592: How To Find High-Margin Products Without Spending a Dollar Upfront With Izabella Ritz

Summary

Episode Summary: "How To Find High-Margin Products Without Spending a Dollar Upfront with Izabella Ritz" (Episode 592)

Podcast Information:

• Title: The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast With Steve Chou
• Host/Author: Steve Chou
• Description: Start an E-commerce Business, Become Your Own Boss, and Spend More Time With Your Loved Ones
• Release Date: June 3, 2025

---

1. Introduction to the Episode

In Episode 592 of The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast, host Steve Chou welcomes Isabella Ritz, founder of Ritz Momentum, to discuss strategies for identifying high-margin, profitable products to sell online without the need for upfront inventory investment. This episode delves deep into Isabella's expertise in Amazon selling, product validation, and leveraging AI tools to streamline the product research process.

2. Isabella Ritz’s Journey into E-commerce

Isabella shares her entrepreneurial journey, highlighting her move from Russia to the United States in 2015, where she entered the Amazon selling space. Despite initial challenges, her first product—a Silicon Wine Glass—generated $14,000 in revenue in its first month. This success cemented her belief in the potential of Amazon as a lucrative platform.

“The moment you stop selling, it feels like you're missing something.”
— Isabella Ritz [02:52]

3. Finding High-Margin Products

Isabella emphasizes the importance of targeting high-ticket items with substantial margins. She advises against chasing low-margin, unbranded products, which are increasingly challenging due to Amazon's tightening policies. Instead, she advocates for products that meet specific customer demands and offer room for premium pricing.

“We have to sell high-ticket products, products that actually have margin.”
— Isabella Ritz [06:59]

4. Leveraging AI in Product Research

A significant portion of the discussion centers around the use of AI tools in product research. Isabella explains how tools like Smart Scout and GPT have revolutionized her approach, allowing for rapid data analysis and more precise product identification based on client-specific criteria.

“The AI process, everything changes literally every day.”
— Isabella Ritz [13:09]

5. Product Validation and Development

Isabella outlines her meticulous process for validating products, which includes analyzing keywords, assessing competition, and understanding market demand. She highlights the use of customer reviews to gain insights into product improvements and tailoring offerings to better meet customer needs.

“We read customer reviews, take notes, and use AI to create customer personas.”
— Isabella Ritz [22:05]

6. Pricing Strategies for Maximum Profit

Pricing is a critical factor in Isabella's strategy. She discusses how setting prices significantly higher than the market average—when justified by enhanced features or design—can lead to increased profitability. For instance, her blade product was priced at $89 compared to the typical $39, based on customer willingness to pay more for perceived quality and unique features.

“We tested the price with tools like Pickfu, and $89.99 worked.”
— Isabella Ritz [27:05]

7. Launch Strategies and Listing Optimization

While Isabella primarily focuses on product research and development, she touches on collaboration with PPC experts and influencers for product launches. She emphasizes the importance of having a well-optimized listing to drive conversions and leveraging high-converting PPC campaigns to boost visibility.

“We work on listings for products we develop because we understand how to present them to the audience.”
— Isabella Ritz [39:16]

8. Understanding Customer Personas and Market Insights

Developing detailed customer personas is pivotal in Isabella's approach. She utilizes AI to analyze customer feedback and simulate polls, enabling her to tailor products that resonate deeply with target audiences. This method ensures that each product variant meets specific customer preferences, enhancing overall market fit.

“Develop your customer Persona first. You have to know who your product will be talking to.”
— Isabella Ritz [22:07]

9. Overcoming Challenges in Today’s E-commerce Landscape

Isabella acknowledges the increasing pressures on Amazon sellers, including higher tariffs and stricter competition. She advises staying ahead by continuously innovating and focusing on products that offer unique value propositions, rather than succumbing to saturated markets.

“Amazon is squeezing everybody, and we have to find opportunities where we can win.”
— Isabella Ritz [08:38]

10. Services Offered by Isabella Ritz

Ritz Momentum specializes in assisting Amazon sellers with product research, validation, and development. Isabella ensures that clients receive personalized strategies tailored to their unique budgets and market conditions. She also provides detailed listings and collaborates with PPC specialists for effective product launches.

“Ritz Momentum is mitigating the risk. We're helping you reduce your risk and improve your quality of life.”
— Isabella Ritz [37:19]

11. Key Takeaways and Final Thoughts

The episode concludes with Isabella sharing actionable insights for e-commerce entrepreneurs:

• Focus on High-Margin Products: Prioritize products with significant profit margins and customer demand.
• Leverage AI Tools: Utilize advanced AI technologies for efficient product research and validation.
• Understand Your Customer: Develop detailed customer personas to tailor products effectively.
• Optimize Pricing and Listings: Set competitive prices based on market research and optimize listings for higher conversion rates.
• Collaborate for Launch Success: Partner with PPC experts and influencers to ensure successful product launches.

Isabella encourages listeners to adopt a strategic mindset, viewing their e-commerce ventures as long-term investments rather than quick cash flows.

