Helium 10 Buzz 3/8/24: Amazon SEO Update | How To Save Money With New FBA Inventory Fees

We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, interview someone you need to hear from and provide a training tip for the week.

COSMO: A large-scale e-commerce common sense knowledge generation and serving system at Amazon
https://www.amazon.science/publications/cosmo-a-large-scale-e-commerce-common-sense-knowledge-generation-and-serving-system-at-amazon

Target will launch unlimited rush shipping subscription to rival Amazon Prime
https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/6/24092880/target-circle-360-free-delivery-shipping-annual-plan

Walmart and Amazon Race to Provide Best Virtual Try-On Experiences
https://www.pymnts.com/news/retail/2024/walmart-and-amazon-race-to-provide-best-virtual-try-on-experiences/

We tested Amazon’s new shopping chatbot. It’s not good.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/03/05/amazon-ai-chatbot-rufus-review/

Exclusive: Walmart opens new front in same-day delivery war
https://www.axios.com/2024/03/07/walmart-hours-delivery-early-morning-online-orders

Use persona builder to create and get insights on your personas
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/use-persona-builder-to-create-and-get-insights-on-personas/

Amazon will no longer underwrite loans for sellers in its $140 billion Marketplace business
https://fortune.com/2024/03/07/amazon-lending-loans-sellers-marketplace-discontinuing/

My name is Alexa and I loved it until Amazon’s smart assistant came along and ruined it
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-ruined-name-alexa-2024-3

Cap the episode off with an inside look at how Amazon’s FBA fee changes are reshaping the game for sellers. Discover how you could turn the tide on FBA fees with savvy shipping strategies. We also dive into Helium 10’s latest feature alerts that promise to bestow an edge to Platinum Plan users and European sellers. Join the conversation, test out these new tools, and let’s tackle these changes together.

In this episode of the Weekly Buzz by Helium 10, Bradley talks about:

• 01:27 – Amazon Cosmo – Sellers Panic?
• 07:39 – Target Prime+
• 08:36 – Amazon / Walmart Augmented Reality
• 09:35 – Amazon AI Chatbot
• 10:44 – Walmart 1 Hour Delivery
• 11:58 – Persona Builder
• 13:05 – No More MYCE
• 14:29 – Voice of Customer
• 15:34 – Amazon Lending
• 16:08 – Coupon Requirements
• 17:42 – Amazon Alexa
• 19:35 – FBA Inventory Fees…SAVE Money?
• 30:20 – New Feature Alerts

Transcript

Bradley Sutton

Is Amazon completely changing the way search is done and it’s time to panic at sellers. New FBA fees are in effect and causing some sellers to pay 300% higher fees, but I’m going to show you how you can actually save money. Target is coming out with a new Amazon Prime like service. These stories and much more on this week’s weekly buzz how cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that is our Helium 10 weekly buzz. We give you a rundown of all the news stories and goings on in the Amazon, Walmart, e-commerce world and we also let you know what new features that Helium 10 has released and we give you training tips of the week that will give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. 

Bradley Sutton

Let’s see what’s buzzing Last two weeks. If you guys are a weekly listener, know that it was slim pickings for news stories. There’s almost nothing going on, right? Wow. This week is like more than the last three weeks put together. That’s how I think. I have maybe 11, 12 different news articles. I’m going to show you what’s going on with the Amazon fees, so make sure to stay to the end for that and just a lot of cool stuff. So let’s just go ahead and hop right into the news. The first article is actually not an article, but I was at the Prosper show and multiple people came up to me and were like, oh my goodness, Amazon, COSMO, this scientific document. Do we have to completely change the way we make listings? And is my keyword, research, irrelevant? And is everything changing? The sky is falling this and that, and I wanted to address that because TLDR. The answer is no. No, there’s nothing to worry about. Everything has changed. That’s different. Things are always changing at Amazon, but where all this kind of like hysteria is coming from is from this science, Amazon science document. All right, now, this science document, you can actually see it just for free on Amazon. It’s entitled Cosmo a large scale e-commerce, common sense, knowledge generation and serving system at Amazon. 

