Ask me anything about eCommerce (2012)

[biophase]

Hey Biophase,

I really appreciate this topic, (I haven't been as active in the last few months due to university studies) but I was wondering what do you do to get suppliers. Like my strategy was to put a bunch of products on my website and then call the supplier and show them my site. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

IMO getting suppliers should not really by a strategy. Remember it's all about creating value. If you are targeting a niche where your supplier has an online retail store and ranks on the first page they have no incentive to supply you. All you are going to do is dilute their retail sales. It will be tough to get a supplier like this to dropship for you.

You would have to offer a new channel to them, maybe you also sell on ebay or amazon or increase their brand awareness.

But if you can find someone who has a shitty online store or no retail presence, then you can provide value by offering them a ton of new sales. Sometimes a supplier like this will be reluctant to supply you. But if you just began your store and began ordering things from them every week they will probably come around. Everyone likes money.

 

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

[GlobalWealth]

Thought this might help you guys out also.

I laughed for a solid 10 minutes reading this.

 

[mrbusines]

Biophase in your opinion is it better to have multiple sites under one holding llc , or creating a separate llc for each site.

 

[evanwebb]

Was this one of you guys?

I make over $100k per month running Drop-Ship product websites (proof inside).. AMAA : IAmA

Was this someone on this forum? Anybody know?

Just curious.

 

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

[Dan Da Man]

Hey Biophase. If you get a chance to hit me up I would greatly appreciate it. I own about 5 stores and just seeing if I could run some things off you..

One of my main issues is finding the right products to sell. Some stores the products sell so good and while others just don't sell so great. Haven't really figured it out.

 

[biophase]

Biophase in your opinion is it better to have multiple sites under one holding llc , or creating a separate llc for each site.

I don't see the need for multiple LLCs unless you think you have some liability in some of the products that you sell. If you sold knives and blankets, you might want to separate them into separate LLCs.

 

[biophase]

Hey Biophase. If you get a chance to hit me up I would greatly appreciate it. I own about 5 stores and just seeing if I could run some things off you..

One of my main issues is finding the right products to sell. Some stores the products sell so good and while others just don't sell so great. Haven't really figured it out.

Hi Dan, unfortunately right now I don't have much time to answer individual personal questions, which is why I created this thread. You never know how a product will perform until you try it out. Even if you have search numbers, they don't always correlate with how a store performs.

I think that once you get good at putting up stores and basic SEO and even PPC, you can easily put up trial stores in many niches and get an idea fast on which ones will do well. Then you close up the crappy ones and really work on the good ones.

 

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

[Dan Da Man]

Yeah thats what I am thinking.

Another question I had was how do you do your phone system. Do you use one common number for all stores or do you use a call forwarding type system?

And I have been thinking of adding my products to shopping engines. Have you ever done this and if you have, any tips on how this works?

Thanks for answering my initial question

 

[GlobalWealth]

Biophase in your opinion is it better to have multiple sites under one holding llc , or creating a separate llc for each site.

You can use a series LLC if you really want to segregate.

 

[Stayer]

biophase, what content management system do you use for your stores? I like it how every product has its own url with keywords in it and how simple the design is.

 

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

[biophase]

Yeah thats what I am thinking.

Another question I had was how do you do your phone system. Do you use one common number for all stores or do you use a call forwarding type system?

And I have been thinking of adding my products to shopping engines. Have you ever done this and if you have, any tips on how this works?

Thanks for answering my initial question

No, I have separate toll free numbers for them all. I used kall8.com. All the numbers forward to the same phone and I know what store they are calling from the caller ID.

I haven't done shopping engines yet. I know they cost some money but have no idea how you are charged. I try to stay away from paying for any exposure. I'm pretty sure that this is not the best approach, but I don't have the time to make sure I'm getting my money's worth on these yet.

 

[biophase]

biophase, what content management system do you use for your stores? I like it how every product has its own url with keywords in it and how simple the design is.

My stores use Interspire shopping cart, but they are discontinuing that in a few months. Most carts can do that with the URL. They are called SEO friendly URLs.

IMO, a nice clean site is better than a cluttered site with too much information or too many seals, symbols and logos.

 

[angelique]

Thank you, biophase!

This thread is really helpful!

Your process seems so simple - Sell something, get your customer first. If it works, keep going with it and always diversify. If it doesn't, stop doing it and/or try something else. The analytics that matter most are actual conversions. (This is the way I understand it, anyway.)

It's easy to get lost in all the analytics/'best' tools/calculations/blah-blah-blah specifics before actually trying something. Thank you.

