🚢Wakeboarders' 100-Day Challenge: The Scaleship Project (54)
🚢Wakeboarders' 100-Day Challenge: The Scaleship Project
Hi fam!
Recovery after AWE 2019 is finally over and its time to get back in the game. 
Big shoutout to @chad and his team to organize this incredible event. AWE 2019 was by far my best marketing event I ever attended and I got so inspired by other eCommerce marketers that I decided to move some of my projects on the next level. That said, together with our team we agreed on the 100-day challenge with the one main goal -- SCALE.
The point of this challenge is to scale as much as we can. Open all the biggest EU markets and set up processes that will help us achieve numbers we are looking for. To achieve this, we decided to move into a huge house named The Scaleship based in the middle of nowhere in Slovenia. We will be together 100 days and all three with the same end goal -- SCALE.
In The Scaleship we have everything we need to make this happen. 80% of the product is developed in-house.
About The Challenge
Based on what I see in our Pinterest spy tool, I strongly believe personalization will be a big thing in the next couple of years. Personalized products are easy to sell but hard to copy.
In the last few months, we have set up a mechanical infrastructure, developed a product, tested a few creatives and generated 16,294.24€ in revenue with 259 orders and received insanely positive feedback from our customers. Marketing wise this was pretty much on auto-pilot, but it was complex from the technical point of view. Vesna and Zan did an amazing job here and now we just need to “spread the word”. 
We will try to optimize our lives, workspace, and daily routine so that we will be the most productive and healthy as we can be.
Here is the plan for how we will achieve this:
The Team
We are 4 key team members. Each of us with a different skill set but all hungry as wolves with ideas literally spewing out of our brains (words from the one and only @maynzie).
Vesna and Zan are a couple, my favorite persons in the world, top-notch developers with a killer mindset and the list goes on and one. They will take care of all the automation, development, split-tests, integrations with other services.
Zans’ dad is our MacGyver. He is working with CNC machines, building chainsaws and much more. We tell you more crazy stuff about him in the next posts. 
I will take care of marketing, media buying and growth in general.
We are focused on the European market, that’s why we working with VAs that are already working for the Wild Boar Liquidator Project.
Marketing Game
After almost 300 hundred orders we know we have an amazing product. Zero returns and very positive feedback without asking them or giving them any incent. Product market fit is not a question here, the product is for a very broad audience and we can use many different angles to target a completely different pool of user. The point I wanted to make here is that I believe the product is scalable as fuck and this is the main reason why we are entering this 100-days challenge.
So far we were pushing traffic only from Facebook and a brand-protect campaign on Google Adwords.
Here is the initial plan how to kick this off:
- Find top-performing angles in our local country where traffic is ultra cheap
- Test 3 advertorials with 3 different copywriters
- Tets FR, DE, and IT market and see which GEO converts the best
- Start optimizing the process because we know that for scale we need a process
When we have a killer campaign on Facebook we will start running the Pinterest campaign, because this will help sale our Pinterest tool because I will show step by step how to run a campaign on Pinterest.
What’s next?
Well, after I hit the submit button for this post I will go wakeboarding until they don’t turn off the cable.
Tomorrow I'm packing my bags and on Saturday morning I’m moving to our new home - The Scaleship. There I will meet my roommates Vesna and Zan.
On Saturday morning we will sign our manifesto, discuss a long todo list, set priorities and start working on the tasks.
What you can expect from this FA?
We will share our biggest struggles in the scaling process, how are we overcoming them, failed split-tests and overall progress.
For the time being, I will not share the brand we are building.
I’m super pumped about this challenge and also about this new FA. I discussed with @matuloo and @vortex and we all hope eCommerce will become more popular on STM in the near future. Maybe this follow along will help a bit.
That’s all for now!
The next big update will already post from the The Scaleship.
Cheers,
wakeboarder
This is awesome! Deff following along
Love the amount of detail you went into here just to set the platform for our adventure - good luck to the four of you! Looking forward to seeing the results of your venture!
Goodluck @wakeboarder!
This is dope!!
Good luck to you guys... will be following along.
Can't wait for the next update!
so fucking cool!
Just reading this makes my blood boil! You go Tim - will be on the lookout for updates!
In the meantime - can you elaborate more on exactly what you mean by personalized products?
Amy
Thanks guys!
@vortex by personalized products I mean products where the customer can customize one part of the product.
For example ...
Personalized dog collars
It's a basic dog collar but customer can write owners phone number and name on the collar, so in case that the dog got lost someone can call the dog owner.
Another more complex product is Lovebook.
My Name Necklace is also a good one, but there are many more.
UPDATE: Day 3
Start
On Saturday we moved to the Scaleship and we already did some work. The first day we were only brainstorming and discussing about the workflow, Trello and priorities. We need a few days or a week to get into our routine and start crushing tasks.
SendInBlue
We are using very customized Wordpress and front-end is custom made because of the generator where customers are building their product.
Cart Abandonment emails are very important. We get tons of data from out customers before they even complete the order.
The Marketing Automation feature in SendInBlue offers to track user on our webpage and based on their activities we can trigger AR campaigns inside SendInBlue.
