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ashen-crest · 2 years

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Ambrose & Eli Baking

I asked for prompt ideas, and boy, y’all delivered. shout-out to @chaotic-queer-disaster for specifically adding ‘baking’ to the prompt, but everyone who requested Ambrose and Eli fluff, here you go!

(also tagging @writeblrfantasy, @drabbleitout, @the-orangeauthor, and @shydreamyechoes because you asked for Ambrose/Eli stuff)

Synopsis: Ambrose tries to bake bread for Sherry’s birthday.

Word Count: 900

TW/CW: food mention, pain mention, light flirting/romance

It was days like today that Eli wished the sparring arena wasn’t quite so far from Rosemond Street.

To his dismay, his party had beaten him soundly in the ring. A few heavy strikes with a wooden sword, and he was limping all the way home, bruises blooming across his ankle. By the time he reached the potion shop, he was cursing with every step.

But as he set his hand on the door, he drew his shoulders back and steadied himself as best he could. “Hey, Ames!” he called, walking in as evenly as possible. “I’m back early!”

“Hello,” Ambrose’s distracted reply came not from the workroom, but somewhere upstairs. Eli glanced up the steps to confirm the man wasn’t looking down, then quickly returned to his hobble and grabbed a healing potion from the shelves.

“I thought you’d be brewing today?” he asked, forcing himself up the stairs with the vial in his pocket. “You said you had that commission to…work on…”

His words trailed off as he reached the top of the steps and saw what had drawn Ambrose away from his workroom. The kitchen was an explosion of flour and bowls, one that hadn’t spared the baker in its destruction. When Ambrose turned to face him, Eli could see the smudges of white that trailed from his hair to his waist.

“Finished the commission early,” Ambrose said, then gestured weakly to the sad ball of dough on the counter. “Thought I’d try to make something for Sherry’s birthday tomorrow.”

“Oh?” Eli set down his pack and slowly approached the mess, careful not to limp too much or step on an errant patch of flour. “And what are you making?”

If the flour wasn’t already enough, Ambrose himself exploded. “Bread!” He threw his hands up, casting puffs of white into the air. “I thought it was going to be easy, but it’s not, and I— look.” He yanked a cookbook off the counter and held it out to Eli. The book seemed to be new, despite the globs of dough now gluing the pages together. “It says to knead until the dough looks like a window. How can dough look like a window, Eli? What in every gods’ name does that even mean?”

Eli had to stifle a laugh. Ambrose’s angry flush, all bright pink cheeks and sparking blue eyes, was the most endearing thing he’d seen all day.

But Ambrose would throw the book at him if he said so now, so instead, Eli bit back his smile and gestured towards the book. “I’ve made bread plenty of times. Here, pass me the book and I can help—“

“No.” Ambrose whisked the book out of reach, his gaze flicking down to Eli’s legs. “Don’t think I didn’t catch that limp as you came in. Take that healing potion in your pocket and go sit in the armchair.”

“But—“

“Go, and don’t put any weight on it for a half hour.”

As Eli grumbled and drank the potion, Ambrose turned back around and stared at the dough. He poked it once, twice. Sighed. Turned to the rose statue on the counter. Sighed again. “You don’t happen to know where Dawn is, do you?”

Eli glanced at the statue, its crystals veins gone dark with its lack of incoming messages. “You wrote to her for help?”

“Twice.”

Eli set down the empty vial and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I think she’s with her parents for dinner tonight.”

“Oh. Yes, of course.” Ambrose’s shoulders slumped, and his gaze on the cookbook went distant. His next question was so quiet that Eli almost missed it. “Do you think her parents taught her how to make bread?”

Eli’s heart gave a sharp crack, and before Ambrose could react, he was scribbling something on the scroll by the rose statue.

“What are you doing?” Ambrose’s frown deepened when Eli closed the scroll with a snap. “Who did you write to?”

Eli grinned. “No one.”

Ambrose reached for the scroll. Eli batted his hand away. “Eli, come on—“

“You’ll see.” Eli straightened Ambrose’s vest and tried to wipe flour off his cheek. “You’re cute like this, you know. Should just sprinkle you in sugar and pop you in the oven.”

Ambrose glared, even as his face reddened again. “You think you’re distracting me, but I will get to that scroll—“

“I’m here!” Sherry’s voice boomed on the first floor. Ambrose’s mouth fell open. “There’s nothing to worry about, Ambrose, I’ll teach you how to bake!”

