Ep. #1035 - How to Use Analytics on Amazon

Andrew Morgans 00:00
What’s up, Hustlers? Welcome back. This is Andrew Morgans, founder of Marknology, here as today’s host of Startup Hustle, covering all things e-commerce, Amazon, and entrepreneurship. We love storytelling here. We’re gonna get into some of that. And today, we’re gonna be talking about how to use analytics on Amazon, which, honestly, is a very fun topic for me. I’ve been in this space for 11-plus years, and analytics is the key to everything. Before I introduce today’s guests, today’s episode of Startup Hustle is powered by FullScale.io. Helping software developers can be 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 to learn more. One of the coolest sites I’ve ever seen to find your next hire, your next software engineer. They’ve got amazing, like Avatar, of all their employees and team members. It’s really amazing. Check out FullScale.io. You won’t regret it. And without further ado, Nick Uresin, welcome to the show, president and CEO of ArgoMetrix. It’s nice to have you today. Excited to hear your story and get into some of what you’re doing on Amazon.

Nick Uresin 01:10
Hey, Drew. I’m pleased to be always happy to be talking about business and talking about Amazon.

Andrew Morgans 01:16
I had the pleasure of being on Nick’s podcast a few weeks back. And we just got to know each other. He ran me through the fire a little bit with some hard questions. I tried to keep it fun and interesting. So you’ll have to go over there and check it out. Nick is an amazing host. We had a lot of fun. But today, I would love to get to know you a little bit better. Nick, we spent the last time, you know, we chatted, getting to know me and my technology and kind of what we’re doing. You’re in the Amazon space. Everyone kind of has a story for how they got here. But let’s go all the way back to the beginning if we came with you. Like, you know, where’d you grow up? Did you know you wanted to be an entrepreneur or a business owner? What was that early life like for Nick?

Nick Uresin 02:00
Oh, thank you. This is a question that has many interesting aspects of it and the answer, but I’m first and foremost, I’m an immigrant. I grew up in Turkey and Istanbul. I went to college in one of the Ivy League schools in Turkey. In computer science, my degree is that I’m an engineer by training. So after graduating, I realized that you really need to speak English. So you can’t do that by staying there. So I went to England, and I spent 15 years in England. And that was where my first job was. So I never worked anywhere else. Other than my very first job in England, which was in a clothing company. We’re talking about 1984. Those days, there was no, there was no hard disk, there were no PCs, and the only computer was those big huge mainframes that you couldn’t go anywhere near yourself on the big corporations on them. And in college, when I did my degree, I was given access to it, when also I could write programs and things like that. But that was the only computer, but in those days, Mac was just starting. And it was floppy drives and about. So just around that time, I got my first job, which was basically to work in a company to help with their office stuff while I was studying the language. So what happened is the owner of the company hired me to computerize the company’s operation. So this was a visionary entrepreneur. And there are no computers being used by businesses at a great scale. And he wanted to computerize his operations. And that was my job. I knew nothing about business. I didn’t really know about these little computers. I knew the big ones and programmed them. So how do I learn all this? And then put it together? Yeah. So I had to learn the business, of course. So in that process, I learned manufacturing, order processing, customer service, and all that stuff. And not to mention all the counting aspects of it. So I had to learn all that. Anyway, Along the way, it was hard. This was invented, and it came out. In fact, when I advocated for one of the companies that provide a service for the Mac. I said, Look, I heard about this harp disk. We ought to go for it. We need to install a network with a hard disk on it. So he says oh, That’s only for lazy people. I said, What do you mean for lazy people?’ He says, well, have this case, you know, everything is on one desk, and then you log in, and everything’s in front of you, and then you just call up whatever you want. And I said, What’s wrong with it? He says floppy drives are much more fun. You take out one floppy, and you insert another. Anyway, those are my days.

Andrew Morgans 05:27
He stopped being revolutionary. At first, he was revolutionary, and he changed his mind.

