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💣 Taking Affiliate Marketing Skills And Scaling A Shopify Store in Competitive Niche (25)

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Hey there

So today I want to create a new follow along.

Some back story:

2017 I saw an opportunity to jump into the female athleisure industry.
So I created a Branded Shopify store and thought I was gonna make millions.

Of course, that wasn't the case. I made 6-fig in revenue and.... ended around 10k negative after year end, so i made ZERO in profit.
Then last year I tried again to see the store could get legs and I wasn't able to get it moving.

My problem was/ is the price point, I can't sell them for a price that these people want, on the other side the quality is so good that
I could sell the products for more, and around 25% of first-time customers become repeat purchasers.

So customers love this product.

During 2018 I decided that wouldn't touch this store anymore, I've literally tried everything.
I would only let it sit there and get organic sales and sales from our email blasts.


Fast forward to today and after 2 full months into AM I have so much more flesh on my legs
when it comes how to buy traffic and optimize everything.

Soo as I already am into the health, fitness and diet niche I thought why not try to create a big brand that
uses CPA offers on Front-end and then monetizes those leads with merch from the store and build
value from a branded blog.

So I created a plan...

The current setup for this store is as follows:


FB Ads--> Presell article --> quiz to pre-qualify them even more --> Product page.

FB SETUP:
I started very simply.
3 ad sets at $27 bucks each
2 ads in each, same copy difference is one is VIDEO one is STATIC IMAGE.

Targeting:
Initiate checkouts LLA from the diet offers
Page view LLA from diet offers
Planet fitness Interest

Here are the stats so far after 1.5 days running.


Here are the stats from the tracker:
66 Clicks To Presell from FB Ad
Out of these 66 clicks, 36 clicked through to the QUIZ
Out of these 36 clicks 16 landed on the product page.

This gives me the following %
Presell = 51%
QUIZ = 94%
Offer Page = 83%


STATS:
ATC: 7
Reached Checkout: 3
Sales 2
Profit per sale is $27 so a total of $54
Ad Spend: $87
ROI: -35%



WHAT TO DO NEXT?

Will let the ads run through today without touching anything and tomorrow I will introduce 3 new
images to the ads.
The goal is to the CPC down a notch, although I've always had high CPC on this market. Never been able to get it under $.50 consistently.

I am also going to look at HotJar to see what we can improve on PreSell and the QUIZ.

I might split test to remove the quiz and send them straight to the offer after pre-sell too.


GOAL
The goal with this branded store is to get it to breakeven on the front-end, if i can get that then i can maximize the profits with upsells and emails etc.
I really hope I can crack it now using my AM skills I've learned these past months.

That's it for now.

I would love to get ideas here from you guys.

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I'm not into ecomm myself, but just from an affiliate side of view, first thing to do would be to skip the quiz to see if it's actually helping the sales or not. It could also be a good idea to run a bit longer, 1 more sale and the stats would look way better.

Promising follow along btw, will be watching it

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Are the LLA's good quality? Also what is the potential audience size at the moment?

Would love to see your FB ads to see how improve CTR, but I understand you won't share them here. PM is you want me to have a look at it, just saying!

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From a business point of view, on 6 figures, it should be possible to turn a a 10K loss into at least some profit.

I would be looking at:

- COGS (Cost of goods sold) or in other words, look at your product. If you find that your product is better than what people want to pay for, downgrade the product. Or introduce 2 new options, one more expensive, one cheaper.
This will appeal to all buyers, the ones that go for cheapest, the ones that go for best and those that go for the middle option

- fulfilment cost - how much does it cost to pack and ship. Talk to different people, see where you can save. Look at offering bundles of 3 / 5 or whatever if shipping is a high percentage of the total purchase (regardless of whether you or the customer pays for it)

- talk to your suppliers, drive down prices. Look at other suppliers and see if they have a more competitive offer. See if you can expand to marketplaces, like Amazon to increase volume and decrease product cost though buying larger quantities.

You are right in wanting to have this profitable on the front end. And it should be possible.

Take the advice from others with regard to the ads and look at the points above for the rest.

Your goal is not to find the 10K change, it's to find a few K here, a few there and let those smaller wins accumulate. This should get you to profitability without massive changes.


You are so far ahead of people starting out, it's a matter of fine tuning.

