Scott is on a mission to help others build online businesses that provide stability and the freedom to live life on their own terms; without the GET RICH QUICK HYPE. He’s a family man first, wanting to teach, inspire and motivate others to build a future proof business that fits their lifestyle.

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> Here’s a glimpse of what you would learn….

In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley interviews Scott Volker, a renowned e-commerce expert from Brand Creators and the Rock Your Brand Podcast. Scott shares his journey from selling on Amazon to expanding into Etsy, emphasizing the importance of perseverance and building a loyal customer base. Key strategies discussed include leveraging email marketing to create a raving fan base and the potential of Etsy as a complementary marketplace. Scott also introduces his new YouTube venture, Live Video School, aimed at helping others master live video content. This episode offers actionable insights for scaling e-commerce businesses to new heights.

Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:

Special Mention(s):

Related Episode(s):

This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures.

I started Hadley Designs in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then go to www.EcommBreakthrough.com (that’s Ecomm with two M’s) to learn more.

Josh Hadley 00:00:00  Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. I’m your host, Josh Hadley, where I interview the top business leaders in e-commerce. Past guests include Kevin King, Michael Gerber, author of The E-myth, and Matt Clark from ASM. Today, I am speaking with Scott Volker of Brand Creators and the Rock Your Brand podcast, and we’re going to be talking about how to build a raving fan base and to capture those people, to grow a true brand off of all the other platforms. This episode is brought to you by Ecomm Breakthrough Consulting, where I help seven figure companies grow to eight figures and beyond. If you are looking for a team that can help take your brand, that can bring in our expertise, our strategic insights and our experience in SOPs to plug into your business, join us. Reach out to me at Josh at Ecomm Breakthrough dot com. That’s ecom with two M’s. Reach out and let me know that you’re interested in partnering up with us, and we are anxious to be working with you. But today I am super excited to introduce you all to Scott Volker.

Josh Hadley 00:00:47  He is somebody that I actually followed on his podcast. He was one of the first early Amazon podcasts back in 2014 when I was first trying to figure out the game and I’ve been following him. He’s transitioned into Etsy as of late, and he’s got even newer plans for the future. So Scott, I am super excited to have you on the show. So welcome.

Scott Voelker 00:01:03  Josh, thank you so much. I appreciate it. And yeah, it’s been a few years hasn’t it?

Josh Hadley 00:01:06  It’s been a little bit since you’ve been talking about Amazon, but I think that’s a perfect way to just kind of like segue into this podcast is so Scott, you started on Amazon, you know, or that’s where your podcast kind of started. Yeah. you sold a brand, then you’ve been able to pivot into Etsy. You’ve got plans for Tick Tock Shop and all that good stuff onwards. But why don’t you give our audience maybe a little bit of background of why you have some credibility to be talking today?

Scott Voelker 00:01:28  Well, first off, yeah, I mean, the podcast that you started listening to wasn’t my first podcast, but it was the first one that got traction.

Scott Voelker 00:01:34  And I think that’s a lesson in itself is like, you know, you try something, it doesn’t work. Will you try it again? You know, and it’s funny because a story on that one there just for people that are trying and thinking like, is this thing going to work? And then it doesn’t, and then you’re thinking, I don’t want to waste my time and try something else. I remember telling my wife that I was thinking about starting a podcast to document what we were doing on Amazon, because I was just getting in the game, and I purchased my first order for five grand, and I was selling at the time, fitness bands before they were a big thing. And, that was my first product. Actually, that product did really well. I think I did over 500,000 on that product in like, I don’t know, 18 months, but that there was something that I was looking for. I was looking for information. And the only person at the time was Ryan Moran, who he didn’t even have a podcast dedicated to him, but he had a couple episodes.

Scott Voelker 00:02:16  And so then I was like, man, maybe I should just start documenting. I know I don’t have crazy numbers yet. I mean, I made like 40,000 with my first product, which was good. It was revenue, it wasn’t all profit. And I’m like, maybe I’ll do that. And so I did, and I started that podcast, but I said to myself, if after 25 episodes it doesn’t go anywhere, I’m just going to stop. So I gave myself the thing like I’m going to do 25 episodes. And I think that’s a lesson for anybody. It’s like getting started is hard, and you always want to see numbers and you’re going to have those doubts. But I kind of pushed through those doubts. Also, My wife was a little bit of a cheerleader. She’s like, come on Scott, you’re good behind a mic. You’re good at talking. You love talking to people. You love helping people give it a shot. And so I did.

Scott Voelker 00:02:49  And then that thing just took off and skyrocketed. So yeah, it just to me it started there as far as like how I got on the map. But years before that I had been running a mid six figure business in the photography world. Like, you know, that’s kind of I got my start in there because my wife and I ran a photography studio, and then I started to dabble in the online space. And if anybody is an OG with the internet marketing stuff like, Jeff Walker, Frank Kern, those guys, that’s kind of where I cut my teeth and and, Jeff Walker was a very instrumental in my first launch. Started my first YouTube channel and, and did all that. And I supported my family for seven years on the back of that, before I even got involved in Amazon. Amazon was just a little thing. I’ll try this private label thing and we’ll see what happens. And then the rest is history.

Josh Hadley 00:03:29  I love that, Scott. And I love that it it’s true.

Josh Hadley 00:03:32  Like it takes perseverance. And I think especially now, you know, the marketplaces as a whole have never been more competitive. And so you’ve got to be willing to go in and you know, and say, hey, if I don’t make it in one day, right? It’s like, oh, my first pole was this amazing success. That doesn’t mean it’s a complete failure. Like being able to persevere, I think is important. But, Scott, why don’t you talk to me about the brand that you built and sold?

Scott Voelker 00:03:54  Yeah. Well, okay, so that wasn’t even the first one. Again, kind of like the I would say my first go at this was kind of like everyone did, right? It was like, find a product. You know, honestly, it’s funny. Jungle Scout wasn’t even there yet. And a funny story with Greg Mercer, who’s a good, good friend of mine. I was one of the first people to test that, that Chrome extension before it was even a thing.