Bradley Sutton

Now, you know, for those who don’t know, just Amazon releases tons and tons of scientific documents. You guys, if you want to get a deep dive into it, we at Healing in 10 have analyzed all of the science documents that Amazon has come out with and we talked about it in a podcast, episode 499, with somebody from our AI lab, kevin, and so make sure to go to H10.me, forward slash 499 and you could learn all about all the Amazon science documents that come out. But, in the nutshell, Amazon does all kinds of tests and experiments and postulations and this and that, and they publish it. You know they publish their findings. 95% of what you see there is not doesn’t make it to the light of day. In other words, just because you see a test, it doesn’t mean it’s been implemented. I mean they’ve been making these scientific documents for years. Some of what you just see in those scientific documents we’ve actually seen now in the wild. Some of the ones that came out a few years ago, you can actually see the effects of it. So for this particular article, this study, it was made by some interns along with some other people. Back in 2022 is when it started, so this is even before generative AI was really started to get super popular. So this is interesting because in this scientific article I talk about different ways that they could perhaps modify the search, like, for example, more behavior based. 

Bradley Sutton

Let’s say that I am searching for, you know, a lot of kitchen utensils, right, or maybe even buying kitchen utensils in a week, and then at the end of the week I type in knife. Well, right now, when you type in knife, the search results is like who interacted best with the keyword knife? You know there’s could be kitchen knives there, it could be hunting knives, could be decorative knives, like a mixture of different knives, right. But in this Cosmo world, what Amazon would show would be only kitchen knives. Because if I am a consumer who is searching only for utensils, or buying utensils that week, like it postulates that, okay, I must be looking for a kitchen knife where, let’s say, I was buying earlier in the week a whole bunch of hunting supplies and backpacks and tents, I type in that same keyword, knife, and then what might come out would be hunting knives or something that you would need for camping, right. So that was kind of like. You know that’s over a simplification, but that’s in a nutshell what some of this science document was talking about. It talks about a lot of things about how Amazon could potentially, you know, re-rank things based on as far as search results, based on buyer behavior. 

Bradley Sutton

Now, again, none of this is 100%. You know active Some things Amazon already implemented on its own. You know we talked about some of those examples in this episode for 3.99 or 4.99, I should say, but the bottom line is there’s nothing to worry about right now. All right, probably a lot of this is not going to go through Now there are some indications that this is actually a more serious scientific document than some of the others that Amazon puts out. For example, they ran a test, it says on 10% of Amazon’s catalog, which is a humongous percentage. You know it might not seem like a humongous percentage, but compared to the Amazon tests that they normally do, 10% is a humongous number. So it shows they’re pretty serious about this test. And another thing that I was doing some research some of those interns that started it. They were interns in 2022. You look at their LinkedIn. They’re full-time employees now. So Amazon wants to like what they saw. 

Bradley Sutton

But forget about all that. Let’s just say let’s play devil’s advocate and say, oh, 100% of this is going to go active, which it’s not. I guarantee not 100%. No, 100% of any scientific document has ever gone. Nobody can predict what’s going to go forward and what’s not. But let’s just play devil’s advocate, right. 

Bradley Sutton

If there’s still no reason to panic, guys, all right, there’s nothing going to change. First of all, nothing has changed right now. All right, things gradually change. Sometimes Amazon might make a big change overnight, and we’ll know what it is when it happens. There’s no sense speculating. And at the same time, guys, the same fundamentals are still going to be in place, right, for example, like, let’s say, it is based on this new algorithm. Well, how would Amazon even know that you are a kitchen knife? It means that you must have been indexed and ranking for regular kitchen knife keywords and have your listing optimized for a bunch of keywords that people searching for kitchen knives are buying, and then that’s how they know how to prioritize you. All right, so like, it literally doesn’t change at all what an Amazon seller needs to do to stay relevant to the Amazon algorithm. All right, so there’s definitely changes. Maybe on the buyer side, that’s going to happen. 

Bradley Sutton

But again, people are coming up to me at the processor show and like worried about this, and I’m I told them don’t worry about, there’s nothing to worry about right now. All right, don’t waste your time speculating on what could come through and what couldn’t. There’s so many things that you need to be focused on as an Amazon seller. You don’t have time to be worried about things that you have no control over. You don’t know what’s going to happen. So, anyways, I just wanted to make sure that people aren’t getting distracted by some of these documents that come out of Amazon. They’re really great to read, really good stuff. I mean it gives you some insights into how Amazon thinks and what’s important to them. I mean we wouldn’t have paid thousands of dollars ourselves to to read these articles if they weren’t important. But again, focus on the fundamentals, guys. That is not going to change. 