Nick Uresin 05:35
So I mean, those are the days I started anyway. Fast forward four or five years. At this point, I built the whole network and the company, but the software system on it, learned accounting, and law, learned financials, put everything together, and I went all the way up to becoming a chief operating officer for the company. At this point, I’m running the whole business. And so it took me about three years or so to get there. Then I got headhunted by another company to do the same for them. And then, along the way, I built this idea that I was going to start my own business to build a software system. So that’s what my initial entrepreneurial tendencies are. And I got my first client, we built the system, it became the very first. It basically combined transportation logistics with accounting. It was all integrated. So if you issue the freight invoice, it will immediately be noise posted to the relevant accounting code, but also link it back to the actual shipment with the bill of ladings. And things like that, which were revolutionary at the time, there was no such thing that produced the documents and all that stuff. So. So that’s what I built. And the company that we built it for was a transportation company. And they obviously loved it with one click. I will never forget, five o’clock in the morning, we finished the whole thing. We clicked one button on outcomes, the p&l statement, the balance sheet, and all the receivables and payables, and they would just complete the groundbreaking kinds of stuff. I bet the guy who was running the branch in London presented it to the head office, and they said, Don’t let this guy go, then they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. So they asked for all kinds of crazy things. I asked for crazy things to work there. I basically said, look, look how much money you paid me just to build a system. I can do this for many others. And why should I come to work here? And I say, you know, you’re not gonna work here for too long. We know that. But in the meantime, we need you plus, you know, tell us what you need? I said, Okay, I need this, I need that, I need the other. And anyway, we ended up taking over that company. Three years later, it became our own. Yeah, it was a management buyout. And then with two partners. A year after that, I totally went on my own. We basically split the company into two. I took my half. He took his app. We continued working together, but in our independent operations, they were I basically handled imports and exports, so they never really mixed anyway. It was two separate things. And we said, you know, what company on its own is to have one leader, and therefore let’s separate this, but continue doing business with each other.

Andrew Morgans 08:48
So the original owner was a friend of yours that started the software company.

Nick Uresin 08:54
No, I started a software company. And this friend of mine, who was the original employee of that company, arranged for me to join him. And that’s when we became two directors running that company. We were just the two yuppies running this company. And two and a half years later, we did a management buyout. So we became partners. And then we separated the year later, cooperation-wise, but we just continued the business relationship. So that’s when I ended up being completely on my own. Running my own business.

Andrew Morgans 09:37
The only thing is for about six, how old were you at that time?

Nick Uresin 09:41
Yeah, at that time, I was 30. I was 30 years old. And I totally ended up on my own. And it was a scary thing. And then I thought, well, you know, I know what to do. So Oh, you know what’s to begin? So, I did that. So I’m running my own business, but within three years, it was a transportation company, but it was a freight forwarding company. So we were the London office of this major trucking company that owned 100 Plus trucks. So that was the business I ended up taking over. Now, my part was obviously the technology part of the computer’s computer system. So I pretty much did the accounting, the import operations, customer acquisition for import clients that we handle imports for, and of course, the technology part of the company. So that’s really what I did. And then, when I separated, I continued doing the same thing. I had my own customer base and everything. And then, within three years, pretty much I got to the point where I had a sea freight division, every division, and we ended up buying our own trucks, trailers, so I went all out because the business brings you these opportunities, you do the math, right. Okay, I’ll take that on. I have a good thing. So the business expanded until 1997. In fact, in my company, we were all the first ones ever to use GSM phones in Europe. Because what happened those days, you know, transportation, the standard is you have to lie. So people ask, you know, where’s my merchandise? Oh, it’s in transit, it’s in transit, or it’s shipped, it’s in transit, it’s always like, so, especially with trucks, it’s standard. So I made it my policy, the company, we don’t lie. So in order to combat this, some companies started to install these major satellite systems in their trucks, so they could track the trucks, you know, in the satellite system, and then let the customer know. So. So what happened was, in the meantime, these systems cost 1000s of dollars to install because you have to install the main system used in every truck with one of those. So, I started stealing business from these major companies with these satellite systems. And my pitch was very simple. I would go to the company, and I would pitch our services to get theirs, their business, and they say, oh, you know, for us, information is very important. We want to know where the truck is at all times. I will say, okay, so how do you know now? Oh, you know, we work with so and so. And they have so many trucks, and they have a satellite system? I said, okay, but tell me how you know. So they will say, Okay, well, when we want to know where a truck is, it’s very simple. We call it comprehensive. And we asked them, Where is the truck? And they’ll say, okay, hold on a minute, we’ll look it up. And then they would look up and come back and tell me, so I said, “Oh, so you basically believe what the guy tells you? Yeah. So how’s that different from any other way? How do you know that when you are not seeing the truck and the satellite? Are they?” And they’re telling you where the truck is, but it may be somewhere else that says, Yeah, but you know, so what are you doing differently on this day itself? I say mine is very simple. I’m gonna give you a phone number for you to call. When you dial that number, it will ring at the other end, the driver, and the driver will answer, and you can ask yourself where the driver is and ask him to describe and, in fact, ask him to pass the phone on to the next guy next to me. Really, you can do that these days. GSM phones are brand new, nobody. So I gave a GSM I saw that I gave in GSM phones, every driver of mine. And they said this would be great. Can you really do those? Sure, no problem, give us a trial. And then, you will track the biggest lie. As always, the factories will tip the drivers to say you know, it’s shipped, but in fact, they will either be just loading or not loaded yet. So that was gonna sell some time. Yeah, so the exporter, the factory will simply tell the driver to look, you know, just say that you picked up the cargo, and then they’ll give me a few bucks. So, they saw I said, you can verify if something is already gone, or loading or whatever, and said okay, well, We’ll test this right now. Can you give us a truck? I said, Well, let me arrange that. And then I’ll get it to you. So anyway, we will arrange it. I give them the registration number for a truck and give the driver’s name. I said, Okay, here’s your truck. And he said, You just call him and ask him. And he knows he has the instructions for your consignment. And you can ask him if he’s loaded or when he’s going to look. So, sure enough, they called him up. And they said, Are you the driver? Bla Bla Bla says, yep. Okay, tell us. What’s the status is oh, I’m loading right now. In the warehouse. They said, Okay, can you put us on to the warehouse manager? And then it puts the warehouse manager on the phone? And when as well as mine says, okay, yeah, we’re loading the halfway through will be done in about an hour, then he’ll be on his way. There was the end of it, and I got their business. So this was just, you know, practical thinking.

