Journal: Authority + E-commerce

Long overdue update:

The workload at the university and a weekend job has been kicking my ass the last two weeks so my progress has been limited.

Nothing much happened on the authority front. Just added a few articles. Also found a great new source for videos (contact some people on Youtube and you'll be amazed at what can be arranged). I'll work on adding some of those to the site as people love that stuff in my niche.

Got another site up in the same niche as the "successful" EMD mentioned in the first post, which is now sitting tight in the first spot on Google.

On the ecommerce side: My 3rd and last sample arrived and it looks amazing. So for now I'll be focusing on getting this up and running.

Done:

- Opencart installed
- Bought and modified theme

To-do list:

- Start a company
- Order first batch of products
- Local hosting
- SSL
- Payment gateway
- Implement live chat and a one- or two step checkout.
- Take my own photos of the product(s).
- Unique product descriptions.
- Logo
- Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest
- Start advertising
- Profit?

Hopefully I can get most of that done this week, depending on how long it takes to get the company and payment gateway up.
 


My advice may not be as good as dchuk...okay it never will be but I'll give it anyway.

I would strongly recommend to start advertising before you start selling. How long before you start selling is up to you but from past experience it is always better to create a bit of a hype and then offer some sort of discount or free product.

For example I used twitter and facebook as a bit of a journal document. I talked about myself, the niche what impact the niche had on my life and my friends and how I wanted to improve it (if i did it all again i don't think I would do the last one, it causes a huge amount of debate and distracts you from actually selling your products. it's good to listen to the market but listen to them as a group not individuals....unless they are super rich). When I was finally ready to launch I posted on facebook and twitter a bonus ebook for the first 50 buyers, naturally those went fast and I actually had people emailing my support address asking/demanding why I couldn't give out just 1 more ebook to them. I did not make my money back in the first day...but within the first month i had broken even and everything after that was pretty much pure profit. I just had a VA run the day to day aspects of the site while i only checked in every now and again (checking stats, watching what my competitors did etc).

Now with all that being said I strongly recommended to build a list. Of the people who missed out on the free ebook i made another one and advertised it as "The sequel to the wildly popular "__________", Only 100 offered, gone in under 5 minutes". The 5 minutes is a bit of a lie but I had people opting in like crazy. Though they didn't convert as well as I hoped I was managing to get more money out of my traffic by getting their email.

So to sum up advertise before you launch on social media so people feel special that they were the "first ones" to find the site (internet hipsters are good for increasing the perspective value of a product/service) and build a list offering special deals and free products.

Of course most of this is irrelevant until you at the very least start your company, get at least half of your content and train up some VA's to stream line things.
 
Insaint said:
Long overdue update:

The workload at the university and a weekend job has been kicking my ass the last two weeks so my progress has been limited.

Nothing much happened on the authority front. Just added a few articles. Also found a great new source for videos (contact some people on Youtube and you'll be amazed at what can be arranged). I'll work on adding some of those to the site as people love that stuff in my niche.

Got another site up in the same niche as the "successful" EMD mentioned in the first post, which is now sitting tight in the first spot on Google.

On the ecommerce side: My 3rd and last sample arrived and it looks amazing. So for now I'll be focusing on getting this up and running.

Done:

- Opencart installed
- Bought and modified theme

To-do list:

- Start a company
- Order first batch of products
- Local hosting
- SSL
- Payment gateway
- Implement live chat and a one- or two step checkout.
- Take my own photos of the product(s).
- Unique product descriptions.
- Logo
- Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest
- Start advertising
- Profit?

Hopefully I can get most of that done this week, depending on how long it takes to get the company and payment gateway up.
Click to expand...

There are a few schools of thought as to when to launch. Do you wait untill everything is done on the checklist? Or do you get something live and pressure yourself to prioritize? I like to do the latter.


Get the site up and running with some content (products) before you get to bogged down with all the small stuff. One of the biggest problems many people run into is fussing over the little details. Getting your store off the ground and live will help push you to getting the important stuff done.
 
dmnEPC2 said:
There are a few schools of thought as to when to launch. Do you wait untill everything is done on the checklist? Or do you get something live and pressure yourself to prioritize? I like to do the latter.


Get the site up and running with some content (products) before you get to bogged down with all the small stuff. One of the biggest problems many people run into is fussing over the little details. Getting your store off the ground and live will help push you to getting the important stuff done.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice, I do tend to get bogged down in the details. However the products took longer than expected to arrive, so I had the time to get things done.

Left to do:

- Take my own photos of the product(s).
- Implement live chat
- Logo
- Start advertising
- Profit?