Bradley Sutton

Next article today this is actually from theverge.com. It’s entitled target will launch unlimited rush shipping subscription to rival Amazon Prime. All right. So target circle 360, $99 annual subscription. Now this article goes to talk about how it’s not really anything new per se. It’s like similar to something that they had called target 360 and shipped with SHIPT. But the reason I bring this up is I had speculated before that if, if the target does do a Walmart plus kind of Amazon Prime rival, it could indicate the opening more of its third party marketplace to kind of like widen the selection to give value. So that’s what I want, or that’s what I think that we should be paying attention to, is right now that doesn’t affect sellers at all. That target has this, but are they going to open up their marketplace more to third party sellers? So that’s going to be interesting to see. 

Bradley Sutton

Next article is from paymentscom and it’s entitled Walmart and Amazon race to provide best virtual try on experiences. All right, so it talks about how, in the Amazon and Walmart app, they’re using these new augmented reality things where you can like virtually try on shoes and virtually, you know, look at how things might look in your living room. Both Walmart and Amazon are doing this virtual try on boom it calls it. So a lot of these things are beta tests. So if you happen to get one of those beta tests, absolutely take advantage of it. You know, like Helium 10 or project X was in a beta test years ago for those 3d images and it was pretty cool. We had some of the best conversion rates and I think that might have been a one of the reasons for it. So if you have a chance to get one of these beta things, do it. Check out some service providers out there that might have back doors into some of these augmented reality things. It could probably help your conversion rate. So it looks like there’s a big race between Walmart and Amazon on this. 

Bradley Sutton

The next article is from Washington Post and it’s entitled we tested Amazon’s new shopping chat. But it’s not good, all right. So we talked a while back about Amazon Rufus it’s called where it’s like a chat bot or the buyers, where you can kind of like just chat with the search bar and say, hey, I’m looking or I’m going to a party this weekend, but should I aware if it’s this kind of theme party or something like that, as opposed to like a general search? But bottom line, according to this person, this news reporter, it has a long way to go. So you know we were talking about things that are changing me with Amazon Cosmo. This is Amazon Rufus, something different. But even this is kind of like has a long way to go. It seems to actually be usable, but hey, they’re on the right path. And anything that makes the buying experience easier and more likely to close the sale, I’m sure sellers would be happy to do. But if these things require us to do something different the way we make listings or something, we’ll have to be ready to pivot at that time. But right now Rufus is not completely live across the board. Only a very small beta group has access to it. 

Bradley Sutton

Next article is from axios.com and it’s entitled Walmart opens new front in same day delivery war. All right, so now Walmart has something where, if you order on Thursdays at 6am, Walmart is guaranteeing delivery in an hour or less. All right, so like they’re really going after Amazon Prime. It’s mainly right now for products that are available at that local Walmart, but who knows, as the Walmart distribution expands and more products might be stored in the back end of of Walmart’s, who knows? You know, this could be something where even your third party products could have this one hour delivery time for some customers. Remember, Walmart is like within five miles of like what? Something like 90% of the population in America or something crazy Like. I forgot what the exact quote was. But hey, this is good. When one marketplace is really trying to do something, the other one, you know, tries to go along with it. So if Walmart’s really pushing the you know super fast delivery, that’s just going to make Amazon, you know, speed up its its you know endeavors in the same field. And remember, we’re the ones who benefit from that. You know, the more that Walmart and Amazon invest in their delivery infrastructure, sellers are the ones who are benefited. All right. 

Bradley Sutton

The next article is from Amazon advertising, and it’s entitled use persona builder to create and get insights on your persona. So if you are using Amazon DSP, I mean you can use that through Pacvue or some other services such as BTR media and clear ads. A lot of different companies have the ability to DSP, but now you can build these personas, and so what this is is it says so you can create your own custom brand personas by combining existing audiences into a single persona. For example, if you are releasing a premium headphones with fitness branding, you can create a persona by combining the Amazon interested in technology persona with the in market for headphones and the in market for fitness clothing segments. All right, so this is pretty cool, really allows you to laser focus your advertising to select groups, and so that is something brand new. 