Keep us posted, because I feel this could become a really valuable thread for people in the same situation.

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Yep, today i removed the quiz to see if we get more conversions.

LLA's are good.

2m audience size per ad set

I might msg you later.


Valuable input man but.

This is a POD store but not with the typical shitty looking stuff. We are talking really nice high-end designs.

I've tried several POD suppliers and 95% of them are SHIT. By that i mean, the quality is so bad that people are sending back the stuff.
Delivery times were an issue.
With the current POD supplier, we don't have any issues at all.
Quality products, super fast shipping and happy customers.

The supplier has a quantity discount but i need to reach at least 5k a month in sales to get the first bump which is 5% discount.

What I am thinking of doing now to drive up order value etc is to add upsell app as Carthook or One click upsell.

Also, need to get the retargeting in place as I think the visitors from the pre-sells are so much more "hot" than a regular "FB ad to product page" visitor.


STATS FROM YESTERDAY
$78 spent on ads
2 sales = $27 x 2 = $54
ROI -31%


Will keep the post updated as much as i can.

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Just a few quick ones:

- 1Conversion rate looks very good

- 2 Supplier is one to keep, considering the product quality and service level

- 3 Try to negotiate: lay out the plan, explain you're investing and what the target is. Explain that you intent to continue to work with them and need their support. Get 2.5% discount as soon as you pass 2.5 K per month. Then 5% at 5K and whathever you can get after that.
Apparel has massive margins, so there should be room there.

Aks for more than you want to get, so that the end effect is what you want. It should not be the starting offer.

Another option is to ask for an additional bonus, so 5% on 5 K monthly. Plus 2% on the yearly turnover if you reach 75K for example. The good thing about that is that the 2% will be applied to the whole turnover, which at 75K would mean an extra 1500.

Figure out what they find important. Think about units sold, speed of payment, reliability of you as a buyer, brand name etc. Make them understand your goals align and that it's in their best interest to help you.

4. Don't know how you pay them now, but some suppliers will give a 2% discount when you pay in advance or within 8 days. See what's possible there. Again, suggest and negotiate.

5% on 50.000 in purchasing volume is 2.5K already.

If you can now reduce ad cost and find some savings in other places, you're well on your way to profitability.


The other way around is to make sure you know what the discounts are on volume and get that volume ASAP. This means investing though, so you'd need the cash to support you until you reach the set goals.

Hope this helps.

Lycka till!

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Definitely agree with pekadis that this thread will be super valuable - it already is! Will include this in next week's forum newsletter!
@kinged you're already in really good hands. I only have suggestions on how to improve your funnel.

Skip the article, skip the quiz, just FB ads -> dedicated product funnel.

I don't know if you're still selling multiple products in a Shopify store and just sending prospects to a product page, but if you are, then you're leaving a lot of money on the table!

Take your best-selling product (can replicate for other best sellers later but would be good to start with one) and create a simple site for it. Basically sales page -> billing and contact info page -> upsells and/or downsells -> final confirmation (that should allow the customer to change order/billing details) -> thank you page.

This will maximize your front-end profits. You don't want the customer to get distracted by all the other links on the typical Shopify product page (that lead to other products etc.) You want to concentrate on selling them on that ONE product that has brought them to the site in the first place. And then you want to maximize order size with upsells/downsells.

Once you have them in the funnel, you can push other products in the backend using email etc.

Another thing you should look into, is somehow introduce some form of recurring income into your business model. Your niche is perfect for this.

I would highly recommend the book "Ecom Evolved" by Tanner Larsson. I've written a synopsis of the first few chapters (the best parts in my opinion) into some posts - please do a search for it. I'm replying from mobile app so have no idea how to do a search and come back to this reply without having to start over . Please feel free to check out those posts and if you'd like more details straight from the horse's mouth, can get the book.

Lastly: Have you considered selling this on amazon? If so, do a search on posts by moderator Zack - he's extremely knowledgeable on how to sell on amazon. Has helped some sellers to do millions in daily revenue.

Hope that helps! I'm with pekadis - you WILL make this store profitable. Multiple optimizations will add up to very significant changes. It's not simple addition - more like synergy where the resulting change will be greater than the sum of individual changes.

Looking forward to seeing you scale this to 7 figures this year! You can do this!



