Part of the fun in helping families find new ways to earn income is keeping a pulse on what is trending, what’s coming up, and what the next “big thing” is. The latest “jump” we’ve found is a theory taking the Amazon sellers’ market by storm called, The Maldives Honeymoon Strategy. I shared an episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast featuring Amazon Master, Bradley Sutton, in our Mastermind Group, and there was a lot of interest, and questions, about his theory to get a higher Amazon ranking quickly. So we’ve taken this theory and broken it down to 4 steps, which we will explain, and hopefully give you answers to your questions so you can jump into it and start making money. 

(This guide is more on the advanced side of Amazon Selling/Sellers. If you need information for beginners click the link below to get you started, or keep reading and get a peek at what could be in your future.) 

First of all, let’s talk about why this is called the Maldives Honeymoon Strategy. When you launch a product on Amazon they give you a “honeymoon” period that could last from two weeks to two months depending on the product. During this time, Amazon is more likely to allow your product to be shown, and gives a chance to start getting your product moving before they begin ranking you and finding where to place you in the marketplace. Following these 4 steps during this “honeymoon” period, is they key. Getting your product moving while you’re in this period will attract Amazon’s attention and will hopefully land you on the coveted, first page of a search screen. 

Launch Strategy for Private Label Products

Step 1: Search Volume

You have your product and you’re ready to post it, but you have to come up with a title. It is crucial that you be specific when you decide on the title for your product. This is what is going to decide whether or not your product gets pulled for a search, and how many pages it will take to find it. So for instance, if I were selling a baby helmet, giving it a name like “baby accessory” is too vague and broad. It will likely get lost with the bowties, hair clips, beads, belts, and socks, and your intended buyer may miss it. Now if you were to name it something more specific like, “blue baby head protector”, you know for sure what you’re going to see pulled up when after you hit that search button. 

One of the greatest ways to decide on a title is checking for what words people are using to search for your product, so you can then use that same verbiage in your title as well. 

Go to helium10.com and park here, download, and use this, because we will be using several of their tools through this process. 

The first search we can use is the Search Volume tool. This will pull up how often a related phrase was searched for per month. It may not be the exact same item you are offering, or word for word what you typed in, but it’s items that are related to one of your keywords. You’ll want to try out your ideal name and see how often it’s being pulled. For the intro to this theory, we’re going to be looking at phrases that have 1,000-15,000 hits per month. These are going to be areas that are a little less saturated and easier to compete with, than say something with hundreds of thousands of hits, and is super competitive.

(You could go for those hits higher than 15,000, but the competition will be stiff and until you get used to how this theory works for you, it’s best to wait for those big, home run swings.) Look through a few of these products and see what common words and phrases you see in the listing. 

Next you will use the Magnet Tool. This tool shows you the popularity and trend for certain products/search hits each day. The magnet rating is based on some of those words that were commonly found in the Search Volume, and see which words/phrases are more popular or have a higher trend. Make a list of some of the most common or repeated words. 

Step 2: Use Keyword Phrase in Your Title

All of those popular words you just looked up and listed? Now is the time to use them to create the name of your product. You want to put as many of those top keywords together into a phrase as you can (without sounding ridiculous of course) so that your product is being flagged more often. When you can get at least two or three keywords in your listing, it becomes known as a long-tail keyword phrase. Going back to the baby helmet example; it is so important to put these words together in your title, not only because it’s more likely to be seen in a search result, but because of how it will be catalogued in Amazon as your URL. 

Super fun nerd fact; if you go to an item on Amazon and right click on it, then scroll down to “view page source” it will show you all of the behind the scene code of your page. I know it looks like a jumbled mess, but if you hit search (F4) and then type in the word “canonical”, you should only have one result pull up with your canonical url. Look at that url, and you will notice that about the first 3 words of your product name, is what they have for part of your url. 

If you use these keyword phrases as your title, they won’t only pop up in a search page for your product, it will pull up because it’s part of the url.

Step 3: Find Your Competitors

Now it’s time to see exactly what other vendors you are up against, and how to leverage that to your advantage. Using that magnet tool from earlier and looking at some of those key phrases, you can see exactly how many competitors are using that phrase. For instance, using the “baby head protector” again, I might look on the magnet tool and see that I have 30 or so competitors using the term “baby helmet” or only 19 that are using the phrase “baby cushioned head protector”.

This is where the Magnet Score and all of its data comes into play. The higher the Magnet Score, the more potential there is to break into a search field. This is because there was a higher demand in searches for the product, than there were products to match them. 

Still using helium10,  there is another tool called X-ray vision that will show you how many people on the first page of a search have used the keyword or phrase, and will also show you the behind the scenes bank side, where you can see the gross profit for these sellers each month. Some of these term uses are surprisingly low or are sponsored products, especially for such a prime spot on the search’s first page. We all know that if you can’t find it on the first page or second page when you search for something (Maybe even the third if you’re desperate.), then you change your search up. 

The great thing is you can actually download this information by clicking on the “download csv” button in the bottom right corner of that pop up box. Once you download it you can search for your keyword phrase that you are trying to sell, and see how many people from the first landing page used them as well. So for instance, using the phrase,“baby head protector” there are about 19 of the 61 total items on the front page that used the phrase “baby head protector”. Therefore, I know I have 19 competitors with that phrase. If I change it up to “baby helmet” I only have 4 people who used the phrase “baby helmet” to compete against. This will also show which sellers are “sponsored” pages because they will have a $ sign next to their title. 

Knowing what competition you have, how they are listed, and even how much they are making each month, is all such valuable data when posting your own items on the market place. Use this info to adjust your name, your prices, how you link things etc. 

