If you want to learn how to win selling products on Amazon, this is the episode for you! I’m interviewing Amanda Wittenborn who has created a seven figure business selling party invitations on Amazon.
Host 0:04
Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast brought to you by MiloTree. Here’s your host, Jillian Leslie.
Jillian Leslie 0:11
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Now, for today’s episode, I thought this episode was really cool. I am interviewing Amanda Wittenborn from Amanda Creation. I’ve known Amanda for years. She designed printables. We even have some of her printables on Catch My Party.
So, Amanda was struggling in her business and as a last resort, started selling invitations like physical invitations that she would get printed with her designs on Amazon. And guess what? It worked.
She has now grown this into a seven-figure business. No joke. And she is here and she is sharing everything about how she did this. If you sell something, if you are creative, you will find this episode incredibly inspiring.
I used to think that in order to sell on Amazon you had to be… I don’t know. It was all about competing on price. You had to kind of game the system and she has proven me wrong.
I think she’s a really delightful guest. So without further delay, here is my interview with Amanda Wittenborn.
Amanda, welcome to the show. I am so glad you’re here.
Amanda Wittenborn 3:10
Thanks for having me.
Jillian Leslie 3:12
So, we’ve known each other for four years and in fact, we were just talking about how you design free printables that we show on Catch My Party. If you want to throw a zombie party, come to Catch My Party and people can download your free printables.
Amanda Wittenborn 3:29
I think they’re still there.
Jillian Leslie 3:30
They are still there. So okay, let’s take a step back and please share about your entrepreneurial journey and how today you are a huge seller on Amazon.
Amanda Wittenborn 3:45
Yeah, I’ll make it the short and sweet version.
Jillian Leslie 3:49
Great.
Amanda Wittenborn 3:50
I started my business about nine years ago. I started in the digital scrapbooking community and started by creating digital scrapbook kits. I learned a lot of my skills through doing that.
And what I started doing is I’ve always been a lover of parties and themed parties. I joke that I was throwing coordinated themed parties before Pinterest even existed. I mean, it’s hard to think of a time when Pinterest wasn’t around, but it wasn’t.
Jillian Leslie 4:19
No, but I’m sure we were in touch before Pinterest was around.
Amanda Wittenborn 4:22
I’m sure we were, yeah. Because, you know, Catch My Party was where you would go to look for coordinated party stuff. And now of course, it’s everywhere.
But I started making and designing things for my own children’s parties that were unique, different from what could be found at the local party store, and personalized with their name on it, and every little detail matched and was adorable.
And of course, friends started coming to those parties. “Where’d you get that?” “Oh, you made it.” “Oh, can you make me some?” And really from there, everything was born.
And so, that was probably about 16 years ago doing the printable things. I sold printables for a long time.
Jillian Leslie 5:09
Where were you selling them?
Amanda Wittenborn 5:10
I was selling on my own website and I was selling on Etsy.
Jillian Leslie 5:13
Got it.
Amanda Wittenborn 5:14
Years back.
Jillian Leslie 5:15
Got it.
Amanda Wittenborn 5:18
As time went on and understanding my audience and thinking about who I was really serving and what they wanted, you know, I realized that my customers are moms that are busy, and they don’t have time necessarily to print everything out, cut it out, assemble it.
They want the perfect coordinated party, but they just want it without all the work. And so, I set out about three, three and a half years ago to make that possible where now I am offering items that are printed, ready to go and can be ordered and everything comes to you.
Jillian Leslie 5:59
And personalized, right?
Amanda Wittenborn 6:01
They can be personalized, yes. I do a mix of both. Ready to go and personalized.
Jillian Leslie 6:07
Got it. And did you then start selling these on your website and on Etsy?
Amanda Wittenborn 6:14
Actually, this is what I started on Amazon with. So Amazon was a different beast. I kept trying to figure out how can I sell my invitations on Amazon that you know, the audience is bigger.
If I could get in front of more people, if I had more eyes on my product, I know I would sell more, but I couldn’t fit what I was doing until like the Amazon box. And so, what I did was develop products that did work for Amazon.
And so prior to Amazon, I did all personalized, where I would type the details on the invitations and either send customers the digital file or sometimes I would print them for them. With Amazon, what I started doing was creating fill-in invitations.
Jillian Leslie 7:01
Where somebody with like a sharpie.
