Broke my record in sales yesterday. There is still more room to grow.
Also got a my first, very nice 5 star review from a customer with photos and stuff, I was a bit surprised.
It feels awesome when you spend MONTHS sketching, making prototypes, re-sketching, designing everything from scratch, graphic design, writing the instructional insert and pictures, etc. trying to make a product actually better, and someone you don't know says they love the product with proof of its use with their own photos.
There's something to be said about choosing a niche or area that you know about. There were times when I had (and still have) doubt creep in my mind about whether or not its worth it to continue to pursue, whether it's the amount of money I sunk in, the volume of traffic, having to assemble each unit by hand, etc.
But because I firmly knew that my product is different and better as a consumer of said product first, it's a lot easier to stick with it.
If I was selling garlic presses, it'd be harder to push through the doubts since I have no interest or background in using them.
I will say this, to anyone who wants to start with something.. In my experience, your best chances of success are when you are LASER FOCUSED on what you are doing. I used to get shiny object disorder in the past and it got me 50% of the way for about different ventures. This one, my
goal was to really see it thru to learn the ins and outs of ecommerce, even if it is a failure.
And it's easier to maintain focus when you have a product you believe in and trust, for months on end, not some random product from Jungle Scout. At least for your initial first launch.
Now, I feel like I have a better gauge of how Amazon works, how competitive a product is, the margins, how hard it will be to source, oversized fees, etc. and while I'm not an expert, it's much easier for me to know when looking at other products using tools like JS, how easy/hard it will be to launch.
I had actually bought Jungle Scout in the past about a year ago and did nothing with it because all that data is meaningless without context.
If you're launching something PL, keep to this formula: Improve it as much as possible without having to sink too much into it. Get the lowest MOQ possible, even 100 or 500 units. You need at least 100 to test product and sales velocity.
Sell it all, A/B test, price test, finalize the margins and numbers, optimize, and most importantly, LEARN. If it's a REASONABLE product and not a $10 commodity knife, worst case scenario you should be able to at least liquidate it at cost and lose nothing, or very little and chalk it up to a hands-on ecommerce course. If it works, then good improve it further and order more.
