In this episode, the host interviews Howard Thai, a former top 50 Amazon seller and founder of the Elite Seller Society mastermind. Howard discusses how his mastermind group helps sellers solve problems, access mentorship, and gain valuable resources. He shares insights on black hat tactics in the Amazon marketplace and stresses the importance of understanding these to protect your business. Howard advises sellers to fully optimize their listings, monitor for unauthorized changes, and innovate through unique product bundles to stand out and succeed on Amazon.

Chapters:

Introduction to Howard Thai and His Amazon Journey (00:00:00)
Host introduces Howard Thai, his Amazon success, and his background in educating Chinese sellers.

Overview of the Elite Seller Society Mastermind (00:01:19)
Howard explains the purpose, benefits, and unique resources of his mastermind group for Amazon sellers.

Value of Mastermind Groups and Continuous Learning (00:03:16)
Howard discusses attending other masterminds, the investment involved, and the importance of learning from top-tier groups.

Black Hat Tactics: Stigma and Seller Concerns (00:04:22)
Host and Howard address the stigma around Chinese sellers and black hat tactics on Amazon.

Understanding and Defending Against Black Hat Tactics (00:04:52)
Howard explains why sellers must understand black hat tactics to protect themselves and their listings.

Current Black Hat Tactics and Amazon’s Response (00:06:17)
Howard lists active black hat tactics, notes their decline, and praises Amazon’s efforts to protect sellers.

Proactive Listing Protection Strategies (00:08:32)
Howard details steps for sellers to proactively secure their listings, including team building and monitoring.

Filling Out All Listing Fields for Security and Visibility (00:09:43)
Howard explains the importance of completing all Amazon listing fields to prevent manipulation and improve searchability.

Leveraging Filters and Searchability on Amazon (00:11:41)
Howard highlights how properly filled fields affect product visibility in Amazon’s filters and search results.

Key Takeaways and Actionable Advice (00:12:52)
Host summarizes three main takeaways: innovate with bundles, optimize listings, and understand black hat tactics for defense.

Closing Remarks and Resources (00:15:59)
Host thanks Howard, shares his website, and encourages listeners to follow his work and mastermind events.

Links and Mentions:

Elite Seller Society
Shopify
Facebook
Amazon Seller Central

Transcript:

Josh 00:00:00  Without further ado, I am excited to introduce to you Howard Thai. Howard is a former top 50 seller on all of Amazon. And his origin story as a seller is an epic itself. Between selling thousands of units of hoverboards daily and battling with Amazon Incorporated on Amazon, Apple actually on Amazon. The story of his humble beginnings is a story too long to tell. He began his journey as an educator by single handedly spearheading the training of Chinese sellers on Amazon. The insights that Howard provided and the tools he developed led to what many in the United States consider the Chinese takeover of Amazon. He has saved, started, scaled and sold hundreds of businesses via Amazon and other virtual platforms. And he’s done it time and time again. So welcome to the podcast, Howard. Howard, I think this is a good time to kind of talk about your mastermind. You do something with the elite seller society and you have a mastermind big, you know, kind of event that you do once a year, I believe.

Josh 00:01:05  this is something that I’ve been very interested and I keep asking you about. I think every time I talk to you, I’m like, hey, do you have the dates? And do you know where you’re going yet? So tell us more about that. And what is it all about? What content are you sharing?

Howard 00:01:19  So the elite level of society is like, a mastermind that I have created. it’s everyone that’s been in our event, our mastermind events that gets, gets added into and, we kind of go in and help each other within our group, like how to solve problems, as well as, there’s like, something that we can offer our group through, like, other mentorships or through, like, special, like things. I’m working on getting our, all our membership members. Members, that own, their own, account rep So that they don’t have to go through the SAS program or SAS program. That really sucks. So they’re getting like really good quality. employees and Amazon being able to support them.

