SHOW TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Jeff Sieh: Welcome to Social Media News Live. I’m Jeff Sieh. and your not…

[00:00:03] Grace Duffy: I’m Grace Duffy, and this is the show that keeps you up to date on the world of social media.

[00:00:10] Jeff Sieh: We’re joined by our friends, Jim Fuhs, and Chris Stone. And we’re going to be talking about how to earn an income and grow your business with Amazon live.

[00:00:18] You’ll find out in the show today, what you need to know about going live on Amazon and being a success at it. Just like Jim and Chris have done. We’re gonna give you some updates about the things you need to know about the Amazon influencer program. Some of the requirements have shifted since we last talked about Amazon Live.

[00:00:36] When Jim was on the show before and a new, well new to us streamers, the way streamers and podcasters in live video creators are branding their shows and broadcast. How are you guys doing today? Thank you so much for both being on the show. This is just a treat.

[00:00:52] Chris Stone: Oh, thank you for how amazing.

[00:00:54] Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. It took Jim on first in order to get me on.

[00:00:59] Jeff Sieh: We got to test people first. We’re like, I know, I see Chris. I knew you were a pro. I had to test out Jim, cause you never know what Jim’s going to do. He’s the wild card of the group so we can, so shout outs to Sabrina.

[00:01:11] Hello. It’s me. I didn’t get a text either. Don’t you love me more? Okay. So something happened, you know what? I I probably put the wrong time. It’s probably gonna go out at nine 30 tonight, but I’ll look into that. See what’s going on and says hello, beautiful people. And when you’re in the UK, you don’t get one.

[00:01:26] Yeah. So forget about it. And yeah. So Gary, he says, Grace, your mic sounds like it might be your onboard laptop. Mic. Yeah. We had some issues before. We just don’t, we can’t have nice things here. We just can’t have nice things. But we are talking about earning with Amazon Live today. We’ve got the, our folks here and if you don’t know who Jim Fuhs and Chris Stone are, they are successful.

[00:01:45] Amazon live influencers. You can watch them on deal, casters live and deal casters after dark. That’s not a Cinemax show. That’s actually an after hours deal casters. It’s really cool. And they also don’t fear the gear, watch it on Amazon, live and Twitch for the latest. Technology for live streaming and podcasting, and they interview people.

[00:02:05] They have top influencers and brands on there. Jim is president and COO, of Fuhsion Marketing, a full service social media management company. He’s also a retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel and he’s turned. He turned digital marketing consultant and a speaker. He was over in Lima just a week ago and he’s been a live streamer and he’s got over 30 years of business and social media experience.

[00:02:28] He teaches people how to go live each week on his podcast, Launch Your Live. Now Chris Stone, he is president of CastAhead, a full service digital marketing company. He’s specializing in developing creative content for podcasting live streaming, virtual and hybrid events for businesses of all shapes and sizes.

[00:02:46] He’s a podcast in live streaming consultant for hire, not for free. And he also helps entrepreneurs, influencers, thought leaders and brand brands, great podcasting and live streaming to their business goals and tell their stories. This is amazing. So glad you guys are here, your stuff. That’s what we set, all that stuff for.

[00:03:01] Chris Stone: Thanks, Jim. I think we need to update the bios. We’ve got to hire less things and a few more things. So

[00:03:09] Jeff Sieh: we’ll get to that. Yeah, I do that before it, I did one. I had, we had Mark Schaefer on and I was talking about a book. He was like, oh, those are old books. This is what you know. And so you never know.

[00:03:17] You’ve got to make sure that stuff’s up to date, but anyway, so if

[00:03:20] Grace Duffy: it’s on the internet, it’s true.

[00:03:21] JIm Fuhs: That’s right.

[00:03:24] Grace Duffy: Joe mentioned, you guys were both at social media week Lima and Jim, I saw you were hosting a tabletop there. Tell us what that was like.

[00:03:33] JIm Fuhs: It was, it was a lot of fun to see like real people and sit next to them and talk.

[00:03:38] And so I was talking about building credibility with live streaming. You guys are a great example of that. This show is amazing. I love watching it, even if I can’t catch it live, I like to watch the replay because you bring on a great guests and people learn. And but yeah, Jessica Phillips host an amazing conference that now marketing group, an amazing team of people it felt like a family reunion as opposed to a, like a conference.

[00:04:04] Cause they keep everything in one room. It’s 200 of your closest friends and everybody gets to see the same speaker. It’s not like you have to choose, oh, who do I want to go see? And we had Brian Fanzo Angus Nelson, Jennifer Watson, Bella Vasta, there’s just a ton of great speakers and.

[00:04:22] I’ve already got my tickets for next year, cause you never know if you’re going to get to speak all the time. So the, Hey I’m buying my tickets now. Cause I it’s that’s the second time I’ve been. Cause last year got a rescheduled because of a COVID and so it’s Hey, I’m hoping by June, everything will be okay.

[00:04:36] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, I do too. Chris, what about you, you were telling us before that you were like his work wife there and helping this tabletop stuff. So what did you think was this your first time.

[00:04:45] Chris Stone: First time as a work wife and as an unpaid intern as well. But yeah, yeah, Jim Jim covered it just just a great group of diverse speakers and, each one of them have their specialties, Brie Anderson talking about SEO, talking about going through Facebook and how to find clues from your customers that they’re leaving.

[00:05:05] It just an, it’s just an incredible event. And like Jim said, I think there was just a lot of people that were ready to get on that stage because they had men on stage and well over a year. Yeah. And so the excitement from Fanzo the excitement from Angus and excitement from branders, it was just it was really a great event and something I look forward to to viewing afterwards as well.

[00:05:26] And, cause you miss some stuff, you want to go back in and dig in, so we’ll be able to, yeah,

[00:05:30] Jeff Sieh: very cool. And I totally agree with Ian here he goes, there is something special. About smaller, more intimate, single track conferences. I agree. I’ve been to some and to be honest, I think a lot of that stuff’s going to that’s what people are going to want after afterwards.

[00:05:42] COVID times that we’re going through. So very true. My friend another event, we’ll see how it just segues amazingly Leap Into Live is coming soon next month. And it’s brought to you by our friends over at Ecamm that are Leap Into Live Streaming Bootcamp. I’m going to be talking about how to grow your podcast, reach by using live video and vice versa, but there’s other, like little known people there, like Lesilie Samuels and Pat Flynn and Stephanie Liu.

