#523 – RIP Rufus! Hello Alexa For Shopping | Weekly Buzz 5/21/26
Audio version above. Video version below
We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s VP of Education and Strategy, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, TikTok Shop, Walmart, and E-commerce space, talk about Helium 10’s newest features, and provide a training tip for the week for serious sellers of any level.
Meet Alexa for Shopping, your personalized, agentic AI assistant on Amazon
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/alexa-for-shopping-ai-assistant
How to use Alexa for Shopping to compare products, check price history, auto-buy items at target prices, and more
https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/how-to-use-amazon-shopping-ai-assistant
New Feature Alert! Helium 10 Ads now lets sellers create bid rules based on Keyword Tracker rankings.
This means you can get bid increase or decrease suggestions when your sponsored rank drops or improves for specific keywords, helping you stay competitive during launches without constantly checking ranks manually. It’s especially useful for sellers trying to maintain top sponsored placements and scale Amazon PPC optimization faster.
Help customers discover your new products with new or notable arrival badges
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-news/articles/QVRWUERLSUtYMERFUiNHNzI5TTc0NVpQUTVVSEoy
Turn unsold inventory into recovered value
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-news/articles/QVRWUERLSUtYMERFUiNHWEtVQVBXMjdETEI5VEVX
TikTok Shop Now Open To All In New Change
https://www.spinsouthwest.com/news/tiktok-shop-now-open-to-all-in-new-change-2260665
Amazon Advertising Event in Seoul, Korea
https://h10.me/seoul
In episode 523 of the AM/PM Podcast and Weekly Buzz, Bradley talks about:
- 00:00 – Introduction
- 00:42 – RIP Rufus, Hello Alexa For Shopping
- 16:39 – Managing Amazon PPC Bids Based on Keyword Ranks
- 24:27 – New Amazon Badges
- 25:28 – Get Amazon Demand While On Other Websites
- 28:53 – Liquidation Options For Amazon Products
- 30:52 – TikTok Shop Ireland Now Open For Business
- 31:12 – Amazon Advertising Event in Seoul, Korea
Transcript
Bradley Sutton:
Amazon Rufus is no more. It’s been replaced by Alexa for shopping. There’s some new badges you might be able to get for your listings. TikTok shop opens up in another country. These stories and more on today’s weekly buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool. I think. Hello everybody. And welcome to another episode of the AM/PM podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host Bradley Sutton. And this is the show that is our Helium 10 weekly buzz. We give you a rundown of all the goings on in the Amazon, TikTok shopping e-commerce world. We let you know what new features Helium 10 has, and we also give a training tip of the week. So let’s get started and see what’s buzzing.
Bradley Sutton:
Might be time for a, I told you so I’m just playing. It’s not necessarily a, I told you so about Rufus, but there’s a lot of aspects that I don’t know if you can call it. I predicted or I postulated on wherever you want to call it. But some of it or a lot of it is actually kind of like coming to fruition based on this information that Amazon has released. But let’s take a step back before we, before we get there. I’m just saying stuff like I told you, so just to cause controversy and make people listen to this or, or get people riled up a little, let’s get into the actual facts of the matter, forget opinions or, or emotions or anything like that.
Bradley Sutton:
Number one, yes, Rufus is no more. It has been replaced by Alexa for shopping. So let’s get into this article and we’re going to take it step by step. And I do want to talk about things that we’ve been postulating on and, and about how Rufus affects, how sellers need to prepare their listings and what is the changes now, if any, now that we’re going to this Alexa for shopping. And at the end of the day, that’s what we care about. All right.
Bradley Sutton:
We care as brand owners, as Amazon sellers, how do these new innovations that Amazon has, how do they affect what we do, how we operate our businesses, how we create our listings. All right. So let’s hop into this article. And again, let’s just take a factual thing and not try and predict stuff or try and jump to the conclusions. That’s the kind of thing guys that just drives me crazy. And even this week in LinkedIn, I’m just seeing all this crazy talk that I’m like, no, where do these articles say this and that, you know, it just, Oh, my pet peeve.
