Ep. #943 - Events for Amazon Sellers

Andrew Morgans 00:00
Hey, what’s up, Hustlers? Welcome back. This is Andrew Morgans, founder of Marknology, here as today’s host of Startup Hustle. We’re going to be talking about events for Amazon sellers. But before we do that, and before I introduce today’s guest, I’d love to give a shout out to today’s sponsor. Today’s episode of Startup Hustle is powered by FullScale.io. Hiring software developers is difficult. Full Scale can help you build a software team quickly and affordably. And has a platform to help you manage that team. Visit FullScale.io for more details. Augustus, welcome to the show.

Augustas Kligys 00:34
Hi, Andrew, it’s nice to be here. Thank you.

Andrew Morgans 00:37
Yeah, well, I know you’re dialing in from Portugal, and it’s late over there. So I really appreciate you getting on the show. I love getting a chance to introduce our listeners. I know we have listeners all over the world. But really introducing our listeners to some amazing partners that are worldwide. And as someone that participated in the Orange Klik event recently, I think in June, I had a great time being part of that event. One of the best virtual events I’ve been a part of. If you guys are on YouTube, you should check it out. You can just type in, of course, for me, Andrew Morgans Orange Klik on YouTube will come up. But there were a lot of great speakers, a lot of great content, and a lot of eyes on the speaking. So, for me, it’s always about balancing. Is this event worth going to? Is this event worth the expense to go as a speaker? And it’s really just about getting eyeballs, you know, on an ear listening to what we’re kind of trying to say, an amazing event. But just before we talk about Amazon events and everything Orange Klik is doing, and even just your overall thoughts on events around the Amazon space, I would love to get acquainted with you a little bit better and let our listeners understand exactly who you are. Take me back to like when you first started. Maybe entrepreneurship or business is something that, you know, within the family. Is it something that you grew up kind of passionate about? How did you find business?

Augustas Kligys 02:05
So at the moment, I’m, like 40, maybe four years old, and I would say like more serious intrapreneurship started six years ago when I started what I’m doing now, the Orange Klik. But before that I was like 15-20 years old, like a digital nomad. I like to travel a lot. It was my passion, especially when I was still studying at university when I was 20 years old. So I would like to study work a bit but also travel, like mostly hitchhiking in Europe and then going to Africa and other countries. And yeah,

Andrew Morgans 02:45
stop, stop there just for a second. Okay, so you might not know this about me. But I grew up in Africa until I was 16. I’m a French Canadian that was, you know, raised in Africa. My parents were missionaries there. What parts of Africa have you been to?

Augustas Kligys 02:58
I was traveling in East Africa from Ethiopia to South Africa by hitchhiking by buses. So it was a nice trip. Yes. It took me like two months and then I lived in South Africa for months.

Andrew Morgans 03:16
I think in my dream world, or like my backup plan ended up in Cape Town, I will retire my family to Cape Town and you know, it’s beautiful there. No, that’s cool. There’s not very many people you know that have spent even a month’s time, much less several months backpacking and taking buses in Africa definitely gives you a perspective of the world. So I relate to that.

Augustas Kligys 03:38
Yes. So for many, many years I was this kind of digital nomad in my mind and borderless you know, I just like to explore different countries. I like to stay in different countries. Then I about 19 years ago I met German lady who is now you know, my wife so her dream was also to travel the world so we traveled together for six years kind of living on the road in a tent in Latin America, I learned Spanish language and so as I say I was like digital nomad almost 20 years ago 15 years ago literally exists.

Andrew Morgans 04:19
Did not even exist whether jobs online you know 15-20 years ago.

Augustas Kligys 04:24
Yes, I was actually a programmer. I was programming websites but at that time they were not like really small laptop one for traveling. And what they did was like a USB stick for the first two gigabyte size and I would have all my files there and I would go to an internet cafe and sit for eight hours. Wow. And I would load from that USB stick all what they need all the programs to program and upload to FTP server. And then at some point, my wife when we were in Chile, she organized they were appeared this first kind have portable laptops called a Seuss e something. So it was really small, like two hands big with like four gigabytes or two gigabytes space. And it was working for me also to program then, of course there was no I could connect to WiFi but there was no really where fine. It was a year like 2008 and 2009 was not yet established. There was a big culture of internet cafes in Latin America when we’re traveling. But this small laptop helped me not to go to an internet cafe, I could just locally install a web server and program and then just bring the, you know, files online.