“Sherry!” Ambrose whipped around as the woman appeared at the top of the stairs, bowls and spoons and cloth held against her hip. “Sherry, I don’t know what Eli told you, but I’m fine—“

Her eyebrows rose. “Clearly not.” She approached the counter without a second thought and hip-checked him out of the way, leaving him spluttering by the sink.

“But—but—,” Ambrose shot another glare at Eli, who grinned harder, “I was trying to bake this for you, not make you do it yourself!”

“Nonsense.” Sherry beamed at him. “This is the greatest gift you could have possibly given me.” With one hand, she tossed an apron over Ambrose’s head; with the other, she tossed the dough and the cookbook on the floor. “Now, step one. Fetch me that sack of flour, and I’ll show you how to sift it properly…”

#rival potion shops #fantasy romance #writeblr #ambrose beake #eli valenz #sherry the armorer #my wip #tw: pain mention #tw: food mention #tw: romance

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hopeisour4letteredword · 5 years

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It's hard to hear tone of voice on the internet, especially from someone you don't know. At the risk of digging a deeper hole, what I MEANT was that prior to the last post, I'd only seen your very quick scribbly doodles and the cleaned-up coloured-in versions of the same. I had no idea that you had the talent to produce professional quality art. It surprised me in a positive way.

And yes, I do commission people via Ko-Fi or plain old Paypal when I have money! I believe in compensating artists for their work.

i do feel like you’re digging a deeper hole, yeah. i don’t think your clarification has changed the way i interpret the comment. i think you missed part of my point, or i didn’t explain it clearly in the initial post. i take issue with the use of “scribbly doodles” to suggest cartoons aren’t a professional storytelling medium. cartooning is a profession. i feel very strongly about the value of cartooning as a method of storytelling. when you say that my cartoon work didn’t give you any indication that i had “the talent to produce professional quality art,” what i take away from that is an association of cartoon work with lack of skill.

so yeah, i’m kind of insulted that you would say that you’re “surprised” that i’m capable of professional-quality work just because i usually post cartoon doodles. being able to produce loose and fast cartoons that, a reasonable portion of the time, look alright, is a skill that takes practice and hard work. i’ve been developing my cartoon style for years. i really don’t like the implication that cartooning is a throw-away category of art that doesn’t count or something. professional cartoonists usually have some degree of traditional training; many fields of art require traditional training as a base for jumping off to more specialized approaches.

of course most of the cartoon work i post isn’t “professional quality” even for cartoon work. almost nothing i post is “professional quality” because, as i was saying, this is an amateur art hobby blog. i wasn’t trying to say that you don’t believe in paying artists, i’m trying to say that as an amateur artist, of course i’m not investing a professional level of effort into most of the work i post here. i make art to satisfy myself. sometimes i’m like “yeah, i WILL make professional quality gay fanart for myself!” but a lot of the time i’m thinking, “i will be less frustrated and have more fun if i just sketch out these ideas as cartoons.” professional quality work consumes a lot of time and energy that could go into many smaller, lower-effort pieces, which is frequently more fun for me as the creator. that’s what i mean when i emphasize that i am an amateur artist, investing my time into this work for free. i’m not making pieces for a portfolio. this isn’t my job. i’m just tossing things i do in my downtime, for funsies, out into the void of the internet, and i’m delighted when other people happen to like it too.

frankly, your follow-up message just made me feel more like you were saying, “oh, so it turns out you can draw REAL art.” i’m sure you’re trying to be complementary, but it’s not... really working. like i said, i’m proud of all the comic work i post. it’s all real, proper art to me. yeah, sure, a lot of it i wouldn’t use as an example for commissions, but hell, maybe i would use it for storyboarding, or just for working out ideas for a bigger, cleaner piece. it’s all valuable. and even if you mean well, i gotta flag you down and warn you that you’re not phrasing any of this in a way that turns it into something artists are happy to hear instead of, like. vaguely offended.

also, i just checked because i was thinking to myself “well, i’ve been updating a lot more recently, maybe the six shooter piece is buried deep in my klapollo tag,” and it’s... right at the top of the second page? i don’t expect you to chew your way through my entire archive, but it’s right there. i don’t know, i wouldn’t have been ashamed to send that back to someone as a commission, so it feels like professional quality to me. it’s recent enough that you would have found it pretty easily if you had looked. i know you’re a newer follower, so i don’t expect you to know the ins and outs of what i post, but that just... makes it weirder that you’re making broad claims about what i “usually” draw and how surprising my skill level with different styles or approaches may or may not be.

