Startup #3: Feedbackz + Amazio Labs (Amazon FBA Seller Blog)

[James Fake]

Yup... Startup #3! I'd like to introduce the fastlaners (especially all my Amazon FBA private label sellers) to:

FEEDBACKZ - Get More Positive Reviews For Your Amazon Product

Why It's Better?

• HotStrike Feature - Schedule follow up emails to buyers who left positive seller feedback but not a product review. If you are private label, you know this is huge cause many buyers leave seller feedback but few leave product reviews. Seller feedback don't help anything when trying to rank your product.
• High Converting, Optimized Email Funnel - I've tinkered with many variations of emails and how to ask for reviews and I've found the highest converting formula and have baked it into the app so you experience the same thing.
• 5 Minutes To Setup - No fu**ing around. I spent all my energy into making this Ready to go out the box. Literally flip one switch to turn on email campaigns.
• The heart and soul is run by a person inside the Amazon private label selling trenches day to day just like you. I run 2 private label brands breaking $50k/month, one brand with 3 products in the line, and other with 5. So 8 products in total.
• I made this to scratch my own itch, cause the others sucked. I am an internet marketer and I know all the IN's and OUT's of ranking Amazon products. With that said; I have other apps I built for myself that helps me rank products as well. Feedbackz just happens to be my first one I am releasing publicly.

Some background: If you don't know.. I am a web designer and internet marketer who self-taught myself Ruby on Rails in 12 weeks.
Anyways, I coded Feedbackz myself with the help of a senior coder friend. I paid him 25 hours of work (at a whopping $150/hour!) and I put in about 80 hours myself. I also designed everything as well.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

AMAZIO LABS - A Blog For Amazon Sellers

On this blog; I talk about my own experiences and learning from selling my successes on Amazon FBA. If you are into Ranking and Marketing Amazon products; this is written just for you!!

Anyways.... ASK QUESTIONS!!

Yes, I coded this app myself.. Feel free to ask me startup questions related to dev work, and anything SaaS.

Yes, I gross $50k a month off Amazon FBA with my own private label products, Feel free to ask away on questions about Feedbackz, Amazio Labs blog, or selling on Amazon!


Thanks!
- James A.

 

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[James Fake]

Feature: SEND TO ONLY ORDERS THAT'S USED A PROMO CODE

If you're in Amazon selling; you already know about running promotions for reviews.. and finally there's a way to reach out to these folks. With what is usually a low conversion because many times; these promo code users never leave their review that they agreed to.

I launched this feature along with Feedbackz Academy (blog posts aimed at making users bad a$$ with feedback software). This is the first post:
How I Turn Lazy Promo Code Users To 90% Leaving A Review

That's about it.. right now; I am busting easy 90-100 hour work weeks with usually 4-5 hours of sleep a night. Also; working on another app as well... so grinding hard!

Note: Also; I left my job about 6 months to go full-time with Feedbackz. I was a lead web designer (self-taught btw.. also self-taught Ruby on Rails for those that's followed my other threads from years ago) for a company for 3 years and moon-lighting the entire 3 years almost every night and week ends.

On the last day before leaving; I sat in the parking lot and cried... Tears of joy, excitement for the future, dis-belief that after all these years of marketing, design, building web apps, and overall business are finally paying off. I finally built myself into a person capable of becoming a millionaire through providing value & improvement to others.

 

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[James Fake]

Hey guys,
I updated the original post but I am putting this offer on the table: @BusinessBen @Vigilante @eliquid @axiom @ljb7 @ddall

- - Offer expired - -

 

[James Fake]

Just launched out Feedbackz 2.0.. going to write an in-depth post and video on it.

In addition; I also launched a Live Public Inter-active Demo of Feedbackz so people can feel/use/play with it without having to create an account and hook it up to their Amazon.

Oh... and also after some hard hours; pumped out this article. I think it's a must read if you are trying to rank your Amazon product:
Amazon’s 35 Ranking Factors: A Complete Breakdown List

 

[James Fake]

Update 4-5-2017:

First off; I apologize for doing a lousy job at updating this thread. It's been a year and a half since my last real update; and sooo much has happened, changed, and progressed that I've been non-existent in the online community world. It would take me hours to give a solid update, so I'll try to summarize as much as possible:

• Monthly Recurring Revenue is over the 5 figure mark.
• Team Grew has grown to 3 member dev team including a project manager, and 2 members that handle our support tickets.
  
• 2 Serious Acquisition Offers turned down.
  
• Re-vamped UI on the entire app and homepage.
  
• Re-vamped Support Ticket Process to better handle tickets with speed, following up, and attention.
  
• More Features on the app, but due to time constraints I can't go into detail or even try to recall them. But from this point forward; a better job will be made to document thread updates.

