From Affiliate Marketing To Importing And Ecommerce

[JasonR]

It is definitely not needed. There are plenty of guys on this forum that have or had good businesses just like this one that didn't come from affiliate marketing. @theag and @JasonR are two off the top of my sleep deprived head.

So if my goal from the get go was to build a business such as this, I would skip AM all together and just learn the importing side of things and the basics of Facebook ads to get going and improve along the way.

You're right, I have little marketing experience before I started marketing my own products. The exception is I had a bit of experience with Adwords from a company I worked for.

I also devoured every single piece of marketing information I could find. Every book, every guide, EVERYTHING.

You can certainly learn marketing with your own products/business. It's a bit harder - if you don't know your offer/product/service works. Learn how other peoples funnel/sites works, and you can get some insight on how to run your own.

 

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[nomeus]

Facebook is all I use for Affiliate Marketing

Do you use the same "concept" for affiliate marketing?

FB ad -> landing page with affiliate offer?

Do you prefer to sell physical products as affiliate? Or digital (subscription based services?)? Or both?

 

[hughjasle]

Do you use the same "concept" for affiliate marketing?

FB ad -> landing page with affiliate offer?

Do you prefer to sell physical products as affiliate? Or digital (subscription based services?)? Or both?

Yes same concept.

Physical products. I find most of the digital stuff that's out there (especially for affiliates) is a load of crap.

But there are things like auto insurance, lead gen stuff, that is good. However I have just focused on physical products for the most part.


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[nomeus]

Physical products.

But what about the margins on physical products? I see that you can make up to 50$ for a sale with digital products. Can you get 50$ form a sale of a physical product?

 

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[hughjasle]

But what about the margins on physical products? I see that you can make up to 50$ for a sale with digital products. Can you get 50$ form a sale of a physical product?

Sure you can.

Margins and payout are quite different tho.

You can have better margins (higher ROI) on a 15 cent payout than a $500 payout sometimes.

But if you are asking about how my margin compares with that of digital products, idk. I don't run anything digital atm.


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[kelvinleang]

Great thread man. Thank you!

 

[kelvinleang]

@hughjasle did you register your company first before selling products under it?

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[hughjasle]

Yes I had a pre-existing LLC that I used for it. I have since gone back and created it's own special entity etc.

*I decided to edit this response after thinking about it for a bit, the following is my addition*

I am not a lawyer - I hate law crap so I can't say you have to have anything set up prior to selling or not.

However, having that set up before hand makes ZERO difference in the stores success/failure.

I don't want people thinking they have to do all this before even making a sell.

I have other businesses that I don't want at risk from this and so I created this ecom business with those in mind from the very start. I wanted to make sure the time I could give this to make it successful was there WITHOUT disrupting my other stuff, made sure if this returned me nothing, that it wouldn't affect me whatever and I can eat that loss and continue, made sure I couldn't have some stupid lawsuit come in and take down everything, etc.

I'm sure this response is preaching to the choir to most of you, but there are lots of lurkers and people who genuinely don't know. I wanted to be clear for their sake.

 

[hughjasle]

Due for an update:

• upgraded the site.

• Using a fulfillment company now - but now that I've done it in house and outsourced, I've found that bringing it back in-house will be a better option for me.
• Running low on product due to the CNY. I thought I would be fine but seem to be selling faster than I anticipated and don't really want to turn down the heat.
• Starting to get into more products now and expand.
• Hired help to manage the day to day. I'm now freed to focus on keeping the marketing up to date and expand the line(s).

Now that I have the system working for me rather than me doing it all and learning as I go - it's becoming pretty fun. Goal this year is to have my income from ecommerce and the likes match or exceed my affiliate commissions.

 

[nomeus]

Great that you found a way to continue this.

How much did you earn per month from affiliates? Like 60k?

 

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[hughjasle]

How much did you earn per month from affiliates?

Still earn.

And it's not a set amount each month. I'm still growing that as well, because, why not.

But let's just say it's sufficient for my needs

 

[eliquid]

Are you still just selling on FB only? No adwords, no amazon?

 

[hughjasle]

Are you still just selling on FB only? No adwords, no amazon?

Yes, FB only.

However, I do have plans to expand into both. Lots of competition with only minor changes to the product on amazon, so I'm looking at a few options to see if there is a way I can have my product on amazon and sell it from there without leaving my store. I don't want to send my customers there where they might go in full amazon mode and shop for the cheapest highest rated products instead of just buying what they initially intended.

