Come and watch me make FU money: Over $100K/mo now.

[MythOfSisyphus]

I was wondering, did you put 3000$ on one single product at the beginning or it was multiple products ?

Does SEO has helped you to make sales or it was with Ebay at the beginning that helped you to get cash first, then scaling on google ?

Thanks for your time and your intro threads, your story is inspiring !

The 4,000 was spent on multiple products (around 600). There are thousands of products in this niche and most cost around 5 dollars to import and retail for around 20.

In the beginning most of the sales came from ebay and it took around 10 months for the shopify sales to overtake them.

 

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[MythOfSisyphus]

Like MJ and many other great people here say, you create your own luck!

What would make you say were the high barriers to entry into your niche? Industry knowledge? Capital for inventory? Trying to evaluate your experience to see how we can try to look for niches like yours systematically and find ones with barriers to entry that we can overcome but others won’t


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The main barrier is Industry knowledge. Most people probably wouldn't bother touching the niche without knowing how to use the products. It was just fortunate for me that my wife had this knowledge. Now that I've been doing it for a while that initial barrier isn't too important. I know quite a lot about the niche and it's products without ever having performed any of the beauty procedures myself.

The majority of my competitors are women who were in the industry already and decided to start a side business. Most of them have good knowledge of the products but poor business models and poor websites.

There are a few at the top of the chain who appear to be both industry professionals and very astute business people as well.

 

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[MythOfSisyphus]

APRIL UPDATE

Monthly Revenue Goal: $118,000

Actual Monthly Revenue: $110,990.38

Annual Revenue Goal: $1,750,000

Revenue so far: $425,616.05

A slight increase over March's total revenue but unfortunately still a long way off the goal of $118,000.

At the current rate I'll now need to average $165k per month from here on out to hit the annual revenue goal. The new products need to go up on the website asap, and then need to sell ridiculous amounts in the coming months otherwise I can't see me getting anywhere near that lofty goal.

What went right:

• Plenty of new stock arrived that should bring in a lot of revenue over the next few months
• I added Afterpay to the website at the end of the month and it's resulted in an unexpected spike in sales so far this month. This surprised me as I assumed that since our customers are business owners that they wouldn't be so reliant on payment methods like AfterPay but I guess I underestimated how many sidewalkers are out there.
• The new products I introduced last month continued to sell well, netting approximately 4.5k in sales
• My suppliers all managed to ship on time and combined with the excellent stock forecasting software I use this has resulted in a much lower number of stockouts than usual.
• I managed to simplify several tasks that I can now hand over to my employee to free up more of my time.

What went wrong:

• The Adwords campaigns didn't improve as I had hoped, netting only 31k in sales from an 8k spend.
• A shipment of new products I desperately want to start selling is still being held up in customs
• Another shipment of different new product that I also want to start selling asap arrived with printing errors on the labels a large number of products. They sent replacement labels and my employee will start replacing them tomorrow.
• My mobile phone died and I spent 1.5k AU replacing it with a Pixel 2 XL because of it's great camera. Well, it turns out that it's camera is terrible at taking photos under fluorescent lights which makes it useless as for product photography (The entire reason I purchased it). I wasted an entire day taking photos of new stock only to find all of the pictures had an ugly yellow band running through them and were essentially useless.

Revenue Goal for May: 125k

We're a week into May and I still haven't put any of the new products up for sale on the website as yet. I am hoping to have at least some of them up at the start of next week and this should help me hit this months target. The spike in sales I've seen from Afterpay should also hopefully continue throughout the month and contribute.

 

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[MythOfSisyphus]

June Progress Update:

Things a looking good so far. Had a mid-year stock take sale last week that provided the biggest week ever in sales by a fair way. Not sure if I'll hit the target but should hopefully be close.

I've also put in a bid for a warehouse and office that is currently under construction and will be ready early next year. Hopefully I won't run out of room in the home office and storage shed before then. The main reason for this move is that I'll most likely be bringing on a 2nd employee within the next 7 or 8 months and I don't think having 2 employees working from my backyard is sustainable.

