The value of an Amazon mastermind group: Creating new forums to meet other sellers

A few years ago, it might have been possible to create a seller account on Amazon, join the general Amazon mastermind group, and get your business going with reasonable sales and reviews. Today, changes on Amazon and e-commerce isolation will leave you frustrated, burned out, and struggling to solve some day-to-day issues.

The truth is that it’s pretty difficult interacting with other sellers directly on Amazon because everyone is busy with their personal and e-commerce lives. Joining the general Amazon seller forum is also not as effective as it seems.

With the right mastermind group, you’ll find many sellers helping each other solve everyday problems, sharing resources, offering strategies and inspiration, and building an expansive network.

The people who make up these exclusive Amazon mastermind groups have a great deal of experience and knowledge about making money on Amazon. They are motivated and successful, and they understand the challenges of being a seller in such an extremely competitive online marketplace.

With the numerous free seller platforms on Facebook and other channels, you may not be so enthusiastic about paying to join a premium Amazon seller group. However, if you’re thinking of joining an Amazon mastermind group or wondering if it’ll benefit your Amazon FBA business, you should read along. We’ll discuss the perks of joining a private-member or premium Amazon seller group – and how you can leverage the same to accelerate your e-commerce business.

What are the different types and sizes of Amazon Mastermind group available to sellers?

 

You’ll find many Amazon mastermind group out there with different offers. Some groups are small with a cap on the number of members, while some have a large membership with amazing benefits. For example, there are small masterminds with about 3 to 6 people, and some mastermind groups accommodate as many as 150 members.

Amazon masterminds also differ in their eligibility conditions and subscription prices. A small mastermind group will most likely charge more than a larger one.

Whatever the case may be, all the group members come together to share collective intelligence, support one another, and build successful ventures.

What two mastermind groups do we recommend?

With endless information, ads, and content about the best Amazon mastermind groups around, finding the right mastermind group can be overwhelming.

To make your search easier, we’ve put together two of the best Amazon seller groups you can join to grow your Amazon FBA business.

Titan Network is a member-only Amazon mastermind community with over 1000 Amazon sellers providing mentorship, training, and highly effective strategies to one another. Amazon experts and successful sellers with an average annual sale worth millions of dollars on Amazon came together to build this mastermind group. The community takes pride in helping sellers achieve exponential growth and a lasting Amazon seller success.

When you join the Titan network, you’ll get exclusive access to these successful sellers who understand how to stand out from the competition and scale your Amazon FBA business. They offer different strategies and advice including guidance on legal, tax, and shipping issues.

How to join

To become a member of the Titan Network on Amazon, you have to register on their website and schedule a phone call with a representative from their team to get an estimate of the membership cost.

Million Dollar Sellers (MDS) is another mastermind group you should look out for if you’re an Amazon seller. The mastermind group was the first to be verified by Amazon, and today, they have over 500 members across the globe with more than $5 billion in cumulative revenue.

Membership perks of joining MDS include 24/7 access to an exclusive Facebook group for members, participation in global networking events, and access to learning resources and training. Members also enjoy weekly live calls with industry experts about trending topics and white hat methods of boosting Amazon sales, and they get discounts on software and online resources among other perks.

The MDS group recruits members every month. To join, you must pay an annual due of $4,997 (that will be refunded if they reject your application or your interview is unsuccessful), complete the application process, and go through an interview process.

You must also prove that you’ve made more than $1 million in revenue in the past year, as MDS will verify this and other information before your interview.

How to get the most of a mastermind group

Paying to join a mastermind group is great, but not taking advantage of all the benefits and opportunities is not a smart decision. Make the most of your Amazon mastermind group subscription by:

Attending as many online events as possible

Generally, Amazon mastermind groups hold online events where they share business hacks, tips, and other important information from time to time. Take an active join in these conversations and ask questions or contribute to the discussions.