Scott Voelker 00:04:14  And he reached out to me private, messaged me in Facebook and said, hey, you know, I’d love for you to try this. And I said, sure. And so, so I went ahead and tried it and it was good. And he was actually my first. My first dollar I made was promoting Jungle Scout before it was anything. and I think that was episode again, going back to like putting in the work. I think it was like episode 62. So I had recorded 62 episodes before I had made a dollar. but but yeah. So that helped me find some products. But my first product was like I was into fitness. So I’m like, you know what, maybe I’ll do a fitness product. And that’s before it was really repetitive so that there was a brand in itself. I added a few other products. I even dabbled with supplements that didn’t really do well because it was, you know, so I was kind of still dabbling. But then I moved to South Carolina.

Scott Voelker 00:04:53  I used to live in upstate New York. We moved to South Carolina. Now it’s nine years ago. But this was when this happened, about probably four years after we were here, one of our neighbors had become friends with her and her husband. She was a good blogger, so she was good at traffic. I was good at the, you know, product side of things and in marketing. And so we had just brainstormed and, one day she said, oh, you know, there’s, you know, we really should go into this, into this new market. It was in the cooking niche. And she’s like, you know, I can make like, you know, these accessories for it and this, that and the other. And I’m like okay cool. Let’s see what happens. So she started to kind of learn from me on the inventory side or, you know, producing a product side. And I started learning from her on the blogging side. And then between the two, we built a pretty successful brand that we ended up exiting.

Scott Voelker 00:05:34  but we ran it for probably three years together. but it was kind of like taking all of our, all of our strengths and putting them together. But the truth is, here’s what happened. she’s the one that gave me the phone call and said, hey, I think I want out of this thing. I’m not liking this inventory thing. Like, we had 150, you know, not too much. 150, $200,000 in inventory. and depending on your audience, I mean, obviously, some people have $1 million in inventory. I have buddies of mine that had $1 million. It’s like, how do you sleep at night? It’s hard. so, that was starting to weigh on her. And so then I just said, hey, you just give me the nod and we’ll sell this thing. So then we listed it through Quiet Light Brokerage and within, I think, well, that was around Covid. So before Covid just happened we had an offer and then they dropped out. And then about two weeks later we had another offer.

Scott Voelker 00:06:16  And then that one ended up going through, so yeah. So I mean, it taught us a lot. We got out of it, we made some money. and yeah, I mean, then we moved on from there and she started to dabble in Etsy. And it’s funny how things happened. She started dabbling in Etsy because there was no inventory, because she was doing print on demand and then introduced it to my wife and my wife’s like, oh, that looks like fun. I had nothing to do with it. And this is like, you know, probably for a year. And then after that, I started seeing my wife was making like, you know, $1,000 a month and $5,000 a month. And then Q4, she was making $20,000. And I’m like, wait a minute here. What’s going on? You know, you’re doing this all on your own. There’s no inventory, you know? And I’m like, let me see what this thing is all about. And then that’s kind of where I transitioned to helping her a little bit and then started to document it, because I know that if you can help people in an area, you know, just like I did in Amazon, you can build a nice little business there too.

Scott Voelker 00:06:56  So that’s kind of the backstory on that.

Josh Hadley 00:06:58  I love that, Scott. Love that you, you know, you kind of been there, done that. You’ve seen the pros and cons of the Amazon platform. You’ve also seen Etsy as well. So I want to transition maybe a little bit into talking more details on Etsy specifically right now. And then we’ll come back to that blogging aspect of your Amazon brand, because I think that’s a really important thing. But yeah, for Etsy. So knowing that our audience is primarily seven figure plus Amazon based brands. What advice would you give them as it relates to Etsy in today’s day and age?

Scott Voelker 00:07:27  Yeah, I don’t know why I didn’t know about it when I was on Amazon, to be honest with you. I mean, you just look at Etsy like it’s a small little marketplace. It’s all handmade, you know, stuff. And in reality, it’s really not, it’s that it’s grown so much. They offer you to sell digital products now, which you never used to be able to do.

Scott Voelker 00:07:41  You can sell print on demand now, which you never could do now. you can’t just take, you know, products that you’re slapping a label on and putting them up there like they don’t want you to do that. Now, will that day come when you can sell your own stuff? Probably. But if there’s any customization to it, you definitely can leverage that platform or you can add products to your brand. Here’s a good one without buying inventory. And maybe you bolt on a print on demand side of your business. If someone’s on Amazon listening to this right now and you’re using Amazon merch, then you’re crazy not to go over on Etsy. so it does depend on the market as far as the niche goes. It does depend on that. Like could it work for you if you have a giftable item? Definitely. Over on Etsy, they’re going hard on gift mode right now. They spent 7 million on a commercial for the Super Bowl. They’re putting a lot of ad money towards it and they are really trying to evolve the platform.

Scott Voelker 00:08:23  but to me it’s like, why wouldn’t you leverage that platform? Super easy to set up, easier than Amazon. their stuff is a lot easier to work with. Like you don’t have as many dials to turn or you know, things that you can that you can tweak, which is a good thing and a bad thing, right? You can’t really go in and dial in your pay per click as much as you can on Amazon. So there’s some restrictions, but it’s a great little platform and there’s brands on there doing seven figures all day long. You know in the jewelry space there’s a company that sells seeds like seeds for gardening and they’re, they’re, they’re probably a I’d say high seven figure business. you know, just selling seeds. so I would say for anyone listening, if you’re not yet looking at that platform, I would look at the platform super easy to get on. It’s not hard. There’s not a lot of hoops to jump through.

Josh Hadley 00:09:06  What do you estimate? Like what percentage of Amazon sales would you say you could get from Etsy? Are you saying, like, if you’re doing seven figures on Amazon, estimate like what, 510% of your sales could come from Etsy?

