From Affiliate Marketing To Importing And Ecommerce

[theag]

Somehow missed this thread. Cool to see you got up and running so fast with your own products! Looking at how quick you got those your sales figures I really have to get a couple more expensive products in my line.

the grass isn't always greener. Just different, and grass in the end is still grass.

Tell me about it. So true.

 

[hughjasle]

$580 in total for testing?

Roughly. I don't have an exact number. Some ads you can tell quickly that they suck, some took the full $80.

The amount doesn't matter. What matters is that you know if that product can sell or not. It's just a cheap way of testing the waters before you dive in.

 

[kwodzilla]

Yes clicks is the main thing I am looking for, but I don't ignore things like the likes, comments, and shares. The ad CPM is right up there with clicks in what I look at AND the ad CPM is largely correlated with the ad engagement, which includes everything from the clicks, likes, comments, and shares.

Ultimately you are right when it all comes down to the conversions, but since I was just feeling the water for which product to start with, this was just a way I decided to use to try and find out which product would seem to have a better 'virality' <--(made up word) to it which would then mean more exposure and thus more sales.

Also as a side note for anyone reading - don't discount the comments and shares on an ad. Good comments, likes, and shares speak VOLUMES to you potential buyers. I know I pay more attention to something if someone I know gave a positive response to something...

I've been watching this thread for a while and I just wanted to thank you for essentially laying out a roadmap to a fastlane business.

 

[hughjasle]

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?

yes and no - I have those pages, but I don't have a menu bar. Only way to get to them is via links.

Remember this was all about selling products, not really building a full on brand and doing thing right. This was more testing things out and scaling them. I have an entirely different set up I'm working on now to incorporate all my products into one site. But that's an entirely different method. That's long term and lots of upfront capital. This build a quick shopify store is for quick short term money.

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

Yep. I have shown a few ppl who I know (in person) from this forum and they can all confirm it. Simple as that. Whether or not that is best, that I don't know. Every product is different. But this has been working for me thus far.

 

[hughjasle]

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

@amanteai no I do not use those funds. I refund those orders. I only run ads before I have the product to test demand. That's all. Once I see there is demand and I can be profitable, I place my order with China. I don't begin selling again until the product is in and ready to ship. Shopify held my funds because I sold to much to quick on a new user account. They do that so scammers can't come in and screw with people.

@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

 

[hughjasle]

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?

You can see the exact same information on PPE ads as clicks to website or conversion objective ads. FB will tell you how many people clicked over to the website, and if you set up the pixel and attach it to the ad then it will track your conversions as well. It just wont optimize for them. As for tracking software, not really. FB and google analytics is all I really use for this.

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?

I test a lot, some things are surprising and work others I think will for sure crush fail miserably. I don't use ebay/amazon. It's more of a "do I think I can sell this? Can I come up with an ad angle that would showcase this product super well and create massive curiosity, enough to get clicks? That's it really. That's what I test.

 

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[hughjasle]

How much of your revenue comes from repeat sales/up sells/ cross sells at the moment?

To keep some secrecy/privacy all I can say is there is a decent amount in up sells. But all ads are profitable on the initial sale regardless of anyone purchasing up sells/cross sales/etc. I think that answers the front vs back end question as well.

Is this still just fb ads sales?

Yes, some direct traffic now as well however. But only marketing on FB.

And yes building up a VERY nice and sizable list. Haven't touched it yet however. Need to get a few more pieces in place before I start properly utilizing that asset.

 

[hughjasle]

In other words, how can you have a good representation of the product's potential when you do an image ad, while a video ad might do much better?

Remember this is just a test. You are just putting out feelers to know whether or not going thru the manufacturing process/sourcing QUALITY product is going to be a worth while venture for you (see all of @Walter Hay 's posts on that side of things. I read his content on this forum and purchased his book. A+).

People import quality products all the time, but have no idea how to sell them. So you don't end up with a ton of inventory and no way of getting rid of it, make sure you test first.

 

[hughjasle]

So if I understand it correctly, for testing whether there is demand for this product you don't need content and you can leave the page empty. But once you have bought inventory and are really selling the items, then content is very important. Is that correct?