Howard 00:02:13  So I’m talking to Amazon on that on how we can actually make that work for our employees. So that’s just something cool that I’m working with or things that things that are always open when you’re in the mastermind. I like like you said, my shift change. Like you never you’re in a box all the time. For most of the people that aren’t in, in these mastermind I’m talking about, like, if you’re even in these podcasts or in Facebook groups, you’ll never get the same kind of, like information that you really could get on those different platforms than if it was in Bessemer. You probably know that, Josh. so, like, I’m just sitting there and learning and like, oh, there is this thing that out there to doing this stuff, you know, I’m not ready yet for it, but I know it’s out there exists, so I need to do it. Like, for example, like, digital marketing, you know, I need to do some marketing, but I went to, I went to, custom conversion.

Howard 00:03:16  I went to, a lot of, Carrie’s events, like the weird events, you know, three and and even I’m thinking about getting into those two masterminds, right? One from all inside one site and also from Perry site, you know, so I’m trying to I’m looking into that. They’re not cheap. They’re like maybe 25,000 a year. but, yes, it’s from the world, right?

Josh 00:03:39  So yeah, I know that. That’s great. And I agree with your statement there, Howard, in terms of, you know, the deeper tactics, if you want to go deep with stuff, you need to start reaching out and joining some of those mastermind groups. So I think it’s going to take your learning to the next level. Now, Howard, you’ve educated a lot of Chinese sellers, right? And I think there’s a negative stigma in the marketplace where it’s like, oh, the Chinese sellers, they just want to implement black hat tactics, and that’s who’s always attacking me. you know, prior to this conversation, you and I discussed and you’re like, you, you see kind of the black hat, black hat tactics kind of, you know, lessening to some extent or or another.

Josh 00:04:22  But from your experience, you are so well versed on Amazon. I know a lot of sellers are fearful when it comes to black hat tactics, but would you mind kind of educating our audience in regards to what are the active black hat tactics that you see being implemented right now, and what are ways that sellers can do to protect themselves in advance, as well as what do you do if you do have a black hat tactic that actually affects you and attacks your listing?

Howard 00:04:52  People think that, you know, like this stigma like, hey, you know, black hat and you do black hat, right? But the reality is, if a person has been in this industry for so long, they would need to know how to protect themselves. What kind of backpack techniques? Like what you’re asking. Right. so, like, a computer security guy, right? Who does? Computer security? Needs to know how people are coming in and attacking the system. So if you’re like a programmer and you’re trying to do, like, become like, virus scanners or something that you don’t know the what the other parties are doing, there’s no way you can you can you can even create a, a defense campaign, you know, or a defense project to help alleviate those kind of pain points.

Howard 00:05:39  So you have to know this blackhat stuff. If you don’t know it, you know, oh, this guy or this, the Chinese or the old guys, all these black cats or those all these black cats, they must be doing it, you know, that’s so like, that’s one of the, like the things that I really think that these people have some kind of, not it’s not, it’s not. Has it been the mind more. You know, you have to know all this stuff. So going back to your question is, what was it again? I’m sorry. What was up? Let’s go.

Josh 00:06:09  Let’s go. Let’s go. Step by step here. Tell us, what are some of the active blackhat tactics that you see going on in the marketplace right now out there?

Howard 00:06:17  You know, people are training images within sub nodes. They’re attacking you. They’re trying to get a like an authentic claims. They’re trying to say that this is defective giving you reviews. But these are getting less and less because it’s getting harder and harder to do, like giving you negative reviews after a certain one of the Amazon scans the system and it’s all gone.

Howard 00:06:39  But you know, they still tried to do it, but, yeah. So there’s a lot of things that, that Amazon is doing a great job at. They’re actually, helping and protecting, the sellers more and more. maybe it’s not as fast as we want it to be, but they are doing it. And, you know, they’re big company and stuff like that. But like, I, I really like how they’re helping, helping helping the, the seller community with that. So this is something that I really like. Because if you a black hat is only very I would say something that you don’t want to do because it’s it doesn’t it doesn’t help like overall like the market I want. I like to do marketing where we can actually do it within all platforms, not just Amazon but Shopify. So if you know how to do your influencer marketing, your media, buying it, it goes all the way to like Facebook from Facebook driving traffic to your website, Shopify, or to your Amazon to Walmart.