Andrew Morgans 16:06
And revolutionary at the time. Yeah.

Nick Uresin 16:09
Anyway, so those little things like that, always thinking ahead. And so anyway, fast forward to 1996. Internet businesses just started. And, you know, I hit my business growth, I had several agencies and I but my heart is always in technology. Because you know, when you start to scale the business, you’re not doing anything different. You’re doing, you’re doing something that is just more volume. So the internet business started and my brother at the time, had just graduated from FAU and, and he said to me, Look, there is this internet business starting now. And I want to be in it. I want to start something. I said, Okay, if you start something, then I’ll take a look. And we’ll go from there. So he comes up with an idea. He says, Look, I want to build a directory, an internet directory, but in multiple languages. I look at it. I said, Look, why don’t you build a prototype? And then let me know, he builds a prototype in two languages.

Andrew Morgans 17:16
Because he is a coder as well, and engineer, yeah, he’s a coder.

Nick Uresin 17:20
And so he builds, but this is all HTML, there’s no database, no, nothing at the time. So we built the whole thing. And I said, this is going to be test marketing. And we don’t want to really spoil anything. I’m gonna launch this in Turkey, because Turkey is my backyard, so to speak. Plus, at that point, I have a lot of connections, and my business has grown. So we built this prototype, we launched it in 1996. June, suddenly, it’s in all the papers, they’re calling us gate brothers, and that it’s become a huge success. And, and I get investors coming in saying, oh, you know, this is this is the future and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, bottom line, in one and a half years, I got $7 million in investment raise, build this company, from zero to 200 people. We had a development arm here in the US, employing 50 people. And then 150 People in Istanbul, we became the poster boy of internet business. And now the company was sold. And in 1997, I’m thinking, okay, part of my exit was to take over the US office. So that’s when I moved to the United States. And at the time, I had my business running in England, still, my transportation business was going, and I built this internet business at the same time. And, and then as part of my exit, I had the US office in the US office, we had our own data center. And so I was at the crossroads of what I do now to go back to home for me was London. So go back home to London and go back to transportation, or I have this US operation, the internet business that I got into now. And I made a decision. I said, I sold the business in England, I’m not going home because now I’m in America. And I already have the US office. So I came to the US and took over the company here to go to the data center. And at that point, I had to make a decision. How do I do that? So companies sold. I tasted the internet business. I want to stay in the internet business, but those days, it was all about advertising. Just bring eyeballs to a website with content and sell advertising. But nobody cared about making money, it was all about going public, you know the file for which I raised $10 million.

Andrew Morgans 20:14
File for. Familiar, familiar, but filed for IPO.

Nick Uresin 20:17
And that’s it. I wasn’t there, no profits, no, no sales, no nothing. So I thought, you know, I don’t believe in that business model. I don’t really, I’m not an advertising guy. I like transactions. I like small businesses. So I told you know, the future of the internet business will be mostly commerce, commerce is going to take place on the web. So I want to be an E commerce. And I want to be for small businesses. But I want to offer a service that can scale. So I want to productize the service. So I built an online store platform, subscription based for small businesses, but it has a huge reveal comprehensive back end to manage the business as if you know, you’re a small business guy, you have your books, you have your you know, ideas, and then you go do it. Exactly that kind of mentality, very business oriented, back office to create an online store, there’s no such thing at the top. Nobody has anything. Except for Yahoo, Yahoo had, in fact, they had just acquired a company that had online stores, they had 1100 accounts, and they got $58 million from Yahoo for that. So I said all my ideas are validated. I’m not going in this direction. So that’s what I started. Yeah. So in April 1998, we launched that platform. And come September, we ranked number three in the country. And I’m thinking again, I just came to this country. I don’t even have a residence visa yet. And I launched something, and it got ranked number three. So this is great. So if I became number three, now, why not become number one? Well, two years down the road, we became number wise. So this is all happening. In the meantime, we had the.com bubble burst, and I’m thinking okay, but by this time, I have subscribers, I’m profitable. I’m raising my hand.