Amanda Wittenborn 7:03
Correct. Yeah. And when I started, I thought, “Oh man, nobody’s going to want to write their details in you know. These aren’t going to sell.” I was completely wrong.
They do sell and people love the ready to go, they arrive on your doorstep. And of course, Amazon offering the prime shipping. It can’t be beaten. So, the last minute mom who has a party a week and a half from now can go on Amazon, order that pack of invites and have it out in two days.
Jillian Leslie 7:35
Wow. So, I just want to make sure I’m clear on this. You have, I guess, some sort of printing setup that I’d love to talk about where you are printing invitations, let’s say themed like you know, a popular theme.
Amanda Wittenborn 7:52
Yes. Mermaid, or unicorn, or bowling. Yeah.
Jillian Leslie 7:55
It literally is the, for: and then a line. Somebody types in, you know, like Maggie’s 13th birthday or third birthday. And then, it’ll have a line that says where and all that stuff and people love that.
Amanda Wittenborn 8:13
Yes. So there are two different ways that can be done. The main way that I sell is I preprint everything. So just like you would go to Target and buy a pack of invitations, and they’re ready to go.
It’s the same thing on Amazon. I have local printers that I work with. We print and package and hold inventory of all of our items.
Jillian Leslie 8:39
You’re holding them at your house?
Amanda Wittenborn 8:41
Somewhere here, somewhere at our office, and most are warehouse by Amazon.
Jillian Leslie 8:46
Wow. Okay. So you sell printable invitations or printed invitations.
Amanda Wittenborn 8:54
Right. They’re printed ready to go so when they arrive, they handwrite their details in.
Jillian Leslie 8:58
Got it. And do you sell them with envelopes?
Amanda Wittenborn 9:02
Yes, they come with envelopes.
Jillian Leslie 9:03
Got it. Okay. And in packs of…?
Amanda Wittenborn 9:06
I sell in packs of 20.
Jillian Leslie 9:08
Packs of 20. Wow. And then, are you also selling party decorations?
Amanda Wittenborn 9:15
Yes. So we also have thank you cards. Similar style. Thank you, fill-ins. So it’ll say, “Dear” and have a blank. And they’ll say, “Thank you so much for…” And have a couple of blank lines.
And then, it’ll say something cute like, “You helped make my party mer-mazing.” for a mermaid party. You know, something silly like that. And then, a from line that they can fill it out.
Those are really popular because it makes writing a thank you card really, really easy. Most of the work is done. The kids just write who it’s to, thank you for whatever gift it was, from, and then they sign their name, which is cute.
We also have two-inch circle stickers. Those are very very popular. Sometimes they just say, “Thanks for coming to my party.”
They’re meant to be like goodie bag stickers or stickers you could put out a cookie or something like that where, you know, it’s like a cute party favor decoration kind of item.
Jillian Leslie 10:15
Okay.
Amanda Wittenborn 10:16
We also have water bottle wrappers. That’s a new product we just launched recently. Those are printed on waterproof paper.
So when you wrap them around, they are sticker, waterproof paper, but stickers, when you wrap them around your water bottle, you can throw them in your cooler, and the ink is not going to run or smudge or smear or anything like that.
I’m thinking there’s one other thing, what else do we do? stickers? We’re expanding quite a bit. So 2020 is a year to expand into a lot more items.
Jillian Leslie 10:52
Okay. So, you get this idea that you want to sell on Amazon. You somehow go, “I’m going to test invitations that people fill in.” And boom, how did you figure out this was working?
Amanda Wittenborn 11:07
So when I first started, I think I said, “I’m gonna design 10.” I’m just going to try it. There are two ways, two different Amazon’s if you will. There’s regular Amazon, we’ll just call it Amazon, and then there’s a new subset of Amazon called Handmade.
Jillian Leslie 11:30
Yes, which is like their Etsy competitor.
Amanda Wittenborn 11:35
Correct. So they’re both of those. I mainly sell on the regular Amazon but for anybody who has an Etsy business and wants to try out Amazon, Handmade by Amazon would be a good way to go but you could also go on regular Amazon as well.
Jillian Leslie 11:56
Okay. So let’s talk about just off the top of your head what kinds of businesses like yours do you think would sell well on Amazon?