Andrew Morgans 05:41
I tell you, the kids of today, Gen Z, have no idea what you’re talking about. You know, those early days, like I was, even as a kid in Africa were pretty dangerous where we were. And, you know, I obviously got out and about, but a lot of my time was spent. You know, you’re indoors by curfew. And, you know, you I’ve already done School for the day, and there’s not a lot to do. So we had satellite internet, like in the night late 90s 2001. And I was, as a kid, like just hacking stuff. And like, you know, just doing dos prompts, and like, you know, getting in the backdoor of websites to stream and stuff like that before that. And I can talk to some people now even kind of about some of that process, because I was never a full developer or programmer. But um, they have no idea what I’m talking about, you know, like being able to just make it work, you have these big desktop computers. You know, you build them yourself, and then it’s just a different time back then. So when you said digital nomad like, you know, 20 years ago, I was trying to imagine what that looked like because it’s really only been the last few years where almost the whole world can imagine now working from home or being a nomad, you know, so before that, if you were doing it, you were rare. It was unique, very, very rare to be doing so.

Augustas Kligys 07:04
Yes, yes, it’s, you know, especially like you would not have a computer at that time, which you can use. So if you’re traveling, you need to go to internet cafes. You were talking about 2000-2001. I remember I was in 99. I was there for half a year. I’m originally from Lithuania. And I was studying computer science, it was something new. You know, I started my studies in 96 into something new in computer science. I didn’t know I liked mathematics, but computer science was on the wave. So I joined. And then I got a scholarship for half a year to study at university. It was a college, not University in Denmark. So it was like an exchange program. So for half a year it was cool. And I remember that in that college in Denmark everything was so nice. You couldn’t sit until midnight in this college, you have access unlike in my country, which is more limited. And I would sit. I have nothing to do, just dormitory and college. So I would sit and do something. And you mentioned hacking, I was also trying to hack the passwords of others I know, classmates and emails and email, you know, it’s like name and password is name one.

Andrew Morgans 08:19
Yeah, yeah. Dinner, right.

Augustas Kligys 08:20
And then I was installing some programs on different computers in the computer room. And I could install some software which controls somehow through the network, another computer and I’m in the room like 20 computers. I’m sitting at one computer with a Danish student and another another one. And through my admin control, I opened for them a CD, CD drive. It comes from his boy’s computer box. I’m like I cannot like laughing and then they close for humans really looking as if it was doing such things.

Andrew Morgans 08:58
Nowadays, we’d be in jail. I think I met you from Lithuania or you were just there at the time? No, I’m saying I met an amazing consultant at the last conference. I was an AMZ bee. I don’t know if you know him or not, it’s yeah, I didn’t want to try to say it and mess it up. So thank you. He was very kind. He was very kind. I know it’s a smaller country. So I’m sure it’s a small network around ecommerce as well. Yeah. Okay, so you get the laptop for your wife. What’s her name? Katya. Katya. Alright, so Katya comes back with this ASUS, you know, new laptop and you’re using that to, you know, steal code and travel and you know, Latin America is interesting, because in Congo at the time, one of the best entrepreneurs I’ve ever met, was someone from absolutely zero. His name is Felix colza. And he started finding ways to build wealth. And now he has even sent his kids over to the United States for studies, but with internet cafes, you know, you pay like 10 Congolese francs or something, you know, to use the printer. And I think even calling home back then was $10 a minute, if you’re calling the US from Congo, so couldn’t afford that. So we would email, you know, we put all the emails on a floppy disk and take them home and write more like, you know, and that was common. So I would assume, like, in Latin America it is kind of what you’re talking about, just like these little internet cafes everywhere, no one has a computer at home, but they all kind of use the cafe. So who are you who are making websites for at that time, just freelance whoever.

