Intro / Ecommerce Progress Thread

[crystal_]

Hey guys, I’m 19 and wanted to post an e-commerce progress thread here to share some upcoming goals and also share insights. Read MFL a few years ago but just found the forum.

My current ecom store has done around 6 figures in sales the last year, and my goal is to end this year at around $200-$300k revenue per month, consistently.

I’ve scaled a few different ecom stores to 6 figures and one to 7 figures, and while none of them were nearly as profitable as they could’ve been I think I understand why and where to improve.

How I plan to get there:
- Making higher quality ads. All of my ads now follow a structure (for example, Hook, Problem, Intro Product, Social Proof, etc) and are fully scripted with a content creator to read the lines + shoot the broll. I think this will be a massive advantage in the months to come and I want to continue improving the process.
- Testing more products. I don’t have a flagship product I’m selling, so I’ve got to test more. I was spending the last few months just focusing on the ads part and less on product research, but I’m at a point where I think the ads are good enough so it’s time to really crank this up.

I think these are the two biggest factors for scaling an en ecom store (quality creatives and a good product) to its first few million, so this is where I want to put my focus on.

Kept it concise in this post and will update as I go.

 

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[crystal_]

Hey guys wanted to post an update. I found a good product and I'm currently at $6-8k per day at healthy margins.

The last few months I've been testing a bunch of new products and while I've found a few that scaled to the $500-$1k per day range, none have scaled as easily as this, which is cool. I also switched from TikTok ads to Facebook which I think was important because Facebook is a much more mature platform and the performance has been more consistent so far.

Current things I'm working on
- Getting more creatives. If I find an ad structure that works well I can dupe that out to different content creators and heavily increase the content I can put out.
- Setting up the backend. I'm at good margins without email setup except for basic abandoned cart flows. I think this setting this up would really help.

The biggest risk I see with this product and not hitting the numbers is the product itself. It's in a unique niche that I haven't seen too many ecommerce guys scale before (not health or beauty). I think there's potential there because if I can pull things off right and create really good content for this product and complimentary ones, people won't be so quick to copy it. But at the same time there's probably a reason this niche hasn't scaled.

Anyway will continue updating as I go.

 

[RightyTighty]

I’m a little confused. In your earlier post above you stated that you’ve had profitable eCommerce stores with annual revenues in the 6 and 7 figures range, but you don’t mention what happened to them. In this post you indicate you’re selling $6-8k/day (which is north of $2M/year) but you’re not sure it will scale or remain successful. Have all of your products been trendy/sketchy/marginally legal? Can you give us an idea of what market (or at least what kind of market) you’re in?

 

[crystal_]

I’m a little confused. In your earlier post above you stated that you’ve had profitable eCommerce stores with annual revenues in the 6 and 7 figures range, but you don’t mention what happened to them. In this post you indicate you’re selling $6-8k/day (which is north of $2M/year) but you’re not sure it will scale or remain successful. Have all of your products been trendy/sketchy/marginally legal? Can you give us an idea of what market (or at least what kind of market) you’re in?

Yeah so by nature dropshipping (at least how most people go about it) is a short term business model. You find a product, scale it til it becomes unprofitable on Facebook, and then move onto the next one.

When I say I’m unsure if I’ll be able to continue scaling it, by that I mean the business doesn’t have a strong foundation at the moment. I started selling this product a few weeks ago and am already at $6-8k/day, so the same reason I scaled so fast is the reason reason why I’m not sure it’ll remain successful. Right now anyone can come in and sell the exact same product the I’m selling and become a competitor for it, which would start to make my ads less profitable.

The process I have to go through now is putting up moats that will make it harder to compete (getting better content, making better ads, better offer etc) so that even if someone comes in and tries to compete, it’ll be harder. I’m just not sure how well that process will go. Also I’m only selling on Facebook so I’m not diversified. If the ads costs start rising then that’ll affect sales too.

 

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[The-J]

When I say I’m unsure if I’ll be able to continue scaling it, by that I mean the business doesn’t have a strong foundation at the moment. I started selling this product a few weeks ago and am already at $6-8k/day, so the same reason I scaled so fast is the reason reason why I’m not sure it’ll remain successful.

One of my clients is going through something similar, although they're not at that scale yet. We have a few choices. Right now we're trying to scale as fast as their inventory will allow.

