Can I Help YOU?

[Laverdure]

Hi,

I haven't been much active on the forum lately and I would like to answer any kind of question (I'll do my best to answer them all with the knowlegde/experience I have).

Feel FREE to fire up!

Cheers

 

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[DeletedUser2]

1st up. get a avatar for the new site. or you look like a noob.

FYI I have worked with Laverdure, and he is a very helpful guy, and knows his shit.

PS. what kind of questions would you say you can specialize in? because you probably cant help me with a collateralized debt obligation, 2nd tier slice, asset valuation much...

Z

 

[Laverdure]

I surely can ... let me do google/youtube it for the next 30 minutes

P.S: I can answer anything (or almost) about traffic - affiliate marketing - where to start - scaling your business etc.

 

[AroundTheWorld]

Here is how you can be helpful....

Write an article and post it. People aren't going to play a guessing game with you. You have some rep speed, so you have obviously posted some content, but if people don't know you, they will have no idea what to ask....

I don't know you - so I'm tempted to be a smart a$$ and ask things like....

How can I help my 6 year old stop throwing a fit?
How can I find better airline rates when flying out of Montana?
How can I train my dog to return to me when I call him, but he is more interested in chasing a squirrel?
How can I get my teenagers to ski instead of snowboard?
How can I get my ex-mother-in-law to like me?



Cheers

 

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[Laverdure]

I understand your point of view but it's obviously and entrepreneur/biz forum .

I just thought it was logic enough that the question had to be related to a problem they have getting started or scaling their business since the forum is all about it.

 

[AroundTheWorld]

Okay... let me be a little less smart a$$ like.... while still being a smart a$$

How can I start buying apartment buildings?
Should I start investing in tax liens?
What product should I sell on amazon?
How do you manage self storage properties?
How do you publish an ebook?
How can I do a better job getting repeat customers at my restaurant?

The point remains....

I applaud you for wanting to give.... awesome!!

The WAY to give is to write an article and post it, or to start a project and share / track it here.... Don't make people guess about your specific area of experience and knowledge.

 

[Laverdure]

Yes, I get it now there is some question that I might not be able to answer .

 

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[Oven]

Thanks for making this thread, I guess I'll be the first one to take advantage . Not sure if you've seen my progress thread on the inside but I've been working on a new website for the past 2 weeks and I'm seriously having trouble getting sales. I don't know how much experience you've had with ecommerce but maybe you can help me identify why no one is buying. I don't want google indexing this so I'm putting a space in my link but I would really appreciate if you could take a look at my site and tell me if you see any flaws: http://posters rock.com

I know that on the product page the poster image is being cut off a little, I'm working on fixing it. So far I've had just over 100 visits, all from social media and it should be pretty targeted but none have converted. A few people go to the cart page and then I seem to lose them. My current theories:
1. Not enough payment methods
2. High shipping cost

I've been advertising the site for less than a week but I feel like I should have made a sale by now. I'll be trying paid advertising soon but it'll be really nice to fix any potential flaws before I start spending money. I know it's not much data to work with but I'd really like to hear your opinion. Thanks again for doing this.

 

[Lakeview]

I clicked on Lennon poster and did not see categories. I thought all that was available was on home page until I looked at other posters. I would make the categories easier to find.

 

[Laverdure]

I see many flags and there are many factors to improve.

Let's start with the website.

To be honest when we land there (unless you qualify on the ads) I couldn't guess that you were selling posters (with a first quick impression).

I would try to make it more obvious...

Example: you sell them for $11.99... I would write $25 and scratch it with a logo Discounted at $11.99 and put it close to each poster.

Second, have you made any research about this market? if yes, then what the competition is doing and how their website look like?

Third thing, your traffic... where was your traffic coming from?

I would start with Facebook and I would target John Lennon fans and I would use a newsfeed ads to promote the poster and I would send them directly to the john lennon poster.

Spend $50-$100 see if it convert. If not your shipping might really be too high. ($10 is expensive for a poster IMO)

If you have a few sales after spending $50-$100 I would focus on optimizing testing some variable on the website. (price, design of poster, deals, adding plus value etc)

You could also add some scarcity:

Example : 2 left out of 100...

You could add testimonials.

Since it's a low entry product I would try to add upsell because with paid traffic unless you get known, it might be hard to profit on the front end without any backend if you sell them at $11 in average.

Maybe I'm wrong here because I never tested this market.

Here is what I would do...

Start by focusing on micro niche inside the rock poster niche.