 

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

[Stayer]

My stores use Interspire shopping cart, but they are discontinuing that in a few months. Most carts can do that with the URL. They are called SEO friendly URLs.

Could you recommend an alternative to expiring Interspire shopping cart? I did a search on the forum and saw you talked about trying CS-Cart out. How did it go?

Also, I've seen some shopping cart solutions offer monthly cost alongside their full license cost. Would you recommend this for starters or better go full license? I initially open a shop selling 32 products and not sure if I could justify a full cost of shopping cart license at this point.

 

[Tiger]

My stores use Interspire shopping cart, but they are discontinuing that in a few months. Most carts can do that with the URL. They are called SEO friendly URLs.

IMO, a nice clean site is better than a cluttered site with too much information or too many seals, symbols and logos.

You going to be going with BigCommerce since you're already on Interspire? Too bad they don't have multiple storefronts.

I know Americommerce has multiple storefronts with a unified backend.

If you have some good rankings it would be a shame to frick that up by changing to a new framework. Maybe stick with BC.

 

[Iqen]

Hi,

What percentage your sales are from the marketplaces, like Ebay and Amazon (if any)?

 

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

[verial]

For some reason I cannot PM the original poster.

I have a ecommerce site that has been up for one month, but with no sales. I've been running an adwords campaign and am getting traffic. I am a professional copywriter and know my adwords ad has no problems qualifying and getting the kind of traffic I want, but I still have no sales. Can anyone help me out by taking a look at my site?

 

[verial]

By the way, am I allowed to post my site in this thread? If not, please PM me if you are willing to help out.

 

[biophase]

Could you recommend an alternative to expiring Interspire shopping cart? I did a search on the forum and saw you talked about trying CS-Cart out. How did it go?

Also, I've seen some shopping cart solutions offer monthly cost alongside their full license cost. Would you recommend this for starters or better go full license? I initially open a shop selling 32 products and not sure if I could justify a full cost of shopping cart license at this point.

CS-Cart's backend wasn't as easy to use as interspire/bigcommerce. I would go with the monthly hosted carts if you aren't technical, can't upgrade your software and cannot do things such as create an sql database. You also get a better server with the hosted carts vs. a shared cheapo server. The main issue with a hosted cart is the bandwidth prices. They can make your cart cost alot more per month.

 

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

[biophase]

You going to be going with BigCommerce since you're already on Interspire? Too bad they don't have multiple storefronts.

I know Americommerce has multiple storefronts with a unified backend.

If you have some good rankings it would be a shame to frick that up by changing to a new framework. Maybe stick with BC.

I used to want to have multiple storefronts, but most of these use the same backend and therefore use the same photos and same descriptions on each store. What good are multiple storefronts if you products are exactly the same? I've always thought we did that for SEO purposes. I like having different descriptions and photos for each store.

I would probably switch to BC one day, but my bandwidth usage would put my stores into $100/mo.

 

[biophase]

Hi,

What percentage your sales are from the marketplaces, like Ebay and Amazon (if any)?

I don't sell on Amazon yet. I do sell on Ebay. I don't use it for sales. I use it for marketing. My prices are super high on Ebay. Therefore I don't expect many sales. What I do expect is people to see my auctions, see my products and see my brand. Then hopefully they search the brand and buy from someone else on Ebay or mine or somebody else's stores.

Ebay w/paypal takes up over 10% of your gross. Amazon takes 15%. That's alot of money.

I will be opening an Amazon store soon, again using it for mainly marketing.

 

[biophase]

For some reason I cannot PM the original poster.

I have a ecommerce site that has been up for one month, but with no sales. I've been running an adwords campaign and am getting traffic. I am a professional copywriter and know my adwords ad has no problems qualifying and getting the kind of traffic I want, but I still have no sales. Can anyone help me out by taking a look at my site?

I turned off PMs. I don't want to answer specific questions for people. If you want to post your store on this thread I can take a look at it. That way, everyone else can also learn.

The first thing I would do is look at your analytics and find out what the people are doing once they get to your site. Install some video capture to see where their mouse is going. Then look at your funnels to see if anyone is adding to cart and how far they are getting in the checkout process.

So let me ask you:
Are they landing on the product page that they searched for?
What does a visitor do once they get to your site? Do they bounce? What is their next page?

 

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

[Tiger]

Ebay w/paypal takes up over 10% of your gross. Amazon takes 15%. That's alot of money.

Do you use any other paid source of traffic?

Using Ebay and Amazon really depends on your market and product line. If you are selling items that people only purchase once in a while then it probably doesn't pay since you're counting on that one sale to be profitable.