Bradley Sutton:
If anybody has been hearing me talk anyways, let’s go ahead and hop into this article directly from Amazon entitled, meet Alexa for shopping. Your personalized agentic AI assistant on Amazon, right? It says here, Amazon brings together Rufus and Alexa plus to create Alexa for shopping. So it’s kind of like the child of these two things. It’s not just a rebrand. It’s not just a complete Rufus has gone the way of the Mary pumpkin or something.
Bradley Sutton:
No, this is a merging of both Rufus and Alexa on the shop and website. Now some takeaways from this article. It says here, Alexa for shopping combines deep product knowledge, in-depth information from across the web, powerful shopping capabilities with your personal preferences. A lot of this so far, this is what Rufus had. Nothing wrong with that. It’s fine.
Shopping history. Rufus had that before. Conversations from both Amazon and Alexa.
Bradley Sutton:
There isn’t something new. It wasn’t important in Alexa before, and the world’s best most personalized AI assistant for shopping. It says here’s something brand new. Rufus didn’t have this. Customers can now use Alexa for shopping to ask questions directly in the main Amazon search bar. So before you don’t have to click the Rufus button or go into the Rufus left side or hit the little widget right on your mobile app, you can go in the search bar, type in a question.
Bradley Sutton:
You know, this is not a search term and Amazon will figure out, Oh, they’re not typing in a search term. They’re actually trying to have a conversation. All right. So it’s a little bit, a little bit different. It also says it can now create a dynamic product comparisons view up to a year of price history. That’s from a Rufus automate deal finding cart building.
Bradley Sutton:
These are all from Rufus and routine purchases based on personalized insights. Now, obviously another difference is before you have to have an echo device, right? And to be able to use Alexa a no longer guys, I’ve been using Alexa for, Oh my God, maybe 10 years. If it’s, if that’s correct, it’s been years. I was one of their early adopters. I have probably eight to 10 echo devices across my house.
Bradley Sutton:
My parents’ house all tied together. Love Alexa. But let me tell you guys, I have not used it for shopping before. All right. I found the experience not ideal. Like it does not beat ordering something from my phone ordering from Alexa. I just need to see the search results. I don’t even like to buy, let me just tell you guys, I don’t like to buy things from Alexa. Even if I’m reordering something, why today I reordered two things from Amazon, some boxes for shipping for my warehouse and some undershirts.
Bradley Sutton:
Now, why didn’t I use the Alexa device? Why didn’t I use at first the Alexa app or the new Alexa for shopping? It’s because I still needed to see my purchases. All right. Like the boxes, I ordered the boxes from multiple places and I didn’t know which one came a faster. And so that’s not something that I could just search in Alexa.
Bradley Sutton:
The other one that the shirts, I have ordered different bamboo shirts at different times and I wasn’t sure until I saw the image, right? And the history of when I bought it, which one I actually bought. So I felt more comfortable going out. But here’s the thing. I already started using Alexa for shopping, even in this case. All right. I went to my Amazon app on my mobile app and I first looked it up just on my order history. It’s faster. Like I just go to orders.
Bradley Sutton:
I type in boxes like there’s no conversation I can have with Alexa or, you know, conversation. I can be doing Alexa for shopping. It’s going to make that easier. So I just did that immediately found the sellers of the two orders that I bought. Then I was like, you know what? Let me give this Alexa for shopping a try. And what did I do? I, I, I said, Hey, can you please tell me from the boxery and this other box company, which one came faster? Cause that was what was important to me.
Bradley Sutton:
And it gave me an answer when like 15 seconds, it said, Hey, this one you got in eight days, this one you got in two days. And then I literally ordered it from within the Alexa for shopping app. All right. So here guys, I’m already using it. Now, why did I do that? When I just said, I don’t really like using Alexa for shopping. Well, why? Because that experience was better to look up my order. No, it’s not better on Alexa.
Bradley Sutton:
I could do it faster just in looking at my order history. But what would I have had to do to see the shipping times? I would have to find each order again, click through and try and find the tracking number and then look at the original order date and compare it and then do the same thing for the other one. Of course, it’s going to be easier to ask Alexa, Alexa for shopping. So there’s already an improvement right there. But again, this, this that we’re talking about has nothing to do with those Amazon sellers who own those boxes.
