Reverse Engineering Money S01E03 - Honor your work

[healzer]

The goal of the series is to learn new ways to build and manage digital businesses.
You will learn how other people structure their online empires and how you can do it as well.
Instead of lurking around and waiting for a magic money making guide, we shall take measures into our own hands. If you missed episode 02, click here.

Disclaimer: All research, content, facts and figures are obtained without the intention of causing any harm to any business whatsoever. All information is obtained through legal and public ways using services such as Google and/or other websites.
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In this episode we revisit Pinterest for a second time.
This time I've stumbled upon a possible lucrative Shopify empire.

Here's the account that caught my attention:
♡Teen Fashion♡ (julialikelove)

Profile screenshot:

Notice that this account has almost 9k followers.
What I dislike is that they have +20k followings. For some reason they didn't bother unfollowing the non-followers. Whatever they reason... maybe to avoid being flagged/banned?

Either way, the account itself is pretty decent.
First, they do not promote any website/url in the profile/bio.
Secondly, the account doesn't look spammy like many other Amazon/Etsy affiliate-marketing profiles I've come across.

In particular I love the fact they don't have stupid/cheap/spammy-looking images like those which Amazon provides most often. They look very decent and quite professional.

[Start of rant]
From my experience and from people whom I've worked with I learned that image quality is KEY. It's so important for your success on Pinterest - I cannot emphasize it enough.
Pinterest is an image sharing site, so if your images suck and do not resonate with the audience then it's GAME OVER. I mean literally, nobody is going to buy nor follow some crap/dirt looking profile, so don't even bother spamming/botting without ever looking back and expecting results. If you're doing Tinder, you can just steal profile pics and spam all the way, but on Pinterest image quality is all you have -- if you don't then there is nothing else to win with.

Everyone who is doing Pinterest marketing, go and ask 10-20 girls you know (mom, grandmother, girlfriend, cousins, ...) whether they like & trust your profile (don't tell them it's your profile), just say you're doing a survey. If their first impression is not positive then you know you need to fix it. Beware: you ruin their feedback as soon as you say it's your site/profile, coz' they don't like lying to you. If your profile sucks, just be honest and start over, throw all garbage out and fix it -- if you want to succeed that is.
[End of rant]

Some pins have quite a lot of repins, some even +300. This definitely means the product is popular and selling well! For some reason (today) Pinterest is no longer showing how many repins/likes a pin has, but from the HTTP requests you can still discover it:

Also, have a look at pins which do no get more than 100 likes/repins and which have over 1000 likes/repins. You will quickly realize which styles, products and images resonated the best with their audience and spread quicker than other. This is quite important to be aware of, if you're doing Pinterest and your pins are not going viral then you should definitely experiment with styles/niches -- your success depends on it.

There is one thing I majorly dislike and I'm pretty shocked by this...

What in the world is with that description????
I mean, who he hell cares about which sizes are available and all that other crap... come on guys.
If someone wants to buy that sh*t, they'll go to the website to check the available sizes/fits, don't put all that sh*t on Pinterest *facepalm*.
I would bet they'd make much more sales if they tied up their descriptions!

Now, let's analyze their website:

See, their description is much better and more meaningful on the website. Why did they copy paste that stuff... jeez.

The website itself isn't that professional looking, but it's nice and clean, I like that -- they make it look like it is run by a group of indie fashionistas, which is a good thing
Screenshot home page:

Before I give them any more credit, here's another terrible thing I see quite often.
Many people who start Shopify/affiliate sites fill them with a wide array of products.
I mean, they start with Women's fashion, then they add men's fashion, then they start adding gifts and even toilet paper rolls... I mean wtf? You shouldn't try to be the next Wallmart, you will never dominate Wallmart at being cheap and fugly. But you can compete with niche industries. You can dominate markets on social media if you solely focus on a handful of niche categories.

Look at the image below; these products appear as "related" to some piece of clothing. I mean, what's that aquarium doing there? A girl (the visitor) is trying to buy clothes for the summer, not some god d*mn aquarium or LED Umbrella... These gals/guys clearly do not understand the power of simplicity. In fact they have lost more money because of so many unrelated products and crap than they could've earned by being more focused on a specific category.

I haven't used Shopify myself, I've always been using Wordpress with ecommerce plugins (or already ecommerce-ready themes). However, many Shopify sites lack reviews and testimonials (maybe there exists a plugin for that). There should be a section where people can post questions/reviews about the products, ask questions, etc.
Why? Well, it earns money.
What if you have no visitors yet? Then post some reviews yourself, be creative and genuine -- it's okay to make sh*t up. However, don't try to sell something which doesn't resonate with your message/review, that's just scamming not marketing.

I looked up their website on Google and found this page:
Karyn Kostiuk

Screenshot:

The above image is proof that this website is getting visitors (and probably sales).
But it also proves the point that reviews/testimonials are very important. If the website had more credibility in its appearance, these would've been their clients and bought their stuff.

If you think these details don't matter, think again.
Have a look at the footer of this website and compare it with that of our case study:

Now ask yourself the question, which one looks more credible and genuine? Just by seeing all these authoritarian emblems and logos you immediately trust this website much more than this:

Notice that the Twitter, Facebook and IG logos point to Shopify's profiles, LOL....

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Here's something else I've noticed.
Their most recent pins all promote products on the website: Teen Fashion
However, when you scroll down into the past, you will notice that it wasn't always like this.
At some point in time they were promoting Welcome to Luxedaze Bikini which appears to be their website as well.
Scrolling down even further in time, they were promoting Home · MegaFashion · Online Store Powered by Storenvy
Before that, they had their products listed on Buy directly from the world's most awesome indie brands. Or open a free online store. on Storenvy but these no longer exist.
Even further down it was: Best Gifts Online store I wonder why they no longer promote this website, as it doesn't look bad at all.

We can only speculate and come up with theories why one profile has shifted from one site to the next, maybe someone has some ideas?

 

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