“Business is a risk. Investment is an adventure, your venture, your future opportunity.”
— Isabella Ritz [37:54]

Contact Information

For those interested in leveraging Isabella Ritz’s expertise, she can be reached directly via text:

Phone: [phone]

Isabella is open to new clients and offers personalized strategies to help e-commerce entrepreneurs succeed on platforms like Amazon.

---

Additional Resources Mentioned:

• Seller Summit 2025 Recordings: Available at sellerssummit.com
• Free 6-Day Mini Course on E-commerce: Sign up at mywifequiterjob.com/free

---

This episode provides invaluable insights for both novice and experienced Amazon sellers, emphasizing the importance of strategic product selection, advanced research techniques, and understanding customer needs to achieve sustained profitability in the competitive e-commerce landscape.

Transcript

[Steve Chou]

Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all of the latest strategies and current events related to E commerce and online business. In this episode I sit down with Isabella Ritz, founder of Ritz Momentum and one of the sharpest minds in E commerce to break down exactly how to find high margin profitable products that actually sell. But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that the recordings for sellers summit 2025 are now available over at sellers summit.com the seller summit is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. The talks this year were incredible with tons of actionable advice and behind the scenes insights from every speaker. If you want to catch the recordings, head over to sellers summit.com now onto the show. Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. Today I am thrilled to have Isabella Ritz on on the show. Now Isabella is the founder of Ritz Momentum where she helps Amazon sellers find and validate profitable products to sell. She's very well known in the Amazon community and she just spoke at my annual e commerce conference called the Seller Summit where attendees really raved about her talk. So in this episode we are going to break down Isabella's strategies on how to find and validate profitable products to sell online without spending any money upfront on inventory. And with that, welcome to the show, Isabella. How are you doing today?

[Isabella Ritz]

Thank you very much. Thank you for having me at the event. I had so much fun and when I saw that, I believe Tony put me first right after your speech to talk, I'm like, oh my God, that's a lot of pressure. But I'm glad everyone had fun and I am very happy to share today everything you want to know.

[Steve Chou]

That's great. Yeah, we put you against Tony, I think. And then I think that might have worked to Tony's disadvantage because you know, a lot of people did attend attend your session, so with rave reviews.

[Isabella Ritz]

Great. I'm, I'm glad that I made other people happy, but I really wanted to be on at her talk because I'm like, well last time when I was at your event, her talk was the most impressive for me and she was talking about all these crazy funnels that pretty much every single business, not just Amazon seller supposed to do. Like if you're not doing funnels, follow ups, sending out the emails to those that clicked and didn't approach you. Like you're losing, you're losing so much money on the table keeping.

[Steve Chou]

So definitely 30% of my business is email. So. So Isabella, many of my new Listeners probably do not know who you are. So how did you get into E commerce? And actually are you currently selling on Amazon today?

[Isabella Ritz]

I do sell on Amazon today and I want to say it's very contagious. Like the moment you stop selling, it's. It feels like you're missing something. And I know it because we exited three brands in 2021. And then mine. And I will get back to the story how I started and the brand we're selling right now. It's a Japanese brand. We started because it was out of principle. We, we had one client, he came to the agency and he said, find a product for me to sell. We did find a product that was extremely advantageous. And I. And he didn't have a huge budget. He had like probably like 20 to 25,000 to launch his brand on Amazon. And then he said, you guys found a shit show. It's not the product I will be able to sell and this product doesn't have any opportunities. And I got so pissed and I said, whatever, I will launch this product myself. And I did and it became bestseller. And we do have time like during Q4, this product is making like 60 to 80 thousand dollars a month. And then it's like it does have consistent sales because it's a niche, niche product. But at the same time like, okay, so now we have to create a brand around this product. So we created a brand around this product. This. It's mid six figure right now. So we're. I don't know if I want to grow it to eight figures or something, but this probably will be like low one, low seven figure brand. But this is how this is to the point that selling on Amazon is contagious and this is something that you just want to continue doing it. I got into the Amazon space back in 2015 when I moved from Russia to live in United States. And I just, I was already serial entrepreneur. So I knew I'm going to do some type of the business. But I didn't have language, I didn't know culture, I didn't know anything. And I was just googling like, what should I do in United States? What kind of business should I do in the United States? And everybody was talking about Amazon and if you will look at the space right now, a lot of sellers so started back in 2015, 2016, y. It just, it was a boom and I was probably one of these people that was in a wave of this 2015. And I did start and I, I think I was super lucky because a lot of Products I was launching that they've been just very intuitive, no validation, generic. Didn't even slap my log on it. It was just let me launch a.

[Steve Chou]

Product, my first product back in the day, it was like that, right?

[Isabella Ritz]

Just throw. Yeah, yeah. And I launched Silicon Wine Glass and I, I made $14,000 on top of my investment month one. I still don't know how it happened, but it happened. I was very happy about it. And this is where I realized, okay, Amazon works, I guess I just will stick with this. And I just continued with a lot of mistakes after then this product became unavailable for me to sell because someone patented. I didn't know at the moment that patents are territorial. And this patent was filed in uk, not in United States. But you live, you learn. If we would know better, we would do better.