Andrew Morgans 22:32
Where did you where it was home in the US as well. The US is big. You know, where did you land,

Nick Uresin 22:37
Florida? Our office was in Deerfield Beach, Florida. So I basically went there and took over the office. Because those days you chose Florida over London at that time.

Andrew Morgans 22:46
I mean, just, you know, Florida if you’ve been living in London, and it’s simple. Florida has a vibe. Right, Florida’s you know, I don’t know where that is. Exactly. But you’ve got a son, and you’re like you’re taking over a new company. I imagine you’re probably like, mid 30s. Maybe at that time or? Yeah, yeah. Well, you were married at the time, or no?

Nick Uresin 23:12
No, I was married before I was divorced. already. I was an entrepreneur. No kids.

Andrew Morgans 23:21
Okay, I’m just trying to picture in my head, you know, you just had an accident. You just sold your other business in London, you’re in the US, you’re landing in Florida, you’re in your young 30s. And you have another startup that, you know, is number three in the country that goes to number one, one at a time, all the time.

Nick Uresin 23:40
I mean, it was great. But you know, I will tell you this. Yeah, London is obviously a great place. But the first time I came to America was in 1993. And I knew that this is it, I want to be here, because it’s a totally different lifestyle. Totally different set of values, the attitude, the society in America is a very open society. In England, it’s a closed society. So this is a much, much deeper discussion. But if you have an idea, and you have a vision, people will embrace you, and then they will rally around you. And they will be your biggest fan and they’ll support you. In England. If you come up with an idea the first thing they’ll say is that it’s not gonna work and then they don’t really do much about it. There’s no excitement and then when you when things go wrong, and things often go wrong. They say I told you so this was never gonna work.

Andrew Morgans 24:49
So it’s a huge attitude and pessimism versus an optimism kind of thing. Yeah. And it’s, it’s very exclusive.

Nick Uresin 24:53
It’s not for you, who are you? You know, it’s one of those things. It’s not a well Welcoming society now I have no complaints. England treated me very well, I still to this day, I have very close friends and everything, but for an outsider to come in, and then be successful, during which the society helps you forget it.

Andrew Morgans 25:20
Yeah, you have to do it on your own.

Nick Uresin 25:23
In the exam, I forgot right from the get go here I had investors because they believed in me. I mean, I was nobody. And as yet, you know, they gave me the support. So that’s the biggest difference. And in fact, in 1994, two years before I moved three years before I moved to America, I started a company here in the US, I registered it, we were filing everything and what my brother was doing stuff. But that was all because I knew one day I was going to be living here. So it was obvious. Florida, on the other hand, is a different story.

Andrew Morgans 25:59
I just, you know, this country is a big country. So it depends on you know, did you land in Philadelphia, or jersey, or Florida or Cali, where you land, I think, you know, where you set up shop, whatever becomes home matters as well, like, you know, your experience your experience here as well changes depending on kind of what part of the country you’re in. And I moved here at 16 years old, from Africa, and, you know, landed in the Midwest. So a completely different experience than if I had landed, you know, in New York or something like that. As an immigrant, I’m American, but I was an immigrant in my own country in a lot of ways, coming here at 16. And not knowing the customs or anything, you know. So I’m just relating a little bit, for anyone listening, kind of trying to paint that picture a little bit of what that’s like, I’m also nobody from nowhere, and, you know, have found an opportunity here in the US as well building Mark Knology. And everything I’ve done. And as many flaws as the country has, because we all do, right? There’s still this, you’re right, there’s still this environment of innovation and new ideas and individuality in regards to life, you can do anything yourself, that you don’t get anywhere else, you know, you don’t really get anywhere else. So I kind of want you to just spell that out. Because I think it’s only something that someone from Turkey or someone from another country is going to really appreciate and realize, you know, I call it the American dream. But for me, coming from a poor family with not a lot of opportunities. I mean, I’ve chased the dream that I’ve wanted to build, and it’s, you know, it’s there to take you to number three, or four, you know, with planning already or like, you know, I’m gonna be in the US. So I have a lot of friends in the UK, as well, just from Instagram and podcasts, and, you know, business and things like that. So I’m excited just to understand the differences as well. And I even at 10 years old was like building computers. So in 96, I would have been 10. Okay, but my dad grew up with floppy and Das. And you know, the big three by five and a quarter, you know, like I do, so when you talk about those things, even though I’m younger, I understand because I was growing up in Africa, I didn’t have a lot to do. And my dad was one of the ones that had the first in the House computer. And so I got he was always he wasn’t showing me how to fix a car, but he would show me how to fix a computer, you know, and how to take it apart. And in Africa, I had all this time to really play and network and just try different things out. The internet just came up, you know, even in, even in Africa in the 90s at that time. So it would dial up satellite, you know, at nighttime at 3am. And in Congo, you can get some reception, get some speed or something. But just relating a little bit to your story at the time to know what someone in the 30s was doing at the same time. Right? Wide open in a similar way. I feel like ecommerce is still wide open. Like you know I’m trailblazing in the Amazon space tick tock on social media still trailblazing? You know, what an exciting time. And I’m trying to just try to picture what you guys had built. And you said the case in the office, and you talked about it being like an HTML database in different languages, I think of Craigslist. But no, it wasn’t like Craigslist. Yeah, it was more like the back end of a Shopify.

