I've been skimping on the posting in the last while. We attended the Summit over the weekend, and after being urged by multiple people to start a new progress thread, here it is!
Life:
22 years old, moved to San Diego in October with @nitroheadz28 to get a fresh start and focus solely on business. We met eachother at C&B (meetup) a few years back, shared a hotel room, kept in touch, and one day decided to GTFO and move to a new city. We moved in together in order to push eachother business wise, and it has been a great decision so far. I highly recommend anyone that is in a position to do this start thinking about it. We are 100% focused, and I have made THOUSANDS of times more progress than I would have had I not changed my situation and moved away from my old friends/vices/habits/environment/etc.
Business:
I currently have two Shopify stores. One, I dropship products from China to customers in the US. The other, I do Print on Demand using a supplier within the US (much less of a pain in the a$$ so far).
Biz 1:
Not going to disclose products or website name obviously, but it's a pretty large niche. So far, I've done lots of Instagram marketing. Bread and butter is shoutouts with larger accounts (100, 200, 300k followers), so I pay them $15-45 for a "shoutout post," and drive sales that way.
Where I'm stuck: FB ads. Thankfully, I learned a TON of helpful information from people at the summit. I will be executing on this this week, and will post updates. So far I've tried two different creatives with two different sets of ad copy, using lookalike audiences from people that have already bought from the site (thru IG). I'm not having much success with that so far, so time to switch some things up and keep testing. I will also be doing a video ad, thanks @Eskil !
This business deals with much lower end products (price wise) anywhere from $15-$35, so the profit isn't as good, but it's easier to get people to buy.
Biz 2:
Doing Instagram shoutouts. Finding good influencer accounts, DMing them, asking about their pricing for shoutouts. This biz is much newer so I need to get to 100 sales through IG so I can move to FB ads (what I have learned is that the FB pixel needs at least 100 "events," in this case, sales, in order to start a decent lookalike audience to target.
I am also sending some free samples to smaller Instagram accounts, as well as attractive female accounts in return for a post. This costs me a decent amount up front but hopefully it will pay off, if I even make 2 sales from sending a free product, it's worth it.
This business deals with much higher end products (lowest is $89, highest is around $450). I have zero experience selling higher ticket items, so I am researching that. One thing I've been suggested to do is build a landing page, although I'm not quite sure that would work with this niche... we shall see. Going to do it anyway and see what happens.
We have several whiteboards in the house filled with "do to" lists, and are constantly crossing off items. It feels great to cross something off and erase it. I feel much better about always making a little bit of progress this way since it's a marathon not a sprint.
I will update this at least once a week. Please ask any and all questions, or throw out suggestions on what I could do better.
Best wishes!
GravyBoat
Life:
22 years old, moved to San Diego in October with @nitroheadz28 to get a fresh start and focus solely on business. We met eachother at C&B (meetup) a few years back, shared a hotel room, kept in touch, and one day decided to GTFO and move to a new city. We moved in together in order to push eachother business wise, and it has been a great decision so far. I highly recommend anyone that is in a position to do this start thinking about it. We are 100% focused, and I have made THOUSANDS of times more progress than I would have had I not changed my situation and moved away from my old friends/vices/habits/environment/etc.
Business:
I currently have two Shopify stores. One, I dropship products from China to customers in the US. The other, I do Print on Demand using a supplier within the US (much less of a pain in the a$$ so far).
Biz 1:
Not going to disclose products or website name obviously, but it's a pretty large niche. So far, I've done lots of Instagram marketing. Bread and butter is shoutouts with larger accounts (100, 200, 300k followers), so I pay them $15-45 for a "shoutout post," and drive sales that way.
Where I'm stuck: FB ads. Thankfully, I learned a TON of helpful information from people at the summit. I will be executing on this this week, and will post updates. So far I've tried two different creatives with two different sets of ad copy, using lookalike audiences from people that have already bought from the site (thru IG). I'm not having much success with that so far, so time to switch some things up and keep testing. I will also be doing a video ad, thanks @Eskil !
This business deals with much lower end products (price wise) anywhere from $15-$35, so the profit isn't as good, but it's easier to get people to buy.
Biz 2:
Doing Instagram shoutouts. Finding good influencer accounts, DMing them, asking about their pricing for shoutouts. This biz is much newer so I need to get to 100 sales through IG so I can move to FB ads (what I have learned is that the FB pixel needs at least 100 "events," in this case, sales, in order to start a decent lookalike audience to target.
I am also sending some free samples to smaller Instagram accounts, as well as attractive female accounts in return for a post. This costs me a decent amount up front but hopefully it will pay off, if I even make 2 sales from sending a free product, it's worth it.
This business deals with much higher end products (lowest is $89, highest is around $450). I have zero experience selling higher ticket items, so I am researching that. One thing I've been suggested to do is build a landing page, although I'm not quite sure that would work with this niche... we shall see. Going to do it anyway and see what happens.
We have several whiteboards in the house filled with "do to" lists, and are constantly crossing off items. It feels great to cross something off and erase it. I feel much better about always making a little bit of progress this way since it's a marathon not a sprint.
I will update this at least once a week. Please ask any and all questions, or throw out suggestions on what I could do better.
Best wishes!
GravyBoat
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