Blog: Jungle Scout's Private Label Launch: Getting Reviews with Review Kick and Growing Initial Sales

Jungle Scout's Private Label Launch: Getting Reviews with Review Kick and Growing Initial Sales

Published on 2015-12-11

Today, our private label product, Jungle Stix, have arrived at the Amazon warehouses. Our listing is officially active and live, and we have already scored a few organic sales! While our listing is unoptimized with less than perfect product images (still just a quick cell phone quality photo), somehow a few customers have found the product and purchased Jungle Stix! Already generating profits to donate to non-profits, which is very exciting. We are still collecting votes for exactly which organization that will be, please be sure to cast your vote here (it takes less than two seconds).

 

Below is the recap of our sixth live webinar in our product launch case study. In this hour, we cover the strategy and tactics to accrue initial reviews, creating our product images, and our gameplan going forward:

 

 

A quick update on shipping from our manufacturer in China: it turns out that Air Cargo was going to take 20-25 days, longer than initially anticipated. While Air Cargo is still less than Air Express, it is still significantly more expensive than Ocean Freight, and at 20-25 days en route, not much faster than Ocean Freight at all. Greg had already sent 100 units from China to Amazon (via his warehouse for quality control and inspection), and opted to send just 200 via Air Cargo, and the remaining 700 units by Ocean Freight.

 

The rationale for this decision is that there would be enough inventory with the 300 units that arrive Air Express and Air Cargo, that it didn't make a difference whether the remaining 700 units arrived Air Cargo or Ocean Freight. So why not save $2000 and have the last batch of the 1000 initial order arrive a few weeks later than initially planned, without any threat of running out of inventory? The one downside is that there is more paperwork and administrative work when going through customs and ocean freight, but well worth the cost-savings and therefore increased bottom line of profit.

 

Greg used freight forwarding company Flexport to receive the shipment and send to Amazon warehouses, but there are other options, like Shapiro, Shiphaus, or FBA Forward. These companies do not do any product inspection, but simply receive the product from overseas, handle the paperwork, and send the product to Amazon warehouses. For this service, the 700 units of Jungle Stix costs $1200 via Flexport, but even so it is a significant savings from the alternative of Air delivery.

Even if slightly higher cost, send your private label product via air. Sell fast, take action.… Click To Tweet

 

As noted earlier, there have already been a few sales even though the product was activated just to get some initial reviews. Here's a look at the first full day of an active listing on Amazon with no promotion, PPC, or reviews promotions:

seller central image after day 1

 

Not bad, an organic sale without any effort! Jungle Stix is currently on the second page of results for “marshmallow bamboo stick”:

Jungle Stix organic listing

 

The sale was for $27.99–after the cost of goods sold and the Amazon FBA fees, that is an 82% Return On Investment! That 82% does not  account for taxes or future Pay Per Click fees. However, considering the cost savings with sending 700 units via Ocean Freight, the ROI will increase to around 150%, which will certainly allow us to generate some handsome proceeds for our non-profit organization.

 

This is what our listing currently looks like:

jungle stix listing

There is certainly some room for improvement here, with some better product images, and more of them. A quick note on the product listing: we included some small HTML to help with the formatting. This includes basically just a Bold font and some spacing.  To be honest, this is a little but of a gray area so do so at your own risk.  In Amazon's downloadable instructions, they tell the seller they can add the break or paragraph tag, yet in other areas they say HTML in the product description is not allowed.  We decided to go ahead and add these two HTML formatting items, which their system does not automatically remove.  We guess that if Amazon begins to crack down on this, they will likely send us a message asking us to remove them which will be no big deal.

 

Our Product Description looks like this on the backend in Seller Central:

amazon product listing backend

Which renders to the end customer like this:

amazon bullet points

There is still room for improvement here, we will continue to optimize the listing, especially as we see actual customer search queries once we turn on pay per click advertising.

 

Getting Reviews: Supercharging the Launch

(Important Update October 2016: Due to changes in Amazon’s Terms of Service addressing incentivized reviews, utilizing promotions to get honest reviews is no longer allowed. Review Kick has now been relaunched as Jump Send, focusing on email communications to help Amazon sellers grow their business. Find out more information about Jump Send in our relaunch blog post.)

One of the most important parts to launching quickly and successfully is gathering reviews. A new reviews service that we are just launching into beta is Review Kick. Having reviews for our listing will help organic conversions, which in turn begets more sales and reviews, and ultimately improved organic ranking. After receiving a few reviews, we will turn on our pay per click campaigns, which will also improve organic sales ideally.

review kick homepage

Review Kick is a marketplace for Amazon sellers to list their product at a large discount (at least 50% off) in exchange for honest Amazon reviews. It is completely free to list a product, as well as to request a product as a reviewer, so a nice opportunity to get some holiday shopping done at a discount! No one needs to know that their holiday gift was purchased at 90% off retail price!

 

There are various review clubs and review services for Amazon sellers. There are a few things that differentiate Review Kick as a unique service:Sellers approve all reviewers: All reviewers who request your product must share their Amazon Reviewer profiles, and you as a seller approve every code that is sent out.

  • Sellers approve all reviewers: All reviewers who request your product must share their Amazon Reviewer profiles, and you as a seller approve every code that is sent out.
  • Review Kick is Completely FREE for Sellers and Reviewers: Alternative reviews services out there will charge sellers in various ways. In our early beta launch, Review Kick is 100% free for buyers AND Sellers, so now is the best time to join Review Kick!
  • All Reviewers must leave a review: We understand that every discount given out by sellers has an associated cost, so we want to make your launch and reviewer promotions as cost effective as possible. Everyone who requests a code will be forced to abide by Review Kick community guidelines and leave an honest Amazon review.
  • Everything is strictly within Amazon's ToS: You may have seen some rumors that Amazon is removing any reviews that are not “Verified” or do not include a disclaimer stating that the review was in exchange for a discount. I have noticed this too, which is why I think Review Kick comes at an even more important juncture for Amazon sellers.

 

Post your #amazon #FBA product on Review Kick for FREE to get more reviews quickly.… Click To Tweet

 

One important note when creating promotions for your product on Review Kick: it is a very important step set up the promotions properly, in order to prevent people from using the same coupon code multiple times, sharing the code with their friends, or using one coupon code on multiple products:

 

UNCHECK THE DETAIL PAGE DISPLAY TEXT….if you don’t click this, it will display your coupon code on your product listing for everyone to see!!!

promo creation 4

 

Next Steps For Our Product Launch

 

Our Jungle Stix are currently being photographed by Robert at Product Photography. We have discussed a few possible shots that would emphasize the size, quality, and various use cases for Jungle Stix, and we will certainly share the photos as soon as they are live. If you are also looking for product photos yourself, contact Product Photography and mention Jungle Scout for 10% off all services through January 31st, 2016. That is not an affiliate sale of any kind, just an offer by Robert to support the donations generated by Jungle Stix to a non-profit organization.

 

After we update the product images and get some initial reviews from Review Kick, we will initiate the Amazon pay per click campaigns, and hopefully increase our organic sales in tandem.