My biggest concern at the moment is trying to keep the overheads from blowing up. The warehouse expenses won't help and I've just switched to an online accounting system that will most likely require me to hire a part time book keeper, in addition to a digital marketing expert some time in the coming months.

I'm also in the process of going from being a sole trader for tax purposes to an actual business operating through a family trust. This will help protect my income, however will also incur further costs.

I'll provide a full update at months end.

 

[MythOfSisyphus]

July Revenue Goal: $150,000

Actual Revenue for July: $151,089.57

Annual Revenue Goal: $1,750,000

Revenue so far: $867,268.41

Just reached this months target. June/July are the quietest months of the year so I was happy to stay around the 150k mark. From here on out though I'll need to average around 175k per month to reach the end of year target of 1.75 million in sales.

August is off to a decent start already so hopefully I'll be at least around the 160-165k mark for this month and then should really start to see sales peak in the months after that.

What went right:

• New products introduced in previous months continued to grow in sales
• International sales continued to grow
• I returned to free shipping on eBay which boosted ebay sales.
• Streamlined some internal processes around customer engagement that should make handing over some of the customer service workload a lot easier when it eventually happens.

What went wrong:

• A lack of time to implement new changes I'd planned.

Plans for August

I've just hired a part time bookkeeper and part time digital marketing specialist to help free up more of my time, however I'll need to spend a bit of time this month handing over my workload and planning some goals with them both.

I'll also focus on expanding the product range even further so that I'll be in a position to really cash in on the busy months at the end of this year.

Revenue goal for August $165,000

 

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[MythOfSisyphus]

November Revenue Goal: $200,000

Actual Revenue: $200,818.99 (up 17k from previous month)

Annual Revenue Goal: $1,750,000

Revenue so far: $1,586,377 ($163,623 to go)

Average per month required: $163,623

November started off a lot slower than expected and I had pretty much resigned myself to not hitting the target, however I underestimated the growing popularity of Black Friday/Cyber Monday in Australia. In fact, I only decided to have a sale a few days before black Friday. I won't make the same mistake again next year and will plan ahead.

On the Friday alone we did around 17k in sales which was almost double the previous best day and over the entire weekend we did around 44k.

Having said that, the downside is that sales have slowed a little since then and December isn't looking promising. Sales really die off in the last week so in order to hit the monthly target I need some really solid sales in the first 3 weeks. It's not looking good so far though.

What went wrong:

• With the most experienced of my 2 employees on leave myself and the new employee were under a constant barrage of orders and emails in the last 2 weeks. We've really only been able to catch up in the past few days.
• I didn't anticipate the impact of the BFCM sale and could have capitalised on it even more had I planned properly
• The warehouse we should be moving into early next year has been delayed due to some construction issues with the foundation. Still hoping to be in there around March but this will put a hold on expanding the product range as early as I had planned.

What went right:

• Sales hit an all time high
• The Adwords campaign continued to improve with ad spend down 1.5k and revenue up around 4k (Although it's difficult to gauge if this is actual improvement or just the impact of the busy season - time will tell)
• Had a new logo designed by 99designs and was extremely happy with the result. Now to look forward to the horrific task of rebranding everything early next year.
• I started to feel a little more confident in organising and delegating to my staff and contractors. It's been a tough adjustment from solopreneur to manager.

Plans for December:

• Working hard on handing over some of the customer service tasks to my employees so that I won't need to be as involved while I'm on leave for 2 weeks after Christmas. I'm currently documenting how to handle the most frequent customer requests/complaints so that it will cut down on the number of requests that filter through to me.
• I have a meeting tomorrow with a social media marketing expert who hopefully will be able to get our paid social campaigns on track.
• Apart from that I'll probably shift my focus to next year with a few major changes coming up including a new website, re-branding of the business and new warehouse.