Some struggles:

Customer Service
Took me way over guard; with the growth of users and complexity of the app - support tickets were coming in way faster than they could be handled.

A lack of resources and tutorials and such made things really hard, and I often caught myself spending crazy hours handling tickets than actually working on progressing Feedbackz.

I had to really sit one day and yell at myself to outsource and delegate this part out or Feedbackz would be doomed due to being stagnant in really important areas for progression.

Marketing
Due to customer support and trying to get on my feet with development. Marketing has slacked off tremendously, if not hit zero activity at all. All growth has been either due to word of mouth or the 6 original blog posts I made. This actually boils self-disappointment as I reflect on this, more on this down below.

Working "On The" Business, And Not "In The" Business
With those two previous points above; it really boiled down to I had to take a week off and really self-evaluate myself and my company in the big picture of things.

User growth was good organically, but I am really mad at myself for where it could really be had I spent times wisely building a company and not being inside the app all day.

When I did have time freed up; I decided to pursue another app (in the same space and launching soon, I'll create a separate progress post)... which may either be a very great decision or very bad one. It also took ALOT of time away from progressing Feedbackz in Marketing.

I had to really learn to delegate parts that I feel were my strong points and reasons why the app was doing well, in particular design and maintenance.

I learned (and still working on) the transition of a founder to a CEO. It's a delicate progress and a delicate balance, but it's going in a very good direction for 2017 and future years.

That's about it off the top of my head guys; time is super-tight now a days, so I have to get going. (which is another topic itself as well, time management was something else I had to get a handle on as I found what was already "no time" as a hustling entrepreneur to an even more "no F*cking time, not even a free 15 mins" traction gained/growth mode/hustling entrepreneur.

 

[Digamma]

Whoa. Ok, I know little about Amazon FBA, so I can't really judge about what your project does, but HOLY SHIT your dev work looks impressive.
Think about all those startups who ask for huge loads of VC cash to come up with an MVP that does nothing, you can really see the difference between people with a get-shit-done mindset and people who really really want a C*O title on their door.

I like this stuff.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Moving to GOLD for execution... site looks fantastic, nice value proposition, and getting results. (And you coded it most yourself through self-taught education).

 

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[James Fake]

Moving to GOLD for execution... site looks fantastic, nice value proposition, and getting results. (And you coded it most yourself through self-taught education).

I can haz Gold?! YESSS... and Thanks. Means a lot, thanks for planting the seed many, many years ago!

 

[James Fake]

James,

Just started reading your blog post, and i've already learned something.
Amazing content.

Could you elaborate on why Feedbackz would be a better solution than something like Feedback genius or if someone already had their own email funnel?

Do you plan to have any more tools?

I was actually thinking of doing something like this the other day...

I'd love to PM you sometime to exchange ideas.

P.S. Any tips on how to write great content?

Hey Ben!
Yes, I do have more tools. I use them privately though because they don't even have accounts, logins, etc. etc. I literally just fire it up from my computer.

Sure, definitely PM me anything you've got.

As far as Feedbackz being, that's an awesome question. Thanks for asking!

1) HotStrike. If you've been selling awhile, you'll quickly notice you get buyers to leave feedback reviews on your seller account. And very few leave an actual product review on your listing.

This doesn't do us private label guys any good. We need product reviews. It's the currency on Amazon.

Anyways; so unlike FeedbackGenius, Feedbackz will automatically pull and schedule follow-up emails to all those who left positive seller feedback. These are what we call "warm" leads for reviews because we know a) they're vocal.. and b) they're already satisfied with your product. So they are really more opt to leave a product review as well. It helps me out a lot.

2) Optimized Emails. I've tested out a lot of different ways to ask for product reviews, and I've found the highest converting one. Not only that, but since I'm hardcore into Amazon. I continually find more and more ways to extract reviews and rank products. Those other guys are all about "software".


3) Shows New Product Reviews. The dashboard shows your 20 latest product reviews. Those other guys can only show seller feedback, that's worthless to us trying to rank our private label products. Basically, when your reviews start rolling in (I get about 1-3 daily) its boring to open each product page every single day to check for new reviews. It's a waste of time, now it's in your face.

 

[James Fake]

Sept 20, 2017 Update:

Just wanted to keep updating & track my progress on this thread.. It may seem I have dialed down on the development of Feedbackz (with launching Helpify) but it's still going full steam ahead.

1. We just launched the ability to auto delete any Pending Emails getting ready to be sent out for buyers who have opted-out of buyer messages.
2. Got another feature that's just about complete and going through testing phases called Consolidation. This will let you add on as many Amazon accounts and marketplaces all within one Feedbackz account & billing plan.

There are a few more features being developed on as well, but can't let the cat out the bag yet!