Attending a minimum of 1 live event per year

Leveraging live seller events is another way to make the most of your mastermind subscription. At these events, you’ll meet directly with industry experts and connect with other people with unique ideas and initiative. There are tons of free resources and next-level speakers at live events and many events are worth their weight in gold.

Making similar friends

Being committed to a mastermind group also improves the chance of meeting Amazon sellers with similar challenges or on the same scale as yours. Group members will be more open to being friends with you, and you’ll be able to help each other navigate challenges and grow.

Being part of personal and lifestyle discussions

Besides business, you’ll find opportunities to have personal and lifestyle discussions with your mastermind team members. Some offer workout/yoga sessions and health discussions that members can enjoy and learn from. Keeping a healthy mind and body in e-commerce is essential to avoid burnout, and having like-minded people to motivate you in this mindset is a bonus.

Final Thoughts

If you know your way and associate with the right people, you’ll be able to alleviate challenges, mitigate risks, and scale your Amazon FBA business quicker.

Joining the right Amazon mastermind group for sellers can be the difference between a million-dollar Amazon business and a struggling one. In mastermind groups, you’ll find industry experts and similar business owners with the resources, knowledge, and support you need to run a thriving Amazon FBA business.

Also, make sure you put in the work and make the most of every opportunity when you finally decide to take your business to the level.
Are you currently part of an Amazon mastermind group? How effective are they to your business? Share your experience in the comment section below.

Why you should vet Amazon Service Providers

 

You’re busy bustling away in the day-to-day of your Amazon FBA business when you suddenly get the notice of death from Amazon seller support. Sounds scary, right? Just saying the words Amazon Account Suspension aloud can cause internal panic.

Your Amazon seller account is the entirety of your FBA business, and therefore the most critical asset.

As your business expands, the need to outsource some of your tasks becomes evident. If you don’t know what to look out for in terms of hiring competent Amazon service providers and bestowing access to the keys to your amazon kingdom, your business could be in jeopardy.

This article will walk you through the dos and don’ts for onboarding service providers in your Amazon FBA business, what to look out for, and how to ensure your account health safety is the number one priority.

What is an Amazon FBA Account Suspension?

 

Understanding an account suspension can help you steer clear of account-related issues so that you can maintain profits and scale your business.

An Amazon account suspension happens when an account is prevented from selling on the platform or prevented from selling a particular product. When you receive a suspension notice, Amazon provides a list of plausible reasons for the suspension. If you fail to respond to this notice, your account is suspended without question.

Often, sellers don’t realize that an Amazon suspension appeal may or may not be considered by Amazon- there are no guarantees to Amazon account reinstatement once you’ve been suspended.

There are typically three main reasons for an Amazon account suspension:

1. Selling a product that is deemed restricted by Amazon.
2. Violation of Amazon’s Terms of Service and policies.
3. A decline in performance.

Amazon TOS can cover a wide ray of instances and compliances. That’s why you must vet every Amazon service providers to whom you allow access to your account. Even the most reputable Amazon seller consultant can cause irreversible harm if not careful.

Below you’ll find three examples that can force an Amazon account suspension:

Example 1: A private label brand hired a full-service agency to manage their account. The agency submitted forged invoices to Amazon, resulting in Amazon account suspension.

Example 2: An FBA business hired an untrained independent virtual assistant to file Amazon FBA reimbursements on the business’s behalf. The VA filed duplicate reimbursement requests forcing an account suspension.

Example 3: A business used an untrained VA to answer customer service messages. The VA became frustrated and wrote abusive messages to customers, forcing buyer-seller messaging to be turned off by Amazon.

It’s not just the infractions of a seller or brand that can force account suspension. If you don’t take the time to carefully vet the service providers you onboard within your FBA business, your account can be in jeopardy without your knowledge.

What are common types of Amazon FBA Service Providers?

 

When your FBA business reaches full-scale mode, you may be bombarded by different Amazon service providers vying for you to outsource some of your mounting tasks to their solutions.