Howard 00:07:36  There are all the the all the things. So you’re learning a trick that’s not just for Amazon. It’s for everything. So, so for Black Hat, it’s only for Amazon, right? And also it’s not it comes and goes and it’s hard. It’s hard to maintain. So I wouldn’t want anyone to try to use it because it’s not really something that is scalable, which is what you’re talking about. How do you scale brands?

Josh 00:08:00  Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And it’s encouraging to hear from your perspective that you do see Amazon, you know, taking some proactive steps to mitigate those. It’s by no means perfect, as everybody would know. But I do agree that, you know, a lot of those loopholes are now more closed than they were in the past. So, Howard, kind of the next question on to that is, what should sellers be doing and how do they proactively prepare or, you know, put up walls to prevent these attacks from happening to them?

Howard 00:08:32  Okay, so first of all, you have to go to a team, right? seven figures.

Howard 00:08:36  You should have enough money, hopefully because you have enough profit margin, like 20%. Hopefully you’ll be able to have some kind of invest into building a great team to be able to look at this, you know, through, through the some of the software out there that alerts you for kind of changes in code changes or other things, but be able to have someone that will be able to monitor that more often and make sure that all your products are Or a secure meaning that you’re listening to all different countries. Of those, with Amazon in there so that no one can insert keywords or. Insert some kind of, image changes into your product. make sure that, you have all your fields, inserted. so maybe it doesn’t see all previous, but a lot of the fields are searchable that you might not know. They’re searchable and viewable. You know, you should go into your category. If you are serious about expanding your Amazon, go into your category and make sure that all your fields are, tested.

Howard 00:09:43  Is this searchable? Which field within this, subcategory, the flat file, which of these are are able to be seen? I used to do like Howard one. Howard two. Howard three. Howard four. you know, with no space and, like, search. Can I see how? One. Howard. Two. Howard. Three. Four. And then I see which one of these fields are open that are viewable or searchable. After I see if any of these are seen on the page. Okay, I know these are marked down. These are actually viewable. And then I go in and I search on the search bar like I would 1 or 2. How do we. Are these searchable for more keywords in there. And you make sure that you know you have a highly, you know, highly, highly accessible and viewable page and things like that. It’s like something you need to do. Yes, it’s a it’s a hassle. But you talk about a particular, sub node. Right.

Howard 00:10:40  It’s worth it. It’s not even that much work for and there’s a lot of benefits coming out of it, even with, more characters that more, more characters that you can put in to be searched.

Josh 00:10:50  Yeah, I think that that’s really interesting. So what you’re saying is like on the back end of Amazon when you’re creating your listing, right? There’s a ton of different fields in there, right. And I think, you know, sellers are like, well these are the minimum requirements to like I gotta get my bullets, my description, my search terms in there. Right? Everything else. And it’s not worth the time. What you’re saying is like Amazon is actually showing some of that content. on the detail page, it’s blank if you leave it blank. But it leaves room for hackers, so to speak, to implement their their black hat tactics on your listing by uploading those bulk files or feed files and, you know, manipulating some of that. So that’s what you’re saying is like, just make sure that all of those fields are filled out and seeing what is searchable on the actual detail page, right? Is that correct?

Howard 00:11:41  Also, the things that you filled out on that page can reflect the search ability, not just the, the search bar, but also on your left hand side.

Howard 00:11:52  You see the filters on when you’re searching for a product. The filters are there, like, you know, you’ll see you’ll see if you put it incorrectly, you’ll get more eyeballs, because when people filter, they will be able to see your product, you know.