Amy




Sent from my SM-G930W8 using STM Forums mobile app

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Hey Amy
Thanks for the inputs.

I see where you got that info from.
I am well aware of the single-product-funnel style and have the book since he released it 2-3 yrs ago.

Here is the problem with THIS store, it's apparel with sizes and different designs.
I've tried in the past to do it in ClickFunnels and it was very hard to get it to work.
BUT with that said, IF I can get all this to just break even consistently on the Front-end then and ONLY then
will i test different product landing pages.
Reason is that as i stated in the beginning, i've wasted a lot of time on this store on other stuff that still wouldn't stop the leaking holes when it comes
to get it profitable on FE.

Amazon is not an option as this is print on demand, i don't have any stock nor do i want to have that. ( one of the reasons why i came to AM)


Thanks for the motivation, and i hope i can it to gain some legs.
Will keep this post updated so i can get your guys input and so you also can learn from what works for me.

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UPDATE
So yesterday I decided to remove the quiz from the funnel to see if it increased conversions or not.
Sadly, it didn't. I got twice as much visitors to the store but only 2 sales.

Stats Feb 8th

Adspend: $98
Sales: 2
Revenue: $54
ROI: -45%


Overall stats Feb 6th - Feb 8th

Adspend: $382
Sales: 5
Revenue: $135
ROI: -65%


At this point, I've added new images to get the CPC down but as it is a competitive market the CPC can't be much better on
Purchase objective optimization, not on US traffic.

The Pre-Sell LP CTR is very good and staying at 48-50% daily, so people are definitely interested to know more.
People are then adding to cart but not following through, and this was the case last year too.
Reason is the price. $59.99 is the selling price. On the other side, there are brands selling similar products for $80-100 bucks.



At this point I feel the LP shouldn't be touched, it does it job and gets the visitor to the next page.

What I need to figure out is if I should send them to the quiz to qualify them even more or not.

AND I also need to find out if it's best to send them to the collection page as we have different designs
OR send them to specific designs.


I've set aside a budget of $500 for this in total because I am not gonna let it ruin me like last year.
So as of now, we have $388 to play with in order to get it to breakeven.

If you guys have any ideas what i can do to improve this, please lemme know.

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UPDATE - Sunday Feb 10th
Saturday was the best day so far.

Adspend: $133
Sales: 4
Revenue: $109
ROI: -18%

WHAT DID I CHANGE?


So I introduced back the quiz in the funnel, and it turns out that it warms them up and pre-qualifies them enough to
want to buy the product. At least more than sending them from preselling to the product directly.

I also split tested between sending them to a specific product and to a collection page.
Seems like the collection page is the winner as 90% of sales come when they have
the chance to look at different designs and choose for themselves.

Some screenshots:




WHAT'S NEXT?

Retargeting: I really struggle to get any retargeting campaigns going for this store. The CPMS are literally RAPING me. See the attached image.

Problems i am encountering is that the DPA won't spend despite that there are enough visitors and enough Add To Carts that basically just needs a few more touchpoints to whip out their CC...
So this needs to be fixed ASAP.

One click upsells: I am considering adding an upsell app like one-click upsell or carthook to increase the AOV.

Implementing Lead Gen?: I want to test to add an opt-in form after they finished the quiz in exchange to join our VIP FB group.
This would be good as i would set up a 7-day sequence where they will get value and see the quality in the product at the same time they would be hit with
FB ads retargeting etc. = Multiple touchpoints from different channels.

Let me know if you guys have any suggestions.

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Besides the high cost, it’s also a waste of time and energy to already start/focus on retargeting.

Make sure your add to cart and eventual sales percentages go up with your “normal” funnel first.

If every step is optimized fully as you wish, then start looking around for other options to increase sales.

Ofcourse this would be my approach, also because I prefer to focus of only a few things. Some people can multitask better for sure....


Sent from my iPhone using STM Forums mobile app

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One suggestion, how about trying to experiment with the pricing a bit?

Couple years ago, I was heavily into promoting adult paid sites, I sold many 1000's of memberships. And some of the programs offered various price points that I could chose from.