Here are some of the standard types of Amazon service providers:

Amazon FBA Reimbursement Services – These providers work on your behalf to manage and file FBA reimbursements claims within your business. To file claims on your behalf and manage case files, you may have to provide account-level access.

Brand management with virtual assistants – Brand management providers manage the entirety of your selling experience on Amazon, but did you know that many of these companies often outsource tasks to virtual assistants with little to no Amazon experience?

Ad specialists or PPC management companies – Amazon Ad managers manage entire ad campaigns on behalf of large businesses or small sellers. These ad managers require extensive access to your Amazon account.

Each service provider may require different account access. The more you know about the service provider you choose to work with the better you’ll be able to monitor the health and safety of your account.

What to look out for before hiring an Amazon Service Providers

You’ve decided to outsource some of the tasks in your FBA business. It’s a momentous occasion because it’s a sign of growth, but it can also be daunting, especially if you aren’t sure what to look out for.

To hire the best service provider, it’s essential first and foremost, to understand the business model of that service provider. Review these five criteria before hiring.

1. USA-based supervisors – Everything in your account boils down to trust, communication, and experience. Does the service provider have USA-based team members with experience in Amazon?
2. SOPs – A reputable provider should have a standardized method of doing business. This is not only so you receive the best, most consistent service, but also so that if things go wrong, there are procedures in place to follow.
3. Non-Disclosure agreements – Are NDA’s standard for the service provider? Confidentiality is everything to your Amazon business, NDAs are a must not a maybe.
4. Amazon TOS – While you have a responsibility to uphold Amazon’s terms of service independently, so does your service provider. Your service provider should be able to discuss TOS compliance with you before onboarding.

5 Questions to ask before you hire

 

Whether you hire a large brand management company, a PPC software provider, a virtual assistant, or an Amazon FBA consultant, it’s essential to ask questions to understand the service provider’s experience level and trust factor.

Here are the most crucial questions to ask:

#1 Experience level – How long have they been in business, and how many clients have they helped?

#2 Transparency and TOS compliance – What are the service provider’s safeguards within their team, and how do they enforce compliance? Can you see different stages of work being completed at any time during your business together?

#3 Supervision model – Who is the last point of contact before large account-level decisions are made? What are the safeguards of the supervising team? Who do the supervisors report to?

#4 Review case studies – A professional case study isn’t clouded in fancy numbers. Professional case studies accurately depict the situation, the challenge, and the goals of particular businesses. Avoid fluffy content, as this can be a sign of a red flag.

#5 SOPs and communication – The only way to know if an Amazon service provider operates with stringent SOPs is to ask. Ask about SOPs and policies, and get a sense of the growth trajectory within the business. An Amazon service provider with a clear understanding of their own growth path is more likely to operate a successful business model.

You may not be comfortable asking service providers these questions but think about it this way: Professional businesses will accept these questions as a normal part of doing business with you, especially because they understand the associated risks operating within your account.

How to check-in and ensure standards are being met and upheld

Clear communication will be your best friend in terms of working with various eCommerce consulting services. Ask for a clear, consistent communication path based on your needs.

Good communication examples are weekly Zoom meetings, quarterly reports that detail advancements and challenges in your business, and instant communication channels such as Slack.

You’ll want to dedicate time and focus to attending these meetings and reviewing each report.

As much as a service provider should be responsible to provide transparent information, it’s crucial that you are an active participant in your business. Keep up to date on the inner workings of your business with any service provider to keep your account safeguarded at all times.

Summary

Sadly, we see too many Amazon seller accounts suspended for inadequate safeguards in working with service providers. Often the service provider’s workforce is working with little to no SOPs resulting in unnecessary account suspensions.

It’s important to ask questions with any service provider that you onboard from virtual assistants to consultants, to large-scale reimbursement companies and other service providers. If a service provider shows hesitation in answering your questions, this may be the right time to take pause and re-think your direction.