December Revenue Goal: $163,623

 

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[MythOfSisyphus]

I had a few people ask for progress updates so here goes (I'll try and do at least a couple more before the end of the year)...

Progress Update:

The business is still going quite well although month to month revenue hasn't changed a lot since the heights we hit late last year. Having said that, this is pretty standard as in previous years sales are fairly consistent from Jan through Oct before jumping massively in November. At the moment an average month is around 195k in revenue.

Despite not setting a solid goal revenue-wise for this year I believe I said that around 2.6m would be a pretty good result. It's currently sitting at around 1.7m so it's highly unlikely that I'll get there. Having said that, the business is now 4 years old and still experiencing pretty solid year on year growth so I can't complain.

Changes This Year:

The re-branding, while a pain in the a$$, went really well and the new logo and products with it look fantastic. Looking back, branding is something I would take more time to completely nail in the very beginning to avoid having to go through this process a couple of years into the business.

The move into the warehouse still hasn't eventuated as the build took far longer than expected. The warehouse is now basically finished but I still need to wait on some formalities before I get the green light to move the business in. This delay has probably cost me quite a lot of money by preventing expansion into as many new products as I would have liked and looking back I should have either purchased or rented an established warehouse. Lesson learned.

A couple of months ago my second employee (who handled shipping and inventory control) resigned. This however turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The new employee has been much faster at packing orders, rarely makes mistakes and always shows up on time. So I now have 2 extremely dependable employees who I can trust to do 90% of whats required to keep the business moving day to day. I also have a team of contractors that I rely on for many of the other tasks.

I recently branched out into a new type of product that's not exactly in the same niche we're currently in but a very closely related one that many of our customers buy from. The manufacturer would only agree to a minimum of 1000 units and they have an expiry of 12 months. This was at a cost of around 65,000 AUD so a pretty big risk to take for an untried product.

But, in business everything is a risk, and it's all about playing the odds the best you can. I figure if it falls flat and I only sell a few hundred units then I lose maybe 30k and learn something. If it does really well and we sell out ahead of schedule then I'm potentially making an extra 100-200k a year in profit. The end result will most likely be somewhere in between so that kind of risk sits pretty well with me.

Lessons Learned:
The idea of taking smart risks is something that's really hit home with me the past year. Almost every decision I make in managing my business has risk involved and I've found that being successful comes down to how you decide to play the odds. Not everything comes off but if your potential upside is always bigger than the potential downside then in the long run you come out on top despite a few losses.

 

[MythOfSisyphus]

Any updates for October??

Cheers,
-Eric

I'll post an update within the next week with the final tally but currently sitting about 6k short of the monthly target with a day and a bit to go. I'm confident I'll reach the 180k

 

[MythOfSisyphus]

Just dropped by to say thank you so much for sharing your progress.

Considering you are doing B2B sales, I have a couple questions:
1. How do you decide how much inventory to hold?
2. Why not use a pre-order system so that you do not have to hold inventory? So for example, you bring a sample of your product to a customer. If they like it, they order 500 units. Only then, you order 500 units from your supplier and ship it to them. This way, you are cash flow positive.

You're welcome. I don't really let anyone apart from my wife in on the details of the business and how it's going so it was pretty enjoyable to be able to share it on here at least.

1. In the very beginning it was very much just guesswork (and still is for new products) however I now use a shopify app called inventory planner which is amazing. It uses past sales history data to (pretty damn accurately) predict future sales. I can go in and set how many months or days worth of stock I want on hand for each particular product and then it will tell me exactly how much I need to order from my supplier. Most of our manufacturers take around 1 month or more to fulfil an order so I always try and have around 3 months worth of stock on hand for every product (less for some, more for others but generally 3 months for 90%). This means that we stay in stock almost 100% of the time for almost 100% of our products which being a B2B seller I think is important. When businesses know they can always get what they need from your website I think it's a big advantage to have over the competition. The extra month or 2 worth of stock gives some extra time in the event that a shipment is delayed or something goes wrong as well.