Augustas Kligys 10:40
Actually, it happened that before we started to travel, like really full time travel with my future wife, I worked at university in Denmark after I finished studies there, I was doing a master’s degree after I finished, you know, four years at my home country, I went for two years to Denmark, for Masters, also computer science. And I worked at university a little bit and I saved some money, my wife saved some money. So at the beginning, we were spending like $500, for two people per month, just traveling in Mexico, because we spend money only for buying food. And we cooked ourselves. We slept for free and traveled. Transportation was for free, because we checked. And we had some funds for this kind of activity. But then my friend from Denmark, another Lithuanian student, says, Oh, I have an idea. And I need to program some Card websites about cards. And we ended up making affiliate websites with the cards for American people to like, somehow in America, it’s not not common in Europe. But at that time, it was 2006 Seven, in the United States, it was like a big affiliate business where you create a website presenting different bank cards. And if somebody clicks and chooses and signs up, you know, you get like 50 bucks affiliate. So it was his idea. And he’s asked me to program we ended up working like for many, many years, like seven years. So I was programming these kinds of websites to get some passive income. I didn’t know about passive income. I was like, at some point, I was really fed up with this programming. And they told my friend, they said, Oh, I’m quitting this project. But it literally was like working sometimes for just two days a month, just because we were traveling and when I don’t believe that you can travel and work. And since I did that, I think it’s impossible. Like if you can arrive in a country and stay for three months, rent an apartment, and then you will work and explore, neighborhood, but it’s impossible to move actively and to work. So even for my team sometimes if I see that somebody’s applying for a job to my company now. And the traveling like I don’t want such person person who is like digital nomad, because it’s hard to focus when traveling.

Andrew Morgans 13:08
Yeah, I would agree. I think you’re right, like, you know, I build working into my travel, like into my, you know, meaning I’ll play in it. But times have changed a little bit one, you can go to a hotspot from anywhere, like so if you’re on a train or you’re on a plane, even if you can work now I can use these downtimes to work whenever I wasn’t used to before. But the focus part is very real. And I would say that, for me, it’s a it depends on what I’m doing when I arrived there, okay, if I’m touring museums and parks, and you know, the Christmas markets in Germany or things like that, where it’s like, almost like tour touristy things or cultural things, I can actually build in work pretty well. Okay, because it doesn’t exhaust me. It’s not like an event. It’s like, it’s a little bit of pleasure, come home and work. Okay, like, you know, you build it in, if I’m doing like music shows, or anything that involves like, let’s say alcohol, right? Or something with late night, or it just doesn’t work because you’re already off on your time. And then you’re like, you know, you’ve got a, you’ve got like a little bit of distraction, or like, it’s a bigger commitment than just popping out to do this or see this tourist thing. And you have to build in. It’s almost like building the travel days. Yeah. So if you can get there in time. So for me, it’s like traveling. The time that you travel is important if I can arrive here before Monday, if I can arrive here by you know, because when are people on calls and podcasts and things like that, so it definitely has to be planned. And I hope you know, I hope me and my sister will travel a lot together. Eventually we write an e-book just like you know, tips and things we’ve learned along the way but I will say that advancing technology has helped a lot. You know, even in Thailand and we had a hotspot that I could get to, you know, I wouldn’t be doing podcasts but I could answer all of my emails, do whatever I needed to do out in the middle of the jungle. So I know it’s changing. But also that focus thing is very, very real. So unless you’re trying to get inspiration, it’s not a good thing.

Augustas Kligys 15:19
Yeah, I remember we were living my life in Malaysia. And we were renting a house. Of course, there was no Internet, just electricity. And we didn’t have any kind of SIM cards at that time, SIM cards to have mobile data. And we were receiving some friends one week, and some travelers came from Russia, some friends, a couple and Russian guys, they arrived, like by taxi in the midnight to our house to sleep. And they say he says, Oh, do you like Wi-Fi? Or something? I said, No. So the next Wi Fi is the internet cafe 24 hours a day, but it’s two kilometers away. Like you can walk out half an hour to eat at night. You just arrived maybe by airplane from Russia to Malaysia, and is it sorry, and he says like, oh, tomorrow morning I have to deliver and it’s a project for some Russian ministry. Or something like, oh, well, we have the internet and I don’t know, like, I think he somehow figured out something. But it was so unusual still to have the SIM cards and, and no internet. And yeah, no internet is like you and might even my dad would get along. I think he likes going simple and minimal, you know, you just get used to it.

Andrew Morgans 16:31
And then everything else feels extra. Okay, so, so you’re traveling the world. I mean, literally even in the first 15 minutes of this, I think you’ve mentioned like, you know, 15 countries already. How did you go from kind of that nomadic you know, digital nomad, creating sites, affiliate sites, what was the next step?

