Ask me anything about eCommerce (2012)

[biophase]

Dan Da Man or other experts: when you set up a new store every month, do you apply license for each and every one of them? I am planning to open two stores (dropship and my own inventory), and the business license people said if the domain names are different then I need to apply for different licences. Is it better to set up some kind of corp? LLC is out, because it's too expensive.

You should not need a license for every domain but maybe it's different in your state. You should have a company name, and that company could be doing business as under different names.

 

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[AllenCrawley]

Hey guys, just checking in for a quick second. I am currently in Zanzibar and have not had internet for the past 4 days and probably won't for the next week. So I won't be on this forum until later in the month when I get back to the states.

Interesting things for you guys to ponder while I'm here in Africa...
Most people make $150 a month, $500 a month is a great salary
Interest rates are 25% on home loans
Most people pay cash for land, then buy materials as they save money. It could take them 10 years to build a house, but they have no loans on them

Just curious, why did you visit Zanzibar? Did you visit other countries while in Africa? I would like to visit Zimbabwe and South Africa next year with our Associate Pastor for ministry work.

 

[biophase]

Just curious, why did you visit Zanzibar? Did you visit other countries while in Africa? I would like to visit Zimbabwe and South Africa next year with our Associate Pastor for ministry work.

I only visited Tanzania and Zanzibar. I went there for business mainly.

 

[DeletedUser4]

Even though I am a stay-at-home mom, I don't sit around watching TV and eating bonbons. I have been looking for business opp and found this board to be so valuable. I am also a realtor, and I do BPOs (mini appraisal) for banks and I don't enjoy doing them.

Amail, you are so great! I can't believe how much you have progressed! We joined this forum around the same time! How do I rep you?

I think a lot of women have the same mindset as you did in the beginning of this thread, Susanyang - a lot of them spend all day taking care of others and that's a tough thing to get of when it comes time to sit down and do something for yourself, like start a business. But there are huge advantages because I get the impression that the majority of ecommerce shop owners are male, and I know there are some untapped niches out there just waiting to be monetized that only us ladies understand!

 

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[JasonR]

Oh yeah - I think there are hundreds of niches out there geared toward women. I'd love to start one if I could find the right niche (and the time).

 

[tincho1492]

First of all, to Biophase and the other guys, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!! You make a great community. Thank you, guys!

I've just read the whole 31 pages today and am excited as hell.

Right now I'm making some plans to start my first store. Will read other valuables threads (Vigilante's is one of them) and see how I can start importing some stuff from China.

Feels scary but exciting as well, you know what I mean

I think there are hundreds of niches out there geared toward women. I'd love to start one if I could find the right niche (and the time).

I'm starting to work on one right now

 

[tincho1492]

If you're looking for trusted suppliers maybe you can search for the ones that exibit their products on sourcing fairs. Like this:

China Sourcing Fair: Garments & Textiles, Global Sources Trade Show Center: Search

I believe this is a good start.

 

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[St.Alpine]

Hi Kenric,

great stuff in this and Vigilantes thread.
I try to find out if my niche makes sense, financially.

I am researching with google adwords
and found 1300 global searches a month.

I calculated the following hypothetical profit:

40% CTR (assuming #1 on google) are 520 searches.
Conversion rate 1,5% from 520 is 7,8.

I make a profit per product of 110$.
That would equal to 858$ profit.
That is just for my main keyword.


The competition is high. So assuming a 7% CTR
would equal to 150,15$ profit.

My fear is, the niche is to small and the competition
to high, that I can rank on #4 or #5 in a reasonable
time.

Would you go for it anyway, because this is just one keyword,
or scrap it altogether?

 

[theag]

Hi Kenric,

great stuff in this and Vigilantes thread.
I try to find out if my niche makes sense, financially.

I am researching with google adwords
and found 1300 global searches a month.

I calculated the following hypothetical profit:

40% CTR (assuming #1 on google) are 520 searches.
Conversion rate 1,5% from 520 is 7,8.

I make a profit per product of 110$.
That would equal to 858$ profit.
That is just for my main keyword.


The competition is high. So assuming a 7% CTR
would equal to 150,15$ profit.