2. @SIDI pretty much nailed it with his explanation. I simply wouldn't be able to run the business without holding the inventory. The average customer orders once every couple of weeks and they usually need their products pronto. We actually provide express shipping (1 business day to most addresses in Australia) on every order for this reason and our competitors have starting copying this. I even take a slight hit on the shipping costs to do so. If they had to wait any more than a week for their products they'd probably just go elsewhere.

The other reason is that the business doesn't really have any cashflow issues. There's always more than enough profit to not only re-invest in new products and expand our range but also to take out of the business to pay down personal debt and hopefully soon start investing in new ventures.

 

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[MythOfSisyphus]

Quick Revenue Update:

While our annual revenue is higher than last year (we're looking at hitting around 2.27m in revenue vs 1.76m last year) we haven't seen the kind of late year explosion in revenue we have previously.

This November was our biggest month ever at 210k but still only around 10k more than November 2018.

I can't be 100% certain for the decrease in growth but I think it can be attributed to at least a few of the below:

1) Maturity - The business is now in the start of it's 5th year and the kind of growth we were experiencing in the first 3-4 years (basically doubling revenue every year) was always unsustainable

2) Increased competition - New competitors keep popping up every month it seems and there are now around 20 well established Australian eCommerce stores in our niche.

3) Lack of expansion - The delay in our warehouse being built (almost 1 year past schedule) really killed expansion into new products. While we did delve into several new products there are plenty more that I simply couldn't explore due to a lack of floor space. If I had my time over again I probably would have just purchased or rented somewhere that was already built and ready to go.

Anyway... 2020 I would really like to put a focus on expanding into new products and boost monthly revenue to 250-300k. And I'll consider going back to doing monthly updates in this thread again to give myself a bit of added incentive.

 

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[MythOfSisyphus]

@MythOfSisyphus going through the thread and I really appreciate how you've documented the journey. At any point did you think about using a 3PL instead of getting space plus employees to pack? If you considered it would you mind explaining why you chose to get space plus someone to do that part? Im not ready to make this decision yet but I really want to stay small as long as possible so am considering using a 3PL over having to manage someone to pack my stuff. Thanks

I considered it very briefly. The main reasons I decided against it:

1) The cost - compared to paying my own employee to pack and ship the cost was quite prohibitive and meant that we wouldn't be able to compete with many of our competitors on price.

2) Attention to detail - The products we ship are quite delicate and prone to small defects that someone who is unfamiliar with the products wouldn't be able to pick up on. At least once or twice a day my staff find faulty products that otherwise would have gone out to customers (and yes - ideally this shouldn't happen at the manufacturing level but with thousands of products shipped each week it's a reality).

3) cross training - My staff that pick and pack orders also respond to email queries throughout the day (the ones that don't require my input anyway)

These were the main reasons but I also didn't like the idea of outsourcing such an important part of our customer service. Basically I wanted full control of what our customers were receiving.

 

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[jcvlds]

What could you do to make it likely? What elements can you influence to make this a reality?
If it’s cash, get cash.
If it’s time, get employees/VA and automate.
If it’s knowledge, bring in an advisor.
If it’s fear, conquer it.

These are the golden nuggets of insight and motivation that I've come to love so much.


Good luck on your journey @MythOfSisyphus, it sounds like you have already achieved some level of success so I'm sure these new goals will be achieved soon I'm just getting started myself.. haven't done a proper intro and not sure if I should do a progress thread or not but it will be fun to watch yours. Keep it up!

 

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[MythOfSisyphus]

Skimmed the op, I saw the word unlikely way too many times.

If that number is your real goal, think outside the box about how you could achieve it. If there’s no realistic path to reaching a target, then it’s more of a dream than a goal.

What could you do to make it likely? What elements can you influence to make this a reality?

If it’s cash, get cash.
If it’s time, get employees/VA and automate.
If it’s knowledge, bring in an advisor.
If it’s fear, conquer it.