Bradley Sutton

Now, Amazon giveth Amazon take it away. That’s going to be the theme of that one and the next few articles here. So that was Amazon giveth. The next thing is Amazon take it away. Manage your customer engagement. M Y, c, e. All right. So this was something that allowed you to actually do email marketing to customers for a. I think it lasted for about a year and a half or so where, for certain select groups of your customers that you built up, you can actually, you know, like announce new products and have special promotions that you would send to them via email. But now that no longer is the case, all right, as of a few weeks ago, Amazon is shutting it down and it says it didn’t deliver the quality or value we aim to provide you and your customers. So that’s kind of big Like this. 

Bradley Sutton

This, this announcement kind of flew under the radar. It was kind of big back in the day when Amazon announced that this was available, because, you know, Amazon never wants has historically never wanted you to contact your customers pretty much in this with marketing material, and now they actually provided a way to do it. So you’ve I’ve got to think that this is probably going to be replaced by something else. All right, because they build up this infrastructure, like for coupons and stuff to be able to send to these different market segments and to just completely yank away the ability to talk to them. I got to think that there’s going to be something coming. But you know me, I don’t like really speculating on stuff, but I hope Amazon brings something back that allows us to still communicate with our customers for marketing in a TOS compliant way. That was Amazon take of the way. Let’s go back to the Amazon give it. All right. 

Bradley Sutton

The next article, also from Amazon, says improve customer satisfaction with the new voice of the customer features. So voice of customers is a part of your seller central dashboard and the new updates are. It says it’s going to give you more recommendations on the things that you should do, including key phrases, so that it expands out customer feedback, not just from what people are saying in reviews, but it’s going to be feedback from customer service sessions, so potentially stuff that you don’t even have access to, or because maybe a whole bunch of buyers are asking Amazon customer service some kind of question or they have some kind of complaint about your product and maybe you’ve never seen that. Now that’s going to be highlighted in this section voice of the customer. So a lot of this. I haven’t seen this phrases section yet. Doesn’t look like it’s active, necessarily, in my account, unless it’s this top NCX reason. I’m not sure what it’s referring to, but I think that could be cool and give us more information. All right, so that was another Amazon giveth. 

Bradley Sutton

Now here’s an Amazon. Take it away, says article from fortune.com. Amazon will no longer underwrite loans for selling in its $140 billion marketplace business. So this was they’re not going to be doing their own loans. For Amazon lending, which maybe some of you, including myself, have taken advantage of in the past, it doesn’t mean you’re not going to be able. There’s no such thing as Amazon lending anymore. It’s just going to be through their different partners that they have, as opposed to Amazon itself underwriting loans. Don’t forget, even Helium 10 has a service for that. You can find out more information at growwithaltacom. 

Bradley Sutton

All right, next article is a new coupon pricing requirements, and this was kind of like again under the radar, but if I’m reading this correctly, this is kind of impactful. All right, take a listen here. I haven’t seen people talking about this too much. You know like part of it starts out kind of like with stuff that makes it seem like nothing’s changing. Right. It says, hey, have a discount percentage between the minimum 5% and the maximum 50%. That’s still gonna be the same case. But now look at this statement Products will also be required to have a sales history before they’re eligible to run. 

Bradley Sutton

What does that mean? You’re launching a brand new product. According to this, you’re not gonna be able to do a coupon anymore from day one, all right. And it also says and a promotion price lower than either the was price or the recent lower price. So you know that in a way, is good. You know, some people would kind of manipulate things. Right, it’s coming up on a big holiday or sales day and then sellers would raise the price way up and do some big coupons so it looks like a big discount. But that really wasn’t the case, right, so that they’re cracking down on that. But this is kind of crazy. Yeah, to be eligible, you have to have a sales history for coupons, so that I mean, unless I just completely miss something that is brand new, right Like I know a lot of sellers, I don’t use coupons myself. When I launch, I use sale price. But for anybody who’s using coupons in launch, it looks like you’re not gonna be able to do that anymore unless you’ve got a few sales under your belt. How much sales that is, it doesn’t really say. 

Bradley Sutton

All right, now in our funny article of the week. Next article kind of triggers people. So I wanted to have like a lighthearted one here that you guys will get a kick out of. At least I got a kick out of it. All right, this is from businessinsidercom and it’s entitled. My name is Alexa and I loved it until Amazon Smart Assistant came along and ruined it. So this reporter here, her name is Alexa and she had some of the most hilarious quotes. All right, she’s like. Growing up, I loved having the name of Alexa. I’ve always been happy with it until Amazon created Alexa obviously the device it’s talking about. All right, she says hey. She says here. 