[00:06:05] There’ll be there too. So make sure you guys go. Yeah, I know. It’s like what a lineup. So we’ve got you go to Leap Into Live dot com. Get your seat. It’s free. There is a paid option. Yeah, it’s really cool. If you want to get the replays, if you can’t make it for the entire time that we’re doing it, but it’s going to be starting next month.

[00:06:22] So make sure you guys go and check that out. LeapIntoLive.com. It’s going to be a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to it. I learned stuff every year and a big fan of ECamm They help support the show, so by supporting them, you help support us. So we really appreciate you guys checking that out and let’s just go right into our first segment here.

[00:06:40] And you guys tease this to us. So Grace, talk about this a little bit.

Why Get A .LIVE Domain Name?

[00:06:45] Grace Duffy: Yeah. So this is something that Jim came to us to talk about. And of course we have them on, as soon as we could, we tried to get them on last week, but of course they were traveling and this is the. live dot L I V E domain name.

[00:06:58] So it’s just lik dot com or dot EDU on Restream we have.io. So it’s a domain name that you can register for. And we wanted to invite them on the show first to talk about this. I was doing some digging into it and it, they describe it as the startups, influencers, celebrities, and brands are using this domain name to promote their live events and streams.

[00:07:18] So tell us, Chris, tell us, what is, this is all about what is.live and who is using it. And then how do you redirect your streams to go to this URL?

[00:07:30] JIm Fuhs: Yeah. So Chris came up with the idea because what you run into a lot of times, even with YouTube is you have this long ugly URL. And with Amazon, especially for us, if you want to see our show, it’s amazon.com/channel/in it.

[00:07:45] And it’s just a bunch of hieroglyphics as Chris likes to say, and I haven’t made the shirt yet, but I say you lost me at the slash. I’m not going to remember all that stuff. And so Chris came up with the idea of using deal, casters.live as a redirect. And so what it does is it takes you to our most recent or while we’re alive that show, I’ve also now done it for Tim and jim.live takes you to our YouTube channel.

[00:08:11] Because even though it’s brand is still, it’s a lot for people to have to remember and type in. And so it also gets into your, always be branding. So it’s memorable to say, Hey, go to deal. Castro’s dot live as opposed to, oh, you go to Amazon and you do this and you do that. And because you can change that redirect, if you have Jeff Sieh dot live, you could be sending them.

[00:08:32] Maybe you’re getting interviewed, you say, Hey, to catch my latest, whatever it is, you want them to see it takes them there. And I’d like, Chris, why don’t you jump into talking about what it’s done for us, SEO.

[00:08:45] Chris Stone: Yeah. I mean it, we as, as far as Amazon is concerned, deal, casters was born on Amazon Live.

[00:08:51] We didn’t exist on YouTube before we went live on Amazon. We didn’t exist anywhere else. And because it’s somewhat new and every day we’re telling somebody about Amazon and going live on Amazon, no one can find. They’re like how do we, where is that? What’s the, and so I was like, this is super frustrating.

[00:09:08] We have to get control of this. And as content creators, redirect, and these high top level domains are the way to do it. We’d be in a clubhouse room. We’d be in Twitter spaces, we’d be wherever. And somebody would say for the first time, they don’t know what Amazon is. And we’re like, go to deal, casters.live, just open a browser.

[00:09:27] And that they’ll remember that they hear. It’s memorable. They’ll see it. It’s memorable. Those URLs on Amazon still exists. Those places still exist. And they look like, I don’t even know what they look like. I don’t even, I can’t even repeat whatever the shop page is. But we have deal casters.shop.

[00:09:42] So if anybody wants to know what we recommend if anybody wants to know what Jeff Sieh recommended on the podcast, when he came on our show, they can go right there. And there it is branded for them to be able to look at and of course purchase. And then of course there’s commission and there’s affiliate revenue that is involved and we’re covered from an Amazon perspective because that language is there when you land on those pages.

[00:10:05] So a redirect for us, not only made sense from a let’s control, the traffic to Amazon, but also from like Jim spoke to, from an SEO perspective. Our Amazon show it, you couldn’t find it in the first eight pages when you when you’re searching for it. Now it’s been, it, within three weeks, it shot to number one, when you type in deal casters from any incognito browser or whatever.

[00:10:29] And it has remained there for well over a year. And we partnered with name.com because of it. They came to us and they said, Hey, we love what you’re doing. Would you talk about it to other people? And can we pay you to do that? And we said yeah we’d be happy. We’d be happy to do that.

[00:10:46] Just because it’s something we, we believe in. You get approached as a content creator, Jeff Grace. I’m sure you as well, you get approached as a content creator all the time and say, Hey, will you talk about my stuff? Talk about this. Here’s this. We can do that. If you don’t believe in the product, it’s just not going to come across in a lot.

[00:11:01] Situation, but Jim and I believe in this and believe in redirects for a content creator, we think it’s the secret weapon really, and not just.live, but.fitness.lawyer. No. and.shop. Depending who you are, ma if it’s a part of your brand, make it a part of your your URL and just further it, and it’ll help you be

[00:11:22] Jeff Sieh: found.

[00:11:23] Yeah. So I wanted to bring up this as we’re talking and you guys have brought for us the special that we can share with our audience. And so can you explain how this works and how they can actually take advantage of this offer?

[00:11:34] JIm Fuhs: Yeah. Chris, why don’t you go ahead and.

[00:11:37] Chris Stone: Yeah. So you just go to name.com/live and search for whatever your show is.

[00:11:42] If it’s baby Yoda type in baby Yoda, and you can go and get a baby yoda.live for a dollar or 99, the promo code is get live. And you get your own.live domain. And it’s really easy in name.com to go in and say, I want to redirect baby oda.live to my show on YouTube. My show on Amazon, my show, wherever it is Twitch, doesn’t it doesn’t matter.

[00:12:06] Really. You get to control your show. And it’s it just is something that I can’t believe was easy to do and has been so effective for us. And it’s. Inexpensive, I’m sorry, I can’t say cheap

[00:12:20] Jeff Sieh: on Amazon. That’s right. So is this something that will work for is it just a one-time thing that the special for arc and I go in do a bunch of domain names for that special price that you have there, do

[00:12:30] JIm Fuhs: you know for the dot lives?

