[Progress Thread] My Ecom Journey

[Madara]

I thought i'd make a progress thread to document my Ecom journey and to kinda hold myself accountable to the Fastlane group

Background
I'm 32, never owned a business and currently in a job i HATE!! Toxic environment, abusive managers, staff treating each other like crap to get one over on one another, non stop drama and no route for progression. The good news is, i don't want to progress in this job, and even better, i only work 3-4 days a week and get a fulltime salary. Although, the days are 13hours+ long

I've always wanted to start a business, but have had bad experiences from the past when dropshipping off Ebay and Amazon (I dropshipped for about 6 months 10 years ago and then quit and have only recently seriously considered getting back into it). This past negative experience has led me to really doubt myself on whether I can pull it off today. The mistakes that were made back then would never happen now, but the thoughts do cross my mind of history repeating itself.

I want to start an Ecom business for the financial freedom of course, but mainly because as I get older, i can see that my mother and grandma are not as healthy as they use to be. It's fair to say as the years go by, they are slowly deteriorating. On top of that, my mum still has hundreds of thousands left on her mortgage to pay. I also have younger siblings who require extra assistance due to learning difficulties. Thankfully their condition is not too severe.
Another major reason is because I love working for myself on my own projects. I can't stand working for other people in pointless jobs. I just think, what a waste. I could be doing something much more productive with my time and building something that is my own.

My Ecom Journey

Febuary 2019

• Took a course on dropshipping
• Created a plan on what i would like my store to be. (High quality products, high quality customer service etc).
• Domain Purchased

March 2019

• Product Research (Indepth Product research using the methods i learned in the dropshiping course
• Supplier research (looking for top class suppliers for store)
• Store created (Bare bones)
• Good quality products found and imported into the store
• Learning about facebook ads

April 2019

• Learning how to create videos in premier pro to create video ads
• Learning more about facebook ads
• Logo created
• learning about Email marketing
• policies, Faqs & QOL added to the site

May (First half) (1st - 15th)

• Store created and ready to launch

Scared to actually press the button and launch. Past negative experiences coming back to haunt me. I challenged my beliefs and said "screw it im going forward. Either I remain stagnant in a shite job or take a leap of faith forward." I choose to leap forward

• Tracking added to the site
• Apps added to the site
• Store LAUNCHED!!!!

May (Second Half) (16th - 30th)

• First set of facebook ads launched using testing strategies from dropshipping course
• No sales

Someone analysed my site and said my store would be good if this was 2017. They said the game has changed for 2019 and explained what needs to be done to improve the site. (Ironically, the course i learned drop shipping from at the start of the year was made in 2017)

• New product research methods learned
• Products currently on site are not hot or trending (Confirmed by new research methods)
• Product descriptions are rubbish (Needs redoing)
• Ad copy needs massive work in ads
• Video ads need some serious adjustment
• Too much spammy apps on site (timers, sales pop, email pop, etc)
• New Facebook strategies learned (These ones make more sense than the ones I learned previously)

I kinda feel gutted that there was so much mistakes on my store that i overlooked and I can now see what makes a quality store. I am a little disappointed, but it is what it is. Let's move forward

I've also purchased a highly rated copywritting book to learn more about compelling ads and copy etc.

I'll update this thread as I go

If you have any advice or suggestions, then please feel free to post.

Thanks in advance.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

No sales

Still dropshipping?

 

[Madara]

Still dropshipping?

Still trying to. Working on my second batch of products and ads currently. I'm logging everything in terms of data from the ad data, ad copy, time of day. Pixel data, product, etc.

I'm hoping after spending a good amount of time with all of this, everything will begin to click into place.

Updated my first post to make it clearer about when i attempted dropshipping 10 years ago.

**I dropshipped for about 6 months 10 years ago and then quit and have only recently seriously considered getting back into it****