Home > Paid Traffic Sources > eCommerce

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Building a Digital Product Website that earns USD 10K Monthly (28)

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Hello everyone! Stoked to be here.

Welcome to my first ever follow along.

I've recently partnered up with my buddy to create an ecommerce store (Film Cereal) that sells digital products. I'm a filmmaker / graphic designer and my buddy is a sound designer. I also have a bit of a background in digital marketing - but not a ton of experience. I'm not an affiliate marketer although I'm looking to explore maybe by Q4 this year but for now i'm focused on getting Film Cereal off the ground.

Target launch for the website is on April 1, 2021 (getting close!). Currently, we are working on finalizing our product packs and setting up the website and our funnels.

So far, this is the status of the company:
1. Homepage is done, apart from the Product Pages. We will be designing the product pages when the product packs are finished. ETA for this is 3rd week Mar.
2. Our chosen ESP is Klaviyo
3. We're planning to focus on building our email list from scratch during the early stages of marketing

Our marketing plan / sales funnel goes something like this:
1. Paid traffic to our website using FB Ads / Blog guest posting / Youtube Influencer Marketing
2. Get people to sign up to our newsletter by offering Free Packs
3. Setup Email Flows and Campaigns and convert here
4. Facebook retargetting

Target Market
1. DIY Filmmakers - Secondary
2. Youtubers - Primary
3. Freelancers - Tertiary
4. Small Agencies
5. Hobbyists
6. Indie Filmmakers
7. Marketers

Link to our Company Pitch Deck: https://docs.google.com/presentation...it?usp=sharing

NOTE: The website is not done yet but I thought of posting it here for feedback as we prepare for the launch. I'll do my best to keep this thread updated so we can all learn from each other. Any input / suggestions would be absolutely amazing!

Homepage screenshot:


Would love to hear what you guys think. I have so much respect for the people here and i'm stoked to be a part of this community.

Website: www.filmcereal.com

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Hey,

If you are going to send paid traffic, i would advise to speed up your website, which is very slow at the moment

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Hey Jeremie!

Thank you for your input. Will have a developer take a look at and fix the speed issue of our website. Didn't realize it was that bad! I'm currently using Woocommerce and we're hosted by Bluehost.

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Interesting project, will definitely watch your progress!

You know what I'd love to see on your homepage? Some short video that shows how using your products makes a home-shot video look much better.

Not much to add at this stage, your plan sounds good... offering some freebies should help you get some initial userbase. You will need to properly target your audience and I would also suggest to explore the options of organic traffic generation.

This is one of the verticals where you can reach a solid organic growth, since as you already mentioned in the company pitch deck, pretty much everyone wants to be youtuber these days There are quite a few active youtuber channels on reddit, plenty of groups on FB etc... I would definitely spend some time to find some good ones and start posting in them to become a part of those communities.

I like the design of your website, the domain name is easy to remember too... all looks fine for the starters

Bluehost is a joke, get off there before you launch.

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Hey, matuloo - thank you for chiming in!

Having a video sounds like a great idea. Maybe place it above the fold?

Interesting take in organic traffic - haven't put much thought into this yet but now that you mentioned it, it totally makes sense! Do you think it would be smart to gather information from the communities you mentioned prelaunch and before I start running ads?

Glad to know you like the site's design!

As for bluehost - Oh dear. That's a bummer since we've already purchased for the entire year. But if they're not reliable then they're not worth sticking to. What hosting provider do you suggest?

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I think this is actually really well thought out. Good stuff.

I used to edit lots of videos several years ago and I constantly found myself searching for very specific noises on YouTube... I would find videos people had put together with x,y,z sound effect collections and then download them to cut out the sound effect I wanted.

I imagine if you did that and then added a call-to-action at the start/finish saying "Lots more great sound effects at our site filmcereal.com!" you would get some good organic traffic.

But yeah, cool stuff!

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Thank you for acknowledging!

Youtube is definitely one of the main platforms we plan to pull organic traffic from. The idea is to create Free (sample) packs and create a library in our Youtube channel. This is something I have never done before so its helpful to hear that this is a possibility worth exploring. Thank you for flagging that important pain point - I'll start making a list of possible content that addresses that. Great insight!