[Steve Chou]

I'm curious, that client who got angry, did you show them the product that they could have launched?

[Isabella Ritz]

Oh no, I didn't because I was proven to myself, I'm like no, I'm going. But if he would ever reach out, I will make sure to punch him on the face by seeing.

[Steve Chou]

I know, seriously. So the last we mentioned that I actually started it I think in 2016 or no 2014. I can't remember around the same time you did. Yeah, it was a lot easier back then. But just in the last couple years Amazon's been squeezing both sellers and buyers more than ever before. So I want your opinion real quick before we get started. What do you think about selling on Amazon specifically today and have your strategies adapted as a result? Because obviously you can't just buy something unbranded and throw it up anymore.

[Isabella Ritz]

No, you definitely cannot. Some people still do and some people still doing it successfully. I think it's just the lack of first time mover like I will try first time and let's see how it works. For some people it still works, but I don't see much success in it. I never believed on cheap products. It's just the nature of my personality. I never believed in low ticket prices. Even this, my Silicon Wine glass, I was selling at 39.99 back in the days and it was set of four and I was. My cost of goods was five bucks I believe or something like this. So I stick with the theory that we have to have, we have to sell high ticket products, products that actually have margin. And if you're based on consumers demand, consumers, avatar shoppers experience and you develop the product the way your buyers are ready to pay higher price, you will be successful. So like don't go out after the bsrs and like all this craziness, just going after margins. And I do agree Amazon is squeezing everybody and I just believe that we have to be not in the crowd of people that are talking and squealing, but we have to be on the side where we can win. So if it's an opportunity for us to win, how we can have it as an opportunity? Where is the opportunity here where everybody suffers? So you're just finding it and you're bringing it to the market.

[Steve Chou]

So how do you define high end? Like can you just throw some numbers? Like what do you consider a high ticket item?

[Isabella Ritz]

So let's just go with the another example. We did have a client coming to us to sell blades. So most of the blade blades is kind of plate, but at the same time it's not. It's in between plate and the bowl and it does have a keyword blades. So it's kind of deep plate. The average price for this product I believe is $39. If I not mixing out. We launched his product at $89 and it happened because we've been learning customer demand and what are they ready to pay for. So people didn't like that this product is breakable, is not dishwasher safe and like a lot of other features and benefits that other sellers were not able to provide. So we redeveloped the product the way where customer will be happy to pay higher price because this product has an opportunity. And the reason this product has an opportunity, again we find out about it because of the customer feedback. This product is being purchased primarily as a gift. So when we're given a gift we want to look good. If I am given the gift, that means I want something that is more expensive and at the same time people will use for a long time. So and when you do this discovery of the product, this is where you're able to find out if people are willing to pay higher price. So if I'm selling Vitamin C, I have doubts someone would want to pay for product that you can buy at $6. There's just no opportunity for this. But there are a lot of products where it's a huge opportunity to sell at the higher price because of different reasons people are purchasing this product.

[Steve Chou]

So in your plate example though, I am kind of curious and you don't have to reveal the actual plate, but to charge two and a half times more than the market, it sounds like it was a completely different type of plate than what was being sold out there.

[Isabella Ritz]

I would be prepared, I would bring that it's in my kitchen.

[Steve Chou]

Oh, you do? That's okay, that's. I'm just curious.

[Isabella Ritz]

I have it in my kitchen. I didn't see this gas, this guy continue selling. I don't know why, but when he launched, it was a hundred thousand dollars launch.

[Steve Chou]

Wow.

[Isabella Ritz]

It was huge. It was like amazing and.

[Steve Chou]

But like just. I just trying to get an idea though. Was it. Did it look completely different than all the listings out there?

[Isabella Ritz]

It didn't. It didn't look completely different. I think my husband actually just heard me and I think I was going.

[Steve Chou]

To go get it.

[Isabella Ritz]

I will not be surprised if he will bring this blade. And I actually hear his. I think he's taking this blade.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Isabella Ritz]

Awesome. It did look different at the time. I didn't analyze this listing for this market for a while, but we made it wider, we made it a little bit deeper and we literally went through the supplier and created the sample with completely different design. And we didn't just test the design against each other, we tested pricing structure as well. Okay, so would you purchase this product that look like this is $39 or will you purchase this product that. Oh, actually, yeah, I'm about to show you guys.

[Steve Chou]

Okay, perfect. Awesome.

[Isabella Ritz]

It's right here, so. Or will you purchase this product that is like handmade and hand painted on a different way? Okay, so that's pretty cool. Thank you. Yeah, that's.

[Steve Chou]

That's great. I wish my wife was here to, to help me out with these podcasts too.

[Isabella Ritz]

Yeah, well, you never know. I thought he's on his headphones, but he wasn't. But yeah, this is like how we really structured the product. And this one, we use it for like over two years. Dishwasher safe, never broke one. And you know, sometimes things break. So you just develop the product the way your customer is asking for and then you sell it at the price.