Scott Voelker 00:09:17  Yeah, I think you could probably. And again, it’s going to depend, right. If you’re in the gardening space and you sell seeds, well you’re going to do great, right. Like you could say you could do 20, 30, 40%. you know, it does depend on that. But I would say on average, you’re probably looking at, like you said, like five, 10%. I mean, think about Walmart. Everyone goes to Walmart. But Walmart’s not really a big player, at least from what I’m hearing. It’s not right. Like Walmart, small compared to Amazon. But Amazon is such a big, massive platform, it’s hard to compare. Right? It’s like you and I were talking, you know, pre-interview. It was like once you once you get that Amazon drug man, it’s hard, right? There ain’t any other drug out there that is quite as good as the old Amazon drug.

Scott Voelker 00:09:50  Right. Because Amazon’s just this massive platform and people get spoiled on that. But to me it’s an easy platform to navigate to to add your products. And I think it’s definitely worth your time to put it, you know, to put it in play, you know, and if you’re going to sell the business, it also allows you to kind of add another revenue stream, although you cannot. This is something interesting. You cannot sell your Etsy shop. You cannot do that. You can sell your products, give them all your products. Right. You can give them that. You can give them your email list that you can build off of the back end of that write. You can do all that. You can not sell your Etsy shop as of right now.

Josh Hadley 00:10:23  Interesting. Yeah, yes, I know Etsy is going through a lot of changes as of late. oh yeah. That’s I mean.

Scott Voelker 00:10:29  They’re definitely trying and it’s funny coming from the Amazon side and I’m, you know, here now and I’m looking at it I’m like yeah that’s all you can do.

Scott Voelker 00:10:37  Like I’m like seriously. Like you guys are just starting to introduce that. Like that was like ten years ago. You know what I mean? Like so they’re they’re slow to catch up. But I think they do that because most of the sellers are going to be, you know, just you know, Sally, you know, who’s 45 that wants to make a little extra money on the side. And she crafts, you know, like that’s who they’re building it for. Yeah. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just they’re not into, like, understanding the metrics and understanding, like, you know, how to drive sales. It’s like they’re just like, I made this nice thing, I want to list it and I want to sell it. You know, it’s not about optimization and things like that, which is an opportunity, though, for people like you and I.

Josh Hadley 00:11:11  Yeah. No, it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Scott, you briefly alluded to this again, but you talked about that Amazon drug.

Josh Hadley 00:11:17  And you know, in our pre-interview you talked about the importance of really trying to build a raving fan base off of Amazon. Sounds like you guys were able to do that as part of your blog. I know that email marketing is a big thing that you’re kind of focused on as well right now. So speaking to a group of Amazon sellers, what advice do you have to them to say, hey, here are the strategies to go build a raving fan base so that, heaven forbid, Etsy suspend your account. Amazon suspend your account. You can now take your audience and go somewhere else.

Scott Voelker 00:11:46  Yeah, I mean, as simple as start building your email list, like right now. Like today. One thing that we did and actually, worked really, really well was in the very beginning of building that brand, we actually started building the email list before we even had a product on Amazon. So we knew the product we were manufacturing. But I said, you know what? We’re going to go ahead and we are going to, we’re going to go ahead and just start building that email list.

Scott Voelker 00:12:08  So when we launch, we will have an email list of people that will go buy our products. Okay. Now we know years ago it was like, you know, Zon blast. You remember Zon blast back in the day, right? I used to use them back in the day. Right? I used them once. You give away all your products so you can get sales, right. Well, it’s kind of the same thing as far as, like, building your email list and then you don’t have to pay someone to send out a blast for you. You can send out an email list with a discount code, and you can still get the benefits of that without giving the product away. and so for us, what we did is we would run giveaways and we would do it using Facebook. So we would just take our giveaway, we’d create a bundle. And at the time we didn’t have our own product. So we had a product that we were building accessories for. So we would give away the main product and that would be the draw.

Scott Voelker 00:12:45  And then our products were going to be accessories that went on the product. Right. And so, so we did that, built our first email list, I think, to about 5000 people in, probably around, I don’t know, a month and a half. And then we got our first shipment in, and then we ran a little campaign, and I think we sold at the time, like maybe 150, 175 within like two days. Right. And then boom, all of a sudden we get this rush of traffic and we know that the algorithm like that, you know, we got ranked and, you know, we started to get our, you know, natural organic sales. So I say building the email list is key. and it’s not just key in selling your products. I think that is one thing. But the second part of it is, like you said, you have this asset now that you can bring with you if you get suspended. But the other thing that it does is if you’re going to sell your company, that email list is a huge asset, like a company’s going to give you a higher, you know, multiple on an email list attached to it than if you don’t have one.

Scott Voelker 00:13:33  If you’re just dependent on Amazon, you’re going to get less, multiple than you would if you had your own traffic source. Is an email your own traffic source?

Josh Hadley 00:13:40  Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. So how do you build that email list? I mean, you grew a 5000 person email list. You said in about a month or so. Yeah. So what are the tactics that you use to get people on your email list? Still do it to this day.

Scott Voelker 00:13:50  You do it for the Etsy stuff. It’s the same thing. It’s very simple. You just if you have your own products, you will take 3 to 5 of those products, bundle them together, create an image. We use King Sumo for the for the giveaway tool. So basically we just take King Sumo. We load all our stuff in our images. You know how much it’s worth? It’s worth $225. We’re going to be giving one of these away. It’s got a countdown at the top, and we usually run that for either 14 days or 30 days, depending on how long you want to run it.

Scott Voelker 00:14:14  And then we run an ad on Facebook and we spend usually starting five bucks a day, and then we’ll gradually scale it up to $10. If it’s doing really well, we’ll get to $20 and we run that out and we might spend, you know, 800 to $1000 between product and between the ad spend. And then we build that list and typically we’re getting emails under a dollar apiece. Our goal is always $1 is our max that we want to spend. But most of the time we’re getting them for under $0.50. and so then we just just run that. And it’s very simple because we just target people that are interested in that niche, right. If you were going after people that were if you were selling dog collars, you’re going to go after people that own dogs. it’s very simple. And then you just put up an irresistible offer, and then people would go to a landing page with the landing page as king sumo. And then from there it collects the emails. we then will take those emails, bring them into our autoresponder of choice or email platform.

