Kris and Dustin discuss different acronyms used in the Amazon e-commerce industry that sellers should be familiar with.
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– Hello everyone, and welcome to episode 40 of “Two Amazon Sellers and a Microphone.” With me as always is Chris Gramlich. What’s up, Chris?
– Not much, man, how you been?
– I’ve been good. It’s a good Monday after Thanksgiving weekend, so I’m stuffed. I probably should start exercising, but I’m good otherwise.
– And I got food, I got leftovers for weeks, so I’m good to go for a while.
– Absolutely, yeah, that’s true, it’s true. But also we’re kicking off, Cyber Monday’s today. So it’s exciting to see sales rolling in and this boom of traffic that’s going on right now, so it’s-
– It’s a fun year.
– Fun time to be selling on Amazon and e-commerce in general. But today’s episode we just wanna spend just a quick amount of time here, going over some common terms and acronyms that you hear people talk about all the time that are in the Amazon space. These terms get thrown around all the time. And sometimes unless you just look ’em up, it takes a little while to figure out what they actually mean. So we’re just gonna go sort of down a list here, we’re gonna try to go in alphabetical order and just quickly touch on a term and what it means, and then just move on. So this can be a nice resource for you in terms of knowing what people are talking about when they say some crazy acronym from Amazon. Let’s get cranked up, Chris.
– Sure.
– I’ll just, let me say the term real quick and just give a brief definition of what that term is. How’s that?
– Yep, sounds good to me.
– What are people talking about when they say A+ content?
– This is a detailed page on your description, below this where your description is, but it’s more like images, infographics, lifestyle photos. It’s below the bullets, but this has replaced basically enhanced brand content. This should be called enhanced brand content but now it’s just called A+ content.
– Yep, all right, moving on. We’re gonna speed through these because it’s a big one for us, Chris, ACoS, A-C-O-S. What does that mean?
– Advertising Cost of Sale. The formula is total spend divided by your ad sales gives you ACoS.
– All right. What about affiliates? What are affiliates on Amazon?
– This is a program in which people can actually earn money by driving traffic to Amazon products. So they get a little bit of a cut. This can be off social media, blogs, forums, but they essentially sign up for this program. And if they promote the link, they get a percentage of that sale. And it’s not just that sale, it’s like the entire cart. So somebody buys a big screen TV, you get that too.
– Yeah, I’m an Amazon affiliate myself. I’ve done this before going spending most of my time in private labeling, but yeah, it’s a good way to, you can just send somebody a link and Amazon will pay you a commission for driving traffic to the site, so. It’s good side money for something you’re looking to do. All right, next one. People talk about, say this all the time. ASIN, A-S-I-N, what does that mean?
– Amazon Standard and phone number. This is just a characteristic or identifier that Amazon uses for your product.
– Yeah, and they use a lot of different identifiers. So a lot of times there’s confusion between what ASIN is or SKU or FNSKU, which we’re gonna talk about later on. But yeah, this is, the ASIN is the number that Amazon assigns to a particular product. You have no control over setting your own ASIN. Yeah, this is like it’s set and it’s always gonna be that ASIN.
– All right, here’s another one that causes confusion. What’s the Buy Box?
– This is where you get your sale, right? This is where people make their money. So this is where you as a seller, somebody goes to the listing and buys the item. You’re in the Buy Box, which is on the detail page. That’s gonna be where you get the sale from. So the Buy Box is on the detail page. A customer just has to hit buy now, and as long as you’re in that Buy Box, you would get that sale. And that does rotate, depending on the product.
– Yeah, where this comes into play mostly is when you have a lot of different sellers, selling the same product. So if you’re selling a pair of Nike shoes and there’s 25 other people selling the same pair of shoes, you’re all on the same listing, but Amazon will allocate the Buy Box to only one of those sellers based on a lot of factors. So it can rotate, or somebody can have it for a long time, especially if they’re the lowest price. So that’s a real people fight over the Buy Box all the time. BSR or Bestseller Rank. This one’s pretty obvious.
– Yeah, this was pretty common too. This gets thrown around a lot. This is where you rank in that category. So every product is gonna have a Best Seller Rank. It’s usually updated hourly, but it’s like a sales history of a product. So this is your Best Seller Rank in the given category.
– It’s just good to know that Best Seller Rank is BSR. That’s the acronym, ’cause people all the time will just throw that around. Hey, what’s your BSR right now? So that’s what that means. We already talked about an ASIN as the, now what’s a child ASIN?
– It’s just a variant of a listing. So if you have parents, which is the main product page and you have different colors and different sizes, each one of those is going to be a child ASIN.
– All right, moving on. CPC, this is an advertising term, stands for cost per click. Explain that, Chris.
– Yeah, this is just what you get charged for a keyword. So when somebody clicks on your product for a keyword you’re bidding on, you’re gonna get, the charge for that is gonna be, you call it cost per click. So you’re only charged on a cost per click basis for your ad. And so that’s why people bid on different types of keywords to get better placement. And you’re only charged again when that person clicks on the ad.
