Ask me anything about eCommerce (2012)

[CEBenz]

Hey Biophase. I have a question. How would you go about marketing items that are prohibited on many ppc/ppm type paid advertising channels? I'm trying to get a marketing plan in place. Thanks! Let me know if pm or a phone call might be a better way to discuss it.

 

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[Whiphsh]

Awesome thread! I've just finished going through all of it.

I have one question, what if I wanted to sell in US but manage everything from Europe? Would there be any problems (licensing, taxes, whatever)?

I'm asking this because I live in a small country (2.5 m people) so the market isn't very large and if I wanted to expand to the rest of Europe I'd probably have to translate pages to a quite a few languages (not like I couldn't do it, though).

The talk is about drop shipping.

I'd certainly stock up on the items if I wanted to sell locally (which I probably will when I earn some money).

 

[CPisHere]

I have a retail store with several thousand SKU's over several categories and my POS system doesn't integrate with Shopify/BigCommerce/Magento, etc. This makes managing products a very manual process, which has really discouraged me from pursuing it.

Yesterday someone said that I should go a niche or two deeper for selling online to drastically reduce the number of items I have to manage and be laser focused on the target market. This sounded like great advice so my plan is to focus on no more than 50 products across 2 categories - all priced between $15 to $30. Does this sound like a good idea?

 

[Denim Chicken]

So much misinformation about SEO in this thread it is ridiculous. Keyword domains and exact match domains will always work. Why? Because google cannot determine if you are searching for a domain name or or a keyword.

For example... "Cool Dog Collrs". Google doesn't know when people are typing in cool dog collars" if the searcher is searching for "cool dog collars" or the domain cooldogcollars.com: The Leading Cool Dog Collar Site on the Net. When people search for brands, they don't type in www.

I have been reading the information about SEO and I can say that a lot of of the SEO info in this thread is regurgitated info. No offense to those who are contributing but unless you are testing every method possible on dozens of sites, you really don't know what you are talking about.

And if you are trying to get into SEO at this point, my opinion is don't. UNless you want to spend two years and thousands of dollars trying to figure out how it works, you really have no chance. Learn something else. Really, SEO is not what you think and you have to devote your life to it. It is an all or nothing thing. Unless you want to compete with me, you really have no chance. Not to say that you shouldn't spend some money here and there on it, but there are better ways to drive traffic if you don't have time to get sucked into it.

Take this advice or leave it. Just see many people who are going to get burned by SEO.

Your PM box is full. If youre taking candidates for your course, lmk. Got an EIN, DBA, filing for city business license, applying for merchant accounts and credit card/checking, got a business address, money for hosting domain, etc.

Also want to get your take on black hat seo and why you think it's the best? Do you feel its best to make mad traffic and money in the beginning and get burned by google and start over or are you proposing black hat done right to be successful for the long haul esp with important websites that operate and bring in personal income purely on organic traffic?

 

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[Genium]

I have a question or two about importing, I am having some trouble figuring out how to go about it and I have read a lot online and it is still confusing.

Can you give me any advice on the steps you have taken to import from China to Arizona? I know I am going to have to have the product transported from the port to AZ.. Is the order of importing: Manufacturer, then Port, then to the US via sea, then through customs, then from port to where I live (Arizona)?

I would really appreciate some help, if there is anything I can do to learn from someone that has already done it and knows how it works, I would rather pay them, rather than just jump in knowing nothing.

Thank you,

Tyrel

 

[JAJT]

I would really appreciate some help, if there is anything I can do to learn from someone that has already done it and knows how it works,

Use the search feature. There are a few people on here with threads detailing importing. Vigilante's "Addicted to passive income" thread being the #1 place to start.

 

[Denim Chicken]

Biophase, how do you recommend getting images or photos when you are drop shipping? Particularly expensive products? I assume taking them off a competitor's website may or may not work depending on whether they took the photos themselves or if they are stock photos. How can you tell? When you contact suppliers do you ask for a media kit or is the only way to really do this is to stock a few and take some photos and sell one as refurbished?

 

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[JamesS88]

Hey Bio,

I sent you an email, let me know if you don't receive it, please. Thanks.

-James

P.S. It's not asking anything of you, I just wanted to show you something.

