Social Media Business Hour | Episode 108 featuring Evan Margolin

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A Seller Gone Wild On Amazon

Evan Margolin, the host of Sellers gone wild podcast is a serial entrepreneur with over 20 years’ experience in internet marketing, online selling, and salsa dancing. Salsa Dancing? I know it’s crazy. He also thinks of himself as an “evangelist of dance.” But did you know, salsa dancing is something that changed his entire life and not just change his life in terms of him becoming a dancer which is wild and crazy enough already, but because he never danced a step in his life prior to stepping into a salsa club.

Evan’s crazy passion towards Salsa also changed his business life enormously because he was able to turn his passion into a huge business, a huge worldwide business, which leads to him entering into greater variety of different niches that were all based upon random, crazy passions.

The Detour He Had To Take

His father, whom he respected his entire life which is an amazing person, was a lawyer and an entrepreneur. By nature, all lawyers in private practice has to be entrepreneurs. His career should have been straight to salsa but he has to take a detour. Like most of us, he wanted his legal education done.

For three years, he dedicated himself in the study of law, specifically high-tech law with the mixture of business and believe it or not he also took criminal constitutional law. This just shows how crazy life works. After he graduated, he had the opportunity to become a founder of a video game startup and he was just like, “What kind of kid out of law school doesn’t want to go make video games honestly?”

He was at the pinnacle of what many people would call the battle of the consoles and in the late 90s between Nintendo, Sega and Sony. Sega was actually the big think and Nintendo. During that time, Sony was the up comer and of course 3DO which many people may or may not remember is one of the kind of new was the new console of the day that was going to bridge interactive media and really bring an amazing experience. It was many years too early in that respect but it was an amazing console.

When he started creating games for the 3DO platform which was founded by one of the ex-people from Electronic Arts, a huge, huge game making company. He initially started on the 3DO platform and then eventually we grew as the platform wars grew to support all the platforms. Sony, Sega, Nintendo and of course personal computers as well and we made a variety of hot selling games for pretty much all of the platforms. The company made games such as Captain Quasar, Uprising. 3DO made amazing games as well called Army Men and a variety of other really good brands that went on to do great things. But unfortunately the platform itself which is always depending on the age of your child, he may or may not know that the 3DO platform ever existed because it eventually did not win at the battle of the console wars and that is why most of the time now we hear about XBOX and PlayStation and Nintendo and we don’t hear much about the 3DO, that is why it did not make it into the early 2000s alas.

Funny Lessons From Building An Empire Out Of Salsa

Evan, following his passion and craziness about salsa dancing, and deciding to make a dance DVD is one of the best decisions he has ever made.

The dance DVD he recorded shot up the charts initially on Amazon. And it became a real seller not just on Amazon turning his dance DVD into a retail success. He was able to get retail distribution based on that and it just took off and before he knew it became the main source of his business. He never thought of seeing himself building an empire out of Salsa.

The Secret Behind Evan’s Success

What is the secret behind Evan’s huge success? Aside from being passionate about Salsa, he built his empire during the dot.com boom which was still young, and to quote, “He was just a man who was in the right place at the right time”.

Before Facebook, before YouTube when content was actually a paid for resource. He was in the right place at the right time and that passion for teaching Salsa dancing really took off and became an amazing business. He never really thought of Amazon as a business. That was just one of his channels at that time.

He made most of my money was in real retail distribution. Internet marketing helped Evan to distinguishing hundreds of websites around the world in every single major city that catered to the passion of salsa dance. He sold his DVDs and a variety of other things and it became a template of how to sell online. And especially at the time it was an amazingly well working and at that time it was amazing template that it worked amazingly that he could ever imagined. The best part? Evan was able to apply that same successful template that you could imagine.

Evan’s Business Golden Nugget 101

Internet marketing has changed a great deal with online selling, where e-commerce is the norm across the entire web.

Once upon a time this online business thing was relatively easy to be successful at and few people did it. Now, it’s extremely crowded and relatively difficult to be accepted in a market. The products have changed quite a bit as and technology is racing ahead at break neck speed. Evan points out that if you wanted to sell DVDs they’re no longer in local stores and they’re any DVD rental store like blockbuster store. His secret tool? Amazon. Amazon has become more important to him than any other online market. His products can be distributed, regardless of what his content is or what his products are.

Evan says, when you’re presented with an opportunity like Amazon, which is the world’s biggest marketplace, you only have to figure out what to sell. Amazon will provide you the buyers. Selling on Amazon, gives you the answer to the biggest and most difficult question in the business; Where to find your next customers.

Evan’s Secret To Success

Strike while the market is hot. The market was really hot during the time that Evan started his Dance DVD business. This also meant he had lots of competition with the millions of people offering the same thing. How did he get an edge on his competition? Evan was the only one who got the retail distribution. He often wondered, “Why I was the only one out of dozens of DVDs that were on Amazon, eBay and other online marketplace?”“Why was I number one?” His answer, “It all boils down to meeting a specific need”.

Evan Magic Formula For Targeting A Market’s Specific Need.

Targeting the specific needs of your customer is a great strategy in any type of business. It is very important to know of what your customer really need. Evan looked at his competition and saw that everyone was just teaching people how to dance. In that market today, everyone is still teaches people how to dance. The one thing that set him apart and the one thing that made it so possible for him to succeed beyond all of his completion is that he understood how difficult it is to learn how to dance.

Evan knew from his personal experience just how tough it is to learn how to dance and he used that while marketing his salsa DVD’s

He was able to reach out to his customers, making them realize that he understands how awkward it is to learn how to dance. Evan used his ability to break it down for beginners, who by the way, is usually the largest market of any single group if not the most avid. What set his DVDs apart and continue to set his DVDS apart is helping beginners understanding easy salsa dancing can be. Those same beginners, of course, were not being marketed to in that way by anyone else.

Evan was the only one who would break it down, step by step, with empathy for how difficult it can be on how to dance. He would talk about every single step, and discussed it in a way that made people comfortable. He made sure to include humor, making it a fun, exciting and sometimes crazy experience.
He created an imminent experience where people could share their passion for dancing, laugh about it, and have fun along the way.

His Business Advice

There’s always a race to do things at a higher level, but do not lose your perspective. Start from a lower level, planning each and every steps that has to be taken. That’s the root of Evan’s success.

Learn Private Label FBA Business with Evan

Evan has a training schedule that will teach you the A, B’s and Cs, step by step, really step by step through the entire process of what it means to create a private label FBA business on Amazon. All you have to do is go to Fbacrazy.com, sign up is easy, and, it is going to be a blast. You’ll get all the stuff necessary to start your own FBA right away.

Weblinks:

www.SellersGoneWild.com
www.MarketingCrazy.com

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Social Media Business Hour