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Shopify + Oberlo + Aliexpress + Facebook (28)

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Not bad at all. Man, I wish I had your product searching skill/luck.

leave it run for a few days, relevant score is low, but who cares if your are profitable. change creative will reset fb algo learning.

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Hey Sam,

How much are you selling your product for and what are your margins?

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Hi Mitchel,

I'm currently selling a product for 9.97, my margin is 6.67 but that doesn't include the cost of FB ads.

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That's a huge milestone, congratulations! I have also had some failures within affiliate marketing but have planned to start dropshipping on Facebook after my exams. Looking forward to more updates

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Great job so far! keep up the good work!

How much is your shipping cost to the customer or does your aliexpress supplier ship for free? Also, how long does it take for shipping?

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The shipping cost is $1.4 for epacket, but I've priced that into the total cost of the product. It takes 7 business days usually to arrive from China, but buyers are aware it can take up to 20 days.

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So I've been testing and it's going pretty well, I'm now hitting £300/day in sales consistenly, and in the last couple it's been nearer £400.

My question is, how do I go about outsourcing? Sitting at my screen and ordering hundreds of products via Oberlo is coming tiresome and taking up too much time. What is the process for getting someone else to do it for me?

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I've heard you can get a virtual assistant in the philippines for a cheap hourly price. I would stay away from Fiverr for things like this.

I also remember there was a guy on STM that owns this service http://bannerslanders.com/ that wanted to create a whole outsourcing suite of services for ecommerce stores, but I haven't followed up on that so I don't know exactly where to find that business.

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Hi there, we run several Shopify stores. The easiest thing especially if you end up scaling out, is to get on UpWork and find a VA that you can train to do customer service as well. If you need help, I can show you what to look for in candidates, but the best thing is to post up a job and while your ad campaigns run, start getting a CS script ready for them. It will be well worth the money

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Only 2 weeks old and already doing £300-£400/day in revenue? Excellent!

This one is going into the newsletter!

Thanks Sam Frost for documenting your journey! I see that cawovt, who is doing 4-figures in daily revenue, has joined in the discussion as well. With one of you doing better in the ROI department and the other doing better in the revenue department, I bet you guys can both benefit from exchanging tips. This is just one of the things this forum is good for.



Amy

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I would recommend get an VA from here: https://www.ecommerce.expert/

I know the lady who founded this and she runs her own ecommerce site that's fully outsourced.

Frustrated with trying to find good Vas, she set up an ecommerce "university" they go through, where the basis of ecommerce is taught. After graduation, they get on the job board, for which I have provided the link.

I know a fair few ecommerce owners who have found good people there for very good rates (that is between $3 and $10 an hour!)

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Lots of gold in there! Thanks!

And this thread was sent out with the newsletter. We also always post a copy in our blog: https://stmforum.com/blog

Can I ask whether this is a general store or a niche store? You can potentially do so much more with a niche store - create a funnel to sell more relevant products to every customer acquired. There would also be potential to general residual and recurring revenue. I'll share more on that later.



Amy

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Do you work only in UK or in several countries? and is that niche or general website with different products?

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Awesome!

I have two stores, the one in this case study is a general store. I just created a new one last night based on a niche I know is about to take off, and I'm launching it over the weekend.

I'd love to hear more about that though!

See above UK at the moment.

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Do you create your own videos or rip from competitors?

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Hi, Sam,

Congrats on the success so far! Wish you the best scaling it further!

Just have a question - how are you dealing with VAT? Do you have it included in the selling price?

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How did the launch go?

I've listed just some of the benefits of running niche, in this post:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post346721

Getting creative with funnel design with the goal of squeezing the most LTV out of every customer is KEY. If you do this, you'll beat out probably 90% of the other newbie (and even not-so-newbie) store owners that are just sending traffic directly to the store hoping they would buy something, and rejoicing over the bits of profits they make on the initial purchase. The higher the LTV

And there are so many ways to maximize LTV. A couple of examples:

-Implementing upsells and downsells to take advantage of the dopamine rush the customer gets after making a purchase. These may be related products or accessories, or even digital products such as a good guide on how to use the product they just bought, or any other ebooks or courses relevant to that niche.

