Ask me anything about eCommerce (2012)

[biophase]

Is starting an SEO company fastlane?

LOL, is this a real question?

 

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

[AllenCrawley]

LOL, is this a real question?

I hope not. That would mean someone that's been on this forum for 8 months with over 200 posts is still asking questions like this.

 

[G86]

Thank you Bio for starting this wonderful thread and taking time out of your busy day to provide us helpful tips and strategies. I've learned so much from reading this thread from beginning to end. Best luck to everyone on their e-commerce venture.

 

[Syc]

Is it possible to run an ecommerce store from a different country than the target market?

I'm from the UK and have researched a few very promising niches, but the search numbers are much higher in the US than in the UK. (e.g. 90,000 vs. 9,000). And for a few the compeititon is a lot less.

Will shipping rates/different time zones make this impossible?

 

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

[Ryllban]

First off, thank you for doing this thread!

Ok so now to my question. How do you know what products you are allowed to private label?

Say Im starting to sell water bottles, yoga mats, air mattress or anything else that often have many brands selling them(not talking about Joes secret 6pack workout or a personal product like that). Can I then just change colour and brand it in my company name?

Im scared that I end up with an lawsuit in the end.

Thanks!

 

[CommonCents]

Starting out in private labeling, being flexible and low quantities you can buy yourself a quality commercial label printer near photo quality for 1K. A good solution if a company wants some higher minimums to label for you starting out, instead have them ship you unlabeled( but include any required regulatory labeling) product and do it yourself. Especially good if you buy a variety of stuff intermittently and still want to brand it. Avoids having a bunch of preprinted label stock sitting around.

 

[CommonCents]

Is it possible to run an ecommerce store from a different country than the target market?

I'm from the UK and have researched a few very promising niches, but the search numbers are much higher in the US than in the UK. (e.g. 90,000 vs. 9,000). And for a few the compeititon is a lot less.

Will shipping rates/different time zones make this impossible?

i've ordered a couple mobile phone cases on ebay for under $4 bucks shipped from china. That's incredible. I can't ship a box of air a state or two over for that here in the US.

 

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

[Dinho7]

Fantastic thread. It took me about a week to get through the whole thing, but it was the ~5 best educational hours I've spent ever, including 4 years of college.

 

[biophase]

Is it possible to run an ecommerce store from a different country than the target market?

I'm from the UK and have researched a few very promising niches, but the search numbers are much higher in the US than in the UK. (e.g. 90,000 vs. 9,000). And for a few the compeititon is a lot less.

Will shipping rates/different time zones make this impossible?

If you are dropshipping from that same country it should be no problem. Do you plan on shipping items from the UK to the US?

 

[Gale4rc]

Keys to defining a target audience for your Facebook ads to hopefully convert into sales ?

 

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

[Michal II]

Hey biophase

Thanks for massive value you offer.
I found niche that I want work on (diet pills), can you recommend some books/articles about making good ads, headlines etc. that will make people click on link to my shop and then buy product?
Also what do you think at this moment about learning SEO from scratch, I am quite technical guy (work as iOS developer now) and feel tempted to learn SEO but I don't want to put too much on myself and be overwhelmed (learning SEO, copywriting, still has to work my developer job etc.).
Btw. sorry for my English but I'm from Poland and I plan to open e-commerce shop for my country only (for now )

 

[JM35]

What do you think is the best form paid traffic/where should we go for paid traffic?

We had to deindex our site while we build up a similar one with more ranking potential, so we need to focus on paid traffic until the other site is underway.

 

[Syc]

If you are dropshipping from that same country it should be no problem. Do you plan on shipping items from the UK to the US?

I do plan on shipping items across, but from researching further it seems like there will be a lot of complications.

 

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

[constantin]

hey, nice thread going on but i have a couple of question. I've been looking to start an eCommerce business and was looking at shopify for the platform but i want the website to a subscription based website were in order to buy the products on the website you would need to pay a monthly subscription. can anyone point in a direction.

