E-commerce Business Treading Water - Looking to Bring It New Life

[BDR]

I have this business. It’s a product of my original mid-life crisis. I started it 5 years ago from scratch. Six years ago if you’d like to count my eBay store that has since been banned (a whole different story).

I sell used remote controls. That’s right, remotes. I don’t make a hell of a lot doing it though. It’s a side hustle that I had dreamt of taking full time. Some of my family and most of the people I have told about my business think it’s a bit weird. It may not be the sexiest business, but I’ve done it all on my own and I enjoy it.

My business model has been high volume, low margin. Unfortunately, it’s not working very well for me right now. There are probably too many moving parts for what I get out of it.

I handle a shit load of remote controls. I have a 20x30 ft storage unit full of about 50,000 or more of them. I have to clean them, test them and then create a listing for each one of them.

I’ve had what I consider mild success with my website. I built it myself and get about 5,000 visitors per month. I’m proud of it but am sure many would consider it amateur.

Here’s what I see as the major Pros & Cons:

Pros:
- Decent ROI
- Already have 2500 listings and counting
- Have lots of inventory with decent suppliers to get more
- Easy and low cost to ship

Cons:
- Labor intensive
- High return rate (much like most electronics but probably worse)
- Market is saturated with knockoff Chinese crap

The purpose of this thread is to brainstorm and try to add new life to this business that I have sank countless hours into. I was tempted to give up on it, but am going to give it one last push. I’m not ready to let it go.

 

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[Johnny boy]

Sounds like an $18/hr employee type of job to do the repetitive work.

 

[BDR]

Sounds like an $18/hr employee type of job to do the repetitive work.

I’ve considered it in the past but have always wanted to wait for more consistent sales. I still don’t think I could sustain an employee for very long, definitely not full time.

Once the listing is created, I only have to change the inventory level as I list the new remotes. The only problem is that there are literally thousands upon thousands of remotes. I’ve created 3k listings or so and feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface.

 

[Johnny boy]

I’ve considered it in the past but have always wanted to wait for more consistent sales. I still don’t think I could sustain an employee for very long, definitely not full time.

Once the listing is created, I only have to change the inventory level as I list the new remotes. The only problem is that there are literally thousands upon thousands of remotes. I’ve created 3k listings or so and feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface.

Why not hire them for a short period and pay them $XXX to do all of your listings in one go.

 

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[BDR]

Why not hire them for a short period and pay them $XXX to do all of your listings in one go.

That’s certainly food for thought. My budget is low as hell so I’d have a tough time swinging it.

To create each listing, they’d have to:

Clean the remote
Create the listing
Take photos
Optimize the Listing

It doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you’re talking about 1000’s of remotes, it’s a wicked time suck. It’d probably get expensive.

I also push each listing through to other platforms with software which takes even more time.

 

[BDR]

I used to sell a lot more on eBay.

I had some inventory software that would push my listings through from my store (a Shopify site) to other platforms, including eBay at the time.

This software glitched on me and stopped removing sold remotes from my inventory. I ended up selling remotes that I did not have as a consequence.

I cancelled too many sales in eBay’s eyes (it was probably 5-10 or so) and they banned me for life.

This didn’t hurt my feelings too much because I hated what eBay was becoming, which is one of the driving factors to create my site in the first place.

Even so, it was a tough lesson learned.

If anyone needs a good software that pushes listings from Shopify to other major platforms I strongly recommend Sellbrite. I have no affiliation with them, I’ve just had the best luck with their software. Godaddy bought their company so apparently they were doing something right.

 

[Johnny boy]

gotta get the remotes cheaper, or sell them for more, or process them quicker. Need to have an employee be able to do it and still be worth the trouble.

Can you batch the processing? Employee cleans and labels 100 or so remotes, employee takes photos of 100, then you list 100. Next batch. See if you can process 1 for every dollar you pay an employee to help. 18x8 means 144 processed remotes a day. Each remote would take 3 minutes each for an employee. Have the employee spend 2/3 of the day to clean 144 remotes, then 1/3 of the day taking photos of them.

Do a sample, do the math, come up with what your numbers have to be, etc.

View: https://youtu.be/nozIkRy0v-M

 

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[biophase]

gotta get the remotes cheaper, or sell them for more, or process them quicker. Need to have an employee be able to do it and still be worth the trouble.