– And that’s different than your bid, then you may be bidding 60 cents on a keyword, but when someone clicks on it the CPC might only be 52 cents.
– Good point.
– And depending on how that auction goes, Amazon’s not always gonna charge your bid. They might charge you less, or more if you’ve got multipliers on there. And that’s where you’re gonna see what the actual cost per click is. All right, next one, CTR, which is your click-through rate. What is that?
– Yep, just a quick calculation. The number of clicks divided by the number of impressions for your product, for your ad.
– Yep, so a good click-through rate, the higher it is, the better it is. All right, DSP. This is a newer Amazon ad platform. Explain it.
– Yeah, this is big. This is a bigger topic, a demand-side platform. This is for big advertisers’ brands. A lot of the functions that DSP has are starting to be implemented into like Seller Central and your vendor accounts or so I’ll be looking for that. But this is a demand-side platform. This is for advanced advertising on and off Amazon. There’s usually a minimum to get in this program. I think it’s like 25K a month that you’re willing to spend on ads. But a lot of the functionality of the demand-side platform is starting to roll over in Seller Central. If you wanna get into the demand-side platform, be ready to spend on ads and have a minimum but you can also use ads. You can contact some agencies who may have access to this. So now this is not that I’m not in, but I know this is a demand-side platform. This is where you’re gonna spend more money on ads. So just, it’s more advanced for ads, really.
– All right, next term, ERP, or the Early Reviewer Program.
– This is the program you wanna enroll all your ASINs in once you get a new product because this is where you’re gonna get your initial reviews. So there’s an Early Reviewer Program. You’ll just enroll that ASIN in there, and this will get you more reviews for your product.
– And next up is EBC. I’ll just go and touch on this, ’cause we already talked about A+ content. EBC is no longer relevant, but you still will hear people say this, ’cause they’re used to it. It’s Enhanced Brand Content is what EBC stands for, but that is now called A+ content. So anytime you hear somebody say EBC, they’re actually talking about A+ content, which we already talked about earlier. All right, the next two, you can do this one quick, Chris. FBA and FBM.
– FBA fulfilled by Amazon, FBM fulfilled by the merchant. Those are super common. You should know what those are if you’re listening to this podcast.
– Yes, exactly. Yeah, by now, because you have to choose, are you gonna fulfill it yourself, or let Amazon? All right, next up. This is an FNSKU. So what is the FNSKU?
– This is an important one. This is just an identifier for the product that are fulfilled by Amazon. So these are Amazon’s like, look at this as Amazon’S UPC network, like UPC codes. This is a different type of label that you can put on a product when you send it into Amazon. This is what they’re gonna scan. So this is just a stock keeping unit, Fulfillment Network Stock Keeping Unit. That’s what that stands for. But essentially it’s just an Amazon identifier for the products.
– Sure, and it’s a barcode that you print. That’s what you’re printing when you’re printing out the Amazon labels is the FNSKU. And it’s a more unique identifier. So if you’re selling something that other people are selling, this is identifying not only as that product but also that’s yours of that product. So you get the credit when that one sells. It also is identifying the condition. So if it’s a used one or a new one, it’s a way to separate, it’s very specific, unique to that actual product. All right, here’s another term you’ll hear a lot. It’s been replaced, but people still refer to it this way. It’s Headline Search Ads. What are those?
– This is now sponsored brand ads, but yeah, these are a lot of old terminologies that Amazon had a few years ago. They’d just been replaced. So when somebody says Headline Search Ads which I haven’t heard a lot of recently which is good to hear it. ‘Cause, a lot of people are using Sponsored Brand Ads. So yeah, Sponsored Brands is now the new terminology, but they’re the same.
– Yep, and we’ll talk about that in a second once we get to that term. Here’s another thing you hear a lot, hijacking. I have a hijacker on my listing. So explain that real quick.
– This happens a lot when people do giveaways on their product or do a lot of promotions on their product and people get it for free or super cheap. They’ll just resell it on your listing. So this is when somebody lists the same product or it could be a different product, but they list an item on your listing and they win the Buy Box. It could be a counterfeit product at a lower price. So this will cause you to lose the Buy Box and it could be an issue. So this is where you wanna do like a test buy and we can have a whole podcast about the hijacking, but this is essentially when somebody jumps on your listing and sells either a counterfeit product or the same product that you gave away to try to make some money off of it.
– Yeah, there’s lots of ways people can hijack. They also hijack listings when you run out of stock and they’ll take over and send in counterfeit stock
– Shady, shady stuff, especially- Oh yeah, you do not want a hijacker on your listing. You wanna take care of that immediately. All right, impressions. What does it mean for advertising when you hear the word impressions?
– It is when your ad shows up. So this is how many times your ad is being shown for a given time period for that keyword. So when you see impressions that’s how many times it shows up. If you have low impressions, it means your bid’s too low. So you wanna increase your bid to get more impressions. So impressions is the number of times your ad is being shown.