That said, Yesterday I setup SendInBlue and start sending all the data from the webpage into users profile inside SIB.
Generator
We are working closely with different print companies and Vesna had a really though job prepare every single order for print. It took her 30 min per product. Zan is building a generator that will prepare everything on the fly and send once per day new orders directly to print companies.
This generator will save us a lot of time so we will be able to focus on more important tasks.
Reporting
I prepared daily and weekly performance report. For the first month I will manually enter all the numbers because I want get better feeling for main metrics. After a month or so we will move to Supermetrics.
Influencer Experiment
Although, our main focus is paid traffic, we will do one experiment with a popular Influencer in Slovenia.
Parents are a huge market for us. In Slovenia there is one couple/family that is very popular and their audience is a perfect fit for us.
I know they have 3 kids so I went on their IG profile and scroll through their profile until I found when one of their kids has a birthday. 
Luckily for us, the youngest one has a birthday in two weeks. We got their home address and we will send them our product as a birth day gift. In the cover letter we will add their LP (our brand X their brand) and give them XX EUR for each order they bring us.
It's a long shot but we know they will be amazed by the product and we hope for the shoutout etc.
If this will work for us, we will start working with Influencer agency for other bigger GEOs.
------
First week will be a bit boring, we need to be focused on technical part of the project, but it's crucial before we start ramping up the budget.
The idea is that we re-run the local market, test everything on local market and then move on to bigger GEOs.
It's our 3rd day here and it's amazing, especially with this Windows XP view. 
Have a good start of the week guys!
Cheers,
wakeboarder
Ah wow, what a project you guys started here! Absolutely amazing
Not sure about this part though:
Proper food and nutrition, without junk food
Without alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes
) I would die within a week BTW: I love the idea of personalized products, any extra step to make copying more complicated is a good thing. And it's also a great selling point for sure.
Would you mind telling us more about the product itself? Of course I understand if you prefer to keep it a secret, but I'd certainly love to know what it is you guys are cooking here
Awesome Tim!
Loving your threads and cannot wait for more upcoming updates!
CRUSH IT!
Originally Posted by matuloo
Not sure about this part though:
6 am? No burgers? No beers?
) I would die within a week BTW: I love the idea of personalized products, any extra step to make copying more complicated is a good thing. And it's also a great selling point for sure.
Would you mind telling us more about the product itself? Of course I understand if you prefer to keep it a secret, but I'd certainly love to know what it is you guys are cooking here
Yes, Indeed. Personalized products are harder to copy and probably more than 90% of dropshippers will never start developing their own product.
When we establish sales in 2 big EU markets I will share the product/brand.
Until then, I prefer to keep it a secret. But I can tell you it has nothing to do with hunting. 
Originally Posted by erikgyepes
Will try to keep this FA updated regularly.
UPDATE: Day 4
We are still in the planning phase. Zan and Vesna are working on automatization, and I was preparing cart abandonment, push-notifications and start planning a Facebook account structure.
One Signal - Push Notifications
We are collecting new push subscribers and we are tagging users with OneSignal.sendTags. This means we tag a user on every step of the funnel.
I created an automated campaign which send a push-notification cart abandonment message to users who built their product, but they did not make a purchase.
One additional Cart Abandonment channel free of charge.
Facebook Rules
I never used FB rules before so I decided to figure it out how we can use it to optimize out testing budget.
For now I have just one simple rule:
If CPA is > $25 = KILL
I know these rules can be much more powerful but I will go one by one. When I see this one is OK, I will preare a new set of rules.
Facebook Retargeting MindMap
I love mind maps. They make my life easier and more organized.
Here is initial structure for Facebook Retargeting strategy.
Probably it will change later down the line, but I think it's good enough to start with.
Angles & Creatives & Pre-landers
I've prepared a list of angles and a few creatives.
At the moment we have one pre-lander and a copy from two different copywriters. I will start testing photos from Instagram, because I know this can work well with pre-landers.
Here is how I'm looking for creatives:
1) I search for top hashtags on Instagram
2) First 9 images are labeled as Top posts
3) I borrow a few that are standing out and have great engagement
4) Test this images in one ad set
For my hunting project this is working very well. In most cases CTR is very high, and if it's combined with the right targeting it will probably convert as well.
Custom Made Chainsaw
Zans' dad aka. MacGyver aka. Franci today improved his custom made chainsaw. This machine is crucial because without it we would need to buy one part of the product which is very expensive. That said, we have much better margin. We believe this will become more important at scaling stage, we will be able to spend more to acquire a customer.
That's all for today!
I'm excited to start running traffic in the next few days. In the meantime I will create more creatives // slideshows, images, videos, etc.
Cheers,
wakeboarder
Sick journey, really!
Parents are a huge market for us. In Slovenia there is one couple/family that is very popular and their audience is a perfect fit for us.
I know they have 3 kids so I went on their IG profile and scroll through their profile until I found when one of their kids has a birthday.
Luckily for us, the youngest one has a birthday in two weeks. We got their home address and we will send them our product as a birth day gift. In the cover letter we will add their LP (our brand X their brand) and give them XX EUR for each order they bring us.
