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$5000 to $30,000 per month - eCommerce Progress

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

devine

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Control is important. One of my smaller brand websites has had a 24% price increase due to the current exchange rate. My supplier put my costs up significantly, now I have to raise all my prices and risk losing sales, but more importantly I can no longer offer my trade account margin and a lot of my customers are trade. Not able to gain product direct, lesson learnt. Unsure how to make the most of this situation now. I can only think of adding more content, more value and more accessories. It's unfortunate, but my other niche site far outperforms this so it's not going to ruin me.
How many products do you have?

Start with discounts:
$59 now ($71 full price).

I would attempt (it's thin ice) to increase the price for fewer products + additional % to slightly cover the lack of margins on other products. Then increase the price for what's left.

I would also offer specials and introduce new products to provide the alternative.

There are countless ways to smoothly increase prices without loosing customers.
 
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Niptuck MD

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bbrrookie

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Awesome progress! Looking forward to more success and more content.

Im sure youre gearing up for the holidays now. Best of luck!
 

SparksCW

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I've not updated for a while but we have been busy.

Last month was nearly $70,000 t/o. This month not so good at $40,000 so far but still good enough and a few days left yet....

Things I've learnt.

  1. Sometimes it's lucrative to get off your fat a$$ and go find business in the real world. Ring people, e-mail people, go see people, network, shows etc.
  2. Paid search is key. You can work hard for months to increase SEO and it should be done as it does definitely help. But likewise you can get hundreds of visitors to your site instantly via paid search. The trick is to LEARN IT so you don't waste all your money without conversions. With the help of reading @andyblack threads and help I've managed to double my daily budgets and actually become profitable. It still needs more tweaking as it's not super profitable, but I guess this is where the element of scale comes in - increase ads exponentially and that "smaller" profit margin becomes a large pot of money. I'd highly recommend you read them, then read them again then watch the videos and of course in the words of andy himself, launch and learn!!
  3. As you grow your debtors amount gets bigger, it gets a bit scarier and you need to be careful with what you do with your CASH money. Cash is king!
  4. Keep good stocks, if you sell something regularly, keep it in stock! Else when the manufacturer says they can't get any for a month you still have stuff to sell!
  5. Stay healthy, being tired and in constant pain isn't the key to success. Exercise, lots of water and a bit of down time is required.
  6. To coin a Gary Vaynerchuk phrase... ALWAYS BE ON THE OFFENCE. Your competitors are not sitting around twiddling their thumbs. They're planning to attack you. Be ready/get in there before they can attack you. They will never give up, just like you won't.

TL: DR

Business is hard, there's more to business than the internet, learn PPC, stock what you sell, do some stretching before you ATTACK!!!
 
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Chazmania

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Great thread man! I'm bookmarking and will be going back through it asap.
 

SparksCW

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Been a while with no updates again so here's an end of 2017 update.

Hit the dizzy heights of $95000 in one month! Still a long way off where I want to be but I've learnt a lot of very important things about the process this year.

We're 120% up on last years turnover, gross profit margin is a little bit down as to be expected but it's still relatively consistent. All of the profit + more has been re-invested, and I've been paid a basic amount each month so all in all a successful year I guess.

Business

  • Increasing order volume is hard
  • When you manage to increase order volume, everything gets even harder
  • Cash flow is king. Ironically when you're selling a lot it gets harder to manage.
  • More orders = more risk of fraud, we've taken quite a hit in the last couple of months.. had to implement new procedures to reduce the risk.
  • Need to build a team - seriously, this is the most important and also the hardest part. I still feel like we can't afford the right person, but at the same time we're struggling and not progressing as much as I'd like to. On the flip side, the right person could increase orders by who knows what? They could transform the company in a matter of months, I have two roles to fulfil but it's chicken & egg here!! what comes first?? May consider taking a leap and getting someone in part time for one of the roles and full time for the other.
  • Keeping up with the competition is pretty hard. A lot of them in my industry have deep pockets and are buying up complete stock ranges (like 700+ items at $100 each per product line) then the supplier ships them to Amazon in batches. It's almost impossible to compete, when we do sell something it's often "out of stock" and we end up refunding our customer.
  • Whilst I'm trying to maintain a set GP margin, a lot of the competition are happy to work on much lower margins for the box-shifting products. I don't want to get too caught up in that, but I think maybe we do need to find some faster selling lines - less profit but could aid cash flow.
  • Stock is becoming key. Almost to the point now where we're moving towards only selling what we physically have in stock. It's impossible to control a third party, they might have 100 today and 0 tomorrow (probably because they've sold it to the big pocketed companies) no stock = lost sales.
  • Don't think too much... i.e it's hard to do things when you're already busy. I was going to implement some new stock and order management software, for some reason I decided against it, then we got really busy and I could have really done with the software, but was too busy to implement it.... now we're quiet I'm re-looking at it, trying to get over the $200 / mo costs but I know it'll bring value so for some things you kind of just need to take a leap of faith and not think about it too much.
  • Too many avenues - there are so many ways to do business, so many options, marketplaces, ideas, sub-sites, niches etc etc.. I'm sure you can make millions in any of them, but if you're dabbling in all of them you're just going to struggle unless you have deep pockets and lots of staff. I'm finding it real hard to focus on the avenues with the most realistic potential. Too many ideas!