– Next one is ISBN. This is for authors, whether you’re self-published or not. ISBN is International Standard Book Number. So it’s like the UPC code for books. So when you hear the ISBN, that’s a Book Identification Number. All right, let’s do, let’s talk about two here that are, and for shipping you’ve got Less-than-container Load, LTL, and then you’ve got less-than-truckload. Talk about those.
– Yeah, so these are just different terms used when doing shipments or when you’re bringing shipments in from your supplier or even shipping to Amazon. So less than container load, it means it measures less than 18 cubic meters. And then less than truckload is usually products for like ground transportation, more than 30 cartons in a load. So these are just terminologies that you would use when either shipping products to Amazon’s warehouse or when you’re importing from your supplier. And we can talk about these for a while too, I’m sure.
– For sure, but you will see that. And when you’re shipping in, you’ll see LTL a lot. So we wanna know exactly what that means. All right, let’s move on to PPC, pay-per-click.
– Pay-per-click is similar to that. It’s pretty simple. I mean, you’re only paying per click for your ad every time your ad is being clicked.
– Yep, and that’s essentially how all advertising is on Amazon with a few minor exceptions. They’re all pay-per-click. And so like you said, you’re bidding on it. If somebody clicks on it, you get charged that amount. Moving on, we’ve got just a couple more here. This is a common term, but it’s newer to Amazon sellers, ROAS, return on ad spend.
– Yeah, this is something that’s now being shown in your campaign manager. It’s the ACoS is kind of been taken away. It’s still there, but I mean, you can look at either the ACoS or your ROAS, which is your return on ad spend. So this is being used to determine how effective your ad campaigns are running. And it tells you how many dollars you will receive for every dollar you spend on advertising. So high ROAS is great because that’s how many dollars you’re getting back for every dollar you spend. So look, I think this metric is gonna be used more, especially now people are looking at this and Campaign Manager. ACoS has been used a lot, but I would look for your ROAS to be a metric people like to look at.
– Oh yeah, you’ll definitely see it a lot. And it’s a common term in advertising in general. It wasn’t on Amazon in the past until recently, but it’s the exact inversion of ACoS. If you have a 50% ACoS, you’ve got two ROAS, it’s the inversion of it. So it’s just a different way of looking at it. And it’s a little bit more positive. A lot of times if you say your return on ad spend is two. That’s a lot better than saying you’re spending 50% of all of your revenue on ads. It sounds a little better, even though they’re the same thing. All right, two more, S-K-U or SKU. What does that mean?
– Stock-keeping unit. And this is just generic. This is a way to identify a product. You can name your, when you make a new listing, you can name your SKU whatever you want it to be. I didn’t realize that at the very beginning. I just saw Amazon do it. I had a bunch of weird numbers or letters as the SKU. So now every new product I name my own SKU, that way when I do a shipment, that SKU shows on the label. And now I know what’s in there, instead of trying to guess what it is, so super important. When you do create your listing, make sure you name the SKU or change the SKU to something that you’re gonna know what the product is.
– Yep, that’s something I didn’t know either. So the majority of my products I’ve actually memorized like the last four digits of the random one that Amazon did. So, but yeah, for new ones, I’ve been creating my own. And regardless, when it’s not something anybody’s really gonna see because when you print your FNSKU labels, it’s different. Amazon’s creating that code for you. So it’s just a way for you to understand, keep your stock under control. And last one, UPC. This is what everyone when they first started selling, they got to figure out how to get a UPC for their product.
– You’re done with OPP.
– Yeah, that’s right.
– Just the UPC code. That’s a code that you need to have for listing a new product. You can get these offline. There are certain websites out there. We should probably talk about some of those on a podcast, but there’s certain ones you can use for your new products that we’ll take, that Amazon takes. So it’s just it’s a way to have a new listing, a new code for your product. Exactly. All right, well, that’s just a real snapshot of some of the most commonly terms and acronyms on Amazon. If you’ve been selling on Amazon for a long time, those are just so obvious, they’re used every day. All those terms, you understand them like the back of your hand but if you are new to Amazon, it can be really helpful just to quickly understand what all of those mean. I mean, I sold on Amazon, been selling for a long time, and I learn new terms all the time. These are the basics. But when I started, I did not know what half of these meant and you just have to look them up and go. So hopefully it’s a good resource for you to understand those. And again, both Chris and I are here at Sellozo. So if you’re at the stage now where you’re ready to advertise, or if you have started advertising and it’s overwhelming, get on a call with either Chris or myself. You can go to sellozo.com, and book a demo with us, 30 minutes. We can talk about anything you want Amazon-related, advertising related. Go over and take a look at your campaigns or talk about how Sellozo can help you automate that. So we’d love to do that. You can go right now to book a time with us, and obviously go to Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube. Get all of our channels, like our pages. You’ll be notified when we go live. We always live stream our podcast. And like our podcast and leave us a review if you think it was well worth it. So anyway, we will be back at this again tomorrow. Hopefully everyone had a great Thanksgiving and we will see you guys tomorrow.