Sounds like a great job for a VA - have them put together a list of influencers (not necessarily limited to Slovenia) and then do the same espionnage work to put together a calendar of their kids' bdays, and send out gifts accordingly.
And while they're at it, can also do the same for their pets (I'm thinking the dog collar you used in your example - thanks for that explanation by the way!)
1) I search for top hashtags on Instagram
2) First 9 images are labeled as Top posts
3) I borrow a few that are standing out and have great engagement
4) Test this images in one ad set
EDIT: How are you searching for top hashtags? Sorry for the noob question - I don't use instagram.
Everything you do is "larger than life" - so excited to see what new heights this project will take you!
Amy
Originally Posted by wakeboarder
Yes, Indeed. Personalized products are harder to copy and probably more than 90% of dropshippers will never start developing their own product.
When we establish sales in 2 big EU markets I will share the product/brand.
Until then, I prefer to keep it a secret. But I can tell you it has nothing to do with hunting. And really looking forward to the product, sounds like you guys are doing something very interesting!
The chainsaw looks sick! Having a skilled mcgyver-type of a person on the team is kinda priceless, I love when people don't get scared from problems and simply build something to solve them, love it!
Originally Posted by vortex
I believe that granular retargeting is even more important when time to purchase is longer, like in our case. Our AVO is around $70 and in its usually bought as a gift. That's the main reason why I'm trying to communicate many different messages and push them down the funnel step by step.
Another idea is that we would like to setup "evergreen" FB campaigns. Custom Audiences are dynamically updated and users are moving automatically between ad sets where they see always a different message.
Will post an update when this is live and tested.
Originally Posted by vortex
For example ...
1) baby gift
2) Auto-suggests will provide just hashtags that are most popular based on # of posts using this hashtah
Originally Posted by matuloo
And really looking forward to the product, sounds like you guys are doing something very interesting!
The chainsaw looks sick! Having a skilled mcgyver-type of a person on the team is kinda priceless, I love when people don't get scared from problems and simply build something to solve them, love it!
Problem with personalized products is not just in the production but in the fulfillment process too. Imagine you need to fulfill 50 orders per day, but products are not the same like if you are selling garcinia cambogia tea bags where the only variable is number of bags.
When working with personalized products, you need to match the right product with cover letter and a post-label. Believe me, this can become a clusterfuck in no time.
Especially when all the products looks almost the same, but they are not, because they are personalized. Cheers,
wakeborder
UPDATE: Day 5/100
Analytics Audit
After analytics audit and when I checked if we're tracking and sending to GA all important events, we noticed one very important issue.
CR on mobile is 0.95% in compare to 1.92%. ��Luckily we installed Hotjar at the beginning and quickly got some ideas what could cause this. Only 28% of users see video infinite loop of my mom crying when receiving our product as a gift.
We will test our thesis which we will test with Google Optimize which is an amazing tool free tool. There are two main KPIs we will measure in this test:
Primary: Conversion Rate (Purchase)
Secondary: Session Duration
Website Improvement
There are a few important changes on the webpage we will do before we re-launch the PPC camps.
Add Shipping Insurance
On the checkout we will add Shipping Insurance option for $1.99. This has direct impact on our margin. ��
Facebook Reviews
Zan found once cool service for showing Facebook Reviews called elfsight.com. Problem wit
Problem with Facebook Reviews is also page load. They add additional 400kb lol. Keep in mind this before you embed tons FB reviews on your LP.
Other minor changes
More secure badges, 60-day money back guarantee and we will redesign the last step of the checkout because it's too plain. We will probably just copy/paste one checkout we know it's working great for a friend of mine.
Cart Abandonment Experiment -- Call Center
One of our main issues in the testing phase was a huge drop when users saw the price. We did the re-brand and present the product in more sophisticated, but we know but there's a lot of room for improvement.
On current webpage we have mail-gate before the product generator and we collect 100+ emails per day. For a few days we add phone number and collect 50-100 numbers of customers who abandoned the cart.
In a span of two or three days I will call these customers and try to sell them our product, but what’s more important, I will get data why they decided to abandoned at the first place. It looks like after years, I will get back into my telephone-terrorist mode.
Older Android Devices
We noticed very low CR for some Android devices, and we realized that no one tested how our webpage looks on Android.
Browser Stack already gave us some ideas what do we need to change.
Google AdWords Campaign
I created Google Ads campaign for gift related keywords. For start we will go with 5 different segmented and broad match modifier.
Because I'm not really experienced with Google AW, I called a friend of mine who (@slojack) also joined STM a couple of day ago, and he gave some some very cool tips.
Here they are:
1) Setup radius targeting
This will help us optimize the campaign based on location.
2) Manual CPC
Always start with Manual CPC so that I have complete control on bidding.
3) Negative Keywords List
Build a negative KW list upfront and when I run the campaign, do the negative run once per day.
4) Extensions
Use all the extensions I can possibly can.
Organic Sales
We have a new goal tracker on our wall. Everytime we receive a new order there is a cha-ching sound and screen updates.
It looks like people are coming back home from their vacation.