Augustas Kligys 17:00
We actually, I think programming was helping us to survive as a family. Our child is now 10 years old. So you know, the baby was born. So I was supportive in the first years of when the child was born. We still settled down at some point before the child was born. So we kind of were tired of this, it’s very stressful. It’s kind of life traveling, because you have to get used to the new place and set up your system, you know, daily system. So yeah, we were literally tired of these seven or more years of this kind of normal thing. And we settled down first in Germany. And then, we lived there at the beginning. But I supported my family by more serious freelance programming, I quit the previous passive income job with affiliate sites at that time. Later, I realized it was passive income, I just need to maybe figure out how I can stay in that. But I like, announce myself. I want to quit just because I was really not enjoying the programming. Yeah, but later, I continued programming just because this was the thing which can bring us bread to the house. And, at the same time, I was always exploring, like watching webinars and knowing what else people do on the internet. I started to learn a little about these affiliate sites. But at some point, I learned about Amazon FBA, it was so exciting. It was like after maybe two, three years of like, looking for something else. I really was excited about Amazon FBA, it was seven years ago. But the problem was that I didn’t really have the money to invest. I could invest like $500 or 1000 maximum. And if I learned that, it’s really impossible, like it’s not worth it, but I was following you know, all the Facebook groups especially it was seven years ago. And now we’re seeing that people are talking a lot about Amazon Europe, but nobody’s talking from like influencers, so educators. And at the same time during that year, when I was interested in Amazon, I learned about another business model: virtual summits. So you know, when I saw so many virtual summits happening seven or 10 years ago, at that time, it was still called maybe telesummit before like video summits, it was telesummit like you will listen to audio recordings, and they say, yeah, you just create a virtual Summit. It’s for free and you make money. I didn’t get how you can make money. But apparently you are making money by selling recordings of these free virtual summits, which are limited to listening for free. And I decided all right, I will combine this I will do a virtual summit about Amazon eBay in Europe, and I did in 2006 in September, out of nowhere, like I jumped into this space, I contacted like 616 Sorry, six years Okay. And yeah, I was the first to create a virtual summit in Amazon like a private label space. There were maybe e-commerce summits, but not for Amazon sellers, specifically. So I was doing this and I got like, in kind of after that first summit, I was I started to get relationships with like many calls from Helium 10, Kevin King, you know, approached me friends, Jordan from Selex, like all these kinds of big companies now, the founders, they list, they started to be interested in what I’m doing, and they wanted to be on my next show. And, yeah, I started to produce like before COVID, I think I made like six virtual summits. And I was already tired of this, I wanted something new. So, in 2019, we did like the first physical event, which was called European seller conference in Prague, and we managed to do it in 19, and 2020. In the middle of the march in 2020, was the second European seller conference. But during that year, like when I started with a press conference until COVID, closed down all the events, we did five events in four countries, one in Fania, one in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and one in Israel. So it was really envisioning Orange Klik as an events company. So I wanted to do 20 events in 2021. And, of course, this passion was killed by the big sea. And then we continued concentrating on the YouTube channel. And now we’re a little bit picking up on virtual summits. And we did one more in person event in June as well in Portugal, this year, and probably will do few in person events next year. But by now we’ve Yeah, basically, at Orange Klik, we produce a lot of videos, so about three videos a week, on our YouTube channel. Wow, that’s a lot. And since for the last six years, in the six years, we did I think 10 virtual summits and six physical events. I think this is our uniqueness in terms of events, like in the industry, there is no other kind of influence on our company, which would focus on doing multiple events and trying different things. Because most of the time, it’s somebody, maybe an agency doing an event to kind of attract brand awareness of the agency, they will do this annual event a maximum of two times a year. And that’s it because event organizing is a completely different business. And it has a lot of different moving parts, and also our YouTube channel, I would say it’s quite unique because it developed from doing a virtual Summit. So we at Orange Klik, we don’t sell on Amazon, and we don’t teach how to sell, but we bring experts, like yourself or you know, so YouTube channel also became like, you know, just, I would say TV station TV channel, where we talk to different experts, which are mostly service providers, and they educate Amazon sellers and get exposure in some way.