[00:12:32] Yes. Okay. Yeah. And then the thing, and I saw Ian had the question, it’s literally, you just, you go in, you put where you want to redirect it to, and it will instantly update. So if you wanted to do it every week to a specific place, you can do that in our case, with the deal casters.live, it just automatically takes you to our latest show on Amazon.

[00:12:53] And, with all our show pages, just like you have. With what you’re doing with social media news live Jeff. So that’s what makes it nice is it’s boom, they’re there. They see the most recent episode. They can follow you from there and then ideally get notifications. But same thing with cause if you’re actually wanted to take it and redirect it to a, like as an example, we could have taken deal Castro’s dot live today and we could have redirected it to this show or, might get another thing.

[00:13:21] I might go get a, another.live URL that when I’m getting interviewed on somethings Hey, catch my latest, whatever, and it redirects it cause for that price, it’s less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks or four Wheeler on Amazon.

[00:13:35] Jeff Sieh: So that’s really and a couple of questions.

[00:13:37] So we talked that you talked about the Ian’s question about doing the redirect and Ian’s actually over on Amazon. So thank you Ian, for popping over there. I usually. I wish they’d fix it so we could figure out a way to bring comments up over on the, on our screens, but hopefully that’s coming.

[00:13:50] So this is a great question. Can you view analytics for your Amazon live show?

Can You View Analytics for Your Amazon Live Show?

[00:13:54] JIm Fuhs: Yes,

[00:13:55] Chris Stone: You can. Absolutely. And so it’s obviously the reason why Amazon is doing this is because. To make money and they know that influencers are a big part of that. And so they provide the analytics that that they want you to try and maximize, which is conversion right there.

[00:14:14] They want, there’s a lot of views that you’ll see. You’ll go live. Anywhere from 45 minutes is what they recommend up to an hour, but you’re really in control of that. But, you’ll see thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of views. And that comes from, selecting a product in the carousel and then your live stream showing up on that product page.

[00:14:33] And then people like that’s what drives the traffic. So you can imagine if you’re talking about something that’s a popular item and then your live stream shows up how many people are ported over to your live show because you’re the expert talking about that particular. Product, but what that, what happens is you got a lot of what I call, thumb by views.

[00:14:51] They’re not there. They’re showing up. And they’re like, eh, this is not for me. I got, I got to go back. It’s not answering their questions. They don’t feel like chiming in, even though they can, like Ian has. And he can ask you about whatever products you have in your carousel, Jeff.

[00:15:04] But the analytics are so you’ll see views, but you’ll see un-muted views. So as an inherent part of Amazon is everything is muted. All the live streams are muted. So that’s why we do a lot of graphics that say, Hey, unmute here. If I did this right now, Hey, unmute everybody. You’d probably see more un-muted views now on Amazon because I made the motion in the middle.

[00:15:23] And so you’ll see muted views, or I’m sorry, un-muted views. And sales, which is your commission based on how many people within 24 hours clicked on your show and made any purchase, regardless of whether or not it was in your carousel after they clicked it.

[00:15:39] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, one of the things just on the analytics side, it’s amazing how much products you sell.

[00:15:44] The amount of PR, we’ll w tomorrow I’ll look at the stats cause it takes 24 hours and I don’t do, I’m not like on it, like Jim and Chris army and there. They focus on this. This is somewhere I go and I like to see it and it’s, trying it out. But I’ll make, I’ll sell 5,000, 6,000, $10,000 worth of product from this live show.

[00:16:03] And now that’s not how much you make, because tech stuff has a lot lower commission rate and a lot of the others I should sell makeup is what I should do. That’s what I, beard products. Hey, I be down. Yeah. But it’s still pretty amazing. And how many eyeballs and before I would have it, one more question with the, about the live.live thing, but while we’re on this topic is I was doing the show and Kim Garst co texted me in slack.

[00:16:24] Hey, you gotta check this out. That’s so exciting. And she had what she was doing. She should have been watching my show, but she was actually on Amazon searching for a camera. And my show popped up at the bottom of the place where she was looking for cameras. She was all freaked out. She took a screenshot and send it to me.

[00:16:39] And so there’s all this stuff that happens. When you’re live and we forget how many people are on Amazon at one at any time during the day. It’s amazing. Gary says it sounds like a modern day QVC. So Jim, can you tell us a little bit, where it’s at similar, in words at different on this gun?

[00:16:58] JIm Fuhs: There, there are definitely people that are treating it like that, like a modern day QVC. And they’re just coming on and talking about products where Chris and I wanted to be different. And that’s where I think you are as well as, when we started our show, we wanted to teach people about live streaming and podcasting and talk about the tech related to that.

[00:17:17] But we also wanted to interview people, whether it was like authors, releasing new books in the marketing space. We’ve interviewed Dave Jackson, Neil Schaffer, Ross brand, when they’re talking about their books and just having a conversation that we even repurpose into a podcast, but then like you talked about deal casters after dark or Friday fines, Chris and I that’s where we’ll be more talking about and demonstrating products.

[00:17:44] So that’s where it’s maybe QVC. The bottom line is, it’s about creating good content, no matter what you do. And because in some aspects, the I don’t know if I’d call it. The barrier entry is low in some aspects because you just have to have a certain number of followers. We don’t know what that number is, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube.

[00:18:05] Cause they, they stopped Twitter. They’re not like saying, do you know how to live stream? And I’m sure you’ve seen some of the shows on there. You could say they don’t know how to live. And so that’s why when you do something like this show where you’re doing these great graphics and are having great conversations, people see that and they’re like, oh, let me stop because I don’t know if you’ve noticed Jeff, if you start to get like repeat viewers.

[00:18:30] Cause you can tell, cause they’ll be in the chat. And so you do start to build up this fan base and they do encourage followers. So I think, yes, it’s a, it’s like QVC, but I think at this point, it’s really up to your creativity and what you want to create. And Chris and I was like, we don’t want to be that cause we’re not like sales guys.

[00:18:49] When you think about it an influencer gets people to do things by just being real and teaching people about things or, saying why you like, or don’t like something. And that’s how we’ve taken that approach of, what, we’re going to make this a show, we want to bring on some of these great people.

[00:19:04] Cause if you’re a book, author selling a book on Amazon, why wouldn’t you want to talk about your book live right. Where people are ready to buy.

