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Amazon FBA selling
Spencer, an Amazon seller who took a decades-old offline greeting-card company (Leanin' Tree) with zero prior Amazon presence to six figures in its first year, walks through his exact Helium 10-driven keyword research, launch sequencing, and PPC bid-automation playbook.
Spencer's background: ran the Amazon/website side of his family's beverage import business (MitchellsNY/BeverageUniverse) before moving to Colorado and joining Leanin' Tree Greeting Cards, an ESOP company founded in 1949 that had never sold on Amazon before him.
Launched Leanin' Tree's Amazon store by picking the company's already-proven top 20 offline/trade sellers as the initial SKUs rather than testing new products cold.
Keyword research via Helium 10: found 'greeting cards assortment box' (~10,000 searches/month) as the primary keyword via Cerebro, then added longer-tail keywords to titles and ad campaigns to build rank.
Runs branded PPC campaigns on the company's own name for easy volume, and extends branded/ASIN targeting across the whole catalog as 'brand protection' defense advertising.
Sells on Shopify (higher margin, no outside traffic diverted to Amazon) and, since the prior year, on Walmart.com via Multi-Channel Fulfillment using existing FBA inventory rather than separately stocking Walmart's network.
Launch sequence: build a test listing and check Amazon Recommended Rank for relevancy in Cerebro first, then launch via Vine (always 30 units), then go live with the real SKU/UPC and immediately run PPC.
Fixes weak relevancy by adding the keyword to the title, driving traffic to it, and having 1-2 people (not a large organized group) do 'search find buy' — explicitly distinguished from the TOS-violating version done with ~20 people.
For new ASIN targeting, uses only Sponsored Products (not Display or Video), starting bids low and raising until impressions appear.
Runs dedicated long-tail 'ranking campaigns' with fixed bids, favoring keywords of 5+ words in a competitive niche for a higher probability of fast ranking.
Uses Helium 10's new Keyword Tracker Bid Rule to automate bid changes: raise bid 10%/day after 7 consecutive checks outside sponsored top 3, and lower bid 10%/day once organic rank hits top 5.
Pricing strategy: launch at full price, then introduce a discount for the strike-through price display about a month later.
Daily/weekly tool workflow: Cerebro for keyword research, Keyword Tracker checked daily, Boost checked 7x/day for browsing scenarios, Helium 10 Ads recommendation tab for keyword harvesting, Listing Builder for AI-assisted listing copy pulling in Search Query Performance data automatically.
Feature request (not built): a keyword-specific pricing discount so a 'hero keyword' search could trigger 50% off without extending that discount to branded-name searches.
Non-Helium-10 tactic: uses ListingOptimization.ai (by AMZ One Step) to generate and A/B-test main/secondary images, framed around a LinkedIn analogy that 'Amazon is a knife fight' where the main image is the only real weapon versus A+ content, bullets, or title.
Currently only uses Amazon's native Manage Your Experiments for live A/B testing (not PickFu or Helium 10 Audience) — Bradley recommends flipping the order: use Helium 10 Audience pre-launch to pick the best image, then Manage Your Experiments about a year later.
Future roadmap: expand to TikTok and keep doubling Amazon sales year over year.
Cerebro (Amazon Recommended Rank check) — Helium 10's reverse-ASIN keyword research tool, which includes an 'Amazon Recommended Rank' score showing how relevant a keyword is to a given listing. Apply: Run your own ASIN through Cerebro before launch and only pursue keywords that return a non-blank recommended rank, confirming true relevancy before building a listing or campaign around them.
Keyword Tracker — A Helium 10 tool that tracks a listing's daily organic and sponsored search rank for chosen keywords. Apply: Check it daily so you know exactly where you're ranking before deciding how to adjust ad spend, instead of running ads blind.
Keyword Tracker Bid Rule — An automated Helium 10 feature that raises or lowers a keyword's PPC bid based on its tracked sponsored/organic rank. Apply: Set a rule to raise the bid 10% per day after 7 consecutive checks outside the sponsored top 3, and lower it 10% per day once organic rank reaches the top 5, so bids self-adjust without manual daily checking.
