From Affiliate Marketing To Importing And Ecommerce

[Janetriever]

You said you ship from your house (before using an fulfilment center). Have you taken dropshipping into consideration?

 

[kelvinleang]

I think i've jumped the gun on making a shopify page set up for a product i want to test. I was looking to use the website conversion ad type for FB. Right now i'm having doubts if it is ok for the brand to keep on refunding/cancelling orders due to no inventory. Did you have any issues with this? I fear the customers might become wary of the brand..

As i reread you thread, you mentioned using PPE or clicks to website types of ads first before making shopify pages. Does that mean you initially made a FB page for each of your products and did some ads leading to the pages?

 

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[kelvinleang]

Thanks! Rep transferred.

When testing products using ads, are the results accurate in about 2 weeks max?

 

[RichyV]

There's so much valuable info in this thread, thanks for taking the time.

In regards to your Shopify store, do you have it set up as a "conventional" eCommerce store (about page, contact, store, product categories etc) or more of a landing page for each product?

Is your funnel as straight forward as FB ad ->product page->add to cart->checkout?

 

[Alex W.]

I am active in running traffic. I haven't spent much time at all in any of the forums. I did have a STM a few times but never posted. I feel like spending time in AM forums is good if you are starting on your own. For me that wan't the case so I never did that. Going to the summits/conventions and making a solid network for yourself is 100x more valuable.


Not for me this year. I'm pretty worn out from all the conventions for the time being. Most likely going to just lay low. Maybe go to some small meet ups with friends. But for now ASW is my next planned event.

I may be at ASW as well. If you drink, I'd love to buy you a beer & chat.

I'm still pretty new to running traffic (started after graduation last year), but I'm sure I could provide some sort of value to the convo

Have a good one!

 

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[MotiveInMotion]

@hughjasle

Curious to know where you're importing these products to, did you have some warehouses on hand, or are they pretty easy to set up storage and fulfillment to?

Thanks

 

[MotiveInMotion]

small tester amounts I have sent to me so I can check them out and fulfill myself (employee really does it). Large quantity orders are sent to my fulfillment company to fulfill.

Awesome! Would you mind going into more depth about some specifics of a distribution company? Since ultimately you'll be launching the brand big time and using that, it obviously took a process to just have a fulfillment center and warehouse, etc.? Like MJ talking in the book about control, it's interesting to decide how far one will go up on the latter of distribution, to owning / creating the manufacturing centers of the actual product, etc.

 

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[MotiveInMotion]

Fantastic! I'll look into it, and sound exciting, keep us posted

 

[#nowhere]

Hi Hugh,

congrats! Cool to hear that kind of news

Do you mean the difference between a private labelled, costumized product (quality) and the Standard goods (low quality) from e.g. China?

Thanks in advance
I'm looking forward to hear such news more often in the future!

 

[amanteai]

@hughjasle thanks for a great thread! This is my first post here (newb alert). Did you order the product first or take orders and then use that money to buy the product? I'm not clear on that. I've already scouted a product I want to import but, well, lacking funds. I've realized that I've purchased at least 2 things on LivingSocial that likely went this same route as it took about 6 weeks to ship, with an "out of stock, on backorder" email shortly after purchasing.

So 2 questions. #1 Do you feel it's feasible/safe to have the website made and use sales proceeds to buy the stock for the first round of importing?

#2 Would shopify/paypal hold up funds because of that tactic? You alluded to that in your post but I wasn't able to see the graphics, the links are not working.

 

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[iTrader]

Not really. I mean just quality products in general. Doesn't matter what you are doing, private label, fully custom unique, or selling another brands stuff. Just make sure what you are selling is high quality.

Like I'm getting LOTS of sales from repeat buyers, friends, and other organic (non-paid for traffic) now. Really opened my eyes.

Honestly, this entire experiment of going white hat with ecom has opened my eyes. So much more fulfilling and from what I can, it will be far more lucrative than affiliate marketing in the end. Pretty cool stuff. Lots of opportunity out there.

How long do you keep your ad? Do you think the shorter it is the better?

 

[DWX]

You mentioned picking an audience and marketing different products until one/two stuck - how did you arrive at your target audience? Were they chosen at random or did you enter a market that you were familiar with/interested in?

Thanks a lot for this progress thread! Enjoy the rest of your vacation.

 

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[iTrader]

Sorry guys I've been on vacation with family all week and internet is short where I am.

