:48
opportunities, what are your guidelines for these opportunities that so you already mentioned like if the carousel is not full, great. Right? What so am I just like clicking on each product and looking at the carousel? Or are there any other guidelines that? Yeah, total number of influencers on the listing makes an impact, obviously, right? Because if there’s already 10 influencers there, it’s much more competitive to try and get that top converting spot around that 4.4.

28:16
rating is about where I can mathematically tell you I can see my performance on that listing do better. There’s a couple other things like is it a sponsored listing because obviously if the seller is driving traffic that helps me in like the ways that I’m showing up. But to your other question like am I just clicking in and out that’s actually why I built Fluencer Fruit right because that’s what I was doing like every time I went to buy something.

28:41
I was like clicking into the listing, looking at all these things, seeing like weighing the pros and cons of like, well, it has open spots, but it’s not rated as high. And so I created Fluentzorfruit, which is the extension. So all of that information is pulled onto the search results page and it’s scored. So it’s a weighted score based on how much each of those factors impacts that product listings profitability basically, or how it performs. All right. So

29:11
If you wouldn’t mind, let’s enumerate some of those guidelines. You already said a rating of 4.4 or higher. You mentioned that you want to have at least a couple carousel slots open ideally. How many influencers would you like to see on the product at a maximum? a maximum, I look at two, but it kind of depends on how many brand videos there are. as the brand, you hypothetically could upload six videos and fill that entire top carousel.

29:41
Now I don’t recommend that because we know that UGC converts better, but sellers do it, right? So I’m looking at a combination of how many open carousel slots are there and how many influencers are on there. So like if I see that a brand has two videos and there are two other influencers, there are still two open spots on there. I’m probably good with that. My ideal is that there is a brand video only and no other influencers. And I can see that it sells pretty well.

30:11
Are you implying that you can submit more than one video per product though? Or is it one video per product? Oh, you can. Yeah. So like Amazon currently asks us for multiple types of content for each product. So like I’m doing right now a full shoppable video where we talk about the unboxing and the pros and like my constructive feedback in one that’s usually between like one and three minutes, right? But then I also shoot all of my B roll in

30:41
vertical and then just have it clipped into like a 30 second or less shoppable short basically. But both of those videos will show up in the carousel if there’s nobody else there. So you’re saying in theory you could occupy all of the carousel spots? Yeah, you just your videos. Yeah. All right. You know, one thing I forgot to ask you was the money involved. So in order to earn money from this, they watch your video.

31:09
and they make a purchase before any other clicks are made or? So we think that it’s last touch attribution. So if they watch my video on the shade tent and they make a purchase decision next, and that can be either the shade tent that I reviewed or it can be basically a shade tent competitor. So we have basically like a one click away.

31:36
related product commission. unlike affiliate where you have 24 hours of their entire cart, we get basically like related product within one reach of our content. What happens if I watch a video for your shade tent, and then I buy a 60 inch flat screen TV? Next click? Nothing. Not a related product for us. Unfortunately. What about like a picnic basket? I don’t have to be in the same category or you don’t know.

32:04
that they don’t tell us but from what I can tell from like the spreadsheets of like influencer videos versus like, it’s it’s got to be pretty much like, if I’m looking at my if I’m looking at my commissions, and I’m seeing things on there that I don’t have reviews for. It’s usually like, oh, I have this stepper under my desk instead of sunny health. They bought Nordic track or whatever the case is, or like I have a treadmill under my desk that I have a video for.

32:31
if they didn’t buy Go Youth, but they went and bought Nordic Track. Like they’re pretty close usually. So like I sell a lot of shade tents, whether they’re that shade tent or another one, there’s a lot of shade tents on there. What would have happened if you watched the video and then you clicked off and purchased together and you bought like three items, including that one. Do you get credit for the whole thing or just that one product? Just the one product. Just one product. question. I haven’t ever seen. Yeah, I think just the one product.

33:01
Okay, so in general, this is different from Amazon Associates, where you get the whole pot of the whole shopping cart. It’s just a single product. And it’s as far as you can tell the next click. Correct. Yep. Okay. Yeah. All right. Which if you think about it from Amazon’s perspective, I’m making money off of their audience. Right. So what I’ve always wondered, Liz is like, if someone clicked on an Amazon Associates link from someone else watched your video and then bought it, does Amazon pay out double?