Is your Amazon account suspended?

What To Do When Your ASIN Is Hijacked

 

Arrogant, controlling, and aggressive strikes when you least expect it. That’s a hijacker. The best way to describe a hijacking is when someone takes control of something or uses what doesn’t belong to them for their advantage. Like actual life hijackers, ASIN hijacking strike without your knowledge and take control of your listing. Most ASIN hijackers turn out to be competitors that would go to any length to drive your buyers to their listings.

ASIN hijackers appear more and more, posing a severe threat to e-commerce sellers. They range from American scammers to bots, Alibaba suppliers to Chinese counterfeits. Most hijackers aim to steal sales from brand owners and resellers by selling lower-priced counterfeit goods.

Imagine a customer purchases one of your products, but instead of receiving the original item, they receive a knock-off version. Naturally, the customer leaves a negative review on your listing, warning others about purchasing goods from you. In the end, you get a bad review for a product you don’t even sell, discouraging others from buying the genuine product you sell. It’s frustrating; that’s what it is.

Let us look at how Amazon ASIN hijackers work, so you know if your listing is compromised and how to handle this.

First, Amazon hijackers are very different from Amazon resellers. Many tend to confuse genuine resellers with hijackers. Below your listing will be other offers appearing as “Other Sellers on Amazon.” That’s not a hijacker but a reseller who purchased your product and decided to resell it. The difference between Amazon resellers and hijackers is that a hijacker will sell a counterfeit product, unlike a reseller who sells a genuine product. How do hijackers strike? There are two ways in which hijackers can compromise your ASIN.

• A seller jumps on your listing page and sells a counterfeit that doesn’t match your listing.
• If a competitor or a bad actor jumps on your listing, edit your listing detail page by changing your brand name, title, bullets, or photos.

You can tell that your listing is hijacked when another seller claims your product listing Buy Box or when buyers start leaving negative reviews on your listing that are out-of-the-ordinary. Every business is vulnerable to ASIN hijackers, but some factors increase this risk. They include:

• When you start running out of inventory.
• When you don’t have branding on your products and packaging.
• When you track your listing monthly rather than weekly.
• Promotional products with hefty discounted offers.
• Not taking advantage of the Amazon Brand Registry program.

How can you get help with an ASIN hijacking?

Suppose you notice that another seller has hijacked your listing. You must act fast to cut the sales losses and negative feedback from buyers who buy from the hijacker. Here are a few ways to get Amazon hijacking off your listings:

Register for Amazon Brand Registry

The first question is whether you have a Brand Registry for your ASIN. Suppose you don’t have it, file for Brand Registry immediately. Brand Registry is an Amazon program meant to help identify brand owners to Amazon. The program allows brands to protect their intellectual property and keep ASIN hijackers off their listings. Brand Registry has a dedicated team ready to step in when you file claims of IP infringement and policy violations.

Brand Registry won’t keep hijackers off your listing, but you will have more protection from Amazon as a registered brand if that happens. As a registered brand, you can also take advantage of the Amazon Transparency Program, where Amazon authenticates all your items before they are shipped to customers. That way, the end buyer only receives an authentic product rather than a cheap knock-off. When dealing with ASIN hijackers, you need a long-term solution, which means registering for Brand Registry.

Now, what happens if you notice other sellers on your listing? You can take one of the following three actions to deal with that.

Conduct test buys

To be sure someone has hijacked your listing, buy the product in question, and report it. For the best results, do this before taking other actions like contacting the hijacker or submitting an IP or trademark infringement claim.

• Buy the product from the hijacker.
• Take pictures of the product.
• Compile a list of differences between what you sell and what the other seller has.

If the product you bought is your own branded product, you can’t file an IP complaint with Amazon as they would be a reseller, or you have a leak in your distribution channel. In this case, you need to deal with the underlying issue.