Bradley Sutton:
Did they have to do their listings differently in order to cater to me using Alexa for shopping? No, there’s nothing different. I discovered the products originally through Amazon search. If I were to brand new search today and under no circumstances would I be using Alexa for shopping because I need to look at a lot of different factors and compare things, right? So again, as long as those brand owners had the right keywords for the boxes, the dimensions, which is what I searched for, they would have still got the sale. But now thanks to Alexa for shopping, my reordering was a little bit easier.
Bradley Sutton:
It didn’t change my decision because my decision was based on who could ship faster. So in that sense, maybe this, the sellers could have optimized. But again, a lot of this stuff we’re going to talk about today does not change what we do as sellers. It might change the buying experience though. Now something I’ve been saying for almost a year and a half while at the same time saying, guys, you need to optimize for Rufus, but I’ve been a heavy, heavy kind of like a, is the word proponent or like opposite contrarian to the narrative that Rufus has changed how people search for products. I vehemently maintain that no, and the data shows it, you know, search query performance, search terms have not gone down.
Bradley Sutton:
The number of orders that happen from search query performance has not gone down. All right. If there was a massive, uh, Exodus from traditional search, you would have seen Amazon data show that and it just hasn’t happened. But look here, there’s some, there’s some stuff that’s backing up even more. What I’ve been saying, right? Look at what it says here. It says here, Rufus helped over 300 million customers in 2025 research compare by the products they want and need at the best prices. All right. Does it say it helped them search for them?
Bradley Sutton:
No research, you know, like, Hey, what, what did these reviews say? That’s what I use it for buy. All right. Now you can actually buy products in there. Like, like I did, you know, today with those boxes, I repurchased it right in the Alexa for shopping app. But again, these are things that don’t necessarily change. Hopefully the way you do your listings, hopefully you’ve already had all the correct information in there. Now something new with Alexa for shopping says here, what you share with Alexa on your Echo and Alexa enabled devices now informs your shopping experience. This is brand new.
Bradley Sutton:
All right. So this is good. You know what I’ve been saying for a while that my opinion, this is, this, you know, there’s a lot of stuff that are just facts and there’s stuff that I, you know, I have opinions on that. I could be right or I could be wrong. But to me, all of the signs pointed to, Hey, Amazon wants you to start your discovery kind of like process of shopping in Amazon instead of chat, GPT or instead of Google. Remember when I talk about product discovery, there’s two ways. There’s a product search where you know exactly what you want to get. And you don’t do that through AI. You know, if I know, I need a screen cleaner.
Bradley Sutton:
I type in, you know, computer monitor screen cleaner spray. There’s just nothing that AI can do that will make that experience better for now. Right. But then if I’m like, Hey, I have a computer monitor that gets really blurry or something and I don’t know what I need. Maybe I don’t know a spray exists. And you know, that’s what I call like discovery kind of like research or searching where I’m not, I don’t know what I want to buy.
Bradley Sutton:
So I’m looking for what is the solution, right? So in that situation, maybe before I would go to Google, I would go to chat GPT and I would ask questions and I was like, Oh, they actually make a spray that clean screens. That’s what I need. Let me go search that on Amazon. But my opinion has always been, Amazon is trying to keep, make you start those things where you don’t know what you want in the Amazon app itself. The vice president of conversational shopping here in this article said Alexa for shopping is like having an exact personal shopper who already knows you and remembers your preferences, your past purchases, your conversations and carries that knowledge across your phone, laptop and echo devices.
Bradley Sutton:
So again, yes, this is something where Amazon can do better than chat GPT or other things because it knows all the things you’ve bought. Right. And it could just, just like, just like a, what I did with those boxes. It knows I bought those boxes. It knew my tracking number, you know, chat GPT can’t do that. You know, like can’t tell me which, which Amazon product is going to get to me faster because it doesn’t have that history. So this is an advantage of Alexa for shopping. And look at the examples that Amazon gives. Again, this is like almost exactly what I’ve been saying for over a year that, you know, right now, Amazon knows that people, again, this is my opinion that people aren’t using this to replace search.