• Create a brand & sell it to our customers:
• Buy our manufacturer & literally prevent others from selling it (they have patents & trademarks)
• Partner with a well known influencer/celebrity

Sounds like your product has a broad appeal. Buying the manufacturer isn't always on the table, but I like the idea of going the celebrity route. Do you see how much product these celebrities and influencers can move?

My question is: How the F*ck did you scale so fast?

 

[crystal_]

One of my clients is going through something similar, although they're not at that scale yet. We have a few choices. Right now we're trying to scale as fast as their inventory will allow.

• Create a brand & sell it to our customers:
• Buy our manufacturer & literally prevent others from selling it (they have patents & trademarks)
• Partner with a well known influencer/celebrity

Sounds like your product has a broad appeal. Buying the manufacturer isn't always on the table, but I like the idea of going the celebrity route. Do you see how much product these celebrities and influencers can move?

My question is: How the F*ck did you scale so fast?

Celebrities/influencers could be great but it depends on your product and the celebrity/influencer themselves. You just want to make sure their audience converts, since sometimes people who have a lot of followers don't actually have that much influencer over them. The gold standard would be Prime/Feastables.

Scaling so fast isn't complicated, I'm just first purchase profitable so I can continue to spend more money on Facebook day by day.

What do you mean by create a brand and sell to customers? Do you not have a brand already?

 

[The-J]

The gold standard would be Prime/Feastables.

How could you get one of those huge influencers to sell your product? Is there an influencer whose audience might particularly like your product?

What do you mean by create a brand and sell to customers? Do you not have a brand already?

Yes, but others can sell under our brand name.

Scaling so fast isn't complicated, I'm just first purchase profitable so I can continue to spend more money on Facebook day by day.

Got it. We have other issues we need to work out it seems, since our problem is that we can't meet demand. We're sold out of our best sellers often. I guess that's a benefit of dropshipping, or the manufacturers you're using.

Impressive progress, you move fast! What's the plan from now?

 

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[Bearcorp]

Great work so far! Couple of questions, are you running the ads yourself or using an agency, and same for the content required for the ads?

Good luck moving forward!

 

[crystal_]

How could you get one of those huge influencers to sell your product? Is there an influencer whose audience might particularly like your product?

Probably just cold outreach, or introducing from a friend. If an influencers happens to buy your product without any contact from you that's a huge in too, for HexClad before they signed Gordon Ramsay he was a big fan on their product.

Got it. We have other issues we need to work out it seems, since our problem is that we can't meet demand. We're sold out of our best sellers often. I guess that's a benefit of dropshipping, or the manufacturers you're using.

Impressive progress, you move fast! What's the plan from now?

Maybe work on terms with your manufacturer? I'm not sure if your product is seasonal but now might be a good time to talk about that seeing as Q4 is coming up (Black Friday/Christmas)

I think there's two paths I can take with this product. The first would be to just continue scaling it into the next few months and try to make a bunch of profit with it that I can reinvest into something else (starting a brand not dropshipping). Or, I could try to really build a brand around this product and scale that. Not sure but I'm kind of leaning towards the first.

 

[crystal_]

Great work so far! Couple of questions, are you running the ads yourself or using an agency, and same for the content required for the ads?

I'm currently running the ads and making them content for them, no agencies.

 

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[samuraijack]

When you say healthy margins, what %?

 

[crystal_]

Update: I’ve been at around 10-12k/day for the past week and am at $150k for the month. I’m going to update the goal to instead of being around 200-300k/mo consistently, to just net around $250k by end of year.

I want to start a brand, and I spoke with a few people way more experienced than me and we agreed that this product is probably not the best for that. It’s in a niche market, and plus, if I’m trying to start a brand the customer experience should be good from the start and dropshipping doesn’t really offer that. So instead of trying to turn a dropshipping store into a brand, I figured it would be best to use the capital and start something from scratch.

To net $250K by EOY I’d have to do $1m rev at 25% net, which comes out to around $11k/day. I’m already there so it’s really a game of maintaining this and then trying to scale higher.

The biggest risk is my Facebook ad account provider - they’re based in China and I got word 2 days ago that they’re going to be on Holiday for almost 2 weeks, which means I have to front my ad spend for those 2 weeks to continue running at scale. Well, I tried to pay them yesterday and I think it got rejected (will know by tonight) because it’s a larger amount than I typically send. If the payment gets rejected I’m going to have to heavily scale down, so if something like this happens again over the next few months, then that could be a pretty big bump in the road.

