I start my idea today (eCommerce + POD)

[Jeannen]

Hey !

So, I was wandering online, searching for a business idea for weeks, when I found a cool ad this morning. Basically, it's some kind of POD (Print on Demand), with additional value.
The ad was in english, the website too, and in USD. Since I'm French, I quickly checked if there was any existing business like this one in France, and found none.
For obvious reason, I'm not disclosing anything about it yet, but once it will be implemented (if it works), I guess talking about it won't be a problem

I really flashed on this idea because:
1) It's working well in the US
2) It provides genuine value and exitement to peoples who receive it (either for them or as a gift)
3) It's for a group of passionated peoples who could potentially buy multiple time, meaning there is a potential for some customers retention

So, I decided to give a try.

I spent the afternoon calculating margins, and to be honest, there is nothing amazing here (3€ to 10€ of margin per product) , but hey, it's worth a try !
It doesn't fully respect the CENTS (My control is limited as I depend of an external supplier) but over time I guess it might improve, since I'll be able to negociate with other suppliers or whatever.

So, here is the things I need to do in the upcoming week:
- Find suppliers (mostly done)
- Calculate profits (mostly done, even tho they are pretty low)
- Find & contact designers (I'll check UpWork & Fiverr soon)
- Find a name & logo (Work in progress)
- Grab a domain name
- Create a store (should take me 4-5h to get it fully done)
- Start a marketing strategy, either organically or trough advertising. I'd prefer advertising, but my margin are pretty bad, and I don't wana burn everything

I have 2000€ available for this project.

I'll use this post as a "follow up" guide. I might post my "background" later, since I'm not starting ecommerce from scratch, I already have good knowledge and some "okay" experienc in the field.

Goal of the project: Create my 1st activity that is not a "Time --> Money" converter and not dropshipping. I'm freelance so I earn some cash, but it depends of the time I spend working.

 

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[Jeannen]

Update 16/04/2020 - 17:00

FIRST SALE

I posted in 3 others groups in the meantime, 2 need admin aprobation, but in the last group, the post have been accepted.

7 peoples commented saying they were interested

I added all of them, and one of them converted into a sales, yay !

Going out of my confort zone was worth it !

 

[Lionhearted]

Some doubts are emerging. My prices are very high and my margin are lows due to the nature of the product. I don't know if peoples will be willing to pay that much. They do in US market, but in France, peoples are willing to pay waaaay less.

I can't know unless I try I guess

"There is no try. Do or do not." Yoda

 

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[Jeannen]

Update 16/04/2020

Second sale !

I kept posting in groups and got messages, luckily there is a shitton of them

So, at this point, 45€ of sale

Not much, but good starting !

 

[Jeannen]

Update 14/04/2020

I worked on the website yesterday, the design and the upload system are pretty much done, I'll add a few tweaks later. I now need to add content: Product, Pages, etc...

In the meantime, I started to plan my strategy. I could go straight to FB ads, but I feel like I need to validate the idea before.

So I'm going to post into FB groups to find beta tester and send them a typeform, it might be better to begin with.

Then, if I see that my post is working, I'll make an ad from it and try to scale from there.

I have 2 main angle. I have written the post text for the first one (which is soft) and I start thinking about the 2nd one (who is really strong emotionally speaking, but it could also offense a lot of peoples lol)




It could also be a good product for some of my family members, so I migth pitch them the project.

My goal today is to post at least in 1 group.

I'm mostly a brain-fart idea guy and a huge introvert, so posting in groups instead of hiding behind ads is something I've never done before, but F*ck that, I need to do it anyway.

 

[Jeannen]

06/04/2021

I haven't made an update for a long time. The store is still running, still making sales everyday ($400-500) and still getting people on the email list.

I've been busy with lots of shit and haven't paid much attention, but luckily I had an assistant running it for me.

Long story short, I fired him because I wasn't happy with his work (customer service + logistic management) and hired a new one who is amazing.
I want to train her for a Store Manager position, where she'll be able to grow the store by herself. That will allows me to work ON the business and not IN the business.