My fear is, the niche is to small and the competition
to high, that I can rank on #4 or #5 in a reasonable
time.

Would you go for it anyway, because this is just one keyword,
or scrap it altogether?

You should always look at local searches, not global. Also, you will get 90%+ of your traffic from longtail keywords, so you have to examine how "deep" your niche is. IMO, 1300 global searches for your main keyword is on the low end for a good niche.

I recommend you take a look at the ebook from ecommercefuel.com, its really good! He explains the process very thoroughly.

 

[Jeremy]

So much misinformation about SEO in this thread it is ridiculous. Keyword domains and exact match domains will always work

Yeah, but the misinformation is coming from you.

Always work?

You mean until last week?

The EMD Update: Google Issues "Weather Report" Of Crack Down On Low Quality Exact Match Domains

The head of Google web spam fighting team Matt Cutts announced on Twitter that Google will be rolling out a “small†algorithm change that will “reduce low-quality ‘exact-match’ domains†from showing up so highly in the search results.

 

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[shizah]

Jeremy - Dan Da Man is not actually giving out bad SEO information. What people need to understand is that EMD will always work because of type in traffic. There are domainers who make multi-millions of dollars a year just based on type in traffic. Also, look at what Matt Cutts said - low quality sites. This is mainly going to target thin sites and most ecommerce sites will not fall into this category because of the amount of content ecommerce sites have. Not to mention if anyone listens to Matt Cutts - they might well forget about SEO and go the PPC route.

 

[St.Alpine]

You should always look at local searches, not global.

I made a mistake. The 1300 ARE the local search volume.
To less to jump into it for my taste.

I just finished the EcommerceFuel book. Took me about 4,5 hours
to read it and try all the stuff out.
But man, it was worth it.

Next thing is the SEO: The Free Beginner?s Guide From SEOmoz.

 

[Dan Da Man]

Yeah, but the misinformation is coming from you.

Always work?

You mean until last week?

The EMD Update: Google Issues "Weather Report" Of Crack Down On Low Quality Exact Match Domains

OMG. Seriously bro, close your mouth if you don't know what you are talking about and clearly you have no idea what you are talking about.

First, Matt Cunts is a blatant liar. He is Google's minion who relays misinformation to people dumb enough to listen (such as yourself) so that they can fail miserable at SEO. Why? because when people fail at SEO they turn to adwords. People turning to adwords means more money for Google. SEO means less money for google.

Matt Cunts says a whole of bullshit but I guess you would have to know a little about SEO to know this.

Second, this "EMD" update was a clear blowing of smoke in the air, to get SEO'ers to scramble. They labeled it the "EMD" update because they could. It was clearly not targeting EMDs but EMDs are typically easy to spot and easy to burn down. They simply flip a switch and refresh all search results. Nothing has changed in SEO just sites got hit. EMDs rank same as they use to. Take a look for yourself.

And also a lot of good sites got hit. Many of mine which were not even EMD got hit. What does this tell you? Tells you that they were not targeting EMD but targeting whatever the hell else they want to target. For all I am concerned they just F*ck up sites to F*ck up sites, making SEOers quit. Simple as that. I have no proof but I am pretty dam confident and anyone who does SEO for a living would agree with me.

So, next time you open your mouth, try to learn a little bit before so you do not look like a complete idiot.

I really would like to see your next response. A have a whole heep of "misinformation" would like to see your Matt Cunt's response.

 

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[Dan Da Man]

Jeremy - Dan Da Man is not actually giving out bad SEO information. What people need to understand is that EMD will always work because of type in traffic. There are domainers who make multi-millions of dollars a year just based on type in traffic. Also, look at what Matt Cutts said - low quality sites. This is mainly going to target thin sites and most ecommerce sites will not fall into this category because of the amount of content ecommerce sites have. Not to mention if anyone listens to Matt Cutts - they might well forget about SEO and go the PPC route.

Yep. Although 3 of my e-commerce sites were hit, non-EMD, thousands of pages indexed (unique and I mean thousands like 2-3,000) and this is all superior content that cannot be found anywhere. What does this tell me? Like I said in a previous thread this had nothing to do with EMD, it had to do with applying a filter based off what ever they wanted, most likely backlinks or applying a decrease in value to a certain link or who knows what else.

