We are new on Amazon, two maybe three weeks now. I went through every e-mail, and I had 5,000 of them (yes I did clean out while doing this project) and sent everybody an e-mail letting them know our olive oil is for sale on Amazon. The European law changed and we now have to use phalate free hoses in addition to the BP free hoses so the last time I was in the States I bought a 40ft dairy hose and brought it back in my suitcase. They charge $14 a meter over here so that was a good savings by buying it in the US. The sales associate I bought it from over the internet, she got an e-mail from me saying our olive oil is now on Amazon. While visiting my mother, I realized that she needed to give one of her kids Power of Attorney as I could see her declining and I was worried how long it would be that she would still be competent, so I walked up and down the streets of her city, found a lawyer and got 'er done. My mom's lawyer, yup he got an e-mail saying our olive oil is now available on Amazon. Last night I finished the e-mails through the letter V so I am almost done with the alphabet.
The earliest sales were through our kids, basically you would say our social network (in the old days we would say our social circle) they contacted their friends and co workers and acquaintances. But we do have a few, what I call "Stranger" sales, we don't know the person who bought they are a stranger to us. You know where we are doing well? Washington DC. There is one "stranger sale," first he bought 1 @ 1L AOC, then he put in another order and bought 3 more. Then he bought Bouteillan on another order so he must love our olive oil or else why would he keep ordering more? He has no idea that he is our biggest customer. I sent him a nice thank you letter, in the thank you letter I always ask nicely if the person will leave a review but so far we only have 2 reviews. And one out of the two didn't go into his orders and then push the "Write a Review Button" so it does not show verified purchase. Enough time has gone by since I sent the thank you letter to that Washington DC customer for him to have received it, so I guess that means he is not going to leave a review which is such a shame as I bet he would leave a glowing review since he ordered 3 separate times.
Trust me what we are doing, being an Amazon Seller is not for the faint of heart. All said and done Amazon charges us right around 1/3 of the sales in fees and there is a lot of competition. It is very hard to go through all the hoops at Amazon, get approved to sell grocery and then do everything else perfectly to get your products shipped and stocked in their warehouses. Then you finally go through all that, get it up on Amazon and then you have to work to promote it or it just sits on the shelves at Amazon. What we are doing is NOT easy, not at all easy, but I believe in our olive oil, I know it is superior olive oil, the key I have figured out is to get Verified Purchase Reviews. I went through all of that prior effortto get this far, I have to figure out a way to convince the people who buy our olive oil to leave a review. This is the part I am struggling with now, how to do that. I know we will not be a long term success at Amazon without Verified Purchase Reviews, sure I may sell out what I sent just through our social network but that will not increase significantly, I need to break through to get more of those "Stranger Sales" and I realize I need Verified Purchase Reviews to do that.
This is what I am toying with, every day I get an Amazon report of the customers name and address and what they bought and I send out a Thank you letter from France to them within 48 hours. I'm thinking to wait for about a month and if they have not left a review to send them a second letter saying, "Well it is has been a month I hope you are loving the olive oil, if so, it would help us out a lot if you could go into your Amazon Orders, find the order from when you bought our olive oil and push the "Leave a Review" button. That would help us out a lot.
My own cousin bought some of our olive oil, I sent her my thank you letter and even my own cousin did not leave a review so clearly, clearly getting people to leave a review is a much harder task than I had ever anticipated. One thing I will not do is lie or cheat, I am not going to go in and put in phony reviews. To be a sustaining seller on Amazon I know I gotta figure out how to get people to leave a review because on Amazon reviews drive sales. I did everything else right, people prefer to buy through Prime and Shipped by Amazon, I signed up for that and i pay the fees for that. I wrote long and detailed information about our products. I created a blog with even more information and verified laboratory test results, I just gotta figure out how to get people to leave a review. I know it can be done, I just have to figure out a way to motivate people to do that. So far I am not succeeding in that area. I'll keep working on it.
In the meantime thank you Dan for posting this on TBN, and to everyone who has bought our olive oil and especially to those who send us well wishes, not everyone can afford to buy our products but if you at least share the information with others that helps. It does make a wonderful wonderful gift, I can see some people are doing that because two people bought it but had it shipped to somebody else, so that must mean it was a gift. Many many thanks to all, sincerely thank you so much.