Personal

  • Need to find a work-life balance. Working too much really does affect everything negatively. Next year I really need to find some hobbies and improve my health. I'm always tired and achey and have a few health issues that I need to get resolved next year.
  • It's really hard to hit personal financial goals when you're growing a business. Therefore it's important to have non-financial goals otherwise you'll feel like you're standing still, which is how I feel right now. I'm not much better off personally (in my opinion) however my business has doubled. Another year and I'll no doubt benefit personally big style. To be fair I certainly haven't got backwards personally and my family aren't doing without. So it's not all bad!

What's planned for 2018?

Well obviously need to keep increasing, keep pushing. Want to make it to the 6 figure / month mark. But consistently, not just a one off.

Need to buy more stock, especially on the common selling items, why worry about buying loads of stock if it consistently sells? Can save an extra 5-10% and less hassle booking in stock etc. Suppliers are happier too as it's easier for them to deal with. Just need to not think about it and send that purchase order...

Trust my instincts on software, a few hundred a month can save lots of time which can be better spent elsewhere. Plus it's systems that help the company run without me.

Going to watch the 1%... as the turnover grows then every 1% of gross profit margin saved now equates to quite a few thousand dollars of additional profit each year. This year we'll be buying in bulk to save 5-10% on some stock lines, some lines we'll be buying into stock instead of drop shipping just to save 1% margin on that line, we're going to be a bit more frugal on quotes to customers and try to offer a free product instead of a general discount, simple things to still offer value but save the 1%...

PPC - paid search is significant. Next year we'll be increasing our ad ranges and our spends. I've noticed that shopping campaigns seem to work best. Looking at our 2017 to 2016 annual advertising spend our turnover has more than doubled and our advertising spend has also just more than doubled. So it's very, very consistent (so far).... sometimes you can get wrapped up in looking at 7 days of data and it might not have been a good week, but over 60 days it could have been very good overall... looking at the year, it was good.

Next year we need to spend more if we want to grow.

That's all for now, so much going on in my head!

Happy new year!
 

SparksCW

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So it's March, another quick update.

Business is still growing, almost at end of financial year and we're set to almost double last fiscal year (turnover)

Things I've noted.

  • We are now buying more profitably but it's causing major cash flow issues, something I've never had to deal with in this business before. We're buying in 50+ units of an expensive product that we used to buy in 3-4's at a time. Making an extra 10% margin so technically making more money but we're buying faster than the money is coming in from payment processors which is starting to cause me some stress. We're also selling more in general so hitting supplier credit limits in the first week of the month. Not ideal.
  • Low daily order volume (of high value products) make it hard to employ additional warehouse staff. Must find lower priced items that sell faster.
  • More staff needed. Seriously, I've said this numerous times in this thread, but it needs to be actioned. And it will be. Just wait and see...
  • Content is king... having done a complete analysis of how we can grow as a value add eCommerce business, it all comes down to content.
  • All my goals have INCREASED.
  • Throw excuses out of the window, everything is possible if you work harder/smarter.
  • I've realised that the technical aspect of our products that's been "worrying" me is actually the moat around our castle if we play it correctly.
So all in all much of a muchness. Bit of a plateau but with lots of positive stuff in the makings.

I can sense a massive breakthrough coming soon though, something to smash the $100,000 / mo mark.