Andrew Morgans 23:32
I love it, thank you for giving me a little bit of extra color and background behind the company itself and how it came to be. And it makes a lot of sense how you stand out, you know, the Amazon prosper show, you know, I think was originally founded by at least I know a ton and Chad Rubin, I think there were a couple others, they ended up selling that and going on to do other things. And this last couple of years, you’ve seen a ton of events pop up, some good, some bad, some not so great. You know, but you’re right. A lot of it comes from trying to get brand awareness or trying to get exposure to who you are and what you’re doing. But I am very aware of the work that goes into a well orchestrated and executed event. Virtual or not, it takes a lot of collaborating, you know and a lot of a lot of things moving all at the same time. Whether it’s a wedding or an Amazon event or any number of things I grew up in. I grew up in a religious-like, you know, environment with my parents being missionaries and preachers and stuff. So I went to lots of conferences and things like that. And my parents were just traveling so just like you grew up in that or like you were being a nomad. I was a kid that had to go along as I was the kid that was the Nomad by default. But I got to experience some of the big events you know, some small ones and you. For me at the beginning, it was about meeting other service providers. I’d like to take the show, kind of to talk about the industry right now as it goes to events. You know, I was talking before the show started, like last year, I went to a ton of events, you know, it’s after the pandemic, they opened it up, it seemed like the E commerce community was the first to like jump at events, because we already have less fear than a lot of other people in that. Or maybe not less fear, more courage, I think, because the fear still exists, but more courage to just go do different things. That’s why we’re in E commerce, that’s why we’re entrepreneurs, right? We don’t have to listen to corporations tell us what to do or what not, we get to make our own decisions. And so I felt like the E commerce or Amazon event industry, boom, tons of stuff. And I started getting connected with the industry, meeting other vendors, other service providers. For me, it was never really about getting business from the events, it was about my network, and partnerships and service providers and, and brand awareness, right. But toward the end of 2021, I started feeling just like, you know, I went through 2020, more like, isolated by myself, like working on, you know, for in a bad way, in some way. He’s like, you know, isolated, I’d already been working from home for a very long time. But all of a sudden, I’m exposed to a lot of other people, and not because of the Big C word. But because just energies, you know, like whenever you’re sharing with other people are networking, it’s like you’re sharing energy, and you’re exchanging that with a bunch of people. And I found myself coming back home, just exhausted, you know, physically and emotionally just after having kind of had these strong boundaries from COVID. And then being exposed to tons of people in energy. I was like, wow, I need it, whenever I come home, I have to have energy for my team, and to build the company and to focus on all the things we need to. So this year, I said all that to say this, and this year, I was just more selective, did more virtual events than just the physical events, because I like to travel. So the physical events got me traveling, but I had to say no, and I had to choose more selectively this year, to the events and just try to be, you know, real specific with I’m going to this event, this is my intention for the event. And when I get back, like I’m gonna get to work and work on these things, at least that’s where I’m at. And I think, you know, some of my colleagues are sharing some of the same things, there’s just been an explosion of events. But also like you, in the early days, on YouTube, I saw that there were no influencers, there were no real people talking about brands, or manufacturers or map pricing, or resellers, or how to, you know, essentially elevate your brand on Amazon and these kinds of things. There were only the Guru’s and the coaches, and like the tips and hacks, and you know, I wanted to essentially be very passionate about Amazon. And I wanted to tell people the fixes, I had found the solutions, so to speak, for some of these brand and manufacturing questions. And that’s why I started pushing out content as well. I have since backed off of YouTube, just not because it wasn’t working, but more so just needed my focus in another area, but I very much felt like we were on knowing that you started in 2016 like pushing content for the same reasons. It seems like we kind of saw the same opening, the same opportunity. What do you like now that you’ve been out there? Seven years now creating events for the space and the industry? What do you see as kind of what’s happening in space or like where it’s gonna go? For me, I would love to see the blend of our Amazon industry or Amazon focus niche, blending a little bit more with general e-commerce and strategies across social media, you know, like social media, instead of having social media conferences and E commerce conferences and Amazon conferences. I would love to see them start blending together. What’s your thought?

Augustas Kligys 28:57
In terms of events, I think it will continue in a similar way that some events are more regular, like prosper shows. And some are like more popping up. And then people see it’s just too much work and they don’t repeat it. Maybe some people will do just two events and stop it. Because it’s a lot of work. And the same with virtual summits. It’s also a lot of work. And I saw in the last year that some people pop up with these virtual summits, especially in 2020. But they think like they can maybe make money or become known or whatever. But it’s still a lot of work and disappears after one event. So in terms of blending topics, I feel like yes, for that it might even now like people talk a lot about when they talk about advertising. They talk about tick tock and Google advertising now it’s even on our YouTube channel. We have a few videos about Google ads, and they’re quite popular videos and like it, we cannot figure out why. And not so many people are talking. So basically agencies, which are focusing on Google ads for Amazon sellers have a lot of potential at the moment today. And, for example, one of the events, which we did was PPC congresses, events, specifically farmers on advertising, you know, enthusiasts and agencies. And one of the speakers said, because we were now already planning this event, maybe in the next months, and one of the known speaker on PPC in the industry, he suggested, Why don’t you do something like traffic and conversions like not only advertising, but to connect, like, I’m still puzzling how to solve this, because I don’t want to become, I don’t want the event. I really liked this very niche event like farmers on advertisers. But if I will start bringing more advertising channels, then it will not be clear for whom this event is. So yeah, maybe it still has to be called like Amazon PPC advertising, but then I have a sidetrack with additional presenters.