#choc talks #not art

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tatooine92 · 7 years

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Homeward, ch. 7 (POTC OC)

Synopsis: Eleven years ago, Adonia Barbossa was abandoned as a child by her father for no discernible reason. Now a pirate captain in her own right, she seeks him to finally demand answers.

Rating: T for language and any various and sundry innuendoes.

A/N: Y’all, I’m really sorry. Stuff at work completely stole my will to write. This may not be a very good chapter, but I wrote it, and that makes me happy. :)

Shoutouts: @soulventure91, @and-will-nice-hat, @queen-scribbles

Present.

"I've seen worse, capitaine, don't worry so much," Jim said with an unconvincing calmness.

Adonia looked over her shoulder and shot him a glare from where she stood by the tiny window in her equally tiny quarters, cradling her healing arm in its sling. Beckett's ship, the Endeavour, had towed the Dainty Lass from Cuba back to Port Royal, and now Adonia and her crew were being housed ashore while the Lass was repaired—all an elaborate ruse to give her the illusion of freedom while ensuring she didn't run for it. Might as well have thrown them all in prison. At least this way, even if there were guards outside the door, Jim or anyone else from the Lass could come see their captain.

"Aye, you have," she grumbled, "but for us, here, now, in this situation, it is bad. I'll not apologize for worryin'."

She could see the bay from her window, but not the Lass. She had no idea if Beckett had ordered her scrapped just for good measure, or perhaps repainted in Company colors. All she could see were the distant, teal waves of the sea, taunting her. That was all she had seen as they returned. She hadn't seen Port Royal in three years, but now it seemed grim, as if the life of a bustling colony town had been squeezed out of it like water from a rag. Even with the sun above, it all seemed gray. Instead of a garrison of Royal Navy forces, now it was the hub of the Company's operations here. She loved money as much as the next pirate, but, God, it seemed such a burdensome force when it dictated people's lives like this.

"We are alive," Jim pressed. "We may not like how that bargain was struck, but I tell you even Thom is grateful to live."

"Aye, for now. And what happens when we're forced to fire upon our own kind?"

What happens if my father sees me flying their colors?

Jim didn't have an answer for her, but Adonia knew he was mulling it over, so she didn't press him. He drummed his fingers on his thigh as he sat across the room from her, and she leaned against the window, trying to get a better angle to see if she could see the Lass. Still no.

"Dammit," she sighed.

This waiting game was like to drive her mad. Maybe that was what Beckett was counting on! She already knew she was a hostage, but one plied with a bed and hot meals. Maybe Beckett hoped to steal her crew from her with offers of higher wages, softer beds, prettier whores. But she knew her men. They'd not leave her for a shilling. For the finest rum and the absolute prettiest whore in Tortuga, maybe, but not for a shilling.

There was a soft knock on the door. Adonia turned, brow arching in surprise when the door didn't immediately open. Jim gave her a furrowed-brow look of uncertainty and got up to answer the door on her behalf. He cracked open the door with a gruff, wary "Qui est-ce?"

"It's Jim, isn't it?" Adonia recognized Lieutenant Groves' voice. "May I see your captain, Jim? Is she within?"

"Let him in," Adonia told Jim. "I don't think this one's come to assassinate me."

"Is that a common concern?" Groves asked as Jim stepped aside and allowed him through.

"I'm not really sure," she replied. "I've never been a hostage before."

Jim snorted a laugh and returned to his chair, fetching his journal and pencil, the two personal items he had, and opening to a blank page. The soft skritch sounds of his work seemed to echo like a clock ticking as Groves awkwardly cleared his throat.

"I'm sorry this is going so badly for you, Captain Barbossa," he said.

"At least for right now there's not a gallows with my name on it."

"A gallows...?"

Without a word, Adonia opened the window and gestured Groves to lean close. Over the squawking gulls and the rush of the sea, they could hear the unmistakable dull thud of a gallows trapdoor opening, followed by the inevitable gurgling and choking as the rope tightened. The gruesome noises echoed from the nearby fort courtyard, and Groves paled.

"I—I didn't realize..."