It's definitely not unreachable but I have intentionally set something that's going to be a huge reach for me. And that's exactly what I want. Something that will push me harder than Id otherwise push myself.

I've outlined how I intend to get there, it's just a matter of execution.

 

[IGP]

Not as yet. I'd definitely be open to exploring it but not sure how viable it would be in my niche. Most of the sellers in this niche have their own brand of products.

I have recently negotiated a contract with Australia post for domestic shipping, but one that also includes the option of much lower international rates as well, so resuming international shipping is part of my plan in the coming months. I originally scrapped it due to the effort required to complete manual paperwork for customs. This process is now automated so I'm good to resume.

Approximately 10% of daily traffic to the site is international (around 30 to 40 visitors a day) so there's money on the table there.

You should consider a 3PL here in the US. Have your products shipped there and they will charge you a per piece fee to do the shipments for you.

Assuming your products are popular here or are a good fit, this could work out very well for you.

The other option is to open a "branch" or get a partner in the US. Have that company import the products in bulk (deal with customs 1 time), then have that "entity" deliver the goods.

Either solution should allow you to scale to the US.

Any questions, let me know.

 

[SROWE85]

The funny thing is, I'm earning around 60k a month now after expenses and still haven't splurged on anything for myself (I did just take the wife away to a fancy hotel for the weekend though). I love the feeling of freedom and the excitement that comes with seeing the bank account increase but stuffed if I know what to actually do with the money. I still drive a second hand car and we still live in a modest house in one of the poorer parts of town. We're looking to build a nicer house but even with our current means it will still be relatively modest and should be paid off in a number of years (I still stress about borrowing an amount that I can easily repay)

This mentality has clearly reflected itself in your success.

This is one of the best progress threads that i have read so far. Thank you for taking the time to share and answer everyones questions. Being able to witness a live process is invaluable to me at this moment in time.

Thanks again

 

[Paul David]

Great story so far. Congratulations on your success.

I like how you prioritise your tasks. I really need to do something like this (I use asana) but i always struggle to put them in the right category. I will try to implement your method this week as i'm spending too much time procrastinating.

Regarding moving to your own warehouse, i had one for 15 years (well more like a shop front with two large rooms) and the cost price was pretty low due to my Father owning it. When i went to look at bigger warehouses the cost increase was dramatic. Now i use a 3rd party fulfilment centre to handle all our orders. The more i sell the more i pay etc. We're paying flat rate of £0.65p a single item and extra £0.10 per unit for same order.

I would highly recommend using a 3rd party company because firstly it makes you get your sh*t together and prevents having stock lying around the place under boxes and paperwork (like i did) and secondly the amount of time it frees up enabling me to concentrate on growing the business is a lot.

No need to worry about staff sickness, utility bills, staff sourcing etc. And the amount of times i was called out over the years at 3-4am for the alarm going off armed with a baseball bat in case of intruders is now all a thing of the past. You're also not burdened with large monthly costs and tied to any leases. Now i can be anywhere in the world and know that day in day out by parcels are going out the door.

 

[MythOfSisyphus]

So using this decision matrix i have a listed my tasks below and the prioritised them as follows, would you agree with these?

Re-stock Amazon FBA SKU's - URGENT
Find New Products to sell - IMPORTANT
Increase Facebook Followers - NEITHER
Increase Instagram followers - NEITHER
Set up Shopify site - IMPORTANT
Set up customer follow up for sales - IMPORTANT
Design product bag for particular SKU for factory in China - IMPORTANT
Re-Order Stock - URGENT
Check Stock Performance - Slow/Non selling SKUS and act on results. - IMPORTANT
Check Google PPC performance - IMPORTANT
Check Amazon PPC performance - IMPORTANT

Looks pretty good to me and quite similar to my lists. Only suggestion I'd make is to go more specific than 'Increase Facebook Followers'. I've found that when I don't write down specific actionable tasks that I often procrastinate with them. I would have it broken down into things like 'Schedule 8 instagram posts' or 'Research ideas to increase facebook followers'. And don't forget to re-order things in order of...