[00:19:13] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. And that’s what I do when we have we’ve had mark Schaefer and we’ve had some other authors on and being able to put like Jen Herman had three books on Instagram.

[00:19:19] We’re able to put all those things. One that makes you look good to hear your cast and also helps you to make sales. And that’s always good. One more question about before we move on past this.live domain name. One of the questions I have is, do you guys think it’s like, should I get Jeff Sieh dot com?

[00:19:34] Jeff Sieh dot live or should it be, social media news, live.live. So what, how should you do a business name or should you do your personal name? Have you guys found what works? It’s cheap enough at this deal. You can get them all, but I’m just saying, what would you guys recommend for, somebody who’s looking at maybe just getting.

Should You Use A Business or Personal Name for your Amazon Live account?

[00:19:53] Chris Stone: I would recommend if live is a part of your name, and social media news live is then at, it should be social media, news.live. I think that, that seems, that feels like a no brainer. I Doc rock has let’s get that live because he has let’s get live is his brand. And so if the word live is in your brand then that makes.

[00:20:12] That makes perfect sense. I would get Jeff Sieh dot live. Here’s the thing it’s like, it’s a dollar 99 to do it. And so why not, and why not experiment? And we’ve done experimentation and, we bought a deal Castro’s dot university and deal casters.academy, we’re building courses.

[00:20:29] And that, and we’re building, websites and other things for for people that are ready to to pay for that. But it’s and those are already showing up when you search in SEO. So it’s, and there’s places where they’re going right now, but they’re not ready, but they’re starting to show up.

[00:20:46] So I think it’s just another way to. Jeff to increase the mix. There’s a lot of people that just buy every, not a squatter, not squatters, but why not have Jeff Sieh dot live? And there’s a bunch of other ones. If you’re a fitness instructor.fitness, if you’re a lawyer there’s a whole bunch of other ones.

[00:21:04] And for a couple of bucks, if it doesn’t work out for you in a year then you could, cancel it if you want it to and not have it, but it’s worth a shot. I think.

[00:21:12] Grace Duffy: Yeah. Megan Powers in the comments here says that she has, she’s had done marketing five years. She’s had it for the last five years.

[00:21:19] So you can do anything.

[00:21:21] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. Yeah. Very true. All right. Let’s we beat that one to death but I think it’s a great deal. So make sure you guys, if you’d want to get this, make sure you guys go check that out because that is, you mean for a domain name. If any of you guys have done like domain names for awhile is.

[00:21:36] That’s a sweet deal. They seem to be going up every time. Gosh, I’ve got so many buttons. I breath. There we go. So here it is right here. Go to name.com forward slash live, and the code is get live. So everybody listening on the podcast, it’s named.com forward slash live, and the code for this special deal is get live.

[00:21:54] So go check that out. That’s pretty awesome. Next segment, we’re talking about, what is, we’ve been saying what the deal is with Amazon live. Everybody wants to know about it. We’ve been talking about it in streaming over there for a long time. And it is like the newest thing that people are talking about with live video.

[00:22:09] We went through. What it can do. And some of the analytics Ian still said, he’s struggling with analytics, but that’s just Ian. I’m sure he’ll figure it out. Yeah. I have

[00:22:17] Chris Stone: struggles too. And

[00:22:18] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, here’s a great question. And I think a lot of people, this is where I think a lot of the hangups happen is, and this is from Janet over on YouTube.

Does Amazon Live Only Accept Influencers With A Large Follower Count?

[00:22:25] Jeff Sieh: She goes, do they accept people with just a big following? It’s an only for these super influencers, Jen, I got on it. So I’m just saying it’s not, there’s not a huge if I, if they let me in, don’t let anybody in. So can you talk about that? Jim, what does that mean? What is the requirements? I just happened because I was already in the influencer program because I wanted a storefront a long time ago.

[00:22:46] I was already in it. So they just rolled that out to go live for those people. But if you’re starting from scratch, what do you need?

[00:22:53] JIm Fuhs: Yeah it goes back to it used to be Twitter. That’s how I got on. But like I just helped Christine Gritman just got approved, got about 4,000 Instagram followers.

[00:23:02] So they’re looking at, you get to pick of your three platforms, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook business. The one, I guess I’d say you have the most followers on, and then they’re going to give you a yes or no. They’re not looking at, have you been live streaming? I think they’re really, and it’s arbitrary, Chris and I talk about, they’re always moving the goalposts.

[00:23:20] So from what we’ve seen, a couple thousand YouTube subscribers, 4,000 Instagram followers, Facebook business, I have no idea. And you’ll know with Instagram and Facebook within five business days, normally YouTube is instant. Whether they’ll tell you yes or no. If you got approved and then.

[00:23:38] Kevin Colby and Gabe Luissi were on our show and they had both been disapproved and we said apply again. And they did. And then they got approved, reminds me sometimes of when I was in the military. It’s you get rejected from some program. Just don’t give up. So it’s if you didn’t make it, try to get more followers.

[00:23:54] So I’ve been recommending to people from an ease standpoint, if you’re going to focus on one platform to get approved with use Instagram right now, because I think if you’re consistent on there, it’s much easier to get more followers than than the other programs.

[00:24:09] Jeff Sieh: So is, do you know, like, how is there, like I’m a LinkedIn live, they wanted you to wait a month before you went back and that kind of stuff.

[00:24:17] Is there any can you just get disprove and then turn right around and hit it again? I mean is, and how often do they, how quickly do they check? Is it like, like in a day and get back.

[00:24:25] JIm Fuhs: Instagram and Facebook is always going to be, I, I don’t know why it’s five. They say five, at least five days with YouTube, it is instant, but I would probably say if you get disapproved, it probably means you don’t have the numbers.

[00:24:38] Like I said, they’re not looking at oh, you’ve never, ever live stream because there’s people getting approved that have never live stream. Cause they come into the, there’s a Facebook group. We’re a part of the Amazon live creators where people always like, Hey, how do I live stream? Do I, should I use OBS, should I use the cam and re stream?

[00:24:53] Or should I use these other platforms? And that’s really, it is the number. So you don’t have to have thousands, tens of thousands of followers or subscribers to get approved. Stay with it. And it is funny, Jeff, that you mentioned it because Madeline had a Twitter chat where I was talking about this and she didn’t realize she’s got an influencer account.