Thanks man!

Wrong, reverse that.

Put up some content on the FB page right from the start. It only takes 10 minutes to do so why not.

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[MitchC]

Just wanted to post here and say I got my first sale! Now to make a profitable one. I've learned a lot already just reading this thread, and I'm halfway through Biophases, and I joined a lot of Facebook ads and Shopify groups on Facebook. But most of all just doing it has been the most important step. Passionate audience is the key! The order came from someone with the email avid"nicher"@.. Now to find a better product for that niche or another niche or better converting product page. I'm still getting people scrolling and scrolling then clicking off like they want to know something else, I have a box that says "Want to know anything else?" and I have Facebook chat on the page, but no replies to it, they just click off. Very frustrating.

 

[hughjasle]

Couldn't you theoretically, and initially, do all of this with an affiliate product instead, save all the importing and fulfilment side of things and the endless headaches it brings?

yes and no.

Yes - in its basic form, all this is is running paid traffic and learning to make it profitable. No in the sense that you typically can't make a cart, collect the money and then ship the product. In affiliate marketing you don't typically have any control once you send them to the page to checkout or whatever they are supposed to do.

A happy medium is to just drop ship. It's one of those hot topic things these days and all the rage for many guys who don't want to deal with the 'headaches' of importing and brand building.

The hard part with drop shipping is that you are relying on someone else (usually some chinese factory) to ship your product, make sure it good quality etc. That is a headache as well. To make things more fun, anyone can ship the exact same thing as you since it's just some chinese brand etc. There are ways to better do this, but takes more money and more risk and not for guys just starting. Dropshipping from aliexpress is notoriously bad and many companies including FB are trying to crack down it because customers typically hate it.

But back to your main point, yea you can cut those corners and dropship or do affiliate marketing to build your base and skills till you are ready to do things right. That's a personal decision really. But honestly it doesn't take much to do it right from the get go.

If I were to start over again today from scratch, I'd join Biophase's Amazon Coaching to get that side of things going as that helps prepare your mind for quality products and building an asset. I'd also grab Walter Hay's book on importing to start learning how to do it proper. That's a fantastic way to get started then just leaves you with learning how to properly advertise and build funnels that convert.

 

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[hughjasle]

What is the average cost of "testing a product"? Lets say the product is selling for $50.00.

The longer I do this the harder these questions become. I really thought it would be opposite that.

Here's the thing, are you looking make that product work? or are you working to find the easiest to sell product?

It can take $5-10k+ to make that product work, but go on to produce $5k profit a day for a year+ and sellable business. Whereas if you were just looking for the easiest product to sell you'd have most likely passed on this product and gone on to spend a small amount across a multitude of products to find a few that sell like hot cakes, but only for a few months till the flare is gone.

 

[hughjasle]

Those are absolutely amazing margins and you need to start scaling ASAP

Trying to. Gonna see how well it sells this time around. If I can get similar results then I'll try and smash a huge quantity of them.

Only catch is I have seen about 10 other people (that i've seen) running the same thing now all on FB ads as well not to mention the 200 people selling them for 1/3 the price on Amazon, and all the discount sites like groupon, wish, etc. selling them for peanuts as well.

 

[hughjasle]

Clicks to website? Ppe?

Did both of those. Clicks to websites and page post engagements. Mainly just need any ad objective that works best with your ad that leads to your website/offer page.

What budget?

I originally spent $80 just testing the ad itself looking to see how many clicks I got and what kind of CPM I could get. Once I saw that was good is when I set up the Shopify page and all that and made a legit ad going to that page. I spent $100 on that test that yielded the 13 sales that I had to refund.

Targeted audience or broad?

I lightly targeted it to my audienced. Basically I just put in the generder for the product and someone the age. I was able to narrow down the age more after I had sales rolling in. But I started it pretty broad.

 

[hughjasle]

Do you use the same "concept" for affiliate marketing?

FB ad -> landing page with affiliate offer?

Do you prefer to sell physical products as affiliate? Or digital (subscription based services?)? Or both?

Yes same concept.

Physical products. I find most of the digital stuff that's out there (especially for affiliates) is a load of crap.