Amanda Wittenborn 12:08
I think as long as you’re able to quickly produce your items and be able to have many of them in stock, that would be something that would work well on Amazon. If you have an item that is custom made to order, Handmade by Amazon would be the way to go.
Jillian Leslie 12:31
Got it. We talked about this a little bit offline, which is, when I think about selling on Amazon, I think about some 23-year-old guy who finds some cheap product on Alibaba, and decides they’re going to sell this on Amazon. They’re trying to game the Amazon system.
It’s this continual kind of fighting for keywords and fighting to show up in search, and that the algorithm for Amazon continues to change that it works really well for these like scrappy bros who want to kind of…
They’re all these like Facebook groups on like what’s working now. Like it feels very much kind of like beating the system.
Amanda Wittenborn 13:23
Yes. What you described is very very accurate. The difference is when you come on Amazon with a completely unique item that nobody else can go and get on Alibaba, you don’t have to worry about all that stuff.
So, I’m not fighting for the buy box on my items because nobody else is selling them, nobody else can sell them because they’re mine. Now, there are other invitations up for sale.
So yeah, we do sponsored ads. We pay for keyword placement and things like that. But it’s not the same as somebody who goes and gets something from China and is trying to really get traction and be number one in their category and things like that.
So, that kind of culture, it doesn’t really affect what I’ve been doing. Sometimes I feel a little bad because I’m like, “Yeah, that’s just not a problem. That’s not something I have to deal with.”
So, hand handmade items or items that are created by you, the beautiful thing is, if it’s the only one on Amazon, you don’t have to worry about all that fighting to get to the top and all of that stuff. It will naturally sell because their audience is so large, that things are found all the time.
Jillian Leslie 14:54
Now, can you share how much, you don’t have to give me specifics, but is this a six-figure business? Is this a seven-figure business? What have you been able to grow it into?
Amanda Wittenborn 15:06
Yeah. So my first full year on Amazon, we did 250,000 in retail sales. And that was just my first year. My goal for the second year was to double it, and we did 650. And then last year, my goal was to hit a million and we did.
So over time it certainly can be grown, but it did not take long to get into the $10000, $20000, $30000 in sales. So prolific, you know.
Jillian Leslie 15:38
I have to say kudos to you. You know, we’re always as entrepreneurs, testing stuff. Like seeing what will connect. And it’s like, you had this crazy idea of selling on Amazon and boom, it worked.
Amanda Wittenborn 15:53
That’s right. We’ve just tested things along the way. When it worked we added to it. So when the invite started selling, I said, “Okay.”
Well, I think I had maybe 40 designs of invitations when I decided to try fulfilled by Amazon. So when I first started, I was printing and shipping all the orders.
Jillian Leslie 16:18
Okay, wait. Let’s take a step back. Talk about what fulfilled by Amazon is.
Amanda Wittenborn 16:23
Yeah. So when I started, I was doing what they call merchant-fulfilled. I was printing and shipping all the orders that came through. So when customers would purchase I would get a notice that said, somebody bought your superhero invites.
I would print them, cut them out, package them with the envelopes and mail them to the customer. I did that for about six months. Of course, when I first started, it was two or three weeks before anything sold.
I really didn’t know what I was doing and my listings weren’t pretty. I didn’t know how to write a correct listing or anything. I just kind of tossed them up there and like, let’s see what happens.
And then as time went on, it was two or three sales a week. And then it was five or six sales a week. And then it was like 10 or 15. And I was like, “Okay. This is getting to be a little difficult to do all this printing and cutting and packaging and shipping.”
That’s when we started looking into having things pre-printed and getting our first supply of inventory. I think at that time I had about 40 different invitation designs. I think I ordered maybe 10 packs of each.
So, I remember this first inventory order was about $750. I was terrified. I was like, “What if they don’t sell? I’m going to be stuck with all these invites.” Just the nerves and how am I going to pay for this and everything like that.
Basically, when you have inventory, you can ship it off to Amazon and Amazon will hold it in their warehouses and then they will fill the orders when they come.
So now when somebody orders the Superman invitation, Amazon gets that pack of invites, packages it up, and ships it to the customer. They charge me a fee to do that. And then I get paid.
So they took all that work away from me. The bonus is when you are doing filled by Amazon, you qualify for the prime shipping. So when I was filling the orders myself, I thought, “Man, people were waiting about 10 days to get their invites.”
