November 25, 2024 Newsletter

[SFTB] 🥊 You will get smoked you clown

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✅The Instant Value Section (IVS)✅

They Miss Claims: Even the best in-house teams don’t have the specialized tools or expertise to spot every eligible reimbursement. It’s simply not possible.

Manual Errors Are Common: Submitting claims is tricky. Mistakes lead to rejections, delays, or worse—claims that can’t be resubmitted.

Policy Updates Are a Headache: Amazon’s reimbursement rules shift constantly. Keeping up takes time, focus, and know-how your team may not have.

It’s a Time Sink: Every hour spent tracking claims and filing paperwork is time your team could spend on higher-impact tasks that actually grow your business.

Automation Misses Key Claims: Amazon’s automatic reimbursement process sounds good, but many types of claims—like damaged or lost inventory—still need manual filing.

Limited Coverage: Not all eligible reimbursements are included in their automated process. Without careful tracking, you’ll never know what’s slipping through the cracks.

Short Claim Windows: You only have 60 days to file for many reimbursements. If you’re not acting quickly, you’re losing out.

Confusing Policies: Amazon’s guidelines are complex, and misunderstanding them means money stays in their pocket, not yours.

Don’t let your profits dissapear. Even if you do it yourself or use automation, it’s still a good idea to have a reimbursement service as a back-up. While Amazon’s FBA reimbursement process is designed to help, staying vigilant is more important than ever.

The last two weeks Costa Rica has been getting hit with a crazy amount of rain.

Lots of people live in low areas and flooding has been a problem. Dirt roads are a mess. Renting a car is dicey with the roads as they are.

I always suggest some sort of SUV with clearance for the potholes. The Liberia Airport was even closed for a couple of days due to holes in the runway!

People have been flying to San Jose instead. Unfortunately, it’s a 5 hour drive from where we are. In the rain.

If you are planning to visit in the rainy season make sure you have backup plans. I see people here on vacation now totally stuck indoors or not even able to leave. Bad luck.

Broken by @Vanessa Hung, there’s some good news about FBA fees!

The verdict? No new fees. 😮👏🙏

From Amazon:

“As a result, we will not increase US referral and FBA fees and will not introduce any new fee types.”

“We will also lower some fees and provide additional benefits to support new selection growth.”

Read more: https://sellercentral.amazon.com/help/hub/reference/G201411300

Are people using my SnS Coupon to get a big discount and then cancelling?

If you want to see how your SnS efforts are working out, check out the new SnS dashboard. It is simply…beautiful.

You can get insanely granular and specific.

• How many SnS subs you’re getting PER DAY

• Your 30 and 90 day retention rates

• What percentage of your subs stick around for 2+ deliveries

• What percentage of your new subs come from SnS coupons (I like >25%+)

But also, you can see how many of your customers use the initial discount — say, 25% — and then cancel immediately.

The metric you’re looking for is cancelled subscriptions after 1 delivery. On this account, it’s 15%. Now, not all of these people are trying to game the system, but some of them are. For the sake of argument, let’s assume they’re all tire kickers.

Here’s the math on what this is “costing” you (money wise, you still get ranking from these sales and other benefits).

1. With a 25% discount, each customer pays $14.99 on a $19.99 product, which means we give a $5 discount.

2. 16% of customers cancel right after using the discount.

3. For each canceling customer, we “lose” the $5 discount since they don’t continue buying.

4. Since 16% cancel, our average loss is 16% of $5, which equals $0.80 per sale.

Soooo.. in essence our discount per customer is actually $5.8/u when factoring in those who are gaming the system.

Not too bad 🙂

What are your numbers looking like in the new Dashboard?

Here’s an awesome little website: seats.aero.

If you’re interested in making your credit card points go a bit farther, read on. Seats.aero is perfect for travelers seeking to unlock the full potential of frequent flyer miles and reward points. It simplifies the complex process of finding and booking award flights by providing real-time availability and curated deals across a variety of airlines and loyalty programs.

Real-Time Award Search: Tracks and displays live availability for award seats, saving you hours of manual searches.

Curated Deals: Highlights the best-value redemptions, helping you maximize your points and miles.

User-Friendly Interface: Makes navigating complex loyalty programs and airline alliances straightforward, even for novice travelers.

Saves Time: Instead of scouring multiple websites, Seats.aero aggregates data in one place, streamlining your planning process.

Maximizes Value: It identifies sweet spots in redemption options, ensuring you get the most out of your miles.

Exclusive Access: Discover hard-to-find award seats that may not appear on standard airline searches.

Last week a police plane was circling around where I live.

This never happens.

It was flying low enough I could even read “Policia” on it.

Something was definitely going on. Well…

Turns out a bunch of packages of “Narcos Finest” were washing up on the beaches by us. Police were camped out in various areas along the beach looking for more and perhaps waiting to see who shows up.

Here is a photo a friend sent me of one of the packages!  Contents will not play in any video game system but could cause you to play video games for days straight! 😂

If you’re the “I can’t get enough drama” type, here’s an Amazing video where Steven Pope calls out Danny McMillan & Oana Padurariu’s lengthy article on The Honeymoon Period as “Bullsh*t.”

The article is extremely lengthy and well-researched and comes to the conclusion that the Amazon algorithm has moved beyond a fixed Honeymoon period for new products, instead relying on advanced algorithms in RUFUS & COSMO.

Pope obviously didn’t agree.

Click on the video above and check out the comments to see the battle in all it’s glory. Timestamp is 3:30.

Speak Up! Community Comments & Questions:

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If you liked this newsletter, here’s where we share more stuff like it:

1. 🤓Just getting started? Check out the Free Amazon FBA Course

2. 🎙️ Listen to the latest episodes of The SFTB Podcast

3. 💸 Increase your income today with Online Arbitrage Training

4. 👔 Need an Accountant? Accounting Services

5. 📧 Want some 1-on-1 time? Rob & Max

6. 📣 Interested in sponsoring the newsletter? E-mail info@sellingfrom.co

All the best,

Rob & Max