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

[Empires]

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]

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]

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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[SparksCW]

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?

 

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[Andy Black]

Move more. I need to do some exercise, it'll help everything but still seems so hard to start.

Just go for a 45 minute stroll every day. It will help the brain calm down too.

Home life is suffering, my marriage is suffering, my kids are suffering

Put the first things first? Remember why you’re doing this?


This video I did for a friend might help:

• A message to a friend who's overwhelmed and worried

 

[Andy Black]

@Andy Black have started walking with podcasts on, done a few miles sine last week and it definitely helps so going to try and keep this up every other night at least.

That’s good. The walk will do your body good.


Also try walking without music or distractions. Let your mind wander and chatter away until it’s run out of steam and/or resolved its worries. I find my mind clears better when I’m not filling it.

Podcasts are good, but so is being alone with your thoughts.


If you want to chat about ads or anything just holler. Happy to be a sounding board.

 

[SparksCW]

I’ve just read through the whole thread and its extremely similar to what I went through with my e-commerce/eBay/amazon business. Stock issues, good months, sales dropping for no reason, cash flow issues. Then the dreaded PayPal loan.

I hope it works out better for you than me. That company closed in 2018, I owe Funding Circle £148k, bank overdraft £50k, PayPal £12k and Amazon £8k.
Funding circle and the bank are personally guaranteed by me so I’ll be going bankrupt shortly as there’s no way I’m paying them back.

I tried to spin too many plates at once and reinvested loan money into the wrong stock.

Good luck mate, hope it works out for you. It also caused me massive issues at home. Just be careful with borrowing anymore money.

Hi Paul, yeah I read your threads too, was a shame for it to fail. I found your website (I think!) at one point and it looks pretty good quality so I guess it just came down to pricing and cash flow issues.

I'm working hard to not let my business slip any further, hopefully I've caught it at the right point. Luckily I'm not buying lots of stock, the loan is to consolidate and reduce monthly outgoings to solve cash flow issue so whilst I'm borrowing more I'm not taking on much more debt (provided I do pay off these other ones obviously!) and I've also reduced my monthly business outgoings by more than the new loan amount at the same time.

Loan applied for today, insured my replacement car so just need to get it fixed (has a "minor" issue ) and get the truck sold.

 

[SparksCW]

Bank loan got approved today so next week I’ll be able to consolidate and remove my immediate cash flow issue, give a small buffer and then focus solely on selling!!

 

[Champion]

Late last year and the beginning of this we were in a pretty poor situation, we were stagnant and actually decreasing monthly revenue not growing, made some mistakes with website platforms and fell behind.

Then C0VlD-19 came along and I thought it was game over! I was in survival mode trying to figure out how to still be in business when it was "over". We sell luxuries, nothing that'll protect you from COVID so we were very, very worried.

But my landlord, who sold his company for many millions, took it upon himself to give me a weekly mentoring call. We made some changes and improvements. We cut a lot of zero margin products (that was scary!) and put a lot more focus into the brands and product sets that do make us margin.

Last month was our best month ever. Not just for revenue, but in actual spendable profit after buying stock.

So far this month, we've beat last month! And we still have a week to go.

In fact, the last two months we've made more net profit that the last two years put together! (which wasn't hard to be fair, but it shows we're on the up finally)

We've cleared our company credit card, paid off a working capital loan in full and refinanced a bank loan saving thousands per month.

Personally I've cleared a credit card (noted as a previous goal) and built a buffer for the first time in years. Long way to go but we're catching up. Also set my standard wages to more than my living costs for the first time in 3 years.

We are continually working away on the websites, improving, narrowing, cutting products with no margin instead of wasting our time fulfilling orders for no profit.

I've identified numerous sub-niches that are untapped and we're working on building them out now to widen our customer base. We're working harder on customer experience, speed, stock management. You name it.

We've created our own brand name and designed our own product lines. Not sure how we will fund it yet but that's a problem for later! We can replace 50% of what we are already selling for this product set and make a LOT more margin, customers also get a better quality product for the price so it's WIN WIN! These will also give us a chance on Amazon.

So instead of trying to survive we're now in full on growth planning mode.

Coming soon.. warehouse operative, marketing apprentice, freelance PPC expert, real time stock system and own brands.

We're currently just breaching $100k / month but this time next year I want to be doubling that.

Lots of work to be done!

The BIGGEST TAKE AWAY FROM THE PAST 2 MONTHS?

We will not grow if I try to do everything.

We need more staff to do the day to day, I need to just do business owner stuff.

I know what I'm doing, and when I do it we grow.

When I stop, we stop growing.

Don't get caught up in doing. Plan, strategise, theorise, design and utilise a team to implement and maintain.

Amazing update and great to hear! This completely fits into the picture with what has been happening in my business the last 2-3 months. Sometimes, the difference between breaking even / loosing money and actually making good profits are just a few small tweeks and focusing on a few different things.

Good job and keep going!

 

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[marklov]

Subd

 

[prof]

Congrats on your success so far!

