From Zero to One! A 30 Day Challenge in E-commerce

[Nomangee]

Day 11

1. Products arrived

Finally all our products arrived like 2 days ago and today I had the time to make the last 90 minutes session.

2. Setup the Upsell plugin

I tried to use bold's Upsell plugin, but somehow that took too long to setup, so I went with an alternative, which still looks quite ok.

3. Setup the FB page
Took me a few minutes to create pictures from the existing one I used for the website and at the end looked really good.

4. Started the Facebook Ad
Finally I could setup the campaign. I started with the interests I searched out before and didn't add anymore restrictions, then country US and to disable it on Instagram/Audiences.
Budget is 5€ per day and a few minutes after submitting it got approved.

Final Step:
We will run the Ad for now until we get the first sale and see how much profit we made on that one, then the challenge is so far over.

I still had on this 90 Minute window over 30 Minutes left, so we created a complete new shop with 2 products populated and a marketing plan in 90 minutes x11 Days, which I find stunning.

 

[Walter Hay]

Aliexpress may not be the best solution, but it's not the worst. It's a good way to start to test out products. A lot of people make a lot of money reselling aliexpress products.

Alibaba is the wholesale division of aliexpress. Not sure if that is what Walter is referring to. There's a few other wholesale sites like DHGate but alibaba is the 800lb gorilla. I've ordered products from aliexpress for myself and have been happy with what I received.

No I wasn't referring to Alibaba. There are in fact two Chinese sites, one of which is only published in Chinese, where liquidation and reject stocks are sold. I won't disclose which ones they are because I know of a few people who have lost their shirts using those sites.

I must add: Don't buy wholesale, buy direct from the manufacturers. There's good money to be made doing that.

Walter

 

[Cato]

Good thread.

I like the 90 minutes in day idea. I have found that when you have limited time to work, then you go to fast mode. You do what is most important and progress faster. When you have unlimited time, you might get too detail oriented and have small or not any significant progress at all.

Actually within 90 minutes (if you have experience), you could reg. domain, get hosting, install wordpress and woocommerce. And get your ecommerce to work- within that time. -Just did it myself.

90 minutes is not issue, when you have some budget - can delegate more.

I love the idea. Have great success!

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Walter Hay]

How is it going until now?

Have you had any winning products/ads yet?

I was going the same route as you, aliexpress purchasing small amount of products, then testing, then finding manufacturer on Alibaba. Finally if it sells well ask the manufacturer to private-label the product.

Apparently it's not a good way, hmm. I wonder what the correct way is if your investment doesn't allow large purchases from Alibaba.

This post quotes my previous one, but I want to make it clear that I have never, and would never, buy through Aliexpress. With reservations I might use Alibaba, but those who use that site need to know that there is a lot of smoke and mirrors there.

Also, the idea that you need a lot of funds in order to buy from suppliers on Alibaba is a myth. You don't have to make large purchases, and I have a huge number of newbies who have learned how to buy small quantities there, without paying high prices.

As a starting point, you don't even ask what is the MOQ.

Walter

 

[Walter Hay]

Hey,

Thank you a lot for the reply.

So can I ask then which supplier directories would you use then, or any pointer in the right direction?

I had understood that Alibaba is the largest directory, and if some supplier was on another one, they were also on Alibaba.

Thank you

Alibaba is certainly the biggest but despite their size they only have listed those companies willing to pay them. You can find different suppliers on other sites, and also in other places that are not B2B sites.

Sorry if it seems mean, but I don't publish them online. It is not just a matter of selling my book. There is a lot more to safe sourcing than using safe sites. I list 28 sites in my book, the majority being for countries other than China, and provide screen shots for a couple of them to help newbies work through the online forms. I also explain how to use some of the user-unfriendly sites.

As you can see from my AMA thread, I am providing a huge amount of specific information that could help anyone getting started in importing, depending on their level of knowledge and experience. I have also provided specific and detailed help to a number of members who contacted me direct.

I feel a sense of responsibility regarding offering advice to people who may rely on that advice when risking their very limited capital. I don't want to have them think that a safe site is all they need to know. I have been in this game for most of my life, and I have seen countless attempts fail. I want those who rely on me to succeed.

Safe sourcing has several aspects to it:

• Using safe sourcing practice.
  
• Using safe sourcing sites.
  
• Using due diligence.
  
• Knowing more about importing than finding a supplier and placing an order with fingers crossed. Believe me, I know of many who have approached it that way. Proof: They get scammed or they lose their shirts when they discover all the costs they did not know they had committed themselves to.

Walter

 

[ZF Lee]

You will get nowhere with that. Why only 90 minutes a day? At that rate I (and most other entrepreneurs, especially in the starting phase) put in the same amount of work in 3 days that you do in 30. You have to commit to it.

