$100k/month Ecommerce - Starting Fresh from $0 (9)
Day 1
Hey everybody.
*This may be a long post so I may add key to help structure better at a later date. I'll try highlight my main questions in orange. Noob tips in pink.
I joined STM in about 2015 when first got into the affiliate world. Long story short I ended up getting into ecom after running native. Was making some progress with native but the offer ended up getting pulled.
Got a store doing $100,000/month few years ago for a while. The store ended up dropping off since I wasn't ready for what came with scale (customers, ali shipping times, paypal reserves, holding money etc). After that I left ecom for a while and went into other things.
A good opportunity came up so i'm now deciding to get back into ecommerce.
Been working on this slowly for a few months but now I have time to give it more effort.
So here's where I'm at:
What I have
A business partner that will be funding the whole project.
Some experience in ecommerce (since I got a store to 100k)
Experience in Facebook
Experience in Native
Pretty open budget (thanks biz partner!)
Extra cashflow if necessary from me.
What I want
Money.
What I lack
-Drive. I started this project a few months ago but couldn't give it my full attention partially due to my other ventures and partially down to my laziness. It's easy to pretend to be driven and act like I'm super motivated for the project everyday, but it just isn't true. What I really love is running traffic (profitably), but who doesn't? The set up stuff I don't mind too but can get tedious but I hate waiting on people.
-A team. For now a team is out of the question. When we get things running then this may be a different story. Right now I will be doing everything in terms of the marketing alone. My biz partner will be sorting out logistics and a few other things.
Where I'm at
I'm in a really good position. I have a bunch of products that are very proven (can't reveal how right away). What's even better is that I have the exclusive rights to sell them online. That's what my partner also brings to the table. He has access to all of these products and deals through his other business.
When I say proven, I mean like each product has shown it can easily reach multiple 6 figures and that's scratching the surface in terms of potential.
I ran a couple of tests and they've gone fairly well.
Thinking about it now as i'm writing. The lack of motivation can actually be pinned down to ad account issues in Facebook. We've had 1 business manager taken down because an ad account got disabled for violating policy (we didn't). I then put it on my personal business manager which took my whole business manager down temporarily. Luckily I appealed and got it back!
This is the main place I've been running into issues. I know that nobody can really give much guidance as even FB can't in this regard, so don't worry.
Quick notes on FB violations:
Fb was disabling my ad account for policy violations constantly. I would appeal, they would reinstate, then it would get taken down again the same day. This happened for about 2 weeks until they decided they would no longer like to reinstate.
I was running a free + shipping offer for a product on the site. The first line of adcopy was FREE- GET YOUR NOW. On the last line of the copy I put 'Just pay shipping and handling'. I also had the word 'FREE' in big letters on the thumbnail.
In the headline section I put Stars with reviews in brackets - ***** (123) - kind of like amazon. The number of reviews shown here was not the same as on site, so that may be why.
So right now my 3 suspects are -
1) Fake review stars in headline
2) Big letters saying FREE
3) Not displaying the 'Just pay shipping' above fold.
Any clarity into this would be really appreciated. Free plus shipping would really work well with our product when combined with upsells.
Is it possible to still run free plus shipping on FB or is it a no go?
If it's not possible, I'm thinking of doing just pay $1 ad, any idea on this?
I'll be honest as I don't want to bullshit myself (i'm good at that). We also took a pretty long while to ship out the orders. Since we ran into FB issues and the volume was low we kind of neglected that aspect. There wasn't much volume at all so I'm not sure whether this affected the ad account or not. I'm guessing not since the ad account went down just a few weeks after.
Right now I'm running on a brand new biz manager, brand new ad account. We ran ads but the ad account got taken down for violating policy AGAIN. We appeal and straight back up. This time no free + shipping offer. I'm certain the product we're selling don't violate any policy and neither does anything in the ad. It's the most mundane product that couldn't cause issue. I've not done the fake reviews or any aggressive call outs. Maybe I scaled to quick on the account. Any thoughts on this?
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The sales process
So during these test we ran to a
We got some decent results right out of the door. The free plus shipping ad did pretty well and was converting. I think we were charing about $9 for shipping. We were losing money but still promising. This was without upsells and any backend or proper retargeting. I set up a quick retargeting campaign selling our $50 product. Got a decent amount of sales from this too.
Tried to run straight sale to the $50 product without much luck, but definitely could be done I think. Our products all upsell perfectly for each other. We have different versions at different price points of the same product so this is something to capitalize on for sure.
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The results
https://gyazo.com/3ace3a395a651c628de0d22193045c62
https://gyazo.com/6c95ce9b408e1ba5630e7876e2ef6c43
Ignore the shitting custom column, this is for a banned ad account and then next screenshots will be laid of with better metrics, although i'm open to new setups. Also, this is just 1q
I think they're promising for some really quick tests, input is welcome.
