The Entrepreneur Forum | Financial Freedom | Starting a Business | Motivation | Money | Success

Welcome to the only entrepreneur forum dedicated to building life-changing wealth.

Build a Fastlane business. Earn real financial freedom. Join free.

Join over 80,000 entrepreneurs who have rejected the paradigm of mediocrity and said "NO!" to underpaid jobs, ascetic frugality, and suffocating savings rituals— learn how to build a Fastlane business that pays both freedom and lifestyle affluence.

Free registration at the forum removes this block.

Why am I not getting any sales? (I'd love some input)

Achieve_Bay

New Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
53%
Sep 5, 2019
30
16
We have an online store: Royalvybe.com
We're getting HUGE traffic (by my standards at least) of an average of 50 new visitors a day. We have around 200 followers on our IG page where I post nothing but photos of our products. People share them, they comments, etc.

However nobody is actually buying our stuff! Can somebody please share advice or constructive criticism as to what we may be doing wrong?

our website is: RoyalVybe.com

thank you
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Kid

Gold Contributor
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
98%
Mar 1, 2016
1,736
1,707
Do you have demographics of people who visit your site?
It seems that your page is targeted to young people.
Maybe those young people have no money and visit your
site for fun.

One thing to learn is that clicks, revenue, likes, shares, followers are all vanity metrics.

Also, you have no "social proof" - basically no one is buying because no one else have bought.
Maybe try to send few items to bloggers/instagrammers.
 

Achieve_Bay

New Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
53%
Sep 5, 2019
30
16
Do you have demographics of people who visit your site?
It seems that your page is targeted to young people.
Maybe those young people have no money and visit your
site for fun.

One thing to learn is that clicks, revenue, likes, shares, followers are all vanity metrics.

Also, you have no "social proof" - basically no one is buying because no one else have bought.
Maybe try to send few items to bloggers/instagrammers.
I could kiss you right now! that's a genius idea! We'll get on that asap!
 

Speed112

Silver Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
284%
Dec 5, 2013
190
540
29
Over here, over there.
We have an online store: Royalvybe.com
We're getting HUGE traffic (by my standards at least) of an average of 50 new visitors a day. We have around 200 followers on our IG page where I post nothing but photos of our products. People share them, they comments, etc.

However nobody is actually buying our stuff! Can somebody please share advice or constructive criticism as to what we may be doing wrong?

our website is: RoyalVybe.com

thank you

Hm...

At first glance things look really neat. You're definitely doing most things right, as proven by you attracting eyes to your products and people sharing them out...

But then a lot of things pop up.

Primarily... I don't know if I'd ever pay $25 for a T-Shirt just because it has some vanity print on it. Maybe with the massive inflation going on right now it makes sense haha, but who knows. Is there a reason why these shirts are priced this way? Do they come with a special advantage? For all I know they could be fruit of the loom garbage with a print on them.

You gotta point out what sets you apart better.

There's also a distinct lack of reviews for the products themselves and stars/ratings that people are accustomed to.

The designs are neat, but do they scratch any deep pain/need? They seem like the type of product that are "nice to have" not "need to have" so if they're not convenient to get or people are highly-driven by benefits or hype, they'll virtue signal their wish to buy (by sharing or talking about it) but then not put the money where their mouth is. I've seen this many times.

Which brings me to...

The copy:

1616866732538.png

The benefits are worse versions of the features!

They don't express any benefits at all, actually. What do I get when I buy this? I don't care about random percentages and all the other stuff. What even is a Buckram? 6-Panel snapback? I have no idea what you're talking about...

Now if you say that the high quality acrylic and wool blend allows the fabric to breathe so that your body can better regulate the temperature and your skin doesn't get too hot or too cold. Maybe I'll consider paying an extra $2 for this.

If the slick classic shape brings you back to what's always been in fashion so you can look cool without worrying about what's "in"

And stuff like that... maybe your audience might consider buying more. You said they share things around... what are they saying? What kind of words do they use to describe your products? Use those words yourself to promote them.

