Another Long Term Shopify + Instagram Business

[paulpaul25]

Week 12 Update

This was the second week for my store, with 5 days of ads posted by new targeted IG accounts. I've decided to only use influencers so no theme pages this time as I feel there is a much stronger connection between influencers and their followers compared to theme pages.

I initially had some troubles setting up the ads, because some of the influencers haven't replied to me or replied too late, but with a little bit of extra work & luck I've managed to find 5 influencers and set up 5 ads.

I only let the ads up for 4 hours per day, for each account. This strategy helped me save a few $$ as some of their rates were considerably high. The last two accounts (122k, 300k) are owned by the same person so I was able to get a better deal as I was only going to buy the promotion for the 300k account.

This is how it looks so far:

231k followers, 6% engagement rate - $70 for 4 hours story + link in bio = 5 products sold
104k followers, 9% engagement rate - $65 for 4 hours story + link in bio = 2 products sold
83k followers, 10% engagement rate - $35 for 4 hours story + link in bio = 1 product sold
122k followers, 9% engagement rate - $40 for 4 hours story + link in bio = 6 products sold
300k followers, 7% engagement rate - $50 for 4 hours story + link in bio = 2 products sold

- Revenue: $320
- Ads Cost: $260
- Product & Shipping Cost: $128
- TOTAL PROFIT: -$68

My latest post was a little bit messed up because I've refreshed the page just before posting the reply so I had to edit it and I also had an error in the cost/profit calculation.

I wanted to add the fact that I'm a little bit disappointed of this week's performance in term of sales, in comparison with the first campaign, but overall I got a nice amount of traffic which is actually great for the future.

Plans for the near future:

Testing micro-influencers, especially those who are also active on YT as again, I feel like their communities might be more solid in term of engagement and trust. This is probably & hopefully going to happen next week.

Adding 2-3 more related products to the store just to test things out. I'm planning on adding some products that need constant replacement. I'm not sure when this is going to happen but I've already started searching for products.

Starting a 2nd store for a long-term run. Knowing myself I was pretty sure this was going to happen sooner or later. I have a pretty solid idea for a niche store in the CBD industry, which I know is not that great for e-commerce especially with the FB ads limiting the CBD ads & stuff.
This will probably be a long process as I want to be perfect and I won't launch it until everything in term of products and suppliers will be perfectly organized. Just wanted to share this plan with you guys and I'd love to get your feedback from those of you who have any experience with this industry and e-commerce.

**I've just edited the post and updated the cost/profit calculation, as it was listed wrong earlier**

 

[Leader777]

Week 12 Update

This was the second week for my store, with 5 days of ads posted by new targeted IG accounts. I've decided to only use influencers so no theme pages this time as I feel there is a much stronger connection between influencers and their followers compared to theme pages.

I initially had some troubles setting up the ads, because some of the influencers haven't replied to me or replied too late, but with a little bit of extra work & luck I've managed to find 5 influencers and set up 5 ads.

I only let the ads up for 4 hours per day, for each account. This strategy helped me save a few $$ as some of their rates were considerably high. The last two accounts (122k, 300k) are owned by the same person so I was able to get a better deal as I was only going to buy the promotion for the 300k account.

This is how it looks so far:

231k followers, 6% engagement rate - $70 for 4 hours story + link in bio = 5 products sold
104k followers, 9% engagement rate - $65 for 4 hours story + link in bio = 2 products sold
83k followers, 10% engagement rate - $35 for 4 hours story + link in bio = 1 product sold
122k followers, 9% engagement rate - $40 for 4 hours story + link in bio = 6 products sold
300k followers, 7% engagement rate - $50 for 4 hours story + link in bio = 2 products sold

- Revenue: $320
- Ads Cost: $260
- Product & Shipping Cost: $128
- TOTAL PROFIT: -$68

My latest post was a little bit messed up because I've refreshed the page just before posting the reply so I had to edit it and I also had an error in the cost/profit calculation.

I wanted to add the fact that I'm a little bit disappointed of this week's performance in term of sales, in comparison with the first campaign, but overall I got a nice amount of traffic which is actually great for the future.