Bradley Sutton:
So what is the examples that Amazon gives for the number, the top two use cases? It says, Hey, your daughter has a science fair at the school and you brainstorm ideas with Alexa on your echo. Here’s another one. Your dishwasher stops working. You type in, Hey, I’m getting an error code flashing on my dishwasher. All right. And so then it helps you find the answer. Like these are the exact things. This is not product search where I know what I need to get. It’s when you don’t know what you need to get. That’s when Alexa for shopping is at its strongest. And it also means that, Hey guys, what it’s taken to make a good listing that is searchable should not have changed.
Bradley Sutton:
Like, like you should show what dishwashers your thing is, is compatible with and under what circumstances somebody would need your dishwasher, you know, repair things, right. Optimizing for Amazon SEO is very similar and it’s what powers optimizing now for Alexa. This is exactly what I think is the power of Alexa for shopping is, and it’s not changing how you as an Amazon seller outside of what, of course, I mentioned, which, Hey, you need to optimize for the questions that come up in the auto things.
Bradley Sutton:
Of course, there’s going to be more and more things you do need to optimize for Alexa for shopping. That’s why we created our listing builder that helps you optimize for Rufus slash Alexa for shopping. And so again, I’m not trying to say it’s unimportant, but it is not making you change what you do as a seller yet. That drastically, if you’re changing, making drastic changes, it means your listing was probably garbage in the first place. The third use case that it said, and again, something else that does not change how you make your listing says, Hey, you’re shopping for a new laptop, but it’s more than you want to spend right now. So you ask Alexa to set a price alert.
Bradley Sutton:
And then a few days later, your echo lets you know, the laptop just dropped your target price and you tell Alexa to buy it on the spot. Absolutely. Very good use case of Alexa for shopping. Once again, does not change how you manage your listing unless you’re talking about, Hey, maybe you should do some more frequent price drops or something. Now the interesting thing about asking questions directly in the search bar is this article says that, Hey, you will be able to, it’ll take you to Alexa for shopping. If it detects that it’s just like a search question or a question, as opposed to a search term.
Bradley Sutton:
What I’m curious about, we’ll know in a few days, once search career performance data comes out for last week is does search career performance now pick up these questions or are, is it completely ignored in search career performance? Because like this article says, it can detect what’s a question and what’s a search term, right? The reason I’m curious about this is because we have had zero visibility, zero metrics as far as how, what customers are doing in Alexa.
Bradley Sutton:
Like we have overall stats that Amazon gives, but you know, like when it comes to search, when it comes to advertising, when we know things down to the, you know, the very impression, the, the ad to cart, we know everything that’s happening. Amazon gives so much data, but there has been no data. And so this would be interesting. Is this the first time we’re going to start getting search career performance data? My opinion is no, that it’s not going to happen, but I’m still going to check in a few days. There’s also going to be AI overviews on search and product detail pages.
Bradley Sutton:
Some of you might have seen this already. So there’s another cool feature that it’s going to add. Another thing that shows that Amazon knows traditional search is actually what people want. Look at this for the first time ever. It says you can now have the full Amazon shopping experience directly on your Echo show before the Echo show. The reason why I never used it to shop is like, it would just show two or three results and just have a conversation with you.
Bradley Sutton:
And it’s like not the traditional shopping experience, but Hey, if regular search and the regular experience is going away, as some people are trying to say, why would Amazon be implementing it backwards into Echo show? It knows that this is how people like to shop for now. If you look on any of your listings, you can still see a lot of the old Rufus, you know, like where it shows up, it’s on the top left and you can see it’s still giving these questions like on my coffin shelf.
Bradley Sutton:
It says, Hey, can it be hung on a wall? Is a coffin box included? These are the things that you should be looking at to optimize for your listings and your, uh, from your competitors to make sure your listings do answer these auto questions that show up for Alexa for shopping.