@SimonGhandil - I have had both long and short text ads work well. You will have to test them both to see which works best in your case. No other way around it. Constant testing and improving is the only way to win.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

Thanks. Im sure this question is all over the forum but I wanted to ask you personally. When I post Ads, they will be active but most of the time they won't deliver. Has this ever happened to you? I deleted the campaign before and it worked but when it doesn't work I'm not sure what else to do.

 

[DWX]

Well two things:
1. I may be changing my own personal methods in regards to picking an audience. I am expanding my products and thus new audiences. I am now selling products for multiple audiences.

2.To arrive at ultimate final audience is simple. Start broad and narrow down based on sales. Like my first product. It was a product for long hair. Obviously a product more suited towards women. I started marketing to all women. After a bunch of sales I was I able to see that most of my sales were coming from women over 45 year old. So I stopped marketing to the 18-39 year olds. Stuff like that.

Brilliant, thank you for clarifying that @hughjasle!

Did you uncover your buyers' age via Facebook Ads/Shopify/Google Analytics? Thanks once again!

 

[Nam88]

Thank you very much for your reply,


Always is a strong word. There is no ALWAYS in anything I do. But starting with website click or post engagement ads while a pixel gathers data is a good move IMO. Even better, run all three at once See what does better in the short term, long term, etc.[/QUOTE]

The old rule test test test

How can you track results with page post engagement? I mean with website conversion and click to website you can make an educated guess at least but with page post engagement is quite hard. Do you use any third party tracking software in particular?


When you make the research about the products to sell which are the factors/requirements that tells you that you can test a product.
I know merchandise sell well but it has low margin, electronics are hard to import from china and usually sales in facebook are based on impulsive buying so do you have any criteria? Do you look on amazon/ebay first to see if this is already selling?

Thank you in advance.

 

[Guest24480]

Great thread, thanks for sharing your experiences.

One question: I have about 1.5k in funds, do you think that's too little to start a process similar to yours? Should I hustle more for startup cash?

 

[eStan]

Wow, congrats! You're doing great. Looks like you're getting close to the 7 fig revenue mark. That's pretty insane with your margins.

I was curious about your affiliate business, looks like you're doing great over there as well. Are you running whitehat or doing the classic nutra cloaking/ account farming? I noticed you promote physical products so I was just wondering what kind if you're willing to answer of course.

Otherwise a terrific thread. Gold nuggets everywhere. Thank you!

 

[eStan]

Not sure what you mean by getting close, but blew past the 7-figure per year mark a long time ago. Pushing up to the 8 figure per year mark now, but thank you

Wow, 8 figures? Holy crap that's amazing.

With the 7 fig remark I was only refferring to your ecom venture. I saw you sold 7000 units and you sell them at around 100 bucks so that was my math.

Anyway one big congrats again. And you've only been doing this for 2 years?

 

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[Paul Thomas]

In this type of facebook advertising testing is there need to worry about being ban/account deleted without cloak, etc like AM? This would be a significant reason to do this over AM

 

[Danny M]

I have experience with graphic design and can make a nice looking website with wordpress. I have done this for a product I am launching soon (my first ever product, I'm completely new to this).

I don't think i'm ever going to rank for google in my niche, but I will run FB adverts etc to get traffic. Is it worth buying a shopify store too? Do they get more traffic from google searches?

 

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[Paul Thomas]

I just want to share this it's something I will no doubt never see again. They ordered. 1 impression, 1 click, 1 sale, what are the chances? Let's hope this scales, this could be my first winner looking at how my other ad sets for it are doing. Thanks Hugh, you haven't made me rich yet but I guess I'm closer than ever.

Nice! Was this a test with an out of stock product or a true "full" sale?

 

[Danny M]

Anybody in the UK have some advice on shipping? Currently running this all from home as it is my first product. The product once boxed is only 10cm x 17cm x 3cm. Say i was to sell around 30 a day, what is the best way to distribute these? Getting a courier to collect each day seems expensive from what I have looked at. Almost £6 per box was the cheapest i found on a comparison website.