After extensive tests, I came to this conclusions:

1. Selling at a discount worked well and customers were purchasing multi-month memberships very nicely. So instead of signing up for a month at $29.95, I gave them the chance to join for 3 months for $59.95 or 6 months at $89.95. This way, my profit per customer was higher, compared to selling 1 month memberships only.

2. To my surprise, there was pretty much no difference when I tried to experiment with various price levels for 1-month memberships, I could sell pretty much the same amount of memberships with a $14.95 price tag as I would with $34.95. There was a limit though, as soon as I went over $40 per membership, I started to see a significant decline in sales.

To sum it up, customers who really wanted the product, didn't really care about the price all that much, unless I really pushed it too high. And that might be something worth a try .... Up the price, try to offers bundles or discounts, experiment with subscription plans or membership based deals.

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You're getting so close!!

It definitely makes sense for different designs of the same merchandise to be included, even in single-product funnels. But I'm surprised that adding so many extra steps to the funnel is not adversely affecting conversion rates.

I guess it all depends on how effective the extra steps are. It's like sending visitors to the offer directly vs. sending them to a presell page first. On the one hand the visitor needs to click through another thing, but on the other hand, the presell will warm them up to increase the likelihood of conversion if they DO click through to the offer. It's a double-edged sword, and everything hangs on the effectiveness of the presell.

Definitely an eye-opener to encourage me to always split-test different things - thanks for sharing these results!


Great idea that must be tested! You have nothing to lose - basically you'd be showing the upsell to the customer after they've made their purchase of the main product.


Certainly something to test, but introducing this before the prospect completes the purchase can have negative effects on conversion rate.

Perhaps consider presenting the opt-in on the thank you page at the very end? And if you can offer something like a 5% discount code to members of the FB group that people can apply to their next purchase, that may be a good incentive for them to join, and also to buy from you again.




Amy

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UPDATE

First the good news: I accidentally looked into our POD backend and realized they have lowered the product cost price by $4.
So instead of the $27 margin per sold item i now have $31, makes a big difference.

Now the bad news: I have not been able to crack it to break even.
Getting sales are not the problem, the product converts but not at a desirable CPA on cold traffic.
The second bad news is that my retargeting ads do not perform what so ever...
I have a lot of people who are ready to buy but just needs that extra push but the retargeting ads are simply not performing.

I've read from a lot of groups and my understanding is that many Ecom brands make their profits from the retargeting.
So they are just filling their MOF and BOF buckets with these TOF or cold audiences to then nurture them via retargeting
and then profit from there.
Basically, they are neg on Cold traffic but positive on the rest of the funnel.

This is kinda my plan too but yea, retargeting needs to perform.

Another issue is the price objection. People are REALLY interested and want to buy ( A LOT of ATCs) but the price keeps them from buying.
I even get a few messages on the FB page asking for discount codes.

So the problem lies in how i can tackle the price objection for them?

STATS from 10-13th Feb

Adspend: $654
Rev: $499
ROI: -26

All time stats since restarting my journey to resurrect this:



What optimizations have i done between these days?
1. I've added the price in the pre-sell a the bottom comparing it to high-end brands charging $80+ for similar products and then
comparing to cheap ass shit that has not same quality etc as ours.

2. Added Free returns + 60-day money back on the top header on the store that is visible storewide.

3. Removed the price from the "above the fold" so they need to read the product description and play around with sizes, The price is then shown at the bottom of the product page. (ATC has increased)

4. Before THIS change i had the setting that if you add a product to cart, it takes you directly to the cart and from there you can press the button to go to the checkout.
So INSTEAD of sending them to the cart i now have the setting that once they add it, a mini cart on the upper right side shows up, and the button there takes them directly to checkout.



Conclusion:

I am not sure if i am wasting my time and resources and if i should give in and move on to other stuff?
I've tried like 10 times to resurrect this brand, this time i feel i've been the closest to crack it.
Never have i had so good metrics in terms of add to carts and purchases though.

But the SAME issue keeps coming back all the time and it's the price objection.

The pre-sell flow seems good to me, 40-50% LP CTR, people are adding to cart but not following through.
So i am not sure how i should move on here...
PRICE OBJECTION...

Of course there are are lot more of optimization that can be done on the store, but it all comes back to: Will it blow up or am i just wasting my MONEY and TIME.
I mean i have an idea of creating a similar product page as THIS --> https://www.protalus.com/pages/model-s-2
This way i can adress all the questions and have much more info on the product pages so that i maybe could tackle the price objection.
On the other hand this would cost me couple hundred bucks at least to let someone create.