 

[SarahSH]

I have been working on setting up shop online for one of my products. I got the domain, hosted with hostgator baby plan, purchased a wordpress template and installed it onto the domain, have not set up payment ability yet because my site was hacked about a week after I began setting it up... I had to take it all down and reinstall it. Ugh! I was online today looking at big commerce and am looking at either the silver or gold plans. I see that silver has a 2 percent transaction fee and gold does not. Does anyone know if that transaction fee is in addition to a merchant account transaction fee?

 

[summit]

can I start a business just buying ads to sell amazon products via affiliate links in niche communities such as reddit subreddits? would it be worth the time?


__________

Disclaimer: everything I say is hypothetical and does not necessarily mean I partake in or perform any actions I claim or mention.

 

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

[s168]

can I start a business just buying ads to sell amazon products via affiliate links in niche communities such as reddit subreddits? would it be worth the time?

That's just regular affiliate marketing so not really doing eCommerce, which is what this thread is about. With AM, it's all about conversions and you're asking a question where the variables are huge. Some products may sell better than others, some subreddits may attract more buyers and some none at all, some products may gain you less commission and some more. Why don't you go to various subreddits, check the ads and click on a few to see if they are affilate ones (usually can tell by their URLs). A sign that an ad campaingn is working is if it is a continuing one that stays around for a long time. But ultimately, you're going to have to pay to find out.

 

[CPisHere]

hey, nice thread going on but i have a couple of question. I've been looking to start an eCommerce business and was looking at shopify for the platform but i want the website to a subscription based website were in order to buy the products on the website you would need to pay a monthly subscription. can anyone point in a direction.

Shopify has a couple apps that offer subscription services & auto-billing customers. They aren't cheap though.

 

[CPisHere]

I have been working on setting up shop online for one of my products. I got the domain, hosted with hostgator baby plan, purchased a wordpress template and installed it onto the domain, have not set up payment ability yet because my site was hacked about a week after I began setting it up... I had to take it all down and reinstall it. Ugh! I was online today looking at big commerce and am looking at either the silver or gold plans. I see that silver has a 2 percent transaction fee and gold does not. Does anyone know if that transaction fee is in addition to a merchant account transaction fee?

It has to be in addition to credit card fees because your credit card fees alone will be > 2% and no plan will exclude these fees.

 

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

[FLYmk]

hey, nice thread going on but i have a couple of question. I've been looking to start an eCommerce business and was looking at shopify for the platform but i want the website to a subscription based website were in order to buy the products on the website you would need to pay a monthly subscription. can anyone point in a direction.

You can use Shopify to make it happen, just keep in mind it will require 3rd party apps (additional cost). I've helped clients setup and operate Shopify solutions - there's flexibility so long as you're willing to incur costs above the Shopify costs.

 

[Envision]

Awesome thread! If I wanted to set up a single landing page for a product that I was selling merely collecting pre orders through paypal does anyone know how I would go about collecting those pre orders or setting that up in wordpress/on a website?

Would be grateful for the advise! Thanks

 

[FLYmk]

Awesome thread! If I wanted to set up a single landing page for a product that I was selling merely collecting pre orders through paypal does anyone know how I would go about collecting those pre orders or setting that up in wordpress/on a website?

Would be grateful for the advise! Thanks

There are a few ways to get this accomplished that come to mind:

1) Get a single-product theme for Wordpress, attach WooCommerce (or another eCommerce plugin) to Wordpress, and add PayPal as the payment gateway. Then, create a Pre-Order Product within WooCommerce.
2) Use Shopify and one of the single-product themes, and/or a plugin/extension
3) Build a simple HTML website for your single-product, integrate PayPal, and presto!

...but you should plan ahead. Too simplistic may require more work down the road. Depends on your goal and plan!

 

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

[biophase]

Hey biophase

Thanks for massive value you offer.
I found niche that I want work on (diet pills), can you recommend some books/articles about making good ads, headlines etc. that will make people click on link to my shop and then buy product?
Also what do you think at this moment about learning SEO from scratch, I am quite technical guy (work as iOS developer now) and feel tempted to learn SEO but I don't want to put too much on myself and be overwhelmed (learning SEO, copywriting, still has to work my developer job etc.).
Btw. sorry for my English but I'm from Poland and I plan to open e-commerce shop for my country only (for now )

Sorry this is not my expertise. I don't concentrate too much on ads and headlines.