[Steve Chou]

I'm glad you brought the plate up as an example because that is an item that I would think would be saturated. So what I want to do next is talk about your process for finding a good product. And I know you rely heavily on AI these days, so just walk me through your process. I would love to hear it.

[Isabella Ritz]

Yeah, this AI process. Because of the AI process, everything changes literally every day. So if in the past I was just not even the past, a year ago I was taking the data sets from Smart Scout and I was uploading this data sets into the GPT, which was also with the help of AI and I was going through this data faster. Like, help me find the product that has this requirements abcd and I was going through a lot of products at the time. Right now I'm structuring prompts for the client. So for example, and this is the starting point, right? So for example, we have a client x that has 40,000 budget for lunch. He has cost of goods he doesn't want to sell in certain categories. And I want to find a product for him that he'll be selling at I don't know, $89 with the cost of goods of 1520. So now I'm structuring the prompt with the requirements find for me the not saturated niche products that I will be able to upgrade and redesign on the way like my customers would want to purchase with the approximate revenue per month. And I am doing it without deep search first. And then if I am finding out some certain ideas I'm adding also deep search. So I will be able to get some links to make sure AI is not giving me like hey, you can sell a book at $2,000 like just because I decided to. So and then we're adding some deep research into that and we're going through the process. It really, it's coming out these days to the structuring correct prompt based on what you want. It's not like hey, find the product without electronics that I want to sell at $20,000 a day. So it's not, it's like you're really going into very deep prompting but you save yourself so much time and then you're already going from there.

[Steve Chou]

Before we get into the prompts, what are your requirements actually that you're feeding.

[Isabella Ritz]

In Requirements really depends. So like we have clients like Charles is one of them. Right?

[Steve Chou]

Okay. Yeah. Charles is a student in my class for people listening.

[Isabella Ritz]

Yeah, yeah. So he's, he's great. But he said I don't really care about oversaturated or heavy products. And he's an experienced seller. Right. So he wants profitable, revenue driven, profit driven product and he doesn't care if it's oversized. So we found product for him that is a little bit oversized. But he can make seven figure of just this product per month.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Isabella Ritz]

So would I recommend this type of the product to the new seller or not really experienced seller, never ever, ever. But he is capable to handle this type of the product. So and that's why we are that like the process, the process is being tailored for every single client individually. So it's not like it's a recipe for everybody. Of course there is a lot of variables for each Individual seller. And sometimes we're finding products that are maxed out at 10 to $12,000. But we know that this customer will be able to handle this product and they will not fail.

[Steve Chou]

Let's target a complete beginner. Okay. So complete beginner comes to you and let's say they have 10, $10,000 or something like that. Or, or we can walk through your plate. Example, whichever you feel more comfortable with.

[Isabella Ritz]

Yeah. Example.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. Yes. Because that, that person's not even selling that plate anymore. So it's probably not a big deal. Okay.

[Isabella Ritz]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

So how did you.

[Isabella Ritz]

Yeah, so for this one, first of all we found an advantageous keyword. At the time that was 20, I would say 20, 22.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Isabella Ritz]

I think so. So this keyword is very, very advantageous now. And at the time it, it's been only, I would say seven or five. It was below 10 competitors. I remember that for sure. So we had a very low amount of competitors for this keyword and sometimes products are being ranked for the different keywords and we were trying to find how many actual sellers would this product are on Amazon.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Isabella Ritz]

And it's still, it's been below 10.

[Steve Chou]

So what is your threshold for that? Like let's say there was 50. Would that is still been. Okay.

[Isabella Ritz]

It depends on the search volume of the aggregate. That supposed to be the aggregate of the search volume. So what is the potential for us to reach? Right, because I don't want to create a demand for the product. I want the product to be in demand and I want to sell something people are searching for.

[Steve Chou]

So what would you, what would be your threshold for the ratio of demand versus number of sellers? Just trying to get an idea.

[Isabella Ritz]

I will be looking for example like at least hundred thousand a year with the very low purchase rate, slash conversion rate. Like if you're going on Amazon Product Opportunity Explorer, you see you're able to see their conversion rate and I want this conversion rate to be below 1.5%.

[Steve Chou]

I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store. I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in ecommerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be [e-mail] free. Just sign up right there. On the front page via email. And I'll send you the course right away. Once again, that's mywifequitterjob.com free. Now back to the show.

[Isabella Ritz]

That's what I want.

[Steve Chou]

You want a low conversion rate because that means people are not selling this very well or there's a lot of. Okay, okay, correct.

[Isabella Ritz]

Because that means market is not satisfied with. With the offer and market is leaving Amazon to look for this product somewhere else.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Isabella Ritz]

And it was a tool. It was. Oh, my God. I think it was viral to viral. I don't. Viral. No, no, no. Viral launch. It was viral to viral. I think they called it.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Isabella Ritz]

I had access to them for a little bit. They've been on beta. I don't know if they ever released. But these guys at the time when we've been actually working with this product, they. They were able to provide data if this product is being sold on ebay, on Shopify, on Amazon. It's very sad that, like, I don't have access and I even don't know if they're there yet.