[00:25:11] So there’s some that they already have an account out there and you just need to go look and you can build your shop page.

[00:25:19] Grace Duffy: Amazon found you. So I know on certain sites, certain social media sites, they do make a distinction between an individual versus a business. So for instance, like on LinkedIn live, you could sign up as an individual or a business.

[00:25:31] Is there a difference on Amazon live? Do they make the distinction between signing up? So you mentioned our friend, Christine. I noticed that she also has a business. Does she, did she have to sign up as Christine or could she sign up as forbid?

[00:25:42] JIm Fuhs: It really. So like I used my fusion marketing Twitter account that cause they’re like, they’re looking at your social handle, but what you’re able to do other than the social handle, being tied to your shop, you can name your page, whatever you want it to be.

[00:25:58] So I think Jeff’s probably all his Social Media News Live, even though his handle is, might be his name or whatever platform he applied with. We called ours deal, casters live. I could change it to, as doc rock, as time deal busters. So you can edit the show, name it, and really that’s the other reason why we went to the redirect for the shot page because we wanted to brand it to the show.

[00:26:22] So that, that was another reason for that. So it doesn’t really matter. Other than on the backend, you got to think from a tax perspective, Do you have a business bank account because when you start making this money, there’s that whole thing, commingling of funds, I would recommend you set up a a separate tax ID or talk to your accountant about how you’re going to manage the financial end.

[00:26:42] Cause they are going to ask for tax IDs and all that. So you could use a business account for that. But it doesn’t have to be your business name, like you said, with Christine to actually set up your

[00:26:52] Jeff Sieh: page. Yeah, mine, mine. Mine is still Jeff Sieh. I need to go and probably change that, but that’s what I gone by when I set it up and I was like, I was just excited to get live and they let me in.

[00:27:03] So I’m just like, I’ll just don’t touch anything. That’s my whole motto through life. It’s it works. Don’t touch.

[00:27:09] Chris Stone: It really is just it goes back to the redirect and I’m sorry we, we did beat that to death and I’m digging it back up and I apologize for that, whatever your handle is and Jim’s handles, not even I actually don’t know how to spell it right now.

[00:27:23] If you type in Jim Fuhs on Twitter it’ll come up. That’s his handle. But, so it’s just in the URL. It’s just amazon.com/shop/whatever your handle is that you submitted to be approved. And that’s one of the other reasons why we have a redirect. It’s don’t go to that because we’ll never even be able to remember it or be able to speak it or put it as a YouTube URL.

[00:27:45] Got to redirect so they can send it to it. So the actual handle that you use is not even that important, to be honest, it’s, cause you could, you can control how people are sent to that. And to Jim’s point, you could brand up your shop page and change it. I guess when Jim goes solo from deal, Castro’s, he’ll change it to, marketing the Marine Corps way or something.

[00:28:05] I don’t

[00:28:05] Jeff Sieh: know. Yeah. And Gary says know this, right? He’s Jeff Sieh and you’re not, that’s why I get a bite, Gary. You’re right. Chris, I’d love for you to talk about for like people who don’t know how, you can actually make money. They don’t understand, most people understand Amazon affiliates and stuff, but can you talk about like how the carousel works and then maybe some like optimization and things that you found like some best practices to do during your show that maybe optimizes the carousel for purchase.

[00:28:32] Chris Stone: Yeah. When we go, when we do our shows that are more interview based, like the one we had you, Jeff on we’ll build a carousel based around that guest. So we want to have, at least maybe 30 products is like a best practice. And we choose products that are, we’re not going to throw in an electric blanket when we’re talking to Jeff Sieh unless Jeff likes to wrap himself in a blanket.

[00:28:54] We just do Jeff.

[00:28:57] Jeff Sieh: I have him on my lap. It’s on my lap. You can’t say it

Best Practice For Your Amazon Carousel During Your Live

[00:29:00] Chris Stone: Exactly, but and obviously we focus on, the show itself, the interview based show it there’s multi, multiple things we do after the show’s over it’s then it’s, it’s game on in terms of repurposing, we’re taking that, we’re chopping it up, we’re putting it across socials, all the things that you want to do to continue to drive people back to replay views, to continue to have people go back into Amazon with that redirect to enjoy that show.

[00:29:28] But, the show is built around that, but what’s not lost on us is we’re on, we’re in the middle of the, one of the biggest malls in the world. And one of the things that Amazon wants you to do, and one of their most recent. I guess emails or best practices is they want to make sure that your shows are product focused.

[00:29:46] And so a lot of people were like, oh, you guys are in trouble, right? You guys are, it’s a podcast. You guys could be talking about this, that, and the other it’s the same thing for us because we have related products. And then the carousel, now we may not end up, holding up a product during, a conversation with Neil Schaffer.

[00:30:02] But if someone on Amazon asks about a product, you better believe we’re going to weave that into the conversation. And we’re not going to feel bad about it because those products that we built in the carousel aren’t completely disparate from the conversation that we’re having. Yeah.

[00:30:17] Jeff Sieh: And one of the things that Jim taught me that I think has made a big difference on my podcast is because I’m able to be in Amazon’s play or not.

[00:30:28] It’s Amazon, what’s it? What’s their music is Amazon. Or Amazon music. It was on music. So my podcast is in there. I see. Seems like I don’t even know it’s called, but it’s in there, but I’m also able to highlight that in my carousel, which leads to sign up some subscriptions over there as well. And I think that’s made a difference, especially if you’re launching a podcast, any visibility helps.

[00:30:47] So I

[00:30:48] Grace Duffy: really, our friend Ian has found the analytics. He says that it’s, he noted that it’s on the website, not on the app. So those of you that are also looking, but he wants to know what kind of metrics should you be looking at when you’re just starting out on Amazon live?

What Analytics Should You Look For After Doing An Amazon Live?

[00:31:02] JIm Fuhs: I would say the one thing.

[00:31:05] Don’t get caught up in the numbers too much, because until you become an insider, you’re not going to get a lot of views once you become insider, which I think, and I know they keep changing things, but originally it was 90 minutes of streaming. They want to see that you’re like talking about products and really they want you to go alive for at least 20 to 30 minutes.

[00:31:26] Now, what I’ve told people is go 90 minutes. Your first time, get that 90 minutes out of the way, get approved for insider, because that’s when, as Jeff said, your video starts to play on the product pages and insider, that’s when the magic really happens. And but what you’ll start to see is certain products, right?