Bradley Sutton

At first the references were subtle. People would ask if I liked my name, but then things started getting crazy. In 2018, customers who saw my name badge. They would ask come up to me and say, hey, what’s the weather today, alexa? What time is it, alexa? And so that was like 2018. And then she was like, okay, I can deal with this. 

Bradley Sutton

But then there was the Despacito meme. This is so sad. Alexa played Despacito and then people would just come up to her and start saying that. And then she says the pandemic era didn’t offer relief. You’d think working from home, all these references would slow down, but you’d be wrong. During Zoom calls with coworkers, if anybody said my name, somebody’s device would go off in the background she says in almost every meeting there’d be a one minute distraction for us to listen to Alexa say I’m sorry, I’m having trouble understanding right now, and then she closed it off saying hey, do I still wish Amazon had chosen a more obscure name for their product? Of course there’s a reason. Apple went with Siri I don’t know any Siri’s out there, sorry and Google’s device is activated by saying hey, google, all right. But anyways, that’s just a little like lighthearted article there. I thought was kind of cute. That, yeah, must be tough if your name is Alexa, all right. 

Bradley Sutton

So now that we’re kind of in a good mood, let’s get to something that has everybody in a bad mood the last couple of weeks or the last week, and that’s the new FBA fees. Now it’s fully live as of the first, and then for a few people it didn’t start going live until like the third or fourth, but now, like pretty much most people I talk to, all have the new fees and it’s really causing some of the most negative comments I’ve seen, and even on Reddit pages that don’t really normally have to do with Amazon they’re talking about, like on the Wall Street Bets. There’s this article that has grown viral. Now there’s 15 million members in this Reddit page, all right of Wall Street Bets and they’re talking about the downfall of Amazon has started and it’s giving like anecdotes here of, hey, some third party sellers are paying six to 10 X, all right. So they said, hey, some sellers that were sending a truckload of inventory maybe they spent $6 to $800 to send product in but now these same sellers are getting an inventory placement fees of $3 to $5,000, which wipes out their inventory, all right. And then another fee is coming up, obviously in April, next month, the low inventory fee. 

Bradley Sutton

So this article and so many others out there were just like bemoaning these and a lot of sellers that prosper came up to me like man, this is really stressing me out. I see it in our Facebook group. And then it reminded me of the original announcement that we did about these months ago and I found the original quotes in this Amazon article and it said here, this is months ago, right, it says Amazon says, after these changes, we expect that sellers will see an average increase of 15 cents per unit. Remember what that last article says hey, some people are paying 5X. 6x says oh yeah, we expect 15 cents per unit sold. All right, but then get this, guys. However, we also expect that there will be many sellers who will see a decrease in the average fees paid to Amazon per unit sold. So I’m gonna be honest, when I saw this, I was like licking my chops. All right, I’m like, all right, I’m about to call my initials my BS flag on Amazon, because this is a bunch of nonsense and let’s go ahead and break it down. But am I proving that for me it was 2X or 3X, or is there a way that these new fees can actually save money? 

Bradley Sutton

Let me show you a shipment that I just did right now tonight for Project X, for 10 boxes of coffin shelves 100 coffin shelves, all right. So first of all, just something to note guys, make sure that you have your inbound settings set, alright. So you go into your settings. It’s on your top right of your page and you’re going to get into your inbound settings If you’re using an API like Helium 10 to make your shipments. You have to now choose. Do you want the partial shipment splits, minimal shipment splits or Amazon Optimized Shipments splits? Alright, so I set up this shipment of 10 boxes, okay, and you have now three options. 

Bradley Sutton

This is how it looks. You got an option to go send it to four places. You have an option to send it to two or three places and then, once you’re there, you can select East, central or West for United States and, as you can see, if it was two shipments, if it’s West, it’s going to be there charging me 48 bucks Central, 42 bucks East, only $23. And then the last one is minimal shipment splits, only one shipment. That means I have sent all 100 units to one location and, as you can see, it’s going to charge me $68 placement fee to send to the West. Alright, and then. So, basically, what you do is, if you’re using SPD which I didn’t even realize out, that was what it’s called now, it used to be called just Amazon Partner Carrier you’re going to see the fee, the total fee, and then you go to the very bottom and then add up what your estimated label, placement and shipping fees are. 

