508: Amazon Fees Are On The Rise! 5 Tips On How To Slash Your Costs With Yoni Mazor

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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 in what strategies are working and what strategies are not with their businesses. Today I my good friend Yoni Mazur on the show. And Yoni is the founder of Getita, which is a company that helps you save money on Amazon. And this guy is literally at every single Amazon conference and he’s got an excellent pulse on the entire industry. So in this episode, he’s going to teach us about all the latest Amazon fee changes and how you can save money selling on Amazon.

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for the rest of the holiday season leading into next year. But before we begin, I want to let you know that tickets for the 2024 Seller Summit are now on sale over at Sellersummit.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.

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Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their business, 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,

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We also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. The Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 14th to May 16th, 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 available on Amazon at 38 % off right now. My book will teach you how to achieve financial freedom by starting a business that does not require you to work yourself to death. Plus, you can still grab my free bonus workshop,

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

02:17
Welcome to the My Wife, Could Her Job podcast. Today, I’m thrilled to have Yoni Mazur back on the show. He is the founder of Katita and he’s helped thousands of e-commerce entrepreneurs get their money back from Amazon. And he actually spoke in my last conference, the Seller Summit. Now today, what we’re going to do is we are going to discuss ways to save money on Amazon because it’s getting more expensive and it’s getting a lot more competitive as well. And with that, welcome back to the show, Yoni, for the third time.

02:46
Yeah, thank you. Thanks so much for having me. Always a pleasure and a privilege to be here. You know, it’s been a while since we’ve had you back on. you know, I keep in touch with a lot of Amazon sellers. And so far, it seems like this has been a harder year for Amazon sellers in general, and people are getting squeezed by fees. There’s pressure on both sides, PPC costs have gone up. I think I read Amazon’s last report and ad revenue for them increased 25 % year over year. So

03:14
It seems like people are getting squeezed. Yeah, it’s just that, you know, we had the past decade where the initial phase, people realized there’s a gold mine, but nobody really knew about it. I remember when I was still selling, I don’t sell anymore. We cashed out. But early days of about a decade ago when I used to tell people that I sell on Amazon, it was like saying I sell on eBay. It’s like, ah, it’s like a, it’s like a garage sale kind of business. Yeah. Right. Yeah. We’re just making bank. We’re just making tens of millions of dollars. But those times were cheap.

03:44
FBA was cheap. There was no advertising, then even when advertising was introduced, it was very alluring. Amazon made it so cheap and so powerful. And once the critical mass has realized it, then the bidding wars and inflation of cost for advertising has skyrocketed. And it keeps on intensifying because bigger players with bigger pockets, with bigger organizations are just swapping everybody out.

04:12
Sellers who don’t have that kind of infrastructure and skill need to be very smart on their positioning. And there’s opportunities out there to position yourself in certain ways where you have that ammunition, that ammunition where you really are lean in your cost. And that opens up better margins. And if you take those margins to constantly improve and iterate and reinvest in the business in key ways, you’re just going to be invincible for the long term. So that’s kind of the framework on this discussion.

04:40
I’ve actually noticed also recently just just in doing product research that whenever I search for a keyword on Amazon, there’s actually a lot of sellers that are originated from China on the platform. I’d say even more so than like the last couple of years, or maybe I just started noticing that now. But what’s nice is that I’ve that Amazon is making an effort for making it cheaper for new people to get started up. And that’s kind of some of the things that we’re going to be talking about today. Yes, but I do have to touch the Chinese

05:10
Notion. Yes. You’re right. You’re right. Not only that you’re right. It’s at this point, it’s probably scratching 50 % meaning 50 % from all the sales generated on Amazon globally, which is mostly North America and Europe is coming from sellers who are based in China. Yeah. Right. So 50 % of them are from China and then the rest of the 50 % are from sellers that are located all over the world, not just the United States. So in other words, they already took over the market. Yeah.

05:37
They’re the engine behind the selection and the competitiveness and stuff like that because Amazon is based in a few places in China as a marketplace. used to be as a marketplace, but it pulled out because there’s too much competition and hurdles. But the offices that they have, they constantly reach out to the Chinese sellers, factories, agencies to train them and teach them how to go direct to consumer on their platform. And that’s where the revolution began and it just snowballed. So that’s kind of the back of the scenes of what’s going on.

06:06
And I think AI has leveled the playing field. Like the listings are quite good now, you know, across all of those. There’s no language barriers really, it seems. And the listings are professional. More than that, it’s so funny you say that because I’ve been to in the past few days, I’m based in New Jersey. So the past few days we had a conference here in New York City. It was called AMZ Innovate with our friends, know, Brandon Furman, who produces it every year, typically in September. One thing was one of the sessions there with the sellers,

06:36
came up and they put their listings on the main screen and Aaron Kordovic, he’s a, know Aaron, he has ZUL ideals. He does over a hundred million on Amazon with his brand. So he was like ripping it apart and comparing it like, you know, how does the listing look and feel like on Amazon compared to the leaders in that same category. And all these leaders, you know, these sellers were pulling it up and they were maybe number, ranked number four five in the category or that niche. And then the number one or two or three were based in China. And you clearly see how

07:05
better the listings are. Images, image impressions, overloads, sensory overload of value. Because for example, one of the products was a trimmer for the hair. So it’s a bundle. It’s actually two trimmers. So the way it’s positioned, it looks like you’re getting one instead of two. And the other listing, the Chinese listing actually, you get one trimmer, but you get so many things around it. And so you see the trimmer, and then another picture with the trimmer inside the package that it comes with so many other things. So feel like you’re actually getting two, even though you’re only getting one.