However if you sell products that people use over and over again like food, then you can use Ebay and Amazon as a marketing expense. You might break even on the sale but you've got a customer to remarket to.

Are you going to stick with Interspire or move to another framework like PrestaCart or Magento?

Best of luck to you. I've enjoyed reading your insight.

 

[Iqen]

I'm starting up an e-commerce site and am curious about mixing dropshipping with stocked products into my assortments. There would be much more drop-shipped products initially; I would eventually try to migrate to full warehousing.

Of course the issue is shipping related (higher costs + have to tell the customer to expect multiple boxes).

I know that some orders of multiple cheap items will take a loss by doing this. But do you think it would still be profitable? It would certainly help a small store owner to grow much faster.

 

[biophase]

Do you use any other paid source of traffic?

Using Ebay and Amazon really depends on your market and product line. If you are selling items that people only purchase once in a while then it probably doesn't pay since you're counting on that one sale to be profitable.

However if you sell products that people use over and over again like food, then you can use Ebay and Amazon as a marketing expense. You might break even on the sale but you've got a customer to remarket to.

Are you going to stick with Interspire or move to another framework like PrestaCart or Magento?

Best of luck to you. I've enjoyed reading your insight.

I run some minimal PPC campaigns (around $300 a month), but other than that it's all organic.

I don't like making sales that are breakeven just to acquire a customer. My niches are small and most people don't repeat buy.

I'm going to stick with Interspire until I find something that is alot better.

 

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

[biophase]

I'm starting up an e-commerce site and am curious about mixing dropshipping with stocked products into my assortments. There would be much more drop-shipped products initially; I would eventually try to migrate to full warehousing.

Of course the issue is shipping related (higher costs + have to tell the customer to expect multiple boxes).

I know that some orders of multiple cheap items will take a loss by doing this. But do you think it would still be profitable? It would certainly help a small store owner to grow much faster.

Where you will lose money is if a customer orders 2 things (dropshipped and warehoused) and pays for next day air. Now you have to ship 2 packages next day. That's way I also keep in stock a few quantity of the dropshipped things. That way when I get an order that includes a dropshipped product and a warehoused product I can ship them both together.

Customers these days don't care about multiple boxes. I think they are all used to it.

 

[verial]

I turned off PMs. I don't want to answer specific questions for people. If you want to post your store on this thread I can take a look at it. That way, everyone else can also learn.

The first thing I would do is look at your analytics and find out what the people are doing once they get to your site. Install some video capture to see where their mouse is going. Then look at your funnels to see if anyone is adding to cart and how far they are getting in the checkout process.

So let me ask you:
Are they landing on the product page that they searched for?
What does a visitor do once they get to your site? Do they bounce? What is their next page?

My site is chinesehandfan.com

I have a 14% bounce rate, which means people are browsing but not buying. No one has added anything to the cart.

Could you recommend a video capture plugin for wordpress?

 

[Pepino]

Verial,
I'm starting out just like you, but I'd like to give you some advice. You need to do some serious marketing/pitching if you want a serious shot at selling your fans. Your cheapest fans are 30 bucks, but you don't give any cool/super-duper/fantastic info about them. 30$ is a lot to pay for a fan unless that fan is totally awesome! So you gotta make them awesome Secondly, I wouldn't mention the material is plastic (unless you start providing lots of other info) and I' d also leave out the price category on the right.
Cheers,
Mike

 

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

[Pepino]

Hi Biophase,
Thanks for helping us out.
Here is my dilemma. I found a product with roughly 50% margin and which sells for around 30 $. The keyword research in Adwords says 670,000 global searches and 110,000 US searches. How does that sound? How would I estimate how many sales I could make? I don't have a site up yet, so I would like to get a feel if this is the right product before I get into Google analytics and PPC campaigns.
Cheers,
Mike

 

[biophase]

My site is chinesehandfan.com

I have a 14% bounce rate, which means people are browsing but not buying. No one has added anything to the cart.

Could you recommend a video capture plugin for wordpress?

My thoughts about your site:

It doesn't look professional. The main picture is way too big.
You have a low bounce rate because there is nothing on your front page so people have to click to another page.
The fans are too expensive IMO. I don't know anything about fans, but when I look at those fans, I'm thinking $15.
I'm not a big fan of wordpress shopping carts (although some are done very well).
Your product pictures are too big and get cutoff on the product page
You have no descriptions on any of the fan pages.


To me, the site doesn't look professional enough to get a sale from a US buyer. It just needs to be cleaned up. Maybe instead of free shipping put the fans cheaper and charge for shipping.