1. URGENT & IMPORTANT
2. URGENT
3. IMPORTANT
4. NEITHER

 

[MythOfSisyphus]

A couple of annoying issues that cropped up yesterday:

1) A shipment of new products Im expecting has been held by Australian customs due to a dispute over the price of the goods and their slice of the import tax.

2) A shipment of another new product from a different supplier arrived from China which is great, however the labels have a printing error. Some only a minor error but others it is fairly major and they can't be sold this way (we're talking around 2000 products). I got pretty pissed about this and ripped into the supplier. They will be sending replacement labels, however doing the relabeling will take a few days and cost me hundreds, if not thousands in wages for my employee to fix.

A very frustrating day over all.

 

[MythOfSisyphus]

Good stuff, I look forward to reading more updates. When you first started did you only invest the $4,000 into the business and recycle it growing month by month or did you infuse more cash into it for inventory to get it jump started?

The business grew slowly and steadily enough over the first few months that I was able to simply re-invest the profits in new stock without any need to dip into the pool of savings that I was living off.

Looking back though, if I knew how well the business would go, I probably would have immediately branched out into different products types using my savings to fund it.

 

[MythOfSisyphus]

Hi @MythOfSisyphus t

How do you decide which new products to introduce? Is your wife still heavily involved in this process and would you be lost without her in this regard?

Thanks for the kind words.

This is a good question. I generally get an inkling of what products to stock by keeping an eye on the competition, listening to our customers (including conducting surveys) and also keeping an eye on new products that our suppliers are offering. From there I will often get my wife's opinion, and then order samples for her to test.
The next step is usually estimating how much stock I'll need to start and then seeing how it sells. Sometimes a product will fall flat but I've found most products I've decided to stock have done quite well.

I've even stocked a few that my wife didn't think would do very well, but are now providing a couple of full time jobs worth of profit each month by themselves.

In the beginning I wouldn't have been able to start without her help, or at least not have been anywhere near as successful, but to be honest, at this point I could simply create a focus group from our long term customers to decide which products to stock.

Also are the products simply made somewhere in China then you slap your branding on them, and your competitors have the identical product with different branding? Or are you literally creating the products 100% from scratch, with input on the composition/manufacture etc

They're made in both China and Korea and yes, some I simply slap our brand on and can spot the exact same products amongst several of our competitors, however I usually only put our branding on products where I've had some input into the manufacturing process. Many of the products, in particular disposable ones, are simply sold without any branding at all.

 

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[MythOfSisyphus]

Amazing update! Congrats on the killer month.

I am not, nor have I have been, in your current level but I think you are making the right moves in expanding your team and operations site. Although it may dip the bottom line in the short term, down the road it should allow you to let the team do more of the day to day and you focusing on increasing sales and expanding the business. Very inspiring!

Are you in the US? By sole trader do you mean sole proprietor (operating under your own social security/name vs an LLC or Corp)? If so, another great move in my opinion.. let the business be it’s own entity, you have limited liability, and thus protect your personal assets if someone ever tries to go after the company


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thankyou.

No, I'm in Australia but you're correct... it's basically the same thing. I'll be going from the Australian equivalent of a sole proprietor to an LLC. So I'm about 12 days away from peace of mind in that regard.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

I've also put in a bid for a warehouse and office that is currently under construction and will be ready early next year. Hopefully I won't run out of room in the home office and storage shed before then.

Ha Ha, sounds like a great problem to have. Outgrowing a space doesn't happen if the phone isn't ringing. Congrats and thanks for all the updates.

 

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[MythOfSisyphus]

Initially I resisted adding afterpay as the merchant fees are quite high compared to competitors and I also assumed that as we sold to business owners that the need for pay later options wouldn't be as high as it would for general consumers. I was completely wrong though. After adding afterpay sales jumped around 10-15% immediately that month and we now do around 30k in AfterPay transactions every month.