But there are things like auto insurance, lead gen stuff, that is good. However I have just focused on physical products for the most part.


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[hughjasle]

But what about the margins on physical products? I see that you can make up to 50$ for a sale with digital products. Can you get 50$ form a sale of a physical product?

Sure you can.

Margins and payout are quite different tho.

You can have better margins (higher ROI) on a 15 cent payout than a $500 payout sometimes.

But if you are asking about how my margin compares with that of digital products, idk. I don't run anything digital atm.


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[hughjasle]

How did you advertise/test your products?

I started testing on FB BEFORE I even got samples.

Did you use a sample from a supplier before testing them on Facebook?

See above answer.

Did you use a random company name for them? I was thinking of using another random company first to test the product before using the one i'll use.

Company name doesn't matter. If you do however already have a name in mind, why not use it? I would, that's basically what I do anyhow.

MOQ (3000) was pretty large

least they can let me order is 1000.

the sample is generic looking without a logo.

Putting a logo on the product shouldn't cost you any extra I'd assume. Also I hope this product is sub $1 cost, MOQ of 1k on a SAMPLE batch seems outrageous.

I just ordered samples where their MOQ was like yours, but my product costs under 50 cents a piece. I have already proved the concept and know what I can sell it for all day long on FB though so I know I could easily order 3k of them. But I still got them do to a test batch for me as I want to make sure the product is good quality and they are legit. Did you try any other manufacturers?

 

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[hughjasle]

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.

Yes it sometimes happens to me. Could be all kinds of issues with you account. Usually for new guys it's a budget thing. Better to let it sit and wait till it starts spending. Could be going through a manual review or something.

Also - reach out to FB support. idk why more ppl don't do that. I love having reasons to speak with FB.

 

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[hughjasle]

is this a product customers tend to research before the purchase?

Some do some don't. Really depends on the ppl. But I have lots of products now so some might be researched more than others. However, nothing I sell is typically stuff that customers typically research.

how does the price point compare with your competitors?

In the middle. Some competitors have big well known brands and are extremely high priced. Others are extremely low. For example, my first product that I was selling for $100, a well known brand was selling for $300 and ppl on amazon were selling for $18.

 

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[hughjasle]

Been a while since I updated.

Everything is progressing well. I've found that scaling your own products when you own the entire process takes a LOT more time than scaling some affiliate campaigns. SO MANY MOVING PARTS.

I have a handful of products now and have moved the base of the business off Shopify onto a heavily customized Woocommerce site that my developers spend FOREVER building out. We'll see in the next few months how I like it compared to Shopify.

In doing so, I had to switch from Shopify's version of stripe to my own and have a question.


I have no idea how to make each customer of mine actually show up in the "customers created" section of stripe. They Should equal roughly the same as the "successful charges". Putting this out here to see if anyone else has had this issue but I'm reaching out to stripe as well to see what they have to say about it.

 

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[hughjasle]

You're building a real operation here. Should be great on the long term.

I'm getting into the space myself now and it's funny because I am in a few ecom FB groups and the so called "gurus" over there are probably nowhere near what you make. Yet you shared a ton here. Hats off to you sir. Wish you all the best!

I'm sure we are in the same groups. It's all decent info regardless of how much people make. It really just comes down to how you want to live your life and run your business. Many guys I meet are happy just working enough to travel all the time.

 

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[hughjasle]

do both of the below happen BEFORE ordering any product?

Don't put too much thought into this. There isn't a right or wrong way to do this.

But I would do #2 both before and after order the product.

I do it just a little before the product gets in as I want to find a base CPA to know if I can actually make money before dropping $10k and 1-3 months in getting inventory.

Then once the product is in I really start digging into it and base all my decisions off the data. Which change products better results. And I keep doing it for the life of that product. Always try and better it.

 

[hughjasle]

I've created a facebook ad video and a good looking shopify site. I'm going to test this product by letting the costumers order the product and then refund the money because I am out of inventory (like you said @hughjasle ).