Bradley Sutton:
All right, next up, we have one of the most exciting new feature alerts that we have had. Uh, it’s something that’s been announced to elite for quite a while, but as always, we always move things down. So this is now coming to the diamond plan, the ability to have rules based on your keyword ranks for your advertising. This is amazing. Watch this. How to set rules to adjust your bids based on your keyword ranks.
Bradley Sutton:
Basically, this is one of the main reasons we even have keyword tracker, right? Of course you want to track where you are organically, but how do you influence your organic rank? It’s by getting purchases with your sponsored ads, right? That’s the way you can help move up your organic rank. So how do you control where you show up in sponsored ranks? Well, it’s by, you know, maybe a change in your bid up or down.
Bradley Sutton:
Like if you’re showing up at 10, 11, 12 on sponsored ads, which means you’re maybe at the bottom of page one, you’re like, no, I need to be at the top of page one. So what do you do? You, once you see in keyword tracker, uh, that your ranks has gone down, you go back to your ads, right? You’re, you know, maybe you do it in seller central, but hopefully you’re doing it here in Helium 10 ads. Uh, you go in and increase your bid and now you go back to keyword tracker after a few hours and see, Hey, did that increase in bid increase where I’m showing up for sponsored ads? Oh, it did.
Bradley Sutton:
I’m good now. Nope. It’s not, it didn’t do it enough. I need to increase more. This was a very manual process, but it’s fine. We’ve been doing this for years, but the number one ask from people is like, Hey, I want to automate this or I want to just set rules and be able to click a button and take action without having to go back and forth between keyword tracker. Guess what guys you can do it now. All right. The first step is you need to be making sure that you are tracking the keywords you want to monitor.
Bradley Sutton:
Okay. And you can do that here in keyword tracker, add the product, add the keyword, just as a, uh, point of note for now, for the first few weeks of this tool, if you want to do rules for variation listings, you have to add the child item. All right, soon you’re going to be able to make these rules based on the family level, but for now it’s at the child level.Here’s, I have a new bat bath mat or a toilet rug that I’m in launch right now. And when you’re in launch, this is when you’re usually trying to make sure you’re showing up at the top of the search results, right? So you add all of those keywords, the keyword tracker, and then you turn on the boost.
Bradley Sutton:
That’s this little rocket ship over here. And then that’s checking 24 hours a day. Now, what do I do in order to make sure I keep this sponsored rank in the top four or the top two, depending on what I want. Well, watch this. I’ll go here to Helium 10 ads under rules and automation. I go here to the keyword tracker tab, and then I hit, add a new rule. Let’s go ahead and name this. Let’s call it bat toilet rug, uh, launch. Okay.
Bradley Sutton:
And now I need to go ahead and find that, uh, product. I add it to the right side here, because this is the product that I’m trying to see where the keywords that are, where are the campaigns that have this product. And then I go down here and I add all the keywords that already knows the keywords I’m tracking. So I’m just going to go ahead and add all the keywords that I’m trying to control my rank for. Okay. And then here, here’s the campaigns that that product is in.
Bradley Sutton:
Uh, for me, I only am going to worry about my campaign. That is an exact match campaign. That’s the only one you’re going to be able to change. So let me add that campaign here, uh, to this rule. And then here at the bottom is where the magic happens. It says here for your keyword tracker, uh, do you want to change it based on your organic rank?
Bradley Sutton:
You could do that, but that’s like a, that’s playing the long game. I always want to do sponsored rank. And now here’s the thing you can do average position. Okay. So basically if I had only a keyword tracker, uh, checking once per day, right? Without boost. And it says here, I was doing it over 10 days. What would be the average of my rank over those 10 days or seven days or five days? Uh, if you do the median position, guys, look up a Mac math textbook.
Bradley Sutton:
If you don’t know what median means, it’s like the middle, you have a whole list of ranks and then it takes that middle one, right? All right. Over a certain time period. I like doing consecutive checks. What that means is each time that keyword tracker checks member, if it’s checking once a day without boost, that’s one per day. So it’s like if I put three here, that means it would be checking three days.