Boost — A Helium 10 tool for checking a listing's 'browsing scenarios' — how it surfaces within Amazon's browsing/recommendation contexts beyond direct search. Apply: Check it multiple times a day (the guest checks 7x/day) to monitor visibility signals that plain keyword rank doesn't capture.
Helium 10 Ads recommendation/harvesting tab — A feature within Helium 10 Ads that flags unharvested keywords from ad performance data that should be added to campaigns. Apply: Review it regularly to harvest relevant new keywords quickly, rather than manually digging through search term reports.
Listing Builder — Helium 10's AI-assisted listing-writing tool, updated to pull in Search Query Performance and keyword data automatically. Apply: Use it to generate an AI first draft of listing copy and then hand-edit it, without needing to separately check Search Query Performance for keyword ideas.
Vine Program launch sequence — Amazon's early-review program, used here as a fixed step in the launch sequence right after going live with the real SKU/UPC. Apply: Push 30 units through Vine immediately at launch to seed initial reviews before competing for organic sales, since 'nobody wants to buy a product with no reviews.'
Search Find Buy (limited relevancy use) — Having a person search a target keyword on Amazon and then purchase the product to send a relevancy signal to Amazon's algorithm. Apply: Use it only with 1-2 people to nudge relevancy for a keyword; organizing a larger group (the stated line is around 20 people) to manipulate rank crosses into an Amazon TOS violation.
Sponsored Products ASIN Targeting — Placing PPC ads against specific competitor or own-brand ASINs using the Sponsored Products ad format specifically, rather than Sponsored Display or Sponsored Video ASIN targeting. Apply: Start a new ASIN-targeting campaign with a low bid and incrementally raise it until impressions begin appearing.
Branded/defense PPC targeting — Running PPC campaigns on your own brand name and product ASINs across your entire catalog to defend against competitors' ads appearing on your listings. Apply: Add your branded keywords to targeting across all your products, not just the flagship item, so a competing ad never has an easy, uncontested placement on your listing.
Long-tail ranking campaigns — Dedicated PPC campaigns using fixed bids on exact-match long-tail keywords (5+ words) that Cerebro has already confirmed as relevant. Apply: In a competitive niche, prioritize longer, more specific keyword phrases in these campaigns because they carry a higher probability of ranking quickly than short, broad terms.
Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) — An Amazon service that fulfills orders placed on outside marketplaces (e.g., Walmart.com) using a seller's existing FBA inventory. Apply: Use MCF to test a new sales channel like Walmart.com without the capital investment of stocking a separate dedicated fulfillment network.
Amazon Manage Your Experiments — Amazon's native, free live A/B testing tool for listing elements such as the main image. Apply: Run it on an already-live listing roughly a year after launch as a secondary optimization check, keeping in mind that during the test you're statistically showing the losing variant a majority of the time by definition.
Helium 10 Audience — A survey-based Helium 10 tool that tests creative assets, such as main image variants, against a target market before a product goes live. Apply: Use it pre-launch to ask your target market which image makes them most likely to click for a given keyword, so the listing launches with an already-optimized image instead of testing after the fact.
ListingOptimization.ai — A third-party AI tool made by AMZ One Step that generates and A/B-tests product image concepts to improve click-through rate. Apply: Use it to generate main and secondary image concepts and run managed experiments when you aren't visually creative yourself, treating main-image performance as the primary lever for clicks.
"Amazon is a knife fight" main-image framework — An analogy (sourced from a LinkedIn post) stating that in the moment a shopper compares products in search results, the main image is a listing's only real weapon, outweighing A+ content, secondary images, bullet points, or title. Apply: Prioritize main-image quality and testing above other listing elements when trying to win the click in a crowded search results page.
Strike-through discount pricing timing — A pricing sequence where a new listing launches at full price and only later has a discount applied to trigger Amazon's strike-through price display. Apply: Hold at full price at launch, then introduce a discount about a month later rather than discounting from day one.
ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) — A company ownership structure in which employees hold equity in the business, as is the case at Leanin' Tree since its 2022 sale by the founding family. Apply: Cited as the structural reason the whole team, not just leadership, is personally invested ('skin in the game') in outcomes like the Amazon channel's growth.