I don't know what actual profit margin you're working to but your listed figures seem pretty tasty considering what you've said about it being pretty much all organic traffic to your own site rather than pushing through the likes of Amazon and eBay.

Without giving away any specifics I'm interested in how people are finding you? Is it the products they're searching for or are you funnelling through to the products after indoctrinating them to the guides, and other items you mentioned on your site?

Either way - following this one! Good luck!

 

[Kingsta]

Hi,

Thanks for the post. I'm interested in your methods of driving traffic to your site? Would you be so kind as to share a few? For example did you use facebook ads? Word of mouth? Etc.

I noticed you said that you're now ranked top 3 in google for certain niches but how did you get there?

 

[relentlessaction]

Sounds like a good idea. These are all things that everyone should focus on running a business.

Can't wait to see your success!

Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads I plan on conquering this year.

 

[TonyStark]

How long were you working on your product/business before it took off in October?

How did you find your product?

Is it something you have experience in?

 

[nomeus]

Couple more questions.

Did you had a phone number for customer service when you started?
Did you had a registered company when you started in ecommerce?

And last, have You had any success finding dropshippers and supliers at esources.co.uk? All I seem to find is different ecommerce websites, that are just there and does not dropship.

 

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[nomeus]

Thank you for your answers.

The problem is, Im not in the UK, but in the Eastern Europe, but I see the UK market as a huge opportunity (2 mil people vs 64 mil, 3x the GDP). In my case, dropshipping would be perfect in the beginning, but it seems that all of the UK stores have valid addresses and phone numbers, so that kind of sets me back a little.

I guess I'll just have to get back to drawing board and think of some ways to make it work.

 

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[Havox]

I'm going to add little "completed" lists and notes, even if just for my own purposes of remembering when I did things.

Thursday 7th Jan 2016

Wrote buying guide for primary product range no. 1
Wrote buying guide for primary product range no. 2
Built "info center" page with some guides and links to the buying guides
Added more info pages to site footer including FAQ's, Technical Glossary etc and also compiled all links in the "info center" page.
Added compiled videos page to footer (shows all product videos from product page, on one page)
Added link to blog

Notes

Sold a high value product that we've not sold before today, relating to niche, more work required on those pages now that we got our first sale. Needs a few more products, better descriptions, category pages, etc.

Sales this week $6500 so far with another $1200 pending awaiting payment (phone orders)

I was curious in your blogs. Are you going to mention your website?

Sent from my A0001 using Tapatalk

 

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[Havox]

I'm going to be the 8-ball here and say "signs point to no"

[emoji106] I'd like to hear the horses mouth though

Sent from my A0001 using Tapatalk

 

[SparksCW]

I was curious in your blogs. Are you going to mention your website?

Sent from my A0001 using Tapatalk

Hi, no not at the minute, my blog is rubbish so you're not missing out there. It's the website I'm working on.

However I will PM a mod with the site details so they can verify it

 

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[happybhoy]

What have you done to protect yourself from competition? $45k/mth just to live seems pretty bloated and it looks like someone could come and undercut you.
Could you lower costs to increase your margin?

 

[Eos]

Congrats on the progress man! I'm also from the Uk and looking at e-commerce.
What resources or advice could you recommend to find a niche or saleable product for starters.

Thanks.

 

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[Smoothsailor]

So January is over, almost a month since I last posted.

This month ended at just under $23,000 t/o so not too bad considering it is January, it's 270% on last year though which is the main thing!

This month we've;

• improved some product descriptions (more to go)
• written buying guides and added to site
• added some more products
• put a lot of effort into our other site in an attempt to start building this up in a broader niche. all new banners, products, better category structure etc.
• done some mail shots
• got Hootsuite and started to do social media (too soon to say if this will work out but hoot suite certainly makes it easier)

Offline however I'm working on some really good deals and partnership agreements, if this comes off then it'll be extremely good for us. Watch this space.

February we will be;

• continuing to improve product pages
• continuing SEO on category pages, descriptions etc
• more content, need to get this blog going!!
• working offline on deals and trying to get our company visible in the "real world"
• increasing eBay and amazon sales with other products to increase sales, we can be a bit broader with this as the products won't show on the main sites.
• looking for more ways to add value

Hey,

Nice thread you got going on here.
I don't know your product and I have limited experience with e-commerce industry wise but hey, your conversion rate sounds pretty good!! On the other hand, (again don't know the product etc. ) 1.6k unique/mo sounds like nothing.

I'd seriously go bonanza on traffic increasing activities.

I also agree that your tasks make sense (blog, case studies, faq etc.) but sounds limited on the marketing side. Did you check affiliate marketing, fb ads, google ads, cps or cpc, what about partnership with bloggers, product review programs and maybe even more spammy approachs that are not straight away illegal but on the gray side?

I don't know your profit ratios either but with that revenue and conversion rate with that traffic I think you might have a big catch here.

