So recently I got a chance to talk to Cameron Scott again from Merch Jar. He does Amazon ads
like nobody else and I wanted to learn more about it. So in this video it's just a part
one of a three-part series. This chat that I had with him took over an hour and so I'm cutting it
up into three pieces. This piece right now is a kind of a Q&A we're gonna I'm gonna ask him lots
of questions that I have. Hopefully it's the same questions that you have and he's going to answer
them with lots of tips in here. Lots of answers to questions. This is a really good interview and
in part two and three I'm gonna show you inside of Amazon ads what kinds of things to change bids
and things like that. So watch through the very end get all the tips on this one and don't forget
to come back for part two and three. Hopefully this video is really helpful for you. Let's go!
Hey everyone, I'm here with Cameron who's an expert in Amazon ads. How you doing Cameron?
Hey Juna, good to see you again. Thanks for coming on this channel
um I want to learn more about Amazon as I I've made it a mission of mine to learn more Amazon
ads because I know how important it is for you and I know a lot of people want to learn more about
Amazon ads so why not have the perfect person you you're my go-to guy for Amazon I don't know anyone
that does it better so of course uh how to get you on the show thanks for joining us yeah absolutely
happy to be back on and hopefully I can share some knowledge and uh everyone can kick some
butt this coming holiday season yes yes that's I'm already think about it like Now's the Time to
start testing and you want ads already we're just gonna jump right into the tips we want to start
optimizing and we want to have already optimized ads when we're in December we won't we don't want
to be messing around with testing new stuff out in October November we want to already know what's
working so now it's a great time if you're just learning Jump Right In and just get started I'm
so glad you mentioned that that's perfect yeah so um before we start and I ask you questions
why why don't you tell us just for the people who don't know you the the handful of people because I
know a lot of people do know you but just for the handful of people that may not know you can you
just give us a like a quick reason why um you're my go-to guy for Amazon ads why you're so good at
it uh well I mean there's always more to learn so I don't want to say like I know everything
about ads I'm always learning too but uh my name is Cameron Scott I've been selling on merch on
demand now for a little over five years I've had a lot of success on there and I've spent a lot
of money on Advertising which is really where the experience comes from and that experience
and also the frustration with advertising is what led me to found Mercer which is software
that helps Amazon sellers manage and automate their ads so they can reclaim a lot of the the
time that it takes to manage all the little ins and outs of it and spend it on what matters most
perfect yeah so so good so you've learned from experience than this hundreds of thousands of
times for hundreds of thousands of products I know you have way more products than I do
um and so you just like know it inside and out and share it with us which is I'm so grateful that you
can share your knowledge with us so that's awesome so yeah happy to do so let me ask you some of the
questions first and then what I really want to do and so stay till the end everybody because I'm
gonna show you my Amazon ads what I do currently and then I'm gonna have Cameron kind of pick it
apart give me some tips and and we can learn from that I like doing Show and Tell I like looking at
it instead of just talking about it so I hope this this works out I've never done this before
we've never done this with Cameron but but he hasn't even seen my my stuff yet so um I think
it'll be great though so first the question so um do you think or can ads work for any design and
does it guarantee sales I know a lot of people put so much emphasis on on ads and like man I
wish I had ads that my thing would sell blah blah blah what's your um what do you think about those
things well advertising is not going to fix a bad product or magically make it sell it's going to
really just highlight if it is a good product or if it is a bad one you'll find out really quickly
what ads do is gives that product reach it's going to put it in front of the audiences that are most
likely to buy your product and it'll let you know if it's a working product or not just from your
performance of your campaigns so it's going to get you in front of the in front of people is
is generally how the advertising works so it's if it is a really good product it's just going
to really emphasize that and if it's bad it's going to emphasize that as well just through a
lot of spend and no results but it's not going to magically fix a bad product so no it doesn't
guarantee sales by any stretch of the imagination you can maybe force it through a lot of spend but
that's not going to equate to profit which I think is what ultimately what most people are after at
the end of the day that's right oh thanks perfect I I'm glad you cleared that out that's something
I believe too what you said I just want to make sure that everybody I mean we hear it from you as
well so that's perfect um no I will add on to that though because I do see a lot of people trying to
uh avoid ads at all costs well I only want to sell organically and I don't think there's any pride in
doing that whatsoever if you have a good product you should be trying to get that in front of as
many people as as possible so ads are a way to do that so they're going to just it's like putting
fuel on a fire that's how you want to look at ads with any type of product they they can work for
any product and you should be using them to if you want to give your product the fullest sales
potential that it would have especially with how much competition there is not just in merch on
demand but just Amazon in general if you're not advertising and your competition is you're at a
massive disadvantage yeah I agree I agree with that and and like you said if they're getting
organic sales then why not put ads you're gonna just like you you have the data to know that
people are buying your stuff anyway so put ads on it like you said in fuel too 500 and I mean should
we touch on like the algorithm side of things too and like velocity because that's like a huge
aspect of it is with Amazon ads it's the only ad platform where the better your ads are doing with
getting sales you see only ads that will actually improve your organic sales too and this is through
the concept of sales velocity the more you sell the more you sell because Amazon Rewards things
that sell because at the end of the end of the day Amazon only cares about selling products so
when your product is selling for whatever search term they're going to move you up the rankings
nice sales yeah yeah exactly because those first several listings the first four four listings
really uh get the vast majority of sales and it's not just like a linear curve like oh I'm selling
like two at the bottom of the page I might get like six at the top like no it's like a hockey