I'll go live in two days, regardless of the checklist above.

Quick tip to those looking for a one-page checkout in Opencart: http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route=extension/extension/info&extension_id=4811

That one is fucking amazing, far cleaner and far more options than the ones they are asking $75-150 for. Took a screenshot as I don't want to out someones website: http://imgur.com/bN3d7
 
Shadz91 said:
So to sum up advertise before you launch on social media so people feel special that they were the "first ones" to find the site (internet hipsters are good for increasing the perspective value of a product/service) and build a list offering special deals and free products.
Click to expand...

Don't sell yourself short, some great advice there.

It's not really a product that can be hyped much on social media, but definitely something to keep in mind for the future.

I'll get that list going by offering a contest of some sort.
 
Left to do:
- Take my own photos of the product(s).
- Implement live chat
- Logo
- Start advertising
- Profit?
Click to expand...

Are you going to take the pictures of your products by yourself using a common digital camera or you have a good dslr camera? Do you have a lot of products?

If your camera is not good and depending on the equipments you have at your disposal (lightning and stuffs) you might have to spend some time photoshop it to make the picture better. Consider the time / effort that you have to spend instead of hiring a photographer to do it.

I say this because i used to waste a lot of my time and effort to take pictures of my products myself and it is very exhausted. Just my 2cent.
 
seoexperttools said:
Are you going to take the pictures of your products by yourself using a common digital camera or you have a good dslr camera? Do you have a lot of products?

If your camera is not good and depending on the equipments you have at your disposal (lightning and stuffs) you might have to spend some time photoshop it to make the picture better. Consider the time / effort that you have to spend instead of hiring a photographer to do it.

I say this because i used to waste a lot of my time and effort to take pictures of my products myself and it is very exhausted. Just my 2cent.
Click to expand...

Only got a decent digital camera myself. My friend has got a pretty good setup though, with lighting, background, etc. It's a single product in a few varieties, so it shouldn't take too long. I'll just get him a few rounds of beers next time we go out.

If I start a project with more products I'm going to hire said friend. As it does seem like a waste of time to do it all by myself, I know zero about lighting/cameras/photoshop and can't be bothered to learn about the first two at least.
 
Link to my getto light tent setup:

http://www.wickedfire.com/shooting-shit/118449-started-traditional-ecom-business-2.html#post1205909

Make sure to get LOTS of GOOD product pictures. This and a lot of detailed information is what people are still looking for.

If the product has any details worth looking at, shoot nice closeups.

Examples for pics:
Textiles --> Fabric, colors, buttons, closures, ...
Gadgets --> Ports, material, side view, front view, top view, bottom, etc...

Examples for text info:
Weight, dimensions (height, breadth, depth), materials, ports, batteries needed, voltage, power usage, memory capacity, country of origin, allergens info, calories per serving, etc...

::emp::
 
emp said:
Link to my getto light tent setup:

http://www.wickedfire.com/shooting-shit/118449-started-traditional-ecom-business-2.html#post1205909

Make sure to get LOTS of GOOD product pictures. This and a lot of detailed information is what people are still looking for.

If the product has any details worth looking at, shoot nice closeups.

Examples for pics:
Textiles --> Fabric, colors, buttons, closures, ...
Gadgets --> Ports, material, side view, front view, top view, bottom, etc...

Examples for text info:
Weight, dimensions (height, breadth, depth), materials, ports, batteries needed, voltage, power usage, memory capacity, country of origin, allergens info, calories per serving, etc...

::emp::
Click to expand...

Thanks for that link, forgot that my mom had one of those light tents lying around so I'll head over tonight and see if it's in working order.

My descriptions include a ton of useful info, might add some more though.
 
Went live last night after adding my own photo's/logo. Got indexed this morning and am currently ranking on the 2nd page for a few small local terms. No linking other than a Facebook page has been done at this point.

Ordered a very small social package to be used on my product pages to avoid the brand-new look.

Advertising will start today on Google/Bing, I'll probably try out Facebook as well.

In the future I'll be testing out advertising before actually ordering products and building a site. Spending a bit of cash to know for sure whether it'll be worth your time sounds like a good plan.
 
Woop, got my first order. I spent ~15 euros on Facebook/Adwords and got an order of ~200 euros.

Still gotta implement a live chat. The customer that ordered emailed me first with some questions and a chat would've been much easier.
 
Insaint said:
Woop, got my first order. I spent ~15 euros on Facebook/Adwords and got an order of ~200 euros.

Still gotta implement a live chat. The customer that ordered emailed me first with some questions and a chat would've been much easier.
Click to expand...