"That Lord Beckett put me in this chamber on purpose?"

"...that he was continuing the hangings. I thought... once he began coaxing the Brethren out of hiding..."

"Allow me a moment of unrepentant cynicism, lieutenant. Folk like Beckett, they get drunk on cruelty rather than rum. I'd not be a bit surprised if he's kept it up just for his amusement."

"...I suppose I knew that," Groves sighed as he shifted back from the window. "It's just that all of this—Beckett's takeover, the hangings, the whole lot—happened so quickly. Speaking for myself, I've barely had time to contemplate the man in whose service I now find myself."

"Find yourself?" Adonia asked, pulling the window closed. Groves nodded.

"Yes. When Lord Beckett arrived in Port Royal, he came with either the king's authority or his ignorance—"

"Aye, well, depending on the day, they're much the same thing."

"Indeed." Groves let out a derisive snort that, just for a moment, showed Adonia how frustrated he was in that blue and gold coat. "But he arrived in Port Royal, and some of us found ourselves suddenly working out our commissions in much different ways than we had expected. I knew we were in for a difficult run when he arrested both the governor and his daughter, but..."

His gaze skipped to the window. An unconscious shudder rippled through his frame. Adonia's brows furrowed. He doesn't want to be here, either.

"...we rounded up women and children, too," Groves murmured. His gaze was distant, and now his body had half-turned away from Adonia. She tensed with unease. Why confess to her? "Literally any soul who could even remotely be accused of associating with pirates. We didn't even interrogate them. We just—"

He stopped himself as if seeming to remember where he was. Jim's sketching had stopped. The only sound in the room was the soft, incessant ticking of a timepiece by the bed. Adonia looked down and picked at a loose thread on her coat cuff. Groves cleared his throat uncomfortably.

"Forgive me," he said. "I did not mean to—that is, I came only to ensure your welfare."

"Well, we're faring," Adonia replied.

"Then I should leave you be. Certainly, if I hear news of your ship's progress, I'll return with it."

Groves dipped his head in farewell as he turned to go. Adonia glanced out the window at the distant sea and sighed.

"How long were ye looking for me, lieutenant?"

She heard Groves swallow uncomfortably.

"Lord Beckett has sought out every possible pirate or pirate-associated person since his arrival some months ago," he replied. "It's almost a miracle you evaded him this long."

"Not a miracle—cleverness. But, again, how long were ye looking for me, specifically?"

"...ah. After your, er, mercantile scam, there was an open warrant for your arrest, though I'm sure you were aware of that."

"To be expected, aye."

"And Lord Beckett did, of course, have plans to capture you. But then just recently he found a new ally in the pirate lord of Singapore, Sao Feng, who gave up the identity of your father as another pirate lord. So, he's kept you in his sights for this specific reason for less than a month. Not long at all.

"I am sorry, though," he continued, his gaze dropping. "It was unfair to use your father against you. To trap you with the hope of meeting him again... I can only imagine how you felt."

"Can ye?" Adonia asked, turning fully toward him. Across the room, Jim muttered "Eh, merde." Adonia's hands dropped to her side in clenched fists. "To be manipulated, played, into the hands of a bastard like Beckett, when all I wanted was to demand answers of why the man what called himself my father abandoned me?"

"Abandoned you?" Groves asked. "I thought—"

"That we'd have a happy reunion? Nay. My father, such as he is, dumped me on an empty dock when I was a bitty six years old with nary a reason nor explanation, save that I no longer had a place on his ship. So for eleven years I've been on me own, strugglin' to survive—because that's what I do, lieutenant, I survive—while he's been off gallivanting and God knows what else, freed of the burden of a child he claimed to love. And I'd intended to ask him why."

Silence hung in the air between them. Flushed with fury, Adonia realized how much tension she held in her frame, and she tried to relax her fists, to no avail. She folded her arms tightly and sighed, trying to follow the sigh with a deep breath. The look of surprise and—dare she say—sympathy on Groves' face made her squirm uncomfortably. I don't want your pity. I want my revenge.

"I'm so sorry, captain," he murmured. "I had no idea. I would not wish such a childhood upon anyone, though I can't help but wonder if—"

"If what?" Her eyes narrowed uneasily. Groves tilted his head slightly, as if gauging her response.

"I... assumed you'd heard of what befell your father."