Can you batch the processing? Employee cleans and labels 100 or so remotes, employee takes photos of 100, then you list 100. Next batch. See if you can process 1 for every dollar you pay an employee to help. 18x8 means 144 processed remotes a day. Each remote would take 3 minutes each for an employee. Have the employee spend 2/3 of the day to clean 144 remotes, then 1/3 of the day taking photos of them.

Do a sample, do the math, come up with what your numbers have to be, etc.

View: https://youtu.be/nozIkRy0v-M

How much do you make per remote?

Is it price elastic or inelastic? Meaning if you raised your price five dollars will somebody go somewhere else to buy the remote? Or is this the only place they can find the remote.

 

[BDR]

gotta get the remotes cheaper, or sell them for more, or process them quicker. Need to have an employee be able to do it and still be worth the trouble.

Can you batch the processing? Employee cleans and labels 100 or so remotes, employee takes photos of 100, then you list 100. Next batch. See if you can process 1 for every dollar you pay an employee to help. 18x8 means 144 processed remotes a day. Each remote would take 3 minutes each for an employee. Have the employee spend 2/3 of the day to clean 144 remotes, then 1/3 of the day taking photos of them.

Do a sample, do the math, come up with what your numbers have to be, etc.

View: https://youtu.be/nozIkRy0v-M

I could certainly batch the processing but haven’t done it. I’ve chipped away at it by myself, which is probably why I’m still creating listings 5 years later.

The listings are only the foundation. They don’t guarantee sales. There are a lot of remotes that I list that likely will never sell. It’s hard to say which ones will and which will not.

In my own mind I don’t sell enough to justify the risk of paying people for listings that won’t produce an immediate return. I’d definitely lose money that I can’t afford to lose right now.

I love the idea of banging out the listings but risk losing my a$$.

 

[BDR]

How much do you make per remote?

Is it price elastic or inelastic? Meaning if you raised your price five dollars will somebody go somewhere else to buy the remote? Or is this the only place they can find the remote.

The price per remote is elastic. My ROI is pretty decent but I could certainly increase it if I wanted to.

I sell every type of remote so the answer varies on whether I risk losing sales to elsewhere on each of them.

The more common remotes that are inexpensive nd can be found everywhere, I probably couldn’t get away with hacking my price up five dollars. A remote for a stereo amplifier from the 80’s I’d have a better chance of it.

In a sense, I compete with myself by selling on other platforms as well. I’ve tortured myself on whether I should sell on multiple platforms for this reason. I get more sales but give away more fees. It’s less control.

 

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[biophase]

I could certainly batch the processing but haven’t done it. I’ve chipped away at it by myself, which is probably why I’m still creating listings 5 years later.

The listings are only the foundation. They don’t guarantee sales. There are a lot of remotes that I list that likely will never sell. It’s hard to say which ones will and which will not.

In my own mind I don’t sell enough to justify the risk of paying people for listings that won’t produce an immediate return. I’d definitely lose money that I can’t afford to lose right now.

I love the idea of banging out the listings but risk losing my a$$.

Do you have a place on your website where someone can request a remote that they are looking for?

 

[BDR]

Do you have a place on your website where someone can request a remote that they are looking for?

I have a search bar at the top of my homepage. It defaults “What are you looking for?”. I should probably change it to “Search for your model remote or device the remote is needed for”. That’s a pretty good idea.

I can either post my website here (if it’s not against the forum rules) or PM you a link to it.

 

[Mat79]

What exactly is your value skew? Why are people buying remotes from you as opposed to someone else? Is it just cheaper? Is there a product bundle or service you can add on to increase the value? Perhaps IR receivers, speakers, antenna, etc.

 

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[BDR]

What exactly is your value skew? Why are people buying remotes from you as opposed to someone else? Is it just cheaper? Is there a product bundle or service you can add on to increase the value? Perhaps IR receivers, speakers, antenna, etc.

Great questions! I suppose I don’t have a clear value skew although my remotes are probably the least expensive that are not on marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon.

People buy from me because lots of times I have remotes that are really difficult to find in other places. I suppose some of them would rather support a small business rather than buy on platforms that are littered with scammers.