And as for Google, I haven't messed much with google in for my AM stuff and thus I know I have a lot to learn. I may be pleasantly surprised with quick results, who knows. I just know I have a lot more room to scale on FB still so when I do jump to Google it will really be just for me to learn a new source under the guise of "diversifying".

 

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[hughjasle]

Actually - since writing that last response, Google has been on my mind - so I'll do up some ads for it this week and just start small. I can't really expand much right now or I'll run out of inventory before the next batch arrives. (CNY and poor planning)

Gonna start with PLA ads then re-read over Andy's Google info and any of yours(Eliquid) that I can find for search and GDN stuff since it's been a while since I played with those and that's really what I'd like to learn.

I've just been held up lately as my son has been in the hospital for over two weeks now and I take turns with my wife being there with him so I'm not able to work as normal. Hopefully I will be able to get started on Google this week nonetheless.

 

[DWX]

I've been following this thread since it started and I have to say, it's so awesome the way you make everything sound so simple. Us humans have a strange knack of making things sound so complex for almost no reason.

You demystify things. And for that, I take my hat off, sir. Great job!

 

[hughjasle]

duplicate post of my last post.

 

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[kelvinleang]

About your shipping costs when customers are buying from your website across different states, how do you sort out these varying expenses?

 

[hughjasle]

About your shipping costs when customers are buying from your website across different states, how do you sort out these varying expenses?

I'm sorry I don't fully understand the question so I'll try and answer by saying what I do with everything regarding shipping until further clarification I guess.

I charge a flat fee for shipping. Sure the shipping costs vary depending where they live. It doesn't affect me really. I know numbers by their averages. So I know my average shipping cost. They are sorted via the software so if I cared to look what each individual product shipped for to where I could. I just don't.

My books have the individual shipping costs if you care to look that deep. But really all anyone looks at is the total cost for shipping for a given period of time. Year, month, week, day, whatever.

Hopefully I covered your question with all that rambling.

 

[kelvinleang]

Yeah you did, thanks for the reply. Im just a newbie in this kind of business and have been researching from various threads on this matter. Learning alot from this thread actually. Thanks!

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[nomeus]

I have been thinking a lot about affiliate marketing lately, but there is one thing I can't seem to have a clear understanding about. If you could clarify this, that would be awesome.

What way do you make your sales funnel?

1. Paid Ads -> Directly to affiliates website
2. Paid Ads -> Your landing page -> button to affiliates website
3. Paid Ads -> Your landing page with email capture -> Email affiliate offers

First one doesn't seem to be a good one or make any sense.
Second makes the most sense, but after potential client goes to affiliate website, you have zero control of what happens after. A lot of websites who offer affiliate deals have tons of products. How do you make your landing page to offer lots of products?
Third is kind of good one, but more towards building a relationship.

 

[hughjasle]

2. Paid Ads -> Your landing page -> button to affiliates website

this one.

How do you make your landing page to offer lots of products?

I don't make pages that lead to lots of products. I make my pages for just ONE product.


The ppl who do lots of products are usually doing SEO type stuff, or amazon cookies, etc. OR they are building their own authority type brand which is very different and not the same type of affiliate marketing. AM for them is just a way to monetize their sites until they can have their own products or whatever their goal is.

 

[nomeus]

Thanks a lot!

 

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[hughjasle]

Guess I'll start with an update:

Getting things going smoothly now. It's pretty hands off for me at this point. I do have 2 employees managing some of the day to day work on it. Mostly things like keeping content up to date on the FB page and fulfilling orders and dealing with customer service.

I did an upgrade to my standard Shopify page and paid around $1,500 for a completely custom page done up and all tied into shopify. I thought the price was a bit steep, but figured what the heck, do it once and see if its worth it for my other products.

Well... lets just say a custom professional page is now a must for me. It over doubled my conversion rate. So I'm super stoked about that.

I have also been slowly turning up the heat on my ad spends, and thus sales. I'm honestly pleasantly surprised at how well the sales hold (the CPA) while I scale this. It has really opened my mind up to this entire space and being able to scale it to the 100k days I thought I would only get in affiliate marketing. Awesome stuff.

The BAD/Lessons Learned....

I got a nice C&D letter from an attorney. Some client of his wanted me to stop selling my product claiming they had a patent pending for the type of product I am selling even though I customized the product to be my own and placed my own brand all over it and the packaging. There are also hundreds of ppl on amazon selling basically the exact same thing....