Great job Insaint! Keep up the great work. This journal rocks.
 
So, just because you get lucky at the start and get an order after just a few clicks don't assume that it will last.

300 Facebook clicks later and I've not gotten a single extra sale. This is a product that should be very appealing to the demographic I've selected, but I guess it simply is too expensive for the majority of people. Hopefully Adwords will be more targeted, volume so far is pretty low (as expected) and it'll take a while to get meaningful data.

Anyway, be sure to test out CPM ads on Facebook. Always heard bad things about it, but I've been able to go from $0.27 per click with CPC (0.15% ctr) to $0.15 per click with CPM (0.05% ctr). Though admittedly this test was cut short, because it was getting late. Still worth testing imo as with a cpc this low my conversion can be pretty abysmal and I'll still be making good money.

Currently checking out other sources of traffic like ask/yahoo answers/forums to see if I can slip a link in. I also added some free classifieds to a local marketplace site.
 
Tip: Make sure you redirect your http pages to https if you're using SSL.

Even though my entire site is using https a number of pages including my homepage were indexed as http. From what I've read this could be seen as duplicate content and links towards one will have no effect on the other. I only noticed this when I used both versions in a rankchecker and found out they were ranking for different keywords. Fixed it and hopefully I'll see some positive results soon.

On another note, does anyone know a good gig on Fiverr (or some other cheap place) for image ads?
 
So after a week without sales I figured it was time to try something new.

Using the knowledge I gleamed from Cashvertising (thanks for the tip, it is an awesome book and you should buy it) I decided to overhaul the text on my homepage. So I changed the text above the fold to a short intro focusing on how the product will benefit the customer followed by something like: "we're cheaper, but not by selling you crap" and then a short list of how our product/service is still better than the competition despite the price difference.

At the same time I stopped ppc advertising and instead used the money to start a promotion lowering prices by 30%. After that I posted the promotion on Facebook and 2 (niche) forums. In the last two days combined I got a measly 80 visitors, but I also got 3 orders. While my profit/item dropped by ~50% I still made the same amount/order because I stopped advertising.

Due to the low amount of traffic and orders it could easily be a fluke, but the future seems bright right now ;)

Oh and I also installed a live chat (Olark), but haven't had any questions through it yet.
 
So I got contacted by someone that was referred by my first customer. She wanted to do a review of the product and provided a link to her blog. Turns out its a pr 3 niche blog and it has a YouTube channel with 500+ subscribers. I jumped on the opportunity and gave her a nice discount. With some luck I'll get permission to use the pictures on my site as well, she wasn't sure yet. No profit on that order, but it should be really good long-term. If I can see a nice impact from that review I'll contact some other niche sites and offer a free product for a review/link/pictures.

I also tried out advertising directly on a niche forum, but it's not working at all. 30k impressions and just 2 clicks, so yeah.. Guess I suck at advertising copy, but even Facebook did better than that. So I'm not going to waste more time on that particular forum.

Finally relaunched my "authority site", it now looks much cleaner and professional. It was a bitch to redirect as I completely restructured the site. My old site is still ranking for everything, but traffic is still coming in and rankings should change soon enough to my new site.

I'll focus my efforts on getting some good links by contacting websites. I might just wait a week or two though, because currently the website looks very new due to low (non-existent) social signals. I removed all ads to increase my chances of getting links. A single good link is worth more than what I made in a month anyway haha.
 
So my e-commerce site just broke the €1k revenue mark for this month, pretty stoked about that.

Got my products on Google shopping, the default feed got rejected because the descriptions taken from my site were "too promotional in nature". So I downloaded the feed and just manually edited it in a few minutes. Within an hour I was approved and started appearing in the results. So far I only got a few clicks from it, but it requires no upkeep so it's all good.

As anticipated only one product variety (75% of my stock) is selling well. The other varieties are performing even worse than I thought, zero sales so far. If this keeps up I might just replace my store with a single product landing page and see how that goes. So yeah, it's pretty important to have a general idea of what will sell and what won't.
 
Keep more stock if you're importing. Customs has been holding my new order for 7 days now and my bestselling item just sold out. No clue what customs is doing, just another thing to keep in mind when planning.

Invest in proper packaging material if you're sending packages yourself. In the last week I've received several packages for a DIY project and some of the packaging is just atrocious. Boxes gotten from the nearest supermarket, balled-up newspapers, one even put in empty plastic bottles! Don't be that guy, it looks highly unprofessional and it doesn't offer enough protection in many cases. A good box + bubblewrap + filler shouldn't cost you more than ~1-2 dollars per order and is worth every penny.
 
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