The Entrepreneur Forum | Financial Freedom | Starting a Business | Motivation | Money | Success

Welcome to the only entrepreneur forum dedicated to building life-changing wealth.

Build a Fastlane business. Earn real financial freedom. Join free.

Join over 80,000 entrepreneurs who have rejected the paradigm of mediocrity and said "NO!" to underpaid jobs, ascetic frugality, and suffocating savings rituals— learn how to build a Fastlane business that pays both freedom and lifestyle affluence.

Free registration at the forum removes this block.

Bought 2 new websites from Shopify Exchange

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

Ecom man

Legendary Contributor
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
496%
Apr 17, 2014
1,039
5,154
35
Interesting business, buying from Shopify Exchange. Always use some logic - is there anyone willing to sell their business, if it still produces money? Would you sell your chicken laying golden eggs? I once bought a website through flippa - and got burned. It was my first and last buy on flippa. Anyway, good luck with those sites.
There will always be people who know more than you and people who know less. If you can buy a site from someone who knows less than you, build it to the max of your knowledge, and then sell it to someone who has more knowledge, you can make a good profit.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

ddzc

Gold Contributor
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
216%
May 22, 2012
577
1,247
Toronto
Absolutely love this thread and the progress thus far. I hope both businesses explode. Do you sell International or US only?

I've been playing around with Google Ads myself lately.
Have you found that certain campaign methods are driving more sales than others (for eg, sales/gmail, sales/display network, shopping, etc) or you running Brand Awareness & Retargetting?

I've been testing their new audience methods which seemed quite interesting at first "Affinity Audiences/In-Market Audiences", as opposed to search. I found many which fit my customer base, but I've had not much luck so far, lots of clicks but it seems like junk traffic. Curious if you've gotten decent results there (if you're used them before). I'm trying to shy away from keyword searches, in my niche, it's super competitive and pricey ($3-4 CPC) for page 1 results.
 
Last edited:

andviv

Gold Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
40%
Jul 27, 2007
5,361
2,143
Washington DC
I once bought a website through flippa - and got burned. It was my first and last buy on flippa.
Just curious, what was your criteria to buy? What did you know about the business? the market? What was your plan to improve the business? What was the opportunity you saw?

Anyway, probably you would be better off here if you posted a Lessons Learned thread as to not derail this one.
 

Ecom man

Legendary Contributor
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
496%
Apr 17, 2014
1,039
5,154
35
Absolutely love this thread and the progress thus far. I hope both businesses explode. Do you sell International or US only?

I've been playing around with Google Ads myself lately.
Have you found that certain campaign methods are driving more sales than others (for eg, sales/gmail, sales/display network, shopping, etc) or you running Brand Awareness & Retargetting?

I've been testing their new audience methods which seemed quite interesting at first "Affinity Audiences/In-Market Audiences", as opposed to search. I found many which fit my customer base, but I've had not much luck so far, lots of clicks but it seems like junk traffic. Curious if you've gotten decent results there (if you're used them before). I'm trying to shy away from keyword searches, in my niche, it's super competitive and pricey ($3-4 CPC) for page 1 results.
Google shopping is by far the most cost effective way to advertise on google. You can control bidding on individual items so starting low and slowly raising bids as you gain more conversion data is the way to go.

For the last week I’ve averaged .16 a click on mobile shopping and .31 a click on desktop and tablet.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

andviv

Gold Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
40%
Jul 27, 2007
5,361
2,143
Washington DC
It's been a week since your last update... how are the new ads performing?

More adjusts needed?

Any new insights now that you have had more data?
 

Andy Black

Help people. Get paid. Help more people.
Staff member
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
370%
May 20, 2014
18,568
68,703
Ireland
Separated mobile and desktop into separate campaigns and adjusted bids accordingly.

Lowered bids significantly and then slowly started bumping them back up. My average cpc across all campaigns was .64 when I started. It’s currently running .21 per click in the last 7 days

I added a bunch of negative keywords to all the campaigns based on irrelevant search terms or not specific enough search terms. For example let’s say I’m selling a dresser. I most likely wouldn’t want my site to come up when a person just searches the word “dresser” instead I want to come up when someone search’s a far more specific term which means they are further down the buying tunnel. So in that scenario I would exclude the exact match [dresser] so my ads don’t show for someone who only types that single word.
Yes, I’ve seen that as well. Google Shopping can appear for search terms too early in the buying cycle. We’ll also add those keywords as exact match negatives.

We then create a paid search campaign for the info-seekers and send them to a squeeze page to get their email address.

It’s early days yet with that, but it’s exciting to see the consistent trickle of people signing up every day. Now we just need to figure out how to educate them to the point they want to buy.
 

ItsAJackal

Bronze Contributor
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
120%
Oct 16, 2018
177
213
This thread is great, definitely going to follow.

One question, you said your goal was to flip both of these sites? Is that still the goal? Will you just relist on Shopify Exchange or Flippa at a higher price?

Also, might have missed it. Is your first successful business also a Shopify store?
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.
Last edited:

Ecom man

Legendary Contributor
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
496%
Apr 17, 2014
1,039
5,154
35
Any updates?
Sorry been swamped with business and other exciting life things happening.