I’m sure there are other things that could go wrong too but I’ll just have to figure it out.

It would also be pretty cool if I could hit a million dollar month in November so I’m gonna aim for that too. I only plan to dropship for next 3-6 months til I start a brand so might as well go for it. This is gonna be my personal ‘surge’ (iykyk).

 

[crystal_]

When you say healthy margins, what %?

I’d say over 20% is healthy

 

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[MitchC]

Sounds like you are killing it, nice

Makes me think maybe I should go back to dropshipping, so much easier

However it has the exact problem you are facing, competitors can steal your ads site and product and be up and running in a day

You are talking a lot about moats, but all of them are just better marketing, that’s not a moat

How about a better product? A custom product? Not dropshipping so shipping times are faster?

These are hard and expensive things that competitors can’t steal in a day with no effort

That’s the path I took, I’m not sure it was the right choice as it hurts margins and holding stock and ordering stock creates a level of complexity and cash you need to scale, but the business has survived for years now and competitors come and go and can’t touch us

The other moat you did mention, a good back end, this doesn’t mean an abandon cart flow, this means getting repeat purchases and referrals

How can you do that?

Well the first step is having happy customers, which is where the fast delivery times and better products on the front end come in

Then you just need more good products to cross sell to existing customers

You’ll also naturally just get reorders for the first product as people’s break or they want to give one as a gift etc

Seems like you have a good market to scale into, I think you are just thinking short term like a dropshipper and aren’t understanding the potential

 

[samuraijack]

That’s the path I took, I’m not sure it was the right choice as it hurts margins and holding stock and ordering stock creates a level of complexity and cash you need to scale, but the business has survived for years now and competitors come and go and can’t touch us

Sounds like you made the right choice?

 

[crystal_]

Sounds like you are killing it, nice

Makes me think maybe I should go back to dropshipping, so much easier

However it has the exact problem you are facing, competitors can steal your ads site and product and be up and running in a day

You are talking a lot about moats, but all of them are just better marketing, that’s not a moat

How about a better product? A custom product? Not dropshipping so shipping times are faster?

These are hard and expensive things that competitors can’t steal in a day with no effort

That’s the path I took, I’m not sure it was the right choice as it hurts margins and holding stock and ordering stock creates a level of complexity and cash you need to scale, but the business has survived for years now and competitors come and go and can’t touch us

The other moat you did mention, a good back end, this doesn’t mean an abandon cart flow, this means getting repeat purchases and referrals

How can you do that?

Well the first step is having happy customers, which is where the fast delivery times and better products on the front end come in

Then you just need more good products to cross sell to existing customers

You’ll also naturally just get reorders for the first product as people’s break or they want to give one as a gift etc

Seems like you have a good market to scale into, I think you are just thinking short term like a dropshipper and aren’t understanding the potential

Yeah definitely, repeat customers and a good product are keys to a brand. I’m aware but that’s why I’m deciding not to brand it and just start from scratch to setup that. So I can have a good experience from the beginning.

 

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[The-J]

The biggest risk is my Facebook ad account provider - they’re based in China and I got word 2 days ago that they’re going to be on Holiday for almost 2 weeks, which means I have to front my ad spend for those 2 weeks to continue running at scale. Well, I tried to pay them yesterday and I think it got rejected (will know by tonight) because it’s a larger amount than I typically send. If the payment gets rejected I’m going to have to heavily scale down, so if something like this happens again over the next few months, then that could be a pretty big bump in the road.

You clearly know something I don't. I've never seen that issue and I've run budgets up to $39k/day, single account. How are you getting Facebook accounts? Why are you not on monthly invoicing w/ Facebook? What kind of credit terms are you getting?

 

[crystal_]

You clearly know something I don't. I've never seen that issue and I've run budgets up to $39k/day, single account. How are you getting Facebook accounts? Why are you not on monthly invoicing w/ Facebook? What kind of credit terms are you getting?

My personal Facebook account got restricted, so using this ad account agency is the best way I’ve found to continue running. To run ads I have to top up the accounts first and then they’ll add the balance to them, so when they went on holiday, that meant I had to send them almost 2 weeks worth of funds to continue running when they were away.

I’m kind of surprised you’ve never ran into account issues, I feel like they’re super common lol. I’m selling whitehat products too.

 

[The-J]

I’m kind of surprised you’ve never ran into account issues, I feel like they’re super common lol.