I thought, “If they’re willing to wait 10 days and I’m selling this many, I bet they’re ready to go for prime. They will sell even better.”
Jillian Leslie 18:47
And did they?
Amanda Wittenborn 18:48
They did. They’re about 10:1.
Jillian Leslie 18:51
Wow.
Amanda Wittenborn 18:53
Yeah. When that first shipment of inventory went in, it started flying.
Jillian Leslie 18:58
Wow.
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Okay. Given that you’ve sold on Etsy, and are you still selling on Etsy?
Amanda Wittenborn 21:06
I’m not selling on Etsy anymore. My focus is on Amazon.
Jillian Leslie 21:09
Great. Let’s talk about the mindset difference, or if there is one, between selling on Etsy and selling on Amazon. And any tricks or advice you have to say, how to optimize your listings. Like, how to find out how to do this.
Amanda Wittenborn 21:29
Yeah. I think Etsy, you’re more involved. There’s a lot of customer communication. There’s a lot of you being the one that’s packaging the orders and shipping them out. Most of your time is going to be eaten up by doing those kinds of tasks.
Amazon really takes away some of the busy work and allows me to then be able to really create more and run it more like a business because I’m not so busy in the minutiae of everything.
So, when I first started and I’m printing, and I’m cutting, and unpackaging, that has been eliminated. So all the time that I spent doing that kind of work, now then could go into creating more invitation designs because now Amazon was handling that for me.
That’s really where the change between the two lies is that using filled by Amazon… First of all, you have to make sure you’re pricing your products appropriately because of Amazon’s fees.
They’re handling the packaging and shipping for you. I don’t think that the fees are outrageous for taking that work away from me. But if you’re only marking up your product $2 or $3, you’re not going to make money.
Jillian Leslie 22:58
So how much do you sell a pack of 20 invitations for?
Amanda Wittenborn 23:03
I sell them for $24.99.
Jillian Leslie 23:05
Got it.
Amanda Wittenborn 23:06
So, I have a good profit margin on my invitations. I’m not the cheapest on Amazon. You do not have to be the cheapest. Sometimes, I think entrepreneurs get into that mindset of, “I’ll price it lower so more people will buy it.”
But there’s a lot of conflicts that comes with that. Number one, you’re going to attract clients that are more on the cheaper side. They only love cheap things.
You’ll actually get more complaints the cheaper your prices because there’s a mindset among customers that maybe it’s not as high quality.
And so, I found that when I priced my items in a higher price range, sure I sell less of them, but I don’t have to sell as many to make as much money. Another seller has to sell 100 packs. I maybe only have to sell 50.
Jillian Leslie 24:05
Right. And there’s that thing called the race to the bottom. And that’s why you don’t want to be selling double-A batteries on Amazon because it’s a commodity. The person who sells it the cheapest gets the sale.
Amanda Wittenborn 24:21
Right. And when it is your own item, then it doesn’t have to be that way. You’re not fighting somebody on price because, you know, “I’m the only one with that mermaid invite.”
Now, there are other mermaid invites. And so then the customer looks at the four or five different mermaid invites, and then they decide which one they want.
It’s not like it’s the same mermaid invite and I’m going to go buy the cheapest one. If they like mine the best, they will pay the price.
Jillian Leslie 24:52
Right. Okay, so let’s talk about how you learned to put your listings up and optimize them, and ads, and things like that. How did you do the research? What were the best resources for you to teach yourself how to do this?
Amanda Wittenborn 25:09
Amazon itself is actually an amazing resource. Their help center and their seller help pages and how to do everything. I mean, they have videos for everything. They have articles about everything. Anything you want to know how to do, you can find the answer for.
That is another kind of difference between Amazon and Etsy is that Amazon is a lot more complex because there’s a lot of different details and things that the listing asks you for. You have to go through it a couple of times and just figure out what applies to your product and what doesn’t.
I was asking for help in the seller forums many times. I would email Seller Central and ask them. I call them too. They take phone calls. When you’re having trouble that you can’t figure out, they’ll walk you through it.
Jillian Leslie 26:07
Interesting. How long then would you say it took you to really understand the Amazon platform?
Amanda Wittenborn 26:21
I mean there’s always something new so there’s always some new confusion that I’m like, “Okay, let’s figure this out.” But I would say, it was probably two years of thinking about selling on Amazon before I actually tried it.