I've made over 30+ documents detailing every task in the store.

For now, I have more than 40k subs on my list, and I REALLY need to start using it properly. I paid an agency $3k/month, which basically destroyed all the profit I made last year. They were sending spammy emails, their automated flows performed WORST than mine, but that's my fault, I was lazy and didn't control anything.

I won't do the same mistake again. No agency, this time I'll train one of my assistants to do it.

Main focus right now:

• Delegate as many tasks as possible
• Improving the customers service (already done with my assistant)
• Working on the "community" part (sharing user-generated content on social media, etc...)
• Adding new products

Lots of work, but the better it is, the more I could sell the store for later. I'm trying to build a great investment for someone looking to make passive / half-passive income, but for now, this means increasing customer loyalty.


P.S. Wow, this thread is almost one year old !

 

[Jeannen]

30/04/2021

I moved to Bali this month, with jetlag, client work and stuff, I didn't had the time to post.

I had too much clients so I had to let one go last week, which will free me time. It was a very busy and stressful month tbh, between moving to a new location I know nothing about, managing the shitstorm of work i had with my client and everything, I'm glad it's now almost behind me. My time basically didn't belong to me anymore.

On the positive side, with all my agency work I'll make around 10 000€ of revenue (100% profit) this month I think, maybe a bit more with everything I did. I might hire a 3rd assistant to help me on the store.

I'm making processes for EVERYTHING. Whenever my VA has a question that isn't in the process --> I update the process. I want my VA to do something for me --> I update the process. I have hundreds of pages on how to run the store. The best is that it's duplicate-able. Once everything will be stable, I'll open new stores following this same process.

If I want to reach $5k of profit per month, I need to sell 28 products per day with a $6 margin. That's do-able.

I also created a complaint Blackbook to group all the suggestions & complaints from customers to improve the store.

I trained my VA to write content and asked to make a newsletter, and bam, $1000 of sales for "free".

For this store, the 2 money-making actions are:

• Sending emails newsletters
• Testing new products and making ads

Those are the 2 things I need to focus on to make profit with this store. The newsletter process is almost finished, and I paid a copywriting course for my VA, so she'll be able to write killer emails.

For the new products, still working on it, but I don't have enough time to do everything.


This post is a bit unorganized but I don't have lots of time, I just wanted to post an update.

In my new place, I have people doing all chores (cleaning...) for me, so I waste 0 time on that shit, it's an amazing time-

 

[Jeannen]

Update: 10/04/2020

Okay, so, I test-hired 7 designer and gave them a test order, from there, I'll be able to pick the one with the best quality (since they all charge the same price).

✔ Find suppliers - DONE (I'll start with 4-5 products)
✔ Calculate profits - DONE
✔ Find & contact designers - DONE
✔ Find a name & logo - DONE
✔ Grab a domain name - DONE
- Create a store - Today's goal
- Start a marketing strategy - Today & tomorrow's goal

The designer will cost a bit more than expected, which should lower my margins. VAT is a real issue, since it F*ck up 20% of my margin. Anyway, I'll make a try and see how things goes

So, quick background, I might go more into details later if it interest peoples (Since again, I'm not starting "from nothing" without knowledge).

Been in eCommerce for 3 years now, I started with dropshipping, didn't made profit but sold 2 stores, and from there I've been able to find freelance job with clients. For one client, I manage their ads and give general advice on marketing. It's a fashion brand, both retail & eCommerce. I also give courses online to beginer entrepreneurs, I teach them the basics.

I've been doing this for more than 1 year (Since October 2018), and it earn okay cash (~3k to 5k/month).
Problem is it's time-dependant, and that's annoying. I like doing it, but I want to create real companies now.

If I manage to grow this eCommerce and then sell with profit, it will be a win !

 

[Jeannen]

"There is no try. Do or do not." Yoda

This quote I love.