Andrew Morgans 31:11
I would love to get my two cents on that. Okay, so before I give you my answer on that, because I’m pretty passionate about the subject, I’m going to give a shout out to our sponsor FullScale.io. Finding experts, software developers doesn’t have to be difficult, especially when you visit FullScale.io. We can build a software team quickly and affordably use the Full Scale platform to define your technical needs. And then see what available developers, testers and leaders are ready to join your team. Visit FullScale.io to learn more. So thankful for our sponsors. Oh, Ghostess. For me, I built my agency, Marknology. Really out of professional curiosity, as I started digging into Amazon, I just kept discovering more and more and more and more, and I kept saying, Okay, this is a problem, I need to solve it, this is the problem, I need to solve it. This is a problem I need to solve 11 years later, you know, here I am. And I have a full full service agency, I think what’s different in, in, like, outside the Amazon world is like, you know, we’re working with a fortune 500 company right now, okay. And this is very common. They have a branding and content team, and then the division, and then they have a media buying team, right, which is like advertising, they’re two separate two separate worlds. They have to work together a little bit, you know, to stay on track with the branding and things like that. But in general, the media buying is very different from long term, you know, content and branding well, so this is difficult as a full service Amazon agency that’s trying to help them understand how Amazon works. Now, because I need them to talk. It’s like I need step siblings to get along. Right. So I’m having to navigate these challenges. Now if I’m talking to a smaller company, it’s rare that they have the team so divided. And so I can actually talk to a smaller brand, or you know, a team that might I might be talking to the founder himself and Amazon seller, or maybe it’s just you know, they’ve got a marketing person. They can kind of understand how the two work together. But when you think about it for me, like I started with flat files for helping people solve their listing issues, then PPC came out in 2015. For Amazon sellers and I dug I dove in and became an Amazon PPC expert on speaking on PPC, everything about it. I loved it. Because before I could get brands that could essentially change their copy of the title and bullet points because you had to have a brand registry and be trademarked and things like this. Before this happened. The PPC was cheap enough and available enough that you could offset bad SEO bad listings with just really good PPC. Okay, now as PPC evolved and gotten more difficult, and the game gets harder and things like that categories get more difficult. I started learning Well, I only want to work with brands that have brand registry so that I can change the copy and images because if I change the copy, and I have control of advertising, oh man, I can get organic ranking to really work much better. So then the next evolution of images, okay, so what I saw was, as I started working up market from an Amazon seller to working with brands that already had existing content and assets, I started seeing the power of really good images. Okay, so I saw my conversion rates go up, I saw my engagement from my ads go up. Why? Because I had a great photo or because I had good images there. And so, you know, you start learning these things as you go and you’re like, wow, okay, so advertising is important, but really, I don’t even want to advertise until my listing looks great till it looks amazing. Why because my conversion rate is maybe 10% higher or 10 points higher. Right. It’s not uncommon to have a well optimized listing duster. 3% conversion rate on Amazon if you’re doing it really well. So all these things being considered, you know, it’s, you write good copy, you do your keyword research, you launch your listings, you know, you have like maybe the top 10 keywords for each listing. And then it’s the advertising that then validates everything, you know, you’ve got your custom headline images, maybe you’ve got your DSP images, you’ve got custom creative, you’ve got that first photo that needs to be engaging and grab people from the search results, you’ve got your video ads. And it’s also advertising on all the keywords that you wrote in the copy way back then in Step one, and it’s telling you, these 10 of these 10 that you thought were important, seven are great, three are not so great. And then you go back to the drawing board, and maybe you change your content to, you know, to validate the seven, the seven keywords that did work. And so it’s very much this collaborative, back and forth between getting the page right to convert them when they get there, but then getting the ads dialed in. And so for me, the Traffic and Conversion piece, clever name. But also, it’s like, I tried to educate people that the Amazon platform is a lot different than how there’s companies have been set up before. And the teams need to talk and communicate and work together to be the most efficient. So for me, it’s a source of wanting to educate, you know, the brands that are at the top end, and this is different for them. And also, there’s a bit of elements in both. So if I was just an advertising agency, I would be very frustrated to be working with brands that didn’t have their images or their copy or their landing pages set up for conversion. So there is a little bit of both needed at least that’s how I feel. You know, I can also see the niche, and like, I just want to come to this to learn. And maybe that’s, you know, a one on one gets both and in a 201 or something is, you know, just the other month, I see the need, and I’m liking that people are even thinking about it now as well. It was a mouthful, but it’s a conversation that I think if you want to be doing great, you have to think about both.

