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I start my idea today (eCommerce + POD)

OverByte

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Nice progress! I saw the strategy you laid out about add to cart retargeting, I was curious for your retargeting campaigns do you use conversion objective or traffic?
 

Jeannen

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Nice progress! I saw the strategy you laid out about add to cart retargeting, I was curious for your retargeting campaigns do you use conversion objective or traffic?

I do catalog sales, so it's Dynamic Product Ad, based on what they saw on the website :)
 

Jeannen

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Update 06/06/2020

What a week ! It was full of stress and doubt, but hopefully this is over! At least for now !

I did $1k/day almost every day since then

I've been blocked by Paypal to verify my account (you get auto-blocked after $2500 if you didn't verify before), so I had to pay my supplier using my bank account instead of Paypal, which resulted in not having enough to pay for the ads, and being blocked by Facebook

I've been shut down for 2 days, and unlocked everything yesterday, and made another $1k/day ($1491, for $300 adspend)

I'm starting to scale today, first ads starting at 6 AM !
I hired an assistant to help me with customers service in India, and now looking to add custom packaging to my products !

So far, I made around $2000 net profit

(I reinvested in the store, of course)
 

Jeannen

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Update 07/06/2020

The VA I hired to help me with customer service isn't as good as I was expecting. I asked her to be more consistent and not just copy/paste answers from the guidelines I wrote.

I might have to fire her and get someone else

Otherwise, I started to add more budget to my ads today ($200/day), I'll see how it goes
 
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Jeannen

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Update 08/06/2020

That shit is going too fast lol, made $2200 of sales yesterday, I really need to focus on improving my systems, at the moment all my times goes in customers service and other annoying stuff, not into improving
 

OverByte

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Thanks for sharing your progress in this thread, it's very interesting to follow and congrats on the success!

Would you mind sharing a bit more about your ad strategy?

I also run an e-commerce store and have alot of trouble with consistency and scaling. Some days will do $500 in sales, the next $100 and trying to push more budget usually results in higher CPR. Sounds like you've got quite a bit of experience in facebook ads and I think hearing more about your strategy and could be really useful for myself and others.

Sounds like you are using LLAs, are you also using interest targeting? Are you using purchase conversion goal for these ads?

Do you run all your ad sets in one CBO campaign that has all the budget or do you have budgets set at ad level?

If at ad set level what % of budget is associated with LLAs / interests / retargeting?

Did you say you are spending around $200/day or did you just increase your spend by $200?

Looking forward to seeing more posts on continued sales and success! Cheers.
 

Jeannen

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Thanks for sharing your progress in this thread, it's very interesting to follow and congrats on the success!

Would you mind sharing a bit more about your ad strategy?

I also run an e-commerce store and have alot of trouble with consistency and scaling. Some days will do $500 in sales, the next $100 and trying to push more budget usually results in higher CPR. Sounds like you've got quite a bit of experience in facebook ads and I think hearing more about your strategy and could be really useful for myself and others.

Sounds like you are using LLAs, are you also using interest targeting? Are you using purchase conversion goal for these ads?

Do you run all your ad sets in one CBO campaign that has all the budget or do you have budgets set at ad level?

If at ad set level what % of budget is associated with LLAs / interests / retargeting?

Did you say you are spending around $200/day or did you just increase your spend by $200?

Looking forward to seeing more posts on continued sales and success! Cheers.

Hi !

For the ads, I started testing at $50/day, 10 interest within a CBO, $2.5 minimum adspend in each adset. I had 3 copy in each adset. Purchase conversion straight away, + $10/day engagement ad on all posts

Then I saw the audiences that were working, then duplicated them into a $100/day CBO with $5 minimum adspend, and 5 creatives

I'm using some LAA (VC, ATC & PUR) but I'll use them more in my next scaling phase

I wanted to try CBO and it's working okay so far, so I'll keep it this way

I added $200, making a total of $450 per day. I'll add another $300 daily soon
 
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Jeannen

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Update 11/06/2020

I had to fire my VA because she wasn't doing the work properly. I spend 2 days hiring someone else, I hope it will works well.
Looking to scale the ads now. Main focus: Test a shitton of new creatives
 

OverByte

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Thanks for taking the time to describe your ad process, much appreciated!

On the VA note, I've hired quite a few and there are some gems and some not so great VAs. The most important thing I've found is to have crystal clear writeup. I use this process for tasks (typically) maybe it will help:

Step 1:
I create a document outlining:
- task at a high level (ie 1,2,3,4 basically bullets)
- detailed sections where needed and handling any FAQ/common items

Step 2:
Then i make a video demonstrating the task and typically referring back to section of the doc in the video.