 

[Jeannen]

Update 12/05/2020

So, I spent a few days feeling like shit because the last store "failed" (I didn't pushed further because margins are really low).
I have amazing reviews tho, on the 6 sales I've made, 3 clients contacted me to say that they were super happy. It genuinely made me happy to know I've put a smile on their face.

Anyway, as I said, I spend yesterday and the day before feeling like shit and being a mop. When I feel like that, I often allows me 1-3 days (sometimes a bit more) to be a larva and then go back to work.

I even kinda started to believe that this won't ever works for me, as it's probably my 11-12th store failed. Here is a quick list:

I started in September 2017

• Store 1: Just started eCommerce. Made my firsts few sales, felt happy as F*ck, but not profitable
  • Learned to create a store and the basics of eCommerce
  • Learned the very basics of FB ads
• Store 2: Tried influencers, was shitty, made 2 sales, non profitable
  • Learned the basics of influencers
• Store 3: I was hyped by a potential new hand-spinner-like trend back then (yeah, no comment lol), no sales, no profit
  • Learned to not follow stupid trends
• Store 4: Made a copyright-infringement POD store + influencers. Made profit. (designs were from a videogame)
  • Learned Print on Demand
• Store 5: Made some good sales (20k but almost not profitable)
  • Learned to manage logistics, supplier relationship, regular ads management / monitoring
• Store 6: Made some good sales (15k but almost not profitable)
  • Learned the same as above in better
  • Learned the power of email marketing (after the store was closed lol)
  • Learned to sell a store (2800€)

Pause from June 2018 to October 2018. In the meantime, I found clients for e-commerce consulting. I'm still working with them and living from it as today.

• Store 7: Tried to create a brand from a "winning" product I had. Spent a lot, no profit
  • Learned to not spend lots of money on theme and other shits until I don't have a winning process
  • Sold it for 800€

Pause from November 2018 to April 2019. Focused on personal shits I had to deal with. Dated the GF I was chasing since highschool, we live together in my place now.

• Store 8: Tried to come back to e-commerce after a half year. I didn't even ran ads on that one
  • Learned nothing lol

Pause from April 2019 to April 2020. My life was kinda in autopilot mode, I was earning good money from not doing much. My consulting activity allowed me to work from 2h to 9h per week and earn a good living of it. Just found the GF so I was happy and didn't really had any motive to hustle. I also started an old project of Minecraft server. Spend 2000€ in advertising, learned lots of shits about game design and advertising for video games. I plan to create my own video game studio later. But not now.

Anyway, my consulting activity has turned in some sort of boring job. I can still work not much, but my new clients are terrible. Not gonna give too much details, but they are definitively not the clients I used to have and want to work with. Feels pissed off by the situation. I tried to look for better clients, but without huge success for multiple reasons. Anyway, I really love e-commerce, and with this whole lockdown shit, I told myself it was the good time to start again, since advertising cost are cheap as F*ck at the moment.
So, here we go, April 2020, ~12 days after lockdown:

• Store 9: General store, made 2 sales, no profit
  • Learned the new standards of eCommerce after a year and half of pause (2020)
• Store 10: General store, made 3 sales, no profit
  • Learned pretty much not much
• Store 11:Niche store, made 2 sales, no profit
  • Learned that trying to copy others success don't necessarily mean it will work for me
• Store 12: Made 6 sales, ad cost eat all the profit I made on free traffic
  • Learned I could do organic Facebook Group traffic (which is good to validate an idea)
  • Learned that my "entry" product needs to have sustainable margin, even if I planned to create a brand from that.
  • Learned to code in Shopify language
  • Learned to not be lazy and not pay someone to do the work unless I have a proven concept
• Store 13:"New" store. Trying to create a brand. Lol
  • Learned to create my own theme options in Shopify language

I probably forgot one or two to be honest. That was just to give a quick overview of my journey !
Oh and, I dropped straight after highschool, I had a big F*ck This Event. But that will be for another time

So, the "new" store is actually the one I sold for 2800€ back in 2018. The new owner didn't made much of it, domain name was available, so I purchased it. I still have data about purchases (900+) so I'll try to use the same strategy I used back then and create a customer audience to market to.