 

[Ambition]

OMG. Seriously bro, close your mouth if you don't know what you are talking about and clearly you have no idea what you are talking about.

I think you are being a little harsh.
I found Jeremy's post useful, although I did take much of the linked article with a little salt. As is often the case, I think it pays to apply a bit of common sense when reading stuff on-line. What the article actually said to me was pure SEO is a game of cat & mouse where you are constantly guessing the algorithm, but if you add quality content you will improve your odds.

 

[nzerinto]

Second, this "EMD" update was a clear blowing of smoke in the air, to get SEO'ers to scramble. They labeled it the "EMD" update because they could. It was clearly not targeting EMDs but EMDs are typically easy to spot and easy to burn down. They simply flip a switch and refresh all search results. Nothing has changed in SEO just sites got hit. EMDs rank same as they use to. Take a look for yourself.

I had approx 30+ EMD "thin" sites that I used for link building testing etc. Every single one of them was hit - went from ranking on the first and second pages, to not ranking in the top 50 results....for every single keyword. In comparison, we manage 5 EMDs for a growing network we are building for a client....none of them got hit. What was the difference? I believe it was the content. The content on the client's site was well written, well researched, thorough and in-depth, and had a nice balance of links with a healthy mixture of anchor text.

I believe the update DID target EMDs, as long as they fulfilled a certain criteria....low quality sites (determined by poor content) with a touch too much On Page Optimization (title tags, descriptions, H1s all containing the keyword, plus content heavily focused around that particular keyword) as well as an anchor text ratio that seemed to favor the keywords more than simple diverse set of links with random anchor text.

Yep. Although 3 of my e-commerce sites were hit, non-EMD, thousands of pages indexed (unique and I mean thousands like 2-3,000) and this is all superior content that cannot be found anywhere. What does this tell me? Like I said in a previous thread this had nothing to do with EMD, it had to do with applying a filter based off what ever they wanted, most likely backlinks or applying a decrease in value to a certain link or who knows what else.

Bear in mind they updated Panda at the same time, so there is a good chance that was what you were hit by....

 

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[JasonR]

Keep in mind that Google would not be around if it didn't deliver search results people wanted. Google, absolutely, needs to protect it's number one product: organic search. Otherwise, very few people would use the engine and the paid ads would be worthless.

I would take the recent posts as an example that SEO can be tricky and tough, and that you absolutely need to read things with a grain of salt. Do you own thinking, make up your own mind about what to believe, and then test it out on your website. Bickering and name calling on an internet forum is a waste of time.

 

[Dan Da Man]

Keep in mind that Google would not be around if it didn't deliver search results people wanted. Google, absolutely, needs to protect it's number one product: organic search. Otherwise, very few people would use the engine and the paid ads would be worthless.

I would take the recent posts as an example that SEO can be tricky and tough, and that you absolutely need to read things with a grain of salt. Do you own thinking, make up your own mind about what to believe, and then test it out on your website. Bickering and name calling on an internet forum is a waste of time.

Again, I dont think you know how SEO works. Organic results loose google money. How do they need organic results? Google is killing themselves because they are neglecting their organic results. Worse and worse results are being pushed up because they are killing organic results. This would be what you might want to do if you owned Google, but remember they have shareholders pressuring them to produce more revenue which means more ads which means less SEO'ers.

Bickering and namecalling is essential when people open their mouth when they don't know what they are talking about, trying to call someone else out who clearly does. In order to make your own thought, you have to have a basic understanding of how Google works. I can't make my own thought about civil engineering because I don't know how it works, therefore my thoughts about how it works is completely retarded and irrelevant.

 

[Jeremy]

Again, I dont think you know how SEO works. Organic results loose google money. How do they need organic results? Google is killing themselves because they are neglecting their organic results. Worse and worse results are being pushed up because they are killing organic results. This would be what you might want to do if you owned Google, but remember they have shareholders pressuring them to produce more revenue which means more ads which means less SEO'ers.

