Steven Pope, My Amazon Guy — Building Brands (Not “Passive Income”) on Amazon
Steven Pope is the founder of My Amazon Guy, a 300+ person, full-service Amazon agency. He’s an operator who grew from selling his first Magic: The Gathering card at age 12 to managing 300+ brands on Amazon. In this episode, Steven breaks down why Amazon is a never-ending optimization game, how real growth comes from traffic + conversion, and why “passive income” pitches are a dead end.
Top 5 Takeaways from the Episode:
Traffic + Conversion = Growth: My Amazon Guy organizes work into two pillars—traffic (PPC, Amazon SEO) and conversion (catalog, design, A+ content, platform management). You need both humming to scale.
Amazon SEO Is Real (and rare): From titles and bullets to alt text and A+ copy, Steven’s 4-phase SEO approach moves listings from indexing → ranking → market share—on Amazon’s own search engine.
Design & A+ Content Matter: Premium A+ modules (now opening to sellers who’ve built 25+ A+ pages) unlock richer layouts, video, and more room to “defend your turf” on ad-crowded pages.
Niche Your Avatar, Not Your Product: Sell the same product to multiple micro-segments with distinct packaging and stories (e.g., dog owners vs. cat owners). Hyper-specific avatars reduce ad costs and lift conversion.
Launch Like It Counts: Treat the first 30 days as a “honeymoon period.” Have inventory ready, brand registry (trademark filed), and PPC budget roughly equal to your COGS to leapfrog rankings early. FBA (and Buy with Prime) typically boosts sales with the Prime badge and fast shipping.
Memorable Quote:
“There’s no passive income on Amazon. Anybody selling you that is a liar—it’s tenacity, grit, and hard work.”