I'm working on the store since yesterday, I wanted to make it looks branded and I'm pretty happy with the result ! Gonna start ads today or tomorrow.

 

[Jeannen]

Update 29/05/2020

Total sales: $5207
Adspend: $1910
COGS: $2395
Various fees: $380

Profit: $522

Peoples in my email list: 1300

I'm profitable !
I reffined my ads, removing the ones producing the least results and testing new creatives, and holly shit, this was a game-changer !

Focus: Add products, create content, top-tier customer service (especially with the shipping delays)

 

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[The-J]

What works on Facebook and Instagram for apparel (I assume that's what you mean by POD) depends entirely on the image. The copy is much less important. Does it look good, and will it look good on ME? That's what people are thinking there.

Complicated marketing strategies for something like this are generally doomed to fail. BUT remember the long game...

What's the long game?

To build customer lifetime value. To get customers that you can consistently sell to. That's the way to win with this: launching lots of SKUs, testing the ones that get buyers, and continuously selling your products to your customer base.

I'll give you a real example of what a client I worked with did in the UK. She launched a fashion line targeted at girls 18-25, primarily sold on Instagram. Her profit generally came from the customer base she already had that was willing to continue buying clothes from her. The customer growth came from Facebook. Generating sales growth for her was simple: test a bunch of those SKUs and see which ones worked the best. To retargeting, we used dynamic ads. Simple stuff.

The problem with her business model was that her products that she was producing depended highly on time based campaigns (Valentines day etc) so the rest of the year she wasn't selling much. She's expanding into more evergreen clothing now but it's proving to be much more difficult, as the key is in matching the DESIGN to the audience.

Hope that helps.

 

[Chapas]

So, this project MIGHT be viable in the US (where is is) but not in my local market in my opinion. Peoples buy way less, and wants cheaper things.

There is probably a way to make this works out, but considering the low margins, I just feel like I'd rather spend my energy on something else.

Sorry to hear buddy. At least you took action and tried, and learned along the way. Which 99 % of people do not do.

Sometimes it is better just to acknowledge that it was not meant to be and swallow the pride, instead of spending more time and money on something that might not work (been there, done that!).

I am sure that you soon will find something you will succeed in if you keep taking action like you did for this project.

Have a great week and stay hustling!

 

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[Jeannen]

Update 16/04/2020

So, I decided to hide all products except one, it will make things simpler to launch. It's the "cheapest" product (25€), so it would probably be the easiest to sell.
Website is fully done.

I'll start from there, promoting the concept around a single product, and will see how it go from there.

As you can see, I didn't progress much in the last few days. My FB post is ready to go, but it seems like I'm finding excuses to not hit the "publish" button.

I watched this video to help me overcome this, but I realized that there was very little risk. I'm just crippled by social anxiety. That sounds stupid af, but that's something causing me real issues in general.

Anyway, I just published the post in a FB group while writting. Since it's a promotional post, it will probably not be approved since posts need to have admin approval, but I'm glad I did it.

 

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[Jeannen]

The biggest problem with POD is slim profits try to keep your profits upto 35% even when scaling. POD can make you money but can cut your profits!

For Marketing get few shootouts build pixel and then start with retargeting and cold campaigns

Yeah, especially in my case, since every design is different

Unfortunately, the profit isn't that much, but I'll try to make it work trough LTV and Upsell, I want to try organic before going to ads

I'll see how it goes


Edit 20/04/2020 - 20:10: 3rd sale !
Edit 21/04/2020 - 15:24: 4th sale !

 

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[Jeannen]

Update 16/05/2020

$121 of sales since I started, no profit but I now have 131 peoples on my list !!