Example: John Lennon poster only to start. Get a few different design/style, target John Lennon fans and send them to your website (try to see how the HUGE player in this niche place their product and how their website look like .. they probably optimized it a lot already and they might have spent a lot of cash on it..) Do something similar with your website. After that, send some really targeted traffic and qualify them from the ads with a call to action that look like... Click Here To Buy This Poster For $11.99... see if you have some sale and take a decision from that point.

You could also capture the email of the people that land on your site to monetize these people through emails with deals or new poster.

I know you don't want to spend a bunch of $ into advertising but that's the fastest way to test your idea/site and then you can optimize from this.
If you are scare to lose money... well you will never make any ... see it as a test/experiment .. then you can play with it and analyze what's wrong.

Now go do what I said put a $25 daily budget .. let it run for 3 days... come back here with the result and your ads etc ... and let'S analyze it together.


P.S: I looked at http://www.allposters.ca/ ... they advertise on google so that mean they make $$$$ and they look "big" if we look at their inventory.

 

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[Laverdure]

I'm also guessing that people would buy more than one at the time... and if they add one to the card why not make something pop (banner) and say something like ... hey if you pick up another poster we'll give you a third one for FREE... I imagine your margain are super high from these products so try to squeeze as much money as you can per transaction so your advertising cost doesn't kill you.

 

[Laverdure]

Also do remember that the experience with your customers never end after the first transaction.

Here is something else you could add/play with.

Example: For every customer that buy you could print out a nice sheet that says something more beautiful than this but something that mean this:

Hey Name,

We would like to thank you for buying with us... I hope you like your new poster... blablabla and then inside the text you could add a promotion saying seen you are a new customer and we really wanna make you happy and enjoy your experience with us.

We could like to offer you a 50% discount for the next 48 hours on any poster you would like... just use the code : XYZ...

This is a quick idea to pull in more sale and make your company "look cool" by thanking your customer and giving them a super nice deal.

 

[Oven]

Wow, thanks for the super detailed post I really appreciate all the effort and time you put into this. You have no idea how much time this could save me, who knows when I would have figured all this out?

To be honest when we land there (unless you qualify on the ads) I couldn't guess that you were selling posters (with a first quick impression).

Good point, I'm going to change the banner at the top really soon to better hint at what my site is about. Probably tomorrow but now I have a huge list of things to do!

Example: you sell them for $11.99... I would write $25 and scratch it with a logo Discounted at $11.99 and put it close to each poster.

Good idea, I'll do that first thing tomorrow, it shouldn't take much time at all.

Second, have you made any research about this market? if yes, then what the competition is doing and how their website look like?

The competition seems really old. This industry is pretty old and I don't think a lot of people are even thinking about selling posters so lots of the competition has outdated sites and seems to heavily rely on eBay/Amazon.

Third thing, your traffic... where was your traffic coming from?

My traffic was coming from a Facebook group dedicated to a certain band and that got ~50 clicks with no conversions as well as reddit, where the traffic was less targeted (I posted a coupon in the coupon section). I'm worried because the Facebook traffic didn't result in any sales and seemed pretty targeted. The post literally told people to go to my site to buy a specific poster and linked right to the poster, I saw a few people go to the cart page and then drop, which is why I suspect something there turned them off.

I would start with Facebook and I would target John Lennon fans and I would use a newsfeed ads to promote the poster and I would send them directly to the john lennon poster.

I'm going to do this soon, but probably with a different artist that I have a better selection of posters for

You could also add some scarcity:
Example : 2 left out of 100...

Good idea, I'll do that too.

You could add testimonials.

I was planning on doing this, but it's going to take a very long time if I do it manually considering the amount of posters I have on the site. I'll do it for the posters that I'm advertising though.

try to see how the HUGE player in this niche place their product and how their website look like .. they probably optimized it a lot already and they might have spent a lot of cash on it..

Oh my god I feel so dumb.. I just realized that literally every time I go on the biggest players site they have an excuse to have a sale and I'm like 90% sure it's always 75% off on everything. It could just be a coincidence because I've only started this during the holiday season but I think it's not.

You could also capture the email of the people that land on your site to monetize these people through emails with deals or new poster.

Good idea, I'll add this very soon.

I know you don't want to spend a bunch of $ into advertising but that's the fastest way to test your idea/site and then you can optimize from this.
If you are scare to lose money... well you will never make any ... see it as a test/experiment .. then you can play with it and analyze what's wrong.