There really isn’t much you can bundle with remotes other than batteries. I’ve thought of doing this. It would probably help with some returns as well. I suspect that some people that return remotes don’t read the listings and don’t try new batteries. I may very well do this but if I do, I will include it as an upsell with option of cheapo batteries or rechargeable ones.

Thanks for the ideas!

 

[BDR]

Another thing that I’ve found difficult due to the nature of my inventory is advertising.

I have had very limited success with Google Smart Shopping Campaigns but that’s all.

I usually only have a very limited quantity of each sku so it’s not cost or time effective to make a bunch of ads for each one of them.

This has caused me to rely heavily on SEO, which has been slow going for me. I’ve been teaching myself SEO out of necessity because I don’t have the funds to pay someone. I don’t mind though because I enjoy learning it.

If there are any SEO experts on here willing to answer a few questions, I’d love to pick their brain. Shopify seems decent for SEO from the get-go but there are a few things I struggle with.

1) My site speed isn’t as fast as it could be. Page Speed Insights states that I have too much JavaScript that is slowing it down. I know I can minify the JS but am not quite sure how to do that. Also Shopify’s Liquid confuses the living hell out of me. Does anyone have any decent resources on where I can learn how to do this?

2) I think my site should be doing a lot better than it is with SEO. I have done no backlink outreach for it. I have had decent success with adding remote control manuals, instructions and code lists as content to haul in visitors. This has organically gotten me some backlinks. Can anyone think of something else I should focus on for backlinks?

3) I use the same text template for every one of my listings. I just plug in the remote control model number and the models of the devices that ut operates. The rest are bullets that states the remotes are used, tested to be working, my guarantee, etc. Will using these same bullets in all of my listings get me penalized for duplicate content?

I’m sure I’ll have more questions, but those are the biggest ones that I have.

If anyone’s still reading, thank you for following. If there are any questions about any of this stuff I will do my best to answer them. As I’ve said, everything involved in this website I’ve done myself. I’ve learned my way around Shopify a bit, as well as eBay, Etsy and Amazon. My wife and I even have a booth in an antiques mall, so we flip antiques as well. These are all side hustles, not my main job. I’d be happy to help anyone with any of it.

 

[BizyDad]

I’ve considered it in the past but have always wanted to wait for more consistent sales.

If this is true (And your other comments about how you have a low budget are true)

Pros:
- Decent ROI

Then this is not true.

The only reason you feel like you have a decent ROI is cuz you are not properly evaluating how much time and resources you're putting in.

Everything you have said sounds good in theory as a side hustle. But if you really want to push for this to be a thing, to have growth, to be a business that can run separate from your time, then you need to find something with better margins.

I say you keep this up, keep your listings up, sell out of your inventory slowly but surely, but definitely start moving towards something new today.

1) My site speed isn’t as fast as it could be. Page Speed Insights states that I have too much JavaScript that is slowing it down. I know I can minify the JS but am not quite sure how to do that. Also Shopify’s Liquid confuses the living hell out of me. Does anyone have any decent resources on where I can learn how to do this?

Don't waste your time on this. If you are on Shopify, And you have small file sizes for your images, then your site loads fast enough.

The amount of time and headache it would take for you to learn what you need to learn to fix this to improve it, and how much improvement you'll probably get, isn't worth it.

I have run those kind of tests to see improvement on rankings. Not worth it.

2) I think my site should be doing a lot better than it is with SEO. I have done no backlink outreach for it. I have had decent success with adding remote control manuals, instructions and code lists as content to haul in visitors. This has organically gotten me some backlinks. Can anyone think of something else I should focus on for backlinks?

Yeah, but I'm guessing they probably link to your PDFs. And that's not going to help you all that much. If they're linking to your product pages, that will be better. But of course if those product pages go away because you just have one in stock, well that's a whole separate issue.

I kind of feel the same way about this as I do about the speed thing. Of course backlinks would definitely help you rank, but if I'm recommending you get another business, I'm recommending you don't spend time getting backlinks.

If you really need backlink ideas, there's a ton of entertainment based bloggers out there. You could do blog outreach/guest posts for them.

Of course you could buy links. There's some other people on the site who get into that sort of thing. I'll leave any advice on buying links to them.