////////
Yesterday we agreed to wait a few more days before starting the campaigns. We need to optimize the fulfillment process more and be confident that we can fulfill 50 orders per day. In the meantime there is tons of stuff we need to take care of (life-style photos, product videos and gifs, more reviews etc.).
If we will be able so productive until the end, I believe we can double the sales goal.
Cheers,
wakeboarder
Love your ka-ching screen.
Were you inspired by the Middle Men movie?
They had a similar thing done, except sales were coming from adult sites
Originally Posted by erikgyepes
Were you inspired by the Middle Men movie?
They had a similar thing done, except sales were coming from adult sites
It came out when I was still selling lots of paysite memberships and believe it or not, at some point we had a similar system in place ... with each sale, I got a SMS notification on my phone.Too bad that the middle men movie actually caused the bankruptcy of a great online payment system called "ePassporte", the owner kinda funded the movie with the money that people had deposited to their accounts
Originally Posted by matuloo
It came out when I was still selling lots of paysite memberships and believe it or not, at some point we had a similar system in place ... with each sale, I got a SMS notification on my phone.Too bad that the middle men movie actually caused the bankruptcy of a great online payment system called "ePassporte", the owner kinda funded the movie with the money that people had deposited to their accounts
Never heard about ePassporte, that's interesting background story then.
Anyway don't want to steal Tim's thread, just got interested by that wall
@erikgyepes the inspiration for ka-ching screen is from the call-canter. They were all over the place to keep us motivated and hungry. Zan's father then open one old laptop and repack everything into monitor housing. :d
Never heard for this movie, but I will check it out. Sound like a must watch. Thanks @matuloo & @erikgyepes
Update follows in a day or two. In last two days we were optimizing checkout/homepage and finally sent out product to a local influencer.
About the Influencer Campaign
As mentioned in my first post, we figured it out important dates and some other things we can use to personalize the product, and yesterday we finally sent them the product.
We attached very emotional cover letter with their own landing pages where they can drive traffic. For each order we will give them 10.90EUR.
First goal is that they contact us back and we discuss the best the best way for our collab.
Let's see if we get a call today!
Talk soon!
Cheers,
wakeboarder
Originally Posted by wakeboarder
I actually kinda liked the movie, not sure why it bombed so badly. And this guy left many people very upset after the epassporte fiasco, there are several hate-sites online for Mr.Malick to this day, here is one of them: http://www.christophermallick.net/But back to the original topic
I'm really looking forward to the outcome of your attempt with the influencer, hopefully they will reach out to you guys!
🚢Wakeboarders' 100-Day Challenge: The Scaleship Project
UPDATE: Day 11/100
Influencer Test Campaign
Our experiment worked and the couple mentioned us yesterday in their Instagram story. Here is the outcome after 24 hours.
New Unique Visitors: 1,394
Orders: 9
Revenue: 584.91 €
Collected emails: 398
ROI: 
At first glance this doesn’t look amazing, but we already know that our customers needs some time before they make a purchase.
I will update whats the outcome after a week or soon.
Everytime a new visitors open our webpage with UTMs, we add first UTMs into Cookie so we can track even if they later visit our site through retargeting camp.
Telephone Cart Abandonment Experiment
Because we are still trying to learn as much as possible about our customers, we will start calling those who generated the product but did not completed the order. Yesterday we publish Google Optimize AB test, where 50% of customer see Phone Number filed on instead of Email.
In the next few days I will try to get in touch with them, and learn from them as much as possible.
If I do this for 2 hours a day, I can talk with 15-30 customers per day. This is enough to get some feedback.
Google Search
Yesterday we launched Google SEM camps with 5 ad groups to cover KWs that we think are relevant for our product. For the first week, I will keep the daily budget low and once per day remove negative keywords.
Hotjar is Life
Because we don't have a regular product for $19.99 and our flow is different, we need to analyze behavior on the webpage and optimize as much as we can.
I'm watching recordings from our visitors our all main pages. Based on this, we prepared improved layout which I believe will increase our CR on mobile. Vesna did an amazing job here, and today the new, improved version of the site will go live.
Overall Progress
For now things are going great and by the plan. Yesterday we start advertising again and we expect to see first sales in a few days.
We will start increasing the budget on Facebook and see how pre-lander works in compare to direct-linking. I hope that pre-lander flow will work great, because in this case, we can already create a process how to borrow content on IG, setup campaign on FB, and connect it with retargeting. Next step is to replicate to another GEO.
Team Vibe
So far we have an amazing time together.
At least once per day we cry out of laughter, we eat very healthy, waking up early and we got a personal trainer who will visit us once or twice per week.
Spot for our brainstorming sessions.
Challenges
Our main challenges at the moment are:
- improve CR on mobile
- figure out the right email marketing sequence
- understand how different traffic sources interact along a conversion path
- what inflluences the most Days to Transaction in our case
/////
We will slowly start increasing ad spend and collecting more data to analyze and optimize.
Stay tuned!
Cheers,
wakeboarder
Really happy for your success man, love reading your threads!
Amazed with your way to dive in the data.
I've seen people on adleaks recommending mouseflow instead of hotjar..
Originally Posted by festus
I tested Mouseflow today, and it's really cool. In general very similar to Hotjar.