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Yup, there is quite a lot of free space in the top part where you advertise the free packs.

Yup, start exploring these communities now, no need to wait. For this to work, you need to kinda blend in and become part of the communities, so it's not that obvious you're there to promote your own products. Try to help people, show them you know what you are talking about and then think about how to convert them

Woocommerce is a WP plugin so I assume you are running the whole site on WP. There are many WP dedicated hosts, but they tend to be pretty expensive. Do you happen to know someone who is a bit savvy when it comes to hosting stuff? There are cheap hosts like digitalocean or vultr that can be used forhosting WP sites effectively, but the setup is not that simple. Alternatively, you can look into something like serverpilot.io and use that as an extension to manage the digitalocean cloud.

Whatever host you choose, stay away from shared hosting plans. Blueshot or Hostgator... both are very popular but all the cheap plans are shared and that's not a good option for any serious business website.

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We've decided to have a video made for the header of the website (thanks guys!). Will update this thread as soon as its up. Currently working on the site speed by doing some compression and back-end code polishing (got a developer) as well as on-page SEO.

For the hosting, I've asked a couple of developers if there's someone who can help us transition to DigitalOcean.

Also, started a list of Facebook Groups + Subreddits that are related to DIY filmmaking and Video Editing. Didn't think it would be this much work (easier said than done!) but I see the value in it. Here's a link to the list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

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Oh yes, there are quite a few communities for youtubers I think reddit has some better ones than FB.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NewTubers/
https://www.reddit.com/r/SmallYoutubers/
https://www.reddit.com/r/SmallYTChannel/

... and plenty more

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UPDATE:

https://gtmetrix.com/reports/filmcereal.com/9aoZEh7l/

We've already improved on our site speed and currently working on on-page SEO.

Our products are also well on their way and (fingers crossed) -after a bit of quality control- we'll be able to construct our product landing pages by next week.

ALSO:

1. Following @vortex FB Beginner Tutorial and currently crafting our swipe file for FB Ads and shortlisting some possible headlines inspired by shops that are (presumably) dominating the space. Here are some of them:

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Love it man! Great stuff!

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Great! Way better.

These 2 should be JPG and not PNG. You will save around 1.2Mb. For the rest, they are not huge issues.

https://filmcereal.com/wp-content/up...02/Hero-BG.png
https://filmcereal.com/wp-content/up...reebies-bg.png

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Now that we're putting together the initial marketing strategy, I've encountered the dilemma.

Initial Marketing Strategy:

1. FB Ads testing using @vortex's formula
2. Upload Free Packs to Youtube
3. Engage in subreddits and Facebook Groups
4. SEO
-My SEO guy said that it's gonna take him 3 months to get the site to rank on Google (first page)

I've called up some Devs and SEO specialists and came to the realization that launching both SEO and FB Ads Testing simultaneously is going to be expensive. I recognize that these are IMPORTANT investments but the fact of the matter is, budget is limited at this point. We're both professionals and have day jobs so the capital is literally our savings (which is not a lot so we have to be creative!). Anyway, the dilemma is - is it important to have both SEO and FB Ads at the beginning? Because if this is the case, I might need to reevaluate our current budget and infuse more capital. BUT if there is a way for me to hit two birds with one stone, like maybe FB Ads would be enough at first and SEO won't matter that much - that would really help us save on costs.

Insights and ideas are most welcome and are always appreciated

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Good catch! Will switch these up tonight. Thanks, @jeremie!

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I just got targeted by this ad, check it out I really loved the video: https://www.facebook.com/18390350463...28624441705223

As you mentioned yourself, SEO takes time, so if you don't start with now you will still face the delay later on.

FB ads or any paid ads on the other hand can produce instant results. So it's great to finetune your sales funnel and strategies.