 

[Azharr]

would you recommend a custom ecommerce store using frameworks e.g rubyonrails?

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk 2

 

[karakoram]

Just my opinion: Using ROR is fine if you are a really good ruby programmer.
With all the open source really high quality shopping carts already available for free, why reinvent the wheel?
In my own case, I like wordpress a lot, and I am using woocommerce, an eCommerce wordpress plugin, though I might find in the future, it may end up being a bottleneck (I have only a few products and not a lot of traffic yet). However, I can still always install an Open source eCommerce shopping cart alongside of my wordpress site.

 

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[HD_edacity]

Hey guys, I'm based in Canada and i know everybody favors a .com domain but would .ca be better if i'm aiming local at least for now?

 

[Azharr]

Just my opinion: Using ROR is fine if you are a really good ruby programmer.
With all the open source really high quality shopping carts already available for free, why reinvent the wheel?
In my own case, I like wordpress a lot, and I am using woocommerce, an eCommerce wordpress plugin, though I might find in the future, it may end up being a bottleneck (I have only a few products and not a lot of traffic yet). However, I can still always install an Open source eCommerce shopping cart alongside of my wordpress site.

no ssl?

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk 2

 

[biophase]

no ssl?

You can have SSL on these. ??

 

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[biophase]

Hey guys, I'm based in Canada and i know everybody favors a .com domain but would .ca be better if i'm aiming local at least for now?

I would still go for a .com

 

[biophase]

would you recommend a custom ecommerce store using frameworks e.g rubyonrails?

I would get an off the shelf one. No reason to make your own.

 

[karakoram]

no ssl?

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk 2

You can have SSL on your site. In fact, I strongly recommend it. I setup my eCommerce with with Wordpress and Woocommerce. I purchased an SSL cert for 1 year with Namecheap for like $10 or $15. I had to buy a dedicated IP from my host for an additional $25/yr. I use MDDhosting for all of my sites. I have many sites, but only a few hosting accounts, as you can host more than one site under an account.

They also support ROR if you prefer to use that (though I usually use wordpress). They also support OpenCart, Magento and a bunch of other open source and very popular eCommerce software packages. THey have 1 click installation of wordpress or any of the offered eCommerce packages. They have a LOT of other open source software available as well as a 1-click install. FOr example, I use Piwik analytics.

Thier tech support is very responsive and effective as well. Recently, they protected all of their customers' accounts (including mine) from the wordpress "admin" attack before we were attacked. THey sent us all an email to notify us of the actions they took to protect us, and so that we could log back into wordpress (I NEVER use "admin" for any of my installed open source software like Wordpress).

If you are planning on having a LOT of different products right away, I would setup a site like this: Install Wordpress as your front end, along with SEO plugins. PUt lots of seo optimized content (text, tagged images and video). Then install OpenCart or Magento (or your favorite eCommerce package), and link the main wordpress site to the shopping cart.

The reason for doing it this way are 2 fold:
1) Wordpress is a lot easier to SEO optimize for search terms. Its easier to get a wordpress site to rank well.

2) Dedicated open source shopping cart software is better at handling the eCommerce side of things but is harder to SEO optimize.

SEtting up a site this way gets you the best of both worlds.


If, instead, you are only doing a FEW products (this is my situation) then just install Wordpress then wooCommerce. wooCommerce is free, but you will also need a wooTheme and a couple of other smaller plugins that are not free. I bought the Stripe plugin for wooCommerce so I can take credit card directly on my site. WooCommerce supports Paypal out of the box, so I have both those options on my site. You might consider one of the shipping integration plugins (fedex, UPS, USPS) as well.

The other thing I bought was a WooTheme that works well with their wooCommerce plugin.

SSL or not is not dependent on using ROR or Wordpress or whatever you use. It is dependent on your host.

I will also add that if your business model is a SaaS (software as a service) and not eCommerce, and you are offering a pretty unique product, I would have that part built in Ruby, or Python. But if your business is eCommerce, I stand by my earlier comments-- WHy reinvent the wheel?

 

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[Azharr]

where to learn about inventory and value delivery management?

how do you partner with a courier company? price taken from retail (wholesale price) clothes $99/piece taken from "source" $16/pc but min. 8 - 1 set

this is clothing...