[Steve Chou]

I mean, the Amazon tool space is super competitive. I wouldn't be surprised if they ran out of money.

[Isabella Ritz]

Yeah, right. Yeah. And you were able to pull if people are purchasing this product off Amazon more than they're purchasing it on Amazon.

[Steve Chou]

Oh, okay. Nice.

[Isabella Ritz]

Yeah. So now it's not really available, but now you're able to see if this product has been advertised and promoted by influencers, which is a bigger deal. Because now if I have this product or if I have any seller that launched this product with the high margins and higher revenue because of TikTok video or because of Instagram video. Like you're the one of those that is buying toothbrush with toothpaste.

[Steve Chou]

That's my wife. Yeah.

[Isabella Ritz]

Yes, I saw this page. So that means I can create and I can hire influencer that will create for me the viral video for this stupid blades. And if someone created this demand and not demand like the sales, we can create the same cash flow. Right, Right. So this is where I will be looking at. And if this again, if this purchase rate coming back to the purchase rate of the purchase rate is low, that means market is not satisfied. So let me find out what market doesn't like about the product. So I will recreate the product the way the market will be happy and my conversion rate will be way higher.

[Steve Chou]

Right. Okay. So walk me through that process. How do you discover what the market.

[Isabella Ritz]

Actually wants these days is actually super easy. In the past, if you remember what we Were doing like we've been reading reviews for days and taking notes and like it was a huge. It was a lot of work and a lot of it was time consuming. Now I'm using V. There is some other tool that is doing the same thing, but V is really the best.

[Steve Chou]

That's Voc AI for anyone listening.

[Isabella Ritz]

Yes, thank you. And you are going into the customer reviews, I think marketing customer reviews or market insights. Like it's on the left side and you're pulling asins with the high amount of reviews, they just have to be very relevant to the product you're planning to sell. And redevelop your scraping these reviews takes up to 90 seconds and you can scrape 15,000, 20,000 reviews, whatever you want. And you're able to see all the customer feedback and again, and it's already EI'd. Right. And we're still super lazy. So what I'm doing, I'm just downloading all these reports, uploading them to ChatGPT and asking GPT to create customer Persona. Because that's a big deal. A lot of people still don't do it. Please. When you go after the product, develop your customer Persona first. So you have to know who your product will be talking to. Because we're not going after anymore. Oh, my product is temp. I know. Dishwasher safe. Something safe. Something safe. We have to go after the benefits for the customer. So no need to hand wash. No like ready to go plate or ready to go bag or something like this. So it's supposed to be with the benefits for the customer. And then after you develop customer Persona, you are reverse engineering the product. So how can I do this product better? You're reverse engineering the product after you did that, now you are developing the product the best way your customer would want to purchase this specific primary customer Persona. You can have three customer Personas. You can have two of them. You can have one of them go after the first one first. And then when you did the reverse engineering, you can ask ChatGPT depends on the product. You can ask to create a mock up. It doesn't mean GPT will do a really good job. So in this process, when you reverse engineered first you're asking to create the perfect design task for your graphic or product designer. So you're not going straight to hey, create a mock up. No, it's not going to work. Now you're asking to create very, very detailed, specific description of the product you're planning to develop. And only then you're asking ChatGPT or you can go to poll, you can go to midjourney to create the product based on the specific requirements. And now you're going through the like refine process. One of the easiest way to do it is to simplify it first and then start adding feature after feature because GPT is still not at the point where you can just go after complicated product.

[Steve Chou]

So that plate example that, that you're holding up, I, I don't think Vogue AI was around in 2022. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. But what were the criteria to make that particular plate that you showed me better compared to the competition? Just as an example for the listeners.

[Isabella Ritz]

For this one, it was reading. It was. We, we read so for. There are so many reviews back in those days and we just like read what customer want and we've been doing the designs from scratch, which we still do a lot.

[Steve Chou]

But how did you change that particular plate to make it so that you could charge two and a half times more?

[Isabella Ritz]

This one, this particular one was based on the sizing size, like this diameter, height and color. So apparently this product is being purchased a lot design wise because people want to fit it in their interiors.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Isabella Ritz]

And this one was one of those. And this one we developed. If you look, it's different patterns, but they match. So it's set of four with, with completely different patterns on each of them, but at the same time they have a match in between every single one of them.

[Steve Chou]

I see. And then the other ones at the time were smaller and they were a different color. And that's why people didn't like them as much.

[Isabella Ritz]

They still buy them. It's just their conversion rate was very low. Way lower. Way lower. Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

And I'm just curious, since this product's not being sold anymore, what did you boost the conversion rate to on, on that particular one?

