Today we are talking with Dalia Abdalla from The Handmade Mastermind about how she made $631K selling on Amazon Handmade in 2020 and how you can follow her exact four-step process to achieve amazing results for your business!
Back again!
Dalia Abdalla from The Handmade Mastermind and creator of the Mastering Amazon course is joining us again! We’re talking about how Dalia made $631K selling on Amazon Handmade in 2020, which is outstanding!
Dalia Abdalla Amazon course is coming out and today we’re going over the system she uses in this course. If you want to sell handmade on Amazon, stick around as we talk Amazon SEO and how you can attain her level of success by selling on Amazon.
Being honest about selling on Amazon Handmade
Gordon: The first thing we want to know is if this is attainable for everybody, or is this a special Dalia number that you were able to hit?
Dalia: First off, yes, the $631K is attainable for everyone. However, I’m gonna be real with you guys, ok? I’ve been selling on Amazon Handmade since it first started in 2016. Of course, a good portion of those customers are repeat customers. So it gets built over time. I can’t say that if I start tomorrow, my first year will be $631K.
Selling on Amazon Handmade depends on the product
Dalia: The next thing I want to say is that it really does depend on your product type. I actually have some students that make way more than me selling on Amazon Handmade. However, that should not intimidate anybody because there are a lot of people that do six figures or under depending on what they want to do. But it does depend on the product type and if you apply my methods properly.
Obvious Pro Tip: You can’t make somebody want “bedazzled rat hammocks” or something like that! That’s not in demand! So it depends on if you have a product that’s in demand. But for a lot of products, making this amount of money is very possible.
Where Dalia started
Gordon: To have students who are even doing better than you in their markets is crazy! Now, you started on Etsy, right? And then after you started on Etsy you also started selling on Amazon Handmade, correct?
Good business sense
Dalia: Absolutely. I started on Etsy back in 2010 and then like six years later I got on Amazon. Etsy is still going so great! But I love it when students of mine and other sellers are open to diversifying. This just makes good business sense. That’s exactly why I got on the Amazon Handmade bandwagon. I never thought that it would be this big. Honestly, I didn’t think any of my businesses would be as big as they are!
Dalia’s 4-Steps to Success Selling on Amazon Handmade
Dalia: Now, I have this system I follow that I want to share with the Marmalead audience. Technically it’s in four steps, but each step is so important.
Step-1
Dalia: The first thing (and you guys know this) is SEO research. This applies to any marketplace you sell on. Doing SEO research is so important. Properly brainstorming keyword phrases and setting everything up with the right foundation to get found is essential. I always tell people, when you’re doing SEO properly (researching and applying it correctly) you’re widening your audience. A lot more people will see your products.
That’s the first step, and it sounds simple enough, but it’s a lot of work. You guys know with the Marmalead tools, there are tips and tricks to learning the tools themselves, then finding the right keywords, brainstorming, all that stuff, it takes time to learn. The bottom line is that if you don’t get found, then all that hard work you put into making your products was basically for nothing.
Step-2
Dalia: The second step is preparing your listings. This does include SEO, of course. The other part of setting up your listing is not just setting it up, but also optimizing it properly. Are you using photos that attract buyers’ attention? Are you using additional photos that answer buyers’ questions? Are you using photos that match your variations? You won’t believe how many shops I see that have an in color option chart, but then they don’t show what those colors look like. Buyers would prefer to know if the blue you’re using is on more of the green side or the gray side, etc.
You have to make it super simple. This means if someone lands on your listing wanting a personalized mug (or whatever your product may be) and then they left without purchasing from you, it’s your job to find out why. Your job is to answer this question and fix your listing. You could do SEO all day long, but if you don’t have your listings set up properly and optimized, they won’t sell. I don’t want to hear people telling me descriptions don’t matter either. They matter!
Each Step Matters to Master Selling on Amazon Handmade
Dalia: All these pieces really do matter. They each help you prepare your listing so when a buyer clicks on that listing, your conversion rate is high. Some of my products are in the twenty-plus percent conversion rate on Amazon. It’s crazy! But here’s the thing, you won’t believe the amount of time we dedicate to re-optimizing listings.
We don’t always get it right the first time. We have to go back and update our color chart or update this or that, add a variation here or there. And that’s fine because we’re learning from our buyers. After being on Amazon for years now, I’ve learned what my buyers want and I’ve adjusted and tweaked and re-optimized those listings to give them what they’re looking for.
Step-3A
Dalia: The third step is not necessary, but the reason why I say this is because it doesn’t fit everybody. So the two things within this are FBA. FBA is Fulfillment By Amazon. This means you could take your products, ship it to an Amazon warehouse, and Amazon employees fill your products. So if you ever shop on Amazon and see the prime logo, you know that it’s coming (for the most part) from a warehouse.