Then I give the video and the document. If you take the time to document it and do a video it's pretty hard to mess up. It also makes replacement very easy if the VA moves on or doesn't work out.

I also have some tips for hiring if you'd like let me know. I don't want to derail your thread :)
 

Jeannen

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Update 18/06/2020

My new VA seems to be really good ! Asking lots of questions (and good ones), I don't have to manage customers service anymore, what a relief !

I'm not posting much here because most of my focus is into the website at the moment, but what I figured out is that testing creatives is definitively one of the most important part of FB ads. I have a total of 15 creatives I'm testing at the moment.

(I test them in a separate campaign inside my best-performing audiences, before putting the best creatives in my main campaigns)

Oh, I almost reached $3000 of sales yesterday, I actually did $2923, thisis my best day so far ! :)


I plan move to Bali next year, as soon as the frontieres opens up. Better climate, cheaper life, less taxes and good entrepreneur community !
 
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Boychamp

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Congratulations on your success! I won't comment on everything but I was reading and you were talking about struggling with being profitable on the front end. Here's something people forget SO often: Don't forget to target your PAST customers in a separate campaign after X days of purchase (depending on your product buying cycle or your up-sells/cross-sells) encouraging them to buy your other products.
What I mean: Consumer A bought product A but not product B,C, or D. So run an ad encouraging them to buy your other products. Yes, this is done through your email list but is also extremely effective to do via ads on low budgets. Just make sure to pay attention to your exclusion audiences and time delay to not be TOO omni-present in your customers lives.
Great way to encourage repeat customers and up your LTV.
 

Jeannen

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Congratulations on your success! I won't comment on everything but I was reading and you were talking about struggling with being profitable on the front end. Here's something people forget SO often: Don't forget to target your PAST customers in a separate campaign after X days of purchase (depending on your product buying cycle or your up-sells/cross-sells) encouraging them to buy your other products.
What I mean: Consumer A bought product A but not product B,C, or D. So run an ad encouraging them to buy your other products. Yes, this is done through your email list but is also extremely effective to do via ads on low budgets. Just make sure to pay attention to your exclusion audiences and time delay to not be TOO omni-present in your customers lives.
Great way to encourage repeat customers and up your LTV.

Yup, definitively, that's the most profitable campaigns for my clients

Problem is the shipping delay, lots of them don't order again until they receive the product, and it takes 15-25 days for my main one
 

Jeannen

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Update 21/06/2020

I just bought 1000 custom packaging with my logo, and I plan to look into US fulfilling soon to deliver a better shipping experience.

Main goals atm:
  • Improve customers experience (packaging + faster shipping delay + better customers service)
  • Engage the community with content
  • Test a shitton of new creatives
 

Defection

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I love this thread, it's great to see what you've been through, yet how you've repeatedly kept getting up and trying again, and now to see the happiness that you're experiencing on a daily basis from the persistence.

Great work, best of luck to you.
 
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Jeannen

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I love this thread, it's great to see what you've been through, yet how you've repeatedly kept getting up and trying again, and now to see the happiness that you're experiencing on a daily basis from the persistence.

Great work, best of luck to you.

Thanks a lot !
Yeah, I've been tring for 3 years now, and even it it looks like an overnight success, it is definitively not haha
I didn't talked about the countless hours of reading, anxiety, personal issues and stuff like that, but there were (is) A LOT !!!
 

Jeannen

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Update 25/06/2020

I'm doing more than $3000/day pretty much everyday.
I'll let another week pass, and if things are stable, I'll look into really pushing this further by importing stock in the US to get a faster shipping delay

Oh, I'm also moving to Bali when the borders will be opened again !
 

Jeannen

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Update 01/07/2020

So, the results are pretty stable but profit plumeted. End of Q2 is never good (Way more competition to finish marketing budgets, so ad cost is increasing a lot) from ~20% to a bit less then 10%

Since it's the begining of a new Q, I'll see how it goes.

$70 000 of sales in June, that's pretty cool ! I learned a lot !!
 