Hopefully next time I post it'll be because we've broken the £100,000 / mo mark which is $140,000 dollars.
 
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SparksCW

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May Update!

So turnover is steady, nothing too exciting, just steady and increasing. This month is set to be our best month ever as we are almost even with our current best month and its only the 18th!

Since the beginning of the year we've been buying in bulk to save a percent here and there, we've been a bit more careful with how much discounts we give and we've been trying to maximise profits where possible whilst offering great value to the customer. All in all this year every month has been far more profitable than previously, we're not making loads of money just yet but certainly doing better than we were.

I employed a new team member in web design and content creation, let's just say that our website has improved significantly since he started!

I have been working on streamlining the website, conversion optimization and getting the business running smoothly with the aim for it to run with very little of my input as well as providing tangible assets (with view to an exit in a few years time...)

Small changes can make a big difference in sales. Hard to show it in full context but some checkout simplifications and tactical addition of trust badges have had a positive effect (See image, the figures are percentage increases from the previous period.)

screen-shot-2018-05-18-at-15-37-01-png.19495


So I would recommend instead of always chasing new traffic, it's worth having a look at your existing metrics and see if you can easily and cheaply convert more of your existing traffic or increase average order values/repeat custom etc.

Work to our product pages and our help pages has helped decrease bounce rate and increase time on site.

Now we are going wider by adding more relevant categories and products.

Still determined to break that first $100k month but at least I know that my margins are improving which ultimately is the most important thing!

My main take away from the past couple of months is:

Employing and expanding the team is a bit scary and is hard work if done properly to get the best candidate, but the right team member can accelerate your business forward.

My recommendation is to embrace it and don't see that person as a cost, as a liability, that person you pay X amount could help generate Y amount or make life 10 x easier so that you can be more productive and turn X into Y etc..
 

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SparksCW

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Finding the day job a real issue lately, I work for my dad and am "in line for the throne" and all that, but my heart isn't in it and we don't really see eye to eye on anything. I'm having an authority issue too, not happy being an employee. Past couple of years I've only really been there because I want to help him get back on his feet, he doesn't seem to help himself though so I'm almost at the point of giving up. He's a true sidewalker through and through.

Wow just saw my post from a couple of years ago.

Can I just say to anyone who can relate to the above post...

1. You will land on your feet and eventually thrive.
2. You don't owe anyone, anything. (in that situation)
3. Your employer won't fall apart without you, they will simply replace you and carry on as if you were never there.
4. You will never look back.

If I knew then what I know now, I would have left that job many years before!
 
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SparksCW

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Still determined to break that first $100k month but at least I know that my margins are improving which ultimately is the most important thing!

Another month over and.....

$103,000 in May! (margin target also met)

Finally.

A lot learnt this month, will put it into a post at some point.

Next target is $140k /mo and to do this consistently. A lot of things going on at the moment....
 
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Tom.V

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Another month over and.....

$103,000 in May! (margin target also met)

Finally.

A lot learnt this month, will put it into a post at some point.

Next target is $140k /mo and to do this consistently. A lot of things going on at the moment....
Hell yeah! Now you're in the big leagues. Before you know it you'll be cruising past $500k. Rep +
 

SparksCW

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I can't believe it's nearly been a year since I last updated this thread despite being relatively active on here.

We are still not in the big leagues, our best month has been $101,000 revenue which was nearly a year ago. However the past 4-5 months we've been making more profit from a lower turnover, so whilst the revenue isn't there, the profits improved despite employing one additional staff and paying myself a steady basic wage. This is mostly down to watching costs, buying smarter and being more conscious of the figures.

So, a year on and we're still only hovering around the $70,000 / mo range.

Competition is hotting up and some are catching up / overtaking.

Main brands we've worked with from day 1 have been outgrowing us and making things "difficult" - one in particular makes up the majority of our revenues but they are growing significantly, making a lot of money, going worldwide, taken on a lot more resellers and moving their product supply to a large distributor which caused us a lot of problems. I am jealous in a positive way, I'm happy for them and am trying to learn from them as we get on really well still.

Our main brand has BIG potential as a top retailer (in our opinion anyway!), but we're not doing it justice and I'm struggling to get any momentum going. Our smaller brand is doing much better, but it's a smaller niche of the big brand...

So why aren't we growing?

If I knew the answer perhaps I wouldn't be so stressed.