Here is what I like about Mouseflow:
- 500 free recordings in free trial
- comments are included in free version
- paid version start with 29 EUR / month
- robust but simple UI
In general I think Mouseflow is better if you are on free plan. When I compared their 99 EUR with Hotjar 89 EUR plan, I think Hotjar is better, because it's literally unlimited. For this project, we will go with Hotjar premium.
Anyway, thanks for mentioning, I will definitely use it in other projects.
Cheers,
wakeboarder
UPDATE: Day 16/100
For the last few days we did a couple of small adjustments to our process of developing the product, but what’s more important is calling abandoners by telephone.
Telephone Cart Abandonment Experiment
I got in touch with one of my ex-coworkers and I shared with her 80 phone numbers from our customers that designed the product but did not complete the purchase.
Here are the instructions she got:
1) Call each number max 3 times in one day
2) Gather feedback why they did not convert
3) Don't hard-sell, yet.
4) Offer them 10% discount if they order it over phone
Results after the first day:
Calling out: 4 hours
Pick ups: 35
Sold products: 5
Conversion rate: 14%
Revenue: 309.68 €
Based on this numbers we decided to send 100% of our traffic to the version where we ask for the phone number instead of the email.
For the next 7 days, we will try to collect between 100-200 numbers per day, and Klaudija, who is our telephone agent, will calling them between 9am - 3pm and 5pm - 7pm.
We need to set up environmental where she can call between 120-150 customers per day. We will probably go with Freshcaller and a our local phone number, so we get cheap outbound pay-per-minute rate.
So far this experiment looks promising. We are collecting others and powerful feedback from customers.
Klaudija worked in call center for 12 years and she was my mentor in the call-center for some time, so we are both excited to work together again. But this time, we are selling really cool and emotional product.
Exclusive Funnel Experiment //
Yesterday I have read DOTCOMSECRETS by Russel Brunson and it was mind-blowing. This book is amazing and I got tons of ideas for projects that we are working on and what we can improve to increase LTV and spend more on the UA side.
Anyway, one of the key takeaways was that we need to build attractive character which totally make sense for that.
That said, we came up with an idea to test something that could potentially push users to convert as soon as possible.
Here is the new funnel idea:
1) New LP where we present our product in a luxury style (handmade, premium materials, etc)
2) Users cannot buy immediately, they can only opt-in (email) to get on the waiting list
3) Email sequence where we introduce the attractive character
4) Follow by the book how to setup the funnel
5) After X days, they have 72 hours to our the products
We noticed that in Germany in France we have 3 strong competitors, and if we want to get our market-share, we need to have better funnel. Much better.
If we have call-center agent calling them and email-marketing funnel that's working, we are on a very good path.
...
We are still on the good path, next step is to implement up-sells and then move to new GEOs. Probably Italy because there is only one competitor.
That’s all for now!
Cheers,
wakeboarder
I'm learning so much from your thread @wakeboarder - please keep those posts coming!
The biggest lessons I'm learning here are how important it is to:
1)Keep testing new ideas!
2)Keep optimizing known variables!
Of course all the juicy details are only too awesome! But these 2 big takeaways are what I'm benefiting from big-time - because they can be applied to pretty much any project we work on.
You're the single-most biggest action-taker I know. THAT in itself is extremely motivational.
Again, thanks for taking the time to share all this with us. There's so much power behind each of your posts!
Amy
Thanks, @vortex! I’m glad you find it useful, and I hope other members find it too.
I will definitely share everything about this project until 12th of November. That's out last day at the Scaleship.
Today is our 17th day and our daily routine is on exactly like we planned.
Beside business performance, i'm seeing this 100-day experiment as a great opportunity to build some cool habits and organize my life a bit. To be honest, it was quite a mess and everything was more or less connected to affiliate/business/project. Too much, actually.
In these 100 days, I'm trying to incorporate some balance in life (books, workout, meditation, ...) and not thinking about business 27 hours per day.
This is the spreadsheet I'm using to track everything that’s important for me at the moment.
There are two main things I want to resolve in these 100 days.
1) Phone Addiction
This was extreme. If I was not working, I was swiping through Facebook groups about advertising and reading stuff. But at one point, I realized it was total waste of time and it was just a distraction. Most of the content I read I did not remember it, because I was doing this just because I could not just alone with my mind. It might sound crazy but after years, I realized this was the case.
Beside that, I was replying in real-time on Slack to our team members, to our Black Fire resellers on Whatsapp and Messenger and emails. It was insane.
In the past I already used Moment app and I was shocked when I realized how much time I wasted. Anyway, here is what I did one week ago, to change this behavior:
- disable all push-notifications leave only Headspace's because they are dope!
- in Settings I added on blacklist all webpages I was visiting (eg. Recode, Facebook, ...)
- remove Slack, Skype, Whats App, Gmail and unfortunately STM as well.
- everyday I compare book reading time and screen time. This motivates me reading more, as you can also see from the graph!
For now it working, after 100 days, I believe this will get into my unconscious. That’s the end goal.
2) Mindfulness
This one is more though, but with the right approach and consistency it can be done.
