We have a novelty product we’ve been selling for the last year or so and are thinking about taking the leap into Amazon… Is this guide still relevant given all the restrictions on rebates and review hacks previously used that are now banned when trying to rank at launch?

The overall strategy of validating a product with a lookalike product and launching to a list is more valid than ever before.

Yes, it sucks. You’ll probably never directly make your money back but for most product launches on Amazon you need to be sending some external traffic.

As you say, “There’s a heavy fixed cost to building that list but it reduces quickly over time.”

Hi Ben,

We’re always launching with an established brand; not launching with a totally new brand. Launching to a completely new brand and establishing trust/authority is a whole other topic – too much for this comment :)

We use a mixture of Clickfunnels and Zipify pages; Zipify being the better option if you’re hosted on Shopify; Clickfunnels if you don’t have a Shopify store.

Great article. Really appreciate all of the value you are giving away.

I had a couple of questions I hope you could help clarify or provide further detail on.

1) When first looking to build your initial email list via a contest to validate a product idea, how are going about establishing a brand or platform with enough credibility / social proof to launch the contest? Or are you doing this at all? i.e. If you are launching a contest, are you setting up a facebook page and investing time up front posting and engaging regularly before launching the contest? This obviously takes some time and when looking to quickly test a viable product or market may be somewhat challenging. For example say you’re starting out and looking to sell a cat toy through a pet store. Are you first setting up your pet store’s facebook page, building some activity and engagement up over time and then launching the contest once your facebook page has some credibility? I guess I’m just trying to understand how you initially establish a platform to launch a contest if you haven’t even yet set up a store or facebook page to start. I feel like the article is missing an initial step here.

2) If the above is incorrect, are your steps more a long the lines of 1) set up new facebook page and begin posting content, 2) despite facebook page being brand new, set up a landing page for contest through Leadpages.net (I’ve heard you mention you use Leadpages for this process on another podcast), 3) host contest using Gleam, 4) run facebook ads driving traffic to your Leadpages landing page to capture emails via contests and split test conversion using AdEspresso until you find what works 5) after you have built up enough of an audience, market a similar product sourced via aliexpress to this email list using a ClickFunnels landing page to validate your product idea?

3) As mentioned, I’ve heard you on another podcast mentioning you set up your initial contest landing page using Leadpages, but in this article there’s no mention of it and only use of ClickFunnels during the product testing stage. Can you clarify or provide your rationale for using one or both?

Apologies for the length. Really appreciate in advance any response!

Ben

That’s a really tight budget – I’d probably try drop shipping or creating a niche site to build a following around until you can get to at least $1-2k.

Hi Martin – If you raise or lower the price by more than 25% within 30 days normally you will lose the buy box (this has been the case for a while actually)