I mean I've gotten banned about 12 times and I've gotten all but 2 of those back. I got my personal account banned, got that back too. I imagine I was just lucky in both those instances. But the issue I'm talking about is getting accounts from a provider & having to pay them directly

 

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[crystal_]

I mean I've gotten banned about 12 times and I've gotten all but 2 of those back. I got my personal account banned, got that back too. I imagine I was just lucky in both those instances. But the issue I'm talking about is getting accounts from a provider & having to pay them directly

What do you mean? So the accounts you use, if you get them from a provider, you still just pay Facebook direct? And I’m assuming you just pay the provider a fee or % of ad spend?

We may be talking about slightly different things but yeah I’m curious.

 

[The-J]

What do you mean? So the accounts you use, if you get them from a provider, you still just pay Facebook direct? And I’m assuming you just pay the provider a fee or % of ad spend?

We may be talking about slightly different things but yeah I’m curious.

I think we're talking about different things.

Either way, keep going & keep us posted! BFCM is coming up soon & you're in for a huge influx of sales. I think you will beat your goal.

 

[MitchC]

I think we're talking about different things.

Either way, keep going & keep us posted! BFCM is coming up soon & you're in for a huge influx of sales. I think you will beat your goal.

Are you using your own accounts or a providers?

 

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[The-J]

Are you using your own accounts or a providers?

The business owns the Facebook Ads Manager accounts & the Business Manager accounts. There is no other third party involved

 

[crystal_]

Just wanted post to an update, I did around $400k in October. This is between 2 stores, the first one I posted here and a second product I found in early October.

I think the $1m month is definitely possible, however I've been running into some issues with Facebook. On new ad accounts you can only spend $5k/day, and I was maxing out that limit for both stores. I requested to increase the limit for my first store, however when I did, it actually DECREASED the limit from $5k/day to $500/day instead. I've asked a few people and they've never heard of that happening, so I'm really not sure why. Facebook says it's because of 'rejected ads', but I haven't had a single ad rejected in the past 2 months that hasn't been re-enabled, and I'm also I'm not selling in a sensitive niche like health/beauty. Whether or not I scale higher really depends on how quickly I can get back up and running.

This is going to be my last year dropshipping, and I'm going to use the capital from here to transition into a brand. I think a fun goal would be to do $1m/mo with the brand by next November, which should definitely be possible considering I went from 0 --> $400k/mo in about 60 days, which would've been higher had I not had any issues with Facebook.

I have no clue what goes into finding a good product to start a brand with. With dropshipping I just tested a bunch of different products until I found one that sticks, but if I'm trying to build a brand that I'm going to run for multiple years, I'm not sure if it would be the same process. It would probably be so that's what I'll work on to figure out.

 

[freek]

Just wanted post to an update, I did around $400k in October. This is between 2 stores, the first one I posted here and a second product I found in early October.

I think the $1m month is definitely possible, however I've been running into some issues with Facebook. On new ad accounts you can only spend $5k/day, and I was maxing out that limit for both stores. I requested to increase the limit for my first store, however when I did, it actually DECREASED the limit from $5k/day to $500/day instead. I've asked a few people and they've never heard of that happening, so I'm really not sure why. Facebook says it's because of 'rejected ads', but I haven't had a single ad rejected in the past 2 months that hasn't been re-enabled, and I'm also I'm not selling in a sensitive niche like health/beauty. Whether or not I scale higher really depends on how quickly I can get back up and running.

This is going to be my last year dropshipping, and I'm going to use the capital from here to transition into a brand. I think a fun goal would be to do $1m/mo with the brand by next November, which should definitely be possible considering I went from 0 --> $400k/mo in about 60 days, which would've been higher had I not had any issues with Facebook.

I have no clue what goes into finding a good product to start a brand with. With dropshipping I just tested a bunch of different products until I found one that sticks, but if I'm trying to build a brand that I'm going to run for multiple years, I'm not sure if it would be the same process. It would probably be so that's what I'll work on to figure out.

Wow, 400k in a month is amazing, congrats!

 

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[xShepherdx]

Hey guys, I’m 19 and wanted to post an e-commerce progress thread here to share some upcoming goals and also share insights. Read MFL a few years ago but just found the forum.

My current ecom store has done around 6 figures in sales the last year, and my goal is to end this year at around $200-$300k revenue per month, consistently.

I’ve scaled a few different ecom stores to 6 figures and one to 7 figures, and while none of them were nearly as profitable as they could’ve been I think I understand why and where to improve.