File an IP complaint

If the product you bought is counterfeit, file an IP complaint with Amazon. State in the complaint that the product you purchased is a knock-off of your original product, and someone is benefiting from that.

File a trademark complaint

If the product is not a counterfeit but is in terrible condition, make a case of a trademark violation. There have been recent legal cases that have supported this stand. After all, while the product is genuine, it differs from your brand’s standards. If a customer receives this product, it won’t hurt the resellers but your brand the most.

When reporting an infringement, here are things you need to include in the form:

• The hijacker’s seller username on Amazon.
• The hijacker’s seller page URL.
• Your product ASIN.
• Your listing product title.
• The Amazon marketplace where the actual violation occurred.
• Your order ID for the purchase of the counterfeit item.
• Legitimate and bogus product images.

What if your listing has inaccurate content?

Inaccurate listing content happens, especially if you don’t review your listings now and then. Suppose the details on your listing page are false, it not only leaves you at risk of Amazon hijackers, but a buyer might file an “inauthentic” complaint with Amazon that the product received was “not as described.” When that happens, Amazon can take down your listing and may even ban you from selling the product.

If your listing is not updated and attracts dubious people that take advantage, here’s what you need to do:

• Close the offer in question and then work on fixing your listing detail page. Remove any information that shouldn’t be there and then upload a flat file to restore the content.
• If that doesn’t work, contact Brand Registry Seller Support for help if you are registered.

Final Thoughts

Amazon hijackers are the worst, and private label seller hijackers are frustrating. It diminishes your efforts and resources that create a unique brand you love.

But having your listing hijacked isn’t the end of the world. You can bounce back from it if you take appropriate steps and prevent future hijackings.

If you notice something fishy with your listing, it may have been hijacked.

How To Create Better Angular Templates With Pug

As a developer, I appreciate how Angular apps are structured and the many options the Angular CLI makes available to configure them. Components provide an amazing means to structure views, facilitate code reusability, interpolation, data binding, and other business logic for views.
Angular CLI supports multiple built-in CSS preprocessor options for component styling like Sass/SCSS, LESS, and Stylus. However, when it comes to templates, only two options are available: HTML and SVG. This is in spite of many more efficient options such as Pug, Slim, HAML among others being in existence.
In this article, I’ll cover how you — as an Angular developer — can use Pug to write better templates more efficiently. You’ll learn how to install Pug in your Angular apps and transition existing apps that use HTML to use Pug.
Pug (formerly known as Jade) is a template engine. This means it’s a tool that generates documents from templates that integrate some specified data. In this case, Pug is used to write templates that are compiled into functions that take in data and render HTML documents.
In addition to providing a more streamlined way to write templates, it offers a number of valuable features that go beyond just template writing like mixins that facilitate code reusability, enable embedding of JavaScript code, provide iterators, conditionals, and so on.
Although HTML is universally used by many and works adequately in templates, it is not DRY and can get pretty difficult to read, write, and maintain especially with larger component templates. That’s where Pug comes in. With Pug, your templates become simpler to write and read and you can extend the functionality of your template as an added bonus. In the rest of this article, I’ll walk you through how to use Pug in your Angular component templates.

Why You Should Use Pug

HTML is fundamentally repetitive. For most elements you have to have an opening and closing tag which is not DRY. Not only do you have to write more with HTML, but you also have to read more. With Pug, there are no opening and closing angle brackets and no closing tags. You are therefore writing and reading a lot less code.
For example, here’s an HTML table:

<table>
   <thead>
       <tr>
           <th>Country</th>
           <th>Capital</th>
           <th>Population</th>
           <th>Currency</th>
       </tr>
   </thead>
   <tbody>
       <tr>
           <td>Canada</td>
           <td>Ottawa</td>
           <td>37.59 million</td>
           <td>Canadian Dollar</td>
       </tr>
       <tr>
           <td>South Africa</td>
           <td>Cape Town, Pretoria, Bloemfontein</td>
           <td>57.78 million</td>
           <td>South African Rand</td>
       </tr>
       <tr>
           <td>United Kingdom</td>
           <td>London</td>
           <td>66.65 million</td>
           <td>Pound Sterling</td>
       </tr>
   </tbody>
</table>