I would strongly advice to start doing some SEO work immediately. You don't have to hire an expensive specialist straight of the bat too, you can do a large part of it yourself. Optimizing your main page to get some traffic to it will require strong backlinks and you will likely have to buy these, but you can focus on developing supportive content such as articles, guides and so on. These can rank for long tail lower competition keywords. And you can try to get backlinks that are free... post on Quora, check where you can comment with an url, you can post links on some subreddits, grow a FB page and youtube channel, every video can have link in the description... all these links count and can be enough to rank low competition keywords. You can do a PR article announcing the launch of your website and submit it to PR websites that will distribute the article to other websites, these links count too...

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Alright, SEO + FB Ads it is.

I'm curious about PR article announcement. I wonder where you can find PR websites that are related to a specific niche - I will look into this. Thanks, @matuloo! Helpful as always.

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You don't have to find PR websites related to specific niches, what you want to look for are PR submission services that will send the article to multiple PR websites at once. They should offer several plans starting form free ones that will publish just one article on one site, all the way to packages where you can submit several articles and they will be published on multiple websites automatically.

The link juice from the PR websites alone isn't worth much, but chances are some other website author might notice your PR article and possible write about your website somewhere and that's what you are after.

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Amazing start to a promising project - and very valuable feedback so far!

I have nothing much to add at the moment - except:

Whatever you do, once your site is ready, get your FB pixels installed so you could start building a custom audience you can retarget, and more importantly build lookalikes from, down the road.

Interested in seeing further progress!



Amy

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@matuloo i've been searching for PR Distribution websites and saw that there are a TON. Not sure yet which one I should choose. Price range varies and I still need to do some research what would work best for our brand.

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Hey all!

Sorry it’s been a while since I last updated. This past week we were busy optimizing the website, and finalizing the initial product line. FIRST THING’S FIRST, we’ve added a Coming Soon page so if you want to access, just click on the lock icon located at the left of your screen and enter the following credentials:

username: cerealfilmmaker
password: secretstuff

Will discuss in a bit why we chose to do it this way.

Now that’s set, let’s talk about the update. Here’s what’s going on so far..

*We’ve done some SEO work:*
1. Keyword Research
2. Competitor Search
3. Revamped Homepage to include at least 750 words (writeup is still temporary, we got a seasoned copyrwriter to do some writing on the homepage and he’s submitting it at the 23rd. We’re excited about this)

Note: As you can imagine, it has been a challenge narrowing down to 5 keywords (2 main, 3 support) but we’ve finally come up with a list we’re happy with.

*Initial Product Architecture - Done*
We will be releasing, 1 SFX pack and 1 VFX pack for now. We figured it would be better to start small, but make sure it’s robust and valuable. Additional packs will be released regularly in the coming months. This way, it feels that the brand has always something new to offer.

*The Launch*
We thought long and hard about @matuloo’s comments along with some feedback we’ve got from the Reddit regarding organic traffic and reaching out to the community. Here’s what we came up with:

-On Apr 1, the site will go live but will only have exclusive access to people who give us their email. We will be advertising this to reddit and Facebook groups (refer to our list posted in this thread).
-Those who get the access code will be able to browse through the website first and will have first dibs on the initial product line and free packs.
-We will then encourage them by incentivizing them with discounts if they leave a feedback in the store / our trustpilot (haven’t decided yet).

This way, we will be able to achieve two things:
1. We get feedback from our customers before we even launch it in the public - which means we will be able to identify (and rectify) problems in the entire sales funnel and also get feedback in regards to our products.
2. We are establishing a relationship with our key customers. Make them feel valued and satisfy the need to “always be first”

We will only start running ads when we’ve gotten initial feedback from the community and have plugged all the holes in the funnel (as pointed out by the target market themselves!)

This week we’re focusing on getting the product pages done, as well as setup our basic email flows (Welcome, Post Purchase, Abandonded Cart, Abandoned Checkout, Browse Abandonment, and Thank You)

It’s been a fun process so far!! The STM community has been very helpful.

Now back to work..

Only a week to go!

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If you can pull this off, that would be great. Having a bunch of VIP-customers who got early access and actually got some value out of it... if they really get to feel special, they can help you with the start a lot.

Having a coming soon page listing some solid features, then some early users who post solid reviews about it... that could get quite a few people excited and following you from the get go. I like this strategy

Definitely keeping an eye on your project, I think this could go pretty well

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Hey all!