[00:31:44] If you’re talking about a highly ranked product, you’re going to see your views will start to go up. So we look at things like that. Chris, like we talked about by telling people to unmute, putting stuff into the chat itself on Amazon do you have questions? It’s about engagement.

[00:31:59] We look at that unmute rate, we look at, how many clicks did we get that really starts to tell us, are, are we being successful? I don’t think there is a, like a right time to go live on Amazon. Ever people always asking when’s the best time to go live. It’s there’s people out there 24 7.

[00:32:17] And so what you may want to watch out for you, you see this Jeff, like they’ll have what they call beauty hall, where all these beauty people are talking about makeup, but, Despite what people may think. They’re talking about beauty. They’re not talking about electronics, so you could still go live when they are.

[00:32:34] But if you’re going to talk about makeup during that time, you might as well forget it because your video is going to get trumped by, some, a list that that’s what they, all they talk about is his makeup and beauty products. And then days prime day was just unbelievable.

[00:32:50] I think we went live for a total of about 10, 11 hours over two days. And, I think we had an excess of 90 to a hundred thousand views in those two days. And that was fun. It was nice, so the next big holiday, I would say it’s not just black Friday, but all the people are going to start shopping more.

[00:33:10] Because of the holidays coming. That’s where you need to start thinking about what is your strategy? How are you going to get more visibility in that regard? So that’s, I think what Chris and I really look at, I don’t know Chris, if you want to add anything to that, but I think those are some of the keys we use.

[00:33:27] Chris Stone: Yeah, I think a lot of this it has to do, and this is a great question, cause I CA I love to nerd out on the data and sometimes I spend way too much time down that rabbit hole. And at the end of the day for Jim and I, we built this show because. Our businesses. We’re in the people that we were talking about, consulting our clients, it always ended up talking about the tech.

[00:33:52] It always ended up talking about the gear and trying to get people past that you don’t have to buy the, this particular mic this’ll work. You don’t have to buy this camera. This will work. Let me show you how this works. And so being on Amazon and doing that inside of the mall is it works for us.

[00:34:09] And we know people and we can have interviews, and then we can have conversations that, are a part of the customer journey. When you go on to Amazon. Yeah. It’s not like going onto YouTube. And I think too many people are comparing the two because one is live streaming. And then, oh, this is also live streaming on another port.

[00:34:28] This is you are inside the mall. When you go to YouTube, you’re looking, you’re not looking to buy necessarily. You could you’re thinking about a product it’s earlier in the customer journey. When you show up on Amazon. Man you’re ready. I got to get this. And so now you’re the expert and that person’s ready to spend money on whatever that thing is that you’re talking about potentially.

[00:34:50] And so it’s a completely different conversation than YouTube where people are looking to get free information, YouTube university. And it’s, we, in our more product-based shows it’s more like that. It’s more Hey, you’re here. This is we’re showing it. We’re going to show you how the loop debt works, or we’re going to show you how this works.

[00:35:08] And this is how I use it on my podcast. And that’s on sale today. And, oh, look, is here asking this question and people are, it’s like people walking up to you in the mall as you’re the expert. So we have different sort of shows. And I think a lot of people, Grace and Jeff, they think Amazon live is they have to create some other show.

[00:35:27] And that’s what I love about this show is you guys already have a great show and it’s on all of these, great. Platforms thanks to restream and, Amazon can be one of them and you can just do what you already do. You’re not ignoring what’s happening on Amazon and Amazon’s watching your stream and they’re listening as well.

[00:35:46] And so if you, there was any problem with you being live on Amazon, you wouldn’t be live on Amazon. And so I think a lot of people just need to get past that, oh, I got to create this type of show for Amazon. Take your existing brand and try to just, work it into the mix. And then you’ll see like what Jeff has seen with doing it is, Hey, I got a little maybe margarita money or whatever.

[00:36:09] Jeff Sieh: Some bourbon money that’s right. They need to sell that on Amazon. No you can’t. So the thing that I would, I was going to ask you about this the, now you’re thinking about bourbon, I just gotta stop. So this is a great question because you talked about, this is the one that from ENS.

[00:36:22] He goes, should we do a dedicated, you talked about this, should we do a dedicated show on Amazon or is it okay to multistream our shows everywhere and stream to Amazon as a secondary thing? We’ve answered that. But I think part of the strategy is I want to do a singular show, talking about how I set up the stream deck, because I use the stream deck for this entire show.

[00:36:41] There’s some hacks and things that I’ve learned that I want to go and just do a specific show about the stream, Jack. So I think I want you to go in here. I think is fine. And I think we provide value for people over on Amazon, but I love it so much that I want to go. And that intent that you were saying of buying when we had Stephanie Lou on our first time we went over there, she just mentioned like a vacuum and somebody in the comments says, what vacuum is it?

[00:37:02] Where is it? They wanted it. If you mentioned anything, the people want to buy so much over there. Even if it’s just like a throwaway comment, they ask where it is, how can I get, and you have to add it to the carousel really quick. But it’s just amazing. Like you were saying, Chris D the intent to buy.

[00:37:15] David Foster, a friend. And I think I even helped, I talked to him about it when he was first starting. It tells you to talk to Jim and Chris he’s loving Amazon and he’s killing it over there. And partial geek is so awesome. Thanks for stopping by. So where are we going to say I cut you off Grace, sorry.

[00:37:28] Grace Duffy: Oh, I was going to bring up this question from Gary. And so we talk a lot about how you could bring in the Amazon products already there, but he has a question about if you have a brick and mortar store establishment that is selling its own products, is there a way for a small business to create their own Amazon store and then create a show, selling their stuff on Amazon?

How Can Amazon LIve Work for a Brick And Mortor Store?

[00:37:49] JIm Fuhs: As long as those products are, if they’re an Amazon seller. Yes. But if it’s products that are going to take people off the platform at this point, know that’s the thing you have to be careful about. We can talk about, where you can follow us outside of that, but they’re very explicit in the terms of service that they don’t want.

[00:38:07] You taking people off the platform during the show to go buy stuff, other places. And so in some aspects it’s incentive for maybe some brick and mortars you know what I need to apply to the Amazon seller program. And then they could even work with people like Jeff to put their products.

