Branding Blitz

I've finished my first week of sales and am ready (and excited!) to report the results of that first week.  Toward the end of that first 7 days (on day 6) was a special promotion Amazon ran called Prime Day where a ton of extra traffic poured over Amazon's website.  Even though I wasn't one of the deals being promoted by Amazon, I aimed to harness some of the extra traffic with my PPC campaigns. For the full transcript head to http://brandingblitz.com/10/ or see below. --- Hello again! I'm JR, and you're listening to episode 10 of the Branding Blitz!   That's right, we're in episode 10 of this podcast! This is still new – we're still at the very beginning of this story – but it feels like a pretty significant milestone to get to double digits. It might not seem like much, but sometimes you have to stop and appreciate those little steps that you take along the way to get to the big goals.   Man, has it been an exciting week here! There has been a ton of stuff going on both on a personally and with the business

One last thing needed to be done before I could start promoting my product on Amazon... I had to decide what my initial sales price would be.  Generally, I would recommend doing that ahead of time...  In any case, once that was done I was ready to launch my PPC campaign(s) and get those first sales rollling in! For the full transcript head to http://brandingblitz.com/9/ or see below. --- Hello again! I'm JR, and you're listening to episode 9 of the Branding Blitz!   Let's go ahead and jump right in here. At the end of episode 8, I mentioned that my products were ready to go live on Amazon. And it's true, the listings were live and the products were available for sale, but there was one last thing I needed to decided before I could start promoting the product.   Believe it or not, I got this far without deciding what price I wanted to start out selling the product for. I had put some consideration into the price I wanted to eventually sell at, but I planned to start at a lower price so that I could build up my

Before I could send the product to Amazon I had to do something a get a little creative with the packaging.  I had planned ahead for this so had everything we needed when we got back from our trip.  I also had to shootsome pictures before the listing could go live. When I was ready to ship the product in to Amazon, I was amazed by how inexpensive Amazon makes it to ship to their warehouses. For the full transcript head to http://brandingblitz.com/8/ or see below. --- Hello again! I'm JR, and you're listening to episode 8 of the Branding Blitz! Life has been pretty crazy trying to take care of my health while juggling this business startup and trying to prepare for a move across the country! I haven't been able to move as quickly as I'd like with this business, but for everything that has been going on, I'm really excited about the progress I've been able to make. I've got some exciting news to share over the next couple of podcasts.   Today, I'd like to talk about what it took to get my inventory live and sel

I'm back from my trip to Idaho with some good news regarding my health.  AND while I was gone, the first shipment of inventory arrived from China and it's time to get things rolling.  I also discuss how my things shifted from my original plan after running into the Hazmat issue I talked about before. For the full transcript head to http://brandingblitz.com/7/ or see below. --- Hello again! I'm JR, and you're listening to episode 7 of the Branding Blitz! If you're subscribed to the show, you've probably noticed a break since the last episode was released. If you're not subscribed to the show, you should probably pause this episode and go subscribe. Don't worry, I'll wait for you. Anyway that gap was due to a number of things. The biggest is that the day after recording episode 6 I went on a trip to Idaho to visit some of my wife's family. We'd been planning this trip for a while and in some ways it turned into an inconvenient time to travel with my health issues and trying to start up this business. But it act

I'd never heard of the hazmat flag before, but apparently it isn't all that uncommon happening on such random products as baseballs, toy cars, and... my product. It's been a longer process getting it cleared than it should be, and as such I'm being forced to switch gears.  Let's dive in to find out what happened! To leave a comment head to http://brandingblitz.com/6/    Full Transcript below: ---   ---   ---   ---   Hello again, and welcome back to the Branding Blitz podcast! I'm JR, and this is episode 6.   It's been well a couple weeks since I recorded the last episode because I've had a long string of bad days with my health and life's been kind of crazy as a result. I went to the doctor yesterday, and got another steroid shot and some new meds, so I'm doing a bit better now, but still a bit out of whack.There have been some interesting things happening in the meantime though.   After I recorded episode 5, discussing some common questions I'd seen about barcodes, it occurred to me that this is the kind of