Scott Voelker 00:14:58  And then from there we can message them and say, hey, there’s 14 days left or there’s seven days left, and then we can kind of keep following up with them. And then here’s the cool thing that we always do at the end is we’ll say, and we did this all the way back, you know, in the Amazon days. Same thing. Right? We took at the very end we would pick the winner and we would use a randomizer tool, and then we would pick the winner and then we would announce the winner, and then we would follow up with everyone else that didn’t win. And we would say, the winner is dot, dot, dot. And then they would open the email and say, Susie Brown from, you know, Tennessee. congratulations. you know, now, if you’re the one, if you’re one of the ones that didn’t win, don’t worry. We still want you to be a winner. Here’s a 25% off coupon for the next three days to go grab whatever.

Scott Voelker 00:15:33  Right. And then you’d have orders come in from that, and then on the back end. So that’s it. Like, that’s that’s as complicated as it is. It’s very, very simple. And you’re getting people that are interested in your niche by putting out, you know, the we call it the lead magnet, the thing that’s going to attract the right people and we’re targeting the right audience. I love that.

Josh Hadley 00:15:49  Yeah, I love that. So really simply, you had King Sumo that’s hosting a giveaway. You’re taking, you know, 2 or 3 of your top selling products, running a Facebook ad saying, hey, enter this free giveaway on Facebook. They join the list, right? They enter the contest. Yep. Are you running this for a period of 30 days then? And do you just like, rinse and repeat every 30 days.

Scott Voelker 00:16:08  For 14 days? If we want to kind of compress it, because sometimes people don’t want to wait 30 days. So we’ll do it for like 14 days.

Scott Voelker 00:16:13  And then we would like stop it and then restart it. but yeah. So typically we’re going to run it. And then obviously we want to see how the numbers are too, because sometimes you might be tapping into an audience that’s not as a buyer audience would you think they are, but they might not be. So you got to kind of see what that is. And you might want to start adjusting your targeting inside of Facebook. but yeah, that’s that’s pretty much it. The one other thing I should mention, though, is the reason why we use King Sumo is because after they enter their name and email address, they go to a thank you page. And this confetti guy kind of kind of goes out, right? Like, hey, congratulations. And then it’ll give you and you can choose what you want. It’ll give you other actions that they can take that will give them additional entries. So like if you have a YouTube channel you would say, you know, go subscribe to our channel and get five more entries.

Scott Voelker 00:16:50  You know, go to our Facebook group and get, you know, three entries. Share this with someone. Get three entries. And so every action and that’s all built in, they’re going to be incentivized to do it. And when they do that now they’re also giving you free traffic to your campaign that you’re running there. And that works really well. And then the other thing I would say to that we always do is once someone’s on our email list, once we run a new one of these, we advertise it inside of our email list. Hey, we’re running another giveaway, right? And so they’re thinking, this is great, I’m going to stay on this list because they’re doing these giveaways. But then if they don’t win, guess what? They’ve been kind of like seeing that we’re doing this. But then we also are bringing awareness to our brand at the same time without saying, like, hey, go check out our stuff, right? It’s just like, hey, we’re doing this giveaway thing.

Scott Voelker 00:17:28  And then maybe in the WPS, hey, we just added a couple new products to our store. If you want to go check it out, here’s the link. Right? Just drop a little RPS in there and you’ll always pick up additional orders from doing something like that.

Josh Hadley 00:17:37  I love that, I love that strategy, and I love being able to do it. Rinse and repeat. Now you briefly touched on this, which is how do you make sure you’re not just getting freebie suckers, right, that are like, oh, well, I’m only gonna I only want this if I get it for $0. I’m not going to buy it even at, you know, 25% off. How have you been able to navigate that? Yeah.

Scott Voelker 00:17:55  That’s the harder part. But the way that I look at it is, is like, you just have to look at the end of the day a couple of different things. You have to look at. Number one, is the list paying for itself? That’s the first thing, right? Which depending on what you’re using, you know, you’re probably going to spend it to host like 10,000 email subscribers.

Scott Voelker 00:18:10  You’re probably going to be spending 100 bucks a month. So if you can’t make $100 with, you know, 10,000 emails, we got to work on your marketing. I don’t care if they are freebie people. You’re going to be able to get some of them to convert. But what you’ll also do is you’ll start seeing people that aren’t paying attention anymore through the opens and the clicks. And then what we’ll do is we’ll just we’ll clean that list after, you know, 90 days, and then we’ll see if there’s cold people on our list, and then we’ll just kind of discard them, and then we’ll just keep building on and kind of keeping the warmth of the lists growing. But there’s you’re going to you’re going to want to track it, obviously, depending on what you’re using for a tool for software. you know, and then you’re going to be able to kind of see, okay, like are these leads converting? Right. And you can get really sophisticated with that. Like you can have also other campaigns that if someone clicks this send them into this funnel, you know, and you can get really elaborate with it.

Scott Voelker 00:18:53  But if you do that, you will most likely be able to convert people because, you know, abandoned carts, if you send out abandoned car email sequences, you’re going to convert higher, right? So, if that is a difficult thing to navigate. But I always look at it like, okay, the list is costing me this. This month we made this. All right. And then let’s look at see who’s not opening. That’s costing us money for storing them on our list. And then we’re just cleaning.

Josh Hadley 00:19:12  Yeah okay. Makes a lot of sense. Now are you pointing people to on that email? Are you pointing them to Amazon or to Etsy or to your own D to C site?

Scott Voelker 00:19:20  Yeah. Typically it’s going to be over to the platform. And and the main reason why we’re doing that for obvious reasons is we want the sales velocity. Right. We want the sales velocity. We want the reviews coming in. Now, if the goal was to launch something on Shopify and get that thing going, then we’re going to drive traffic there.

Scott Voelker 00:19:34  That’s the beauty of the list, right? We can drive it to any platform that we want. And at that point, the conversions might be less if you don’t drive them to an Amazon or drive them to an Etsy because they don’t trust maybe an independent site of yours yet. But once they get to know you, maybe they will. But yeah, generally we’re going to drive them over to Amazon or Etsy. So this way here we get the sales velocity credit okay.