Another big deal is that it takes long to get the products. "I have to wait for them to make it after I order it? 1 week? Pshh"

For vanity products, the desire to buy is super whimsical. There's a fad or something that makes them get a product to remember it. AOC burns some dude on twitter and some kid laughs about it so they're like "lol I wanna get a shirt with AOC on it now" so they google it and they find your site and then they don't pull the trigger because they reconsider.

A more targeted campaign for the popular products or similar lines might help with converting that type of people. Basically a product-specific sales funnel.

Beyond this... it's hard to say. The only ones who can say why they're not buying is your audience. Are they even the right audience for your products? How are they reaching your site? What are they doing once they're on it? Do they shop around? Do they add to cart and then forget about it?

Depending on the stage of their buyer's journey then you need to do different things to help them along all the way to the sale.

Do some research. Ask them questions.

Then come back here and tell us your findings :p

We can help more with more info about your audience and what differentiates your business.
 

woken

Silver Contributor
Read Rat-Race Escape!
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
145%
Mar 24, 2021
606
879
London, UK
You haven’t even bother to remove “powered by shopify” from the footer.

The story doesn’t sell.(Our story)
You started the store to “generate money” ? That’s all I read I don’t need to hear it’s for charity.

You should identify a problem here, and your brand as a fix.
The clothing does follow a theme itself so that’s alright.
No contact info, other than an email.
It takes 5 mins to make a Contact us page with an autoform-> saving potential customers time.

Also,

50 views is not a lot.
if you go to to your shop dashboard, shopify lets you know that the average views per sale( for a shop) is 1000.



All this info is on youtube, free.

good luck!
 

Kung Fu Steve

Legendary Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
283%
Jul 8, 2008
2,718
7,698
Road Warrior
The irony is pretty funny.

Hopefully you get rich enough so your customer hate you haha

Kidding.

Here's my harsh criticism:
  • You need a decent shopify template. The website is not easy to navigate and looks like it was built in the 1990s. You can get a really inexpensive template that would make you look like any high-end retailer. Don't reinvent the wheel here. Use what works for other people
  • The video takes too long to load. This might sound insane but people's patience is approximately 3 seconds. If your website doesn't load almost instantaneously, you're going to lose all of that traffic.
  • Create a capture. Emails in exchange for a discount. Emails in exchange for a free gift. Emails in exchange for joining "the cause" -- 99% of people don't buy the first time. If you're not capturing, you're losing a ton.
  • I know you're proud of the traffic you're getting and you should be. You're doing a great job. However, you need more. 50 visits a day -- is that actual traffic or are some of those bots? How do you know? Where is that traffic coming from?
  • Proof trumps everything. You have a visual product. Why does your video cut off half of your product? Who cares about the models, people want to envision what they would look like in your product.
  • Why in the world do you have 56 categories?
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Achieve_Bay

New Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
53%
Sep 5, 2019
30
16
Hm...

At first glance things look really neat. You're definitely doing most things right, as proven by you attracting eyes to your products and people sharing them out...

But then a lot of things pop up.

Primarily... I don't know if I'd ever pay $25 for a T-Shirt just because it has some vanity print on it. Maybe with the massive inflation going on right now it makes sense haha, but who knows. Is there a reason why these shirts are priced this way? Do they come with a special advantage? For all I know they could be fruit of the loom garbage with a print on them.

You gotta point out what sets you apart better.

There's also a distinct lack of reviews for the products themselves and stars/ratings that people are accustomed to.

The designs are neat, but do they scratch any deep pain/need? They seem like the type of product that are "nice to have" not "need to have" so if they're not convenient to get or people are highly-driven by benefits or hype, they'll virtue signal their wish to buy (by sharing or talking about it) but then not put the money where their mouth is. I've seen this many times.

Which brings me to...

The copy:

View attachment 37344

The benefits are worse versions of the features!

They don't express any benefits at all, actually. What do I get when I buy this? I don't care about random percentages and all the other stuff. What even is a Buckram? 6-Panel snapback? I have no idea what you're talking about...

Now if you say that the high quality acrylic and wool blend allows the fabric to breathe so that your body can better regulate the temperature and your skin doesn't get too hot or too cold. Maybe I'll consider paying an extra $2 for this.