3) I use the same text template for every one of my listings. I just plug in the remote control model number and the models of the devices that ut operates. The rest are bullets that states the remotes are used, tested to be working, my guarantee, etc. Will using these same bullets in all of my listings get me penalized for duplicate content?

No. Penalized is a heavy word in SEO.

It sounds like you have a huge site. It sounds like your site doesn't have a lot of authority since you don't have many backlinks.

Which means that Google probably isn't going to show all of your pages anyway. Going through 5,000 listings and adding a block of unique text to each one, I don't think that's going to make much of a difference.

You can put this to the test. Check your rankings on Google search console. Find the pages that are on the second or third page, and add a unique block of text to them. Wait up to 6 weeks and see if they jump up in rankings.

If they do, then prioritize the pages that are on the first few pages of Google, and handle those. Then worry about the ones Google isn't ranking high.

But I have a feeling it won't make much difference.

 

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[BDR]

If this is true (And your other comments about how you have a low budget are true)



Then this is not true.

The only reason you feel like you have a decent ROI is cuz you are not properly evaluating how much time and resources you're putting in.

Everything you have said sounds good in theory as a side hustle. But if you really want to push for this to be a thing, to have growth, to be a business that can run separate from your time, then you need to find something with better margins.

I say you keep this up, keep your listings up, sell out of your inventory slowly but surely, but definitely start moving towards something new today.



Don't waste your time on this. If you are on Shopify, And you have small file sizes for your images, then your site loads fast enough.

The amount of time and headache it would take for you to learn what you need to learn to fix this to improve it, and how much improvement you'll probably get, isn't worth it.

I have run those kind of tests to see improvement on rankings. Not worth it.


Yeah, but I'm guessing they probably link to your PDFs. And that's not going to help you all that much. If they're linking to your product pages, that will be better. But of course if those product pages go away because you just have one in stock, well that's a whole separate issue.

I kind of feel the same way about this as I do about the speed thing. Of course backlinks would definitely help you rank, but if I'm recommending you get another business, I'm recommending you don't spend time getting backlinks.

If you really need backlink ideas, there's a ton of entertainment based bloggers out there. You could do blog outreach/guest posts for them.

Of course you could buy links. There's some other people on the site who get into that sort of thing. I'll leave any advice on buying links to them.



No. Penalized is a heavy word in SEO.

It sounds like you have a huge site. It sounds like your site doesn't have a lot of authority since you don't have many backlinks.

Which means that Google probably isn't going to show all of your pages anyway. Going through 5,000 listings and adding a block of unique text to each one, I don't think that's going to make much of a difference.

You can put this to the test. Check your rankings on Google search console. Find the pages that are on the second or third page, and add a unique block of text to them. Wait up to 6 weeks and see if they jump up in rankings.

If they do, then prioritize the pages that are on the first few pages of Google, and handle those. Then worry about the ones Google isn't ranking high.

But I have a feeling it won't make much difference.

Thank you so much for the awesome reply. I’ve been at odds for a couple years now on whether it is worth it to keep this business running. If you’re curious about the site and want to check it out for the hell of it, the name of the business is Best Deal Remotes.

I’d say financially the ROI is decent. I get the remotes for peanuts and the ones that sell, usually sell for $15-20 ea. If you factor in my time, the ROI is probably lousy though. I go through spurts where I work my a$$ off for a few days and burn myself out and slow down for a month or so. I work shift on my full time job so balancing that along with my family time usually takes a heavy toll on me.

As far as the SEO advice goes, you’re a rockstar. My SEMrush Domain authority is a 27, so you’re right about that. I’ve been a bit of a lurker from time to time on here and have noticed you’re the man as far as SEO goes. I was studying SEO to possibly take a similar path as yourself and possibly start an agency, but I’m still on the fence about that as well. I have a lot to learn.

I know e-commerce fairly well but have never white-labeled anything which is a whole different art. @biophase is the man as far as this goes. I’ve read all his Gold threads but my budget would make white-labeling and creating new products difficult.

For now I’ll probably take your advice and just sell off what I have listed and not put any extra effort into it. This will give me time to figure things out. Perhaps I’ll even have an “aha” moment although it hasn’t happened in 5 years. For now I’ve studied copywriting and SEO. Perhaps I’ll go down one of those routes.