Some of it is down to focus, I started another company and built a web app - the product is good but we have no time or money to market it. Should never have built it! It's genuinely a good app, maybe I'll try to sell it off as a business-in-a-box, not sure! It doesn't cost a lot to keep ticking over so may just leave it on the side. Takeaway = Don't get distracted.

Whilst I'm still "free" working for myself, I'm not making a great deal of money and I work a lot.

We're currently upgrading our websites, they'll be faster, better looking, better features, better payment options and better on mobile. I'm hoping this will increase our conversion rate thus increasing sales "overnight".. but we'll see... Takeaway = keep up with technology and customer expectations.

I've deleted most of my mini-sites and binned off side projects. We're all in on our main two brand websites which go hand-in-hand. I'm finding it hard to bat off distractions, but so far so good.

We're kind of in limbo right now, we can't do too much until the new sites go live, developer is taking way too long. Hoping to be live by the end of this month. Once live we'll be focusing on growing our product range and content.

Other than that I'm not sure. Doubting myself a bit lately!!

According to my extensive spreadsheets using a cost of goods sold method we're making okay money each month. But we're still negative overall on the balance sheet and if sales drop we're in trouble. However cash flow is good and we barely owe anything on loans/credit cards.

Which leaves me in a position where we're obviously doing something right, but we've not enough money to do anything interesting or take any risk.

I guess it's either get funding or find "free" ways to increase traffic and sales.

I'm tired and need a holiday with the wife and kids (which I can't currently afford) We are mostly just getting by and surviving whilst trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong (or what I'm not doing!) on paper we're making money yet my personal credit cards are getting higher and higher as I daren't take too much cash out of the company despite making enough on paper.

So yeah, still here, still going.
 

Empires

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Just a few things to think about:

Can you outsource more of your responsibilities to free up time to grow the business?

What is stopping you from doing the same thing as the other brands to grow?

Don't doubt yourself my friend, you are killing it. You will figure this out and break through this plateau. Take a day off and have a budget date night, get your mind together, and then get back to killing it.
 
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SparksCW

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Just a few things to think about:

Can you outsource more of your responsibilities to free up time to grow the business?

What is stopping you from doing the same thing as the other brands to grow?

Normally I would say that the problem is money and resources.

But actually it's "Audience / Traffic", we have low traffic and no real audience (on our main brand, our sub-brand is doing much better and makes up most of our current revenues) - it does take money and resources to build that, but that's not the actual cause of our lack of sales.

A lot of our products are top brands and margins can be as slim as 10% making it impossible to run ads for. We need good organic traffic to make this work and a better paid traffic strategy to create "customers" rather than sales - probably through decent content and education.

We've (I) have been focusing so much on revenue, gross profit and net profit - and yes they have improved since I've been monitoring them. However, I think I'm focusing too much on the "event" rather than the "process" of getting sales.

So today I have created a new monthly tracking spread sheet and set new KPI's for our team. We'll still keep an eye on revenue, GP etc. but our main sheet now includes traffic, bounce rate, conversion rate, transactions etc.

My theory now is to focus on growing the number of people visiting the site whilst improving the content and conversions. The sales, revenue, profit etc should all follow. It's not rocket science, I just need to go back to basics on this.

I'm also breaking our main categories down to 50 primary keyword terms, I'll then start tracking these to monitor where we rank and then we'll use them to create all the landing pages, category descriptions etc. Further breaking down into sub-categories with longer term keywords.

I've found a content writing company that can help with creating all the content, I'm going to give them a test piece to make sure they're as good as they appear to be.

Back to basics..!
 

SparksCW

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June update.

Last couple of months have been quite hard with sales averaging around $60,000 / mo, especially compared to the first few months of the year as they were really good. I've been quite down about it all, complete lack of progress, almost going backwards to be honest.

But I've realised that this is just gearing me up for scaling. Instead of being down about it all I've now realised that I've had the best lesson ever in what to/not to do and I feel so much more confident about turning this all around.

The thing is, I came from an on-the-tools trades background and moved into ecommerce with no education, experience or training other than what I could find on the internet. I learnt as I went along and have hit a ceiling which has been stressing me out.

I read a lot about funnels, and conversion and SEO. Which is great, but I was learning about individual pieces without learning the core foundations or how to tie everything together.