Plans for the near future:

Testing micro-influencers, especially those who are also active on YT as again, I feel like their communities might be more solid in term of engagement and trust. This is probably & hopefully going to happen next week.

Adding 2-3 more related products to the store just to test things out. I'm planning on adding some products that need constant replacement. I'm not sure when this is going to happen but I've already started searching for products.

Starting a 2nd store for a long-term run. Knowing myself I was pretty sure this was going to happen sooner or later. I have a pretty solid idea for a niche store in the CBD industry, which I know is not that great for e-commerce especially with the FB ads limiting the CBD ads & stuff.
This will probably be a long process as I want to be perfect and I won't launch it until everything in term of products and suppliers will be perfectly organized. Just wanted to share this plan with you guys and I'd love to get your feedback from those of you who have any experience with this industry and e-commerce.

**I've just edited the post and updated the cost/profit calculation, as it was listed wrong earlier**

Happy to see u updating your journey. Don't give up for that loss! it is actually a good thing to look for small infulencers ( they don't cost much and u find them very targeted ) . I want to ask you if you can please update the traffic u received also , that be great!

 

[paulpaul25]

Happy to see u updating your journey. Don't give up for that loss! it is actually a good thing to look for small infulencers ( they don't cost much and u find them very targeted ) . I want to ask you if you can please update the traffic u received also , that be great!

I won't give up for sure, I was totally expecting something like this, I just wasn't sure when. The first campaign's profit should cover this loss and still keep my head above the water.

Should I post the traffic volume every time I'll do a weekly update? I can do that if it helps.

For this week it looks like this:

231k followers, 6% engagement rate - 316 visitors
104k followers, 9% engagement rate - 183 visitors
83k followers, 10% engagement rate - 118 visitors
122k followers, 9% engagement rate - 202 visitors
300k followers, 7% engagement rate - 359 visitors

I would say it's definitely not that good as the first time, considering the fact that most most of the accounts had a larger number of followers, but I don't know, what do you think?

 

[Leader777]

I won't give up for sure, I was totally expecting something like this, I just wasn't sure when. The first campaign's profit should cover this loss and still keep my head above the water.

Should I post the traffic volume every time I'll do a weekly update? I can do that if it helps.

For this week it looks like this:

231k followers, 6% engagement rate - 316 visitors
104k followers, 9% engagement rate - 183 visitors
83k followers, 10% engagement rate - 118 visitors
122k followers, 9% engagement rate - 202 visitors
300k followers, 7% engagement rate - 359 visitors

I would say it's definitely not that good as the first time, considering the fact that most most of the accounts had a larger number of followers, but I don't know, what do you think?

Yes sure i will love to see the traffic when u update. The traffic is a bit low but still good since it does convert , just keep searching till u find the good ones that give good amount of traffic

 

[paulpaul25]

Good luck! I am also starting something similar

Thanks, you should start a journey here too, it will help you stay motivated. Good luck to you too!

 

[Deleted member 657006]

maybe it time to make a opt-in list to sell to your list.

looks a lot of cash for traffic not reusable.

 

[paulpaul25]

Week 13 Update

Another 5 days of IG ads are over, and for this week I've only used micro-influencers to run the ads. I found a way of targeting the niche even deeper and closer to my product and found quite a lot of influencers to work with. The only problem is that they can not post the swipe-up links in the stories if they have under 10k followers, so I had to go for post + story + link in bio. I've created a good looking post ad so I went for the same combo with the pages that have 10k + too, just because I wanted to test it.
Micro-influencers are way more responsive and easier to work with when organizing the ads, I've sent a total of 15 DMs and 12 of them got back to me in 2-3 hours.