07:34
So you see all these nuances where they’re actually much more sophisticated and refined than the US-based sellers. So a lot of respect to them. Yeah, I think AI gave them a lot, probably most of all, discipline. They’re very disciplined. Incremental improvement over time and they’re killing it. Exactly. Yeah. On that note though, Yoni, how can a new seller just compete then? Okay. So a few things to consider. I think if you are following Steve in this podcast and

08:03
and this content and you’re kind of on the fence getting into e-commerce, we can give you one, I guess, a simple things to consider that can really set you up for success and savings. We’ll start with the basic ones. So Amazon has a program for new accounts. So if you want to create a brand new account on Amazon United States, not Canada, United States, or UK, or Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, believe, they will give you, if you have brand registry,

08:33
Brand registry means you have a trademark and you register your brand. Amazon acknowledges it’s your brand. So once you get a brand registry and set up this new account, for the first million dollars, you’re going to generate in revenue, they’re going to give you a 5 % bonus. So that’s a $50,000 value. Okay? So you can use that value savings to restock, replenish, you know, use for advertising. Yeah, ahead. What does it take to sign up for this? Or do you have to sign up or is it automatic? It’s kind of automatic. So make sure that you are, you know,

09:01
If you want to start in Canada, maybe not. Maybe you should start in the US, for example. Typically, I always very recommend to start in the US or UK and Germany. That’s like the top three marketplaces. So if you’re based in Canada, listening to Steve, thinking I’ll start in Canada, maybe you should start in the US because you get a 5 % on their first million. There’s no time horizon, meaning there’s no expiration date for that 5 % bonus. So keep that in mind. or… That essentially knocks down the referral fee from 15 to 10, right?

09:26
Correct. If you’re in that category or sometimes some people do electronics, it’s 8%. Correct. If you’re 5 % back, you’re actually paying only 3%. So that’s another consideration. Or if you do jewelry, it’s 20%. So you’ll be at 15%. But most people are locked in 15%. So that’s kind of the general rule of thumb. But if you’re already active in the marketplace, so you’re selling in the US and you want to expand into Europe, here’s your opportunity. Because this program is still running, but they might shut it down in a few weeks or a few months. So speed is key. And vice versa, if you’re selling in the UK or Europe,

09:57
and you want to transition into the United States, that’s opportunity to save 5 % on your first million. So that’s kind of first basic ground level, ground zero thing to consider. But once again, make sure you get that trademark and brand registry. Don’t just launch a product on Amazon, no trademark, no brand registry. That’s not the right way to do it. Yoni, would you say that brand registry is pretty much par for the course now? It’s social security.

10:26
Like if you don’t have it these days and you’re just listing something as generic or whatnot, mean, would you… You’re wasting time. You’re vulnerable. You’re too vulnerable. It’s not the way to go. Well, I was gonna say, would you go as far as to say you shouldn’t even bother selling on Amazon unless you’re blinded? Because I’ll tell you what, if you reach success, you’re still vulnerable. So it’s just gonna blow back at you. People will just copy you this and that. You have no trademark, no protection.

10:53
People hijack your listing, they change your listing, you just be so vulnerable for more fronts. So if you’re be successful, it’s gonna backfire. If you’re gonna have low success, you’re gonna retire anyway, or you’re not gonna probably pull out of the game anyway. So I say simply that if you do something, do it right, and this is the right way to do it. It’s a very basic, fundamental way to do it, and don’t try to cut corners and save time on that. It’s not worth it. You know, I actually haven’t heard as many reports of hijacking, and it seems like the chatter around that has died down a little bit.

11:22
What are you seeing since you go to every single Amazon event in the world? Still around. It’s always that whisper of hijackers. It depends on the competition and your category, your niche. Whenever they want to target you, all of a sudden you get it. So being around so much, it’s still around. I don’t have any laboratory conditions. I don’t have the exact data, but I still hear it. Yeah. What about review abuse? Are you still hearing the chatter around that?

11:52
A little less. I’ll say a bit less. It’s more about they come in, they change the images or whatever they can to kind of botch you. Less on the review side. Yeah. Because Amazon will delete it. There’s better ways right now to clean up. Not just reviews that you got manipulated with. It’s also just reviews that are unfair in general or doesn’t make sense. They oh, this is a great product. It’s amazing, but it’s one star. Stuff like that, which is little funkier. Sometimes, you know, it’s a wrong click.