For anyone on the fence about it I would recommend just pulling the trigger (assuming your margins can cover the merchant fees). You can always remove it if it doesn't work out. My only complaint is that their support team are absolutely terrible to deal with.

 

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[zeros-only]

NOTE: I'm taking off on Holiday straight after Christmas so I don't know if I'll get time to do a full update for the end of year until mid Jan. I'll at least try and give the final tally at some stage.

Awesome! And congratulations. I've just gone through you progress thread and do you know what really struck me (other than the impressive numbers)...it's the interesting fact that stuff like redoing your logo, and the website redesign are being done when the business is well on it's way and churning thousands of $ a month in contrast to how some focus on stuff like that in the beginning, wondering whether the colors are right etc....Great lessons in your progress thread mate! Thanks for letting us take a peek into your cash machine!

 

[DrunkFish]

Wait i might have read this wrong, and i dont know the industry. But you get B2b sales to beauty shops/salons with ads and ebay and stuff? I figured that was more of a reaching out type of thing. I don't picture an owner surfing ebay for products but like i said, completely have no idea of this industry.

 

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[MythOfSisyphus]

Hope you reach it! [emoji1376]

Do you also have profitability goals alongside your revenue goals?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks. Me too.

Not really. I'm mindful of overheads not blowing up and trying to keep the margins healthy but my main focus is growing the revenue which will obviously grow the profits.

 

[Action Mike]

Good stuff, I look forward to reading more updates. When you first started did you only invest the $4,000 into the business and recycle it growing month by month or did you infuse more cash into it for inventory to get it jump started?

 

[MythOfSisyphus]

Hey @MythOfSisyphus nice updates. I’m sure you will kick the gears these months and will get close to your annual goal, good job!

Would you mind sharing how you approach your targeting method to sell to retailers, vs a direct to consumer approach?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Sure, it's basically been about allocating the marketing budget a little more unevenly than you would with a direct to consumer approach.

The majority of the marketing spend is on adwords search because I know that I'm paying for business owners and retailers who are already actively looking for similar products.

I don't spend a lot on social media ads because our audience on there is extremely narrow (based on job title). Even using lookalike audiences based on our existing customer base gives a really poor return.

Secondly I spend quite a lot on retargetting as we're in a niche we're our customers are constantly restocking their products. I have retargetting campaigns setup on both adwords and facebook/instagram that display previously purchased products to lapsed buyers, and also campaigns that target previous visitors who showed interest. Based on experience (and I believe this is the general consensus when it comes to marketing) it's been far more cost-effective to advertise to previous customers than it has for new ones.

I'm happy to go into more detail for anyone who's interested.

 

[Genius01]

Great job, you're killing it!

In an effort to get better results from my online advertising, I'm going to hire a digital marketing expert to work a couple of hours a week to get the adwords and facebook campaigns doing better returns and also to provide me with better analytics and reports.

I think you should consider talking to @Andy Black about your AdWords strategy, looks like he knows his onions when it comes to AdWords.
Though I think he primarily consults for offline services local businesses, not sure about ecommerce businesses, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a chat with him.

Wish you sustained progress, and hope you hit (and shatter) your targets for this year.

 

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[Andy Black]

Great job, you're killing it!


I think you should consider talking to @Andy Black about your AdWords strategy, looks like he knows his onions when it comes to AdWords.
Though I think he primarily consults for offline services local businesses, not sure about ecommerce businesses, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a chat with him.

Wish you sustained progress, and hope you hit (and shatter) your targets for this year.

Thanks for the kind words @Genius01.

@MythOfSisyphus ... I have some eCom clients but mostly lead gen. Happy to have a chat, as I’m sure @Ungodly would who does specialise in eCom.

I’m not actively looking for any more eCom clients but could maybe spot a few quick wins.

 

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