Adonia said nothing, cocking her head and furrowing her brows. What the hell was he on about? She'd heard nothing of her father in eleven years—nothing of any detail, anyway. There were the usual stories of the Black Pearl seen pillaging and plundering, and aye, she'd noticed a fair number of uneasy glances and whispers at the sound of her last name, but...

"Ye'd best speak quick, lieutenant," she said, "and tell me what ye mean."

"About three years ago, my former commander pursued a ship of cursed pirates across the seas—vengeful and cruel, unable to die. The ship was the Black Pearl, and I remember distinctly that your father was her captain, though I did not have the privilege of making his acquaintance. I was not privy to all the details, but Commodore Norrington was able to defeat the pirates only when their curse was broken and your father killed."

The world seemed to abruptly clench around Adonia, squeezing her head at the temples and knocking the breath from her chest. She sagged into the windowsill, her nails digging into the wood. The rumor was true? Anger burned in her chest, and vengeful tears stung her eyes as she looked up at Groves. It wasn't until she felt Jim's hands on her shoulders that she realized she was visibly shaking and hadn't breathed. She gasped raggedly.

"Dead?" It's all a lie, I'm being lured to my death for a lie, Papa's not a pirate lord, he's not even alive, he's been dead three years and I never even knew...

"Yes, he was. Was!" Groves quickly crossed back to her and crouched beside her, a hand on the windowsill as he looked up at her with soft, apologetic eyes. "I'm so sorry, captain, I didn't finish—Feng testified that your father had come to see him in Singapore, and that is how Feng knew of the Brethren's gathering. I have no idea how he could be dead and then return, but—"

"What is the testimony of a pirate worth to you?" Adonia choked. "Maybe Sao Feng lied! Maybe you've all lied to me and I should kill ye where ye stand."

"...I would appreciate it if you did not, but I would understand if you did," Groves murmured. Adonia stopped cold at that. No, no, she'd not kill a man who had nothing to do with it. A man like this, who looked at her with such gentleness and blushed when they spoke, was a man trapped by orders when his nature was far better than this. She sucked in another shaky breath.

"I'll save my shot for Beckett," she sighed, "if I ever get the chance. So is my father alive or not?"

"A pirate would lie about many things, I'm sure," Groves replied, "but Sao Feng was too eager to save himself. Besides, Beckett's man Mercer corroborated Feng's story and saw your father as well. I'm so sorry, captain. I should have opened with that."

"Aye, that's true." She realized suddenly that her grip had shifted from the windowsill to his shoulder. She swallowed hard and pulled her hand away. "So I am well and truly bait."

"...yes. I'm sorry."

"If ye keep bein' sorry about this, then ye'll not have sorry left for the big mistakes," Adonia snorted. She took one last deep breath to steady herself. Think, Addie, use your brain. You're clever and quick. Best begin to act it. "I understand a man followin' orders. It's not ye I despise.

"Besides," she continued, mustering a smile, "how could I be cruel to me very best customer?"

Groves flushed the color of Adonia's hair and got to his feet, stammering. It's just shirts, she wanted to say to him, but instead she smirked silently and let him fret. It was amusing, in its way, though she couldn't figure why she'd send him into a tizzy like that. Jim chuckled, low in his throat, beside her.

"Well, I—I believe I've overstayed my welcome, as I'd only come to ensure your welfare—" Groves muttered, turning quickly for the door.

"Don't be a stranger!" Adonia called. "I may have more shirts for ye next time!"

The last thing Groves heard as he closed the door was her bright, trilling laugh. Adonia waited for his footsteps to fade down the hall before she looked up at Jim.

"What do ye make of all that, then?"

"Don't think you should've told him about your childhood," Jim mused. "Might come back to find it used against you. But then, maybe not by that boy. Seems to admire you."

"He'd better not," Adonia said. "Admiring a pirate will get him killed."

I hope he doesn't come back. He's too decent to lose his life for talkin' to the likes of me.

"Might be worth checkin' into, this thing about a curse," Jim added. "Might explain a few things."

"Aye, it might at that." I asked you if the treasure was sick, Papa. Why did you lie? "So we continue as planned. We sail so politely and do as told, and when we find my father..."

She trailed off, but Jim nodded in understanding and agreement. Adonia picked herself up and neatened her coat, looking out the window. One day I'll have the truth.