Josh Hadley 00:19:53  I love that. Are you doing any other strategies to build your email list? I know people have used product inserts on Amazon or even Etsy. Are you doing anything like that?

Scott Voelker 00:20:03  Yeah, product on the Facebook. Yeah, product inserts are really good and if you have the ability. So with the Amazon side of things because we were buying products that was already, you know, packaged, I could have my manufacturer add my insert card there, with Etsy and print on demand. It’s a little bit harder. Now we’re using printer fee for all of our print on demand stuff.

Scott Voelker 00:20:23  There are companies inside of print fee that you can add a card. We have not yet done that. to be honest with you, because I, I was doing it with the Amazon stuff and I didn’t see a huge uptick in it, but, it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work. but what I will say is, if you have a way which most platforms allow you to send out that welcome email or the email that says thank you for your order, then what we have is what we call a VIP list. So what we’ll do is we will then advertise that list. We’d be like, hey, thank you so much for your order. We appreciate it. you know, supporting a small, family owned business. you know, we’re getting your order ready, and it should be shipped out shortly. in the meantime, I wanted to invite you to our VIP club, where we do monthly giveaways. We give exclusive discounts, you know, things like that go here, right? And then you just create a link, you know, like Scott’s, you know, bass Pro, vip.com, whatever.

Scott Voelker 00:21:10  Right? Just buy that domain name and forward it over to your landing page where you would then collect someone’s email address. So now you’re getting someone that’s a customer on your list. which, you know, in Amazon, you know, there’s different ways you can do it. Are you supposed to. Not really. same thing with Etsy. They don’t want you to just take someone’s email even though they show it to you. Like in Etsy. You can see the email, but you’re not supposed to just take the email and start. You have to get permission. And the way to get permission is to put a landing page in the middle there, letting people know what they’re signing up for and giving you permission to email. yeah. That’s one thing that I would do, like right away, because those customers are going to be, like we said, the other one, the giveaway people, we haven’t converted them yet, maybe, but the customers, we’ve converted them, they’re going to be even better to convert later.

Scott Voelker 00:21:48  Right. So we want to try to capture. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:21:50  Yeah I love that. And I think you hit the nail on the head in terms of Etsy, one of the advantages of being on Etsy is you get the full shipping address, you get their full email address, you get it. All right. And so whereas with Amazon, Amazon’s literally locked everything down, you’re lucky to see just the customer name and the order ID at this point, right. But on Etsy that’s truly where you could easily maybe start with your list, right. And start with an active buyers list and be able to speak directly to them. So Scott, I’m curious then it sounds like this. This email is kind of like the most powerful tool you have in your brands. Is that correct?

Scott Voelker 00:22:21  Yeah, it’s the first thing that I do, you know what I mean? Like, and I talked to you a little bit again pre-interview. You know, my son and I are starting a little project and it’s teaching people video.

Scott Voelker 00:22:29  It’s teaching people how to use YouTube and just build audiences and things like that. It’s something I’m really excited about. I already start to build a list, like we have like 2600 subscribers, on our YouTube channel, which we started about eight weeks or, yeah, eight weeks ago, and which is going really good, but I started building an email list like it started. Oh, how would you.

Josh Hadley 00:22:43  Build that email list?

Scott Voelker 00:22:44  Yeah. Good. Good question. So what I did was we’re talking a lot on that channel about like, okay, the number one thing is on YouTube is you need a great title. Okay. So when you’re having a good title, it’s a good hook, right? It’s curiosity. It’s giving someone like, you know, five ways to, you know, do whatever. Get more sales on Amazon or five things to avoid that could hurt your Amazon sales. Right. Like all those things. And that’s like a struggle for a lot of people. So what I did is I created a little swipe file of ten of my best titles that I’ve created on brand creators, my channel that’s got just about 100,000 subscribers.

Scott Voelker 00:23:11  And I took those and I made templates out of them. And so then when I’m talking now on video on, I’m like, you know, titles are your biggest thing that you got to stay, you know, you got to make sure you have the great titles. And actually if you want, I’ve got ten that I created his templates if you want them just in the comments hooks, just put hooks in the in the comments and I’ll send you a copy. And then what I do is I have basically you can do it rate and vid IQ. I basically then just take a link to my landing page and I send it to those people. and then from there they click on it, they go on over and they, you know, sign up to get the swipe file of the top ten titles. Right? That’s my first thing. And it took me like five minutes to put the swipe file together. And then it took me probably 15 minutes to put the landing page together. But I’m already collecting emails.

Scott Voelker 00:23:46  I’m getting new emails every single day from a small channel. But that’s it’s always for me, starting there, because I know that right there, that will be the thing that I can use to communicate with people on a regular basis. I don’t have to worry about an algorithm. It’s like it’s there, you know?

Josh Hadley 00:23:57  Yeah, I love that. That’s brilliant Scott, love that strategy. Yeah. It’s awesome. so my question would be this. Let’s go back to an e-commerce brand. What types of emails are you sending to these people? So once they join let’s say they come in, they want to do the giveaway thing, right? Like, is it just like, giveaways on repeat or are you trying to, like, tell like a brand story? Like what are like some of, like the email cadence that you have to, like, indoctrinate people to your brand? Yeah.

Scott Voelker 00:24:21  And it’s, it’s like so a lot of people, they want to build like this long indoctrination sequence and stuff like I used to do that stuff.

Scott Voelker 00:24:26  And I’m just like, I don’t I don’t like that anymore. I want it to be more natural. So basically what you do is I might do like a mini one, like a three, like a three email sequence. It’s like, here’s who we are. You know, here’s a little bit about the backstory of the brand, right? and then even in that one, you might be like, you know, head on over to our shop and, you know, see some of our stuff. Right. It might just be like that. But generally what it’s going to be is if we’re approaching like a holiday, right? Like we’re entering Q4, we’re going to be, you know, right now, like, again, time of this October ish, like, so we’re like, okay, what are we into? Well, Halloween’s coming up. So we’re probably going to start talking about Halloween stuff probably already did probably in September. But then you got Thanksgiving coming up and then you’ve got, you know, Black Friday coming up in Cyber Monday and Christmas and all that stuff.