I've read this entire thread again, but I couldn't find the answer to the following question. To make the ad appear on the Facebook news feed, you have to create a facebook page for it. @hughjasle Do you create facebook page content for this phase of the testing? Because I am afraid that when people click on the facebook page link instead of the shopify link , they will see an empty page with 0 likes and that will turn them off because there is no social proof. How much page building should I do at this stage?

Is there a way to prevent the costumers from visiting the facebook page?

Or am I overthinking this and I should just create a facebook page and leave it empty?

Thanks again!

Definitely put some content on the FB page. And continually use the FB page to post. Content is king.

But dont worry about ppl clicking your ad and going to your page. Very small number of ppl with do this.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[hughjasle]

Please let me know if you have any clarifications!

Wow dude. question overload 100%. You even got me confused. For the sake of everyone else who follows this thread I will go through what you wrote and try to lay it out nice and neat for everyone to clearly understand.

However now is not that time. I'm a bit worn out. I'm in NYC for the week and just finished up 8 hours of in-depth FB discussion with a handful of other FB marketers.

All I can tell from what I read is that you are are way to hung up on the tiny details that don't even matter. You should be more worried about why you haven't spent $1 in ads yet and not how I created my first ads or what type of ads I first ran.

90% of all the mystery will be solved when one start running ads themselves.

 

[hughjasle]

I have questions like how much data a facebook pixel needs before it is wise to convert from "clicks to website" type of ads to "optimized for conversions" ad type.

Honestly you can run them at the same time and then cut the one that isn't doing as well. Sometimes the Website Conversions will start out strong (even with no previous data) and hold it, sometimes the Clicks to Websites will win. There is no statistical number where switching over is ever good anyhow. When you find a winner campaign, let it run. Don't fiddle with it.

Or is it all just a matter of testing and I should dive into the unknown?

This. BUT make sure you have the knowns down. Make sure you page is working proper. Make sure your links are up, your payment processor, your fulfillment center, etc. Once everything else you can control is controlled, crank that advertising.

 

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[hughjasle]

Isn't this margin too small?

I'd run it. Taxes are gonna hit you on any product. Just focus on making it profitable. Once you are profitable and scaling, then spend some time talking to pro's who work with taxes for a living. But your margin is fine.

FYI I'd suggested testing higher pricing than your competitors BTW. Worst case, it doesn't sell well and you have to drop the price point you are at now.

 

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[Andy Black]

Working with the right people is crucial.

Isn't it just.

People > Processes > Technology (in that order)

 

[hughjasle]

How did you test? I was thinking about testing on forums and FB groups as to their opinions on the products.

A quick idea on how I tested is on my second post in this thread. In short, made a site for the product on shopify and running traffic to it to see actual customer engagement. Asking people for their opinions in forums would have done nothing for me. Probably would have told me to screw the idea since others are selling the product for nothing on amazon.

Would you be able to explain in detail what expenses are charged when ordering from alibaba? Shipping? Duties? I've been reading through @Walter Hay thread, but I've still have yet to understand the underworkings. Any material you can provide would be greatly appreciated as well.

Don't konw what thread ur talking about. Off the top of my head there weren't any alibaba fees. Just the cost of the products, shipping costs, customs/broker fees, packaging for shipping to customers, shipping to customer, shopify fees, mechant (payment) cost fees, and i can't think of any more off the top of my head.

 

[Y.B.]

Ads: $4k
Shipping: $3k
COGS: $5k
Fees/Brokers/Returns/misc.: $3k

Total Expenses: $15k

Total Revenue: $55k

Profit: $40k

Those are absolutely amazing margins and you need to start scaling ASAP

 

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[hughjasle]

Are you still just selling on FB only? No adwords, no amazon?

Yes, FB only.

However, I do have plans to expand into both. Lots of competition with only minor changes to the product on amazon, so I'm looking at a few options to see if there is a way I can have my product on amazon and sell it from there without leaving my store. I don't want to send my customers there where they might go in full amazon mode and shop for the cheapest highest rated products instead of just buying what they initially intended.

And as for Google, I haven't messed much with google in for my AM stuff and thus I know I have a lot to learn. I may be pleasantly surprised with quick results, who knows. I just know I have a lot more room to scale on FB still so when I do jump to Google it will really be just for me to learn a new source under the guise of "diversifying".

 

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