Honestly, it's not that I don't want to spend a lot of money on advertising I really want to but I don't have money. I'm on a really limited budget but I will be spending ~75% of all my money on advertising soon.

Now go do what I said put a $25 daily budget .. let it run for 3 days... come back here with the result and your ads etc ... and let'S analyze it together.

I'll setup the ads tomorrow, gonna go to sleep as soon as I'm done posting this. I'll be back in 3 days with my results.

P.S: I looked at http://www.allposters.ca/ ... they advertise on google so that mean they make $$$$ and they look "big" if we look at their inventory.

They are the biggest in the poster industry as far as I can tell, they are definitely killing it. You don't get to over 500,000 posters easily. I just noticed that as soon as I go on their site the first thing I see is an email opt in and the second is the 75% off sale.

I'm also guessing that people would buy more than one at the time... and if they add one to the card why not make something pop (banner) and say something like ... hey if you pick up another poster we'll give you a third one for FREE...

Right now my shipping is flat rate $10 no matter how many posters you add, I should probably let people know that. It might make the shipping seem a little better.

For every customer that buy you could print out a nice sheet that says something more beautiful than this but something that mean this

I had already planned on this and will definitely be doing it.

Thanks again for all your help, I really appreciate it. Expect to see me back in 3 days with some results.

I clicked on Lennon poster and did not see categories. I thought all that was available was on home page until I looked at other posters. I would make the categories easier to find.

It was actually a huge challenge trying to figure out how to display all the categories because I have soo many. If you hover on shop at the top a dropdown appears with all the categories and most of the posters lead to a category since the Lennon one only had one poster I had it lead right to that poster. I'll see if I can figure out a better way to display the categories on the homepage.

 

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[Laverdure]

My traffic was coming from a Facebook group dedicated to a certain band and that got ~50 clicks with no conversions as well as reddit, where the traffic was less targeted (I posted a coupon in the coupon section). I'm worried because the Facebook traffic didn't result in any sales and seemed pretty targeted. The post literally told people to go to my site to buy a specific poster and linked right to the poster, I saw a few people go to the cart page and then drop, which is why I suspect something there turned them off.

until you become big I really recommend you to be very very very narrow with your targeting. I mean 50 clicks is really nothing and then maybe you don't accept enough payment method? what do you accept? You might wanna lower your shipping cost and see?

Also later on, I would use retargeting for every people that landed on your shopping cart and didn't buy.

Let me know how your first test goes.

 

[RogueInnovation]

I'd really like to hear some of your stuff, I've seen a few of your posts and they have a nice outlook.
Could you give me a brief outline of what your outlook on things is, what you feel is important to emphasize, what are your core competancies, and some generally helpful clues as to what kind of untold wisdom you have to share.

For me, I'm very much into mindsets and I am trying to expel imbalance from my perspectives.
I am confident in my competancies, but I am not sure I have all the competancies I will need to adapt to unforseen events that are sure to come up in my life of biz (I think I have enough but I have no way to tell).

So yeah, I am at that level, where I have pretty convoluted outlooks, I need clarity and perspective where ever I can get it .

So yeah, I'd like to hear what you have to share, you sound quite clearly past that yourself.
Leaves a guy to wonder, what did you do? What were the major things that contribued to your growth, what is now important to you that wasn't before?

 

[Laverdure]

I would def work on communication/marketing/sale.

I think (in my perspective) these are the 3 main skills that you need to work on. (unless you have very obvious strength in other skillset that are related to business. At this point, I would focus on those strength and I would hire/partner with people who has the communication/marketing/sale strength.)

You will realize with time that if you want to make more money you need to focus on increasing your:

-communication
-confidence
-mindset
-emotion control

Someone who is super confidence, who is not afraid of failing, who can control his emotion (fear mainly) and who can communicate really well are usually super successful.

You can improve these area by reading, watching video, meditation, taking action and to be honest it all come down to getting out of your comfort zone.

Deeply inside of you, you know what you have to do to be successful and everybody do but getting out of your comfort zone bring in fear, failure and as a human being nobody really like to be in this situation.

If I was you, I would just do whatever I wanna do period.

One day or another you will be successful if you keep pushing and learning from your mistake.

I gtg but you can write any other questions.

I'll answer them when I'm back.

 

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[Dom117]

Thanks in advance for taking time to help me out, I'm kind of stuck here.
I have got some specific questions about the niche I am persuing.

I have been working on a website that sells lights for outdoor sports for a while now.
I have received samples and the quality is ok.