I read a book by Tanner Larsson (Build Grow Scale) called "Ecommerce Evolved" and it's every bit as good as I hoped it was is changing my business as we speak.

The book has enlightened me into what a CEO SHOULD be doing to grow their ecommerce business (well, any business to be fair) it brings all the pieces together into a meaningful foundation, rather that just teaching just the individual components alone.

So now we are plugging all the holes and reinforcing the foundations ready to scale. By next year we should be seeing consistent $100k+ months.

Progress / To do

  • So far we've deleted three micro sites that just distracted me and provided no results.
  • We've replatformed (nearly finished) one of our small brand websites from Magento to WooCommerce - the idea was just to keep it easy as it's a very small store, but I'm quite surprised at just how good WooCommerce is - we've created a better looking, faster, easier and more conversion optimised store than our Magento sites in less than 3 days, in house!
  • I've signed up for Klaviyo, firstly on the small store mentioned above - setting up flows for welcome series, abandoned cart, winback etc. Starting on the small store to learn but this will all roll out to our main brand shortly.
  • Put in place new KPI's, score board in the office, new company values etc. to keep my staff motivated and engaged.
  • Started putting in place a wholesale side to our main business, time to start selling our products to people who will sell to their customers. Leverage. In hindsight this is probably going to make up the biggest part of our revenues plus it's consistent and "safer". It'll solve a lot of my worries as it brings in some consistency to sales, improves order volumes with brands, profit obviously and is harder for my competitors to compete with, they can't simply drop the price online and affect my sales any longer.
  • Making plans to slightly broaden our niche, this will give us more relevant products to sell to existing customers in the future of their customer lifecycle. We've tried to do this before but always done it half-hearted and wrong, this time it'll be fully built out and "proper" before it goes live.
  • Implementing new order management and shipping software, once in place this will aggregate all our orders and making shipping easy for my warehouse team (ready for lots more orders!!)

I realise now that we've been focusing/stressing on getting every new sale individually when in reality there is a whole lot more we need to do and build upon to turn this website into a machine that can scale.

If you focus on each new sale then you'll be chasing your tail forever. I can easily see now that this is the thing I've been missing in this business and in my previous employment.

So bad month for sales but great month for learning.
 

SparksCW

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July update, back on track now, last two months were very poor, this month has been OK.

I've deleted ALL sub-sites, we now only have our main two websites and a smaller brand site (no involvement required). I've moved one of the main sites from Magento to Shopify and re-built it from the ground up. Everything we've learnt is going into this site, hoping this will become our primary site within the next 12 months.

We now have full-on enhanced analytics, instragram product tagging and more things we were struggling with on Magento. Site is faster, easier, better.

But all of this has caused loads of problems, certain staff can't get their heads around the changes in platform, the new order management system etc. so having to document everything in SOP's (standard operating procedures) which is good, but time consuming.

I don't like stressing people out but our business needs to evolve and it will evolve, regardless of who or what stands in our way.

Have a meeting with a big supplier tomorrow to tell them we're replacing their range with a better brand, not looking forward to it but their stuff is hard to sell, friends or not, it's holding our business back.

Ordered more packing benches, going to build a work station for processing orders then we can pack on the new bench. Ordered a specialist rack for some of our products as they were stressing our packer out. This should make things easier.

Focusing more on content, guides, category descriptions etc.

Adding more products, websites looking good, but still lots to do before we turn ads on and hopefully start scaling.

The small brand website we run moved from Magento to WooCommerce and the conversion rate went from 0.19% to 2.99% - significant uplift in sales and enquiries. It's only a small site but it's still revenue, and we don't need to advertise or do much work, just process the order. I don't like WooCommerce as an ecomm platform though, it fits the need for this small niche site, but otherwise I'd avoid WooCommerce.

Now have weekly staff meetings, have set KPI's and got a dashboard in the office with our BEST month vs CURRENT month. Previously I set a target of X but it made no sense, what does the target mean? now we put our BEST month and then always try to beat the best month. If we did X once we can do it again + some!

Planning office revisions now to allow for more staff. Staff are stressful, but vital. I think a lot of stress is relieved if you have detailed SOP's and a clear mission. Something we don't have yet, but are getting closer every day.

Cash is running low, going to have to start stocking more lines now to get the margin we need to scale. Haven't ran out of cash yet but we'll see what happens.

Starting to feel in control, still learning and still have a long way to go.