And then, once I sat down and did it, maybe a month or so of listing items and stuff. I got the hang of it pretty well.
Jillian Leslie 26:44
Got it. I’m just so impressed with how you’ve been able to put this together.
Amanda Wittenborn 26:52
It’s one step at a time.
Jillian Leslie 26:54
Like everything.
Amanda Wittenborn 26:56
Yeah, it’s just been one little thing at a time. Like I said, when we found something that was working, we just did more of it.
So when invitations were selling, and I had 40 designs, you know, my mindset was always, “Okay. Well, if I’m selling $500 a month with 10 designs, if I had 20 designs, I’d sell $1000 a month. If I had 40 designs, it will sell $2000 a month.”
And so, I really just kind of hunkered down and designed for the first year or so probably. Just adding new invites. And then, maybe about nine months in I went, “Well, what else could we sell besides invites?” So thank you cards were the next thing we went for.
Jillian Leslie 27:42
Yes. Now, in terms of the rest of your business. Didn’t you have a blog and all of that?
Amanda Wittenborn 27:52
Yeah.
Jillian Leslie 27:53
And have you kind of abandoned that now because you’re so focused on Amazon?
Amanda Wittenborn 27:57
Well, a little bit yes and no. As I started Amazon, I had the wrong web developers along the way. There have been problems with the website.
Actually, before I started on Amazon, I had hired somebody to redo my website, redesign it, make it work better for what I was doing. And you know, they pretty much broke the whole thing.
So, every link I had out there on social media and Pinterest and everything, no longer worked. And so, it was basically starting from the ground up. I just wasn’t having any success on my website because of all the troubles that were caused by having it redesigned.
And so, that’s what led me to start on Amazon because I was like, “I’m not getting any eyeballs on my website. I don’t know what to do.” I’m not sure but I know that if I can get it in front of enough people that these will sell. And that is what really pushed me to start on Amazon.
Now that we’re established on Amazon, we’re going back to the website. The website is getting a complete overhaul this year and is hopefully going to bring in as much revenue as Amazon it will itself.
I don’t do a lot of advertising off of Amazon because my goal is, if I’m going to spend time on social media driving traffic, I’m going to drive that to my own website.
Jillian Leslie 29:37
Okay, so in terms of you said that you are buying on Amazon ads for placement or keywords, can you explain what that means?
Amanda Wittenborn 29:45
Yeah, Amazon has a sponsored ad campaign system. You can go in there and you can say, I’d like to advertise these products and I’m willing to pay $2 a day. You can set your bids. Like, “Oh, I’ll bid 20 cents.” Let’s say it’s a pirate invites.
So you know, I’ll say I’ll bid 20 cents anytime somebody types in the pirate invites. I know that my ad will show. When I first started, I just dumped everything into one ad campaign and I let Amazon do the work.
It was an automatic. Like, “Amazon, you figure out how to advertise this product.” And they did a pretty good job. I was making money on my ad campaign, so I wasn’t worried about it.
My ad spend would be $1,000 but it would tell me it brought in 4000. I was like, “Fine! This works.” And then last year, in about May, I think, I actually hired an agency that specializes in Amazon sponsored ads and they run my campaigns for me now.
Jillian Leslie 30:55
Okay. I love what you just did, what you shared there, which is you know what? First time, try it out, let Amazon do it. And then as you see it working and as you get more sophisticated, that’s when you go higher the agency.
Amanda Wittenborn 31:09
That’s right. As far as writing listings, they were terrible. When I started, they were simple. You know, one sentence and a bullet point, barely any description. I mean they were awful.
It was maybe nine months in or something it went, I’m gonna hire somebody to write one of these listings for me. And so, I did. And then, I basically took what they had done and I turned it into a template for writing future listings.
So, I saw what they had said in the bullets and what they had said in the description. And then, I just went in and I kind of highlighted. Okay, where can we change keywords to fit a different invitation? And I made it work like that.
Jillian Leslie 31:56
That’s great.
Amanda Wittenborn 31:57
Yeah, one step at a time. You don’t have to buy sponsored ads to start. You don’t have to hire the expensive copywriter to write your listing to start or a photographer to take your photos to start.
You can just start. As it grows, then you hire out these different pieces along the way and grow it more from there.