I’ve been averaging 1 sale a day ($300-$500) so after ads and product costs I’ve been break even or at a slight lost for sure 1. I think the issue is the products are more likely to be bought in store vs online as the product line is more people wanting to try it out before buying. My conversion rates are ridiculously low across the board so I’m not sure if I’m not conveying enough trust or if the in store factor is why people aren’t buying.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

AppMan

Bronze Contributor
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
68%
May 25, 2019
280
189
I’ve been averaging 1 sale a day ($300-$500) so after ads and product costs I’ve been break even or at a slight lost for sure 1. I think the issue is the products are more likely to be bought in store vs online as the product line is more people wanting to try it out before buying. My conversion rates are ridiculously low across the board so I’m not sure if I’m not conveying enough trust or if the in store factor is why people aren’t buying.

How are the organic traffics ? do you get 100 unique visitor daily ?
 
Last edited:

AgainstAllOdds

Legendary Contributor
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
647%
Dec 26, 2014
2,274
14,724
32
Chicago, IL
I’ve been averaging 1 sale a day ($300-$500) so after ads and product costs I’ve been break even or at a slight lost for sure 1.

Damn. So as of now, after all your effort, it looks like a waste of time?

By the way -- great thread. I've really enjoyed reading so far.
 

Ecom man

Legendary Contributor
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
496%
Apr 17, 2014
1,039
5,154
35
Damn. So as of now, after all your effort, it looks like a waste of time?

By the way -- great thread. I've really enjoyed reading so far.
In a way it certainly has been as I have been unable to bring the conversion rate up as I was expecting. I do still have a few things that I’m going to try and do including installing a payment app as obviously making 4 payments on a $300 item might make it better for some people. If those don’t work I’m not sure what My next step is going to be besides resell it.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

uroz

Contributor
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
150%
Dec 2, 2016
18
27
36
Thanks for your honesty.
What about the second site? Anything interesting there?
 

struka

Bronze Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
124%
Feb 22, 2018
112
139
TN
Out of curiosity, what are the items that the site is selling where they purchaser has to try it out in store before buying online?

Part of me wants to do this as a learning experience.
 

Ecom man

Legendary Contributor
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
496%
Apr 17, 2014
1,039
5,154
35
Thanks for your honesty.
What about the second site? Anything interesting there?
Honestly I haven’t had time to do anything with it and it hasn’t sold anything organically. My guess is the person selling it was running all of his storefront business through it which is why the numbers were so high with no residual customers once it was purchased.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Champion

Silver Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
103%
Apr 12, 2019
682
701
Hamburg, Germany
Hey Ecom man, thanks a lot for sharing this.

I am currently building my first shopify store and will launch it in the next 2-3 weeks.

Just out of curiosity, the 1-1.5m business ur talking about, did you also build that up with an online shop?

Best
 

Dan_Fastlane

Silver Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Read Unscripted!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
170%
Jan 3, 2017
412
701
World Citizen
@Ecom man hey do you still work on those shops, if yes how its going? and would you still recommend to buy a shopify shop and then fine-tuning it?
 

Ecom man

Legendary Contributor
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
496%
Apr 17, 2014
1,039
5,154
35
Hey Ecom man, thanks a lot for sharing this.

I am currently building my first shopify store and will launch it in the next 2-3 weeks.

Just out of curiosity, the 1-1.5m business ur talking about, did you also build that up with an online shop?

Best
Yeah my main business has been built over a number of years started with eBay and transitioned to Shopify a few years back.
 
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

Ecom man

Legendary Contributor
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
496%
Apr 17, 2014
1,039
5,154
35
@Ecom man hey do you still work on those shops, if yes how its going? and would you still recommend to buy a shopify shop and then fine-tuning it?
Yes site number 1 is currently only doing 2k a month in sales with site number 2 doing 0. I think buying a shop is a good way to go BUT I would say more expensive shops with longer track records are a better bet than ones like I bought. Also the high $$$ items that are on both sites is new to me as my AOV that I’m used to is $80-100 vs $300-500 AOV on the new sites. I don’t know how to curate trust with people on those higher AOV sites yet. I’m going to spend some time and money working on seo/email sequences and see what I can make happen with site 1 as I still feel like it could turn into something good with some effort.

On a side note I actually started a new site with POD products that has done $300 in sales in the first 10 days with about $100 in ad spend. So a little better than break even on that new site and it should have some good upside as the item categories get built out.
 

100k

Gold Contributor
Read Fastlane!
Speedway Pass
User Power
Value/Post Ratio
149%
Oct 20, 2012
1,529
2,284
I don’t know how to curate trust with people on those higher AOV sites yet.

Maybe create a landing page on your site, offering a loss leader / tripwire offer that most people can't turn down that would be the perfect antecedent for someone looking to buy your main core offer, then up-sell them the core offer through a 1 click upsell (once you've already captured their CC details).

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnsEHtELUlQ


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRmFi9pCNk0
 

Post New Topic

Please SEARCH before posting.
Please select the BEST category.

Post new topic

Guest post submissions offered HERE.

New Topics

Fastlane Insiders

View the forum AD FREE.
Private, unindexed content
Detailed process/execution threads
Ideas needing execution, more!

Join Fastlane Insiders.

Top