Step 4: Multiple Micro Launches

The final step to getting products moving in your store and getting you noticed, is by having a launch. Obviously you want to get some hype around your product, and try to make it to that first page hit, so you can either release your product with PPC or Amazon ads, or with launches. 

PPC ads can be expensive and are not always worth the investment in the end.

We are going to focus primarily on Micro launches for the Maldives method. A launch can be something simple like a free giveaway or a deep discount on your product. Something to build hype around your product, or draw people in. While it may not seem like giving away or reducing the price of your product will make you any money, it can actually make a big impact on how Amazon sees your store moving product, and rank you up. 

To help us with this we are going back to our Helium10 magnet to find Overlapping and Ally keywords. 

Let’s start with finding overlapping keywords.

You already have your main keywords in your title, so that is not what we’re looking for this time. This time we are going to use your product title and we’re going to use the magnet to search for “overlapping keywords” and sort by search volume. Find those top 4 overlapping products and make note of their hits and CPR rate, and you’re going to keep them in your pocket for just a moment. 

This next search is the one that is going to set you above the rest and really drive your ranking up quickly. Next we’re going to look at your ally words. They won’t be overlapping like before, but rather they are words that connect with your title and that are working on your team. These could be similar products that would be supplementary with yours, or be related to something that a buyer is looking for based on your keywords. You know how when you click on an item from amazon it automatically tries to bundle items together, and shows the “customers who bought ____ also bought ___” This is where you want to be! Think about your product and who is going to be buying it. What other things are they going to want or need that is similar to your product? How would you be shopping and searching if it were for you!

So now for the actual launching. In the Maldives Honeymoon Method we’re going to do several small launches during this “honeymoon” period that Amazon gives us to show our products worth and get a higher rank. So how are we going to do these small launches? To find out how many of these “launches” you are going to have to do we’re going to look at the CSV report we were using for keyword phrases earlier, and look at the CPR rate.

The CPR rate shows the average rate a product moves within an 8 day period, and how many units you need to move in order to be ranked on the first page or stay ranked once you get there. You’re going to use 10% of your CPR number as allocated giveaways. This may sound scary but we’re actually going to go a little lower than that number and do 10% again. So if your original CPR was 136, we’re now going to make it 13.6, and use our giveaways in a more thrifty, effective way. Now we’re not going to go the full 8 days, we’re only going to do abou 3-5 days. I know that’s not the normal formula, but if you target a giveaway to those 4 keywords that you pulled from the overlapping or ally magnet, you’ll be hitting your core audience more quickly.This could look like giving away 3-5(max)units per day, or having a “24hr Sale” with a deep discount. Even though these giveaways and discounts may not seem like they’re going to make you money, what they are doing is showing as products leaving your store and going to a buyer, which trends your rank up because there is movement happening. As this movement between you and your buyer/winner is happening, it is going to show Amazon how relevant your product is to that particular community and will begin ranking you higher until you get that first page spot. 

Now if you have dealt with Amazon FBAs before or are a pretty established seller on the platform you can simply follow these steps for your new products, or you could even try going back to some of your older items and juicing them up a bit with some of these strategies. 

If the thought of doing this has completely overwhelmed you and you want help setting up your launches, we have found an incredible company that will do just that for you. I did my research on these companies and was thoroughly impressed with the owner of AZrank.com. These guys partner alongside Amazon and you are extremely customer service oriented, just like Amazon, and will work with both you and Amazon to create your optimal launch. Like I said I was blown away by the service they gave me and I’m a verteran seller! 

In order to get started with them you need to go to their website and set up an inquiry, because everything they do is personalized for you and your product, the search terms you want and create a strategy with you for. In the dropbox click on “The Rainmaker Family” and they will set you up with this Maldives method. 

 

That was a lot of information, and a lot to process so I’m going to post the link for a video of me going through this process and screen sharing so you can see exactly what I mean by Magnet IQs and CPR rates. I will also be linking Bradley’s podcast that started this whole venture, the AZ Rank company, as well as a few of our youtube videos that will help with your Amazon seller’s journey. 

Before you go, I want to give you some encouragement as you try out this method. I shared at the beginning how I dropped Bradley’s podcast into our Mastermind Group and here are a few stories of people who tried it and it actually worked!

Nicole used these keyword phrases and noticed her rank went up in only 24hrs. During the first week she tried this, her sales were up higher than they had been with that product before.

Kabita also tried this method with one of her older products as a way to “reboot”, and her sales went up to $28,000 per month. She said that the key for her was actually doing the giveaways. 

We love to see others succeeding, so if you tried this out we want to hear about it! Drop your story in the comments below and tell us what went well, what didn’t, what you learned and how you succeeded.  We look forward to celebrating success with you!

Resources:

►►► Helium 10 Podcast Episode Mentioned About Maldives Honeymoon Technique:

https://www.helium10.com/podcast/amazon-launch-strategy/?crsh_reqid=1770433

►►► Done For You Launch Service Recommendation

AZ Rank: https://azrank.com

✓ Select “The Rainmaker Family” from Dropdown Menu

►►►Maldives Honeymoon Ranking Explained

This is where you can see my screen and a more visual form of everything discussed here. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN3GBM8vjoA&t=679s

►►►Rainmaker Family -Amazon FBA for Beginners Playlist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1xWr8pNdHw&list=PL82ayeIyVxlc-H3i9EZBy88KouFd-U5Rj

►►►Rainmaker Family – Amazon FBA Advance Trainings Playlist

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL82ayeIyVxlchgPL9Vh0_Q4S0mIfAoJVK