Jillian Leslie 32:20
So now, what does your team look like right now?
Amanda Wittenborn 32:24
Let’s see. My husband… My goal was always to have him quit his job and work for me. We’re at the 18th-month mark. He quit his job 18 months ago, and he’s been working for me ever since.
He and I are the bulk of the business. We also have three or four other women that help us. Being that I have three young sons, I have a lot of mom friends and a lot of stay at home moms that their last child just went to full-day kindergarten and they’re home all day by themselves.
They want to make money and contribute to their family but they don’t want to have to worry about not being able to pick up their child from school or missing any of their events.
And so, we kind of snatched a few of them up because they’re the perfect person to work in this business because it’s very flexible. So, I have one that we’ve taught how to write listings on Amazon and add new products. So she does that.
She also knows how to ship out our inventory when it arrives from the printer. She does a lot of work. We’ve taught her new things as time has gone on.
I think she first started writing listings, and then I said, “Hey, would you be interested in something that, you know, you had to do on a weekly basis?” She was, “Sure, I could do it.” And so then she started ordering our inventory for us.
And then I said, “Are you interested in more?” And she said, “Sure.” So, “Well, let me show you how to ship our inventory.” And now she pretty much works 30 hours a week for us doing multiple tasks.
And then I have somebody who takes photos of us. We display our products with adorable backdrops. She’s highly creative and wonderful at what she does. She creates these beautiful scenes with the products and photographs them. She has an assistant.
I have somebody who makes all of my Amazon reviews for me, and she’s not even local to me. She lives in Arizona and I’ve known her for years.
Jillian Leslie 34:35
Okay. What is an Amazon preview?
Amanda Wittenborn 34:37
That’s just the image that you see when you’re looking at products. So, because mine is digitally made, our previous or digitally made. We just show the invitation to different images.
One size. One shows up with an envelope. One has some confetti with it. And so, she makes all those for us.
Jillian Leslie 35:04
Got it. Got it. Okay.
Amanda Wittenborn 35:07
We have quite a few. And then I have somebody who’s been writing blog posts for me. And just a few miscellaneous people helping with some miscellaneous tasks of changing out the wording on my website and things like that. So, it’s quite a few.
Jillian Leslie 35:24
Wow. And again, I like how it is growing organically and that you find a good person and you go, “Hey, if you like doing this, do you want to go do this?”
Amanda Wittenborn 35:34
Right. And that is key because not every person wants more responsibility. A lot of what we have people do is very very flexible. Nothing has to be done. We’re not doing surgery here. It’s birthday parties.
It’s not like we have to have this to the photographer by this day or else. So, a lot of it is flexible which I love offering because, as you know, if you have a child who’s sick, you want to able to just be there for them.
Jillian Leslie 36:05
Yes. I just have to say. As I’m recording this, my daughter is in her room, and she has the flu, which we’ve talked about. I kind of said, “You go off here for just an hour while I record, and if there’s any emergency come out.”
Amanda Wittenborn 36:22
That’s right. That’s how I wanted my life to be. That’s why I started a business so that I could bring in some income, and still have the flexibility of being a mom and being there when my kids needed me to.
And so, that is very important for me to offer for anybody who works for us. And that’s why stay at home moms are the perfect fit because they can take their kids to school and then start once they’ve dropped them off.
They can stop when they have to go pick them up. And so, you know, our workday is usually about 9:15 to 3:15. And that’s it.
Jillian Leslie 36:59
Wow! That was my next question, which is how many hours a week would you say you’re working?
Amanda Wittenborn 37:05
Yeah. Me personally, I’ll tell you, my kids just had their Christmas break, and I barely worked.
Jillian Leslie 37:13
That’s great.
Amanda Wittenborn 37:15
You know, we’re at a point in this business that I’ve grown it long enough that I’ve set it up in a way so that I can do that. Prior to this, I was probably working 30-40 hours a week.
But my ultimate goal was to run a successful thriving business that I can step away from when I need to. And you know, 20 hours is pretty good for me.
I like working in that section when my kids are at school, and then not worrying about it outside of that, but that took years to happen.
Jillian Leslie 37:50
So now, are you posting on Instagram? Are you on Pinterest, that kind of thing?
Amanda Wittenborn 37:58
We’re just starting there. We’re just getting into social media and getting into those things because like I said, the website, we’re going to start redoing that and make our focus really on kids’ birthday parties.