Nick Uresin 29:28
Well, I don’t know if you remember. But at the beginning when the Internet came out, Yahoo was the search engine. Yes. And there was in fact, not even a concept of a search engine so to speak, but there was an internet directory. So what Yahoo had done was they had 14 categories. And what you would do is you would click on the category and drill down, and under each category, you would see the names of companies. So, in fact, when I moved to the US next office in the same building I was in, there was a guy who was building a search engine. And in those days, it was not called search engines so to speak, but it was called the search directory. So he was building a search directory, we’re talking 1998, early 98. And to the extent that Yahoo is the dominating player, the only player in search, that’s what it was referred to as search. So who is that search company? Yahoo. And how do they do it, they have categories, you click on the category, and then you find what you’re looking for. So the game was for anybody else entering into the game? Forget it, you’re going against the amount Yahoo is not winning against Yahoo. So people started creating these segments, like, for example, this guy next to my office, he was creating search for porn sites. So everybody was trying to have this, this angle to take a search became because as soon as you are on the internet, that you need to find information, there is no nothing. So how do you find the directory? So it was the natural destination for every internet user?

Andrew Morgans 31:30
So comp is a kind of logging, cataloging, it was more like cataloging.

Nick Uresin 31:33
Exactly. So but what Yahoo did, which was a mistake was they came up with the idea of directory, and they needed to put the content well, guess what, there was not much content, because internet is still not so so what happens is the first wave of the internet business was creating websites with every company needs a website, you had to impact justify why a company should have a website these days.

Andrew Morgans 32:04
I call this, I call us demand generation. Okay? So in the early days, in the early days of my company, I was happy to tell people why they needed Amazon, why they needed to care about it, why they needed to create content for it separately than their website, the same thing, but a different channel right later, later down the road.

Nick Uresin 32:22
So there were other sites like yahoo, yahoo, was the most organized, but there were other sites coming up with their own ways. Like, for example, there was a site called Lycos, Lycos had a dog as their mascot, they will advertise you ball and everything. There was a company called Alta Vista, there was a company called to excite you remember, these were all internet directories. But the leader was without a doubt Yahoo. So they all basically had the same idea. We are the place for everything on the internet, except not many people have things of any presence on the web. So get yours. So that was the first wave of the internet business, in terms of production, and then bubble bursts. So now you are in an environment where Yahoo is the dominant player, the others started to disappear once the bubble burst that the question started to come up. What’s your revenue? What’s this? What’s that? Because none of these people really have any significant revenues. Suddenly, they either get acquired, they disappear, or they shut down. So they get weeded out. So then comes Google. What is Google doing? Nobody knows google.com. There is no google.com, no nothing. And Google had such a website that is not mentioned anywhere, really, I haven’t heard of this. But Google had such a smart strategy, this guy said, we are going to be the search engine. But guess what, we need to have something for people to search in the first place. That means content. And we’re going to index the whole universe of content. So that by the time we open bang, it will be all there. So what they do is they go to your library by Library, University by university. And they say to them, let us search on your website. They started licensing, making money, licensing Google’s search capability. So if you ever went to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and you wanted to search the University website, Google powered by Google powered by Google. So guess what, two, three years after that.

Andrew Morgans 34:51
One, they were making money the whole time Google launched.

Nick Uresin 34:53
And I’m hearing this Oh, Google launched. I go to the Google website. I’m Thinking I have all the bells and whistles Google and click here, click here, click here. All I see is a search box. And I thought to myself, what losers, you know, they’re not gonna get much business. This was Google. So that was the search. We are at this point. It’s the early 2000s. So that’s really the thing that was always to me of yours. Now looking back, I can see how smart they were. And by the time they went to that silly little search box and put anything, stuff would come up, that was completely irrelevant. Yeah, good luck. It was not like that, I remember one.