[Isabella Ritz]

That was a great, very well developed listing. And that, that was pure PPC campaign launch. Okay. That was buying reviews, PPC high converting listing and product. Like I do believe that you have three primary components is product conversion and traffic. If conversion traffic are not in place, like you can fix those, but if you have a very bad product, you cannot fix the product.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Isabella Ritz]

And if you have three components, then it's just working out.

[Steve Chou]

How did you decide on 89.99 versus whatever was being sold before, which was 20 something?

[Isabella Ritz]

I think at this moment the highest price for similar product, not for the blades but for similar products, was something like $70. And we're like, let's see if 89.99 is gonna work.

[Steve Chou]

Interesting.

[Isabella Ritz]

And we just tested with Pickful or with the product opinion, I don't remember which one of them. We tested the price and this price worked.

[Steve Chou]

Okay. Okay. So Pickfu for everyone Listening is a polling platform where you can upload images and get feedback from real people who are unbiased. So regarding that plate. So 89.99. The thing is, like, the way I shop on Amazon, I never buy the cheapest thing anymore because just my assumption is it's just this cheap thing from China. And these days, whenever I advise any student of mine to sell anything, I always have them target the high end because chasing the low margins, especially since Amazon is squeezing everybody, makes it a lot more difficult. I do remember in your presentation at Sellers that anything you'd generally advise people don't use anything that requires a mold. Right.

[Isabella Ritz]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

So does that imply that, you know, anything plastic is kind of just not in the cards, especially if you're a beginner.

[Isabella Ritz]

I would say complicated mold is not something I would be going after. But for example, this is clear clay. Right. So you don't really need mold for this because people, it's a handmade product. I am not really against the mold. It's just for the beginners, it's a little. A little bit overwhelming.

[Steve Chou]

Right.

[Isabella Ritz]

That's why I am probably just recommending going after clay, after wood, after glass.

[Steve Chou]

And metal doesn't need a mold.

[Isabella Ritz]

Metal doesn't need a mold because you just cut it. Yeah. So I would just probably go after materials that don't. Sewing, like things that don't really require Chinese will tell you that, like, yeah, you still need the mold. Sure. But it's not actually mold. It's just some shapes that they're creating.

[Steve Chou]

The world of molds is actually kind of complicated for anyone listening here too. There's different grades of molds that you can buy that last a certain number of runs. And once the mold is in, in the factory, like, it's really hard to move molds as well. So I tend to agree with you on that.

[Isabella Ritz]

Yeah. Thank you.

[Steve Chou]

So I think. Okay, so up until this point, we've already used voak AI to figure out how to change the product. And then what I heard you say is you then kind of feed that information into ChatGPT and you actually have ChatGPT make a mockup form for you.

[Isabella Ritz]

Yeah. These days with you, we don't usually finalize mock up with ChatGPT, but we usually have a direction for our designer to go after. And this is how we're able to simplify, speed up the process and not make it so expensive for our customer that are coming and paying us these days. Because in the past what we were doing designer was going after sketch, then we were checking if the sketch will be able to scale sell and then we were doing the mockups and testing mock mockups and etc. So now with GPT we can have this basic mockups, test them against competitors with big four or even simulate those polls inside of the chat GPT. And I was going over like on at seller summit, I was showing how you, you can simulate the poll. When you guys, if we will come back for like 10 minutes before when I was talking at this podcast, you can take your customer Persona that you created with VOC AI and then you ask ChatGPT to create to simulate the poll based on the hundred similar Personas. So simulate 100 Saras that we just created with you. You means ChatGPT and test these three designs against each other. Make sure you provide me comments so I will be able to improve the design I want. And if you do it right, ChatGPT will actually tell you your design is losing against your competitors. And then of course after you achieved certain amount of improvements, then you're going to pick phone. You're actually spending money and investing into your final polls.

[Steve Chou]

So just to be clear here, you're having chatgpt or whatever image generation tool that you want create a mockup and then you're literally pulling the product image from Amazon and you're having ChatGPT just kind of run an AI sort of poll telling you based on your avatar which one they would buy. Yeah, I've actually never done that before. How does that compare to actually a real pick through poll with people?

[Isabella Ritz]

It fluctuates. Again, depends on the, it really depends on your process, depending on how you structure the question, how and if you are not priming Chad GPT to vote for your product. Right, right. So you shouldn't be doing that. But it's very close. Some polls GPT is pretty much the same as pick phone because chatgpt I.

[Steve Chou]

Feel these days just tells me what I want to hear.

[Isabella Ritz]

I mean that's why you have to ask him right way.

[Steve Chou]

I guess the difference also is in ChatGPT you're feeding in your customer Persona on PickFu. I don't think you can filter down to that level. Like you can't have it. You can do it by age and, and gender and whatnot, but it's not as granular. Right. Is that. Is that why you start out with ChatGPT first?

[Isabella Ritz]

We actually started with ChatGPT because people were complaining that they don't want to spend that much on polls. And I'm like, makes sense.

[Steve Chou]

It makes sense.