Normal market times
Dalia: When you do that (I can’t because I have personalized products) you know the statistics show that your conversion rate increases because people like to shop prime. I know there are some sellers who are like, “I’m not Amazon, I’m a handmade seller!” I get that. We’re not asking you to produce products in five minutes. As long as you’re within your market shipping times, right? So if you are making personalized stationery (like me) and the market is shipping it within one to three business days, but you’re shipping within two weeks you’ve got bigger issues if you cannot ship within the normal market times.
Nonetheless, if you could get your products to the warehouse, especially during the busy season when conversion rates are naturally higher, this is a great plan. Mother’s Day shopping, Father’s Day shopping, Christmas, etc, and probably many more, this does help boost your results.
Step-3B
Dalia: This is not possible for everyone but, similar to Etsy ads, you can pay to set up ads on Amazon within search results. This is a really smart idea like on Etsy. Why? Because you know buyers are already shopping within a marketplace and they have a need and they are searching for it. Your ads will show within results, so it’s simple and straightforward. Having that set up properly is very important as Amazon ads tend to be slightly more complicated than Etsy ads. When done properly, however, you could really see fantastic results!
Step-4
Dalia: Last but not least, step four is adjusting and tweaking your listing and ads. Once you set up the whole system, you wait. You wait and see how things go. You don’t start tweaking without seeing how your customers react to it. Are things not getting views or are they getting views but not purchases? You start to see data and from that data, I teach my students how to read it and what to do with it.
For example, if they see a listing that has a lot of views but is not converting, I break it down and go with them on how to help that listing convert better. There are many other things I go over as well. The most popular section is the ad section because it is complicated for people to read. In my course, I break down all the different types of results that you’re seeing, along with those you don’t want to see and how to fix them. So the point is, you take your data and you tweak it to improve what you’re seeing.
In conclusion
Dalia: So that’s my system and I’ve worked on this for many years, applying the same exact thing with these four steps. This got me to where I am today. It helped in all of my businesses, but particularly on Amazon.
Is one step more important for selling on Amazon Handmade?
Gordon: That’s awesome, and those four steps don’t seem too crazy either. You kind of break it down into something that seems straightforward when you think about it. Now, are there any one of those steps “the most important?” Like, If you get this wrong, you’re going to screw the whole thing up? Or are they all equally important?
Don’t miss a step
Dalia: They’re all really important. However, if you’re forcing my hand and I give us one that’s more important (but I want everyone listening to this to know, when you walk away from this podcast episode, walk away willing to do them all properly) I would say step one.
When you properly do your SEO research, you really do broaden your audience. I tend to feel that people do this step just enough and then move on.
We agree!
Gordon: That makes a lot of sense. We see people on Etsy who are really struggling with keywords. They’re trying to find good keywords for their listings that have good engagement and good search, and they’re not feeling like they’re getting anywhere with that. You take a step back and you look at well, what about the market that you’re in? Maybe it’s just a super niche, small market, and there’s just not enough interest there.
If you just pivoted it a little bit, you can still make the same sort of product you want to. But just switch your market up a little bit. You’re going to have the doors opened to you for a whole lot of other keywords that are going to fit your listing, and you’re going to have more success with them. But it’s that whole component of it that we think some people tend to miss.
The importance of traffic
Richie: Also, traffic fixes a lot of problems. If you have traffic and you’re getting the same conversion rate without changing anything, you can learn what you need to change. You’re just going to learn faster about everything. You can’t optimize a listing that people aren’t showing up and giving you a learning experience on. They’re not going to send you that message and let you know, “Hey, people, have these questions about this. You need to improve the listing in this way,” because if no one seeing it, it’s just crickets across the board.
Questions about Dalia’s Selling on Amazon Handmade course
Gordon: So how does this all fit in with your course? We just went through these four steps, now how long is your course? How do people digest this information? How much time should they expect to spend on each of the steps? How does that all work?
Dalia: A lot of people like to ask me, “If I watch this course from start to finish, how long will it take me?” I’d say a couple of hours, maybe less. But the real question should be, how long will take to implement the steps. This really depends on how many listings you have. It also depends on what market you’re in. Because if you have mugs and you also have personalized mouse pads, these are two different products and two different research processes. That would be two different patterns and two different listing setups.
However, I find that the majority of my students (when they dedicate uninterrupted time to the process) could probably get started on a handful or so of their listings. They have to do research and then they work on setting up the listings, which is the first two steps and the bare minimum you have to do to really start making money.
In my course, I really go into detail on the four steps, walk you through each and really hold your hand. I find that to be the way I love to learn and I find that to be the way my students love to learn.
Final thoughts
We will have a link to Dalia’s course below! And if you’re looking to find Dalia online, the best place to find her is in her Facebook group, The Handmade Mastermind. You can also check out her website handmademastermind.com.
This was a great tour of things in the Amazon space, which we normally don’t cover! We think this is super interesting and we hope you found it super interesting too!
Happy selling, everyone!
Take Dalia’s Mastering Amazon course to start making money on Amazon Handmade.
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