12:21
Things like that, Amazon wants to be a bit more attentive to the sellers to make it more wholesome. Right. Okay. So you mentioned 5 % right off the bat, which is a huge deal. It’s essentially a third off if you’re just starting out. Yeah. Yeah. For their first million. So you did that. You did the right thing. You started the basics of all basics and you have your trademark and brand registry. That’s great. So now that you have brand registry, the next layer would be to sign up to the brand referral bonus program.

12:50
So once you’re in SideSale Essential, just go to the search box, brand, referral, bonus program. Look for it, apply for it. You can only apply if you have brand registry. So it takes us back to that. And now you’re able to kind of get to the second layer. And the second layer is pretty cool because you’re to get a link, a URL. If you use that link to drive traffic from outside Amazon into Amazon, Amazon is going to give you a 10 % credit back, no cap. So if you’re really good with influencers, TikTok, YouTube.

13:20
Instagram, whatever it is, or email marketing that drives traffic from outside Amazon into Amazon and it converts. So all these sales generated with this link is they’re going to give you 10 % back. So if you’re able to within a year, for example, generate $1 million, you’re going to get $100,000 back. Right? So let’s take the $1 million again, right? $1 million, you get 10 % back, plus you get the 5 % from the first layer. You’re selling for free. There’s no fees. At least on your first million, which is very powerful. It’s $150,000.

13:50
So let me talk to you about driving external traffic. Cause for my store, I always focus on D to C and driving traffic back to my own store. And I know Amazon has introduced all these ways to get back in touch with their customers. There’s a limited email marketing and that sort of thing. So I know you might be biased towards Amazon, but what are your reviews on driving external traffic to your listings? I think that’s great in any platform. If you have that ability, that you’re a real G of e-commerce.

14:20
If you have the ability, I want to kind open that up for a bit more. What I find interesting in these times is that the most important or valuable resource in the world is not gold, it’s not diamonds, it’s people’s attention. Right? Think about all these massive companies that are worth so much money like Meta, right? Or Google, or because YouTube, right? So what do they really have? Do have gold resources? Do have oil? No, what do they have? They people’s attention.

14:48
Addicting, you constantly on their feeds and this and that. And with that attention, you can trigger them to take actions. Politically, who to vote for, stuff like that. So that’s government, Military, all that stuff. Wars. And of course commerce. Buy this, get that. I recommend, I don’t recommend. All that stuff. So if you’re able to source your product and become a retailer and want to build a brand, if you have the ability to really touch and grab some of their attention of consumers out there with all these platforms and drive them anywhere, that’s really the name of the game.

15:19
People are locked into Amazon because Amazon has people’s attention. It creates such a robust platform with so much variety and good quality, know, customer support, fast fulfillment, a library of videos, a very rich environment for consumers to get delighted. So their attention is there. So what are all these sellers doing? They’re riding on that attention credibility or whatever it is that Amazon has, that moat.

15:45
And they’re paying a tax for it or a fee for that. Selling fee, advertising fee, all that stuff. Which is okay, that’s the way to do it. But if you can also have other varieties of it where you have your website and you can target them through email, social media, whatever it is, that’s really the same thing that Amazon is doing. That you create your own shell that does it and that’s really the core of what e-commerce is. I think Amazon is ingenious to do this. One, regarding the specifics of that,

16:14
Is that link last click attribution? Do you know? Well, one more time. What is it? Is it last click attribution? So if someone clicks on the link to your site, they don’t buy and then they click on, let’s say someone else’s affiliate link and then buys. you still going to get credit? Uh, too rich for me. I don’t know. I got to double check. Okay. I’ve always wondered that because I, yeah. Cause this program has been around for a long time. Right. The, uh, uh, no, the brand reform bonus program. Yeah. No, it’s pretty, it’s pretty new.

16:43
It’s in the last year. yeah. It’s been around for a year. Yeah. So last year. it’s a good one. I don’t know if this episode will have the answer, but if other episodes, if you could give an update on that or show notes, it’ll be good. Yeah, I should look that up. I mean, that question immediately popped back into my mind as soon as we started talking about it. But if you do those two things, you’re essentially selling on Amazon for free outside of SBA costs, of course. Yeah. So yeah, two great layers to stack.

17:13
up on your setup to once you have gears up to success, you have more free cash flow coming in from all these sales. And really the next question is what do do with this free cash flow? Buy a cell phone as a car or reinvest in that or whatever, a watch or reinvest in the business? I’m a big advocate of reinvesting in the business. So you keep compounding and compounding it. Hopefully we build a good team around and a good structure around. So they also have the same mindset of growth and compounding. So then you can really at some point have a good machinery.

17:42
that runs itself and you can have a balance of work-life balance. When you want to jump start anything, you know, you’re, Steve, you’re an engineer, In physics. I used to be an engineer. Yeah, with microchips, right? Yeah, that’s correct. So yeah, the first gear is always the hardest, needs the most energy. So if you’re a micropreneur, it’s going to be all on you, honestly. I don’t want to sugarcoat anything, it’s going to be a grind, it’s going to be hard, a lot of energy, but as you turn into second gear, third gear, fourth gear, you actually need, you have so much, you know, movement and momentum, you need less and less energy.