Anyways it was kinda bittersweet to get it. Means I'm making enough of a splash with my sales that other competitors are noticing and getting butt-hurt that I'm beating them .This is also one of the reasons I decided to blowout basically 2 weeks worth of inventory in two days and found that my CPA stayed consistent, meaning next time I start selling again, I can start right back up at $20k+ per day. SWEEEET. But then there's that legal side of things...which sucks. Luckily - I reached out to my patent attorney and found out that a 'patent pending' is worthless and I can sell the living daylights out of this. He also highly highly doubts that their patent will hold any water against me IF it is even ever granted. He can't be sure as they didn't even site the supposed patent.

So worst case as my attorney put it, they do get a patent granted at some future date and it is enough to make me stop immediately. I will just have to eat any inventory I have in stock at that point, but there is nothing else they can do. Cool. I'll take that

So now that CNY is over and I got that legal stuff out of the way, time to really see how much I can really sell

Oh, also have more products going now and building a completely new product that I'm super excited about. More about that in my next post.

 

[hughjasle]

Speaking of making a new product.....

I've been reaching out to manufacturers from alibaba like crazy to get quotes on making my new product.

So far I have only heard back from one. They quoted me $4,500 to make my mold. Price is fine with me - but puts my first order with a new manufacturer that I have never used before at around $8k + shipping.

Since this is my first time getting a mold made... not sure what to watch out for or be careful of.

So question to those who have had their own molds done:

1. Would it be wise to purchase some of their other products (planning on this already anyways) to see this manufacturers quality of somewhat similar products?
   
2. How much do molds typically cost? does $4,500 sound steep/low/good/no idea because every product is different?(I read here someone else say $2k for a mold..)
3. How can I make sure my mold isn't used by the manufacturer to make my same product for other people? (I will try and work my brand into the mold - any other tips?)

 

[Walter Hay]

Speaking of making a new product.....

I've been reaching out to manufacturers from alibaba like crazy to get quotes on making my new product.

So far I have only heard back from one. They quoted me $4,500 to make my mold. Price is fine with me - but puts my first order with a new manufacturer that I have never used before at around $8k + shipping.

Since this is my first time getting a mold made... not sure what to watch out for or be careful of.

So question to those who have had their own molds done:

1. Would it be wise to purchase some of their other products (planning on this already anyways) to see this manufacturers quality of somewhat similar products?
   
2. How much do molds typically cost? does $4,500 sound steep/low/good/no idea because every product is different?(I read here someone else say $2k for a mold..)
3. How can I make sure my mold isn't used by the manufacturer to make my same product for other people? (I will try and work my brand into the mold - any other tips?)

OK so you have been around a while, but are you sure you are dealing with real manufacturers? I always ask this when I read that someone is sourcing from "manufacturers from Alibaba", because I know how scarce genuine ones are. Maybe yours are genuine - I hope so.

I have a lot of experience involving molds, from way back when I sold product to mold makers and mold users through to paying for hundreds of molds for my importing business. So here are my comments about your questions:

1. Their other products can tell you a lot. Look for flow marks, bubbles, tiny holes or sprew. Sprew, also called flash, is the excess that leaks out of the joins. It should all be removed but if the visible joins are wide, mold quality is poor. Look for matt finish where it should be shiny, and vice-versa. If you don't feel confident, I would ask for one of the European inspection services to visit their factory and examine mold quality. They will even look for broken and discarded molds because they can tell a lot about mold quality. Shouldn't cost more than a couple of hundred dollars.
2. Depending on complexity, size, number of cavities, finish required, cost can range from as little as $50 for a stamping mold, to $50,000 for a complex consumer product mold with 12 cavities. You should contact mold makers to get quotes before relying on the manufacturer who quite likely contracts it out anyway. Molds in China can cost as little as 1/5 the price in a developed country. If they are made using CNC methods, quality is likely to be good. Some items require skilled craftsmen to work like sculptors, but such molds usually cost only slightly more.
3. Incorporating your brand prominently and if aesthetically acceptable, in several places, is a good form of protection, but having it made by someone outside the manufacturer's factory adds another layer of protection. Ownership absolutely should remain yours.

Walter

 

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[hughjasle]

Walter

Oh man, THE Walter Hay - I am honored.

Going through your massive thread on importing now and have your site open to order your book after I complete the thread. Additionally I'm gonna be PMing you soon anyhow - just want to read all your content first so I don't waste your time and can actually hold an intelligent conversation with you.

