EternalStudent's progress thread - to Ecommerce and beyond

[EternalStudent]

Initially i was going to wait until my business was a roaring success before i started this thread... but listening to Unscripted again where MJ talks about the forum being a resource to learn from others' losses as well as victories, i decided to start my progress thread right now, even though i have very little to show for my efforts so far.

I am working on getting my first ecommerce site off the ground.

Currently I have a website set up and am recovering from the ego bruising that resulted from my first FB ad campaign.

Lessons learned so far:

• If you think (like i did) that choosing the right product is the only thing stopping you from making money in ecom, think again!
• Dont bother trying to take product photos yourself. There are professionals online that will do better than you can even imagine. Seriously, save yourself the embarassment
• GoDaddy are amazing at first but I am starting to loathe them. SSL certs cost an arm and a leg through them but are free on other providers eg HostGator! I'm looking to make the switch this week
• Writing good copy is harder than it looks. I thought my first crack at it came out well until i started reading about product page optimisation.. lots of work to do here!
• Getting your first ad published on FB is just the beginning.

Next steps are:

• moving from a com.au to a .com domain
• Re-write my product page to be more conversational and customer centric
• Re-do landing page to be more generic (currently it is focused on one product but i think it will be better to make it about the niche and why customers should choose my brand over others)

Once my product page is optimised I will have another go at FB ads. I know that the first scene is getting people's attention, but viewers are scrolling down 1 second after the second scene starts. Lots to think about!!

Happy to share more information about any of the above if you are interested!

 

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[EternalStudent]

Quick update... I have redone my website copy, moved over to a .com url and restarted my fb ads. I made a new ad and also signed up for google ads too.

When i set up the Google ads i got to preview a Google search result, which showed many other websites (amazon, etsy etc) selling the exact same product. How did I not see these when i did my initial research?
I think now that i was so desperate to get something moving that i just went with the first product that caught my attention and ignored/blocked out red flags.

I am glad that i only made a small order to test the market interest, so have only spent around $300in total for product, website, photos etc. Overall a good investment considering what i have learned.

In unscripted MJ talks about the hard way being the easy way and vice versa (ENTRY). If this new ad campaign doesnt get traction I will kill the ads, shut up shop and move on to one of the many ideas that have the potential to really impact people's lives.

Random side note.. i got a 6% payrise out of the blue yesterday, bringing my salary to over $80k. I'm 28 and havent formally studied since high school. If you are looking for a profession that is in high demand and will never go out of style, consider Compliance or Risk management. Happy to answer any questions you might have in relation to this.

Anyways, I have a B2B SaaS idea that I will look at should my current ad campaign not take off. I've already learned the importance of validating market interest so am looking forward to doing this first using a similar approach to the WPEngine guy (sorry, couldnt find the thread to share here)

Will update in around 1 week to give my ads time to calibrate. Have a great one!

 

[EternalStudent]

Its been 2 weeks since my last update. In that time, i was able to get over 10k impressions but still not a single sale, so I killed the project.

I listed the domain for sale and will list my samples on FB marketplace.

I also read a few books:
Never Give Up by Donal Trump - the first few chapters were great but it turned into a bit of a brag-a-thon as it went on. Still, interesting to get a glimpse into some of the man's thought processes. No matter what people say about him, his business savvy cannot be denied.

The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday - Didnt live up to the hype for me. Its short but i still didnt finish it. The quotes at the beginning of each chapter and stories of adversity were entertaining and inspirational but Holiday's takes on them were a bit meh.

Shoe Dog by Phil Knight - One of the best books I have, and will ever read in my life. Strongly recommend.

I started doing some planning for my SaaS.
It's pretty simple and there are some solutions already out there, but they are overpriced and incomplete.
It's a marketing-compliance related app. My employer has needed something like it for years but just never had the time to put it together, so I know there is demand for it.

I found out about GPT-3 last week - holy moly! There is so much potential for entrepreneurs who can find use cases for it. I cant find anything on Udemy about it - Opportunity for someone who has the expertise to get the first mover advantage in that space! If you end up making a course, let me know and I will buy it!

Commitment for September is to get the logic mapped out for the SaaS in the form of a matrix and flowchart. If I manage to complete that, I will start building the MVP in bubble.io
I want to offer 4 main features, but will add them as I go.

 

[EternalStudent]

Time for an update.
I finished the flowchart/logic for the SaaS but decided it would not be worth pursuing further after listening to the chapter in MJ's new book where he talks about multiples. We dont live in a universe where this app will ever make millions. More like 6 figs best case.

I turned the work done so far over to my boss and he was impressed. It will make our life in the office a little easier so it wasnt a complete waste of time. I'll note it as evidence of exceeding expectations on my next performance review slowlane entrepreneurship!!

I have started building a new SaaS app with bubble.io. It's one that I thought of last year and put it in the too hard basket after trying to learn node.js on Udemy. Bubble is far easier and faster to build on. I'm psyched since this app really has the potential to impact millions of people positively and the value proposition is massive.

So far I've connected to an external data source via API and am working on the CRUD operations and database relationships. very early days.

By the end of this month I aim to have built out the basic CRUD functionality for all the use cases and have the database relationships finalised. I'll then need to look at error handling and fallbacks for the API data, as well as user types and permissions.

Im reading a book called "No More Excuses". It's all about accountability and how accountability is actually a competitive advantage rather than a consequence.
Also listening to the great rat race escape . Awesome book and I'm glad to hear MJ's voice again like in TMF . The narrator for the story parts does a really good job with the fiction but the business parts (in my opinion) feel more authentic when MJ reads them.

I am finding it difficult to juggle all my priorities though... Kids, family, fitness, a job... Keen to hear from any family guys who have managed to make it work. Every time I add all the hours up the only way to fit it all in is at the expense of sleep.

 

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[EternalStudent]

3 months on... how quickly that went by!

I decided not to progress with bubble due to the difficulty in handling API errors. I'm now looking at flutter which should have been the obvious choice from the beginning.

Unfortunately the last 3 months have been terrible with the kids and work - huge amount of resignations in the team means i am running at 120% capacity every day, and my 13 month old is not getting to sleep until 8:30-9pm every evening. There has also been a spiritual fatigue caused by the covid situation which is taking a not-insignificant level of bandwidth. At the end of the evening the last thing i want to do is grind a Udemy flutter course.
I completely acknowledge it is my choice not to grind further and have no issue taking responsibility for my lack of progress.

It's that time of year now when we reflect on the last 12 months and what we want to change in the next.

In 2021 I had my 4 goals:

• run a marathon
• gain residency in Australia
• get certified in my profession
• start a profitable business

I achieved 3 out of 4 by August but never ended up getting traction on the business. My journal entries expose so much time wasted in fantasy land, shiny object syndrome, learning stuff i didnt yet have a use for, and other action faking.
The one "business" i did see through was, on reflection, a lazy money chasing effort.

I will begin next year with only one goal in mind - to start a profitable business. I will make a commitment to completing the Udemy course and publishing my first app by the end of February - even if it means i have to take leave from work to do so. With that under my belt I will engage with my target market to validate my app concept before investing too much time building the MVP.

I will also spend more time each day visualising my end goal rather than being stuck in the present 24/7, and repeating my affirmations - something that slipped out of my routine earlier in the year.

 

[olli_23]

Thanks for sharing your journey. I enjoyed reading it and I'm sure it can also inspire others.
You're taking action (starting the ecommerce biz) and learning from it. So you are already a step ahead of a lot of others.
Good luck!