Again, I don’t waste a lot of time messing around with those things to drive traffic to Amazon. And so, until my website is a place I want to drive people, it’s a very haphazard social media posting for now.
Jillian Leslie 38:34
Got it. But again, I like that. I like that you’re saying, “You know what, this is working. I’m focusing here. And I don’t have to be everywhere right now.”
Amanda Wittenborn 38:44
No. I don’t think anybody needs to be everywhere. I think you should pick your one social media platform that’s working for you, and really focus on what’s working. Double those efforts. And when you double those efforts, you should double the rewards of that.
I think everybody spreads themselves so thin thinking that they have to do everything and then all of a sudden, nothing seems to work. So I think one of the biggest parts of our success has been, we try something and if it’s working, we do more of it.
Jillian Leslie 39:20
I think that is always my advice. You are preaching to the choir. You totally are. So now, what about your business are you most excited right now? I know you’re working on your website. The goal is to get sales from your website as well?
Amanda Wittenborn 39:38
Yes.
Jillian Leslie 39:39
Okay. And then, you’re coming out with new products. Is there anything else that you’re like, “Ooh, I’m really jazzed about this.”
Amanda Wittenborn 39:46
Yes. So an idea I have had for a very long time is a party in a box, where a mom could come on the site, with one click of a button she gets an entire box full of coordinated party supplies with everything she needs to throw a beautifully coordinated party with minimal effort from her.
We have been working on creating this. We put out a few test boxes last year. We sold out of them. And now, it’s time to really get those going. get them all set up. It’s very close to happening.
From something that I thought up maybe three or four years ago, I mean, I feel like we’re inches away from it becoming a reality.
Jillian Leslie 40:39
That’s great. Now, if somebody wants to go to Amazon and see one of your listings and see what you’re selling, how can they find you?
Amanda Wittenborn 40:46
They can just search Amanda Creation on Amazon. When one of the invites comes up, you can click on my brand name, Amanda Creation, and it will pull up everything that I have for sale on Amazon.
Jillian Leslie 41:00
Now people have questions, or just want to reach out to you, what is the best way to get in touch with you?
Amanda Wittenborn 41:07
Yeah, I would say if they would like to talk to me, then they could email me at Amanda@AmandaCreation.com.
Jillian Leslie 41:14
And it’s creation, not creations.
Amanda Wittenborn 41:17
That’s correct.
Jillian Leslie 41:18
Okay. Well, Amanda, I think you are really inspiring. I love that you did this because your blog wasn’t working. You know that you were kind of like your back was against the wall and you said, “Oh, no. What am I going to try?” And that you said, “I’m going to go try this.”
Amanda Wittenborn 41:38
Right.
Jillian Leslie 41:39
And do you agree that had your blog been working just a little bit better you might not be where you are?
Amanda Wittenborn 41:44
Totally. I’m so thankful for all the mess. At the moment, gosh, it was horrible. I was devastated. But when I look back, I just think, “Man, had that not crashed and burned the way it did, I never would have sought out this, which ended up becoming much bigger than what I could have done prior to it.”
I had no idea how big this could get. And we are just at the beginning. So for me to feel like I just hit the seven-figure mark, and I’m just at the beginning, I mean it’s super exciting for me.
Jillian Leslie 42:31
Oh, Amanda. You are so inspiring. So, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Amanda Wittenborn 42:37
Thank you for having me.
Jillian Leslie 42:39
I found this interview to be so interesting and inspiring. It speaks to what I always preach, which is to come up with a hypothesis and test it. Figure out a way to test things fast and cheaply.
But who knows? I mean Amanda is a perfect example of this. If in fact, you sell a product that is unique, it’s not a commodity, you might really consider selling it on Amazon. I think that’s a really interesting place to explore.
And for those of you who are new bloggers, just getting your feet wet, and if you want to find success, please head to MiloTree.com/group and sign up for our coaching group, our six-week program.
Our whole goal is to help you succeed. We really want to empower online entrepreneurs. We want to teach you all that we know so that you don’t have to go out and make all those mistakes.
We’re there to support you and that is our vision. So again, MiloTree.com/group. Please sign up. It starts on March second. And if you’re not happy with it, we will give you your money back. That’s how much we believe in what we’re going to do. And I will be here again next week.
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