Ask me anything about eCommerce (2012)

[Amail]

Susan, you're too kind.

Just hit that "Speed Post" button at the bottom of whatever post you want to add rep.

 

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[andviv]

I don't sit around watching TV and eating bonbons.

Damn, do you know what you are missing? [sorry, couldn't resist the bad joke here]

I have been looking for business opp and found this board to be so valuable. I am also a realtor, and I do BPOs (mini appraisal) for banks and I don't enjoy doing them.

Just another proof that you can do stuff (which was one of my original concerns based on your post).

I get the feeling you are not giving yourself enough credit for what you can do and have low self-esteem. You probably could be more confident given what you have accomplished; you have taken action, keep working on stuff and incorporating lessons learned.

You don't need a step-by-step guide. You need to allow yourself to make mistakes and learn by doing. You don't need to be perfect the first time.

-- Where do you live? (what city?) BPOs? That, combined with your realtor license, sounds to me like a good opportunity to do work on real estate investments, no? (what does BPO stand for? I can't recall).

 

[BeingChewsie]

I have been looking for business opp

Before I offer anymore advice, have you read MJs book?

How about this thread? https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/ge...-have-successful-entrepreneurial-premise.html

I think the above thread should be mandatory reading before anyone even looks for a business opportunity, because if you start from the wrong premise to begin with, you'll have nothing but trouble.

Sue

 

[BeingChewsie]

Biophase,

I have a quick question...when you talk about the size of stores...small, medium, large...what do you use to determine where they fall? Is there a range you'd use. I'm not sure if I am asking the right question...so let me ask this would a store that sells 2000 items a day be considered small, medium or large in the e-commerce world or does it depend on some other factors besides how much product they move?

Sue

 

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[JaySoriano]

Design tips for increasing the conversion funnel?

 

[biophase]

Do you still feel that dropshipping is effective when you starting out and building your nest-egg for future inventory?

Yes, definitely. When you start out you don't have the funds or traffic to be holding inventory. Dropshipping is a great way to start.

 

[biophase]

Biophase,

I have a quick question...when you talk about the size of stores...small, medium, large...what do you use to determine where they fall? Is there a range you'd use. I'm not sure if I am asking the right question...so let me ask this would a store that sells 2000 items a day be considered small, medium or large in the e-commerce world or does it depend on some other factors besides how much product they move?

Sue

Hi Sue,

I'm not sure where I talked about store sizes so I don't have the context around what I meant. A store that sells 2000 items a day would be huge. We have talking high eight figure profits!

I would say that 1-3 sales a day is a part time salary replacement store, or good extra income.
4-10 sales a day, I'd say that it's a pretty good store and a full time job replacer for many.
10+ sales a day is probably a $100k+ salary store.
This is all assuming profits per sales range from $20-$40.

 

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[biophase]

Design tips for increasing the conversion funnel?

Jay, I'm sorry but I don't concentrate on that kind of stuff too much. I would imagine that having good content about the product and then smooth cart checkout process is the first thing. Then you can mess with button colors, checkout wording and text and layout. But I've never done that.

 

[marc100]

Hi Biophase
Just seeing if you saw mine, I think my question got buried
https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/in...312-ask-me-about-ecommerce-25.html#post225684

I just had a question about shipping. Let vendors choose their own price or have it preset?
How do you determine shipping costs?

 

[mywifequit]

Hi Everyone,

My name is Steve and I run a blog at MyWifeQuitHerJob.com, an online store and an ecommerce course. I've noticed in my logs that I've been getting some traffic from this forum so I thought that I'd just pop and say hello.

In any case, this place seems like it's right up my alley. And I believe that I've exchanged a few emails with Biophase as well. Awesome thread!

 

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[andviv]

My name is Steve and I run a blog at MyWifeQuitHerJob.com, an online store and an ecommerce course.

Hi Steve, good to see you here.

You are correct, biophase mentioned your blog in the past. Thanks to that I subscribed to your newsletter.

Feel free to provide more info, you are making it happen and your input is valuable.

 

[mywifequit]

Hey Marc,
I would just keep things simple and use a table rate shipping method instead with a threshold for free shipping. If you use the FedEx or USPS api, sometimes their servers go wonky and may screw things up.

 

[AllenCrawley]

Hi Everyone,

My name is Steve and I run a blog at MyWifeQuitHerJob.com, an online store and an ecommerce course. I've noticed in my logs that I've been getting some traffic from this forum so I thought that I'd just pop and say hello.

In any case, this place seems like it's right up my alley. And I believe that I've exchanged a few emails with Biophase as well. Awesome thread!

Hi Steve! Thanks to biophase I subscribed to your newletter about a month or so ago. Absolutely high value content and I'm learning much from you along with bio, vigilante and others here. Looking forward to your contributions here.

