Prosper Show is the world’s leading conference for established Amazon sellers. Now in its fifth year, it offers professional sellers advice and networking opportunities to help them expand and grow their businesses even further.
If you are an established Amazon seller looking for current insights, educational workshops and networking opportunities, this annual conference is one you will not want to miss.
Prosper Show will be held at the Westgate Las Vegas on March 23-25, 2020.
Who is it for?
The majority of Prosper Show’s 1,000 plus attendees are professional Amazon sellers with multi-million dollar businesses. They are well-established and looking to increase sales, improve processes, and maybe even sell their businesses and move on to their next projects.
Several sessions at Prosper Show will talk about how to improve efficiency and scale your business. There will be discussion around how to put operational systems in place, such as accounting and inventory management. There will be sessions on hiring and managing staff, and sourcing external funding to leverage your business.
Prosper Show isn’t really the right choice for brand new or entry-level Amazon sellers; it’s for sellers who already have achieved some level of success and knowledge of the Amazon marketplace. They don’t cover the basics!
What’s on offer at this year’s Prosper Show?
Prosper Show’s conference and exhibition kicks off on Tuesday March 24th with 36 speakers leading hour-long educational sessions. The speakers include former Amazon insiders as well as thought-leaders from Amazon-focused agencies and solution providers.
There is a lot of content planned. Attendees will have to plan their time carefully and prioritize the sessions they are interested in. Most of the time, there will be three sessions taking place at one time, so businesses will often send more than one attendee to cover more ground. However, all the sessions will be recorded and made available to attendees after the show.
This year’s Keynote speaker is Jon Picoult, an expert on building customer experiences that truly resonate with customers. He will delve into the ways sellers can create an incredibly rich customer experience – something that is notoriously difficult on a platform where sellers don’t actually own their customers.
Take a look at Jon Picoult in action:
When it comes to the other sessions, the big topic this year is Amazon Advertising. There are six sessions on this topic, but each will cover a unique and very different aspect of Amazon advertising. There will also be two attorneys speaking on different legal aspects of Amazon selling, including how to deal with IP issues, patents and potential counterfeits.
Workshops
On Monday 23rd, the day before the full Prosper Show kicks off, a schedule of workshops is arranged, based around six key topics that need more extensive coverage.
Each workshop lasts three hours and will have a smaller audience than the full conference sessions, allowing for a hands-on approach and more Q&A opportunities. The seating will be arranged around tables, so participants can work together and take notes during the workshops.
These workshops come at an extra cost to attendees but are usually highly subscribed, as they enable participants to get more practical, in-depth and hands-on advice than the much larger one-hour conference sessions.
Workshop topics include automation tools, leveraging your brand and protecting your Amazon account. Web Retailer regulars Chris McCabe and Leah McHugh will be running a session called When Black Hats Attack: Teaching Sellers to Defend Their Amazon Accounts and Brands which is sure to be an invaluable workshop on one of the most critical issues that sellers face today.
Take a look at the full show agenda including both the conference and workshops.
Who will be exhibiting at the show?
The exhibition area offers attendees the opportunity to meet over 100 leading service and solution providers covering all aspects of Amazon and ecommerce.
Technologies change rapidly and it is important for Amazon sellers to stay on top of their game in order to compete. The exhibition floor will display the latest cutting edge technologies and solutions available to sellers.
Walking the exhibition floor is a highly efficient way for sellers to see what services are out there in a low-pressure, informal environment. Sellers can ask questions, and browse the stands without being committed to a long sales call.
It is often much easier to decide if a service or product is right for your business, and build a rapport and confidence with the service provider in person, than by browsing a website or sending messages over email.
Some attendees enjoy browsing at the booths, just to build a picture of what is available to them. Others have a clear idea of their needs in advance, and create a plan of who they want to talk to at the show. Take a look at the full exhibitor list to find out more.
Prosper Show draws a clear line between educational content and sales pitches, and does not allow speakers to promote their products in the conference sessions.
What networking opportunities will there be?
For a lot of sellers, the networking opportunities are just as important an aspect of Prosper Show as the educational sessions. Meeting other like-minded sellers with the same issues can really help businesses to thrive. Some attendees maintain contact after the conference and meet up each year, building long-lasting business relationships and friendships.
A two-hour networking event is planned after the sessions on the first day, running until 7pm. This is the prime opportunity for attendees to meet other sellers and exhibitors.
In addition, some exhibitors host dinners or drinks and invite sellers along to discuss their service or product in more detail. Sellers also tend to organize themselves and meet up after hours. This can be a great way to get to know other sellers and share experiences.
To aid the networking aspect of the show, an app will be available to help sellers find other attendees with similar interests and connect with them.
How has Prosper Show changed over the years?
The first Prosper Show took place in Salt Lake City in 2016. Co-founders James Thomson and Joe Hansen (partners at Amazon consulting company Buy Box Experts) started Prosper to fill a need for a genuinely educational conference, without any pushy sales pitches.
In its first year, the show hosted 700 Amazon sellers and 90 speakers, from all over the US and more than ten other countries worldwide. The fact that so many people attended, despite the show not being widely advertised, showed just how much people needed an event like it.
The following year, Prosper entered a strategic partnership with Emerald Expositions, one of the largest event organizers in the US. The partnership meant that Prosper Show would be co-located in Las Vegas, alongside the huge ASD Market Week sourcing show which has around 40,000 visitors each year.
Now an established annual event, Prosper Show takes its educational remit very seriously. The organizers are approached by hundreds of speakers each year, but have a rigorous screening process. The sessions always focus on the most interesting or unusual aspects of each topic, and are delivered by speakers who are uniquely positioned to talk about them with authority.
Reaching its fifth year, Prosper Show has established itself as the event for professional Amazon sellers who want to educate themselves and meet other people like them.
Web Retailer is Prosper Show’s official media partner and we will be there from Monday 23rd. We’d love to see you there!
Find out more about Prosper Show.
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