If the slick classic shape brings you back to what's always been in fashion so you can look cool without worrying about what's "in"

And stuff like that... maybe your audience might consider buying more. You said they share things around... what are they saying? What kind of words do they use to describe your products? Use those words yourself to promote them.

Another big deal is that it takes long to get the products. "I have to wait for them to make it after I order it? 1 week? Pshh"

For vanity products, the desire to buy is super whimsical. There's a fad or something that makes them get a product to remember it. AOC burns some dude on twitter and some kid laughs about it so they're like "lol I wanna get a shirt with AOC on it now" so they google it and they find your site and then they don't pull the trigger because they reconsider.

A more targeted campaign for the popular products or similar lines might help with converting that type of people. Basically a product-specific sales funnel.

Beyond this... it's hard to say. The only ones who can say why they're not buying is your audience. Are they even the right audience for your products? How are they reaching your site? What are they doing once they're on it? Do they shop around? Do they add to cart and then forget about it?

Depending on the stage of their buyer's journey then you need to do different things to help them along all the way to the sale.

Do some research. Ask them questions.

Then come back here and tell us your findings :p

We can help more with more info about your audience and what differentiates your business.
dude...thank you so much for the detailed review!!

"Primarily... I don't know if I'd ever pay $25 for a T-Shirt just because it has some vanity print on it. Maybe with the massive inflation going on right now it makes sense haha, but who knows. Is there a reason why these shirts are priced this way?"

the thing is we looked up other stores that sold apparel online catering to a certain niche and these were the average prices among them. We use a Print on Demand company so with what they charge us, this is basically the 'minimum' price we can place them at to get even a little profit.

"There's also a distinct lack of reviews for the products themselves and stars/ratings that people are accustomed to."

yeah, we're fairly new so we don't really have any reviews in yet :\

"The designs are neat, but do they scratch any deep pain/need? They seem like the type of product that are "nice to have" not "need to have" so if they're not convenient to get or people are highly-driven by benefits or hype, they'll virtue signal their wish to buy (by sharing or talking about it) but then not put the money where their mouth is. I've seen this many times."

THIS THIS THIS! perhaps we need to get back to drawing board and see if we can give any additional benefits for customers who shop with us. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS!!

"Another big deal is that it takes long to get the products. "I have to wait for them to make it after I order it? 1 week? Pshh"

yeah, I know its a long time. But I'm really powerless over this because it's the time given to us by the Print on Demand company and we really don't have the funds to get a storage of our inventory yet.

"A more targeted campaign for the popular products or similar lines might help with converting that type of people. Basically a product-specific sales funnel."

this is really interesting input. can you please elaborate more on this? Because I'm not entirely sure what this is haha
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Achieve_Bay

New Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
53%
Sep 5, 2019
30
16
You haven’t even bother to remove “powered by shopify” from the footer.
is that a bad thing? Personally I've never cared if a website says that or not
The story doesn’t sell.(Our story)
this is good advice. Maybe we need to write a little more detailed of a message

It takes 5 mins to make a Contact us page with an autoform-> saving potential customers time.
damn, you're right! Thank you for this
 

Achieve_Bay

New Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
53%
Sep 5, 2019
30
16
You need a decent shopify template. The website is not easy to navigate and looks like it was built in the 1990s. You can get a really inexpensive template that would make you look like any high-end retailer. Don't reinvent the wheel here. Use what works for other people
see, I was also worried about this, but a lot of people we've shown our site to have said it's fine. Do you have any sites that you can hopefully link as a good example? I'd really appreciate that!
The video takes too long to load. This might sound insane but people's patience is approximately 3 seconds. If your website doesn't load almost instantaneously, you're going to lose all of that traffic.
damn, this was a huge fear, thank you for pointing that out.
Create a capture. Emails in exchange for a discount. Emails in exchange for a free gift. Emails in exchange for joining "the cause" -- 99% of people don't buy the first time. If you're not capturing, you're losing a ton.
thank you for this!
I know you're proud of the traffic you're getting and you should be. You're doing a great job. However, you need more. 50 visits a day -- is that actual traffic or are some of those bots? How do you know? Where is that traffic coming from?