And of course the upsells and downsells would be offered only after the customer has entered their contact and payment info, and the initial purchase has been completed, so that they don't negatively impact on the initial purchase.

-Offering some type of Recurring Income Offer, such as a monthly membership or subscription offer. This is the secret to exponential growth in revenues. Many big companies make this their primary focus. (Amazon's prime and kindle unlimited are great examples.)

The book I'm reading, "Ecommerce Evolved" by Tanner Larss, goes into great detail on all of the above and much more. I'm not easily impressed when it comes to books, but this one is fast-becoming a bible to me. When I'm finished reading it I'll probably summarize it in a post here. In the meantime, feel free to ask for details on any point. I enjoy this type of discussions.




Amy

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Hey Sam

Well done on your success. I've found marketing to women on FB has almost always brought in a higher ROAS, even male products lol. Seem wives are the ones doing the shopping for the whole family.

I'm looking to open an Alieexpress based store in South Africa. Just a few questions,

1. Customer service must be a nightmare with the long shipping time. Any tips on how you handle all the complaints?
2. Any other hurdles you have had to overcome that might not be obvious at first? And how have you overcome them?

Looking forward to your response.

Kalwyn

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Hi all, I wanted to thank everyone for their invaluable feedback!

I haven't posted in this thread for a while because I've been SO busy. Between work and my stores I've had zero time haha! I'm finding ways to manage my time better and outsource some of the minor jobs that I shouldn't be involved in.

I've just purchased that book @Vortex and looking forward to reading it.

And after a month or so of not properly commiting, I've booked my tickets to Ecommerce Mastery Live in Barcelona. I can't wait to learn from the speakers who are going to be there!

1. I tend to make it very clear from the get go, especially in the first email they receive after ordering. There's no point in misleading people about delivery times because the people who aren't willing to wait will just charge back, so you may as well not deal with all of the aggravation and not even have them order.

2. I think the biggest hurdle to begin with was not automating things. Example, a simple auto responder on incoming support requests with common questions. Sending out follow up emails (I used OmniSend) after an order to reassure people that their order is on it's way and can take a little longer. This drastically reduced support requests into the inbox.

Other than that, I'm still learning a lot of things that I'll be sure to post up here!

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Hi Amy,

Are there Shopify apps you recommend for these types of niche product funnels you described?

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Not yet, but in a few weeks' time I'll be in a much better position to make recommendations!

And if you like funnels, be sure to check out the book I've summarized (a portion thereof) here:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...n-Introduction




Amy

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I noticed in your screenshot that you it shows some stats about videos. I'm curious, did you create the video ad yourself? Or did you source it to some agency?

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I created the video myself using Camtasia Studio

UPDATE ON ECOM JOURNEY

So after a month or so of doing pretty well on e-commerce I'm taking a break? I'm sure many of you will ask why given the fact my stats are pretty good and I'm into some decent profit. Well, I've learnt so much about e-commerce and drop shipping in the last month. I've made a lot of mistakes and those represent valuable lessons going forward.

This will give me time to regroup and focus on what I want to do next (which I shall reveal below).

Here are some of my BIGGEST learnings from the last month:

• E-commerce and drop shipping isn't easy. A lot of the "gurus" sell it as an autopilot business that will make you millions, I didn't buy that but I also didn't anticipate the amount of work behind it all when setting up. Especially when it comes to ordering the products. I started using Oberlo, and it was so slow and buggy - often not tracking the fact I had ordered on AliExpress. I moved to Dropified which is 100x better... PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not waste time and resources like I did, start on Dropified. You can save so much time ordering products using their app.
• Customers WANT IT ALL. Fair enough, they've paid for a product. But I didn't expect the level of support requests that I ended up receiving, the classic request you need to expect and should have a canned response for is "WHERE'S MY ORDER, IT'S BEEN 15 MINUTES ERRRRGH". In-fact, I setup an autoresponder for all emails that set out some frequently asked questions. But you should still follow up with each email individually, even if the auto responder covers it.
• MODERATE YOUR FACEBOOK AD COMMENTS - this is so important and something I didn't realise would be so important. I would get used to getting Shopify notifications via their mobile app when a sale went through, so after 60-80 minutes without one I'd worry and wonder why. Most of the time it was down to someone commenting on my FB post "OMG YOU CAN GET THIS FOR £5 ON EBAY DON'T PAY THEIR PRICE". Comments like that should get swiftly hidden
• Use an Upsell app on your store, one that pops up after customer adds a product to their basket. I was selling a product for 9.99 (which cost £2 including shipping on AliExpress), so half way through this experiment I offered an upsell to get a second for free. Suddenly 60% of all checkouts were 14.98 instead of just 9.99. I missed out on LOT of cash because I didn't do this earlier.
• Use an email marketing app, something I didn't do and still haven't done. I know it sounds obvious, but when you're busy handling all of the other stuff it becomes less of a priority and you allow Shopify to send out their order emails (which suck). This is something I'll do from the beginning next time rather than waiting.
• Call out in the ad itself how much the product is, and add some bullshit sale like HALF PRICE + FREE SHIPPING... calling it out means that people who are willing to pay that much will be the ones who click through... I found this lowered by CPC and CPS. The free shipping thing is a biggie if you're focusing on one product like I was, no-one wants to pay for shipping on one product.

So what's next for this journey?

I have been reading "Ecommerce Evolved" by Tanner Larsson (recommended by Vortex). This is an absolute BEAUTY of a book, and I'm learning so much from it that I wish I knew before I launched by first store. Anyone who wants to start in E-commerce or is struggling to make a profit NEEDS to read this book.

So I'm going to finish reading that book and make a huge amount of notes to act on.

Then I'm going to setup my new store. This time I want to build a brand around a niche I'm passionate about. I'm going to use the things I've learnt in the last month and combine it with learnings from Ecommerce Evolved to build a brand new store which I hope will become my full-time job.

I'm also going to Barcelona for Ecommerce Mastery Live + Mastermind dinner, which I absolutely can't wait for. I hope that over the next couple of months I'll learn enough to take this to the next level.

I'll update this thread as I continue to make progress.

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Hello Sam,

I am about to start my first store myself. The thing that i am hesitant with is facebook ads. I have close to none experience with it. Could you please recommend books, articles or courses that helped you get started. Do you think taking facebooks blue print is a good idea? Also a quick overrun of your methology how you test, set up and run fb ads would be really appreciated.

Good luck with your journey!

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This is pure gold, thanks for sharing your insights!

Great tip about using Dropified instead of Oberlo. And I cannot agree more on adding an upsell right at the start. I was amazed how simple it was to increase average order value simply by adding an upsell to the flow.

One thing I did to reduce the amount of WHERE'S MY ORDER emails is to use an app called Tracktor - it lets you add a custom status like "In Production" or something, and you can have an order tracking page on your store that customers can use. Only downside is you can't bulk update your custom statuses, you have to do it one by one for every order. But the number of emails I get dropped drastically.

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I already had some experience with Facebook Ads as I've worked in digital marketing for a few years and have run ads for clients.

Here's a really good case study that I've found SUPER helpful: https://smartmarketer.com/how-i-turned/

I also took the DigitalMarketer course called 'Paid Traffic Mastery': https://www.digitalmarketer.com/lp/t...affic-mastery/
Honestly though, there's nothing in there that you couldn't learn for free, it's not worth the $995 but sign up to their newsletter as they often do $95 flash sales on their courses. If you can grab it for that price it's definitely useful.

Also, as of today Facebook have launched a new feature where you can view ads being run by pages currently as part of their efforts on transparency. Very useful for us marketers, you can read more about that here: https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/06...ads-and-pages/

Thanks very much for that tip! I'll definitely check it out.

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Thanks Sam and Manu for your insights! I'm learning lots from your posts.

There are 2 additional places (aside from FB) that are good for promoting ecom: Google shopping and google adwords. Heard about very good results from people.


Amy

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After a while you can look for patterns in such comments, and add them to your spam list so those comments would be automatically hidden.

(e.g. "don't pay", "ebay", "cheaper")


Amy

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