Scott Voelker 00:25:02  So whenever we’re doing this, like right now, my wife is creating products because it’s so much easier creating product for print on demand. All you gotta do is create your design and then put it on whatever product you want. But it might be like, and I write a lot of emails for her stuff, and it might just be like, hey, you know, it’s Lisa. You know, we you know, I was working all weekend on this brand new design. I’m super excited about it. you know, one one way that I always de-stress is just go and create, because that’s what I love to do. I think you guys will love it if you want to see it. Here it is. Have a great weekend. Talk to you later. Like that’s it. Like that’s the email. It’s just talking about that stuff or hey, I’m doing an exclusive, product release for Halloween, right? It’s going to be on this date, so keep an eye on your inbox. I’ll just tease it a little bit and then boom, the day it comes.

Scott Voelker 00:25:41  The big thing is for me with email and this is where people screw up, is they’re not sending enough email. And then when they do send email, it’s only about sales, right? Yeah. I like to sprinkle in like like even in in Amazon. If you’re launching a new product, let people know about the product, let people see shots from the factory that you haven’t received yet, of the new of the new product that you’re creating. have them help you pick out things in the, you know, have them help you pick out the box color that it’s going to be, or you know what I mean? Like stuff like that. I think the more that you can make them part of the behind the scenes stuff, it’s going to allow them to buy into the brand more. And also it keeps you front of mind without you feeling like, I got to say, like, here’s a sale I’m running. Now, I’m not opposed to sales. I’m big on sales. Another mistake that people make with sales is they don’t email enough.

Scott Voelker 00:26:21  They’re either. And they don’t let people know about the sale. So what I mean is like, someone will be like, I want to do a flash sale for the weekend, and they send one email about the flash that it’s like you want to start a middle and an end, and you’re going to probably get bulk of your sales at the end. So for me, it’s always start with, hey, we’re doing this special weekend sale because it’s my birthday, right? That’s it. That’s that’s it. So I wanted to celebrate with you guys. So I decided to discount some some of our stuff here. Go check it out. The sale will be through the weekend or maybe on Saturday. You set that out Friday. On Saturday you say, hey, I sent you an email yesterday about what we’re doing here and the reason why I’m doing it is this, this and this. I just want to remind you, just in case you missed it, that’s it. And then the last day, I usually send 2 to 3 emails morning, afternoon and night.

Scott Voelker 00:27:00  And to a lot of people that’s like, oh my gosh, that’s so many emails. I’ll give you a story. I shared this. We actually did a lot, but I kind of cut down on it. But I was doing some, consulting, and I had this one, company, this lady, her and her brother ran it, and he ran. It was a t shirt shop. So he did all the printing and she did all the designing. And it wasn’t on Etsy. It was just on Shopify. And, she came to me and she had a list of about 25,000 people. And she was like, yeah, I emailed like maybe once a month or whenever, you know, it’s like whenever. And I’m like, all right, let’s put this campaign in there and let’s see what happens. And we did exactly what we just said. We ran it for five days though. So we did a whole five day sequence. And mind you, these t shirts were about 15 to $25 somewhere in that range.

Scott Voelker 00:27:39  We sent out six emails and I think her number, if my memory serves me correctly, I think the emails generated about $19,000 from just those five days and text messaging did another, I think 5 or 6 just for messaging. So when I say that putting something in play, that’s a deadline, I think that’s the big thing that we got to remember is the deadline is what gets people to buy. So awareness, hey, we’re doing this thing reminders and then deadline. And we just again I bolted it into hers. We tested it on like four other people that we were working with at the time. And I think she was our, our superstar, like did like 30 grand. And then we had a couple other people that did like five grand. Another person did like ten grand, actually 13 grand. so and that was all just through emails and kind of bolting the same sequence into their business.

Josh Hadley 00:28:26  Scott, I love this. This is brilliant. Brilliant. I love these email strategies. what else would you want to convey to these Amazon brand owners to really build that raving fan base that we haven’t yet touched on?

Scott Voelker 00:28:37  Well, it depends on what you’re selling, but I would say also YouTube’s a big opportunity right now.

Scott Voelker 00:28:41  It’s a massive opportunity. I’m going all in on YouTube. I’ve been on YouTube for a long time, but I got serious about 18 months ago and that was when I and for all of you that are listening that might remember the podcast, the amazing Seller that was the original name, then I changed it to Rock Your Brand, because I didn’t want to be just Amazon focused. but that channel about 18 months ago, I think we were at like 22, 25,000 subscribers. And then I pivoted to the Etsy side and I went all in on YouTube and, we’ve gained just about 75,000 subscribers in 18 months. Now, the reason why is, again, focused, you know, we’re putting out good content and all that stuff. but it’s also because the YouTube platform has changed. It’s not just search based, like people think it’s just like how to tie a Western Union, like whatever, right? Like it’s like whatever the not so, you know, how to adjust your mixer for podcasting.

Scott Voelker 00:29:28  Like it’s. Yes, that stuff is still there, but it’s more now on a browse. So if you’re your product let’s take gardening right. If you’re someone that sells seeds because that company on Etsy is crushing it. If you did little videos on seeds and maybe you show like 19 days of growing these seeds or something, like you’re going to bring awareness to your seed company. So to me, like, and it’s organic, you’re not paying for this. Right. So I would say if you can use YouTube, do one video a week, That’s all you can do. And a lot of the stuff now is like less editing is doing better. Like, I did a test the other day on the channel that we’re starting from scratch here, and I did it literally just using an Osmo six, which is new. It’s like a handheld little device, right, that holds your phone for a selfie. I have a DJI mic right on my right on my chest here and my iPhone 15, and I literally filmed myself.