I have encountered a couple of problems though:

1) It is very difficult to estimate the size of this market

2) I buy "my brand" lights in china, the quality of some batteries is doubtfull to say the least. (Is this a red flag??) (High returns?)

3) NO re-occuring revenue: Because of the 45% tax in my country, I estimated that I would have to sell close to 100 lights (average) to match my current 'daytime' income.
Does this seem as unrealistic to you as it does to me?

4) People sell equivalent lights unbranded on ebay&amazon for about the amount that I buy them. So for about half the price that I would sell them.

My market would be only europe, shipping+customs would be to high to target America.

Thanks a lot if you want to take time to answer these questions!
Not sure if I have to ditch this or keep on working.

 

[MHolland]

Here is how you can be helpful....

How can I train my dog to return to me when I call him, but he is more interested in chasing a squirrel?

Cheers

My side hobby/passion happens to be training dogs at sports competition level. I could very easily show you how to get your dog to return to you like a speeding bullet when you call him/her, no matter what the level of distraction, be it squirrels, cats, dogs, kids, food or anything else for that matter.

 

[AroundTheWorld]

My side hobby/passion happens to be training dogs at sports competition level. I could very easily show you how to get your dog to return to you like a speeding bullet when you call him/her, no matter what the level of distraction, be it squirrels, cats, dogs, kids, food or anything else for that matter.

OMG...... PM me your solution..... I will TOTALLY send you a starbucks gift card, or take you to dinner at BP - are you going to BP? or....

WHAT DO YOU WANT??????

 

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[DeletedUser2]

My side hobby/passion happens to be training dogs at sports competition level. I could very easily show you how to get your dog to return to you like a speeding bullet when you call him/her, no matter what the level of distraction, be it squirrels, cats, dogs, kids, food or anything else for that matter.

article? list? how to ?

I will send you a starbucks card as well!
Z

 

[MHolland]

OMG...... PM me your solution..... I will TOTALLY send you a starbucks gift card, or take you to dinner at BP - are you going to BP? or....

WHAT DO YOU WANT??????

LOL - thanks but I don't want anything in return! I love working with dogs in general and if my tips can help keep them out of harm's way then that's my reward.

 

[MHolland]

article? list? how to ?

I will send you a starbucks card as well!
Z

I don't have any articles or how-to's, I'm afraid. If I wrote something on the subject of Recalling it might be as thick as a dictionary! I'd be more than happy to speak with you though to explain everything.

 

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[AroundTheWorld]

the squirrel chaser...

 

[MHolland]

the squirrel chaser...

 

[AroundTheWorld]

And... while we are at it... he just plain HAS BAD MANNERS!!! Paws at people to be pet... licks.... grr... can you help with that too??? Seriously... do you like starbucks?

 

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[MHolland]

And... while we are at it... he just plain HAS BAD MANNERS!!! Paws at people to be pet... licks.... grr... can you help with that too??? Seriously... do you like starbucks?

Haha, yes I do like Starbucks. But to tell you the truth, I've never helped anyone with their dogs through forum posts so I'm not sure how effective I'll be at delivering the goods this way. LOL

And yes, I can help fix all of the above.

 

[throttleforward]

MHolland I think you have a pretty large business opportunity - you just had two people freak out about obtaining the knowledge you have. You might want to put together a youtube video of dogs running at you and a simple website. I'll help if you want.

 

[MHolland]

MHolland I think you have a pretty large business opportunity - you just had two people freak out about obtaining the knowledge you have. You might want to put together a youtube video of dogs running at you and a simple website. I'll help if you want.

Thanks ThrottleForward. I appreciate you wanting to help! I might do something like that in the future but at the moment I'm putting all my energy into my current project which is unrelated to dog training. The main issue I have at the moment is not being able to raise awareness about my site/info product quick enough.

I'm considering options like Clickbank, etc. Do you have any experience with that?

 

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[throttleforward]

Sorry, I just have experience in running Adwords and Facebook ads, plus posting on forums specific to my industry.

What is your current concept and how have you validated it?

 

[GravyBoat]

LaverDure,

If you were to create a brand new, start from scratch e commerce website, also selling your products on amazon, ebay, etc, what solutions would you use for getting the site up? Would you get hosting/domain package and put wordpress on it? Would you go the Bigcommerce/Woocommerce route? Or would you simply outsource the entire thing via Elance?

Thanks for posting this thread, should turn out to be a good one!

Gravy