[00:38:23] And that’s what we have happening brand partnerships where these brands are approaching us. Would you talk about our product on your live stream or if it doesn’t fit our show it, if it fits what we’re calling, we call our site self. Now, I guess a lifestyle bloggers or whatever the term is, we will do product videos.

[00:38:42] That go on our shop page and we’ll end up on the product page, but we will not talk about it during our live stream. Cause it just it’s too off brand, if that makes sense.

[00:38:50] Jeff Sieh: So I want to bring up this from David. He had something and it’s a good point. He’s watching over to YouTube. He says I’m worried that at, in time, if we stream things that aren’t made specifically for Amazon, they will start expanding the rules.

[00:39:00] That’s why he’s ex extremely when he’s talking about gear, which makes sense for his brand. I’m still I think we talk about it and people see that we’re a podcast and they want to know every, even on comments and on Facebook and other places are always asking what Mike are you using? And having that, being able to be on the carousel below there. I think that I’m safe with that. I’m guessing before we move on to our next section, I wanted to ask Chris because I actually modeled a lot. Of seeing what you were doing on deal casters. When I started this show with the graphics and stuff like that, and some of it for me like that when I go full screen to you, Chris, like that’s a, it’s a little cheesy, but there’s a reason why I do it is with that overlay is because it catches the eye in the stream.

[00:39:40] But can you talk about, how you’re doing those graphics, you’re you very in your face, it’s, unmute here your strategy behind those graphics for Amazon live. And I know impartial geek, David Foster does is the same thing.

Branding Your Amazon Live Show

[00:39:51] Chris Stone: Yeah. It’s a. It really is about pattern interrupts and goes back to, okay, if this show is maybe only on Amazon you have to understand that first of all, people are muted your or not.

[00:40:06] They’re not muted, we’re muted when we when we go alive. And so like when we’re having a conversation with a great guest, like Winnie sun or somebody like that, it’s we’re bringing, we want people to hear what she has to say. So we create an overlay that does this like sort of circle thing that says unmute.

[00:40:23] And that’s it. I think if you’re sitting back and watching a show like this, it’s that would be right over my face. And so you just gotta be you gotta be judicious in terms of okay I’m going to be using this video later. And if she says something really awesome, I don’t want this big circle.

[00:40:39] It says unmute going over her beautiful face. It really, a lot of what we’ve done is to number one. It’s branding 1 0 1, look like you belong. So we we intentionally created our logo to look like we belong on that platform, even though we had not gone live once.

[00:40:55] And so you look at the color scheme you look at the branding that we do and we do a lot of people are like, they’re doing a four minute long countdown clock before they go live. Again. You’re not on YouTube. You’re not going live on Facebook. You might be. But if you’re going live on Amazon, you will lose everything.

[00:41:16] If you do, or if you’re doing a countdown clock. Yeah. So if you’re, even if you’re selecting a product, even if you don’t, so when we go live, we hit them with a one minute intro video. That’s showing our guests, that’s showing all of these things and they’ll end getting people’s attention. So when we are actually live on Amazon, we’ve got people that are there because we got their attention and then we keep their attention.

[00:41:39] And a lot of the, run of show, so to speak is about capturing people in. So we can have that conversation. And then throughout the show, doing some creative pattern interrupts, like what you’re doing here, we’re pulling, solo looks, we’re pulling in different views. We’re pulling in lower thirds the wrong, lower third that’s underneath that.

[00:42:04] Yeah. That’s really, the idea is it’s not, it’s not that different than other platforms and pattern interrupts people thumb by your stuff on YouTube. People, thumb, buy your stuff on all kinds of other platforms. And sometimes it’s about grabbing their attention, waving your arms every once in a while, see a bunch

[00:42:20] Jeff Sieh: more views.

[00:42:20] We did that. We sold, oh man, I sold all these iPads. So before we move on to the man, I said, I can geek out about this stuff for a long time. Cause it’s so fascinating. There’s so many facets about, branding and, pattern recognition and all that stuff. But I want to bring up Danny’s question.

[00:42:34] She’s here every week and I wanted to make sure we get to her. She goes yes, Gary, have you guys seen any local products who sell on Amazon? Do Amazon streaming, for example, a small coffee roasters or maybe a furniture stores, or is it more for influencers representing products? Any locals.

Selling Local Products on Amazon Live

[00:42:51] JIm Fuhs: I have a friend is asking us he, he has a product that he’s made.

[00:42:57] It’s a water balloon shooter, that he, he’s a small seller few products, and he’s asking us to talk about, his product, maybe do some product videos. We might do a video where we have have the kids shoot each other in the yard. But so there are, there is some of that, but they, like I said, they’ve gotta be approved to sell on Amazon.

[00:43:16] So I don’t know that there’s necessarily some of these real small, but I think actually I take that back. Chris, you had a guest with, on Dan show, right? The sneaker ratio. That might be a good example of a

[00:43:27] Chris Stone: small, so those are the, Amazon, it, local and small businesses is there’s a lot of local, small businesses that have products on Amazon.

[00:43:35] They do a lot yeah. To support them. And they have Amazon launchpad which is, I think you can go now and vote for 10 different launchpad products. Sneaker erasers is one of them. They were on shark tank. And I think they got a deal from two of the sharks, but like if they, if one of those companies wins, the Amazon launchpad contest, like they, Amazon gives them a ton of global, distribution and money and all kinds.

[00:44:02] They get this huge look. I think a lot of people look at Amazon as and they are massive, right? They’re a massive corporation, but they do a lot for local and small businesses. And I think if you’re someone that wants to go live on Amazon, You’re a company. You have brands, you have things that that you’re selling.

[00:44:19] It’s a different thing than having an influencer. Do it. Number one, a to do it you can’t just be a seller on Amazon and then just decide you want to go live yourself and sell your own products, that cost money. And so if you want to be that person then you can be that person, but you probably will have to hire someone to do it for you.

[00:44:40] So what a lot of these companies end up doing is contacting people like us who are already influencers on the program. And they find that’s, not only more affordable, but more effective, right? If you’re a branded product and you’re doing your own live stream, it doesn’t feel as authentic as somebody who is talking about other products that you bought from that is a bigger influencer, bigger than any of us here on the screen.