Andrew Morgans 35:42
One when I was a kid and trying to learn, you know, everything. Because I just came from Africa. I was in high school like, you know, 2001-2002. Asked Jeeves. Remember the search engine? Yeah, that was like asking your big brother, your dad or something, you would just type it in there, you know. And it was the first time I remember as a kid being able to be like, there’s this thing that will answer any of our questions, you know. And you could just go Ask Jeeves, kind of before Google, I think, maybe somewhere in between there at the same time or something. But it was, it was troubling. You know, we’ve got like, we’ve got like, 10 minutes left here, I want to talk about how you built ArgoMetrix, because we’re talking about data and analytics, and you know, even your experience all the way up to this point. I do believe there’s just an advantage, I believe I have an advantage just from understanding, watching the internet grow from floppy to where it is today. Even though I’m younger, I’m like, I’ve seen the whole progression, there’s an understanding that I have, that I don’t feel like everyone has if they haven’t seen the whole path. And it’s a way to predict almost what you need next in what’s coming next, in a way, right. And, you know, we both found ourselves at Amazon, and building, you know, you’ve built software, and I’ve built services and in all types of things I’ve been here, kind of pioneering the growth of Amazon as an industry, from the software to the service providers. Talk to me about the beginning of Argo, if I can call it that. And just like you know what you’re building there with the last few minutes we have here, because we’ve talked about data and search engines and like the key the thing is any of our listeners out there is like, the data is everything. That’s how we dominate on Amazon as an agency. We think about a listing, we take in all the keyword data and the pricing data, the competitor analysis data, and customer behavior, data over time and experience and creativity and all these things, but it’s really 100% the data and the analytics is what gives us feedback on what’s working, what’s not working. What are people enjoying, what are people not. And I believe Argo solves some of that. So, you know, explain, explain that to me in the next few minutes. For any of our listeners, kind of what, you know what you guys are doing?

Nick Uresin 38:03
Yeah. So as I had my online store system, and then I, it did pretty well. I had to, I had to evolve in my business model. And in the process, I became an Amazon seller. So my goal was completely: it’s not about selling Amazon, but it’s about figuring out, where is the need, what problem can I solve, what technology where’s the need, and therefore I will become the solution that people will use. So I just became a seller to figure that out. So I spent about four or five years figuring that out. Once I figured out it was the analytics on Amazon that I had to watch. We built that platform, we built this platform that basically gathered all the data on each listing. And then automated some of the business decisions that you would make yourself manually, like sell this, don’t sell this, hold it, price it at this price, do that, whatever. So that gave us that took us from 60 orders a day to 2000 orders a day. And that is where our goal matrix idea was born. Because once I proved once I tested so many different ways to gather and use the analytics, and that automated that thing and then turned it into a platform. I said that’s it. And then that platform, the very platform took me from 60 to 2000 orders a day. In fact, it was a big deal. And this all happened right around when the financial meltdown occurred in 2008. So the time I am like doing gangbusters when everybody else is Thinking All the world is going to come to an end, my platform saved me. In fact, I was written up in the Entrepreneur Magazine, they put me on the cover of entrepreneur with my story. So, three years after that, at this point, we’re doing 2000 orders a day. I thought, you know, there is no difference between 2000 A day and 20,000 A day selling it. So I learned that there is a need for conventional businesses who want to be Amazon sellers, to learn how to use the data, and what data to look at. And I have all the knowledge of running an Amazon business. So I said, I’m going to start a new company. I sold that company, and I’m going to start a new company, and offer this to other Amazon sellers. That’s where our biometrics idea came from. And now, in 2013, I started it, it’s now the end of 2022. So nine years fast forward, our platform evolved. So now what we do is the two magic bullets for success on Amazon are two numbers to watch. So for everybody listening, forget about everything else, watch these two numbers, there is no question, you will be successful. If you work on these numbers. The first one is called click through rate. That means what keywords are bringing your business, you can get that from search query performance. These days, Amazon makes it available, we get it into our platform. So if you get more and more of the people to click on those search terms, that’s magic bullet one, what you’re doing in fact is if 100 People are clicking on a search term, you make that 200. You’ve got 100 More people landing on your product page. So you increase your exposure. And how do you do that, that’s where the optimization of the listing the keywords and everything else comes. So work with someone, do not do it yourself, hire an expert. Time is money. If you try to do it yourself, you’re gonna waste time instead. Because these numbers are changing everyday, the key is the demand for the keywords. Another thing I’m going to say here that speaks to this click through rate marketplace, Amazon Marketplace, is not a marketplace of products. It’s a marketplace of keywords, associate products with the keywords, you find products to sell based on what keywords have demand. So once you figure that out, and then you create your listing in the right way you come up, figure out how to increase the click through rate. The next magic bullet on your product page is commercially, how to increase your conversion. How you increase your conversion on your product page has nothing to do with your price has nothing to do with keywords. It has everything to do with how that Amazon shopper that landed on your page will emotionally connect with what’s on that page.

Andrew Morgans 43:34
Well played, well played.