If I send 1 email, with only a 1% conversion rate, selling a $20 T-shirt with a $5 margin, I'll earn $5 for free

The goal is to make this at scale

Basically, break-even on front-end and then profit on back end

I hired a Fiverr designer to make designs for me

 

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[Sethamus]

Doesn't Amazon have a free POD service where you can input your design and if it sells you get a percentage? Maybe sell on your own platforms and link to your Amazon design store or fullfill through their POD if possible .

 

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[Fr33zerPop]

Let us know how it goes. I'm interested to learn from your success (and challenges), as someone still trading time for money.

 

[Jeannen]

Update 20/04/2020

One of the group I had the most traction in removed my post. That was kinda expected.
(Still 2 sales at this point, and I'm speaking with several potential customers)

The designers sent me the first designs, one of them wasn't fully as I was expected, so I had to spend some time on Photoshop to make it looks good, even tho I'm no designer at all (Youtube & Google are my friends)

Customers satisfaction before all.

Now, I think it looks good, but ultimately the clients will be the judge.
Until the product is delivered and they are satisfied, I'm borrowing them their money. Once I deliver the promised value, and only then, the money is mine.

I think that's a good mindset to start in eCommerce. Of course, once you are established, you can considere the money as yours as soon as you get the payment, since you know your satisfaction/return rate, and tho can include it in your maths.

 

[Jeannen]

What works on Facebook and Instagram for apparel (I assume that's what you mean by POD) depends entirely on the image. The copy is much less important. Does it look good, and will it look good on ME? That's what people are thinking there.

Complicated marketing strategies for something like this are generally doomed to fail. BUT remember the long game...

What's the long game?

To build customer lifetime value. To get customers that you can consistently sell to. That's the way to win with this: launching lots of SKUs, testing the ones that get buyers, and continuously selling your products to your customer base.

I'll give you a real example of what a client I worked with did in the UK. She launched a fashion line targeted at girls 18-25, primarily sold on Instagram. Her profit generally came from the customer base she already had that was willing to continue buying clothes from her. The customer growth came from Facebook. Generating sales growth for her was simple: test a bunch of those SKUs and see which ones worked the best. To retargeting, we used dynamic ads. Simple stuff.

The problem with her business model was that her products that she was producing depended highly on time based campaigns (Valentines day etc) so the rest of the year she wasn't selling much. She's expanding into more evergreen clothing now but it's proving to be much more difficult, as the key is in matching the DESIGN to the audience.

Hope that helps.

Hey !

Thanks for the long reply !

I'm doing POD yeah, but not the usual POD, clients can customize their own design, to keep it simple

It has a huge "wow" effect, and 3 clients who bought now purchased because it's a gift for someone else (their childrens or themselves).

I'm definively aiming for LTV, one of my client is doing woman clothing (+1M of sales/year) and more than 40% of our sales comes from recuring purchases by happy clients (either organically or trough FB ads retargeting, which is cheap af)

I'm basically doing:
Dynamic product ad retargeting / Catalog sales

• 1-3 days after adding to cart, excluding add to cart
• 1-3 days after adding a product to cart
• 4-7 days after adding to cart, excluding add to cart
• 4-7 days after adding a product to cart
• 7-15 days after adding to cart, excluding add to cart
• 7-15 days after adding a product to cart

This campaign generated more than 60k€ of sales, with a cost per purchase of 2€ to 5€ (depending of the period)

So, for now, the main goal is to get "recurring" sales (like 1 every week or so) without any action from me, either trough ads or something else. I might also create brand-awareness actions like contest to attract peoples. Might not be the best one ("free things lovers"), but the US company I saw is doing it well and have tons of following on social media, migth be worth trying

I also found some products idea that are not POD but who would have a huge "wow effect" and create a huge entry barrier if someone try to copy me, I gotta investigate this better

P.S. To be 100% honnest, I haven't done much shit to progress in the lastests weeks, I'm spending most of my time playing video games with my friends until my hired friend finish the persona and stuff

 

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[Jeannen]

Edit 06/05/2020

So, I ran some ads again, I had tons of engagement but 0 sales. I think peoples misunderstood the ad, and though it was a contest or something, and started posting pictures to enter.