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk 2

 

[Azharr]

You can have SSL on your site. In fact, I strongly recommend it. I setup my eCommerce with with Wordpress and Woocommerce. I purchased an SSL cert for 1 year with Namecheap for like $10 or $15. I had to buy a dedicated IP from my host for an additional $25/yr. I use MDDhosting for all of my sites. I have many sites, but only a few hosting accounts, as you can host more than one site under an account.

They also support ROR if you prefer to use that (though I usually use wordpress). They also support OpenCart, Magento and a bunch of other open source and very popular eCommerce software packages. THey have 1 click installation of wordpress or any of the offered eCommerce packages. They have a LOT of other open source software available as well as a 1-click install. FOr example, I use Piwik analytics.

Thier tech support is very responsive and effective as well. Recently, they protected all of their customers' accounts (including mine) from the wordpress "admin" attack before we were attacked. THey sent us all an email to notify us of the actions they took to protect us, and so that we could log back into wordpress (I NEVER use "admin" for any of my installed open source software like Wordpress).

If you are planning on having a LOT of different products right away, I would setup a site like this: Install Wordpress as your front end, along with SEO plugins. PUt lots of seo optimized content (text, tagged images and video). Then install OpenCart or Magento (or your favorite eCommerce package), and link the main wordpress site to the shopping cart.

The reason for doing it this way are 2 fold:
1) Wordpress is a lot easier to SEO optimize for search terms. Its easier to get a wordpress site to rank well.

2) Dedicated open source shopping cart software is better at handling the eCommerce side of things but is harder to SEO optimize.

SEtting up a site this way gets you the best of both worlds.


If, instead, you are only doing a FEW products (this is my situation) then just install Wordpress then wooCommerce. wooCommerce is free, but you will also need a wooTheme and a couple of other smaller plugins that are not free. I bought the Stripe plugin for wooCommerce so I can take credit card directly on my site. WooCommerce supports Paypal out of the box, so I have both those options on my site. You might consider one of the shipping integration plugins (fedex, UPS, USPS) as well.

The other thing I bought was a WooTheme that works well with their wooCommerce plugin.

SSL or not is not dependent on using ROR or Wordpress or whatever you use. It is dependent on your host.

I will also add that if your business model is a SaaS (software as a service) and not eCommerce, and you are offering a pretty unique product, I would have that part built in Ruby, or Python. But if your business is eCommerce, I stand by my earlier comments-- WHy reinvent the wheel?

mine is $2.80 all unlimited us swrver with cdn

500 inc.

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk 2

 

[Brentnal]

Hey everyone, I've been getting alot of PMs lately about my ecommerce stores so I thought I'd just start a thread where you can post questions abouy anything ecommerce (suppliers, platforms, credit card processors, SEO, dropshipping, etc...) and I will try to answer them here.

I want to start making money on ebay i am completely new to this i don't got any business knowledge. Kan you make a list and tell me a few important things if you got time i will look on the internet to for some information i have only 160 euro's and i live in holland.
If you want some more info about me related to your info just ask.

 

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[Pure5abi]

What would you recommend for a newbie with no knowledge and experience with ecommerce? Or someone who doesn't know how or where to start? Thank You

 

[AllenCrawley]

What would you recommend for a newbie with no knowledge and experience with ecommerce? Or someone who doesn't know how or where to start? Thank You

1. Start by reading this entire thread.

2. Read it again and take detailed notes.

3. Then, if necessary, ask more specific questions.

 

[LibertyForMe]

I have read the entire thread and took notes, and read all the content that was linked to in this thread as well. I have a question that didn't appear in any of the prior information.

I found a clothing product that is a fairly niche product. It comes in mens and womens, and I would be focusing on men to start with. The main keyword gets 2,400 local searches, but other similar keywords add an extra 2,500 or so for a total of around 5,000 monthly local searches. The CPC is around $1.50, and google keyword tool says competition for these keywords are high.

The reason why I am interested in this product is because there is not one store that is dedicated to selling this product specifically, but instead there are multiple big name stores that have from 2 to 10 of my product category in their massive catalog of offerings. This would be very similar to ghille suits, in that you specialized on just one category of product, while big names like Bass Pro or Cabelas may carry them in addition to their massive amount of other products.