Thanks again for the help!

P.S. - my offer still stands on answering any questions about selling on any of these platforms. I’d be glad to help anybody, however I can.

 

[BizyDad]

Thank you so much for the awesome reply. I’ve been at odds for a couple years now on whether it is worth it to keep this business running. If you’re curious about the site and want to check it out for the hell of it, the name of the business is Best Deal Remotes.

I’d say financially the ROI is decent. I get the remotes for peanuts and the ones that sell, usually sell for $15-20 ea. If you factor in my time, the ROI is probably lousy though. I go through spurts where I work my a$$ off for a few days and burn myself out and slow down for a month or so. I work shift on my full time job so balancing that along with my family time usually takes a heavy toll on me.

As far as the SEO advice goes, you’re a rockstar. My SEMrush Domain authority is a 27, so you’re right about that. I’ve been a bit of a lurker from time to time on here and have noticed you’re the man as far as SEO goes. I was studying SEO to possibly take a similar path as yourself and possibly start an agency, but I’m still on the fence about that as well. I have a lot to learn.

I know e-commerce fairly well but have never white-labeled anything which is a whole different art. @biophase is the man as far as this goes. I’ve read all his Gold threads but my budget would make white-labeling and creating new products difficult.

For now I’ll probably take your advice and just sell off what I have listed and not put any extra effort into it. This will give me time to figure things out. Perhaps I’ll even have an “aha” moment although it hasn’t happened in 5 years. For now I’ve studied copywriting and SEO. Perhaps I’ll go down one of those routes.

Thanks again for the help!

P.S. - my offer still stands on answering any questions about selling on any of these platforms. I’d be glad to help anybody, however I can.

Well if you're thinking about starting an SEO agency, then I would say definitely put some effort into doing SEO on this site. (I haven't looked at it yet.)

One thing that helped me when I was first building my SEO agency was that I had built a website that was getting 10,000 visits a month. Eventually a group of 50,000 visits a month.

When you're in a sales meeting and you're able to tell people that that's what you've done, they don't really question whether you can do it for them.

I don't know if a remote based website can get to 10,000 visits a month, but I don't know that it can't. Either way the point is you can learn the techniques and build confidence in your ability that you're going to need to sell the service.

Edit: You've got to fix your pricing on shipping. You say one thing in your top header, and another thing on your homepage.

 

[BDR]

Well if you're thinking about starting an SEO agency, then I would say definitely put some effort into doing SEO on this site. (I haven't looked at it yet.)

One thing that helped me when I was first building my SEO agency was that I had built a website that was getting 10,000 visits a month. Eventually a group of 50,000 visits a month.

When you're in a sales meeting and you're able to tell people that that's what you've done, they don't really question whether you can do it for them.

I don't know if a remote based website can get to 10,000 visits a month, but I don't know that it can't. Either way the point is you can learn the techniques and build confidence in your ability that you're going to need to sell the service.

Edit: You've got to fix your pricing on shipping. You say one thing in your top header, and another thing on your homepage.

Thanks for the advice!

It’s funny, I caught that too when I was looking at my site earlier. I haven’t been able to fix it yet. I’m stuck at work with only my cellphone.

I’m currently at 5753 visits so far this month. If I stay on this pace I’ll be at around 7-8k at the end of the month. Not too far from 10k. I think 50k would be pushing it though, haha.

 

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[biophase]

I have a search bar at the top of my homepage. It defaults “What are you looking for?”. I should probably change it to “Search for your model remote or device the remote is needed for”. That’s a pretty good idea.

I can either post my website here (if it’s not against the forum rules) or PM you a link to it.

You need a submission page where someone types in their model and email address.

Then you go find and clean the remote they need and email them back with an invoice or price.

This way you don’t need to list any remotes. Let the customers tell you which ones to clean.

 

[biophase]

OK, I just went to your site.

It needs a lot of work.

You should have way more categories so it’s an easy search. I’d have it listed by appliance tv and also by brand. Why don’t you have a category of Sony, Samsung or LG?

You don’t have any prices on your product page. I don’t understand this? I’d raise the remote price and make it free shipping. $7.99 is too cheap for a used remote that’s hard to find.