So this is how things look in term of performance and sales:

8.3k followers, 28% engagement rate - $15 for 6 hours post + story + link in bio = 8 products sold / 58 visitors
12.6k followers, 25% engagement rate - $20 for 6 hours post + story + link in bio = 0 products sold / 13 visitors
11k followers, 21% engagement rate - $10 for 6 hours post + story + link in bio = 3 product sold / 88 visitors
11.8k followers, 22% engagement rate - $13 for 6 hours post + story + link in bio = 7 products sold / 103 visitors
9.5k followers, 26% engagement rate - $15 for 6 hours post + story + link in bio = 0 products sold / 51 visitors

+ 2 semi-organic sales, probably someone who follows my IG page or someone who previously saved or bookmarked the product

- Revenue: $400
- Ads Cost: $73
- Product & Shipping Cost: $160
- TOTAL PROFIT: $167

I love the conversion rate which reached the moon this time. I still can't believe that a 11k followers page brought a close amount of traffic to the last week's 83k followers page.

I'm definitely going to run the same strategy again next week and I want to push things up a little bit so I'm going to run 2 ads/day.
Something I should mention is that 2 of the these pages, the ones who brought the highest amount of sales are managed by influencers who are also on Youtube in the same niche, and I think that helped a lot.

 

[paulpaul25]

maybe it time to make a opt-in list to sell to your list.

looks a lot of cash for traffic not reusable.

I'm going to work on this as soon as I'll add 2-3 new products so I can send discount codes or something to make the visitors insert their email address. Hopefully I'll have everything ready in two or three weeks.
Thanks a lot for the advice!

 

[Machinecode]

Defo concentrate on capturing the emails, although i assume you already know this.

the backend conversions make a huge difference.

 

[paulpaul25]

Defo concentrate on capturing the emails, although i assume you already know this.

the backend conversions make a huge difference.

Thank you! I'll do it as soon as possible but first I need to get my knowledge together and organize everything.

 

[Leader777]

Week 13 Update

Another 5 days of IG ads are over, and for this week I've only used micro-influencers to run the ads. I found a way of targeting the niche even deeper and closer to my product and found quite a lot of influencers to work with. The only problem is that they can not post the swipe-up links in the stories if they have under 10k followers, so I had to go for post + story + link in bio. I've created a good looking post ad so I went for the same combo with the pages that have 10k + too, just because I wanted to test it.
Micro-influencers are way more responsive and easier to work with when organizing the ads, I've sent a total of 15 DMs and 12 of them got back to me in 2-3 hours.

So this is how things look in term of performance and sales:

8.3k followers, 28% engagement rate - $15 for 6 hours post + story + link in bio = 8 products sold / 58 visitors
12.6k followers, 25% engagement rate - $20 for 6 hours post + story + link in bio = 0 products sold / 13 visitors
11k followers, 21% engagement rate - $10 for 6 hours post + story + link in bio = 3 product sold / 88 visitors
11.8k followers, 22% engagement rate - $13 for 6 hours post + story + link in bio = 7 products sold / 103 visitors
9.5k followers, 26% engagement rate - $15 for 6 hours post + story + link in bio = 0 products sold / 51 visitors

+ 2 semi-organic sales, probably someone who follows my IG page or someone who previously saved or bookmarked the product

- Revenue: $400
- Ads Cost: $73
- Product & Shipping Cost: $160
- TOTAL PROFIT: $167

I love the conversion rate which reached the moon this time. I still can't believe that a 11k followers page brought a close amount of traffic to the last week's 83k followers page.

I'm definitely going to run the same strategy again next week and I want to push things up a little bit so I'm going to run 2 ads/day.
Something I should mention is that 2 of the these pages, the ones who brought the highest amount of sales are managed by influencers who are also on Youtube in the same niche, and I think that helped a lot.

This is just amazing! the 8k followers account got u the most sales. Keep it up buddy! seeing this i think u should find now a way to scale to some x,xxx numbers

 

[Leader777]

Check pm when u have time

 

[paulpaul25]

Week 14 Update

Well this week was pretty busy and all over the place. Starting with an influencer who tried to "scam" me all the way to having my funds placed on hold by PayPal, but I'll get into that after posting this week's results.