Bradley Sutton:
But if I put consecutive checks three and I have boost on that’s three hours, right? So I’m going to do, let’s go ahead and do three. So I’m saying, Hey, three consecutive checks. If my rank sponsored rank is greater than, let’s just say two, maybe I want to keep my product showing up in the top two search results. I wouldn’t recommend this guys, like maybe do five or something like that. But maybe you’re like, no, you know what?
Bradley Sutton:
I need to be at the top top, both on mobile and desktop. So I’m going to pick two, right? Then it says set targeting bid to a certain amount or, or increase targeting bid percent.Like maybe I’m like, I’m going to increase it by 10%. All right. So, Hey, I’m below two. That’s what this is saying. If I’m three, four, five, let me increase my bid by 10, 10%. If my bid was at 10, a $1, what does that mean?
Bradley Sutton:
It’s going to increase my bid by 10 cents. I could go the opposite. Maybe I am number one or two or three, but I’m like, you know what? I’m okay with being three or four or five. I would set the rule to decrease my bid perhaps. Right. Here it says, if your product has no rank, you know, the beauty about Helium 10 boost is we are checking all kinds of browsing scenarios. And sometimes if you’re, you know, penetration is not strong enough throughout the whole Amazon ecosystem, we might find browsing scenarios where you don’t even show up. And so this asks you, Hey, do you want to just ignore the zero ranks?
Bradley Sutton:
Or do you want to count it as like a page six rank? All right. That’s what this is for. And I usually would want to check this daily and manual never automate this stuff, guys. A manual is what I’m going to check. And so once I do that, I hit create rule. And now the very first time I do that, it’s going to go ahead and check. So let’s actually go ahead and see where these rules are going to come in. You go here on the suggestions page and go under bids.
Bradley Sutton:
And then what you want to do is you want to go rule type keyword tracker based rule, and you’ll see anything that came from keyword tracker. And so take a look here, Halloween bath mat. It is telling me, Hey, increase your bid by 12 cents, which is 10%. Why? Because the rank was over two in the last three consecutive checks. If I wanted to check that, what keyword was that?
Bradley Sutton:
Halloween bath mat. I go back here to Halloween bath mat. I look at the history and I can see three in a row. It was, it was below two, right? That’s why it’s giving me this suggestion. But again, I’m not having to go to keyword tracker to do this. This automatically is telling me what’s happening. So if I want to increase that bid, I just hit this button guy. So this is really, really super cool.
Bradley Sutton:
A one of a kind with these kinds of features, nobody has the boost. Nobody’s checking 24 hours a day. You’re not going to be able to make these kinds of changes on the fly like this. This is going to be a game changer for you guys who have been doing this manually for probably years. This is going to save you tons of time and help you scale what you’re trying to do, especially with your launches. This is only the beginning of the tool.
Bradley Sutton:
Like I said, there’s still some things is going to be working on, how to control variation listings, et cetera. So make sure to start using this. Those of you who have Helium 10 ads here and let us know what you would like to see in future iterations of this tool.
Bradley Sutton:
All right, back here to the news. This is from seller central and there was an article that says, help customers discover your new products with newer notable arrival badges. So if you’re launching products, there are some different new badges that come out. They might say new arrival, might say notable rival. It’s kind of interesting that Amazon has an algorithm that you can’t really influence. It says here, but if you have similar attributes to products that have been doing well, then it could potentially show.
Bradley Sutton:
So, so like, if you want to try and do that, well, if you’re selling a niche where there’s some popular products, take a look at the attributes that the other product has and make sure you have the same attributes. And then whatever keywords using helium 10, you can see what are the keywords that are driving sales and that that other product is optimized for. If you have those keywords in phrase form, that potentially could give you the chance to get some of these new badges.
Bradley Sutton:
I just launched a couple of products this last week. Did get both of these badges or the new, the new one on both of the products. And so this is something that, you know, could help your conversions a little bit.
Bradley Sutton:
All right, next up, what if you are doing some research off of Amazon? Like you’re on a Shopify website, you’re on Alibaba or you’re somewhere else, you know, and you’re like, Hey, I wonder if there’s demand for this product on Amazon. Do you know that you can get demand without even being in Helium 10 or in Amazon Shivali show us out.