Augustas Kligys 37:09
Yes, yes. So but it’s a puzzle, yeah, how to combine because if you start adding, if it’s a specific event, for a specific, let’s say, a specialist, and then you start adding these other things, it very soon, this event might be just regular event like everybody else, you know, just different name.

Andrew Morgans 37:31
I know. And the difference between the crowds between marketing and branding and content versus the advertiser. That’s more than math, brain data, data data. You know, it’s a different event. In a lot of ways, there’s a different conversation. So I have yet to make it to the event you just mentioned before. I haven’t been to one that’s just for advertising yet. So I’m not sure of the difference. But you know, it’s also the YouTube I think that can help you direct what people are interested in.

Augustas Kligys 38:03
Yes, yes. By the way, if you know some people were talking about events, and if people really know what happened to me five years ago, I was living in Germany and I wanted to visit some Amazon Seller event in Germany and I knew a lot of things were happening in Europe in general. And I couldn’t find it. I didn’t know how to find information, what’s happening where and five years ago I started to collect information about all events which are coming in my radar, European events and North American events. And I launched the website five years ago, AMZ summit.com So it’s like Amazon summits AMZ summits.com And we have already like in five years 300 events registered in our database and we you know, like I literally you know, subscribe to some newsletters and if I see some speaker is promoting I’m speaking in this event I’m like, Okay, this this event should be on our database. So yeah, if you know someone is searching for events to attend, I think it’s a very good resource for free to you know, visit and see what events are coming. We recently updated the website and there is a nice map so you can see on the map the locations I really kind of envy the North Americans because you have so many events in Europe it’s not. Yeah, there are not not so many English speaking events. And there are still events happening in different countries but Europe is like very information doesn’t travel through the borders so that’s why I’m also keeping my eye you know, yours open and I know some people in Romania and here and there and some people like send me email so here is this event, maybe you want to add to your database. So yeah, I think North America is a great place for Amazon events, even now in Mexico more and more.

Andrew Morgans 40:01
A lot of my colleagues are really pushing Mexico and Latin America from starting first like manufacturing trade shows to, you know, hosting events down there. I know a few agencies built their teams in Mexico. So there’s a couple of strong agencies that are based there. So you know, they’ve been training staff, they’ve been training people, the community has been getting built. It’s a lot like music. certain cities, as you travel, certain cities will have a better turnout or crowd for certain types of music, if that type of music has been coming there a long time. And it kind of builds a culture. So I think the same with e-commerce. And, you know, I’m here in the Midwest, in Kansas City. There’s not really a neat calm community here. And maybe that’s mine to build. But I’ve been building my community internationally, you know, crossing everywhere, instead of just being stuck here in the Midwest, as far as the community I want to be like, you know, around, but it’s an opportunity. So a lot is in New York or in Florida. You know, you’ll see a lot of events happening there. A lot of people travel there because that’s where a lot of the events in the community have existed. A lot of the nomads or the sellers have migrated to these places to be around more communities.

Augustas Kligys 41:15
AMZ Summit is the IMC summits plural. Yeah, I’m just saying,

Andrew Morgans 41:20
Okay, is this just for European events? Or does this also have North American events?

Augustas Kligys 41:24
It’s mainly North American and European. Because of this, like the information I got in the past, when there was something happening in Vietnam, Thailand, we were adding this but it’s harder to get information about these events.

Andrew Morgans 41:38
COVID as well. Yeah.

Augustas Kligys 41:41
But that’s also for example, if something’s happening in like Vietnam, it’s in their own language, and it just doesn’t come to my channels, because it’s in Vietnamese, but they would love to add it to the website, of course.