This is how that same table looks like in Pug:

table
 thead
   tr
     th Country
     th Capital(s)
     th Population
     th Currency
 tbody
   tr
     td Canada
     td Ottawa
     td 37.59 million
     td Canadian Dollar
   tr
     td South Africa
     td Cape Town, Pretoria, Bloemfontein
     td 57.78 million
     td South African Rand
   tr
     td United Kingdom
     td London
     td 66.65 million
     td Pound Sterling

Comparing the two versions of the table, Pug looks a lot cleaner than HTML and has better code readability. Although negligible in this small example, you write seven fewer lines in the Pug table than in the HTML table. As you create more templates over time for a project, you end up cumulatively writing less code with Pug.
Beyond the functionality provided by the Angular template language, Pug extends what you can achieve in your templates. With features (such as mixins, text and attribute interpolation, conditionals, iterators, and so on), you can use Pug to solve problems more simply in contrast to writing whole separate components or import dependencies and set up directives to fulfill a requirement.

Some Features Of Pug

Pug offers a wide range of features but what features you can use depends on how you integrate Pug into your project. Here are a few features you might find useful.

1. Adding external Pug files to a template using include.
   
   Let’s say, for example, that you’d like to have a more succinct template but do not feel the need to create additional components. You can take out sections from a template and put them in partial templates then include them back into the original template.
   
   For example, in this home page component, the ‘About’ and ‘Services’ section are in external files and are included in the home page component.
   

   //- home.component.pug
   h1 Leone and Sons
   h2 Photography Studio
   
   include partials/about.partial.pug
   include partials/services.partial.pug

//- about.partial.pug
h2 About our business
p Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.

//- services.partial.pug
h2 Services we offer
P Our services include: 
ul  
    li Headshots
    li Corporate Event Photography

Reusing code blocks using mixins.

For example, let’s say you wanted to reuse a code block to create some buttons. You’d reuse that block of code using a mixin.

mixin menu-button(text, action)
    button.btn.btn-sm.m-1(‘(click)’=action)&attributes(attributes)= text

+menu-button('Save', 'saveItem()')(class="btn-outline-success")
+menu-button('Update', 'updateItem()')(class="btn-outline-primary")
+menu-button('Delete', 'deleteIte

()')(class="btn-outline-danger")

Conditionals make it easy to display code blocks and comments based on whether a condition is met or not.
- var day = (new Date()).getDay()

if day == 0
   p We’re closed on Sundays
else if  day == 6
   p We’re open from 9AM to 1PM
else
   p We’re open from 9AM to 5PM

Iterators such as each and while provide iteration functionality.
ul
 each item in ['Eggs', 'Milk', 'Cheese']
   li= item

ul
 while n < 5
   li= n++ + ' bottles of milk on the wall'

1. Inline JavaScript can be written in Pug templates as demonstrated in the examples above.
2. Interpolation is possible and extends to tags and attributes.
   

   - var name = 'Charles'
   p Hi! I’m #{name}.
   
   p I’m a #[strong web developer].
   
   a(href='https://about.me/${name}') Get to Know Me

   Filters enable the use of other languages in Pug templates.
   
   For example, you can use Markdown in your Pug templates after installing a JSTransformer Markdown module.
   :markdown-it
      # Charles the Web Developer
      ![Image of Charles](https://charles.com/profile.png)
   
      ## About
      Charles has been a web developer for 20 years at **Charles and Co Consulting.** 

   These are just a few features offered by Pug. You can find a more expansive list of features in Pug’s documentation.