Proof trumps everything. You have a visual product. Why does your video cut off half of your product? Who cares about the models, people want to envision what they would look like in your product.

Why in the world do you have 56 categories?
56 categories???? Where does it show that!?
 

steve schweitzer

Bronze Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
341%
Oct 18, 2015
64
218
58
alma, arkansas
The messages on these shirts are just plain stupid and highly offensive to anyone that is not "woke". If you want to make a political or social statement don't do in with your business or you will offend and turn off most potential customers. Just my opinion
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

B.Cotter

Bronze Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
144%
Apr 23, 2020
75
108
Northern VA
I didn’t see the links from your site to your social media except for Instagram but the link doesn’t work. If I search Royal Vybe on social media platforms I get a number of hits that are other clothing companies as well, not just yours. Just something to think about.
 

Speed112

Silver Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
284%
Dec 5, 2013
190
540
29
Over here, over there.
"A more targeted campaign for the popular products or similar lines might help with converting that type of people. Basically a product-specific sales funnel."

this is really interesting input. can you please elaborate more on this? Because I'm not entirely sure what this is haha

Before that...

One thing you can do to immediately speed up your website is to make your images lazyload. You can do some tests on sites like gtmetrix to see what slows things down and try to fix them.

The messaging of the products isn't relevant to the discussion I think. Clearly the people who are put off by it are not the target audience and, as such, ofc they wouldn't buy.

It's very important for a website to have authenticity signals. Helps with trust and even SEO. Social proof is one of them. Linking to your social pages helps with that. Having easy-to-find contact details and other things that make you look "legit" help with that. You want to give people as much trust and feelings of safety and security as you can so that they don't question whether or not the products are good quality or if they're gonna be received at all.

A shady website will naturally have poor conversions.

Now for the answer...

So basically you're going for woke stuff, so your audience is probably lefty teens/young adults in some urban center like SF or Seattle... You want to reach out to these people and connect with them in a natural way (not a cringy how do you do fellow kids sort of way) and then guide them down a tailored path from first hearing about your product all the way to ordering it. You can collect their contact details on the way, upsell them, and then even restart the loop after the sale.

So how it works is you have an ad or some capture mechanism that pulls the audience in (lead magnet). "AOC is crazy. Buy this crazy shirt. 50% off!" they'd be like "sweet I want that" because it's relevant to them in the moment. They like the offer, they want the stuff, they click through to your optin page.

You sell to them a bit, make sure they know what they're buying, how the process works. Establish clear expectations. Now, before they can unlock the 50% discount they have to put in their email. Congrats, you can now market to them for free whenever at a later date. This whole process should be without distractions and focused entirely on the action you want them to take: buying the shirt.

Once they've put in their order details or connected with paypal and are about to pay, you offer them potential upsells, like "New T-Shirt: Bernie sitting on a chair" or "We want free stuff beanie" - things they'd find relevant. Out of all of them like 10-20% maybe more are gonna buy the extra stuff too just because you offered it and it's convenient. Then you finalize the order and take them to a thank you page where you can continue marketing to them.

And only then you direct them to your general storefront with all your products that they get analysis paralysis having to choose from 79 different shirts and hoodies.

For a practical example, you can watch me and @Black_Dragon43 execute a similar type of funnel in about 2 hours with more or less all the explanations you'd need to get why and how everything works here: MARKETPLACE - Ready to Build a 7-figure eCommerce Business? Click here!

Anyway, focus works.

And what's cool about this kind of sales process is that you can actually give a really solid deal up-front, even at a loss, in order to pull more people in, because you'll cover your losses through the upsells and back-end selling later through email.

For Shopify you can use stuff like Ezra Firestone's Zipify apps to build landing pages for your ads, upsells, and split-test stuff for better results. I'm sure there are other solutions as well but I don't use Shopify so not sure.

Facebook/Insta should work really well for driving traffic to this type of store actually, since all the woke kids hang on FB and they love to virtue signal how they're owning the republicans which is what these products solve, really.