18:12
So that’s the way sellers, micro-entrepreneurs need to kind of feel about this business or probably any other business. But this one is very magical because it’s digital. You can hire and harvest talent from any corner of the world, which is amazing and very, very efficient costs. And have this digital family of team members that can do wonderful things together and just nourish each other and just have a good balance of life. You’re not really physically bound or restricted on anything, which I think you’re also a big advocate for.

18:41
I am in the center. Yeah. Yeah. But in the beginning, you do have to invest all your profits back in because you’re to need inventory, right? You can’t just cash out in the beginning. For sure. Unless you want to take debt and then debt is a whole another rollercoaster of stress, especially in these economical times where interest is just as high as it’s been probably in 20 years or something. So, know, Amazon did a couple of things this year that I guess puzzled me too. Like they eliminated the small and light program.

19:09
which affected a lot of my friends who were selling smaller, cheaper trinkets. Is there any counter to that? These first two layers if you’re planning to sell those categories. Another counter to that is if you were, some of your products or most of your products are at the tier of the cost structure or so small and light was, you it has to be a certain price point but also a certain weight and dimension.

19:39
If your wedding dimensions can be shrunk a little bit to the degree where it’s lower, so it’s going to be cheaper for you on all the fulfillment side of things. So, strategically, you got to kind of see where you are on the spectrum of the tiers that Amazon charges for wedding dimensions. The opportunity to really reduce it with you and your supplier or your sourcing agent. You do it and then you have a more strategic positioning to save on all these fees and offset some of that adjustment that Amazon did that now is costing you more.

20:08
Mind be eliminating all your margin.

20:12
I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store, I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in ecommerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be obtained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free.

20:41
just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show.

20:52
I mean, you’ve gone to a lot of events and you chat with a lot more sellers than I do. What is the general sentiment? Because, you know, they did raise FBA fees as well this year. Pretty high, in my opinion. And then they eliminate small and light. What are some ways that the sellers are countering this and how are they being affected by it? What’s the general sentiment? Inflation times, the time of inflation, which means that eventually have to raise prices. OK. So now that you’re surprised.

21:20
you or your competition, at some point everybody kind starts to crack. So they start to raise prices. But then you try to say, okay, raise prices. What can I do to optimize my listing that at least it projects the more value? Even if it’s the same value, how do you project, how do you refine that? So you’re to have to raise the price and it might slow you down. But if you are able to combat and offset this issue with optimizing your listing, is, invest a little bit into that, but then it carry you forward for long time. So that’s kind of

21:49
an adjustment that I’ve seen around there. Okay. Well, what are some ways, I know we kind of talked before we hit the record button about just kind of auditing your account and figuring out different areas that you can work on. What is your, know, SOP for doing that? So before I touch that, I want to add more layer, the third layer for setup. Yeah, so as you set up the account, one layer we touched, a new account, 5 % grade, a second layer Brand before program, you get 10%. The third one is that if you plan to open a brand new account on Amazon,

22:18
your first one ever or just another one for another brand that you’re doing and you expect to generate more than $250,000 on your first year, reach out to me. We can have it on the show notes or my email, my direct email is pretty simple. It’s eonem at gatida.com and what we can do for you actually is that we’re part of the Amazon agency program. So it’s a program that, you know, for Amazon partner companies like Gatida.

22:42
where if we are able to identify new sellers that want to come into the marketplace and generate, expect to generate at least $250,000 in the first year, we’re going to apply for you to be part of this program. And what’s going to happen if you get approved is that Amazon will provide you an account representative. And typically these representatives cost $2,500 per month, which is $30,000 a year. But with this program, the benefit is you’re going to get that first year for free. So that’s the savings.

23:11
of $30,000 that you, once again, you save cash, right? But in addition to that, the value is that you hopefully will perform better because it can help you settle into your category, your listing setups, all that stuff, but also, you know, it’ll give you access to lightning deals, prime deals, know, prime event deals, or prime exclusive, I think they call it PED now, prime exclusive deals, and then also the Amazon has special email blast marketing deals for brands and sellers. So,

23:40
you pay less or you pay zero, which is also a good price and hopefully perform better as you settle into position, at least on your first year. So that could be a third layer to help you kind of get more edge, competitive edge, you know, in the market. So let’s say you sign up through you and we don’t end up hitting $250,000. Does that imply that we have to actually pay for the rep? No. No. No. It has to be kind of honest. Once again, if you’re not going to generate that, it’s probably not going to be a good business for you anyway.

24:09
I guess when everybody’s unhappy, was a deal. for the first year. for the first year. Then the second year, if you like them, you want to keep them, can keep them. not, if you didn’t get value, can detach. But at least it didn’t cost you anything. And if you really got a lot of benefit, that’s great. If you got no benefit, that’s fine. But if you really got a lot of benefit, you can really calculate the value and you want to continue with them, you do it with numbers, with data, backing that up. So you can get more strategic with your relationship with Amazon as you come in.