Merchant-Fulfilled Prime — A self-fulfillment model where the seller ships orders directly while committing to two-day nationwide delivery to qualify for Prime badging. Apply: Used in the guest's earlier beverage business to compete as a Prime-eligible third-party seller without using FBA, as an alternate fulfillment path when a seller wants to self-ship rather than send inventory to Amazon.
The bid-rule automation (7 consecutive daily checks; +10%/day until sponsored top 3; -10%/day once organic reaches top 5) is a concrete, numeric self-correcting system, not just a general 'raise bids' heuristic.
The 'knife fight' framing implies a specific listing-optimization hierarchy — main image over A+ content, secondary images, bullets, and title — that runs counter to spreading effort evenly across all listing elements.
Bradley's point that a live Manage Your Experiments test is, by definition, running the 'losing' variant a majority of the time (stated as 30%/66%) is the stated rationale for testing images pre-launch via Helium 10 Audience instead of only post-launch.
A multi-decade offline-first, employee-owned (ESOP) company reached six-figure Amazon results in year one primarily by porting already-validated offline bestsellers rather than by superior Amazon-native product selection.
MCF is used specifically as a low-capital way to test the Walmart.com channel without committing separate inventory investment, reflecting a deliberate 'prove it cheaply first' approach to channel expansion.
The seller explicitly avoids sending outside traffic to Amazon at all, funneling it instead to a higher-margin owned Shopify site — a channel-prioritization choice based on margin, not exposure.
Search-find-buy is used strictly as a small-scale relevancy nudge (1-2 people) with an explicit, stated TOS boundary (~20 people would cross into manipulation), giving a rare concrete number for where that line sits.
«Actually, I signed up for the tool in 2020, the end of 2023, and I actually haven't missed an episode since. I am loyal, very loyal listener.»
— 00:59
«there's there's always gems in these episodes, so you can't miss one. You got to you got to listen them all.»
— 01:42
«So, we sell all different types of beverages, but our niche is premium waters. So, fancy waters from all over the world that, you know, people rich people drink for the most part.»
— 06:07
«I love that fact that everyone's an owner. Everyone's got, you know, skin in the game. We're all in this together.»
— 11:35
«I did keyword keyword research on greeting card boxes and greeting cards assortment box was one of the top keywords that I found in Helium 10, uh, with about 10,000 searches a month, and I was like, 'Okay, that's probably my primary keyword I need to go after.'»
— 17:02
«we're we're not sending any outside traffic. We're we have our own website that we'll make a higher much higher margins on than using FBA and selling on Amazon.»
— 21:17
«That's not against Amazon terms of service. If he's trying to get 20 people to do search find buy for a keyword and trying rank for that keyword, that is against Amazon terms of service. But to do like one or two just to get some relevancy signals, that is not against what Amazon says.»
— 22:37
«you're you're you're so far behind your competitors, and nobody wants to buy a product with no reviews.»
— 23:24
«it's you know, it's a good very competitive niche. So, the longer the count of the of the word count is, the better because there's higher higher probability I'm going to be able to rank quicker on those.»
— 25:56
«Can we can I go 50% off for my hero keyword that I want to rank on on top of the page, but I don't want to spend I don't want to give that discount for someone that is searching my brand name. There's no reason.»
— 28:34
«Keyword tracker is an absolute gem. Without that, you're kind of running blind.»
— 30:13
«Amazon is a knife fight. It's like showing up to a knife fight and your only weapon is your main image.»
— 35:32
«Uh but by definition you're not optimized, you know, 30% of the time 66% of the time that you're running this experiment, you know, by by the by the very nature of what you're doing.»
— 37:12
«grow our Amazon channel to you know keep doubling sales every year and using Helium 10 to help us.»
— 38:54
Reception
Viewers found the launch strategy insightful and praised the guests, with a couple of low-effort but neutral comments.
The episode reads as a granular practitioner playbook rather than a general pep talk, with specific thresholds (keyword word counts, bid percentages, Vine unit counts, review batch sizes) that make the tactics reproducible; its claims rest entirely on the guest's and host's self-reported results and are framed throughout around Helium 10's own tool suite.
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