Meditating, listening podcasts and reading books related to principles of Buddhism is something I found very powerful and even if I'm doing this for only 17 days, I can see some smaller improvements. Or maybe it’s just placebo but I don’t care to be honest. I think it’s working, and that’s good enough for now to keep on going.
Anyway, this is not directly connected to the project, but I believe that many affiliates are facing similar challenges and maybe this will help them.
---
On a different note, today is our best day so far.
In total we generated 714.89 EUR in revenue until 7pm (Call center + organic + paid). It looks like the first 1k day is just around the corner.
We will deploy a new website tomorrow, and I hope it will have positive impact on the conversion rate. In the meantime, I need to optimize Event tracking. It's a mess and I can't measure things that I would like to.
In the next post, I will share how I analyze our competitors, what's our plan to take some of their market share and how I taking care of event tracking inn GA.
Stay tuned!
Cheers,
wakeboarder
At one point I signed up for all of these tools and eventually I ended up with SmartLook.
Has all the features as HotJar, but just much more intuitive and more pleasant to use.
And free plan also has like 1500 visits a month, 2 events, 1 funnel, 3 heatmaps, should be enough for a quick test.
Check them out!
Yoooo!
It’s been a while since my last update. No, we did not give up. Never!
DAY 28
STATUS: Still digging for gold ...
With the current situation, we are not confident enough to start scaling. So we are trying different things to increase the overall conversion rate.
Our biggest bottleneck is the ratio of users who build the product and then order it. Only 7% of those people actually order it.
Many users buy our product as a gift (wedding, birth, baptism, …) so we are aware that they need more time before the final decision. They need to talk with friends, husband, etc.
Good thing is that even now when we are still in testing phase and we increase our daily spend to 200EUR/day, we are still slightly profitable. Which means we're doing tests for free.
PRICE EXPERIMENT
Until recently we only have one option for (printed product + frame) and this costs almost 70 EUR.
On Friday night we deployed a new checkout where users have an option to order only printed product for 34.90 EUR and the frame is available as an upsell option.
We will leave the AB test running and see what happens.
The conversion rate will probably go up but we need to look at the ROAS because there is almost 50% different in AVO if they don’t buy the frame.
UPSELL
One week ago we added “PACKAGE INSURANCE” for 0.99 EUR and almost 40% of users ordered it. A few days ago we increased the price for insurance to 1.49 EUR and make it pre-checked. What do you think happened with Conversion Rate for this upsell?
NEW GEO - ITALY
Slovenia is a very tiny market and we are also very limited when it comes to targeting on Facebook.
That said, we decided to start promoting our product in Italy. We decided for Italy because:
- We have only one serious competitor there
- They are not promoting “our” product on Facebook
- We will offer COD
- They are not from ITA and I think they don’t how important is COD there
Here is one interesting comparison between Italy vs. Slovenia.
Close friends of people with birthdays in XY days is our top-performing targeting in Slovenia and the size of the audience is 190.000.
The audience size for the same targeting in Italy is 5.9M. I believe Facebook’s AI will have just a little bit easier work to find us more buyers.
INFLUENCER MARKETING
As mentioned in my previous update, the experiment with the biggest influencer in parents niche was successful. Tomorrow we have a meeting with this influencer and I will try to get convince her that we do one big campaign and we all make a nice profit.
In the cover letter, I used an angle “pocket money”. I told her that for every order we will receive from her followers, we will give 10EUR pocket money for her son.
She was shocked when we asked her a few days ago if she can send us an invoice because we need to pay her pocket money. Anyway, that was actually the door opener for tomorrow’s meeting. NEW HUGE PARTNERSHIP
A good friend of mine owns a huge eCom business selling a dropshipping type of products in Europe. They’re doing 8.000 orders a day in 12 countries.
As soon as we optimize our funnel they will start promoting our products to their customers. This can huge and we can both benefit from it. We will get huge exposure on CPA level and they will sell a unique and quality product to their customers. In theory this is a win-win!
OVERALL
We still believe we’re sitting on a gold mine. We need to find the right pricing, up-sell model, angle. That said, it’s just a question of time when we hit gold.
Add to Cart in our case is when a build his own product, enter his email/phone number and spend on average 5.09 minutes on the site. Warm leads, I would say.
When this guys will start converting, we will probably achieve our daily goal very fast.
Until then, we will stick to this simple approach:
- burn money to run split-tests (pricing, geos, upsells, checkout flow, ...)
- deep dive into data we get
- tweak and optimize accordingly
- be patient
This week Zan developed a system that's connected to wireless barcode scanner and automatically print the right invoice, shipping label and notify a customer that the product is ready via SMS. IMO, without this system like this is impossible to scale personalized product, because you get lost to when it comes to fullfilment.
TIPS & TRICKS
Upsells
- This is huge. We’re preparing OTO on the thank_you page. Thanks so this book (NOT AFF LINK) I realized how important are upsells and how important is to have custom made system because it gives us limitless possibilities when it comes to upselling.
GTM export
- We have 48 tags, 49 triggers, and 28 variables in GTM container. A few days ago I found out that you can export everything from GTM into one JSON file. This is a huge time-saver if your triggers are connected to CSS classes. Don’t use links, use classes!