Scott Voelker 00:30:19  I was in Puerto Rico with my wife celebrating our 30th anniversary, and I’m walking and I’m just sharing, and that video is taken off right now. I think it’s only two days old and it’s got like 4200 views on it. Right. And the reason why is my thought anyway, is because so many people are tired of the flashy pop ins and, you know, you got all of this editing stuff done and it’s just it’s human again. Right? It’s like it’s just someone talk and share and advice. It’s in a nice area, like whatever, it’s good scenery. That’s good too. But like that video I did, no editing. I literally shot it on the beach. My wife was getting ready for dinner. I uploaded it, created a thumbnail 4200 views, right? Like and it’s still growing. Like I think we’re getting about 60 views an hour right now in that video and it’s just cranking. Love that. So I would say YouTube, like anybody that’s on Amazon that you have a brand that you that you have products that lend itself to either showing people how to do something, but also just interesting things about your niche.

Scott Voelker 00:31:07  If it’s fishing, let’s say you sell a lot of, you know, fishing lures or tackle boxes or something. Fishing videos of people catching big fish, right? Like who doesn’t want to see someone grabbing a fish out of there and putting it in the net and all that stuff, right? so I think there’s a huge play there for brands to tap into the YouTube side of things.

Josh Hadley 00:31:23  Yeah, no, I completely agree. I think especially YouTube shorts, YouTube shorts are getting a lot of traction right now in order to help build your audience there on YouTube, similar to TikTok. So I think doubling down on your content strategy. The nice part is if you create 62nd videos, they can go on TikTok and then they can go on YouTube shorts. And both of those platforms I think are hungry and willing to help you, like send your video viral right and push it further compared to the, Facebook and Instagram still kind of seem to be stuck in their ways of pay to play at this time.

Josh Hadley 00:31:52  Yeah, I think you’ve got YouTube shorts and TikTok, which, you know, the sun is still shining there. So for sure I love those strategies. Scott. Any other tools or other recommendations to build a raving fan base? You talked about YouTube, talked about building an email list through giveaways. Anything else?

Scott Voelker 00:32:07  Yeah, I mean, those are the main two. And I would actually do it in, in the order of like, yes, I would do the giveaways, I’d start building that, but I would then randomly do the YouTube thing, but I would be building the email list off of YouTube too, so you know what I mean. Like that would be my channels. The other thing is, it’s like, and I don’t think people realize the power in doing what’s not scalable. And what I mean by that is getting in the DMs, messaging people commenting on like, so when people are commenting now, it’s harder to do on my brand creator’s channel because I’m getting a lot of comments over there on the other channel.

Scott Voelker 00:32:36  It’s manageable. And while you’re new and while you’re growing and you can do it, getting in those comments and letting people know they’re being heard is huge for building loyalty, for letting people know that this brand is actually there listening. So I would say start thinking about what you can do that’s not scalable that other people won’t do because it’s not scalable, right? That connection piece to where you’re able to really connect with your audience and know that they’re just one click away from buying something from you. And the more that they see you and show up, they’re probably going to eventually click over and buy something or tell someone. That’s the other thing, like word of mouth. Like people are like, yeah, you know, word of mouth. It’s so slow. It’s old fashioned. It works. I mean, I know myself, I’m like, go over to a friend’s house. I’m like, oh, who did the painting here? They did a great job. Oh, that’s John, you know Smith, the painting.

Scott Voelker 00:33:21  You know, he does a great job. He does all the houses in this community. I’m like, give me his number. Sold. Right. It’s like a review on steroids. Yeah. Right. So I would say do the things that are unscalable if you can. You bought those three together. I think you, you got a really good little system process to start building a raving audience. That’ll buy your stuff.

Josh Hadley 00:33:38  Scott I love that, I love that. So I think we’ll wrap things up right here. And I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from every episode. So I’m going to kind of regurgitate what you just talked about. Action item number one is to build an email list. And Scott, here’s one thing I didn’t ask you. What’s your email platform of choice? Software tool.

Scott Voelker 00:33:55  Okay. If you’re using it for a platform like Etsy, I use it to email. if you’re not on Etsy. And the reason why I’m saying that is because if people are listening, they are on Etsy, you would want to use that one because it’s integrated.

Scott Voelker 00:34:08  but other than that, my email of choice, again, it’s going to depend on what your goals are. ConvertKit is really good. I’ve used them for years. I also use Kajabi email now, so I don’t think you can go wrong. You have to kind of get one that suits what your goals are. but those are the three that I would say I would recommend.

Josh Hadley 00:34:28  Awesome. And we’ve actually been experimenting with beehiiv as well, with our own brand as well as, klaviyo. So those are some additional recommendations for people to take a look into. So going back, action item number one is to build that email list. All right. And so Scott’s strategy that he shared, which I think you guys can put together like he mentioned within less than an hour, you can put together, grab your top three best selling products, run it as a bundle, tell people on using King Sumo you can use that giveaway tool. Okay, create that image. Run Facebook ads, Instagram ads.

Josh Hadley 00:34:58  You could even do TikTok ads to drive to that landing page. Have people subscribe, and then over 14 days you’re following up with them, maybe giving them some indoctrination about your brand. Yeah. And then at the end, you know, somebody gets the winner, but then the other people get a 25% off coupon. You’re recommending sending them to the platform, whether it’s Etsy or Amazon or Walmart or whatever, you’re wanting to kind of get that flywheel moving on, send them to that platform and generate some sales from that. And then you do that, rinse and repeat. So that’s action item number one. Action item number two is to create a, you know, a YouTube account, create YouTube videos, ideally shorts that you could do on TikTok as well as YouTube and do demonstrator videos. Right? Even if you’re selling, you know, fishing equipment. Right? And you’re like, I don’t know how many people want to sit there and look at my fishing equipment, but you’re probably out there fishing, right? So like, do videos while you’re out there fishing and just kind of like telling your life story, right? You can even show, hey, this is how we’re designing our next new product or whatever it is just to build that, that raving fan base.