Another idea i had is to use the landing page styles GiddyUp uses for their Ecom offers where you the offer page is a "mini pre-sell" with a video, compelling text, reviews and there i would have my top 6 selling products that they can choose and from there they go to the product page.

Anyways that's what i have to share today.
If you guys have any input on what i should do, please lemme know.
Right now i'm feeling like this:
but maybe you need to let some things just go and move on.. I don't know..

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I would do 2 things:

1. Start customer research. Very simple 1 question forms and follow ups.
To customers who have bought: What almost kept you from buying from us? / What was the most importat reason for buying from us?
Pre-exit with ATC: what is the reason you decided not to buy right now?

You have to figure out why people are nog buying. Is that really price? Price and value are not the same. And people need to understand the value they are getting and then they'll be able to pay the price.


2. Look at financing. I just heard from a company that used bread (link here) so his customers could use financing for their orders. His AOV for orders with financing was 300% higher than the previous overall AOV. And he has cheap items as well (think 5 to 6$), so it's not just for expensive stuff.

It's worth testing, because if the intent is high, but finances are an issue, this could remove a hurdle that you can otherwise not solve.

Hope this helps..

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Just a thought: how about your shipping and payment options? Could there be a problem too? Not sure what GEO you are targeting, but as you know for sure, there can be quite big differences in what customers prefer in particular countries.

Everybody in the US is used to pay by CC, but in Europe it's not the preferred payment option. Pretty much everyone I know is using COD in my country, for example. Even with CCs there can be a problem, I think it was wakeboarder who posted it in his "wildboar liquidator" thread that certain payment processor was refusing branded CCs, which caused a big problem.

Have you spent some time on optimizing this? Maybe they customers want to buy, but you don't offer their preferred way of payment.

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Mainly targeting US but also Top EU Contries where CC are used very commonly.
IE: France, Germany Sweden Denmark.

They are not dropping of in the checkout process, they are dropping off before that.

I sent out an email to my past buyers this morning with questions.

So far the answers validate what I thought, the price is an issue.

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UPDATE + Should I kill this follow along or keep pushing?
(Need your guys help right now)


So I have not been able to crack this damn nut.
It bugs the soul out of me of the reason that i get sales, i get A HELL OF A LOT ADD TO CARTS but people are DROPPING OFF AFTER THEY ADD TO CART....


I have Retargeting ads setup, DPA setup and the same thing happens there = People add to cart and then just leave. (Some of the DPA's offer discounts such as Free shipping, and even 15% off.)

The price point is $69.99 and my thinking is IF they thought it was toooooo expensive they wouldn't even add to cart?
Or am i wrong here?

Look at this screenshot - ( these are the stats since i started this FA 7th feb to today)


LOOK THIS IS TODAY - Dammit..


When i look at HotJar i can't really see any issues they are facing either.

What have i tried:
- Tried NOT to send them to cart after they add something. Instead a side bar shows up. No difference.
- Tried to send them to the cart after they add the product to cart. - No difference
- Added a image of the founder in the cart page and some copy about why they shouldn't be concerned about pricing etc.

At this point i'm thinking it might be something technical OR something HUGE is really missing that every damn potential customer is looking for but can't find..

To sum it up:

I set a budget of $500 bucks that if i can't turn that to breakeven i will stop this.
Right now i am at a $470 loss since the 7th feb.
Almost every day it's been ONE!!!! damn sale away to breakeven. ONE SALE TO BREAK EVEN.

Now this is something that I need to decide on my self, but WHAT WOULD YOU GUYS DO?
Would you pursue this further or would you stop it?

The potential here is HUGE but can i crack it?

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Did you try offering a discount from an inflated price? So if you'r current price is $59.99, try to up it to $79.99 and offer a 15% discount plus free shipping, for example. Sometimes people gladly buy overpriced items, when they believe they are offered a discount. If you strongly believe the problem is the price, try to play around with it a bit. Offer a bundle 3 for the price of 2 etc ...

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I increased the price from 59.99 + 4.99 shipping to 69.99 + 4.99 shipping.
So far no difference in conversions. Usuaöly they have droppes when i did this back when i tried to get this store going. But it seems that it isnt affecting so much.