Carrie Miller:
Have you ever stumbled across a product online and thought, wait, is there a demand for this on Amazon? Why is this important? And how can it make you money? Because some of the best product ideas don’t come from sitting inside of Amazon. They come from browsing Alibaba Etsy Shopify stores, or even just shopping online. And when you can instantly validate whether something has a real search volume and buyer demand, then you turn curiosity into opportunity.
Carrie Miller:
My friend, instead of guessing if a random product is viable, you can confirm demand within seconds. And that is how you can uncover hidden product ideas before anybody else does. That’s how you make the money. Let me show you exactly what I mean. Have you ever found a new product idea on Alibaba? Most people think, Hey, if we’re searching on Alibaba or at any website for that matter, it’s mainly that we are looking for something we already know we want.
Carrie Miller:
For example, the other day we were helping Natalie in our scale stories. If you haven’t seen it, make sure you go check it out on our YouTube channel. She’s one of the folks from our case studies that we put up live. Her product is tuning forks. So we were on Alibaba and looked up tuning fork set. Let me click on one of these tuning forks and go to the product page.
Carrie Miller:
Now here is where it gets interesting. Instead of just stopping there, we can click on their store. Maybe we came here because we wanted tuning forks. Their price is a little bit high, 16 bucks. But once we’re on their store, we can see what other products they have scrolling through their menu. And we’re like, what in the world is a kalimba for those who don’t know?
Carrie Miller:
So we click on it. We start going down this rabbit trail, trying to find different ideas. We’re looking. And what exactly is a kalimba all this jazz turns out it’s this little thumb piano. Maybe you didn’t even know it existed. So the question becomes, is there a demand for kalimbas on Amazon? I’m probably pronouncing that wrong by the way, let’s just roll with it. Right there on the Alibaba page. And this could be Shopify, eBay, Etsy, literally anywhere.
Carrie Miller:
We hit the Helium 10 Chrome extension and select analyze product demand. This opens our demand analyzer. We type in kalimba and ask is anyone searching for this on Amazon? And look at this. We see 6,500 searches for the keyword kalimba something we didn’t even know that existed. We see long tail keywords like kalimba, thumb piano, kalimba, 34 keys.
Carrie Miller:
What, what even is that? We’re seeing the exact products we found on Alibaba and on Amazon, this sells for 29 bucks. So we randomly started searching tuning forks, clicked into a supplier store, found a completely different product and validated demand instantly. What tool is this? This is the demand analyzer inside of the Helium 10 Chrome extension. And honestly, most of you probably aren’t even using it enough.
Carrie Miller:
So if you’re on Etsy, see something unique, you’re on Alibaba, you’re on eBay browsing a Shopify store, or you’re just shopping for something online and something catches your attention. And you think, I wonder if there’s demand for this on Amazon. Don’t wait, use the Helium 10 demand analyzer right there on the page.
Carrie Miller:
You don’t have to even be inside of helium 10. You don’t have to be on Amazon. You stay exactly where you are and you can see, is there demand there? What are the long tail keywords? What are the top selling products? What’s the search volume. And as you browse the internet and go about your normal activity, let that curiosity lead you, but validate it too. Don’t wait until later run the demand and analysis on spot and turn everyday browsing into product discovery.
Bradley Sutton:
All right, next up another article from seller central. I’m not too convinced about this one guy. So let me tell you why. It’s called turn unsold inventory into recovered value. Now, part of me says, Hey, I might be able to, I might want to do this. I just had 150 products of this dead product on Amazon that were shipped back to me.
Bradley Sutton:
And I didn’t want it shipped back to me. Like I had to pay this ridiculous removal fee and you know, but at least now I have the product back, but that costs me a pretty penny. So I’m like, Oh, this is intriguing liquidations. What does it do? But what I don’t like here is it says, Hey, this is a FBA liquidations that you can do. And when you choose liquidation as a removal option, it says they’re going to arrange a contracted liquidator to purchase the inventory at a gross revenue or gross recovery value.