15.8k followers, 23% engagement rate - $15 for 6 hours post + story + link in bio = 2 products sold / 96 visitors
13.2k followers, 24% engagement rate - $10 for 6 hours post + story + link in bio = 3 products sold / 84 visitors
10.5k followers, 29% engagement rate - $13 for 6 hours post + story + link in bio = 0 products sold / 89 visitors
18k followers, 19% engagement rate - $18 for 6 hours post + story + link in bio = SCAMMER
8.6k followers, 33% engagement rate - $10 for 6 hours post + story + link in bio = 3 products sold / 66 visitors

- Revenue: $140
- Ads Cost: $66 / $48 **(excluding the 18k page)**
- Product & Shipping Cost: $56
- TOTAL PROFIT: $36

The scammer.
So, the influencer who was supposed to post my ad on Thursday, the 18k followers page, haven't posted anything until 12:30 after he promised me to do the post at 8:00 in the morning.
I contacted him, and told him to remove the ad and give me a refund. He removed the story, the link and the post but of course refused to give me a refund so I've asked PayPal for a refund and got my money back in no time.
After that he told me he is going to send his followers to report both my personal and business pages, like he has some sort of an army, haha.
I took a screenshot and also screen-recorded the whole conversation and I've sent an email to IG support team, just in case.

Paypal holding my money.
On Friday, I got an email from PayPal regarding the shopify funds, which were put on hold. I initially thought they will request the tracking codes or any proof that the packages were sent/delivered to my clients but it was about my account.
When setting up the store I've linked my main email account just so I can track the activity properly as I didn't want to have my payments and invoices from my main business get mixed up with the ones from shopify.
They told me it would be better to link a business account with all the details about the products and industry so they can identify me as a business.

I managed to get to an agreement and they told me I will get the funds unlocked on 14th of March for the shopify account but I still need to switch to a dedicated business account, which I think will require me to link another credit card, and I don't know exactly how this will turn out.

Just to keep things safe, I'm planning to create a stripe account for the future payments, but I'll need to use a personal debit card, and it seems like my only accepted option is the Revolut card, and this will be a temporarily solution.
If anybody knows a better solution to this, please share it with me.

I think we won't have any update for the store next week as I need to sort this out first, but I'll continue my product research for adding new related products.

 

[Leader777]

Week 14 Update

Well this week was pretty busy and all over the place. Starting with an influencer who tried to "scam" me all the way to having my funds placed on hold by PayPal, but I'll get into that after posting this week's results.

15.8k followers, 23% engagement rate - $15 for 6 hours post + story + link in bio = 2 products sold / 96 visitors
13.2k followers, 24% engagement rate - $10 for 6 hours post + story + link in bio = 3 products sold / 84 visitors
10.5k followers, 29% engagement rate - $13 for 6 hours post + story + link in bio = 0 products sold / 89 visitors
18k followers, 19% engagement rate - $18 for 6 hours post + story + link in bio = SCAMMER
8.6k followers, 33% engagement rate - $10 for 6 hours post + story + link in bio = 3 products sold / 66 visitors

- Revenue: $140
- Ads Cost: $66 / $48 **(excluding the 18k page)**
- Product & Shipping Cost: $56
- TOTAL PROFIT: $36

The scammer.
So, the influencer who was supposed to post my ad on Thursday, the 18k followers page, haven't posted anything until 12:30 after he promised me to do the post at 8:00 in the morning.
I contacted him, and told him to remove the ad and give me a refund. He removed the story, the link and the post but of course refused to give me a refund so I've asked PayPal for a refund and got my money back in no time.
After that he told me he is going to send his followers to report both my personal and business pages, like he has some sort of an army, haha.
I took a screenshot and also screen-recorded the whole conversation and I've sent an email to IG support team, just in case.

Paypal holding my money.
On Friday, I got an email from PayPal regarding the shopify funds, which were put on hold. I initially thought they will request the tracking codes or any proof that the packages were sent/delivered to my clients but it was about my account.
When setting up the store I've linked my main email account just so I can track the activity properly as I didn't want to have my payments and invoices from my main business get mixed up with the ones from shopify.
They told me it would be better to link a business account with all the details about the products and industry so they can identify me as a business.

I managed to get to an agreement and they told me I will get the funds unlocked on 14th of March for the shopify account but I still need to switch to a dedicated business account, which I think will require me to link another credit card, and I don't know exactly how this will turn out.