Remember - Consistent forward motion. Day by day.
 

LifeDreamn

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How do you like Klaviya? I just looked into it and it sounds great. I like the free trial along with the ability to scale to a very large contact list. Also, it seems like this system is geared more toward ecommerce compared to other systems like drip, convertkit, etc...

What has your experience been like so far? And would you recommend it for any and all ecom sites?
 

SparksCW

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How do you like Klaviya? I just looked into it and it sounds great. I like the free trial along with the ability to scale to a very large contact list. Also, it seems like this system is geared more toward ecommerce compared to other systems like drip, convertkit, etc...

What has your experience been like so far? And would you recommend it for any and all ecom sites?

I've barely got it implemented yet on the main site, but in trials it appears very good, way better than MailCheat(Chimp) at least!

Will be completing this on the main site shortly and after a few months should be able to give a better insight.
 

SparksCW

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Hey, can you give us an update how your business is doing today?

Not much different to four days ago on my last update :) but we did have a big meeting today where we've started addressing logistics issues and streamlining the business.

Went quite well, our warehouse is packing way too slow but it was taken well and we're implementing a series of improvements to speed things up.

In the meeting I also discovered that my staff really want a new fridge, our small fridge stresses them out?! I've bought a new refrigerator, problem solved, more room for sandwiches?! haha. No one needs to stress out about bloody fridges.

But goes to show that you should have regular meetings and let people tell you their issues, big or small. Some things are easily resolved before something ridiculous escalates into an actual issue. Plus it keeps them happy :)

And if you meant in terms of turnover then last month we were at just over $80,000 revenue again.. pretty static, still struggling to break the $100,000 + mark. But I think with all the improvements we'll soon start smashing that.
 
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LifeDreamn

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I've barely got it implemented yet on the main site, but in trials it appears very good, way better than MailCheat(Chimp) at least!

Will be completing this on the main site shortly and after a few months should be able to give a better insight.

Awesome, I'm thinking about trying it. I got nothing to lose with a free trial period that alone beats convertkits trial. Especially with an abandoned cart. This alone can pay for the next tier after a few successful cart recoveries.

Thanks
 

Champion

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Not much different to four days ago on my last update :) but we did have a big meeting today where we've started addressing logistics issues and streamlining the business.

Went quite well, our warehouse is packing way too slow but it was taken well and we're implementing a series of improvements to speed things up.

In the meeting I also discovered that my staff really want a new fridge, our small fridge stresses them out?! I've bought a new refrigerator, problem solved, more room for sandwiches?! haha. No one needs to stress out about bloody fridges.

But goes to show that you should have regular meetings and let people tell you their issues, big or small. Some things are easily resolved before something ridiculous escalates into an actual issue. Plus it keeps them happy :)

And if you meant in terms of turnover then last month we were at just over $80,000 revenue again.. pretty static, still struggling to break the $100,000 + mark. But I think with all the improvements we'll soon start smashing that.

Haha man, this is so inspiring and cool to hear from you talking about the business!

To see how it was started in January 2016 and today you're at where you're at.

Thanks for the inspiration and motivation you provide around here.

Best,
Champion
 

Monkeycom

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  • Need to find a work-life balance. Working too much really does affect everything negatively. Next year I really need to find some hobbies and improve my health. I'm always tired and achey and have a few health issues that I need to get resolved next year.

Dont underestimate that. It came back to my face hardly after the sale of my business.
 

SparksCW

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Having a nightmare with business lately. Sales are down, traffic is down, everything's down.

Biggest thing I can say is never put too much effort into one product line or one brand, all of our efforts have been into one brand and now that brand is selling to a lot of resellers and our sales are down 50% on last year.

Unfortunately we've not spent any time building up other winning product lines so we're heavily reliant on these sales. Along with a few very bad decisions with website platforms and developers all in all we're officially "finding it a bit hard".

We're desperately trying to build up other product areas, but as we've been neglecting everything else it's going to be a case of trying to get sales back up before we run of cash.

The race is on.
 

SparksCW

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Sales still poor, cash eventually ran out.

Had to borrow a fair amount to keep creditors paid.

Our new Magento 2 site went live two weeks ago finally after 8 months. The traffic has halved (not sure why - no 404's, doesn't appear to be any ranking slips!) and the conversion rate is also halved which has quite a compound effect on revenue. There are lots of bugs and issues, we should never have let them put it live to be honest.