Josh Hadley 00:35:56  And who knows, you never know the video that’s going to go viral and that’s going to explode your list. And to double down on that, you recommend saying, hey, make sure you have a lead capture within that. So maybe it’s the same thing. It’s like, hey guys, every month we do one big giveaway, you know, go here, enter your email address so that you’re getting people off of the, you know, the YouTubes and the TikToks as well to come there and join your email list. And then last but not least, I love the third strategy and action item. Here is what you talked about in doing things that aren’t scalable. So when you’re first getting YouTube or TikTok or even your email list off the ground, you should be the one replying to all the comments and actually communicating with the customers. I think this helps in two ways. Number one, it’s going to be a better experience for your audience, and they’re going to feel more love reciprocation so that they will then spread the word, you know? But secondly, you as the business owner, will have a much better understanding of who your audience is, what their pain points are, and how you can serve them better.

Josh Hadley 00:36:51  time and time again, I love to, you know, at least once a quarter dive in and do my own customer service, even though I’ve got people on my team that do that on a full time basis going in and actually seeing, oh, wow, this is what people are talking about is one of the most insightful things you can do for your brand. So sometimes doing the unscalable things will lead to greater returns. Scott, is there anything else that you think I missed that we failed to mention here?

Scott Voelker 00:37:12  No, I think you covered it. I think those are all really, really good. And, Yeah, it’s definitely what I do and what I stand by. And it’s again, learning these skills. That’s why I look at it too. It is like learning the skills that you can take and then apply to your next business if you start one. Right. Like that’s what I’ve been doing for the last 20 years, all the way back to the brick and mortar photography studio to going digital.

Scott Voelker 00:37:28  And then, you know, everything else here that’s happened is from building these skills and, and applying them. So yeah, those are all right.

Josh Hadley 00:37:34  They’re great. Scott. My favorite part of the podcast here. My favorite three questions that I asked each guest. So number one what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read and why?

Scott Voelker 00:37:44  There’s a lot of great books out there. And I would say the compound effect, that would be the one because it talks a lot about. And again, Tony Robbins has talked about this for years. It’s like doing those small little things consistently. and, and just how they compound on themselves over time. But in the beginning it’s like they’re small. So how are they going to amount to something big? And to me it just creates consistency. That’s, you know, going to allow you to get those results. I’ll add one more though. And the other one would be tiny habits. Tiny habits. If you like atomic habits, that’s a big Bible of a book, tiny Habits smaller.

Scott Voelker 00:38:16  But that has helped me more than the atomic habits because it’s so achievable. And just to give you an idea of how that would work. So like he talks about bolting something onto your day like something that you already do. So most people are brushing their teeth every day. So when I brush my teeth in the morning, I sit on my counter. I do 50 push ups, not on the counter, but leaning up against the counter. I do 50 push ups, so that’s done for the day. I already got 50 push ups in for the day, so if you can bolt those things on, it just allows you to be able to do those things without really thinking about doing those things. So that’s a really good book as well.

Josh Hadley 00:38:46  I haven’t heard of Tiny Habits, but I’ve got that. I like that idea. So Atomic Habits is a great book, but it’s a book and you’re like, okay, where do I begin? Yeah. Love that. Yeah. All right.

Josh Hadley 00:38:55  Scott, question number two. What is your favorite AI tool?

Scott Voelker 00:38:59  I know you asked me that earlier to kind of think about it, and I’m just trying to think to myself, I guess my favorite AI tool right now, I mean, other than like ChatGPT, I mean, because ChatGPT, you know, I mean, that’s pretty much, you know, the standard now, have you ever heard of opus clips?

Josh Hadley 00:39:17  yeah, like Opus Pro. That does like the little create, like, viral videos from longform videos.

Scott Voelker 00:39:22  So I would say if I would, yeah, I would say that’s one that you can take, like even your podcast. Throw it in there, it’ll break it down and it’ll kind of find those little nuggets. You still got to go through it. You still got to kind of tweak it. but I would say it’s pretty. That’s a pretty cool tool if you want to do like short form content like that from a longer form. so I would say opus. I don’t use it much anymore.

Scott Voelker 00:39:40  but I did use it for a time and it was pretty slick.

Josh Hadley 00:39:44  Awesome. Great recommendation. All right, last but not least, Scott, who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that other people should be following and why?

Scott Voelker 00:39:52  There’s two they’re good friends of mine now. There is Steve Chou from My Wife Quit Her Job. and then there is a Mike Jackness, from Ecom crew. So both of those guys are my my, I feel like there are a couple of brothers to me. They’re they’re really awesome. We’ve hung out. We’ve mastermind. I’ve spoken at Steve’s event many times. but they’re just good people. And they do really, really good in the ecommerce world. and I know Jackie has sold a couple of brands. He was one guy that was telling me, though. He had $1 million in inventory and he had a tough time sleeping at night, but, Yeah, but he’s a smart guy. Steve’s a smart guy. They’ve been added a long time.

Scott Voelker 00:40:24  So those guys I really respect are human beings as well. Like, they’re good guys. And, if there was anyone that I would recommend even following for e-commerce, you know, in 2024 and beyond, it would be those two.

Josh Hadley 00:40:36  Those are great, great guys. They are also on my podcast list as well. So nice. got some good names there. Scott. This has been a lot of fun. If people want to follow you, they want to learn more. follow your journey a little bit more. Where can people reach out and follow along?

Scott Voelker 00:40:48  Yeah, I’ve actually got two. So brand creators.com if you just go there, that’s our website. You can go there. YouTube if you go there and search for and creators. But I would actually steer you if you’re interested in the video thing. my, my new little project that I’m doing with my son, my 26 year old son, who does some of my editing for the brand creator’s channel. we’re doing a channel called Live Video School, and it’s all about video.

Scott Voelker 00:41:09  It’s all about live video, but it’s also about just getting your video live. so I would say over on YouTube, go to live Video School and check us out and you can see a new channel that started eight weeks ago and how we’re growing it.

Josh Hadley 00:41:22  Super exciting. Well, we’ll be following you along, Scott, as you continue to pivot into the next venture. And, you know, you and I were talking that we’ll never retire. It’s always going to be the next thing up. And so I look forward to continuing to follow you in your journey as well. But thanks for your time and coming on the show today.

Scott Voelker 00:41:37  Yeah. Josh, thank you so much. This was a lot of fun and good luck to you as well.