I've also felt like I've been saying this forever, but a ton of content associated with Feedbackz, Helpify, and just selling on Amazon in general is about to be released! Since each article & video takes so long to make (since it goes deep), it takes much longer to get ready for the public to see than I would like.

 

[James Fake]

Feedbackz Update 1-11-2016:

Spent the best of the last 2 months really figuring out Feedbackz, it's users, it's focus, it's core VALUE.

With that said; things clicked and have been working furiously on re-branding, re-design, etc. on everything. Has taken much longer than expected as I get OCD about UI and UX but ready to release stuff this week!

 

[James Fake]

@JamesF Props to you for the Feedbackz service, looks really great, awesome UI! I have just signed up and will be testing it this month. Feedback genius is great but there was always space for a competitor, and hopefully you'll be that competition.

Would love to get an idea of what other kind of private tools you have. Not expecting you to shoot them out to me, but I love hearing fresh ideas for things that I could get built for myself that may help my biz.

I'll be keeping an eye on your blog.

Keep up the good work dude! I'll let you know how I get along with Feedbackz.

EDIT: A great feedbackz feature would be to track open rate and provide some sort of analytics! That would set you apart from feedback genius free plan and small plan. I haven't actually used their middle priced plan so haven't seen the message analytics but I'd drop them right away if you provided that!

Thank you so much! Be sure to turn off all emails on your current software before turning on campaigns for Feedbackz otherwise you'll shoot double messages..

I have a couple tools; I can't spill the beans just yet, but one helps me get 50-75+ product reviews at a time. All legit from real buyers. The other tracks competitor products. That's about as much as I can say..

Thanks again for the props and motivation. And yeah; I def agree, email analytics would be awesome. It's on the long list of stuff to do... it's actually one of the harder things to program too.

 

[biophase]

Hi James,

Is there anyway you can add a feature so that the person's name or order number can be added to the email subject? Is this something that Amazon would allow. My issue is that when I get responses they look like this on my G-mail.

Everyone's emails get all jumbled into one big email and I can't keep track of who I've responded to. If I can have each subject different, each person's email would come in in a separate conversation.

 

[James Fake]

- Part 2 Technical Update -

A few new features and things released between my last update and now... here's a quick bullet list:

• Ability to Send To Just Orders That Used A Promo Code (shoutout to Jason!) - more on this on next post
  
• Can send to older orders in "include old orders" up to 200 days ago
• Custom Subject lines with buyer full or first name
• Buyer's first name in Templates
• Europe consolidation for all 5 countries under one account
  
• More Hunt filters: FBM/FBA orders, Time of Day by Hour, Days to Send, Order Statuses improved
  
• Faster, more powerful dedicated servers
  
• 'Daily Monitoring' BCC copy of Hunts going out each day
  
• Test Preview emails

That's all off the top of my head too for now lol.. but dev wise; the team I have been working with have pretty much come on-board (still 1099 contracting) but have allocated developer time so they are pretty much full on!

I lost count of how many hours was spent on those features.. Tons. Planning, mapping out features, logic, business logic, etc. etc. and then finally creating a prototype version of each feature and then getting it developed into a working version, then testing... then releasing.. then announcing/marketing that feature release.

Whoever said SAAS was easy.. dead wrong. Passively, yes the income is great as it is recurring, and physically it's not taxing.... but mentally; its about the most mind-draining work ever.

Still though; although not easy... SAAS is definitely the best business model... all this work is up-front and not wasted. The hours put in build assets and it grows organically after being done.... and things grow exponentially as well.

 

[James Fake]

Update: April 27th, 2017

The usual with Feedbackz; wireframed a few features & having the dev team knock on this heavy next week. Spent most of the past weeks preparing the launch of my new app. =) That and Amazon put out the ability for a buyer to opt-out of buyer messages, so had to do some damage control and adjustments within the app to tackle that.

I have also decided to no longer go by my internet nickname/pen name of James Amazio and going with my real name for everything!

I am spending loads of time the rest of the week writing some blog content so the launch of the new app can start with a splash!

BTW: Here's a teaser, sneak peek at the new app's Logomark I created.

 

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[Vigilante]

I like it. It looks sharp.

I have a new client I am just going to launch Amazon FBA with next week. I will consider giving your FeedbackZ a workout with them after I hear from some other posters here that your platform kicks a$$.

We are pretty happy with Feedback Genius right now for our mothership, but since you have more features I will watch this thread with interest and consider you down the road.

Good luck. Good work. At least the web site is SOLID. Like it. Like the concept.

 

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[LightHouse]

#1 bump this thread

#2 Funny how things come around. @James A Sorry I never saw this thread, I read less these days and I never got a notification that you tagged me in the second post.