Which was totally not the case lol

So, I'll need to make my ad more clear. What is obvious for me isn't for my potential customers

I received my first review, the client was really happy and said thank you.
First time I have a direct review, and holly shit, it feels good !! Almost as good as my first sale !

 

[Jeannen]

Good luck with your journey!

I have tried to do POD before but the margins were so slim that it wasn’t worth to continue the business. If I have spent more effort into it, it might have worked. I hope you succeed and find a way to increase the margins!

POD works only if you have a good back-end, it's hard as F*ck to get profitable on the front-end (FB ads)

Update 15/05/2020
Made some sales so far, not profitable but I'm starting to see the kind of audiences that is working

I have 60 peoples registered in my email list, which is pretty cool !

 

[Jeannen]

LOL, I love this haha. What a great out-of-the-box thinking. Testing shipping time and getting 2 happy clients

Yeah lol, I'm not in the US so I can't test myself, had to figure out something

 

[Jeannen]

31/05/2020

Just past the $1k day yesterday !!!!!

 

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[Jeannen]

Update 08/06/2020

That shit is going too fast lol, made $2200 of sales yesterday, I really need to focus on improving my systems, at the moment all my times goes in customers service and other annoying stuff, not into improving

 

[Jeannen]

Update 18/06/2020

My new VA seems to be really good ! Asking lots of questions (and good ones), I don't have to manage customers service anymore, what a relief !

I'm not posting much here because most of my focus is into the website at the moment, but what I figured out is that testing creatives is definitively one of the most important part of FB ads. I have a total of 15 creatives I'm testing at the moment.

(I test them in a separate campaign inside my best-performing audiences, before putting the best creatives in my main campaigns)

Oh, I almost reached $3000 of sales yesterday, I actually did $2923, thisis my best day so far !


I plan move to Bali next year, as soon as the frontieres opens up. Better climate, cheaper life, less taxes and good entrepreneur community !

 

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[Jeannen]

Update 25/06/2020

I'm doing more than $3000/day pretty much everyday.
I'll let another week pass, and if things are stable, I'll look into really pushing this further by importing stock in the US to get a faster shipping delay

Oh, I'm also moving to Bali when the borders will be opened again !

 

[Jeannen]

Update 01/07/2020

So, the results are pretty stable but profit plumeted. End of Q2 is never good (Way more competition to finish marketing budgets, so ad cost is increasing a lot) from ~20% to a bit less then 10%

Since it's the begining of a new Q, I'll see how it goes.

$70 000 of sales in June, that's pretty cool ! I learned a lot !!

 

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[Jeannen]

31/07/2021

At this stage, I'm a monk. Have been out of my home only once in the last 3 weeks lol

A quick recap of what happened with my business:

• Found a 3PL center
• Learned the basics of importing stuff and buying from China
• Started ordering inventory
• Got F*cked by a supplier (but I was expecting this in my margin of error, I have backups)
• Designed and ordered packaging
• Hired a designer to make me a $200 logo that matches the brand perfectly (I never thought I'd do this lol)
• Changed my brand name
• Hired a new assistant to make content on Instagram & run split-test on the website
• Learned video editing to make good creatives
• Got an official partnership with a partner, that will allow me to make exclusive offers (can't say more)
• Made a full social media content strategy
• Made a full influencer marketing strategy
• Planned a shitton of stuff (I have 30 projects to develop my brand)

Damnit, that's extremely intense (I'm working from 7:30 to 22:00 every day) but I love it, I'm learning so much !!

Can't wait to see how it will go.

 

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[Jeannen]

07/01/2021

Long time no post!
I haven't done much since then, as I'm STILL waiting for my supplier to ship me the proper samples. This is so annoying, there is too much shit going on every time. Wrong fabric, wrong colors, bad quality. This is really pissing me off, I'm already one month late on my schedule.

In the meantime, I learned how to code, since I had plenty of free time. One of my long-term projects is to open a video-game studio, so, why not start now since I have nothing better to do.