[00:45:03] And you’ll end up selling more and it just feels more authentic. Yeah,

[00:45:07] Jeff Sieh: those are all great points. Alrighty. So man, I’m just, I’m going to try to burn through this last one because we don’t have much time. So they’ve changed Amazon’s requirements. And so this email that came out like this week

[00:45:19] they said that we recently changed requirements to be eligible for Amazon distribution review from 10 videos to three videos.

Changes to Amazon Distribution Requirements

[00:45:26] Jeff Sieh: So once at least three videos are uploaded to your storefront, you may start to be discovered by shoppers on Amazon. And I know Jim was the one he peaked. I haven’t done it yet. He’s constantly pushing me to put these these videos up, which I need to do. Like I talked about the stream deck and stuff.

[00:45:41] So talk about this and why this is important that it’s, they’ve lowered down to three. Jim, what are your thoughts?

[00:45:47] JIm Fuhs: One, they just lowered the barrier to entry for you to make, we’ll say one to 4% commission from a video that can appear on a product page. This is how you make the proverbial money while you sleep.

[00:46:00] And so now that it’s no longer 10, Jeff, if you get three videos done in the next 24 hours by Monday, you could potentially start to see that you will have daily sales. Even if you don’t go live for the next two weeks, that’s how important it is. And I’ll tell you why. I think Amazon’s doing it.

[00:46:16] If you really think about these product videos that we’re doing, it’s user generated content, even though it’s by influencers. And so this is it’s a brilliant move by Amazon because people are, we can tell you by looking at our analytics in our video section, on our shop page, people are watching our videos.

[00:46:36] People are buying the product. And that’s why, I think there’s not enough of the, it goes back 2000, 2000 influencers on the platform, but 80, 20 rule, a lot of them are like, they’re either getting frustrated. They’re not doing the videos. Ian, even as a, a rising star and there’s people that they’re not going live, but they’re doing product videos and they’re making money off of the product videos.

[00:47:00] And so I think that’s why they’re really like, it’s like Facebook, right? This is what we want you to do. Hint, hint. So we’ve lowered it from 10 to three. So what are you waiting for?

[00:47:11] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, so I’m excited and now I’m even more excited because even David says, he’s shocked by how many videos.

[00:47:18] I’ve used. My videos have gotten he’s repurposed, all the ones he made on geeks life, which is super smart. I know a lot of YouTubers are doing that as well. Some of the other things that happened there was this new shoppable field photo creation that came out and you can actually, tag products and I tried it and you’re supposed to be able to share it out on Instagram and be able to do some stuff that way I still am in the middle of testing it.

[00:47:39] So there’s a lot of new stuff going on at the Amazon home front, but the videos things I wanted to make sure that we had plenty of time to talk about, but we are at the five minute mark and I wanted to make sure see, I could nerd out about this stuff all the time. I’m telling you we need to do just an Amazon live show.

[00:47:54] Let’s do it. What, where can people find out about you? I’ll let you go first, Chris, and then I’ll end up with Jim, but Chris tell us where’s the best place and deal casters and the deal, casters, Stafford, or dark one, all those, what? Talk about that and where they people can.

[00:48:10] Chris Stone: That’s not a Cinemax show.

[00:48:12] Know you’re looking for it. I know. You’re just trying to look for it on your DVR, but our DVR is still a thing. Yeah, I’m a Chris. Yeah, I’m a cast head.net. If you want to connect LinkedIn is probably the best place. And I think there’s a few Christos in the world. So if you’re looking for me on LinkedIn, it’s Chris Stone ATL and that’s probably the best place to connect.

[00:48:33] And of course, if you want to catch any of the shows for deal casters, they’re all available on replay. Amazon has them at deal, casters.live.

[00:48:43] Jeff Sieh: Awesome. What about you? Yeah,

[00:48:44] JIm Fuhs: You can find me fusion marketing.com, but like Chris, it’s probably better to go to LinkedIn and you just find me at a Jim Fuhs.

[00:48:52] I’m the only, only one that I’m aware of. Name-wise and then if you really want to check out what we’re doing to go to deal Castro’s dot shop, we would love people to follow us. We’ve also got, if you want to learn how to get on Amazon, you can go to deal casters.university, and it will get you access to a video we put together on how to get approved as an Amazon influencer.

[00:49:14] And yeah, I we’re excited then. Oh, and then Tim and jim.live every Wednesday. I do a show with my friend Tim’s son. We just had our third anniversary had Winnie sun on Jeff. You’ve been on the show. Chris did an amazing brand new intro video for us. Yeah. It’s it’s exciting to be here today and great to see you and Grace.

[00:49:32] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. And I want to shout out to somebody over on Amazon live. David Gibson says what a squad. So I’m going to take that as a compliment. So grace, where can people find out about you? The amazing Grace Duffy, I’m

[00:49:41] Grace Duffy: going to go in the LinkedIn train. You can find me personally at LinkedIn at the Grace age stuff at LinkedIn, and then also join us over on the restream YouTube channel.

[00:49:50] We are posting tons of tutorials and new content on how you can also level up your life streaming. And we’re actually going live to Amazon live right now through restream. But Jeff, you have something else that helps people.

[00:50:03] Jeff Sieh: I wouldn’t, I want to make sure that we talk about this real quick before we go, make sure people know about named.com forward slash live and the code is get live.

[00:50:12] Make sure that they go do that. If you guys want to have some help with anything that we’ve talked about today, podcasting, all sorts of stuff. You can go and book me at catalini.com/ Jeff Sieh. Fortunately social media news at S M N L. Social media is live shortened. So I’d love to talk to you guys there, but do not forget about this amazing show we have coming up.

[00:50:33] This virtual conference Leap Into Live Streaming Bootcamp. It’s going to be amazing. You find out more about that at Leap Into Live that’s Leap Into Live dot com. Go there, sign up, get your virtual seat quickly before they fill up. And I’d love to see you guys over there. And with that, thank you guys so much for coming today.

[00:50:49] We really appreciate you guys. Thanks. All of you in the comments, Danny. Brian impartial, Keith David Foster, so many people, Ian Anderson. Great. Thank you guys for sure. Today and watching the show, you guys are awesome. Thank you so much. And thank you for helping me get on Amazon live. You guys.

[00:51:03] I wouldn’t have been able to do it without both of you make sure you guys follow them. Make sure you guys follow them with that. We’ll see you guys next time. Bye everybody.

[00:51:14] Grace Duffy: Thank you.