Anyway fast forward to today and I got an automated email from amazon that was from another member here. (he can name himself just in case he wants to be anon) I messaged him on facebook saying the email looked incredible and asking what it was.... he sent me here. The emails look great. I have not signed up yet, but I may be here soon.

I don't know if you were originally looking for feedback on the app or the UI on the landing page or what. But let me know if you are still looking for it.

 

[LightHouse]

You keep making it awesome, and I will keep talking about it to everyone and anyone!

Can we get a preview of some of the changes?

 

[LightHouse]

I am still using Feedback Genius, only due to the pain in the a$$ of migrating everything.

What is there to migrate? If you shut off FG and turn on another service, the new service will only run for that moment forward and the old will stop getting new orders to email to.

Setting up new campaigns would involve some time, but at the same time it's good to re-do your campaigns that you know work well, and change up the ones that don't. Feedbackz has a good level of options where you can really target your emails in a specific sequence on specific orders and order types.

I don't know how your stuff is set up, but one thing that is clear... feedbackz templates for their emails look 10x better then all the other services without even modifying them. I get the standard wall of text FG emails from time to time and immediately delete them. They aren't designed for people to read efficiently.

 

[Andyc2288]

I am currently using this app, works great!

I just started selling on amazon last Friday

Edit: I was happy when sales doubled, and then I doubled that the next day.

Currently running a 3 email sequence, testing how many reviews actually come back

 

[fkacam]

yo, I used to co-own amzshark.com and you were a badass competitor. I remember we were developing a directly competitive product but it never made it out of beta. Sending emails is stressful! Keep it up man!

 

[James Fake]

I am hearing grumbling about some glitchiness regarding Feedbackz lately. What's new, and can you give us an update on the platform? @James A

Hey,
Thanks for the heads up! I have heard some grumblings as well, specifically about slow support responses which is looking like it's running ALOT smoother since we added a few things.

I really need to update this thread as lots of things have been going on, and brewing. As posted in the other thread; I have to be a bit strategic in publicizing different things about Feedbackz due to competitors copying and ripping off stuff, but soon enough; FLers will be the first to know. =)

 

[Yung1]

Just started using Feedbackz for my FBA products. Love the simplicity of the platform and the fact that you can upload photos into templates, which I highly recommend including a picture of you and your team when asking for a review and thanking them for their purchase. Seems a lot more personal/human and not like it's coming from a robot computer.

Thanks for a Fastlaner making my life easier! Wishing you major success.

 

[James Fake]

Here's my very first blog post, took me 3 hours to write and a couple more to organize and add some "design" to it.

7 WAYS TO RANK AMAZON PRODUCTS TO TOP OF SEARCH RESULTS

 

[James Fake]

More so a rant from spending a few hours marketing..

Man, the barrier of entry to different communities is high! Guess it's purposely made this way so they can make money via ads/sponsorships, makes sense. Looks like I'll have to pull out the wallet to get some exposure.

I'm doing a round of marketing the Feedbackz app directly. Then really just hammering away at providing value through content and promoting just the blog. Going to really try to own this Marketing/Ranking Amazon product niche. We'll see!

Got my first blog subscriber tonight!

 

[eliquid]

if your looking for promotion ideas - http://promotehour.com/

 

[James Fake]

I'm gonna be on a live interview tonight at 8:45pm central with Jake Robinson's webinar/hangout. No sales push, no pitches, etc. Just a chit chat hangout about what I'm doing, where I'm at, and the future in Amazon FBA.

http://app.webinarjam.net/register/480/3ff7c3107a if you want access. See you guys!


Oh.. and I don't ever think I updated, but I posted the Suspension from FBA story on the blog as well: http://www.feedbackz.com/blog/amazon-horror-story-how-suspension-crashed-my-sales-from-50k-to-zero/

 

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[James Fake]

@Vigilante @Iwokeup thanks!!

 

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[James Fake]

This is an awesome thread and your blog is awesome. Im launching on Amazon this week and I plan on signing up for your feedback service. I was reading through your blog and did see the best way you launch a product. I have been leaning towards running ads to a LP rather than paying a service just because it seems more ethical to me. I was wondering if you would provide some details on being successful at this.

It works... driving traffic to a promo (basically a free product) from exact users is really (relative to other things) really easy. I usually hit forums or groups of users that my product is for and skip the paid. Just ask the mods before posting because promos are almost "too good to be true" just coming from no where.

 

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[James Fake]

You keep making it awesome, and I will keep talking about it to everyone and anyone!

Can we get a preview of some of the changes?

Thanks man! I wish I could "leak" some stuff but competitors are very quick to steal stuff unfortunately.. so I got to do like Apple, and keep things in, then hit everybody at once and market it hard before they copy features. smh...

It should be a nice feature released about once a week for this upcoming quarter!