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Sales funnel
Now I started using one click upsell for the store and that was converting too, right before we got taken down.
I have a gut feeling that this type of product (maybe all products) will end up converting better through a proper sales funnel.
I've recently built a quick sales funnel in clickfunnels to test this idea out. I want to right as close to an A/B test as I can - Clickfunnels vs
If Clickfunnels wins I'll use that and link it with my shopify I guess. For retargeting I guess I should send them back to my shopify store?
If I do end up using funnels to sell products and shopify for retargeting, does anyone have any data on whether the branding should be consistent?
Sure I get it should be congruent, but I'm thinking I should put it on another domain in case of a takedown by FB.
Also the product has it's own branding that I'm using, different to my stores.
Right now, clickfunnels is bugging out and not actually accepting payments. Unlucky for me I found this out after running some traffic to it. Such a rookie move. So here's one of the most fundamental tips if anyone new is reading - TEST YOUR WHOLE CAMPAIGN BEFORE RUNNING TRAFFIC.
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Next steps
Get this buggy clickfunnels shit sorted.
Run a test as controlled as I can on Shopify vs Clickfunnels.
Determine if I can run a free plus shipping.
Find out how to build a good back end (without squats)
I truly believe and have data to back it up that each product in our store has the potential to do multiple 6 figures monthly for a reasonable amount of time.
So that's all that out of the way for now.
I really hope I can help some people out with this follow along. I know how inspiring it is to read a chunky follow up. Really gets me thinking about my own ones. Been reading Wakeboarders, cawovt, Kinged, Pekadis threads (plus a lot more). Really inspires me reading and got a lot of good tips. Hopefully some of things I mention that I think are very common knowledge can help people out.
I'm in no way anything special in the marketing space. I want to be and I've picked up a hell of a lot of skills since starting this, but I don't want to bullshit myself. I'm not a noob either, but I'd rather approach it from a noob perspective. Any feedback/question at all is welcome. I don't care if you have less experience as me or not. It could get me thinking and make me some money
I really want to humble myself a bit from this. Sometimes it's easy to feel like a bigshot and it's nice to feel like that. But in the reality of this business i'm a small fry. Thinking i'm a bigshot will limit me much more than just being honest with myself and you guys.
As I'm writing this it's really starting to feel like a therapy session lol. There's a lot of thoughts that have been in my head, ideas that I want to capitalize on, and a mindset I want to be in. This is really helping and I feel a lot more clear now.
All of that being said, ultimately I started this follow along for my own selfish reasons. It's just lucky it will help people in the process.
I've started it because I want to be kept accountable for this project. I have no excuses to not succeed. I have sufficient experience, an open budget and STM! So many marketers, even maybe someone reading this would love to be in the position I am in. I have everything in front of me ready to go. Sometimes the battle isn't the marketing but a battle with yourself.
Please humble me guys and keep me accountable. Don't let me rest until I reach 6 figures with this project. If I think of any other thoughts I'll put them all here.
Thanks in advance, this should be a good ride.
*Summarizing main questions here to make your journey of answering my queries much smoother
*
Is it possible to still run free plus shipping on FB or is it a no go?
If it's not possible, I'm thinking of doing just pay $1 ad, any idea on this?
For retargeting I guess I should send them back to my shopify store?
Update already:
I forgot to mention we will be resolving the logistics issue shortly. I will ship from my apartment for now. As soon as it's confirmed that we can do x,xxx a month we have logistics in place for shipping throughout the world.
We have very big advantages in 4 key areas now:
Unique product.
Exclusive rights to sell product.
Warehouses in most of the world.
Proven products.
At a later date I may reveal my site, but not just yet. Once established I don't see a problem in sharing.
Day 2
Have fixed some bugs in clickfunnels that were stopping progress. Still some more to fix up which will hopefully get resolved today.
Right now all of the upsells in my funnel have exactly the same content on them apart from the videos/pictures of the product. Would this be a problem?
I also don't want to make any assumptions, but I'm trying to think about what order the upsells should come in.
After they get the free + shipping product, I'm trying to decide whether they should be shown the most expensive upsell first.
My thinking at the moment is to show them the most expensive product $97 - if they decline > $50 product - if they decline - $30 product. Right now this is the setup but not too certain. I guess I will have to split test to find this out.
Once the issues with the funnel are fixed I'll start running some traffic to test it out.
I'm going to focus only on the UK geo for now. Once we've cracked that we'll move on to US. Hopefully with the data we have by then it will be easier to optimize for the US. Plus could run some LLA's.
Angle
I noticed that on my original test, most of the buyers were 50+. In fact most were 65+. I think this is because of the angle I took on the marketing. It wasn't my intention but thinking about it now the angle may have been geared towards an older audience. It's either that or the older audience are the only ones receptive to ads that say 'FREE' on Facebook.