[Isabella Ritz]

Yeah, you have to. And I'm like, okay, let's do this. And I was just thinking how I can simplify it for them and make it cheaper. Like, let's do just polling first. And then when you are getting closer, you will go and invest into Pickful. And that's why PickFu is not paying me great commissions anymore, because people are.

[Steve Chou]

Being postponed through chat.

[Isabella Ritz]

Yeah, okay.

[Steve Chou]

No, that totally makes sense. And then once you've gone through that process and you refined it and you think that you have something, is. Is that when you actually look for suppliers and make that final thing, or do you start that process even earlier?

[Isabella Ritz]

We look at potential cost of goods. At the moment we're making the decision to move with the product. So we, like, for example, for our clients, we never, ever provide a report for the product unless we shopped a little bit on Alibaba and just asked our sourcing agent, like, listen, what is the ballpark? Just give me the ballpark. So if I understand, like, okay, what will be able to fit into the budget and be profitable, then yeah, let's move on with this product. Because no matter how badly on a good way, we will improve the product, but we'll still be able to sell profitable.

[Steve Chou]

Okay, so based on sourcing agents that you've worked with, they give you a ballpark. And it just sounds like from talking to you so far, you're shooting for 5 to 6x margins. Is that accurate?

[Isabella Ritz]

I mean, from cost of goods, I would say four.

[Steve Chou]

Four. Okay.

[Isabella Ritz]

Because we. And it's also cost of goods or landed cost. And these days it's also confusing because now we have tariffs that we have because maybe we will get refunded for these tariffs, because now people can apply and refund. It's just a lot, you know, at seller's time and you've been like, hey, Trump just said this.

[Steve Chou]

Oh, I know, I know.

[Isabella Ritz]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, now we have this. So it's just. It's very confusing. Right now we're trying to aim at like 4.4x. Okay, yeah, 4. From cost of goods and.

[Steve Chou]

Sorry, from landed cost of goods or.

[Isabella Ritz]

No, from cost of goods.

[Steve Chou]

Oh, from cost of goods. Okay.

[Isabella Ritz]

From cost of goods. Because. Because of the tariffs. Like, I would say landed cost, but because of the tariffs, I can't even tell you if it's four. And when people will be listening to the podcast, they will tell me, oh, you said five for six. But in reality, I have 15 margin. After all my tariffs, I'm paying. So that's.

[Steve Chou]

That's why I see you have PTSD like I do. Like, when I say something publicly, people call me on it, but things.

[Isabella Ritz]

Yeah, yeah. The funny story about the same. Publicly. I did my first podcast in us with. With Bradley Sutton back. Back in 20, I think 18. And I was still not sure in English, what means margin and what means profits? And when Bradley asked me, like, what margins are you looking at? And I said, 100%. And then Kevin King listened to this podcast, and can you imagine? I could not even imagine that Kevin King would listen to this podcast. And then Kevin called on this Bradley. He's like, who is this lady? She's talking about 100% margins. Like, what. What BS is that? And Bria, like, I know, I know. And then when I met. A couple years later, I met Kevin King, and like, we spoke, and my English was already better. And I'm still working on my English. Of course. I know I'm making, like, grammar mistakes, and I'm Foreigner guys, so. And Kevin said. Yeah, I actually called Bradley on that. I'm like, kevin, margins and profits were, for me, a little bit confusing at the time. So I learned my lesson. Now when I am speaking in public, I'm trying to be as cautious as possible.

[Steve Chou]

100 margin. Sign me up. Sign me up. Yeah.

[Isabella Ritz]

Sign me up.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah. So, Isabelle, I want to switch gears a little bit and just kind of talk about what you do with your customers. So it sounds like your primary service is helping people find profitable products to sell on Amazon. Is that accurate and validated?

[Isabella Ritz]

And develop. Yeah, right.

[Steve Chou]

And develop. Okay, so does that imply that you actually helped them find the suppliers and. And make everything as well?

[Isabella Ritz]

Yes, that's how I'm showing you this stuff. That's why I have it in my house, because we've been checking the samples, and my family just keep using it.

[Steve Chou]

And so what is your target customer, if I may ask? For your agency.

[Isabella Ritz]

For my agency. First, it's supposed to be right mindset, so people can't come to us and say, hey, I just want money to flow into my bank account tonight.

[Steve Chou]

They want 100 margins, right?

[Isabella Ritz]

Yeah. With 100% margins, like, this person's supposed to be as reasonable as possible. So we have to understand that business is a risk. Grace, Momentum is mitigating the risk. We're not eliminating the risk while helping you out to reduce your risk and improve, improve the quality of your life while you're working with product research, validation and development. Because it's a complicated process and people that understand that they will become break even, not profitable, break even in about six to eight months from the start. That's the expectation they're supposed to set. And every single business is about investment. So you're not going into business waiting for the cash back. You're going into business as an adventure, your venture, your future opportunity because you want to escape 9 to 5 or start something new. It is not a cashback and it's not a cash back on spot. So that's kind of it all comes out to mindset.