24:38
Of course, could be also other compliance issues where you got attacked, you got hijacked. They help you really with that much more quickly than seller support and stuff like that because they want to make sure you’re geared for success and revenue because guess what? They’re to get a bonus based on your revenue. So they got your back. That’s how they structure. They’re pretty much representatives that help Amazon generate more more revenue on the marketplace and they give them a piece of the action a little bit. So they got your back. That’s pretty much the structure. So what’s funny is I only ever talked to my Amazon rep when something goes wrong.

25:08
So would you consider this more like an insurance policy or is something that you actively have conversations with? Each one to their own. If you are really savvy and you’re smooth and you really need their input because you’re maybe a few steps ahead of them because you’re already an experienced seller, it might be good to have them just like an insurance policy. But if you’re really totally new, clueless of what’s going on, they hold your hands. That’s very valuable. see. Yeah. So it depends on your background. If you have zero experience, you’re coming in. Very valuable. If you’re already doing your fourth

25:38
account and brand that you’re so savvy and you’re actually a few steps ahead of them. But just like you said, insurance policy is something unexpected that happened and they have the insight, they have the ability to get a faster response somewhere in resolving it. It’s valuable, especially if it was free for the first year. So basically, if you’re a brand, let’s say you’re selling on your own website and you’re doing a couple million dollars and you’re looking to move on Amazon, that’s like the ideal case, right? Yeah. When you know that you’re ready on your first batch, you’re going to have inventory worth

26:06
couple tens of thousands of dollars and you’re probably going to rotate it a few times a year, you know you’re going to generate that revenue. So you tell them, I have an invoice or I’m sourcing, I’m bringing in 20, 30 thousand dollars. That’s kind of a baseline they can really say, okay let’s do it, let’s run this. If it’s a complete disaster failure, they’re not going to charge you. But in other words, when you can kind of show you have the experience or the resources to drive towards 250,000 up, you’re good to go. And then after a year, what happens? Like I mentioned, so you can either detach and stop it.

26:33
Or if you want to keep these guys, you pay. Okay, got it. Okay. So there’s no subsidy after a year. It’s kind of like a one year drill essentially. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It’s pretty generous. Yeah. Got it. Okay. Cool. All right. We covered three layers. Sorry. Is there another layer or? No, that’s it. Now we can touch the layer of, this is just to kind of, I would say to generate the business, launch the business, have a business, which is the most critical thing and I guess most obvious thing. So that’s a setup.

27:00
But I, just to be fair, I kind of live in the world of once you already have a business, because you’re always looking forward, we’re in the business of always looking backwards. That’s kind of what Getida does. Right? So we’re in the world of auditing. What just happened? All these transactions, what’s going on? So, you know, so for sellers, once you already generate all this revenue, 100,000, 1 million, 10 million, it doesn’t matter. What happens is you’re to have to reconcile all these transactions, especially on Amazon, and especially if you sell on FBA. So you use Amazon’s fulfillment services.

27:30
So if you never heard of it, now you hear of it, if you heard of it before, you’re not sure what it is, I’ll give you, guess, a few fundamentals to consider and the basics so can actually take some action and get some money back just from listening to this because I think it’s viable. But before that, I’ll give you a little bit of a quick overview and context of what this all means. So Steve, you sell on Amazon, you know what all about, so I’m going use you as a name and reference just to make you more human.

27:57
Steve is selling on Amazon FBA, he wants to send to Amazon 1,000 units. So he sends 1,000 units to Amazon’s fulfillment centers. And Amazon, instead of receiving 1,000 units, they only receive 990. So 10 units are missing. It’s up to the sellers to actually discover that. Open a case with Amazon. They’re going to probably ask for some documentation. It could be an invoice or packing slips or proof of delivery. And then they’re going to investigate where the missing 10 units are. If they find it, great, you can sell it.

28:25
make your money, know how your feelings, and not lose anything, But if they cannot find it and it’s deemed to be lost inbound, they’re going to generate a… they have an insurance policy and under the insurance policy, they’re going to provide a reimbursement for the loss. And when they provide a reimbursement for the loss, what’s nice about it is they don’t pay you your cost value, they pay you the retail value as if you sold it on Amazon. So you’re kind of converting immediately a double negative to a double positive. Because when they pay you, you get your money back, plus you make the margin.

28:55
So if you don’t get everything that you owed, you’re kind of losing your costs and the profit you would have made. So that’s kind of the first layer and basic layer that most sellers can understand about Amazon discrepancies. The next layers are once your inventory is inside Amazon’s fulfillment centers, inside all of a sudden units get lost, damaged, destroyed, disappear, disposed and overcharged with fees and also between the centers. Sometimes Amazon might ship your products from California to Kentucky to Nevada.

29:25
to have that one or two day prime shipping spread, same issues happen. Units get lost, they get damaged, they get disbursed, all these things. And also between the fulfillment centers to the consumers once the orders come in, not all the orders get received by the consumers or the customers. Also from the customers back to Amazon with all the refunds and returns. And also from the fulfillment centers of Amazon to you if you ever remove your inventory from Amazon. So all these logistics fishing points, the sellers have to be on the lookout to find all these discrepancies.