33:30
So this is a constant like, debate in like the Facebook groups and everything. The truth of the matter is we don’t know. Both commissions come from that referral fee that the sellers pay when they make a sale regardless. So the answer is maybe both, right? Okay. But we don’t know. And then I wanted to let you finish because you said at first you were clicking around looking for products.

34:00
Tell us what what fluency fruit does. Yeah. So fluency fruit pulls all of that information that I know impacts the possibilities of how a shoppable video will do on that product listing and it creates a score and then it just basically pulls it all to your search results. So the cat, the extension will work on search results page best seller pages because a lot of influencers will go through the best sellers.

34:27
click through the subcategories, right? Looking for high sale options works on that works on your browsing history works on wish lists. like wherever you’re looking at, like what can I produce content for? It will always pull like the scoring as well as those does it have an upper carousel? How many influencers are on there? How many open carousel slots are there? Like to a place where it’s easy instead of having to like click in and out of every listing and then trying to remember.

34:57
And then in addition to like right underneath the listings, it shows that it also has a dropdown on any page you’re on that will score any products that are on that page. So if you go to a product listing and you’re like, this is close, but you you scroll down and Amazon has this one’s related, this one’s recommended, like it will score each of those as well. And then in the dropdown, it will pull all of that information into one place at the top of the page.

35:21
So basically, Fluent of Fruit just gives you all the potential listings that will maximize the chances of you hitting the carousel and making money. Correct. Yeah. What about as a seller? Let’s say I’m an Amazon seller. Does your tool provide any benefits? Like if I want more exposure to my product? So indirectly, if you were a seller and you just wanted to be able to peruse your competitors specifically and see how many like

35:49
influencers are showing up in different categories, you could definitely use it for that. The tool I think is really probably something that sellers would be interested in like what is there but it’s not necessarily that something that is going to or that is designed to help them specifically. Okay, the very interesting thing that I think about the influencer program in the way that it relates to sellers is more in like working with influencers, right? So like,

36:19
We’ve had this conversation, but if we start back in 2016, when incentivized written reviews were banned, and we draw a line all the way through, I think it brings us to here because influencers are FTC compliant, Amazon Terms of Service compliant. You can talk to us, right? Unlike Vine voices, you can have us like, tell us like, hey, this is the question I get most often, would you work with me on content for this product? Right? So

36:46
Like more than the tool, think the actual influencers are more interesting to sellers. Okay. No, that, that totally makes sense. Uh, I want to just kind of switch gears and talk about some success stories. I heard a story through the grapevine that people are getting in touch with Airbnb owners or brand new ones. They’re renting it and just going through and reviewing everything, putting it on. And that’s it. That’s their sole reason for getting the Airbnb. Yeah.

37:15
And then it’s a business expense, you can write it on it, right? And then you have a ton of content. Yeah, so I mean, I guess we still like the early stages of this. Yeah, I so there are a couple people who post about it, like publicly, there are a lot of people that have been doing it kind of like on the DL trying to like not let other people find out what’s going on. But yeah, it’s like

37:41
I think we’re still at the very beginning of this, right? If we look at Amazon holistically, but like the Airbnb thing, I think is really a cool opportunity. One, because it, you know, if you’re just launching an Airbnb, it gives you kind of like this other way to like work with influencers because a lot of those influencers are also like affiliates, right? So they’re not just creating on, on Amazon content, but maybe they’re also, you know, creating content around their travels a lot of times as well.

38:12
So it’s kind of an interesting way to work together. I mean, are there any creative ways that people are acquiring products without actually having to spend the money upfront for the product? Like if I want to do this at scale and I have to buy every product, that kind of sounds expensive because I can’t foresee making my money back right away. It’s more like an investment, right? Yeah.

