314 How to Start Outsourcing for Amazon Sellers
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In this episode, I talk with Omer Riaz of Urtasker.com, which helps outsource for Amazon sellers and other e-commerce businesses.
Omer Riaz started with an IT background and has worked for big consulting firms for about 12 years. His Amazon journey started about 5 years ago with his partners. Instead of figuring out all the details of being an Amazon seller on their own, they built a team in Pakistan in order to delegate tasks to them, such as listing creations, listing optimisation, PPC management, customer support, etc. Due to the support of this team, they became six-figure sellers within a year. They then decided to assist small e-commerce businesses with the level of outsourcing that Fortune 500 companies have.
Current Status of Urtasker.com
Manage over 200 businesses
Employee 165 people in 2 Offices
What is the most common problem you see with smaller sellers around outsourcing
- They cannot find people to hire.
- Or if they do hire freelancers, it’s difficult to find a freelance worker that is reliable that you can trust.
- When Urtaskier starts new client, they do a full account audit, which is a 70 page summary. This summary demonstrates that Urtasker knows Amazon and what it takes to be a seller, which gives them a knowledge base that a freelancer may not have.
- Some sellers have an issue of knowing how to delete.
What comes after the audit
After the audit, there is an on-boarding call at the front end where we propose a package of services, based on their needs, as determined by the results of the audit.
Quality Assurance and project manager, are provided free of cost
Communication level
During the on-boarding call, we also document the level of communication as desired by the client, and the time of day in which they would like to be contacted.
Timeline
We look at the audit to see what is needed in order to understand the full scope of what needs to be done.
Occasionally reject sellers!
Once we complete the audit, if we see that they are selling products that are in low demand and high competition, we tell them that this is not going to work.
Urtasker works with sellers that are serious and want to grow, and that know how to delegate.
Services for Outsourcing for Amazon Sellers
3 kinds of skillset
- Good VA
- Amazon specialist – at least 2 years of experience working with Urtasker
- Amazon Expert – Only a couple of people within Urtasker qualify for this position, but they are growing
Services
- Product research – packages for product research, a good place to start, especially for small sellers
- Listing and listing optimisation, a major part of what we do
- PPC management
- Customer Support – leads to reviews
- Account management
We don’t offer anything that is against Amazon TOS!
Mandatory Monthly Feedback from Customers
- This has helped improve services
- Bringing more training
- Employee performance bonuses are based on client feedback
Listings and Optimisation
There are 4 factors when we determine the listing optimisation:
- Listing titles – A lot of people don’t use the whole space or follow Amazon standard practice
- Bullet points – A lot of people have good copy, but if it doesn’t have relevant keywords where they can optimise, then it doesn’t make sense
- Backend keywords – the most important part
- People have been confused
- It used to be 5000 bytes – now it’s 250 bytes!
- A lot of people don’t know about this
- Description – Writing something that evokes emotions
- If running PPC, making the conversion is important
Once people start following the Amazon standard practice, they see a lot of improvement
PPC management
This is a task that is reserved for the Amazon Expert level of employee, someone that knows how to create campaigns, optimise campaigns to make sure the campaign is working, and then to keep up with Amazon changes.
Do you manage “Sponsored Brands”
We have over 200 Amazon accounts, and every account is different, and their campaigns are different.
Once we see the trends, we can then develop our own strategy and recommendations, based on the numbers.
Customer service
It depends on the seller, and if they are FBA or FBM, as those have different needs.
- For FBM it becomes critical because you are responsible for shipping
If we can consider all the tasks of being a seller, customer service can take a lot of time, especially for monitoring and handling everything.
How to Gather reviews
- One way in which we can assist with getting reviews is to provide excellent customer service. If people are happy, they will leave a review.
- The second thing is to follow the Amazon TOS –
- 4 years ago you could send many emails, but now it’s one email
- You can use one of the many tools to send an automated email and obtain feedback
Example: I was working with a client that had great products and was a great seller. He was talking to an unhappy client for 2 hours for a $15 product, because he was trying to avoid a bad review. I told him that instead of investing that time, he could develop a template and hand that off to a VA, who can then work with the client instead.
Shopify
2 packages
- Shopify Development
- This team includes web developers and designers
- Shopify Management
- Once it’s developed, we have the management team to assist with listing products and managing the store on a day to day basis.
If a seller is on Amazon as well as Shopify, we can handle that all under the same roof.
Amazon Account Management
What other services or tasks/projects are involved in this?
This is a category of tasks that are reserved for an Amazon expert within our team.
- It takes 2-3 days to scope out the needs of the client in order to effectively manage their account.
How do you charge for this?
It’s based on commission, not a fixed fee, based on the revenue and level of hands-on work that must be done.
- Based on the account audit, we know the scope of the work necessary and can provide a fee that reflects the amount of work to be done.
- For clients with bigger revenue, we charge a lower percentage of commission
Example of what is included: For some clients we’ve had for over a year, they will invest money, and Urtasker will find products for them.
Free account audit
$200 value-free account audit for listeners-70 page document
What advice for smaller sellers
You need to be ready to delegate!
- List all of tasks to delegate
- Micro-managing is not going to work.
- The life of an entrepreneur is about getting more freedom!
- Once it starts working better, then you move to next level:
- Focus on strategy,
- Whatever you are good at, focus on your strengths!
Try to find people who are expert, who you don’t have to train
- That leads to a lot of frustration!
Set out clear scope!
- Be clear about what you need to delegate