 

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[Eos]

Hey man, nice thread. I'm also from the UK, so it's good to see another British person making something happen on this side of the pond.

How did you start off in e-commerce & what would you advise for a beginner with a few £k to risk?

 

[memelia]

Thanks for sharing! Very insightful. What is your take on inventory? I'm looking to start an online luxury women's boutique, and wondering how much inventory I should have on hand. I'm looking to import from US brands though (i'm based in Asia), so that is another problem.

 

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[SparksCW]

Thanks for sharing! Very insightful. What is your take on inventory? I'm looking to start an online luxury women's boutique, and wondering how much inventory I should have on hand. I'm looking to import from US brands though (i'm based in Asia), so that is another problem.

A lot of my products are sent direct from distributors, however I only have a few key distributors and they only send direct as we've worked with them for a long time so I trust them.

The biggest problem we get is selling something that is out of stock at the distributor, its very rare for us due to the above, but with other companies it's a lot more common and that's the biggest issue you'll have with inventory. We do stock a lot of the most common sellers and we buy in clearance/bulk stock if we can save money.

If you are importing then you have no choice but to hold stock, and I would suggest keeping good stocks and making sure your inventory is accurate so if it sells out the customer either can't buy it, or they are warned that it's out of stock and there will be a delay.

 

[Nhausberger10]

Hi, pretty good this month really. I've been on vacation for the past week or so which means we've not done much "new" stuff. However the hard work appears to be paying off.

Hey SparksCW,

I was looking at this tread (great one by the way), and realized that we are kind of the same. The way you word your words, tells me you might of got your knowledge, the same place I got mine. I feel above average in my knowledge about buisness, ads, and marketing. Just one thing... I never actually went through it yet, so I have no experience. Just knowledge. I know I need to start executing, but with a budget of only $440, I am doing alot of thought about how I am going to spend my money and what product to invest my time in. That said, I have a few problems that come into my mind. Can you or anyone else reading this help me answer a few questions?

(In the US by the way... CA)
-I read that you have a distribution deal with one of your suppliers. That's a nice deal, but if you didn't have that option, how would you distribute your goods to the customer? I was thinking about using the US postal mail or UPS, but is there a better, more professional way to go about it?

-What is your thought about a warehouse, office, and house, all in one?? If I were to start off, could I store shipments at my house (dont own a warehouse), and run a website at m house? or do you think its alot of hassle?

-Is amazon and ebay and pain when it comes to fees? I know traffic is higher on those sites, and that a big deal, but is FBA and selling fees costly? I read that one should start off with their own site, then work up? I feel like you would need to be proficient in selling your product, before using one of the sites, because after paying the supplier, your website subscription, and amazon FBA, plus selling on there site (if fees apply), it seems like your profit margins are not worth the profit. I mean maybe if you had a good product, but If I were starting off?

-One more question, is my age (19) going to play a huge downside in tying to run a successful business? I feel like suppliers would not take me seriously, and no one would want to work for me. I get that most people my age are not that bright, but I am the .001% of people.

Hows this month going? I am mainly interested in your business progress, a kid like me, with no bills, one employ, and 25k+ in sales (netting 20%) a month; that would be awesome. I know running a business involves risk and is not just fun and games, but there is nothing I rather do with my life. No friends, huge chance I will never get a GF, nothing to live for. I have all the time in the world to keep trying in life until I have a successful business.

 

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[Nhausberger10]

Thank you for your answers, they are very well written/ worded, and helped me out a lot. Thank you and congratulation on a good month. I get what you mean when you tell me that what sells the best, are things that other people can't replicate, and that had a lot of thought and hard work put into it. I feel like I am ready, I just have to tackle the biggest obstacle. Picking a product that fixes a problem or fulfills a desire. With 8 billion people in the world, and business starting and failing everyday; finding something to sell now a days that is actually profitable, is hard. I respect anyone who has success in business now a days, and I respect you highly. I look forward to more updates by you.

 

[m500]

Just read through this whole thread and feel inspired and extremely impressed! It wasn't until your last post that I remembered that you also work for the family firm too. I think that makes it all even more impressive, and makes you wonder what figures you can do if you're dedicated to it full time.

I'm also in the UK and am researching products/niches to get into so this is all really useful for me.

I ran a Shopify store for around a year and it did pretty crap to be honest! But, I learnt a lot and was impressed with Shopify.

Congrats on your progress so far and I look forward to reading more.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Eos]

Thanks for the advice and for carrying on sharing your journey. Keep it up mate!

 

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[SparksCW]

Oh I forgot to say though...and it's kind of important.

Whilst overall revenue is steady, it's now coming predominately from the key site this thread is about. When I started the thread we were only doing a few $ through this particular site and the revenue was made up via other sites and third party sales, now via the site and the phone calls it generates we're doing about $15,000 p/m! That's a pretty good increase I think and we're only just getting started!

Lately third party sales and our other site sales are quite low, luckily this particular site is growing and we will be working on the other channels soon to try and increase them as well.

 

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