We've done some updates on the website - wow, this is a lot of work! (www.filmcereal.com)

We've gotten initial traffic and proved that @matuloo was right. Bluehost is ****. LOL. We're currently migrating to Hostinger - I'm not sure if it's as good as DigitalOcean but we found a plan that's good enough to start with. Also, WE JUST FINISHED OUR PACKS. We're super pumped about it - just signed up for a Dropbox Plan and gonna start loading the files tonight. Some files are huge so it's gonna take a minute.

Also, we've finished copywriting + designing our email flows. We are currently looking to hire a Klaviyo expert to help us set it up. We tried doing it ourselves but after tons of tutorial we figured it'll be best to just hire someone to do all the technical work. Our designs might need a bit of basic HTML. We know we only have a few days and we're hoping we can make it in time!

Did a copy overhaul on the homepage and it's 90% done design-wise. Just need to upload the videos we made - doing some final touches after finishing the packs.

So far it has been a lot of work, and definitely not cheap, but the experience setting this all up has been so much fun! I hope this works and we earn from this so we can keep doing it for many years to come.

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Yeah well... told you so Bluehost is ok for starting bloggers with no traffic and that's about it Unfortunately, due to their generous affiliate program, pretty much any big blogger is recommending them...

I just hope you didn't choose a shared plan


The initial setup always looks complicated with any tool, but I'm sure you will learn how to use it quickly. But I agree, it's better to pay someone for a quick setup instead of wasting days on it yourself.

Really looking forward to these, they can really help a lot, if done properly.

You seem to be very dedicated and you do take the time to make all setup properly so I'm having high hopes for you guys! It's hard for me to judge how big the market is for what you offer, but if there is interest and you stick to what you're doing, it should work well!

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Website's looking absolutely awesome man! Love it!

Continually impressed by what you guys are doing...

But yeah, did you already transfer the hosting? Just checked it on GTMetrix and is still looking pretty slow, but if you haven't switched from BlueHost yet that would explain it...

Anyway please keep updating this its very inspiring/interesting!

Let me know once you do your first paid traffic push or podcast or any other initial burst of traffic and I can add a good relevant backlink to your site from one of our content sites if you want

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Okay: a couple of things!

So we went for Vultr in the end. We got the USD 40 / month plan which includes:

160 GB SSD
4 CPU
8192 MB Memory
4000GB Bandwidth

I hope this does the trick. The site is propagating at the moment so should be good in a few hours! @matuloo I can't thank you enough for your advice about the Bluehost thing.

Also, our videos are up!! Still working on the videos for the product pages but it's well on its way and should be up tomorrow.
@jack_l - we're still gonna get the site optimized after everything's all set up. But yes, because of your advice i've been using GT Metrix all the time! Our developer assured me we're gonna get those grades up when we optimize. Just really need to put all the little pieces in place. Thank you for flagging! It's always helpful to have someone from the outside tell you what can be improved.

And of course! I'll let you know as soon as soon as we start running ads - we'll start this when we've had initial feedback from the community / target market. At this point - we're not even sure how people will react to our offer because although there are other sites out there selling packs like ours, they are nothing like ours! (I swear) AND yes - let's talk when that bridge has been crossed!

I'll keep updating this as often as I can! Thank you guys and keep the comments / insights coming! They are all HIGHLY APPRECIATED. You guys rock.

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Hi all!

Dropping by to say that we missed our target launch. Unfortunately, the site is still not ready yet. There's still a couple of things we need to add (Free Packs product pages) and most importantly, we still need a bit more time to set up our email flows. I haven't had any luck finding a Klaviyo expert in Fiverr - any tips to where we can source would be great! As of now, we're relying on YT videos and we're doing it ourselves so that's probably gonna take up time. We've postponed that launch to April 9. In the meantime, we've got some major changes to the site www.filmcereal.com - if you want to check it out.

We've already added discount codes to our shop - just need to implement those emails!

Here are some examples of our emails:
https://imgur.com/a/Eeogt7k
https://imgur.com/a/AXy6d5K
https://imgur.com/a/0CZ74r6

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Look at upwork
https://www.upwork.com/hire/klaviyo-freelancers/

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