Bradley Sutton:
Typically five to 10% of the product’s average selling price. That’s not good guys. What if your product retailed for $20? All right. 10% of that is $2, 5% is $1. That’s what you’re getting for a $20 product. But again, if, if you’re just throwing this stuff away, that’s better than paying money to have it shipped back to you and have to sort through it. But still let’s, let’s dive into this more. Is that really going to help you out?
Bradley Sutton:
You’re never going to have this product again. And who knows where people are selling it? I’m not sure I would go for that. What about you guys out there notice this though? It’s not just that $1 you’re only getting, but says, in addition, there’s a processing fee of 25 cents to 40 cents or 60 cents to a $1.90 for oversize. Well, there goes your $1.
Bradley Sutton:
Completely almost right there. Right. And there’s a referral fee, 15% of the gross recovery value. So, I mean, obviously if your recovery value is $1, 15% is only 15 cents, but still like this just is taken away from the little that you’re getting. So I’m not sure if I would use this unless like I had a defective product or something. I’m like, man, I got to get rid of this stuff and let me just get something out of it. Okay. Maybe in that case, it would be good. What about you guys?
Bradley Sutton:
Would you, would you use this FBA liquidations thing? Next up is an article from spin Southwest and it’s entitled tick-tock shop. Now open in to all a new change. Where is it open? It is open in Ireland. All right. So now if you guys are in the area, make sure you are opening up your TikTok shop in Ireland’s the newest country to the TikTok shop portfolio.
Bradley Sutton:
All right, last up, we’ve been talking about how next week I will be in Seoul, Korea at the Amazon ads prime day event. Myself, re to Java Bopio and a lot of other great speakers are going to be there. It was so popular. It’s sold out already. All right. So you cannot go if you didn’t get your tickets, but if you’re in Korea or you speak Korean and you want to join the live stream, obviously my part’s not going to be in Korean, but the rest of it is retweet is going to be in English to go to h10.me/seoul and you could sign up for the go to webinar. So you can watch it live via streaming. All right.
Bradley Sutton:
So it would be great to see you guys virtually there. If you’re in Korea and you’re going to the vendor, even if you’re not going to the event, hit me up on my, my Instagram, serious sellers podcast. I would love to interview maybe, especially if you’re a Helium 10 user or you know, you’ve been selling on Amazon and you’re in Korea. I would love to bring you on the podcast and interview. So slide into those DMS at serious sellers podcast and let me know when we can possibly film. I’ll be in Korea all week next week at this event doing some Korean beauty clinic stuff and doing some Korean drama sightseeing like I always do.
Bradley Sutton:
So I would love to network with you sellers and community in Korea. All right guys, thank you very much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this week’s news. Uh, next week, Carrie or Shivali will be back to let you know what’s buzzing.
Enjoy this episode? Want to be able to ask questions to Leo Sgovio live in a small group with other 7 and 8-figure Amazon sellers? Join the Helium 10 Elite Mastermind and get quarterly workshops, monthly training, and networking calls with Leo at h10.me/elite
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Want to absolutely start crushing it on eCommerce and make more money? Follow these steps for helpful resources to get started:
- Get the Ultimate Resource Guide from Bradley Sutton, Carrie Miller, and Shivali Patel for tools and services that he uses every day to dominate on Amazon!
- New to Selling on Amazon? Freedom Ticket offers the best tips, tricks, and strategies for beginners just starting out! Sign up for Freedom Ticket.
- Trying to Find a New Product? Get the most powerful Amazon product research tool in Black Box, available only at Helium 10! Start researching with Black Box.
- Want to Verify Your Product Idea? Use Xray in our Chrome extension to check how lucrative your next product idea is with over a dozen metrics of data! Download the Helium 10 Chrome Extension.
- The Ultimate Software Tool Suite for Amazon Sellers! Get more Helium 10 tools that can help you optimize your listings and increase sales for a low price! Sign up today!
- Does Amazon Owe YOU Money? Find Out for FREE! If you have been selling for over a year on Amazon, you may be owed money for lost or damaged inventory and not even know it. Get a FREE refund report to see how much you’re owed!
- Check out our other Amazon FBA podcasts including the Serious Sellers Podcast, as well as our Spanish and German versions!
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