29:52
And of course, once they have the mathematics, they show it to Amazon, Amazon will reimburse for all these losses and issues. So high level to keep a basic, you can go up to 18 months into the history of your transactions, into the past, to find all these issues and get a recovery. You could just visit our, know, get to our YouTube channel, have a lot of content about it and… just Google on YouTube, we did so many presentations, how to teach sellers, how to, you know, kind of step by step check for all those things independently so they can get all these reimbursements and these refunds.

30:20
But for now, just for this episode, I’ll give you, I guess, the first one, the first basic layer with the shipments. So if you never heard of it, never did it, once you finish off listening to this, just visit your Amazon Sell Essential account, go to Under Inventory, right? They have the bar menu of all these elements. So look for Inventory, Manage FBA Shipments, and you scroll down your shipment log, and if you see a shipment that, you you shipped a certain amount of units, and it got received and closed, and it has less than what you shipped, open that up.

30:50
And over there you have the drop down menu to tell them, oh I didn’t ship those units or I did ship and it’s missing, please investigate. If that’s the case, you choose that. You provide the documents that they’re gonna require. You open a case to investigation. And of course if they deem to be missing a loss, they’re gonna reimburse you. So now you know step by step how to take action at least on that. Before you go on, I’ve actually never done it manually before since we always use you guys. Is it that simple though?

31:17
as just pulling down the drop down menu and filing a claim, is there any more things you need to send in? Yeah, documents. They might tell you, now give me your invoice or give me a packing slip or give me your proof of delivery. So you’re to have to spend time. It’s like bureaucracy. You want to your taxes. It’s very simple. What you made versus what you paid and what you overpaid, they give you a refund. That’s on mathematical level, basic. But all the documents around it, your W-2, your K-1, 1099, I don’t know if it’s a stranger to anybody listening to this.

31:46
But these all these documents you got to provide the IRS so they can say, OK, we did all the adjustments. You actually owe the credit or refund. Here’s your refund. So with the shipment, all these documents say, OK, they gave all the demand. They crossed all the I’s and T’s. Now we’re going to go investigate. It is just for them to investigate. And then if they find a grade, the auditory inventory make money. If not, they give you the reimbursement. So on the technical level, to find it, to see it, it’s kind of basic. But there’s document handling that can make it more convoluted. And if you have

32:15
Low volume, it’s manageable, but as you increase in volume and send more more, it just becomes a critical mass that it’s hard. I see for most companies, it’s hard to scale that up. just, you know, we have customers that do over a billion a year on FB and Amazon. They send numerous shipments per day and it just becomes a colossal thing to reconcile thousands if not tens of thousands of shipments on yearly basis. So they need good heavy infrastructure and a framework with a solution that helps them to have it real time, nonstop.

32:45
That’s what we do for our big ones, our big clients, but also all the way to the new sellers that have just won in the blue moon. We covered that also very easily. What is the timeframe for settling one of these claims? So once you open it, how long does it take to resolve? So typically for the shipments, typically within 24 hours to four or five days. Okay. You know, the response time should be, sometimes it could be a few hours and boom, it’s all good. But on average, maybe 24 hours for them to reply with yes or no.

33:13
So if it’s an O, it’s an O, okay. But if it’s a yes, they’ll process the reimbursement within 24 hours to four or five days typically. Is there anything that you can do if you get reimbursed and then they find your inventory later? There was this one year where they lost a lot of our inventory and we got paid for it. But then as soon as the holiday season ended, they miraculously found it and then they subtracted all the earnings. there They call it reversal, reversal, yeah.

33:41
Is anything you can do to combat that? Because it is still lost sales, right? Yeah, so what you only want to do to combat that is have a good product and a good listing so can sell it. Simple as that. Go back to fundamentals, no way around it. Okay. All right, so that takes care of that. What other levels of auditing would you suggest? So another one is that, I guess it becomes a bit more sophisticated, so I’ll try to keep it simple.

34:09
This one is regarding the fulfillment fees. When Amazon charges you a fulfillment fee, they charge the sellers based on the weight and the mention on the product. So let’s say your product is supposed to be 10 ounces and only 18 inches and because of that, Amazon is supposed to charge you $6 every time you sell a unit because they’re going to pick it from the bin, they’re going to package it in a box and they’re going to ship it out or fulfill the order. So they’re supposed to only charge you $6 but it can be that for whatever reason, Amazon has the wrong data.

34:39
of the weight and dimension. So instead of being 10 ounces and 18 inches, in the system somebody, there’s a typo, or maybe it’s 180 inches. Or instead of 10 ounces, it’s 10 pounds. So because of that, instead of charging you $6, they’re charging you, let’s say, $10. So they’re overcharging you $4 per unit every time you sold the unit. You sold 10,000 units, that’s $40,000 of fulfillment overcharges. So if you’ve never heard of it before, yes, this exists. And what you really got to do is,

35:08
Go to Amazon, go to your listing and see what is the fees that you’re paying, right? The calculated fees. But also look what are the weighted dimensions that they think your products are. And then compare with what they actually are. You should have it from your factory if you’re sourcing. But if not, just take a tip measure and a scale and check it out. And see if there’s a discrepancy because if there is and it’s a few ounces away or a few pounds away, then, you know, it could be that you’re overpaying.