Either way I know this is a product that is useful for all ages so I need to test other angles for sure.
Good luck with this - it seems like the real issue here is how you deal with setbacks.
When people ask me what I do, is on one hand look at the bigger picture and set the course, but on the other hand, I deal with those challenges that others can't take care of.
If, as an entrepreneur, you turn away or get demotivated when shit happens, may be it's not for you.
Either you learn to deal with it, or you should go work for someone else.
My guess is you're still pretty young, so there's time to learn.
Which you do by exposing yourself to risk and difficulty and deal with the issues that arise. Knowing that you have to get through it to get to the good things. Which will come as well. But you have to survive long enough to see that happen.
If there's one thing you can learn from all the threads here, is that problems come up that you never expected. In the case of wakeboarder for example, there were issue trying to find a company to print for them and then it took time to buy a printer. Then there were cash flow issues. That's just from the top of my head.
And as a real entrepreneur, he found solutions and dealt with the issues at hand. To eventually get to some really impressive numbers. In a very short time.
If he keeps this up, he'll have a real business.
Because that's what a real business is - something that has withstood some battles, difficulties and has proven itself resilient. Proven it has staying power.
A business is not just some lucky campaign that fizzled out.
I am always rooting for people who set out on their own. But remember that everyone can get lucky, but when building a real business, you are the driving force and the reason why this will either become a success or won't.
You've got some experience, you have a forum with people to help you along the way, so make this work.
Again, good luck and keep us updated.
@pekadis Thanks for the reply.
I'm really aware of this and how mentality plays a big role. I am still young but I've been through thousands of setbacks in health, lawsuits, business in general. I've gone from 10k/day profit in AM to nothing in one night. I've been diagnosed with a disease that is claimed incurable and cured it naturally without conventional medicine. I've had a lawsuit with one of the top 5 largest companies in the world. And I'm still going. In general I wouldn't say this is too much of an issue for me. I think my tenacity is pretty strong.
The main issue I have is with this project in specific. Because it's taking time away from my other business that's actually profiting, setbacks that take a long time to resolve are demotivating and I question whether I should have took the project on. I took it on because I saw the potential in it. But either way I'm learning to manage both slowly.
I think my biggest problem may be biting off more than I can chew.
I take responsibility for everything that happens in my life, good or bad.
Thanks for the input. Will be posting an update later on today.
Day 3Finally resolved some bugs on the funnel so that i'll be able to start running some traffic. Functions properly after many tests on both mobile and desktop, IOS and android. A few bugs on firefox browser but I'm not too worried about that right now.
There are so many things I want to test but I have to remember to control variables as much as possible for true tests.
The FB pixel setup on my funnel is not the best so will be configuring that to make sure it fires everything properly.
I will setup Facebook events with their event tool to track specific button clicks too.
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First test
The first thing I'm going to test is
I'm secretly hoping that
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Concerns
I'm still worried about my ad account running this as we've had so many go down with no indication as to why.
For this reason I might go with the $1 offer over the free plus shipping to start with. I will split test these as well.
I don't know if a 'Free' ad will attract a lower quality customer than a $1 ad. Not sure if there will be much difference. Data will determine.
I also want to test a straight sale at the same time so will do so.
Day 12
Set some shit up.
Have set up events in Facebook with the event tool to fire on button click. Have not set it up in the best way at all just wanted to test before bothering putting any more time into it.
So all of my conversion fire upon button click, even if the page/form is not submitted I guess.
Even my purchase conversion is on the final button of checkout so it can fire just by a press. This is bad and I should fire purchase conversion once they reach the first upsell page.
So far my funnel is
FB video ad > Presell page with video > order form > upsell > upsell > upsell.
I know I want to change the later stages of this funnel. Right now it's kind of weird.
I'm upselling the most expensive product first. Then regardless of whether they purchase that or not they got to the next (cheaper product) down the line and so forth.
Running a free + shipping.
https://gyazo.com/6bbb56c92022ea9d4969948586a2f293
Missing a lot of data on the reporting. Will give better metrics in screenshots soon I promise.
But basically 7CPM.
0.12 cpc
$1.58 per checkout - Which is someone going onto presell > hitting CTA button > filling out name + email > redirected to checkout page > filling shipping section of order form.
Pretty cheap holy shit. I have some campaigns running right now in different verts with a $2 cpc and a $50cpm (although I know I could lower this)
No purchase. Guess people are dropping off once they see the price OR clickfunnels checkout issues (already tested though) OR lack of paypal OR lack of trust.
Could be anything to be honest at this stage. Too early to say.
Got like $1 email leads but no email setup yet.
Will test same creatives on
good luck
Hope to communicate with you
How much is your skype?
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