It's overdue, as I have been helping people, but not creating much original content.
And writing for me is as much about creating useful content, as it is about processing your onw thoughts and often coming to unexpected outcomes.
These are the conclusions that only surface when either talking to people or writing.
So, here's the first number... 1
And that relates to this thread being the first of a series that will come out every Sunday.
Which leads me to a book recommendation: Atomic Habits. Well worth reading. I took pages and pages of notes. Here's a link to the book on the author's page (non-aff)
15.000
The amount that I paid for our new brand's .com domain. It's quite an investment, but well worth it as the biggest value when it comes to domains is in .com
Plus, you want to own the .com of your brand.
That, and the local extentions in the country you are selling. So I own the .fr, .co.uk, .se etc
Annoyingly though, I don't have the .nl So that means, the url we'll use is .com/nl
The process was completed in 2 days (counting from the moment I paid).
Now when it comes to branding, we registered the brand. First got a Benelux registration and then used that to get a European registration in 4 and 3 classes of product respectively.
We used a trade mark attorney to guide us through the process, which gets us our next number. 5.000, which was the total amount this cost.
Not counting the monitoring fees which are a few 100 euro per year.
Why monitoring? As owning a brand and have the exclusive rights to use are not enough. You have to actively defend your brand and oppose to new brands in your category. If you don't oppose, after some time, they can use the brand and there's no longer anything you can do about it (you can always go to court, but it's best to avoid something as costly)
And speaking of defense, here's another number 54.000
That's the monthly turnover it would cost if we lost the buybox on the 4 SKUs in our portfolio we currently have to defend from an aggressive competitor.
They actually reached out and try to convince us to share the buy box and when that didn't work, they started sending threats. It's good to have an account manager at Amazon for these things.
For now, we still have the products, but margins have been slashed.
I'll tell the whole story about this, as the thought process, tools and actions are an interesting case.
But one thing to keep in mind is that as interesting a volume Amazon can bring, as easy it is to lose it. There are not just other resellers. You might find yourself competing with Amazon themselves all of a sudden. Or you might find your account or listing closed one day, because of something that triggered an algorythm.
Which is why we spend on the brand. As a business, you need to have more than just one leg to stand on. And while just Amazon is giving us plenty of growth just on its own, that's the time you need to invest in other things. So when the moment comes when that is no longer there or even disappears, you don't need to panic. You have built something that already has some momentum and be grown easily.
I have talked about risk like this a couple of times now, so here's a next book recommendation. Anti fragile by Nassim Taleb. Currently at 1/3rd of the book and it's well worth reading. Non-aff amazon link here
And when it comes to affiliate stuff. If you want to test the ecommerce waters, without committing to products, an affiliate site really is the best way to do it. And a great example of people doing that really well for mattresses can be found here
It would be very easy for them to start their own line of products at some point. When enough tests and info has been shared and their audience has grown, the authority and reach will be there to make their own products a success from day 1.
Which, for now, concludes this update.
Like I mentioned, this is the start of a weekly piece of original content. I have also been looking at offering a coaching program, but still need to work out a few details.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed it.