I would learn basic SEO so you understand how it works. Then you can see if you want to go deeper.

 

[biophase]

What do you think is the best form paid traffic/where should we go for paid traffic?

We had to deindex our site while we build up a similar one with more ranking potential, so we need to focus on paid traffic until the other site is underway.

I really only use Google Adwords and a small amount of Bing PPC. I haven't tested any others.

 

[biophase]

I have been working on setting up shop online for one of my products. I got the domain, hosted with hostgator baby plan, purchased a wordpress template and installed it onto the domain, have not set up payment ability yet because my site was hacked about a week after I began setting it up... I had to take it all down and reinstall it. Ugh! I was online today looking at big commerce and am looking at either the silver or gold plans. I see that silver has a 2 percent transaction fee and gold does not. Does anyone know if that transaction fee is in addition to a merchant account transaction fee?

Yes it is. I would never use any plan with transaction fees. I'd look at shopify now instead due to the change in BC plans.

 

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

[Dan Da Man]

What do you think is the best form paid traffic/where should we go for paid traffic?

We had to deindex our site while we build up a similar one with more ranking potential, so we need to focus on paid traffic until the other site is underway.

Dude, every niche & every product is different. There is no "best" place to buy traffic. The best place is the place you test the shit out of, that makes you money.

What is right for me, might not be right for you. For myself, Adwords is working great. People are actively searching for a problem & my ecommerce site offers a solution.

My industry is competitive & it took us months of testing until we started making money. But from then on, we are almost able to double our revenue from month to month because when you buy traffic, essentially you are buying data.

Start testing. You are going to need cash. If you don't have some, then paid traffic isn't going to work. Even if you test one traffic source, you have to drill it down to different keywords, different locations, different landing pages, different times of days etc..

Start testing today so you can be profitable tomorrow.

 

[Dicky Dee]

Hey @biophase thanks for the great info in this forum, im currently on my first ecommerce store for one of my businesses, and although sales in store are good and steady my online store is still lacking and its been over a year. Im not too experienced with ecommerce except for ebay and the sales that i have gotten with my online store, i was wondering if you were starting out what would you do first? I'm thinking of hiring an seo agency since i dont know much about it and possibly someone to run the google ads as well. Any advice would be greatly appreciated the website is in the fashion retail industry www.crushnco.com

 

[s168]

Do you have analytics set up on the backend? Your site is really slow to load for me. Analytics will help you see where traffic is coming from and what pages they visit, how long they stay for, heat maps show where they hover their mouse cursor over or look at, etc. You may consider having better images optimised for use on the web.

Think you need general marketing advice not just SEO.

Just my opinion.

Hey @biophase thanks for the great info in this forum, im currently on my first ecommerce store for one of my businesses, and although sales in store are good and steady my online store is still lacking and its been over a year. Im not too experienced with ecommerce except for ebay and the sales that i have gotten with my online store, i was wondering if you were starting out what would you do first? I'm thinking of hiring an seo agency since i dont know much about it and possibly someone to run the google ads as well. Any advice would be greatly appreciated the website is in the fashion retail industry www.crushnco.com

 

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

[TurboWagon]

Is anyone here consistently shipping products from China to the East Coast? If so, what method have you found to be the best value cost/speed wise and least hassle? I've heard some horror stories regarding products stuck in customs, stuck at ports, etc... I'd love to avoid that if at all possible. Thank you!

 

[biophase]

Is anyone here consistently shipping products from China to the East Coast? If so, what method have you found to be the best value cost/speed wise and least hassle? I've heard some horror stories regarding products stuck in customs, stuck at ports, etc... I'd love to avoid that if at all possible. Thank you!

I'm sure there are tons of people doing it. If not, how do the stores on the east coast get inventory. Why would this be different than the west coast? You can just ship to Cali and truck it to the east side. I live in the west coast so I don't know what ports they use over there, but I'd assume it would take forever to go from China to FL or NY by boat, it would have to sail south of Africa.

Horror stories are horror stories and it happens. Stuff will get stuck and inspected by customs, confiscated, seized, etc... You just have to work it out.