Personally I think your Customer flow should look like this. When a customer hits the homepage, there should only be text with a bunch of links going to popular remotes by model number.

When I go to a website like NAPA auto parts, and I’m looking for a specific part for my 2015 4runner, I don’t care about anything else on the page. I just type in windshield wiper 2015 4runner and I go directly to a set of results that fits my car.

There should be a very large search bar that encourages the customer to type in their product number. This way the customer goes straight to the remote page that they are looking for.

There is there needs to be a result when you don’t have the remote that takes them to a page that says something like, we couldn’t find your remote in stock, but we have thousands of remotes in our warehouse that haven’t been cataloged yet. Please tell us your email and we will contact you when we find one.

 

[BDR]

You need a submission page where someone types in their model and email address.

Then you go find and clean the remote they need and email them back with an invoice or price.

This way you don’t need to list any remotes. Let the customers tell you which ones to clean.

It sounds good in theory. My current traffic gets to my website my by searching for the remote or the model number it’s used for. I’d have to set it up differently or run some creative ads to filter people to it. Is this how you would picture it being done?

I would also have to do some significant re-organizing of my inventory to accomplish it. It’s doable but would take a lot of sorting. I receive my inventory in large mixed-bag lots. I keep them in totes on shelving units but finding a specific remote would currently be like finding a needle in a haystack.

That would definitely change things up a bit but would take a lot of work. Possibly worth a try though. Thanks for the ideas @biophase. Haha hadn’t really considered this before. Truthfully, this is the first time I’ve reached out for help since I’ve started.

 

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[BDR]

OK, I just went to your site.

It needs a lot of work.

You should have way more categories so it’s an easy search. I’d have it listed by appliance tv and also by brand. Why don’t you have a category of Sony, Samsung or LG?

You don’t have any prices on your product page. I don’t understand this? I’d raise the remote price and make it free shipping. $7.99 is too cheap for a used remote that’s hard to find.

Personally I think your Customer flow should look like this. When a customer hits the homepage, there should only be text with a bunch of links going to popular remotes by model number.

When I go to a website like NAPA auto parts, and I’m looking for a specific part for my 2015 4runner, I don’t care about anything else on the page. I just type in windshield wiper 2015 4runner and I go directly to a set of results that fits my car.

There should be a very large search bar that encourages the customer to type in their product number. This way the customer goes straight to the remote page that they are looking for.

There is there needs to be a result when you don’t have the remote that takes them to a page that says something like, we couldn’t find your remote in stock, but we have thousands of remotes in our warehouse that haven’t been cataloged yet. Please tell us your email and we will contact you when we find one.

Thanks for the feedback @biophase!

I have tons of different categories (called collections in shopify) but they are probably not easily accessible from the menu like they should be. I gave collections for types of remotes as well as each brand has its own collection. I will work on fixing this.

What would you change about the search bar? It seems pretty easy to find and navigate with. I’m definitely open to changing it though. I’ll try to figure out how to make the change so when the search doesn’t yield results I can collect their contact info.

I totally agree with you on the product page. It’s weird that there’s no price. I believe this is how it defaulted from the premium “empire” theme that I purchased. I’ll see if I can change that as well.

I think I got too wrapped up in the bells and whistles of the theme. Your advice of text links to functional areas where they can find what they’re looking for is way more useful.

This is all great stuff. I appreciate your help!

 

[woken]

I’ve considered it in the past but have always wanted to wait for more consistent sales. I still don’t think I could sustain an employee for very long, definitely not full time.

Once the listing is created, I only have to change the inventory level as I list the new remotes. The only problem is that there are literally thousands upon thousands of remotes. I’ve created 3k listings or so and feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface.

You have no high school kid in your family that you could teach this to?

suppose I don’t have a clear value skew although my remotes are probably the least expensive that are not on marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon.

Interesting. Went on amazon and saw remotes for as low as $7.99. Are used ones cheaper ? Lol

Interesting concept nonetheless. Not all businesses are sexy.

I guess you hit your ceiling. I would teach someone to do it then focus only on getting more sales.
You can also upsell cleaning kits(tv included) batteries and what not else one needs.

 

[biophase]

What would you change about the search bar? It seems pretty easy to find and navigate with. I’m definitely open to changing it though. I’ll try to figure out how to make the change so when the search doesn’t yield results I can collect their contact info.