38:34
So there’s a couple of things. One, there are groups of people who are at the point where like the investment is worth it for them, right? Cause they’re running ROI and they have pretty solid numbers around how long it will take them to recoup their cost, right? So there is kind of like that level of influencers working on this. For somebody getting started, who’s like, okay, I’ve gone through everything in my house. Now, how do I keep moving forward? There are actually agencies that are working with

39:01
sellers and influencers specifically to match them, where it’s not like this, the seller will send the product for free and then you’re getting an additional commission for your on site content. So those are some of the ways. The other thing is, you know, once you get kind of up and running and you have some content under your belt, if you just want like products to kind of review, there are tons of agents that will send them to you and you can run it through kind of like

39:29
let’s call it the fluency or fruit scoring system, whether you do that with the tool or without to make those decisions around, hey, they’re going to send me this product for free. Like, if that’s something that you want to do, I don’t think you’ll ever be at a loss for sellers or agents who want to send you a product for you to create content around. And you don’t have to be a verified purchaser in order to do this, right? No, okay. It can be something you bought at Target, as long as it has a

39:56
a listing on Amazon, you can create content for it. Okay. So if I were to just go to like a department store and just film the video right there for that product and just choose expensive products that wouldn’t work. That’s against terms of service. People do it right now, but it is against terms of service. I see. Okay. And in terms of just product costs, like I wouldn’t want to review like a $10 widget, right?

40:22
I would go into like the higher end. Is that a strategy or is that something you recommend or so kind of like, statistically, the people who are pulling 10 to $15,000 a month don’t spend a lot of time reviewing $10 widgets, right? Okay, like they’re, they’re reviewing things that are 100 500 $1,000 like regularly. Now, if you just thought, I can’t get up there, I don’t have stuff you’ve won, you have stuff in your house that costs that much, and you probably bought it on Amazon. But to neighbors,

40:53
Airbnbs. There was a trend, I don’t recommend this, but I’m going to call it out. There was a trend for a while where people were going to their like, you know, cluster mailboxes. Turns out you can also buy some of those types of equipment on Amazon, and they would go and review different like, ridiculous. I mean, like, but if you think about it, it’s like, it’s ridiculous. And also, like, it is a decent example of like,

41:19
Does the playground at your homeowners association have like equipment on it that you can review? Your kids play on it all the time. Go ahead and review it. You know what I mean? Like there are ways to record or to work with the products. They’re in that high end like echelon of products without having to buy them. Like I recently did a water slide and it’s like three to $5,000 and we were literally like out of friends basically. And

41:48
Like the kids are playing on this water slide. They’re like, come on, mom, I did it once. And I was like, I bet this is on Amazon. So like I filmed some video of us on it and then later did. But it’s in terms of sort of it, right? Like I have experience with this water slide, right? Like, first of all, it was awesome. That’s kind of what triggered it because I like legitimately loved it. But there are ways to like gain access to that type of product price point without being like, oh, I have to go spend

42:18
$5,000 this month, right? Right. Okay. That makes sense. And presumably right now it’s the wild, wild west. And if it’s anything like prior Amazon policies, they’ll probably crack down on this at some point. Yeah. Right. I mean, like you’re not allowed to show prices and you’re not allowed to do like screenshots of products, but we see a lot of like collages that are screenshots of products. The other day I saw an inspire video that was literally just screenshots with music overlaid of

42:47
product listings and it was like 10 things I should buy from Amazon. It was just like screenshots of the listing so they don’t even like, you know, that stuff’s all going away, right? Like we know Amazon well enough to know like that’s not gonna last but people are doing it. I mean, I can see some like mall employee working in a store just like doing these little films in the back closet for all their products. Make sure your price you don’t have a price tag on it. Yeah.

43:15
Yeah, no, I’m excited about this. Liz, where can people find out more about how to get started doing this and then more about your tool as well? Absolutely. So if you go to fluencerfruit.com slash my wife quit, I’ll have the resources all in one place. So how to get started. We’ve got a course coming out that if you have an audience will help you get started and up to the point where you are scaling your business.

43:43
and then also information about the tool there as well. Cool. Well, Liz, thank you so much. And I think this tool is good. And hopefully you quit that cushy job of yours for good reason. From your mouth to the universe here. Thanks, Steve.

44:04
Hope you enjoy that episode. Now, if you want to try this cool new side hustle, head on over to Fluencerfruit.com and use coupon code MyWifeQuit50 to get 50 % off the tool. For more information about this episode, go to MyWifeQuitOrDob.com slash episode 503. And once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2024 are now on sale over at SellerSummit.com. If you want to hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like-minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event.

44:34
go to SellersSummit.com. And if you are interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to MyWifeQuarterJob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.