Custom reports
- GA is a great tool but I also use my own reports especially when building something from scratch I believe it's important that you know your numbers. Not just revenue and ROAS but all other support metrics which are specific to each project. At the moment we're not focused on the Revenue/ROAS but rather on Conversion Rate of those who personalized the product and converted.
-----
That's all for now .
I need to go, my shovel is looking at me!
Cheers,
wakeboarder
This is so awesome man. If you keep going like this you guys will crush your goals in no time!
Also loving the insights, definitely learning a lot from your experiments.
Good luck!! Amazing
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DE: trusted shops + klarna / sofort (must) + giropay (ideally)
FR: Cartes Bancaries (icon) - this is now cobranded with Visa / Mastercard so works on pretty much all processors. Same is in Italy with Postepay and in a lot of EU countries with Diners including ours and especially HR (in HR also AMEX which is hard to get support on processor for because of HRK)
Thats why they are dropping.
Do NL, put iDEAL (Mollie), they dont need reviews
@tiltil Thanks for the tips!
We will place Cartes Bancaries icon today and re-run the camps. We also fixed some typos which will probably help with the CVR.
Will keep you posted!
QUICK UPDATE DAY 93/100
Yesterday we did €4,062.90 in revenue and €1,607.61 profit.
For the past 7 days we have constantly around 1500€+/day profit and around 100 orders a day.
All I want for Christmas this year is stable CPA.
FACEBOOK CBO
Today I'm testing CBO campaign in HU with our 3 top creatives. Here is the initial setup:
- broad targeting
- female only
- daily budget 175e/day
- 3 adset
- each proven creative in each own adset
Let's see how what will happen. If we can squeeze more profit from HU that would be great. I believe we can do 1.000EUR just in HU alone.
FRANCE
In the meantime, we will re-run the FR campaigns with @tiltil suggestions.
FR would be perfect GEO because the FB traffic is cheap, no COD and its huge.
Talk soon!
Yesterday we did €4,062.90 in revenue and €1,607.61 profit.
UPDATE DAY 95/100
The closer we are getting to an end the better results we are hitting.
Yesterday stats
Revenue: €5,344.28
Orders: 145
Net profit: €1,926.99
CBO CAMPS
We increased our ad-spend in HU with CBO campaigns and its working great so far. ROI wise HU is currently our top-performing country.
Return rate for COD orders for HU is 2.5%.
I will now add CBO camps to other countries too.
FRANCE
After We added the CB icon and remove some types from the checkout and as soon as I noticed Yesterday that we received a few orders with good CPA, I took our winning adset with $200/day.
We closed the day in France with €674.41 revenue and €148.72 profit.
Audience size is 8.500.000 and if todays performance will still be good, we will start increasing the ad spend to 500EUR -> 1000EU / day.
Today we are implementing one-click-upsell on the thank you page also for Stripe orders. Until now, we had this only for COD.
We don't have COD in FR so we need to implement this ASAP.
NEW WORKSTATION
MacGyver and Zan did setup a new workstation so we can fulfill 350 orders per day now.
I believe we can get easily to 350 orders per day and this will happen this month. That's the goal.
RETREAT
In December after go offline for 3 weeks we will spend 5 days together planning a master for Q1 2020.
We have 3 big ideas and we need to discuss and prioritize them and then start working on them when we get back online on 5th of January.
Here are a few ideas we have atm:
- Open additional office ES or PT
- Test the USA market
- System a to create many niche spin-offs
There are many ideas but we need to discuss them in details and write down some goals, a killer plan and conquer it.
OVERALL
I believe this is just the beginning. We have a product for mass market and we are hitting them now only with one angle.
Until today we made 2926 orders but EU has 500M inhabitants.
We will get to 1000+ orders per day by:
- open Poland, Spain, Sweden, Romain, and some smaller GEOs
- Increase the budgets
- run multiple angles with the same product
- run multiple spin-offfs
1000 orders per day may sound crazy number, but with the infrastructure we have, mindset, cashflow, determination and ideas ... its just a question of time.
5 more days to go!
There will be probably two more updates in this FA and I hope we hit 200 orders/day before we end this crazy journey.
Talk soon!
Cheers from the Scaleship.
wakeboarder
The growth you guys are seeing is simply impressive!
A suggestion for you, since I know what the product is, focus on this step of your plan asap:
Absolute freakshow over here, you embody the entrepreneur lifestyle like not many others my man!
Yo guys!
@matuloo Yes, you are right we are adding new product. But cool thing is that the product is not seasonal with the right angle.
@maynzie thanks bro, I appreciate really to hear this from a legend like you! Too bad I can’t visit BKK next month, but Im coming coming to AU soon so we can grab some G&T and monkeys.
UPDATE DAY 100/100 __ THE END
Yesterday we ended our 100-day challenge in the best possible way. We generated more than 200 orders!
Here are the stats for Yesterday only.
Revenue: 7,782.07€
Orders: 204
Spend: 1639.7€
Profit: 2737.11€
This was definitely one of the best experience in my life, right after call center. I think we have all progress tremendously not just business wise but personal too.