Andrew Morgans 41:53
Of course. Yeah. Okay, so check it out. Guys. If you haven’t already AMZ. summits.com. I’ve actually found the site already. I didn’t know it was, it was one of your sites. I obviously, you know, I searched it into Google and it is one of the first ones to come up for a lot of the events. I’m going to some, you know, my sister is this third website, I don’t know. Sometimes you have better information than they do on their own site. So I would definitely be an advocate and say, check that out, add it to your bookmarks, be checking in, you know, it’s something I’m always looking into what events should I be going to Washington, my priority list being as a speaker and as an attendee, you know, a lot of times for me as a speaker, I’ll go to events but as an attendee, double A win for me is to say, oh, I can go speak at this event. And I can learn at this event. You know, so for me, I’m always choosing that way. Before we wrap up, let’s do some questions for you. One advice you have for someone that’s looking to start an e-commerce that’s looking for events to go to, where should they start? Should they just jump on AMZ summits and you’ll go down the list? Or like, what’s something you would recommend? For some new sellers? Maybe it’s YouTube and then number two. What’s next for Orange Klik, you know, what’s next on the horizon? And then finally, where can people find you and connect with you? The one so one some advice for a new conference attendee to what’s next for lunch, click and then three work and we contract.

Augustas Kligys 43:22
So most of the physical events are you have to, you know, invest in if you are traveling, you might need to invest in a ticket and accommodation and trip at least $1,000 or euros for beginners might be a big money. And this is what I see when you know, people come to our physical events, it’s, of course, already at the next level, not super beginners. And if you want to, you know, really scale up, I always kind of say, Go to Facebook groups, but don’t like to participate in many just choose one, Facebook group one or two. Or maybe if you bought a course use the group of the students of your teacher. And I myself in other things found really big help. When I focused on a specific group, I was giving myself a lot of help in the group answering and sharing my knowledge. But then, when you are kind of active in the group, you can also ask, you know, if anybody wants to create a mastermind, so it’s it’s for free to organize the first set of like, three, four or five connections where you can meet every week or every two weeks, and brainstorm things. And if you’re all at the same level, it will help you a lot to know, everybody still knows different things. And if you get someone with next level information, it will be even, like more powerful. So this is one of the easiest and the cheapest ways to get connected and kind of grow quickly. In terms of events, on our website, MC semmens.com. There is a menu called local meetups. And there we have a list of 200 It meetups, which we import from the meetup.com platform. It’s for you know, and these meetups are all for free. So we kind of manually go through 200 Different meetup groups publicly available. And you can see when the next meetup is happening. So of course, a lot of things are happening in different places in North America and in us, some in Europe. And this is another very good starting point, if you want, you know, to meet physically other people doing the same thing. So it’s, it’s for free, and it’s probably in your town or nearby. So take, you know, effort and go maybe even one hour drive to such meetups. Totally. And what’s next for Orange Klik? Well, my dream is to grow our YouTube channel by bringing more videos per week, bringing more experts to feature more of them. And at the moment, like I’m also looking for video hos I would like to collect like a European team or like more European people who could host interviews on our channel. If someone is listening and interested, you can contact me. But yeah, this is kind of the vision of growing this kind of neutral platform, which we created at Orange Klik for experts to share their knowledge and for Amazon sellers for free to get it. And of course, another good way to learn farmers and sellers is virtual summits, hours or other ones in the industry, most of the time, they are free to listen. So it’s also a good way to learn but not to network, because virtual events, it’s not really very good for networking. Yeah, so and if you want to reach out to us best if you go, you can watch our videos on YouTube search for Orange, click click is spelled k l i k. And you can go to our website if you want to write us an email, best you right at the team at Orange Klik.com. And we will reply whatever you want to share with us and tell us so yeah,

Andrew Morgans 47:23
We’ll go to sources very helpful. Thank you. It’s been a pleasure to meet you. And if you guys are going to YouTube to start, you should obviously start with Andrew Morgans and Orange Klik because you might as well start there. Since you’re on my show. We’d love to have you guys comment on the video. If you’re coming in from the show and tell me what you think. It’s been a pleasure having you. I’m sure it won’t be the last time. I know you’re continuing to grow the European, you know, community and happy to be a part of that excited to be a part of that in the future with whatever that looks like. You guys heard about AMZ. summits.com Check it out. It’s where you can find so much information around meetups events happening in space. And honestly an authority on what’s happening. It’s been a pleasure talking with you guys before I sign off. Once again, shout out to our sponsor Full Scale that I O helping you build software teams quickly and affordably. If you’re looking for developers, that’s an amazing place to start. They really have an awesome thing going over there simply to look up, go there and look up. Some of the talent and the features to find someone for your team are absolutely amazing. They have some amazing avatars and things like that. So they’re really doing some really cool stuff. It’s been a pleasure talking with you guys. Again, thank you for your attention, and we’ll see you next time. Thank you, Augustas.

Augustas Kligys 48:39
Thank you, Andrew. Bye.