Josh 00:12:05  Okay. So you’re also saying like when you’re in your browse category, right. Let’s say you’re you’re looking for a toilet, let’s say is the most recent example because we had to replace some toilets in our house. So I went to Amazon and I was filtering on different sizes of toilets. Right. So is it a 22 inch toilet or is it elongated? Right. Or is it kind of your standard round bowl. Right. Those are your like standard things. But on the left hand side if you’re on desktop there’s those like filters that you can filter by. Right. And if you’re not adding that content in there like, hey, this is an elongated bowl. When a shopper like myself goes in and says, hey, I’m looking for an elongated toilet bowl, like you’re you’re not going to show up, right? Because Amazon is like, well, I have no idea.

Josh 00:12:52  You didn’t fill out this field. All right, Howard, this has been awesome. You’ve shared a lot of advice with us. And so I love to leave the audience with three takeaways, actionable takeaways from each episode. So, Howard, here are the three takeaways that I have noted. Let me know if you think there’s something that I’m missing. Number one, one of the things that differentiated you as a top 50 seller on Amazon is that you were unique in terms of the product opportunities that you sought for. Right. You were one of the first ones to create bundling opportunities. You didn’t just say, hey, look, this guy’s making a lot of money selling. You know, you know, cell phone cases. I’m just going to create another me two product of cell phone cases. Instead, you’re like, hey, here’s the cell phone case. But I’m also seeing a lot of frequent purchases with this HDMI cable. Let’s give it away as like this free add on. And now we’ve completely differentiated ourselves.

Josh 00:13:47  So becoming creative and innovative with your new products that you’re bringing to the market, don’t just look at Amazon and say, hey, this is what the best seller is doing. So that’s what I should create. Instead, say this is what the best seller is doing. What else can I do to beat that guy and make this an even more compelling offer and help the end consumer. If you’re serving the end consumer, you will always win. Action item number two. I would go back to listing optimization. And Howard shared a he rattled off a lot of different things that you can be doing, with your listing optimizations. the standard stuff we’ve already heard about is like, all right, your images, your title, your bullets, your description, a plus content that’s well and good. But Howard also added on some additional information that I think are some easy wins for people to to add on today. If you haven’t introduced bundles, virtual digital bundles for your product, it’s free and it takes up more space on your Amazon listing.

Josh 00:14:49  Make sure that you got your virtual bundle set up. You could do editorials for your product, right? And there’s services that will create those editorials. there’s ways that you can run promotions, right? Getting on the deals page, creating lightning deals, creating coupon codes, getting the strikethrough, pricing, all of these are are great best practices, and you could spend a month focused on each one at a time. But it’s those 1%, you know, incremental improvements that you’re going to make that’s going to make a huge difference. at the end of the day, and anchor is probably one of the best brands to kind of look at on Amazon to say to today, to say, hey, what is a really optimized product listing look like? And how do they make sure that they squeeze out competition to prevent leakage? What you mentioned earlier. And then last but not least, I would say an actionable takeaway is that people need to understand the black hat tactics. Go and understand what what are the black hat tactics? Not for you to go implement them in your own business, but you need to be aware so that you’re not caught off guard.

Josh 00:15:59  And you’re the one who is susceptible to getting attacked. Because a lot of these black hat tactics could actually be prevented. If you’re just a little bit more proactive with your listings, right? I think the analogy was perfect. If you were trying to prevent people from hacking into your website. Right, and you’re a coder or data security specialist, you’re going to be spending your time in a lot of those hacking Facebook groups or hacking Reddit forums or wherever they hang out, because you got to know what they’re discussing so that you can prepare yourself and make sure your defenses are up. Howard, thank you so much for analytics, for everybody’s information. The way you spell it is sig n a l y t I c s that sig nalytics. Okay. And Howard’s also got his own you know, website it’s Howard. Thai Thai is spelled t h a i.com. So go check him out. I’m going to be continuing to follow you, Howard. Look forward to joining your mastermind events and groups there. And so thank you for your time today and looking forward to touching base again in the future with you.

Howard 00:17:10  Thank you for having me.