stick where you might get two at the bottom of the sales page the top of the sales page could be
hundreds of a day that's how big of a difference it can be of course this depends on the search
terms of how how much traffic there is um but that's really what that the the difference can
be and ads can help you get there wow and I'm glad you mentioned it two things for first that was one
of the questions I had is you know should I should I do ads is that going to affect my organic sales
and you said it it will but for the positive right not not for the negative oh yeah 100 yeah and
secondly we're talking about I forgot to mention in the beginning we're talking about Amazon ads
so this is Amazon merch on demand uh ads well anything Amazon really right but I think in this
in this video we're going to talk about Amazon merch on demand as uh products because that's
what I sell them I thought the great thing is if you learn this with Amazon merch products this
works for any product like the same strategies work for any products more of a philosophy with
understanding ads of the same strategies that work on merch on demand will work with KDP we'll
work with Seller Central we'll work with FBA it'll work with any product will there be like specific
things to each one sure but the general strategies will absolutely apply to all of them so learning
this gives you um a lot of knowledge you can use as you scale your business or move into other like
product sectors good that that is a great segue to my next question which is uh should I put ads
on everything I design you certainly can um I do or try to as much as possible even with a huge
catalog um I think they're great for discovering if your products will sell or I mean to find out
faster if it's going to be a good product or not so you certainly can do that you can do it
with what I call a lottery Campaign which is a great strategy for large portfolios like a
lot of merch on demand sellers have especially once you have access to ads you typically have
um usually several hundred products at that point which is already dwarfing most typical
Amazon sellers um but you can do this cheaply or at low risk with Lottery campaigns and frame
one that doesn't know that is watching this a library campaign is essentially a single campaign
with a single ad group if you don't know the technical details that's okay and it's just all of
your products inside of a single campaign they're extremely easy to manage all the asyns just keep
adding to it every single Asin just and there's a lot of variations you can do with this you
can segment them in all sorts of different ways but that's the the idea is just lots of products
inside of a single Asin and you're letting Amazon do all the work for you yeah and you're Gathering
data at that point right like you're finding out what actually works and what doesn't and kind of
moving on from the second launching point right absolutely what I would call like a harvesting
type of campaign yeah harvesting um the products that sell especially with you know you have a ton
of them that may have not sold at this point so you're harvesting the products that could turn
into your next best sellers and then you're also harvesting data like search term data that you
can utilize as well okay cool yeah and to learn more about that we probably won't touch on it
in this one but I know you have a ton of videos for for those for the lottery campaign so yeah
definitely include a link that just kind of goes over uh the lottery campaigns and it'll lead you
down a rabbit hole but that's one of the best ways to get started for sure and just yeah put
everything in there it's pretty low risk how about I said every design but how about every product so
on Amazon merch on demand you have the t-shirts you have the sweatshirts you have the hoodies you
got the pop sockets um should I put ads on every single product phone cases all those what do you
what are your thoughts yeah this is another thing you certainly can um I've seen ads work with every
product type that merch offers maybe not totes and stuff like I haven't I guess the I haven't seen
too many people selling uh High quantities of some of those products but with like iPhone cases pop
sockets uh hoodies all these different products I've seen people that are successful with all
of them me personally I'm primarily in t-shirts and just t-shirts uh yeah that's primarily where
I'm at there are some differences in like how you go about getting those products inside of
your campaigns like iPhones and pop sockets and a couple of the other products just have a different
Asin system so you have to it's not quite as easy to get all those asins into them but it's
definitely possible okay so you focus on you said t-shirts and hoodies do you mean standard t-shirts
and fold over hoodies or something else uh I mean I do other I I put designs on other products
um I have designs on every single product that there is but the vast vast majority of my sales
come from uh standard t-shirts and then I don't know what the percentage I'd have to look maybe 10
or so if sales come from hoodies which of course with the higher profit margins are are still nice
to to have okay yeah so that this is a great segue because my next question is what do you price at
so because you have ads on them are you typically pricing your t-shirts higher and hoodies higher
to kind of account for the for that I do I don't I guess I don't know what the average pricing is
now after after they did the recent royalties I think yeah I think everybody's kind of adjusting
um all of my best-selling standard tees now are priced at 21.996 something royalty I think it
is and then my hoodies I'm pricing at I believe 44.99 is where I've settled on those somewhere
like a 15 uh royalty uh and they're selling uh best sellers are selling I actually saw it was
I was I was nervous doing this because it's scary anytime yeah uh so I actually started
with my absolute best seller with the royalty change uh I would rather have a higher profit
margin to where basically I I have more ammo that I can put into ads I'd rather
have a larger cushion that I can put into more ad spend to out compete all the the competition
if someone's at a lower price you know they got three dollar royalty where I have a six
I can double my ad spend and still Break Even versus what they can spend on and I I
through my results I've seen that's a better route to go than trying to have lower margin
and recoup with higher uh unit sales that makes a lot of sense and but I'm glad you tested that too
because I I have my hoodies at 35 but I'm thinking I should go higher especially if I'm putting ads
on it and you know ad spin so so there you go that's the end of part one of the three-part
series with Cameron Scott I really liked all the answers he gave here and all the tips uh hopefully
you did too when part two and three come out I'm gonna put them in the description so you can have
easy access to them if you're watching this later but in the meantime if you're watching this right
now you can click and watch this video right here this is a former interview I did with him Cameron
Scott about a year ago and there's lots of tips and tricks for Amazon ads there too thanks again
for watching and as always guys keep creating and keep learning I'll see you on the next one