 

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[ChickenHawk]

Thanks, Biophase, and everyone else who has shared their insight here. WOW. I've read the entire thread once, picked up a TON of great info, and plan to read it a couple more times just to make sure everything sinks in, and that I don't miss anything important.

About e-commerce, I'd really appreciate any insight or pointers on my current project. I'm planning to develop and market a line of weight-loss hypnosis CDs/MP3s, and I'm wondering what would be the best way to sell them on-line. Unlike products like iphone cases, for example, they'd be available in both a digital (MP3) and hard-copy (CD) form. In researching this, I found that CDbaby, for example, offers some interesting ways to get these products into the hands of customers. They have reasonable up-front fees, take a cut of the profit, but offer exposure and fulfillment services.

From reading through the thread, it appears that this might be worth pursuing as part of a two-pronged apprach, meaning I could sell these self-producted & branded, CDs on CDbaby for added ease and exposure (similar to those who suggest selling on Ebay, Amazon, etc., to gain brand recognition), but also sell them from my own (not yet developed) Web store. The nice thing about CDbaby is that they also get the product onto Amazon and itunes, which also boosts exposure.

Sorry for providing so much background material, but since my product is a little different, I thought these details might be important. My questions are:

1. Does this approach seem smart, or is there a better e-commerce route I should consider for this type of product?
2. Is there anything in particular I should know about selling digital products?
3. Would bigcommerce still be a good option for a store like this? Eventually, I'd like to have about a dozen products for sale, but they'd all be hypnosis-type tracks available in a choice of MP3 or CD.
4. Since the product will be available in digital form, does anyone have any pointers on promoting these through an affiliate program?

THANKS AGAIN to everyone for your great insight. This thread has been just AMAZING.

 

[mywifequit]

Hey Allen and Andviv,

Pleasure to meet you both!

 

[Amail]

Looks like we've got a rockstar on our hands! Welcome aboard, Steve!

 

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[MyMotivation]

How did you guys first identify your niche in the market?

 

[Johnathan Ta]

Bio,

In your experience, what kind of sales could I possibly see sitting at the top page of google,
and with these factors in mind.

The Niche I found:

Has 27k Searches Monthly (18k Local)
Lliterally no other Niche Specific Store to contend with
The product is very rarely carried as an accessory in larger stores (of which the stores lack selection)
The price range of the products would be 15$-45.
I'd expect each sale to equal to about 50-65$ (with 50% margins assumed)

Regardless,
I've already set my heart on buying up the sexy free domain,
and we'll get real world answers to this question

but for now, what would you think is possible?
Thanks

 

[biophase]

Hi Biophase
Just seeing if you saw mine, I think my question got buried
https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/in...312-ask-me-about-ecommerce-25.html#post225684

I just had a question about shipping. Let vendors choose their own price or have it preset?
How do you determine shipping costs?

I would let the sellers choose their own shipping cost in your case.

 

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[biophase]

About e-commerce, I'd really appreciate any insight or pointers on my current project. I'm planning to develop and market a line of weight-loss hypnosis CDs/MP3s, and I'm wondering what would be the best way to sell them on-line. Unlike products like iphone cases, for example, they'd be available in both a digital (MP3) and hard-copy (CD) form. In researching this, I found that CDbaby, for example, offers some interesting ways to get these products into the hands of customers. They have reasonable up-front fees, take a cut of the profit, but offer exposure and fulfillment services.

From reading through the thread, it appears that this might be worth pursuing as part of a two-pronged apprach, meaning I could sell these self-producted & branded, CDs on CDbaby for added ease and exposure (similar to those who suggest selling on Ebay, Amazon, etc., to gain brand recognition), but also sell them from my own (not yet developed) Web store. The nice thing about CDbaby is that they also get the product onto Amazon and itunes, which also boosts exposure.

Sorry for providing so much background material, but since my product is a little different, I thought these details might be important. My questions are:

1. Does this approach seem smart, or is there a better e-commerce route I should consider for this type of product?
2. Is there anything in particular I should know about selling digital products?
3. Would bigcommerce still be a good option for a store like this? Eventually, I'd like to have about a dozen products for sale, but they'd all be hypnosis-type tracks available in a choice of MP3 or CD.
4. Since the product will be available in digital form, does anyone have any pointers on promoting these through an affiliate program?

THANKS AGAIN to everyone for your great insight. This thread has been just AMAZING.

1) I'm not really sure as I have never dealt with digital products. I feel like most people doing digital products are going the sales landing page, squeeze page and large affiliate commission routes. I suppose that a physical CD on CDbaby or Ebay could sell like traditional ecommerce. I just don't know.

2 & 4) Sorry, again I don't have any experience in this.

3) I know that they do have a digital download product delivery system so it should be fine. However, if you have a couple products do you really need BC?

 

[biophase]

How did you guys first identify your niche in the market?