 

[GSF]

Anybody in the UK have some advice on shipping? Currently running this all from home as it is my first product. The product once boxed is only 10cm x 17cm x 3cm. Say i was to sell around 30 a day, what is the best way to distribute these? Getting a courier to collect each day seems expensive from what I have looked at. Almost £6 per box was the cheapest i found on a comparison website.[/

Anybody in the UK have some advice on shipping? Currently running this all from home as it is my first product. The product once boxed is only 10cm x 17cm x 3cm. Say i was to sell around 30 a day, what is the best way to distribute these? Getting a courier to collect each day seems expensive from what I have looked at. Almost £6 per box was the cheapest i found on a comparison website.

how much does it weigh?

 

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[Paul Thomas]

I'm going to assume you mean that your ads aren't spending very quickly, and not that you aren't gaining enough data ($10 is a very small amount of data), but you gotta work within your means so I get it. As for the question, you have to best understand how FB works.

AT THE BEGINNING OF THE DAY (FB ad account time zone), FB's algo will check to see various data points about your ad and compared to the market to make sure it can spend your full budget, or as close to it as possible based on your selections. Without going too much into that, key take aways for your situation are that you should start your just after midnight your ad account time, and your $10 will be spread as evenly as possible throughout the 24 hour period. So a budget of $10 will have less than $.50 running per hour. That's pretty small and if your cpc is .25c+ it'll be hard for FB to properly spend it and get you JUST 1-2 clicks an hour. But it should be spending the $10 daily no problem. LMK if that's not the case.


Sure. I'm looking at a few of those types of products myself. I'm not a fashionable person myself so it's kinda tricky for me. That and I haven't really found a way around the multiple SKU's for sizing yet that pleases me.

Awesome thank you - this is the first full day of running but will let you know. As for starting right after midnight, if I started yesterday at 9pm for example, will FB reset itself at midnight or is it best practice to stop the ad where it is right now, and start again at 12:01am for example?

 

[Paul Thomas]

Yes FB resets each day at midnight. Additionally, because you started 3/4 of the day late, FB will typically be charging you 3/4 higher prices to make up the difference.

Ah got it. And you are always bidding on a CPM basis?

 

[Paul Thomas]

Not always. I like to believe that the closer to bidding per cpm the better. But I often bid for conversion of CPC as well. Especially when just starting something. I like to do manual bidding and make my bids unreasonably high. This helps me to get prime spots on the newsfeeds and not at the bottom after the user has just been scrolling for 10 minutes. Costs more to start but is worth it. Higher CTRs etc. So FB will start giving preferential treatment to your ads over other because you have a higher CTR.

Thank you, so much to learn... On my first FB ads ever I'm running a broad audience on a automatic CPM basis at $10/day each... now not sure If that's not the best thing to do.

 

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[Danny M]

how much does it weigh?

Only about 300g

 

[Paul Thomas]

I don't know how to do a popup, but you can always just email them and say sorry in a personalized email for each customer that purchased and give a code that way.

The personalized email is a great idea and what I'm going to do. Did you check in Shopify "allow customers to purchase this item out of stock". And then when you did, just refund the customer and send the email with a code?

Thanks again

 

[MitchC]

Is there any software you use to track which ads are responsible for which sales? Or just Facebook pixel data?

And apps or design layouts you recommend for shopify to increase conversions?

Heres a couple I tried:
I added a variant for 2 for $40 and hid the quantity bar
Added the featured product code to the cart page as a kind of up sell
PoWR countdown timer

 

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[LPPC]

Without knowing your product, I'd be looking at $7-8 for the product and cost of shipping it to you. + $4 shipping to ur customer. +$10CPA (complete Guess) = $22. That leaves a healthy profit margin for higher CPA costs/other expenses and a nice profit.

I also have a product I am about to run an ad for, but right during planning the ad I stumbled upon a blockage. I am a beginning entrepreneur so I had never before thought about taxes. I am planning to sell it for 47, since my competitor is selling it for 60 dollars and mine is the same product but the style is only different. So it only looks different.

So I was calculating my costs.
8$ for product + shipping
6$ for Amazon FBA
2% payment processor costs, lets say 1 dollars
If an average conversion rate is 2% and CPC is 0.30$, then CPA would be 15 dollars.
---------------
My profit before tax would be aproximately 17 dollars. In the Netherlands taxes would be something like 40%. Net profit would be 10.2 $

Isn't this margin too small? Especially since it is an (very simple) electronic product and warranty costs would also have to be taken into account. The manufacturer on alibaba says it has 6 months warranty, but I don't know if they really give this warranty.

Do you recommend me to look for another product with higher margins? Any advice?

Thank you very much!