Maybe try to cater to that sentiment and go for viral marketing with woke liberal influencers.
 

MitchC

Legendary Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Rat-Race Escape!
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
283%
Mar 8, 2014
1,966
5,554
Australia
Make the same brand but with the opposite message.

“conservative” people actually have money to spend and they spend a lot of it, there are huge brands in that niche doing very well.

I have never heard of a woke brand doing well and I assume it’s because their most passionate and ideal customer has no money or job.

The designs are nice so I assume you can do nice designs with the opposite message.

The website isn’t great but that doesn’t explain having 0 sales it should still convert at least a few people.

Biggest most obvious optimisation to me would be to get rid of the buy now button on the product page and to make the call to action buttons like add to cart and go to checkout a solid color not “ghost” buttons.

You could add some we donate money from every sale to some bullshit charity thing if you are going to stick with this niche but honestly I’d just dump it, these are not customers or people you want to be talking to or dealing with. They will be a massive pain in the a$$.

I made the mistake of starting a business that targeted stressed angry people and I got about 30 sales and 15 emails from angry stressed customers before I shut it down. One customer I refunded and told to never order from me again and he sent me an angry email back about that My current business has lovely customers and they send nice emails, even the complains are nice and there would be 1 email per 300 orders not 15 for every 30.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.
Last edited:

Parks

Bronze Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
Read Rat-Race Escape!
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
141%
Jul 20, 2020
298
420
Portland
Have you read Unscripted or The Millionaire Fastlane ?

The entry to this type of business is very easy, as in your competition is everyone in high school with an iPad and some artistic vision. Frankly if you were making sales with only 150 followers on Instagram, I would happily be your competitor as well. Growing Instagram's past 5k in followers is an easy task nowadays.

Not only is the entry very easy to get into, the demand for this might be pretty low. Can you give us some examples of other people with this type of clothing? Can you tell me how you do it better than them?

Personally I wouldn't get into this business. Why? Well, I would read MJ DeMarco's Books.

I may just be the naysayer but I think there is better opportunities out there to still be solved than this.
 

DeskWarrior

New Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
157%
Jan 16, 2021
7
11
Arlington, TX
Granted, I'm probably not your target market. I'm a 40 year old male, but if I had to guess what you were selling before visiting the site, I would have guessed vibrators. I'm assuming your visitors know, before going to your website, what you're selling?
 

biophase

Legendary Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
474%
Jul 25, 2007
9,121
43,261
Scottsdale, AZ
Your T-shirt descriptions describe all types of T-shirts including Heather shirts even though you only have two colors that aren’t Heather colors. So this tells me that you just used to cookie cutter description that your print on demand company gave you. It just feels like there’s no effort being put into your product listings.
 

MJ DeMarco

I followed the science; all I found was money.
Staff member
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Rat-Race Escape!
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
445%
Jul 23, 2007
38,082
169,504
Utah
So you want me (or my forum) to give you advice on how to sell t-shirts that say "Eat the Rich?"

Ha Ha.

I'll pass.

It's equivalent to you asking me how to sell t-shirts that say "MJ DeMarco Sucks".

Why would I fund and/ or give advice to a cancerous ideology that wants to eat me?
 
G

Guest-5ty5s4

Guest
I wouldn’t give any advice because the content of your products is just so out of alignment with everything we do here.

Honestly it’s very off-putting. The last thing you want as an entrepreneur is to give in to all these ancom type of customers. Ew.

Maybe you’ll succeed, get rich, and they will come eat you. That would be funny. Your designs are annoying.

edit: I’m sure you’re a great person and all. But this is honest feedback. Why would you do this?

It’s funny, imagine a guy competing for a spot at Olympic trials selling Merch that says “kill elite athletes”
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.
Last edited by a moderator:

Post New Topic

Please SEARCH before posting.
Please select the BEST category.

Post new topic

Guest post submissions offered HERE.

Latest Posts

New Topics

Fastlane Insiders

View the forum AD FREE.
Private, unindexed content
Detailed process/execution threads
Ideas needing execution, more!

Join Fastlane Insiders.

Top