How I plan to get there:
- Making higher quality ads. All of my ads now follow a structure (for example, Hook, Problem, Intro Product, Social Proof, etc) and are fully scripted with a content creator to read the lines + shoot the broll. I think this will be a massive advantage in the months to come and I want to continue improving the process.
- Testing more products. I don’t have a flagship product I’m selling, so I’ve got to test more. I was spending the last few months just focusing on the ads part and less on product research, but I’m at a point where I think the ads are good enough so it’s time to really crank this up.

I think these are the two biggest factors for scaling an en ecom store (quality creatives and a good product) to its first few million, so this is where I want to put my focus on.

Kept it concise in this post and will update as I go.

Congrats on the success, I hope you continue to crush it! Seems like you'll do really well with a proper brand underneath you.

I'm curious to hear more about how you're sourcing/choosing products and building good ads.

I read you're dropshipping but you seem to be consistently finding winning products, and it seems like you would have some really great insights on how to make ads that get people to buy.

Could you elaborate on those a bit more?

 

[crystal_]

Congrats on the success, I hope you continue to crush it! Seems like you'll do really well with a proper brand underneath you.

I'm curious to hear more about how you're sourcing/choosing products and building good ads.

I read you're dropshipping but you seem to be consistently finding winning products, and it seems like you would have some really great insights on how to make ads that get people to buy.

Could you elaborate on those a bit more?

For finding good products, I don’t think there’s a specific formula. I just tested a bunch, like 100+ in the past few months. Towards the end my win rate got higher but that’s because of all the previous tests. I would highly recommend incorporating GPT into your workflow, in my case it let me test more quickly while still having quality enough product descriptions.

For ads I followed what was working. There was at least 1 person selling the same product I was before me, so I looked at their top performing ad (on Facebook ads library or a spy tool like adspy) and then recreated that for my ads. When that worked I iterated on it, so a new hook, different people in the video demonstrating the product, different body of the video, etc. But it started with 1 successful vid either mine or a competitors to then iterate on.

 

[xShepherdx]

For finding good products, I don’t think there’s a specific formula. I just tested a bunch, like 100+ in the past few months. Towards the end my win rate got higher but that’s because of all the previous tests. I would highly recommend incorporating GPT into your workflow, in my case it let me test more quickly while still having quality enough product descriptions.

Thanks for taking the time to share. I really appreciate it!

Were you creating a new store/landing page for each product or running them under one bigger shop?

I've never tested products in a systemic way before, so all I can picture is someone using Shopify's free trial 100 different times haha. I'm sure there's a way smarter & organized way to run tests like that though!

Edit: I realized after posting that you were dropshipping these products, so you probably did run them under one store and just funnel traffic to certain products. For clarity, I'm trying to figure out how to test individual products someone could then build a brand around. This might make my question irrelevant to the thread/your experience but I'll leave it up just in case you or someone else has an answer.

For ads I followed what was working. There was at least 1 person selling the same product I was before me, so I looked at their top performing ad (on Facebook ads library or a spy tool like adspy) and then recreated that for my ads. When that worked I iterated on it, so a new hook, different people in the video demonstrating the product, different body of the video, etc. But it started with 1 successful vid either mine or a competitors to then iterate on.

Brilliant and simple. Thank you!

 

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[crystal_]

Yeah so each of these tests I did what you said, and ran ads to a specific product page. You’d be surprised how many people don’t look at the homepage at all and just click buy right there on the product page, so knowing that let me test a bunch of products efficiently and without wasting time re-doing the entire site.

For clarity, I'm trying to figure out how to test individual products someone could then build a brand around.

Is there a reason you think testing products like how I did with dropshipping wouldn’t work? Im
trying to do something similar so not sure if it would be best to test like how I did before or go all in on one product/niche.

 

[MitchC]

Yeah so each of these tests I did what you said, and ran ads to a specific product page. You’d be surprised how many people don’t look at the homepage at all and just click buy right there on the product page, so knowing that let me test a bunch of products efficiently and without wasting time re-doing the entire site.

Is there a reason you think testing products like how I did with dropshipping wouldn’t work? Im
trying to do something similar so not sure if it would be best to test like how I did before or go all in on one product/niche.

Could you share you product price, cpa and product costs?

Are we talking $50 sale price, or $10 or $20 or $200?

I know they’re probably all different but just a bit of a rough example would be interesting