In all honesty - I doubt I'm dealing with manufacturers at this point. I am still extremely new to this and as you aptly put it in your thread, jumped into the deep-end based on random info I got from other threads/forums. For this specific product where I am needing a mold done, I just shot out messages to the first 10 listings I found on Alibaba that had the similar product to what I want to make. These guys I'm talking to now were just the first (of a total of only 2 so far) that have even responded. The other one who responded, went as far as sending me list of the products they sell but hasn't gotten back to me with a quote after talking about what I wanted made.

I would ask for one of the European inspection services to visit their factory and examine mold quality. They will even look for broken and discarded molds because they can tell a lot about mold quality. Shouldn't cost more than a couple of hundred dollars

THIS sounds interesting. Trying to knock out all your content this week/weekend. If I don't read any more about this there, I MIGHT have more questions. I didn't even know this was an option before now, but I'm set on doing it.

Thanks again!

 

[#nowhere]

Guess I'll start with an update:

Getting things going smoothly now. It's pretty hands off for me at this point. I do have 2 employees managing some of the day to day work on it. Mostly things like keeping content up to date on the FB page and fulfilling orders and dealing with customer service.

I did an upgrade to my standard Shopify page and paid around $1,500 for a completely custom page done up and all tied into shopify. I thought the price was a bit steep, but figured what the heck, do it once and see if its worth it for my other products.

Well... lets just say a custom professional page is now a must for me. It over doubled my conversion rate. So I'm super stoked about that.

I have also been slowly turning up the heat on my ad spends, and thus sales. I'm honestly pleasantly surprised at how well the sales hold (the CPA) while I scale this. It has really opened my mind up to this entire space and being able to scale it to the 100k days I thought I would only get in affiliate marketing. Awesome stuff.

The BAD/Lessons Learned....

I got a nice C&D letter from an attorney. Some client of his wanted me to stop selling my product claiming they had a patent pending for the type of product I am selling even though I customized the product to be my own and placed my own brand all over it and the packaging. There are also hundreds of ppl on amazon selling basically the exact same thing....

Anyways it was kinda bittersweet to get it. Means I'm making enough of a splash with my sales that other competitors are noticing and getting butt-hurt that I'm beating them .This is also one of the reasons I decided to blowout basically 2 weeks worth of inventory in two days and found that my CPA stayed consistent, meaning next time I start selling again, I can start right back up at $20k+ per day. SWEEEET. But then there's that legal side of things...which sucks. Luckily - I reached out to my patent attorney and found out that a 'patent pending' is worthless and I can sell the living daylights out of this. He also highly highly doubts that their patent will hold any water against me IF it is even ever granted. He can't be sure as they didn't even site the supposed patent.

So worst case as my attorney put it, they do get a patent granted at some future date and it is enough to make me stop immediately. I will just have to eat any inventory I have in stock at that point, but there is nothing else they can do. Cool. I'll take that

So now that CNY is over and I got that legal stuff out of the way, time to really see how much I can really sell

Oh, also have more products going now and building a completely new product that I'm super excited about. More about that in my next post.

Great development here from November til now... I'm totally impressed! Read the whole thread and wondered if you had experiences with the product you distribute now?

Also impressing that you find it reachable to scale to 100k/day. Did I get this right?

I look up to you, as you made it an easy-to-understand process until now, as I'm sure it wasn't easy the whole time. Please keep us in informed about the process!

The attorney story is clearly to scare you and force you to leave market. I think: Just a bunch of crap... or typically in the market

@Walter Hay : Value you're providing has so so so so big impact (I think not just for me). I'm half through your book. Highly recommend it @hughjasle (also read the whole thread on importing..)



BIG thanks to you both!

 

[sWALK90]

Def keeping a eye on this thread.

 

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[hughjasle]

Did I get this right?

Yes - but that is just Revenue mind you - not profit. Already did a quarter of that per day and saw that it held just fine, no higher CPA costs or anything, just more sales. Just means I'd have to buy a TON of inventory. More than I'm comfortable with at this time. So I'll work up to it. But idk how sustainable it is at that level, or even at the 25k a day level. I'll probably burn through my audiences super quick.

Time will tell.

 

[kelvinleang]

I have a question regarding testing products. So i brought in a sample from a supplier from china and their MOQ (3000) was pretty large for me. The least they can let me order is 1000. Now, I still find it risky to order 1000 items right away. I'm planning to use the samples to advertise on Facebook and see if it is sellable. However, the sample is generic looking without a logo.

How did you advertise/test your products?

Did you use a sample from a supplier before testing them on Facebook?

Did you use a random company name for them? I was thinking of using another random company first to test the product before using the one i'll use.