35:37
So what you do really when you find that discrepancy, you open a case with Amazon, say, hey, this is my ASIN, this is my product, I need you to do a bin check and re-measure it. And once they re-measure it, if they find that’s really, you know, the calculation is incorrect, they’re going to adjust it to the right weight and dimensions. And from that point on, they’re going to stop overcharging you. So you save all this margin, which is very, very important long term. And then if they overcharge you, you’re to be eligible to get a recovery or refund for these overcharges for the past 90 days.

36:07
Are there alerts that you can set up to detect this? Because sometimes it happens out of the blue. It’s measured correctly and then one day it’s measured incorrectly. So for us what happens is when I use this Connect to Getita, anytime that happens, we just immediately… So let’s say you are live with… Once again, just to recap on Getita a little bit to give context. It’s free to join Getita. It’s free to stay with Getita. There’s no subscription. Actually, why don’t you tell the audience what Getita is? Actually, we didn’t even go through that. Yeah, so…

36:36
Okay, so get to know what we are. We’re a technology company and our mission is really to help sellers get the maximum FBA reimbursements and refunds that they’re eligible to receive. We kind of do it in three ways. First way is education. We educate sellers all over the world so they can do it themselves and they get it. That’s great. They never use us. It’s all good. Second option is they can just sign up. They can use us and we can do all this headache for them and they only charge, they only pay us if we’re successful. We only charge a fee based on recovery. So, you know, we charge a 25 % fee.

37:04
So let’s say the first 30 days that you use Getita, we get you $100. So we’re to charge you 25%, which would be $25. And then the next 30 days, we get you $0, you pay $0. So it’s very convenient. it’s because it’s performance based. never have to kind of babysit the bill and say, am I using it, am using it? Because there’s no subscription. So that’s kind of the second that we could do everything for everybody. The third option is kind of in between. The sellers do as much as they can on their own to get all the refunds. And then they can have us as a backup.

37:31
So anything that they’re missing out on, we do a 90-day backup system where they have 90 days to take care of all these issues. Any issue, discrepancy that becomes 90 days and older, we come in as a backup and open a case and reconcile it and get the refunds for the sellers. And only if we’re successful, we get rewarded. So with these kind of three options, we fulfill our duty and mission to make sure the sellers are getting the maximum they can get through education and collaboration and partnership, partnering with the seller. It doesn’t have to be us or them. It can always be together.

37:59
And yeah, so once you… so go back to what we’re discussing. Once you connect to Getida and your account is set, anytime that Amazon changes the fee structure on your ASIN, right away we open a case, hey, today this is the winning dimensions in the fees, but yesterday was like that, please explain why or remeasure, something’s up here. So it’s kind of real-time auditing, so you kind of have it resolved in real time, so you have to really think about it, setting and forget it kind of situation.

38:27
Alerts, I’m not aware of any other alerts. For us, it’s like holistic. Alert only means that now you have to spend time and take action. But if you have a solution like Getida, it’s door to door. You have to set it with Getida once and you’re done. Then you can really focus on what I call again, the business which is looking forward. How much margin would you give yourself in terms of package size and weight in order to not accidentally go to the next higher tier? you understand Only the margin of error? Yeah.

38:56
So that’s less of the issue if you’re kind of hitting the edge. The issue is, I’ll give you two examples just to educate the sellers a bit more why these things happen. One option is that maybe you’re selling a handbag. And so you shipped Amazon to FBA, it’s all airtight, as small and light as it can be, that’s great. The problem might be is that when a customer orders it and then they send it back to Amazon, they get a refund. So it’s brand new, never touch it, never use it or whatever, but they open the packaging.

39:26
And once they did, they added it to the handbag, they added the strap. So now what happens is Amazon is gonna take your product, and from time to time they’re gonna scan it into a big machine called Cubic Scan Machine. And then now when they scan it, this handbag, instead of having its real original dimensions, the strap is adding 30 inches. So the computer gets confused, it’s adding 30 inches to the dimensions of the product, and all of sudden from that point on Amazon starts to overcharge you. That’s just one kind of example. Another one is that, you know,

39:55
You send your products in with instead of shrink wrap, you put it like with these nylon, what do you call those for? Especially for apparel. What do call those? The nylon you put on it. You’re asking the wrong guy, Yoni. So, you know, when you have shrink wrap and shrinks, but you have a regular plastic wrap, it’s fluffy. It’s all over the place. So it’s adding all these inches and that’s confusing. So it’s not a good practice to have just plastic wrap that is inflated or just loose, nothing loose in general.

40:25
Another option is that maybe you’re being attacked, right? We talked about attacks and hijacking earlier. Another sophisticated way you can get attacked is that, you know, you and me, Steve, we compete on the same product, right? We try to sell for $30. I also sell for $30, let’s say. So what I do to attack you is that I take your ASIN, I put it under my SellOCentral account, I list basically your product on my account. I never offer it. Only thing I do is pretty simple. I just change the wedding dimensions of the ASIN.