Nick Uresin 43:36
That means pictures, that means bullets, that means your eight plus pages, then they will look at your price. So you get these right, you get the conversion. So now do the math. You have let’s say that you have to focus on three keywords, put all your efforts, money, time and energy to get appearance under those three keywords. You get 1000 searches a month, you get 15% of those searches. People click on you. That’s 150 People landing on your page. How do you make that 150-300? How do you make that 300 forfeit? First step, second step out of that 451 out of three buying How do you make that one out of two, or start small one out of 10 buying? That’s 10% conversion? It’s very low. When I work with my clients, I get 35 to 50%. That’s the goal. I have clients that have 65% click through, click through in other words 65% In search, they do a search, up comes the listing 65% clicking on it landing on the product page. On the product page, I have between I in my software, anybody who signs up, they log in, we pull the data from their account, this is specific to their listings. Anything below 35, we consider bad, between 35 to 50, we consider it average, Anything above average, we consider good industry average for conversions 12%. So of course, this varies based on how much traffic you’re getting and what category you are in. Nevertheless, there are benchmarks, my clients, I say anything less than 25%, and is one out of four people buying. That’s what you have to achieve. So those two magic bullets, if you’ve done your homework, and you set up your pricing model to leave you enough margins, and this idea of oh, we’re going to sell cheap, and we’re going to make it up on the volume. That does not work anybody listening, if you ever want to go with Forget it, that’s not a business, you’re not gonna be successful. So set up good margins, you must have after Amazon commission landed cost of the product and the FBA fee, you must have 40%. Net left before advertising. That’s if you’re not getting that you’re not pricing, right? So does that mean you increase your price? No, you create bundles and packs and everything else. So there are ways so I have a saying that I love. Okay, strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. tactic. Energy tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. So throwing all the PPC campaigns, email campaigns and bringing visitors this picture is a bother. If you didn’t have the right pricing strategy in the first place. Forget it. It’s all noise before the fee. So it starts so when I take on a client, first thing we do on the first day, we set the pricing. And then in the process, we’re creating bundles and everything. Now Amazon offers virtual bundles. So you can test but just as a word of caution, do not ever think that’s a long term solution to bundles because they are doubling tripling your FBA fee. If you create the physical bundle, you will more than likely your FBA fee will be the same as single. So it’s a good idea to test to start with so. So I say and guess what you’re bundling will increase your conversion because you have more value you’re offering. So I can talk on and on. But why my platform does it is it will give you these numbers in real time with benchmarks with suggestions of what to do. So I recommend anybody to, I mean, yeah, it’s just, I don’t know how you can live with that. Without this. So not the solution for this, this report is not available anywhere. I knew that this was Aveda, the source of this data is by the way is your business reports, detail page and sales traffic at Child school child asin that that’s the source. But the only way to get it is to download it. And then you have to have an Excel sheet or a Google Sheet Set Up elaborate. And looking at it downloading and looking at it is not the way to use it. Because you need to be looking at it in perspective, historically, you need to be comparing last year last week last month yesterday, all these numbers that I’m telling you the CTR and the conversion rate and and many of them is by box rate, there’s the average order value, there’s traffic, all these are these are data points that I gathered over the years that you must watch. So we present those we visualize the data so that you can easily click click, click and then see over time how it happened. You can tag events like you may increase your PPC spending, or you may take in a PPC campaign or send out an email. You can tag those so if the conversion dips, then you can change. This is what happened. That’s why it’s understandable or without doing anything if there’s a difference between so you need to look at it historically. You need to look at it in perspective with the events around it. You can tag all these things in our system. So that way you have a full understanding of what’s going on with your operation. And that’s what every seller has to do. And then with our metrics will say success is inevitable, because you are making data driven decisions.

Andrew Morgans 50:14
I love it, Nick, you’re I can tell you’re a true expert in the field. You know, if you’ve been doing this for so long, we started archaically, you know, and the BEST OFFERS come out solving these problems. Speaking of problems, finding experts, software developer doesn’t have to be difficult either, especially when you visit Full Scale about IO, we can build a software team quickly and affordably use a Full Scale platform to find your technical needs, and then see what available developers testers and leaders are ready to join your team. Visit FullScale.io. To learn more, Nick, as we wrap up, talk to me just about like, you know, one tip you would give for sellers going into 2023. Okay, and then and then also share with us something that you guys are working on that you’re excited about, you know, you know, maybe something new in the software, something new in regards to Amazon that you and your team are working on, just to share as you go.