Bickering and namecalling is essential when people open their mouth when they don't know what they are talking about, trying to call someone else out who clearly does. In order to make your own thought, you have to have a basic understanding of how Google works. I can't make my own thought about civil engineering because I don't know how it works, therefore my thoughts about how it works is completely retarded and irrelevant.

So you're basically admitting that organic SEO doesn't work because Google doesn't want it to work. Which is why you have to resort to name calling Matt Cutts--who DOES know what he's talking about given that HE WORKS FOR GOOGLE (remember, the search engine you claim to be able to game).

Like I said in a previous thread this had nothing to do with EMD, it had to do with applying a filter based off what ever they wanted, most likely backlinks or applying a decrease in value to a certain link or who knows what else.

So organic SEO is a bunch of "whatever they wanted" and "who knows what else"--by your OWN WORDS--plus ruled by a company (Google) who you claim doesn't want organic SEO to work.

That's not merely being a passenger in another's wealth vehicle; that's being dragged behind the bumper.

 

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[JamesS88]

Hi Biophase,

What did you do to increase sales on Amazon? I read on your blog that at first you weren't getting many sales, now they're moving a lot of inventory for you. Why the shift?

 

[biophase]

Hi Biophase,

What did you do to increase sales on Amazon? I read on your blog that at first you weren't getting many sales, now they're moving a lot of inventory for you. Why the shift?

Hi James,

It takes a while to get traction on any new platform. I had to do so marketing and other things to get traffic to my Amazon store and listings.

 

[Chitown]

Biophase,

Is there a way to discover product/service demand by zip code? For instance, my old zip in Chicago is 60622. Is there an online tool that allows me to enter my old zip and determine need/solution ideas that may show up in search results?

Thanks, Biophase.

 

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[Kwik]

What is "social e-commerce" ?

 

[PatrickP]

Biophase PLEASE do that lmgtfy : )

 

[biophase]

What is "social e-commerce" ?

Here you go, Patrick.

Let me google that for you

 

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[biophase]

Biophase,

Is there a way to discover product/service demand by zip code? For instance, my old zip in Chicago is 60622. Is there an online tool that allows me to enter my old zip and determine need/solution ideas that may show up in search results?

Thanks, Biophase.

Not that I know of. When posing a question like that, you have to think, What kind of database would have that info? How would they collect that data?

I also question why you would want to know that. Why would you want to know the need of a small geographic region on an ecommerce thread?

 

[andviv]

Why would you want to know the need of a small geographic region on an ecommerce thread?

To offer same-day delivery, ala amazon??? :coolgleamA:

 

[JAJT]

Why would you want to know the need of a small geographic region on an ecommerce thread?

"My smiling face with every purchase"

 

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[JonD]

Biophase-

Thanks for starting a very informative thread. I have read a number of threads concerning e-commerce and importing on this site since I found it.

My question for you, or anyone else that has experience in importing, is it ok to give your shipping account number to manufactures to send sample products? Or should you have them include express shipping of their chosing in the sample order quote?

I thought I read some where on the forum about giving out a shipping account number was okay but I cant seem to locate it again. Im just worried it can or may be used for fraudulent transactions. I have never imported anything before. After finding this site and reading all the informative threads I have decided to finally get something going on my own. so far I have website domains purchased and several products in mind with one I believe can really be branded and will do well with the limited competition.

Currently Im contacting manufacturers and getting sample quotes to test the market. One of these manufacturers wanted my account number for express shipping. So I created a UPS shipping account but Im hesitant on sending it out, dont know if this is a normal practice or not.



Thanks for your time.

 

[biophase]

Biophase-

Thanks for starting a very informative thread. I have read a number of threads concerning e-commerce and importing on this site since I found it.

My question for you, or anyone else that has experience in importing, is it ok to give your shipping account number to manufactures to send sample products? Or should you have them include express shipping of their chosing in the sample order quote?

Hi Jon,

I don't have a shipping account number. I just tell my overseas people to use their account and I pay for the shipping. I am probably spending a little more money, but I'd rather get a straight quote with shipping included from them.

For shipments by boat, I pay for that through a customs broker.