My question concerns the viability of ranking high on Google. Since the primary competitors at the top of google search results are big department stores, would my online store focused exclusively on one product be able to displace such large and well respected establishments? I know I can produce good content and offer value, but is it foolish to take on such large companies by laser-focusing on one product category?

Thanks, I love all the info that I have gleaned from your posts! If you need any details, or need me to clarify my question, just let me know.

 

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[GoodGuyGG]

I have a question, when I make an onine store with lets say tshirts with walt disney characters. How can I make it "legal?". Because I think that disney characters e.g. donald duck is copyrighted so if I print them on my tshirt they will take me to the court.

Is it possible for me (with a very low budget ), to buy such licences?? Thanks In advance and nice theard so far

 

[Talisman]

Is it possible for me (with a very low budget ), to buy such licences?? Thanks In advance and nice theard so far

Go find out - and let us know.

Seriously - go do some research, or just call Disney marketing and find out. Dont be afraid.

 

[Talisman]

My question concerns the viability of ranking high on Google. Since the primary competitors at the top of google search results are big department stores, would my online store focused exclusively on one product be able to displace such large and well respected establishments? I know I can produce good content and offer value, but is it foolish to take on such large companies by laser-focusing on one product category?

Just my opinion - but if you're laser focussing on this niche, and your whole site is about this niche, you can smash the department stores out of the water.

Just don't expect it to happen in 2 weeks.

 

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[daniel21]

I have a question about niche selection in regards to 10 google results competition. I have noticed that some of the niche I have start to research like camcorders, baby monitors, office chairs, watches etc. have alot of big names in google top ten like walmart, amazon, overstock.com, target, etc.

1) I was wondering whether it is possible to eventually compete with these top sites, after years of work of course (organic seo, marketing, adding value).

2) Are some of the niches that I am going after to big. Should I look to niche down: instead of baby monitors only sell a specific type or brand.

3) Also is a bad sign to not see any other ecommerce stores in the top 10 or top 20 of google in a niche? Would you consider this a red flag?

 

[teabag]

Thank you to everyone for contributing to this thread. I was awake from 11pm-4am reading and doing more research on things I didn't understand... It was worth it!

I'm 22 and recently pulled out of university (was studying Business/Law for 2 years). It may or may not have been the best choice I could've made, but I just didn't have the 'university discipline of study' to continue for another 3 years. You could only imagine the problems this has caused at home with my family...

I'm wanting to get into drop shipping, and this past 2 months I've been searching my 'niche' and have found many different fields to enter. I was hoping OP and anyone else who has had experience in this field of business could give me some advice?

As a drop shipper, what is your objective?


Are you looking to make a large profit margin on each product sold - or do you concentrate on selling larger volumes at a competitive price?


When you say you need to test an item before deciding 100% that it is your chosen niche, what does testing involve? Do you open multiple online stores, purchase domain names and start your SEO/PPC campagins?

Or do you test your product on ebay and see if there is a market for it?


When looking for a niche is there a profit range you're looking for? Would there be any point in specialising in products which only make a couple of dollars product? Let's say stationary for example. It doesn't seem practical to spend money of niches like that which only generate a small profit margin, unless you sold a huge quantity.


Also as a drop shipper, what's stopping a person from going on ebay and finding your same product for a cheaper price? As the drop shipper, what value do you give to the customer, that big brand names/ebay/amazon stores don't?

Thank you so much for your time everyone!

 

[asadsaffa]

Hey Dear I just wanted to know that could you please tell me where is the best places for promoting a shopping cart system.

 

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[marc100]

Do you have an app or a mobile version of your stores? If not have you seen any decline in business from not having that?
have you seen any change in business from people shopping with a mobile device?
how much traffic to you is mobile?
thanks

Im asking because i have a store and dont have a mobile presence and getting concerned that Ill get lost without that

 

[Darius]

Hey Biophase,

Hope all is well. I have a pretty simple question.

Have you ever experienced a female sales rep flirting with you on Skype after seeing your profile photo? lol

Thank you for taking the time out to answer this.