#steph writes #potc fic #potc oc #adonia barbossa #theodore groves

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md3artjournal · 4 years

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11:56 PM 5/1/2020

Lately, I've been listening to LucidPixul for some encouragement. I've been feeling sad lately. And art is always something I can feel additionally sad about. I'm just not good at it. But I think what's really worse, is that I don't think I want to work hard at becoming good at illustration. Anytime I have to study and try to practice fundamentals, I just get frustrated, hate everything, and worst of all, often become horrible to anyone around me. More and more, everything seems to reinforce that I should be quitting art. Or maybe I should be just working on my other crafts besides illustration. But isn't the fact that I don't naturally return to clay or carving or wire jewelry everyday, just more proof that I should be quitting art in general?

Ugh. I don't know what's my depression talking or what's realistic. All I know is that when I decided to get into the art major, it was because it was the one class that I was eager to work hard and work above and beyond at, without prompting, and I enjoyed it. That should have been the recipe or the best signal that it was the thing that I should do. That's how I felt about writing, and I wanted to be like Rumiko Takahashi, the type of person who could do their own artwork for their writing. But as usual, once something becomes a class, or in this case, a major, I end up hating it and not working hard at it anymore. So what was all that initiative before about???

I dunno... I'm not cut out to be self-employed. It's been 8 years, since I decided to make a living off of art, and I've still been too afraid to open an online store or take commissions. And with the coronavirus cancelling all the conventions this year and me not getting into AX artist alley for the first time this past decade, I can't exactly make money from in-person artist alley tables. I should probably put more fervent efforts into signing up for fairs and looking for more conventions, but I have just as much anxiety about that, as setting up a website and dealing with all the customer horror stories I've hear from others, but first hand. And online store would much better suit me, but I can't even do that.

I wouldn't feel so bad about quitting art if the thought of it didn't make me so sad. Maybe I'm not good enough to make a living off of art, but all the non-art alternatives make me sad. I did that already. I had the suicidal thoughts and stagnation, even while having an office job that gave me everything that everyone said people nee to be happy. I had security, money, medical benefits, etc. But I was still suicidal. But if I can't do art either, then I feel really stuck. I tried really hard, back when I had that office job, to shift my source of happiness to consumerism, just like everyone else. I thought since it worked for everyone else, it would work for me too. But I was still unhappy.

But now it's becoming clear, I'm also unhappy doing art. Every time I have these thoughts about quitting art, I'm reminded that 11 year old me wasn't wrong to think that maybe suicide was the only place I belonged. I wanna go home.

I once told my sister that drawing didn't actually make me happy. And yes, I still hate that feeling right before scribbling on a page, knowing that any illustration I draw will still always be horrible, and not worth a salary or commission. But as I drew more, the more cathartic and therapeutic it became. I actually did feel happy while scraping pens across paper. And I actually did feel worse, whenever I couldn't. But I know my illustrations are still bad. And knowing I hate working hard on fundamentals to improve my drawing skills, cements that I'll never get good. Maybe I don't want to badly enough. But during Inktober 2019, I found a style of chibi that I could find cute, even coming from my hands. Not good enough to put on acrylic charms for artist alley at conventions, nor good enough for commissions or salary. But they made me happy. They let me express my fandom and make something that was cute enough for me. It's technically terrible, but makes me happy. It's my trash, and I am trash for it, happily.

But even that reinforces to me that maybe art should be nothing more than a hobby to me. But then what do I do instead? "What am I supposed to do with my life?" is a terrible question I hate saying, because there are so many things I'm "supposed to do", according to other people. But I've been there before. I want to know what I was meant to do; what'll make me happy. Logically, the conclusion should be to try a whole bunch of stuff, until I get a better idea of where I want to be, where I feel like I belong and am supposed to be. But I'm too afraid to do that much living.

Again and again, my mind goes around in circles and always comes back to the same logical conclusion: I should have suicided when I was 11. But maybe that's just the depression talking. Maybe life is just supposed to be a series of distractions, while waiting to die, desperately trying not to think about every single little thing reminding me of hurtful memories. Maybe I could find fulfillment with art as a hobby, expressing almost exclusively my fandoms, during off hours from a job that only gives me money and nothing spiritually. ...Or maybe that's just repeating the same situation that made me miserable in an office before.

Maybe it's best to just not think about any of that right now...