I was using it on my iPhone and it shows a bunch of results while typing. So when I typed Sony, it shows 4 results but they are kind of meaningless with the number of remotes you have.

Also I noticed you have 3 pics per remote. You can probably just do 1. May save you a little time listing.

I think you need to figure out efficiencies and streamline everything. If I were running this I’d be positioning it more like, we will find the remote you need, let us find it for you.

Then you start going through your inventory and organizing it.

In fact you can just upload your inventory spreadsheet to the website as text and get all the SEO for your model numbers.

 

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[MitchC]

Can you just use the stock images of the remote or would that take more time to find than doing photography? Could a VA do this if you gave them a list of remotes? Then you wouldn’t even have to clean them till you sold them. I’m sure even just a stock picture of the appliance it’s for would be fine if your website is trustworthy enough. I mean if you really wanted to just get every remote you have on there quickly you could add them all with no images, then add images or have a va add images once that’s done. Having remotes on there with no image is going to be better than not having them on there at all. Add images to the pages that are getting views first.

Have you got free google shopping listings set up? If you have model numbers etc it should be niche and longtail enough that you could rank a few here

Honestly your business sounds like a nightmare but there’s definitely a market, I don’t see why you couldn’t get to 50k page views a month or more.

Biophase already said it but put your prices up. If you can’t afford to make money on how much it costs to list something without losing money or breaking even then it’s not a business it’s a low paying job.

You can definitely charge more for rare remotes but how do you work out which ones are rare? In my opinion is just charge more for all of them and then only the rare ones would sell. Less work more profit. Maybe set something up that automatically drops the price if it gets so many page views and doesn’t sell.

 

[BDR]

Also I noticed you have 3 pics per remote. You can probably just do 1. May save you a little time listing

I’ll probably be doing this from now on. I will likely be teaching someone else to do it.

I’ve started working on making some of the changes you suggested. My shipping is changed to free. I went to increase my prices but realized that you can’t easily bulk-edit your pricing. I can’t believe I hadn’t noticed this before. WTF Shopify! They suggest an app which costs money, otherwise you have to do them one at a time.

 

[BDR]

Can you just use the stock images of the remote or would that take more time to find than doing photography?

Not all of them have stock photos. You’d have to use photos from Amazon or eBay which may not be kosher on the legal side of things. eBay has no problem with you using other users’ photos, but that’s on their own platform.

Could a VA do this if you gave them a list of remotes?

This is probably something that could be taught easily enough with detailed instructions. I’ve thought about doing it.

Have you got free google shopping listings set up? If you have model numbers etc it should be niche and longtail enough that you could rank a few here

Yes, it does help with some traffic some. Google is funny about wanting GTINs for them though. I don’t enter this info because it’s a waste of time to find it and not all have them in the first place. I enter them as custom products, but only a fraction make it through.

Maybe set something up that automatically drops the price if it gets so many page views and doesn’t sell.

That would be cool if I could figure out a way to do this. Maybe there’s an app somewhere that does this?

 

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[BDR]

@biophase, I made some changes on my site:

• I changed to free shipping and cheaper international shipping
• I increased my prices by $5 to reflect the changes to the shipping
• I removed the crappy hero images (also sped up my site)
• I added menus in the body of the page to “Shop By Brand” & “Shop by Type”
• I re-organized a few other things on the homepage so it looks better

There are a few things I’m also looking into:

• How to add the price back onto my product pages. I have a ticket into the theme developer
• Looking for a way to customize the search so that if the item isn’t found it will bring you to a landing page with instructions to “contact us”
• Still need to add something to contact us with requests. Brainstorming the best way to do this

Thanks again for the help!

 

[Jerbear1212]

I agree with the general consensus here - you are the bottleneck in your business. Read E-Myth Revisited.
You need to learn how to delegate. See if theirs a special needs business in your area - something we looked at for packing and shipping for a product and others I know use. Or contact local colleges to be an internship opportunity for entrepreneur program. Or research "hire my mom" part time job search sites or even look at your local fb. neighborhood groups for leads to those at home with time for an extra job. Look at diversifying your product assortment so you're not in one niche. Complimentary products? Bundles you could promote if so?