Agreed. The market doesn't give a hoot about any challenges. It is starving, and it wants ANSWERS and SOLUTIONS.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Evil_Jester]

Yes, why only 90 minutes? I'm confused as to why you'd only commit 90 minutes a day to building a business.

Pour your everything in this business. If it's worth doing at all, it's worth doing with full commitment.

If you work a job everyday that would make sense

 

[Nomangee]

You will get nowhere with that. Why only 90 minutes a day? At that rate I (and most other entrepreneurs, especially in the starting phase) put in the same amount of work in 3 days that you do in 30. You have to commit to it.

Thanks for the feedback theag. That's why I structured this as a challenge. It's more for getting into the niche again, but also test out, how productive I can be in this 90m time frame every day.

I'm also a freelance web-designer and have another business up, so I wouldn't have more time currently.

If you're in start-up mode and you're not building a "hobby" business you should be working every available minute. That means no social time with friends, no video games, no TV, no netflix, etc.

You are right AllenCrawley, that's why I don't have any hobbies, no tv in my apartment or playing any video games since a few years. Basically no social life. Dunno if that's good, lol?

Going from zero minutes per day to 90 minutes (minimum) is a start. Don't stop.

miked_d, thanks man

@Nomangee - It has been 2 days. What have you done?

Thanks for checking in, will post a more detailed update tomorrow.

1. Found a name for the shop, with the .com URL still available

2. Did my research and found the audience, that I can perfectly target with FB

3. found the first 2 products to start with and will order them tomorrow. So I have one main product and one potential upsell.

Hope to get the Shop up and running by tomorrow with the products already populated.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Nomangee]

DAY 2, 3 and 4

1. Step: Find a Shop Name

Didn't put much time into this, as it won't give me much advantage yet, as I first want to test the water. So did a few minutes brainstorming and went with a catchy name "nichegainz.com".

2. Step: Find a niche target Audience!

This was for me the most important step. As I will see, if I can target specific audiences on Facebook, that are not only interested in the Sport, but really participate in it, so I can only target potential buyers for my products.

To do so, I googled for Top Niche Experts and found an article with a few people.

Created a Facebook business account and went into Audience Insights to see if I can target these people directly and found 2-3 Experts. Then went to the tab "Page Likes" to find potentially more audiences, which I did.

At the end I had 700k-800k active monthly users and 6 interests(people) to target.

3. Step: Find a Product

Went to WatchCount and searched for the specific niche. Saw a few products of the same category in the top 30 and wrote them down.

My criteria for a product to be viable:

• Easy to Ship
• At least 100% markup landed
• In the range of $0-10
• Not too complicated
• One more expensive main product
• One cheaper upsell product

Then went to Aliexpress and started searching for these products. Came up with 3 products, one main and 2 possible upsells.

Later today spoke with Elon's Musk and we decided together to go with the one, that had more variants, but was a better fit overall.

4. Step: Setup the Store

As I'm a web-designer/developer, could have easily setup my own Woocommerce store in no time, but went with Shopify, as it's all about efficiency and I only have my 90 minutes time window.

Setup the basic shop and already populated it with the 2 products.

Last Progress:

Exactly at the last second of my 90 minute shift today I finished buying the first 2 products, total value of ~$105.

Next Steps:

Didn't do any design work or specific setup on the shop yet, so this will be done over the next few days.

Also will do the Facebook ads ready until the products arrive, which can take 10-25 days according to Aliexpress.


If anyone has questions or advice, feel free to reply or contact me via pm.

 

[KLaw]

Yes and yes.

How old are your kids?

 

[KLaw]

I know this isn't directed at me but I don't see how this is relevant.

You can have a wife and kids and still create a business, It's been done plenty.

Totally agree. I'm guessing, due to his lack of a response, that his kids are older. It's a fine balancing act. Health, family, career...in that order.

 

[Nomangee]

Day 5, 6 and 7

1. Finishing Store

First I added all the shipping rates by usps, which can be found here

My next step was to design the Shopify store. I used the free Brooklyn theme for that.

Created a logo, with the color scheme of green and black, which will be the main one overall for the shop.

The theme design was quite ok, but it wasn't really customer friendly, so I added some fast css changes to let it look a lot better.

Mainly some hover effects, so it doesn't look so stiff and changed the slider pic from full size to 350px and decreased some distances, so you don't have these huge gaps in the design.

Also searched for some copyright free fitness related stock images, which I found here.

The final result:

2. Creating the Ad

First step was to see, if I can find any other facebook ads by a competitor, which you can look up for free via Adespresso, at the bottom:

Had some results, but nothing looked in anyway satisfying, so I went on to design my own one, which I never did before.