#quitting art #rambling #venting #please ignore my idiocy #don't @ me #processing thoughts #confused with myself

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itswomanswork · 6 years

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I started a physical products business related to working out. It was a protein powder company. At the same time, I also started TwistedHumor.com, which was a humor site, and back then it was super simple to get a website domain.

My protein company ended up failing, but TwistedHumor.com ended up becoming the largest humor site in the world for a couple of years, until the .com bubble burst.

I then went through a variety of online businesses, which eventually lead to mobile games a few years back. From there, the market started to get crazy competitive. You started to need really big budgets in order to compete with the big companies that were out there. I dabbled a little bit in Amazon, and I knew somebody who is now my business partner, who had also dabbled in it.

We tried it out, it did really well in the first two weeks, and then we said, “Let’s go full speed with this.” In December of 2015, we started the AMPM Podcast, an Amazon FBA business, and then everything exploded from there.

When you first started on Amazon did you know what you were doing, or did you go through ASM initially?

Yes and no. My first product failed. I didn’t know what I was doing. The ASM course was closed, so I couldn’t get into that. I decided to learn everything on my own. My first product was more of a passion product. It did okay. I ended up using that product as a test bed to test keyword strategies and different things, instead of using it on my main product.

To answer your question, there are two things that I came in with that gave me a really big advantage over other people. The first thing was that I had a software team in place, so I started creating tools that eventually became the software platform that we use now. The other thing was the keyword strategy that I was using on mobile games, which was very similar to Amazon.

With mobile games, you have your title, bullet points, descriptions, backend keywords, and then Amazon just takes it one step further.

With mobile, you have localization for like 20 different countries which with Amazon, unless you are selling in those countries, you don’t need to do. I just applied that, and immediately I started to see insane rankings that my competitors were not seeing.

You mentioned that your first product failed. What mistakes did you make, and how did you prevent against that when you launched your second product?

With my first product, I was a newbie Amazon seller, so I was still learning how to write copy correctly. I was doing the keyword part pretty well, but I think what’s really important with a listing is your imagery, and mine was okay. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great. I could get people to come to my page, but I couldn’t close them. The conversions weren’t there, and people would see other products that had better imagery and better pricing than mine did.

Amazon also had a 3-foot drop test for every product, in order to make sure that they didn’t break if they dropped. I remember dropping my product and seeing pieces of it go everywhere. I had to redo everything before Amazon closed that product.

However, with my second product, I went all in with the photography, videos, and reviews. Everything was set up correctly.

Is there a certain criterion that you follow when you look at a product that you are going to launch on Amazon?

I do it a few different ways. I try not to get into a market where every single product has 5,000 reviews. I think that’s setting yourself up for a really steep hill to climb. I’ll look take a look at the top keywords, and if there is a product that I’m interested in, I’ll figure out how many sales I think I need to get for a specific keyword in order to out-rank that product for that particular keyword phrase.

A lot of people think, “Oh man, I’ve got to outrank this product, in general.”

They go on a site like Jungle Scout to see how many sales a product has, and they soon realize that they can’t compete with it. Well, if you want a piece of that pie, all you have to do is beat your competitors, using a pretty significant keyword phrase, and then get sales from that. You can still generate a 6-7-figure Amazon business based off of that strategy.

How do you typically launch your product on Amazon? Is there anything that you do in order to rank your product high, right off the gate?

There are legitimate services out there that you can use that will help you get your product ranked. People will say to us, “I get to the #1 spot and then I start falling”. If you are using services for a specific keyword, and you are in the #1 spot and are displacing everybody, ask yourself, “Who am I displacing, what does their main image look like, and what are their price points?”

If your product is there and you asked ten people, “Would you buy this product over the other 15 products on the first page?” and they say, “No, I would buy this one because it is $10 cheaper or because of this image”, then you are going to fall down in the ranks.

When you are launching your product, you need to make sure that your price point is going to be as good or better than the other people on that page.

I always do a giveaway as well. For keyword phrases, I’ll pick the top 10 and figure out how many I need to give away. Then I’ll do an 80-90% discount, where I will give away enough units during one week in order to actually rank to the #1 or #2 spot for that keyword phrase. To get to #1, you have to be out-selling everyone for a keyword phrase.

A great side effect of it all is that you will oftentimes get the best seller badge from Amazon for that particular product if you are driving enough traffic to Amazon.

Sometimes you’ll even get the Amazon choice badge for that specific keyword phrase, so either one of those gives you that super social proof from Amazon that tells consumers that your product must be really good if it’s Amazon’s choice.