40:54
Right? So instead of being 10 ounces, it’s 100 ounces. Instead of being 18 inches, 100 inches. So all of sudden, the system absorbs this new data. And then from that point, they’re overcharging you. You never bother to check. You never bother to do anything. We’re selling the same price, but I’m making margin in bank and you’re being overcharged with fees. So you’re getting wiped out. So it could be an attack. That’s just another example. So that’s on the strategic, you you’re so close to so far, it’s more like how you send it in. Make sure there’s never kind of anything loose or when…

41:23
customers are sending it back, maybe give them instructions to send it away so they don’t kind of send it back in a clunky way. And of course, just have your eyes on it because you might be getting attacked. Incidentally, if you guys are listening to this right now, all this stuff is tedious and detracts from you actually working on your business, which is why, and I’m not just saying this because I’m a Getita customer, but it’s like a no brainer setup because you don’t pay a Getita unless they make you money. Do you want to tell people what the fees are?

41:52
What, 25 %? Yeah, so high level, to make it simple, there’s a price point, on pricing there’s three options. If you do up to 10 million a year in revenue, it’s classic 25%, no strings attached. You can cancel it anytime. If you do over 10 million, we give a large volume seller discount, so it’s 20%. Once again, no strings attached. But you try us out, you like us, you really feel comfortable, you want to go long term, we could do a two year upgrade agreement and we could go lower. So it really depends on the comfort zone of the sellers. But the main idea is that

42:21
Our mission is that really to give you something you never had before. So we’re happy to educate you as much as you can so you can try to do as much as you can on your own and then back you up. Of course, if you really realize and calculate that opportunity costs, your time is much more valuable running the business because that is the business and it moves all the needles. And it’s not worth your time to spend time looking back or you or your team. So you’re happy to just pay a fee but realize that this saves you a lot of time and that time is spent.

42:49
making money and running the business and together you get a better outcome. And it really sounds like Amazon’s trying to encourage new sellers by giving back 5 % and they’re really trying to get you to drive traffic back to Amazon with this 10 % bonus from external traffic right now. So ironically with the price increases and everything, it’s actually pretty decent time for you to get started on Amazon because of these incentives that Amazon’s providing.

43:15
Yeah, one more thing about percentage that I want to add is that if you get 10 % here and 5 % there and there’s no selling fees basically, you eliminate it at least for the first million and then you audit, you use Getita for example and just to give people some idea what is the potential with this, on an annual basis, we see that the discrepancy rate ranges between 1 % to 3 % from revenue. So for your first million dollars, you generate million dollars. Instead of paying 15%, you got $150,000, you get that back. But with Getita, we add another

43:45
let’s say one or two or three percent back with refunds or reimbursements, you get anywhere between $10,000 to $30,000 back. So instead of getting, so you, $150,000 from all these cost savings you get, you get another, let’s say $30,000 with reimbursements, so that’s $180,000. You save $30,000 because you have an Amazon account rub, which helps to more sales and stuff like that, or protects you if you got a hijack. And then you make a regular margin that you expect it to make.

44:11
So if you’re generous for the first million, if you were optimized, right, in a really, really good way, unless your margin is 20%. So instead of only making 200 grand, you’re gonna make 400 plus grand because you optimize and you listen to Steve Chiu in this episode, for example. If you really optimize and touch every layer, that’s a good way to look at it. Cool. Well, thanks, Yoni, for providing those insights on what’s going on Amazon, how to save money. I think it’s especially important right now with everything getting more expensive, inflation,

44:41
just the general environment. thank you for the tips. got it. My pleasure. And where can people sign up? I think we have a special offer for your followers. don’t remember what it is. Do you remember what it is? I know it’s not the amount. I know it’s $400. So not only that it’s free to join, we prepared a $400 offer for your followers. So the first $400 that we get in reimbursement are actually free. You’re not going to pay anything.

45:07
That’s a guarantee. You can have $400 extra in your pocket. After $400, if you want to leave us, you can leave. If you want to stay, you can stay. I believe it’s gettida.com forward slash… I’ve got the URL. I will post in the show notes. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. So $400 for free, essentially. If you’re already selling on Amazon, it’s a no-brainer to sign up. Yeah. Just to make it simple, you have the link. But if you’re just listening to this, driving a car, gettida.com. When you do sign up, just put the name Steve Chu. We’ll take care of you. Okay. Sounds We’ll activate the $400. Yeah. That works too.

45:34
That works too. Well, Yoni, hey, thanks a lot for coming back on the show, man. Appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you.

45:43
Hope you enjoy that episode. Now, whenever Yoni comes on the show, he always offers everyone $400 in free reimbursements. And basically, this is free money that you can redeem by clicking on the link in the show notes for this episode, or by going to mywifecoupterjob.com slash getida, mywifecoupterjob.com slash getida. For more information about this episode, go to mywifecoupterjob.com slash episode 508. And once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2024 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com.

46:13
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. 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.