Only the first few days will tell if it's any good and then adapt. Tried to have as much emotions engaged as possible, with love for the sport and also limited supply for scarcity. This is the result:

3. Problems

Unfortunately as I paid for the products and send them to the US to Elon's Musk, the payment got declined, mostly some fraud protection and I needed to reorder the products again and did a small change. Went with a bit higher quality product, as it's more like the one that was often sold on ebay, which I saw on watchcount.

Also my facebook business account somehow vanished and wasn't even registered anymore. oO So I need to get a new one tomorrow and search again the interests that I previously researched.

4. What's next

In the meantime read some more stuff about facebook advertisement, namely pixels, re-targeting, micro commitments and bridge pages.

Will also add a really cool way to decrease the bounce rate, which are exit intent popups.

We will give people that want to exit a 10-20% coupon code if they enter their email address.

You not only increase your purchase rate by quite some percentage, but also can build a good email list through it, at least that's what the statistics say.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[miked_d]

Really good idea with first drop shipping a market to test it out and then build your own out of it.

Do more research. It is a very bad idea.

 

[Y.B.]

Don't forget that Aliexpress is a retail site, a bit like eBay. Many of the products sold there are sourced from another Chinese site that I won't name, where liquidation and reject stocks are sold. Quality doesn't enter into the thinking of the vendors on Aliexpress.

Feedback quoted on Aliexpress is a farce, and despite the descriptions of their factories, you will often be dealing with someone who operates out of their bedroom, and can and will change their business name in a flash if they get complaints.

Aliexpress vendors are the subject of literally thousands of online complaints. I'll publish links for evidence of that if anyone wants to look through thousands of tales of woe. I can think of other sites worse to deal with, but Aliexpress are close to the top.

Walter

Aliexpress may not be the best solution, but it's not the worst. It's a good way to start to test out products. A lot of people make a lot of money reselling aliexpress products.

Alibaba is the wholesale division of aliexpress. Not sure if that is what Walter is referring to. There's a few other wholesale sites like DHGate but alibaba is the 800lb gorilla. I've ordered products from aliexpress for myself and have been happy with what I received.

 

[Nomangee]

Don't forget that Aliexpress is a retail site, a bit like eBay. Many of the products sold there are sourced from another Chinese site that I won't name, where liquidation and reject stocks are sold. Quality doesn't enter into the thinking of the vendors on Aliexpress.

Thanks Walter for all your information, I already read through your thread before, but as this was more setup as a challenge, I wanted to get the products as fast as possible ordered, so I went for now with Aliexpress. After the initial test and if we go on with the niche, we would for sure go directly to the manufacturers, as I have also a friend who is importing products from China already for nearly a decade.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[grindmode]

Lot's of haters why? A fun and time limited challenge.... I'm enjoying this. Do work!

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[New]

No I wasn't referring to Alibaba. There are in fact two Chinese sites, one of which is only published in Chinese, where liquidation and reject stocks are sold. I won't disclose which ones they are because I know of a few people who have lost their shirts using those sites.

I must add: Don't buy wholesale, buy direct from the manufacturers. There's good money to be made doing that.

Walter

How is it going until now?

Have you had any winning products/ads yet?

I was going the same route as you, aliexpress purchasing small amount of products, then testing, then finding manufacturer on Alibaba. Finally if it sells well ask the manufacturer to private-label the product.

Apparently it's not a good way, hmm. I wonder what the correct way is if your investment doesn't allow large purchases from Alibaba.

 

[strobe]

Just wondering why you chose to go with shopify instead of your bread and butter woocommerce that you said would have taken you no time to set up? That sounds like taking a step in the opposite direction...Giving control to shopify and learning a new platform.

 

[New]

This post quotes my previous one, but I want to make it clear that I have never, and would never, buy through Aliexpress. With reservations I might use Alibaba, but those who use that site need to know that there is a lot of smoke and mirrors there.

Also, the idea that you need a lot of funds in order to buy from suppliers on Alibaba is a myth. You don't have to make large purchases, and I have a huge number of newbies who have learned how to buy small quantities there, without paying high prices.

As a starting point, you don't even ask what is the MOQ.

Walter

Hey,

Thank you a lot for the reply.

So can I ask then which supplier directories would you use then, or any pointer in the right direction?

I had understood that Alibaba is the largest directory, and if some supplier was on another one, they were also on Alibaba.

Thank you

 

[New]

Just wondering why you chose to go with shopify instead of your bread and butter woocommerce that you said would have taken you no time to set up? That sounds like taking a step in the opposite direction...Giving control to shopify and learning a new platform.

I believe Shopify is very easy to configure/set-up and that's why he chosen it, this way he can allocate more time to marketing and less to the technical stuff.

Besides, now a days it is one of the quickest developing platforms, with all the apps that are continuously appearing to improve the platform. You don't have that growth ratet with any other platform.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[johnconstantine]

Any update on how it's working out? Really curious. Hope its going well for you!

Sent from my SM-G930T using Tapatalk