People think, “Wow, Amazon is saying that this should be the product that I buy on the search term.” A lot of people think it’s per product, but it’s per keyword phrase for the Amazon choice badge. If you get those, your sales will jump through the roof.

You mentioned that you guys develop software. I know that one is called Helium 10. Can you share with people a little bit about that software and how it helps Amazon sellers?

Helium 10 started from our mobile site. Alongside some developers, we created some tools that I wanted, that I didn’t see on the market. Or, if they were on the market, they didn’t do what I wanted.

I think a lot of people do this now. They will get a keyword tool and then they need an optimization tool and something that tracks, and then they need a hijacker tool, and they end up jumping all over the place.

I said, “I want one place where I can do everything, and if I do keyword research and I click a button, it then moves into some kind of keyword clean-up tool, and then I click a button and it moves everything into an optimization tool for Amazon, specifically.”

We created that and because we have the podcast, people kept asking, “What tools do you use?” I would recommend other tools, but I would also say that we use our own, and eventually, we found that a lot of people wanted our tools.

We didn’t know that our podcast would grow to the size that it has today. We worked on our business for 6 months, released it, and it’s been on the market for one year now and is available to everybody. We’ve got 10 tools in there currently and it’s growing.

What would you say are some of the top tools that people can use?

About half of the tools that we offer are free. Scribbles is is an Amazon keyword listing optimization tool that assists Amazon sellers with adding more valuable keywords to product titles, descriptions, and more. When you use this tool, you can be sure that you’ve optimized everything.

We have a keyword research tool called Magnet, and one of our most popular tools is called Refund Genie. If you are already selling on Amazon, you know that Amazon loses products, and they don’t tell you about it unless you dig deep into your reports.

With our tool, it is free to check and see how much money that Amazon owes you. Then, if you want to have a system in place that creates the files, our tool does it for you automatically. Some people get back $20-30,000 dollars back from Amazon.

It sounds like you guys really focus on optimization. Can you talk about why this is so important?

We have a tool that was created specifically for this, called 5K Checker because that’s how many characters Amazon gives you on the back-end for your keywords. I tell everybody that at least once a month, you need to run something similar to our tool.

Basically, grab all of your backend keywords and check it against your Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN).

Our tool does this automatically. It does 4 hours worth of work in seconds. Don’t forget to do the front-end as well. A lot of people don’t do this. They will check and see if they are indexed by their title and their bullet points, and then in the next month, Amazon will change something, and they will no longer be indexed.

See if you are de-indexed for specific keywords because Amazon will de-index you for stuff. You may notice that a search phrase that is super awesome is not even showing up on Amazon. For example, you could take that and move it from your description to your bullet points.

It’s a constant game of tweaking things and making them better. If you do this, you will see your sales either stay steady or continue to grow.

Do you have any final advice for someone who wants to grow an Amazon business?

You don’t need the perfect product to start. I didn’t have one, and you also don’t have to be passionate about the product at the onset. If you are passionate about it, that’s cool because you will know about it. However, it’s not necessary.

Just launch, get going, and don’t go too wide at the onset. That was one of my problems after my first failed product. If you have one product, you only have to deal with one of everything. When you have 4-5 products, you have to deal with way too many things. It multiplies your work tenfold.

If you are just starting out it could become a nightmare, especially if you are working on your business part-time and are in the process of transitioning from your day-job to your full-time Amazon business.

Start with one product, learn the process, and figure out how things work. You can read all about how to build an Amazon business, but until you actually do it and make the mistakes you don’t know.

This is how Manny made $1,000,000 on Amazon in only 9 months!

I hope his story has inspired you to start building an Amazon business. If you have the desire to create financial freedom for yourself, there is no better place than Amazon to get started.

I encourage you to check out Manny’s website, Helium 10, where you can find all of his insanely powerful tools for Amazon sellers. Manny and his team have graciously put together a bonus for my audience. If you head on over to their website and type in the coupon code, MASTERY, you will get a 10% discount on their products!

Take action and start creating a business that will give you a freedom lifestyle, where you can be your own boss, travel the world and, spend more time doing the things that you are passionate about with the people that you love. Are you ready to build the foundation for an online business that could transform your entire life?

Want the tools you need in order to make millions selling on Amazon? SIGN UP HERE for my webinar with Helium 10!

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