Bradley Sutton

So what I actually did was I went and I charted what did I pay the last time, which was like four weeks ago, a shipment of 100 coffin shelves to Amazon, using the old system. And here’s what I found. So the old shipment, it had me ship still the three locations, but they were all in the West, so it wasn’t so bad. And so my total price to ship it there the three locations, this is before the changes was $91.67 for a per unit price of 92 cents. Okay, so now let’s just say we’re comparing apples to apples. 

Bradley Sutton

If I were to ship now that new thing that we just saw to just one location and to the West, because it’s closest to me and easiest for me and probably the fastest, the shipment costs now $158. Okay, because of that fee. So now the total per unit is $1.58. So first of all, you’re like whoa, shoot, yeah, that’s crazy. That’s like a 60% increase in shipping fees. Right, because it went from 92 cents to $1.58. All right, but now if I do two locations to the West again so it’s still pretty fast, but I’m sending you to two locations the total shipping price is only $136, meaning a total unit price of $1.36. Okay, so, not so bad as that $1.58. And then, if I use the four locations, remember if I shipped, if you ship under this new system to four locations, there is no placement fee, zero placement fee. But now you’re shipping all over the country, like I’m shipping to the East Coast, I’m shipping to Texas, all over the place. So, interestingly, it’s $140, a dollar and 40 cents per unit. 

Bradley Sutton

If I shipped to four locations, that’s not the cheapest. The actual cheapest for me in this particular situation was the two locations and to the West, which obviously I’m going to pick because not only is it cheaper, it’s going to get to Amazon faster, you know. But you know, is Amazon going to send it out to their warehouses faster? That’s a different story. But that’s interesting how the two shipments don’t always assume that, oh, I’m going to pick the four shipments because it’s always going to be cheaper. 

Bradley Sutton

Now here’s the thing. Right there you can see these prices are more expensive. But something that you might have forgotten is, starting April 15th, Amazon is going to change the fulfillment fees. That means what you have to pay to send to Amazon, okay, and because of that, you need to take into consideration what is your full fee to Amazon or to the customer, how much it costs you to get the product to Amazon, and then how much is it costing to get to the customer. So I did that analysis, all right. So my old shipment, remember I told you was 92 cents, the one I did last month. The FBA fees I’m paying currently is $7.41. That means you add 741 with 92 cents and now that’s $8.33 per unit. Okay, $8.33 per unit, a total of $832 for me to ship 100 units to Amazon and sell 100 units and ship to the customer. Total of $832. Now here’s an interesting thing If I pick the most expensive one okay, the most expensive one, which was sending to one location, the FBA fees is actually going to be only $7.08 because Amazon is lowering the price. So my per unit price is only 8.66. Guys, it’s only 33 cents more per unit for the most expensive thing and actually for the two locations which wasn’t that much more expensive. You know, when we take in consideration the new lower fees, it’s only 12 cents more per unit. 

Bradley Sutton

But let’s go back to what that article said. Do you remember that article from Amazon, the one I was going to call BS on? They said oh yeah, some sellers are going to be are only going to, on average, get an increase of 15%. Let’s take a little, let’s do some math here. All right, guys, all right. So let’s go ahead and see if I was able to call BS on Amazon. Let’s take that number of if I send it to four locations, which is $848,. Let’s subtract what I was paying before $832, that’s $16 difference. Okay, an increase of $16, divide that by 100 units and it’s 16 cents. That’s kind of crazy guys. 

Bradley Sutton

Amazon said on average it was going to be 15 cents and sure enough, for me it’s 16. Now again, I’m not going to take away. Now again I’m not going to take away from those of you who are affected, definitely doing the LTL shipments. But if you have always been doing partner carriers like me, Amazon’s prediction is kind of all right. But again, they also said hey, with all of these new fees, there’s a chance that you can actually save money. Is that possible? 

Bradley Sutton

Well, do you remember the other thing that Amazon announced? They announced about ship in your own product packaging. We talked about that before and if you look in the ship in your own packaging chart, you could see how much you can save if your product qualifies. And my product is a large standard size, three pounds and I can get 23 cents off Right Now. You remember, this new fee is adding 15 or 16 cents for me. 