I was looking at stores for sale and one happened to be in my niche. Finding a good niche is probably the hardest "initial" part, but there are many good ones out there. I would follow the Tim Ferris 4WWW route. Go with a $100-$150 price point niche, low tech, low returns product.

 

[biophase]

Bio,

In your experience, what kind of sales could I possibly see sitting at the top page of google,
and with these factors in mind.

The Niche I found:

Has 27k Searches Monthly (18k Local)
Lliterally no other Niche Specific Store to contend with
The product is very rarely carried as an accessory in larger stores (of which the stores lack selection)
The price range of the products would be 15$-45.
I'd expect each sale to equal to about 50-65$ (with 50% margins assumed)

Regardless,
I've already set my heart on buying up the sexy free domain,
and we'll get real world answers to this question

but for now, what would you think is possible?
Thanks

If you go the pure math route and use traditional data then:
27k searches, Google #1 gets 40% of the clicks = 10,800 visitors a month
Assume 1% conversion, 108 sales a month
Assume $50 a sale, $25 profit per sale
108 X $25 = $2700 a month

This is assuming you only rank for this keyword and no others also.

 

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[Johnathan Ta]

Haha,

this niche is very specific - it's called by literally no other name
Other keywords are <1000,

But thanks for the math system - good round ball figure!

Mywifequit, is that Mr. Steve? haha

 

[JamesS88]

Out of the three sites in your sig, which is most successful? Which is least successful?

 

[mywifequit]

Haha,

this niche is very specific - it's called by literally no other name
Other keywords are <1000,

But thanks for the math system - good round ball figure!

Mywifequit, is that Mr. Steve? haha

Yep, MyWifeQuit is my handle Anyways, I don't want to hijack Biophase's thread over here so I'll just chime in from time to time. Mainly just wanted to say hi and get to know some of the folks on this forum.

 

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[NaPal]

Great thread biophase. This has really given me a good understanding of eCommerce, and SEO

I do have a question for you. If you already answered this, my apologies, as i missed it.
For your different eCommerce sites, do you operate them each as their own business? Or under one main business?

The reason I'm asking is because I would like to start a niche eCommerce site, however I would like to limit my losses if i do not succeed, or have multiple trials to find a target market. Basically instead of creating a business under "thelaptopstore.com", it would be under a parent company such as "QR Industries" and the individual sites would operate under it.

If I operate multiple stores under 1 main business, how do you tie that site legally and payment wise to the main biz?

I hope i explained that right for you to understand......
Thanks everyone for all the great knowledge here!

 

[dv1041]

Biophase, thanks for everything you are doing here, it is really helping me and I'm sure a lot of others just starting out.

My question to you is this: I am starting an online store for a friend that has a brick and mortar wheel and tire business. He asked me to get everything set up and market it. Only problem is that I don't work in such competitive niches. How would you attack the marketing aspect in such a competitive niche? I have already started an ebay store and am pulling the trigger on shopify or big commerce this week. Would you set up multiple stores for different price points or just stick to one? What would be the best plan of attack to market this niche? thanks again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[biophase]

Great thread biophase. This has really given me a good understanding of eCommerce, and SEO

I do have a question for you. If you already answered this, my apologies, as i missed it.
For your different eCommerce sites, do you operate them each as their own business? Or under one main business?

The reason I'm asking is because I would like to start a niche eCommerce site, however I would like to limit my losses if i do not succeed, or have multiple trials to find a target market. Basically instead of creating a business under "thelaptopstore.com", it would be under a parent company such as "QR Industries" and the individual sites would operate under it.

If I operate multiple stores under 1 main business, how do you tie that site legally and payment wise to the main biz?

I hope i explained that right for you to understand......
Thanks everyone for all the great knowledge here!

I started operating them separately, but then consolidated. It's just a bunch of extra work in the end. But it really depends on your business and level of protection that you'd like.

I would go with the QR industries, have all your payments go back into one bank account. Legally you are QR industries and you have many websites that you are doing business as.

 

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[biophase]

Biophase, thanks for everything you are doing here, it is really helping me and I'm sure a lot of others just starting out.

My question to you is this: I am starting an online store for a friend that has a brick and mortar wheel and tire business. He asked me to get everything set up and market it. Only problem is that I don't work in such competitive niches. How would you attack the marketing aspect in such a competitive niche? I have already started an ebay store and am pulling the trigger on shopify or big commerce this week. Would you set up multiple stores for different price points or just stick to one? What would be the best plan of attack to market this niche? thanks again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Are you opening up the webstore with the same name as the B&M store? The important thing these days is branding. I would set up one store and price it competitively. Problem is that walk-ins would probably want the same price as the web.

For marketing, I would start with Facebook, getting likes and people talking about wheels. Then move onto SEO for profitable, hopefully easy long tail terms. Then I would do the same with PPC.

 

[biophase]

Out of the three sites in your sig, which is most successful? Which is least successful?

Sorry, not gonna answer that.