I am offering a discount as i said in my post, actually its 15%.

But if you were in my shoes, would you still pursue this journey or let it slip??

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Hard to say as I don't even know what the product is and naturally do not understand your particular market.

What I can say for sure though, you're only slightly negative, based on the data you've shown us. If in my affiliate marketing years I'd drop campaigns that were close to break-even early after their launch, I'd have to drop pretty much every one of them. What you're showing us, looks promising for an affiliate's eye, so I'd definitely give it some more time and try to figure out what's holding it back from getting profitable.

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UPDATE



So after over a dozens of attempts to get this brand going i got enough.

Sold of this store last week for $35000.
A good chunk of cash for a business that made over 150k in revenue without making any decent profit.

How did i sell it?
I put it up on a market place like Craiglist and used the copywriting skills i've learned last couple weeks.
99% of the peeps selling business on this place write very generic stuff with no persuasion behind it at all.
I went all in and wrote a really DR driven listing which generated a lot of interest and a sale within 4 days of publishing it.
So takeaway from this: Always use your AM skills in every are of your life.



WHAT's NEXT
Soo i'm going to start a Follow along / Case study where i'm going take part of these 35k and build my own ecom offers.

This will not be the typical Shopify "build a brand bro" stuff.
We will focus on finding products that has been dropshipped or products that solves a pain and then create Direct response affiliate like presell pages.

Flow will be simple.
Clickfunnels
Presell -> Order form with BUMP --> OTO 1 (Offering them the same thing but with discount) --> OTO 2 (warranty, or continuity or another product)

Thats it.
Plan is to get them rolling at slight profit, then add in backend funnels to milk the LTV from customers.

Super plan is to launch 3 new ecom offers aka brands a month.

God mode plan is to scale the shit out of them through out the year and then in Jan-Feb sell them off for good profit.
Rinse and repeat.

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That's a very solid plan!

A quick way to test out a product, would be to whip up a quick page - either a product page in a general Shopify store or a dedicated site for the product built using clickfunnels - and using the same/similar template each time for speed of execution. Then run a limited test budget to each product, testing say 3 different ad angles.

And for any product that shows promise, can build out the funnel further etc. etc.

That way you don't invest a lot of time or money into each product, until it shows good potential - such that you KNOW with further testing and optimization, the product will result in greater profits.

This way you'll be able to test more than 3 products a month.

Of course, this is just one approach. Some people prefer to do a lot of research to identify winning products, and then focus their time and money on making each one work. That works well too in certain situations.

A mix of the 2 approaches can work really well, i.e. for products that you're less sure about, can whip up a quick test. And for products that you're relatively sure are winners, devote more time to uncover their full potential.

The latter approach can work wonders for products that have broad appeal that are far from market saturation. You'd have a lot of fun testing general angles on broad audience, plus breaking them down into smaller and more targeted audiences and using targeted angles to potentially increase conversion rates.

I look forward to learning further from your experiences going forward.



Amy








Sent from my SM-G930W8 using STM Forums mobile app

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Solid advice Amy

Although what i mean by 3 products is proven offers. So that means that i will need to test 10+ products first to see as you said if there is any potential. From there we build the entire brand

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Congrats on the sale.

As for your plan, it's a great model.

I would - if it's scale-wise feasible - focus on an industry. Mainly because you will know the buyers for the projects you create a lot better.

If they don't buy the current one, you can come back to them and sell them something else.

This would work especially well with businesses as your customer. I know I would be up for buying a site that does well and is related ot what I do now.


Also, this will allow you to find the right price point. Different people / businesses have different budgets. Even though your project might be profitable / interesting etc. If it's out of their budget, you can't get the sale.

Apart from a profitable project, it should ideally be well documented and easily transferrable as well. Think well-documented procedures in the shape of: this is what we do, here's how, this is the tool we use and hee's why we do it that way.
Nothing too fancy, but enough for you to quickly mover from hand-over to hands-off in terms of the after sale transition period.

Also think about seperate hosting accounts, accounts for tools etc. Bit more of a hassle to set up, but might be worth the time investment.

Amy's suggestion is great of course, test and move fast.

I am looking forward to that thread!

Good luck.

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