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napapey

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Good job on your results. I'm from France too and doing approx the same numbers as you are doing. Keep going, it is worth it.
Also keep in mind that when you reach 82k, you'll have to pay the TVA for every € over 82k. I believe you're in "franchise de TVA" for now but once its gone, you lose 20% profit :)
 

Jeannen

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Good job on your results. I'm from France too and doing approx the same numbers as you are doing. Keep going, it is worth it.
Also keep in mind that when you reach 82k, you'll have to pay the TVA for every € over 82k. I believe you're in "franchise de TVA" for now but once its gone, you lose 20% profit :)

I'm selling to the US so, not in my case, but yeah, entrepreneurship in France is garbage, that's the main reason I'm moving out asap :)

To give some context to non-French:
In France you can do business without creating a company. You don't have to hold any accounting or stuff, BUT, you pay between 12% and 20% of your total sales to social security, and you have all liability.
You can't earn more than 176 000€ of sale per year tho, after that you have to create a company.
That's where the fun starts.


Then, you pay your taxes, and you can't deduct the social security. Taxes are from ~10% to 45% based on how much you earn (the 40% rate starts when you earn around 70k/year and the 45% at 157k/year I think)


So, let's say you want to pay yourself:
First, you get a 25% tax on your profit. Then, if you want to pay yourself, you have to pay ~15% of tax to social security. Then, you have to pay your taxes, up to 45% if you earn more than 175/year

That's around 60% + 25% of your profit

Enjoy France

(It's over-simplified here, but still garbage anyway)
 

Altitude

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What works on Facebook and Instagram for apparel (I assume that's what you mean by POD) depends entirely on the image. The copy is much less important. Does it look good, and will it look good on ME? That's what people are thinking there.

Complicated marketing strategies for something like this are generally doomed to fail. BUT remember the long game...

What's the long game?

To build customer lifetime value. To get customers that you can consistently sell to. That's the way to win with this: launching lots of SKUs, testing the ones that get buyers, and continuously selling your products to your customer base.

I'll give you a real example of what a client I worked with did in the UK. She launched a fashion line targeted at girls 18-25, primarily sold on Instagram. Her profit generally came from the customer base she already had that was willing to continue buying clothes from her. The customer growth came from Facebook. Generating sales growth for her was simple: test a bunch of those SKUs and see which ones worked the best. To retargeting, we used dynamic ads. Simple stuff.

The problem with her business model was that her products that she was producing depended highly on time based campaigns (Valentines day etc) so the rest of the year she wasn't selling much. She's expanding into more evergreen clothing now but it's proving to be much more difficult, as the key is in matching the DESIGN to the audience.

Hope that helps.

Amazing insights @The-J.

I'm following @Jeannen post with great interest as I too am in the process of launching a print on demand business. Thank you Jeannen for creating this thread.

I think what you said The-J makes a lot of sense since it might be a bit hard to be profitable with paid ads on the first sale. But I can see where the magic can happen where we can continue building a relationship with the customer over time and keep offering them new products.

My vision for my business is to eventually build in a subscription model with recurring revenue.

So in essence once the customer is acquired with paid ads even with low profit or at worse break even, the same customer can continue buying more products which in theory has a unlimited life time value.
 

Altitude

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Just finished reading this thread from start to the last post. This has been very inspiring to read @Jeannen. Thank you once again.

With your current store, are you still doing print on demand or have you now transitioned into a different model?

I think the experienced you developed while building those first 13 or so stores you mentioned over the last few years really helped you to get the success with this current store.

You mentioned, you are now building a brand with this store. How would you define a brand versus those other stores you built before?
 

Jeannen

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Update 02/08/2020

Haven't posted for a long time, but I reached the 6 figure mark in the meantime.
However, results are really shitty now, from 20% to less than 10% margin. I was on vacation and haven't done much, but I took a bunch of pictures to try new creatives.

I'm starting to test new creatives & audiences
 
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Jeannen

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Just finished reading this thread from start to the last post. This has been very inspiring to read @Jeannen. Thank you once again.

With your current store, are you still doing print on demand or have you now transitioned into a different model?

I think the experienced you developed while building those first 13 or so stores you mentioned over the last few years really helped you to get the success with this current store.

You mentioned, you are now building a brand with this store. How would you define a brand versus those other stores you built before?

The current store is mostly dropshipping with POD as upsell. My goal is to promote the POD stuff more, since it's automated and delivered faster. I really like the sub model, and I plan to try it soon.


For me, brand = aiming long-term and building a relationship instead of direct-response sale.
 

Jeannen

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Update 15/08/2020

It seems like the dead-period is over for most of my ecommerce friends. I'm starting to get good results again, I hope it will keep being this way.

I sent a newsletter to my whole email list yesterday (20 000 people), and it generated more than a minimum wage in net profit within a few hours ($1.4k). Pretty cool !

I blocked all video-games from my computer, I figured out that I had some kind of addiction, resulting in me spending most of time playing shits I didn't even enjoyed instead of doing something real.
 

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