We're aware that this is just the beginning and upcoming months will be excited when we open more countries, add more products and scale big EU geos like IT/FR/DE.
80% of the Yesterdays profit came from HU and HR. This just confirms that we barely scratch the surface with this product.
Below are the overall stats for this challenge.
Revenue: 142,730.96€
Orders: 3747
Spend: 34,390.33€
Profit: 41,732.56€
As you can see, we are scaling only small GEOs at the moment. ES, FR, DE, IT, SE are coming in the next stage. After the NY. We don’t want too much stress and we are happy with profit we are making with 250 orders/day.
---
Some other fun facts:
- we tested 11 checkout versions
- I read 21 books in 100 days
- our worst day was -€339.24
- we are using carrier detection script from PIN LPs on our checkout
- we hired male erotic dancers for fotoshooting
- we only run UGC style creatives
- I listened one song 2123 times lol
---
Honestly it’s hard to describe the feelings after all this, but we were all waiting and working years to get to this point where we are now. We're all really grateful for each other and plans for 2020 are insane.
People will copy our products, campaigns, funnels etc. but us three are the biggest and most valuable asset so we just need to stick together and build cool things.
I believe I will soon open new FA where I will share our journey to 5000 orders per day.
Thanks to everybody for reading this long FA. I hope you enjoyed it like we did building up all this.
Cheers from Ljubljana!
wakeboarder
Don't tell me you're closing this FA!!!! I'm gonna find you and ... buy you a beer or 100 of them actually, this was such a strong share with the community, much appreciated!
100 days, 200 orders per day reached, with the potential to scale to 5000 orders/day - this is bar none the most epic follow along on STM this year.
It sounds like you guys now have the expertise / know-how and the infrastructure to reach that goal. It's just a matter of how fast you're wanting to scale. I get really excited for you guys just thinking about the growth you'll be experiencing over the next year and beyond!
Thank you so much Tim for being so diligent and in sharing your insights and progress every step of the way. It takes a lot of time and effort to grow a business of this calibre. To spare time and focus on updating a follow-along for the benefit of the STM family is just the most generous thing. Your contribution - of not just this thread, but all your other threads - is much, much appreciated.
To the above and beyond!
Amy
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This is truly great stuff! Thanks for continuing your work. Now keep doing what you do.. I hope to see a "How I made a mil 2020" thread from you.
CONGRATZ and CONGRATZ AGAIN!!!! I always knew you guys are gonna scale THE sh** OUT OF IT, but as u know it's just a beginning. 5k orders / day.. i can see you guys do it VERY QUICKLY..
Maybe Mc Giver will have to pimp the production room or expend to a hall, but def. doable, people are there, hungry for product like that.
BTW, It's never to late to come to AWA .. u have 11h direct flight from Vienna =))
I have to say the same, It was a real pleasure reading this FA, and yes, one of the best on STM.
One day u should write a book about your AF journey. No Joking.
It would be a killer, and it would "auto-scale" )
Very inspiring, one of the best threads i read this year, keep up the incredible work man! lp
Congratulations!!!!!!!
Amazing thread, and congrats on your success!
Originally Posted by wakeboarder
? Congrats on your success!
@wakeboarder
It´s so nice to read your stuff.
I remember when you started your journey here on STM and when you posted your Pops follow along.
Since then so much has happened and you archieved so much.
You are really an inspiration
All the best for you
Congrats!!! You did amazing way! But I am curious what is a product you are selling 
I want more as well...
About the Poland...I made here (my country) some funnel campaign free sample + shipping for beauty product and the conversion is insane like 5-7%, CPA 0,80E, CPC like 1,5-2 cents. And what is funny...poles don't like CC. We have only this option on landing page (because of stripe and upsell's)
If we would offer some other delivery options or COD CR will skyrocket to 15-20%.
Yes, we are earning some money while sending samples, but the real gold is after and of course this campaign build HUGE database for nothing. The cost of acquiring e-mail is like 0,1 euro but...it's not that advertising here is cheap. Everything is about right funnel.
Your thread is one of the most exciting i ever read.
Why don't go more with influencers?
Originally Posted by mmarcin
Why not PayU? You can't charge money automatically with PayU.... If you are using Stripe the 1st step is to get paid with small amount. After you have CC data inside the funnel...you can charge people after just click in OTO: "Yes! I'am buying this stuff" and they charge customer CC on autopilot.
How much is shipping cost? 8 PLN but...it's for the 1st product.
Yooo guys!
Thanks for your comments. I'm really grateful for your wishes.
Originally Posted by ninsingh
It was this one >> https://soundcloud.com/jackvfx/lil-peep-star-shopping
I still listen this one sometimes when I need a sharp focus.
Originally Posted by 4964420454t
I'd rather keep it to myself.
Originally Posted by mmarcin
We are going live with Poland next week and we're in the review process for PayU.
Regarding influencers … Facebook ads are still killin' it and before jumping on other traffic sources we will just keep focus on scaling FB ads.
This is awesome. I assume you are still not ready to reveal your website right?
Originally Posted by carlsagan
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awesome journey
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