[Steve Chou]

So that's good. You set the proper expectations before you begin. I guess that's to your advantage too because then people don't get mad at you like the, like that other person.

[Isabella Ritz]

Yeah, like, oh, you developed a shit show. I'm like, no, we did not.

[Steve Chou]

One thing actually I forgot to ask you about is you help with the launch as well. Right? What is your go to launch strategy?

[Isabella Ritz]

These days we don't really help with lunch because we, I do believe that every single one of us means expert. We have our expertise and we have our strength. And I do refer to people that will help launch.

[Steve Chou]

Okay.

[Isabella Ritz]

And it doesn't mean we disappear. We are there to help. So we also work on listings, but only for list, primarily on listings for the product we develop because we understand how to present this product to the audience. I would love to keep it in house and I want to continue doing it for our customers. But when it comes to like here's your launch, we refer to the best PPC guys that can. They can only imagine. And to influencers. And we provide, we do provide the strategy. We have it in our blueprint. But I don't hold the hand there because my strength is product research validation. Well, that's what I do.

[Steve Chou]

You mentioned earlier that when you're talking about customer Personas to choose two or three of them. But in the final listing you kind of have to tailor the copy and choose one. Right. So are you just kind of testing the, the different avatars?

[Isabella Ritz]

That's why variations.

[Steve Chou]

Okay. Oh, okay, I see. So you sell the same product under multiple listings with different copy.

[Isabella Ritz]

Is that what it can be? For example, let's say one child and nobody is going to sell socks right now. Okay. So it's just an example. So one child likes Mickey Mouse and another one likes dinosaurs and another one like woodland themed something but and for example, for Mickey mouse, we'll have 50 of audience and for two others, we'll have 25 and 15. Something like this or 25. 25. It doesn't mean I don't want to sell a product that has only 25% out of a hundred of my target audience. Because it was. I will still make some money. I will just develop this product as the second choice. Or some customers, they're coming to us and we are. We usually develop two to three variations just because we need to test ideas against each other and against competitors. And if we develop the ideas that really good enough and they're going with like 49, 51 or 30, 70, we still have the split where customers want to buy this product, they really like it. So we just recommend our clients to create this product as the second variation.

[Steve Chou]

Got it.

[Isabella Ritz]

Because there's still the audience for that one.

[Steve Chou]

That makes sense. And the key takeaway, the audience is sell socks. Isabella, you heard it here first. Sell socks.

[Isabella Ritz]

I'm just kidding.

[Steve Chou]

But that, that makes total sense. So as you're doing your research and you find up with find out different avatars, you're going to want to think about variations that you can make to tailor the product to each individual avatar.

[Isabella Ritz]

Yeah.

[Steve Chou]

Accurate. Okay.

[Isabella Ritz]

It is accurate. You also have to think what is like how you're going to treat this brand. Because if it's going to be just one product you launch and that's it, or how you're going to expand on how you're planning to work around it. Right. Because if it will go deeper, can you create community around it? Right. Will this community purchase it? Will this community come to your meeting, meet up, Will they pay you for memberships to learn more about the problem you're solving? Because this one is clearly cooking community of whatever kitchen you can. It can be for lo mein, or it can be for pasta, or it can be for some balls, healthy balls and yada, yada, yada. Right?

[Steve Chou]

Well, that's great. Isabella, if anyone wants to hire you for your services, where can they find you online?

[Isabella Ritz]

They have to text you.

[Steve Chou]

They said text me. You're doing it against me. I have Isabella's cell also. I will be posting it right beneath this episode in case.

[Isabella Ritz]

So I'm pretty open, guys. My Phone number is 904-609-4748. Feel free to text and I will just join you to my WhatsApp chat and I will link you to my sales team and they will start the discovery. And I learned this tip from Perry Belcher when I heard him, like, I'm part of his mastermind. And one day he just like, he sent out his text, his phone number and I'm like, and I checked my contact. I'm like, that's his phone number. I'm like, perry, what are you doing? He said, yeah, why should I hide from people? This is my phone number. Like, you know what? I will just start giving people my phone number. So, yeah, 904-609-4748.

[Steve Chou]

Just text me, guys, his, his cell phone number is actually in every email that he sends. Did you? Yeah.

[Isabella Ritz]

Yes. Is crazy.

[Steve Chou]

Yeah.

[Isabella Ritz]

And I'm like, you? He's like, yeah, I have it in the pocket. I'm like, perry, you're just crazy.

[Steve Chou]

Well, as well, thank you so much for coming on the show and I'm sure the listeners will get a lot out of what you had to say.

[Isabella Ritz]

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me and it's always fun to chat with you.

[Steve Chou]

Thank you. Hope you enjoyed this episode. Thanks to AI Finding profitable products to sell online is easier than ever. For more information and resources, go to my wife quitherjob.com Episode 592 Once again, the recordings for Seller Summit 2025 are now on sale over at sellers summit.com and if you're interested in starting your own e commerce store, head on over to my wife quithherjob.com and sign up for my free 6 day mini course. Just type in your email and I'll send the course right away via email.