Nick Uresin 51:07
Absolutely. So the biggest tip I can tell people to pursue is really don’t worry about your advertising spend. Instead, focus on your total advertising cost of sales, in other words, how much you spend in advertising all together. And then you can break it down channel by channel, but at the end of the day, how much you spend, and then how much your total sales were because some of the sales will come from those advertised, you know, products, or display ads, whatever the case may be, and people will click on them and place an order. Those are the advertised sales. But there will also be organic sales coming in. So what matters is what are your advertised sales and organic sales combined, that’s your total sales, compared to how much you spent on that if you’re what we call takeoff, if your takeoff is between 10 to 20%, that’s what you care about. If you’re a cause is 35% 40%. Who cares if your takeoff is 50, keep spending, just make sure you get a good agency to make sure that they weed out the bad keywords. And then as they weed out the bad keywords, then your ad costs will even increase, then your tape costs will drop even further, which will give you the biggest return. So that’s what I will give as a tip, as something new, we have planned to come out in the first quarter of 2023, you’re not gonna find this anywhere else. It’s my invention, it’s a metric that I came up with. And it’s what you can use to value your company. If you want to sell it, you can use it to plan your advertising, your demand, your replenishment, you can use it on all of these things. And this metric is called the organic rate. What that means is imagine that for every page click, you get three organic clicks. How would that help you? SKU by SKU and as a company. So now you can use this in many ways. For example, you have any SKU that you want to scale, and you know that you spending x number of dollars, and then you’re getting X number of visitors, that means X number of clicks, if you know that for every click on this listing, I’m gonna get X number of organic visitors and you already know your conversion rate that translates into so many orders, you can have a much, much better visibility and therefore decide how much you can spend. Or you can reverse the whole approach where you say, Okay, I want to spend $1,000 on this thing. What does that mean? It means so many clicks, therefore, you know, with this metric, how many organic visitors you’re gonna get and therefore what your total demand is gonna be. So and then overall, as a company, if you go pitch your company say, Look, my advertising costs from 10 different channels. And by the way, for every advertisement clicked, I bring in 10 organic clicks versus two organic fees. That is a huge differentiator selling point. Yeah, so that is a new metric that I call organic ratio. So that is going to be super cool.

Andrew Morgans 55:01
Yeah, at 20, I’m excited to see that I definitely have to learn more. Nick, this has been so informative. I love your story as well. Where can people stay in contact with you? Where can people learn more about ArgoMetrix? What’s the best place to engage? Share your podcasts and I believe you have a special offer for anyone tuning into the Startup Hustle podcast, they share that as well. Yes.

Nick Uresin 55:22
So to reach me, just go to www dot argon matrix.com. There’s A-R-G-O-M-E-T-R-I-X, argometrix.com. If you go to contact and send the URL, the contact form, send the message. I’ll get it. Just put Startup Hustle. Heard you in Startup Hustle. And then I’ll get it. From that, you can reach me. My podcast is Amazon Legends. I had the privilege of having Drew on my show, and we had a blast. So listen to it. It’s on all the podcast platforms and YouTube, and subscribe to it. Just look up Amazon legends, Nick, and it will come right up. So that’s my podcast. And also for anybody listening to the show. If you go to ArgoMetrix.com and under seller concierge service, select seller intelligence platform. We call it SIP. If you go sign up for si P and put in hustle 15 As your coupon code, you will get 15% off for life. So that’s also available for anybody. And by the way, if you sign up with the coupon, what you will get is you will gain access to our platform. We and as soon as you connect your SAP account to your Seller Central account, we will fetch two years of data immediately. So that you will be able to see everything I mentioned in perspective historically, and it gets updated daily, every day showing you so you can track what you are doing and then is it complimentary? When somebody signs up with a coupon code as a complimentary service, we will reach out to you. And then, we will provide you with a formal review of how you are doing with our recommendations to bump up your sales. So go to argometrix.com, sign up for the seller intelligence platform, use hustled 15, and you’ll get your 15% off for life. And you’ll get your complimentary reviews.

Andrew Morgans 57:42
Nick, you’re so generous to anyone driving in the car just listening to this on audio. It’s not writing it down. We’ll have all of these links in the show notes in the bio notes. So we’ll definitely have Nick’s contact information there. Nick, thank you so much for being on the show. Thanks again to our sponsor FullScale.io. Do you need to hire software engineers? Testers are leaders who let Full Scale help. They have the people in the platform to help you build and manage a team of experts. When you visit FullScale.io. All you need to do is answer a few questions, and they let the platform match you up with a fully vetted, highly experienced team of software engineers, testers, and leaders at Full Scale. They specialize in building long-term teams that work only for you. Learn more when you visit Full Scale. I am super thankful for our sponsors. They allow us to promote the show, do all you know, offer all this for free, and just drop tons of knowledge on all of our listeners. So thanks again to our sponsor, FullScale.io. Nick, thank you so much for your time. I know this won’t be the last time we might need to get you back on after spring so we can talk about how the launch of some of the new features is going in regards to the organic ranking. I’m gonna have to see it with my own eyes. I’m in the show me state here, Missouri. So I want to see it. It sounds awesome. I’m looking forward to talking again, and thank you so much for your time. My pleasure. Thank you. You’re welcome. We’ll see you next time, Hustlers.