Bradley Sutton

If I were to do ships in my own packaging which I’m not going to because, remember, I have those coffin shaped boxes I can get 23 cents back, meaning what? Well, I guess, just like Amazon said, I could actually get Less fees, all right. So again, this is a I would say maybe in it not that extreme of a circumcised, but maybe for some of you might think it’s extreme, but Amazon wasn’t lying when they said, hey, it could be 15 cents on average and you could actually save money. Now, me I’m not gonna save money because I’m not gonna do ships in my product packaging, but I just want to show you guys it’s not doom and gloom. Everything out there right now is all negative news and yes, I feel for a lot of the sellers, especially those who were doing LTL and truckloads, like I don’t even know what I Do if I was doing those. But if you’re a smaller seller and you or you’re somebody who’s always used, you know, third-party carriers, you might not overall, get as big of a fee increase as you think, as long as you go through those steps that I was doing to like make sure that you’re choosing the cheapest option and also, you know, consider ships in your product packaging. So how has it been for you? What do you see when you do the new FBA inbound fees? Let me know in the comments below. All right. 

Bradley Sutton

Next up, let’s go into the Helium 10 new feature alerts for this week. The first one these aren’t new tools, but it’s new tools for a lot of you, those of you who are on the platinum plan. We have three new features that we’ve moved now from diamond down to platinum. Okay, so what? These are the? You can see them mainly in cerebro and magnet. You have visibility on some columns you didn’t have before, like, for example, based on the Helium 10 algorithm and all the data that you know we have and packed you have. We have our suggested PPC bid, including the history of the suggested PPC bids, all right, so you’re gonna be able to see like, hey, is a keyword super expensive on average? Is it cheaper? You’re gonna see that now it’s not gonna be blurred out like it was before if you’re platinum. 

Bradley Sutton

Another one that you now have access to is the keyword sales estimates. All right, not all keywords are created equally, like, for example, here is one that has 2000 search volume and it has 90 estimated sales, right, but here’s another one that has less search volume but the estimated sales is a hundred and twenty two. All right, so which? Which keyword is better, probably the one that has better sales, right? So before platinum members couldn’t see that. Now you are able to see that column. And the last one, which is probably the bigger one, is having the brand analytics data that you now can see, ABA total click share and total conversion share. All right, so with this you can see historical trends About which products where the top ones clicked and how does you know where they were clicked Correlate to their organic and sponsored rank. If you guys want to find out more about that brand analytics, make sure to hit the a learn button at the top of the page and then what you’re going to want to do is you’re going to want to click on the how to see the top clicked and purchased products for a keyword using Amazon brand analytics video, and also the how to compare organic and sponsored rank To being the top click product. So that’s something now that if you’re a Helium 10 platinum member, you have access to. 

Bradley Sutton

Now next update is I was in Germany a few weeks ago doing a conference over there in berlin with amesie hackers. We also did one for our Helium 10 elite group and one of the most asked for things I would say, was Some of the european sellers, and maybe some of you felt the same way like, hey, we want you know some of the features that us has that we don’t have, and one of them is inventory management. So Helium 10 has a full inventory management system for Amazon USA sellers, where you can get forecast and and and you know like you can cut POs your supplier and know when you need to ship inventory from your third party warehouse. Well, now you are going to be able to go ahead and hit the marketplace tab and go into you, into all of the european marketplaces UAE and even Amazon india in order to have full forecasting now For your marketplace over there. So make sure to give it a try and let us know what you think. 

Bradley Sutton

Now, another thing that the European sellers were asking for is like, hey, we don’t like how a lot of our Helium 10 profits data is based on the PST pacific time Time zone. Right, that’s where I live in, it’s great for me, but hey, if I’m living in Germany, I don’t want to see things in the PST, like you know, for my daily. What was yesterday, what was today, right, but now, whatever marketplace you’re in, however, Amazon gives that data the time zone that it gives it in and what you see in your seller central. It’s now going to match, what you are seeing in Helium 10? All right. So again, if you’re selling in Amazon Germany and Amazon Germany reports in x or y time zone, that’s what you’re going to see it in now in Helium 10. So two new features also for our Amazon Europe customers. Let me know how it’s working for you. All right, guys. Thank you so much for joining us. We had a lot to go over today. Don’t forget to tune in next week to see what’s buzzing. 

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• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business.
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