Not supposed to be going backwards.

We have been working hard in-house on migrating to Shopify, the site is almost ready to go live and is 100x better. Fixed every single objective we set out to fix. Should have done this 8 months ago before we paid the developer 5 figures to migrate to Magento 2. Lesson learnt.

Excited to get live with the new site & we'll be working a lot on SEO to try and claw back our organic traffic ASAP.

The mistakes we've made to end up here are;

  • Not trusting my gut multiple times, should not have used our existing developer to migrate the site as we had doubts from the beginning.
  • Should not have let him drag it out over 8 months, we did nothing in this time, no content, no products, no marketing push. Big mistake.
  • Not started the migration in the first place as we were under-funded. Should have moved to Shopify like our original thoughts were 8 months ago.
  • Not focusing on the main site that brings money in
  • Not adding new product ranges (profit centres) we have two areas we could easily do well on but they're being ignored.
  • Not working on other channels.
So it's taken me 8 months, $xx,xxx wasted and lots of time wasted to learn this.

I feel like I'm getting better and better at e-commerce, my only concern is it's quite difficult to fix mistakes compared to starting again (not financially an option obviously) so I just hope I can apply all my learnings and swing it back round.

Personally, yeah stressed, not earning enough to support my family right now, having to sell my weekend car and likely cancelling our family holiday in February.

Am I allowed to have more than one FTE? :rofl:
 
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SparksCW

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September since my last post, and September is where it really started to go downhill.

Since September our traffic and sales have dropped by 50%, we ran out of cash and I used a PayPal Working Capital Loan to cashflow us, however paying back up to $6000 a month when we're not making much profit has soon got us back to the no cash situation only now we also owe PayPal $22,000 from the $40000 borrowed and we're paying back way more per month than we were three months ago. Oops.

So tip 1. Don't use working capital finance for anything but stock purchases and make sure your repayment percentage falls well within your profit margin!!

Now both our websites are better than ever and we're working on SEO as paid ads are almost impossible to break even on with low margin competitive top brands. We're only getting around 20-25% margin on a lot of top branded products but at only $50 for some there's just no money to advertise, ship it, support it etc. It's a pure volume game and the volume isn't coming our way right now.

I still have all my staff, although we're currently top heavy, if we don't get sales back up to at least where they were I can't keep throwing money away on staff if they aren't needed. There is one person that we don't need right now, if we can't get sales back up then I'll have to make the difficult decision.

It's weird as we're still a small struggling company but our competition is the largest players in the UK. There is no middle ground. (probably because it's so hard!)

PLANS THIS MONTH

  1. Not make an operating loss like the last three months :blank:
  2. Refinance the WC loan and credit card into a $40k bank loan over 36 months to ease the cashflow or bust issue.
  3. Building more bundled products, if we can't compete on a product for product basis then let's bundle them up into useful logical single product listings to increase AOV and thus net profit amount
  4. Trying to sell my truck. It's a shame, but I don't want to go bust when I can share my wife's car whilst we get back on our feet.
  5. Continue trying to figure out how to get our website traffic up when we 1) can't afford PPC and 2) can't afford a content writer to blast out consistent content for SEO.
  6. Work on my personal finances, it's double hard when the business is broke as am I. I'm not sure how but I am going to put some effort into improving my personal finances without using the business. I've shuffled some credit cards to ease the interest paid each month but really need to hustle to pay some of these cards off.
  7. Plan more. I'm struggling with focus and stress causing in-action. This week I've started planning on a Sunday night what we all want/need to achieve and it's making things a bit easier.
  8. Move more. I need to do some exercise, it'll help everything but still seems so hard to start.
  9. Find a way to make it more fun for everyone, we might not be millionaires yet but who says it has to be stressful and boring?

I'm not going to lie I've considered making all my staff redundant and selling the core products alone whilst I catch up, sure it may solve short term cash but I can't give up the big dream.

Where we're going we need staff and the hassle that brings so let's embrace it and push on.

Home life is suffering, my marriage is suffering, my kids are suffering but I feel like we're so close to breaking through and to be fair we're one paycheck from broke so can't give up or let it slip now even if I wanted to. All or nothing!

Thanks to @amp0193 you may not know it but reading your threads is inspiring! We're both trying to build something more than "just a business".
 

Andy Black

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