If you're stuck or confused by UPCs and FNKSUs, you are NOT alone.  I've noticed a ton of people getting hung up on these.  So this episode is my attempt to clear up some of the confusion. We're going to dive deep into some basics here to get an understanding of what the barcodes are and what you need to do with them. The transcript is below, but if you'd like to leave a comment, head over to http://brandingblitz.com/5/ Hey everybody, welcome back! This is JR and you're listening to the Branding Blitz podcast where I'll take you behind the scenes as I go through the process of trying to strategically use speed and brute force to launch and scale a new brand. This is episode 5 and today I'm going to discuss a topic that seems to be a hang up for a lot of people. I quit using Facebook back in January – when my health started falling apart, I simply didn't have the energy to invest in it. I got back on again this week for two reasons. First, I wanted to look into setting up a page to help promote my new brand.

Now it's time to get a bit personal. Before I can take you along for the ride in this brand launch, I have to lay the baseline for explaining where we're starting from. There are two main aspects to this: the business side and the personal side. This episode continues down the road of discussing the personal side. The transcript is below, but if you'd like to leave a comment, head over to http://brandingblitz.com/4/ Hello again and welcome back everyone! This is JR and you're listening to the Branding Blitz podcast where I'll take you behind the scenes as I go through the process of trying to strategically use speed and brute force to launch and scale a new brand. This is episode 4 – a continuation of episode 3 where I started discussing some of the aspects of my personal life which are going to significantly impact how this brand building story plays out. If you haven't listened to episode 3 yet, that might help some things make more sense in this episode. But just for a quick refresher summary: I started t

Now it's time to get a bit personal. Before I can take you along for the ride in this brand launch, I have to lay the baseline for explaining where we're starting from. There are two main aspects to this: the business side and the personal side. This episode starts down the road of discussing the personal side. The transcript is below, but if you'd like to leave a comment, go to http://brandingblitz.com/3/ Hello again and welcome back everyone! This is JR and you're listening to the Branding Blitz podcast where I'll take you behind the scenes as I go through the process of trying to strategically use speed and brute force to launch and scale a new brand. This is the third episode. Last time, I gave a quick overview of where we're at so far with this business. I am still very early in this process, but things are well underway and moving quickly. That is one of the things that makes me excited to share this story with you. I always love hearing people's stories of building a business – while they are actually

Alright, it's time to get down to business.   Before I can take you along for the ride in this brand launch, I have to lay the baseline for explaining where we're starting from.  There are two main aspects to this: the business side and the personal side.   This episode starts down the road of discussing the business side.   http://brandingblitz.com/2/Transcript:   Hello again and welcome back everyone! This is JR and you're listening to the Branding Blitz podcast where I'll take you behind the scenes as I go through the process of trying to strategically use speed and brute force to launch and scale a new brand. I want to spend the next couple of episodes discussing where I'm at in the process of launching the brand as well as where I am at personally – both of which I think you'll find make this a fascinating story to follow. For now, let's focus on the business side. The past few weeks have been pretty intense for a number of reasons, not all positive. But from the aspect of launching this brand, things ha

Welcome to the show!  In this first episode, you'll get to know me, why I'm starting this podcast, and what I have planned so far for Branding Blitz. I'm going to take you behind the scenes as I build a new brand from scratch.  Specifically this brand is going to sell physical products. Our primary sales channel initially is going to be Amazon FBA.  Similar to what you may have heard others like Ryan Danial Moran ( Freedom Fast Lane ) or Scott Voelker ( The Amazing Seller ) talking about.But it's not just about finding a bunch of products to sell on Amazon.  I want to expand beyond Amazon to other sales channels, e-commerce, and maybe even brick & mortar retail.More than that - I want to build a brand. I want to be intentional about my marketing. I want to harness the power of repeat customers and referrals.  I want to take over my niche by out marketing the competition.As you'll learn, I'm operating under some interesting constraints.   I'm calling it the “Branding Blitz” because I need to move lightning