Just to keep things safe, I'm planning to create a stripe account for the future payments, but I'll need to use a personal debit card, and it seems like my only accepted option is the Revolut card, and this will be a temporarily solution.
If anybody knows a better solution to this, please share it with me.

I think we won't have any update for the store next week as I need to sort this out first, but I'll continue my product research for adding new related products.

Keep it up! I fucking hate thoes people that can't do business the right way.. like u pay them why they just don't post and get their money , it's pretty simple but whatever u got your profits !

 

[paulpaul25]

Keep it up! I fucking hate thoes people that can't do business the right way.. like u pay them why they just don't post and get their money , it's pretty simple but whatever u got your profits !

I know, I was really excited about the results as it was the largest page for this week, but the owner had other plans, haha.

 

[spyguy]

good going, keep it up

 

[paulpaul25]

Last Week's Update

Guys, I'm sorry for not updating my journey for almost 2 months but things didn't went in the right direction but I'll try to explain everything here and this is probably going to be my latest update for this store.

The main problems

- The first thing I noticed soon after the coronavirus situation hit Europe & US was that shipping times started to become crazy long, the average 7-14 days e-packet was going for 20-30 days, orders were processed way slower and I've started to receive refund requests because of these.

- IG campaign's results started to drop even though I was focusing more and more on finding the right influencers, improving my ad's content and everything, but it looks like people were just scared to order packages from China. Some of the influencers told me that they were getting 5-10 messages from people asking if it's safe to order online, where the packages were coming from and things like that.

- My plan was to find and test some US suppliers as quickly as possible, but my main business kept me busy during March and I didn't find enough time to properly take care of the dropshipping thing. As soon as I was ready to get back into it, I found out that all 3 US suppliers were out of stock and my whole store & social media channels were branded and marketed towards that product. That was basically the one and only product I've tested so far.

What I did

I had a lot of pressure on my shoulders at that point because my main business's (source of income) engagement & conversions started to drop because of the lockdowns and everything, but I couldn't do much so I've decided to wait until everything gets back to normal and adapt my strategy when things are recovering.

In the meantime I've seen that bigger ecommerce stores went to the moon during lockdowns, so I was motivated to keep searching for an alternative product and get a piece of this pie but I've decided not to run any ads because until that as I had a really hard time fulfilling the orders with Ali.

I posted some questions regarding US suppliers on other forums and I had no luck finding that product or anything close to it. Somebody sent me a message asking if I was interested in selling my store with my social media and everything after sharing some insights with him. Initially I was thinking he is kind of a scammer as the store was not bringing any great results or high profits as you all know, but he kept insisting that he has a great idea to market that store and that he was really impressed by the branding I've done to it, so we agreed on a price and 48h later we did the property transfer.

Looks like the guy is actually an active member of bhw and he told me that he might start his own journey here in the near future and he asked me not to mention his name, the domain and the price.

However, when I started this journey I wanted to be 100% transparent with you guys and answer to all the questions.
I will not mention his name or the domain's name but I'll share the price and some info about the store.

- SOLD FOR: $850 including IG (940 followers and 31 posts), FB ( 31 posts and 84 likes), a list of 100+ targeted influencers & micro influencers, access to previous insights and order details, full external branding (vectorial versions for the logos, icons, banners), and 8 original articles based on SEO research as I was planning to add a blog section to my store in the future.

I'm pretty sure some of you will ask me why I did this and I will say that it was an impulse reaction, he came with the right offer at the right time when I had absolutely no idea about my journey's next step and I was feeling down because I couldn't find a US supplier for the same exact product.

Plans for the future

I don't want to be a drama queen, but huge tank you to everyone who supported me during this journey, and I'll definitely be back and update this thread with a completely new store as I currently have few ideas for a long term run.

As soon as things will get back to normal, I'll be back and give you guys some details about the next step of my dropshipping journey, as I plan to do a better research on the product & marketing before starting everything and I really consider finding a permanent US manufacturer or supplier for it.

I'll still be around asking your questions so feel free to ask me anything about this or my journey.

 

[Leader777]

Last Week's Update

Guys, I'm sorry for not updating my journey for almost 2 months but things didn't went in the right direction but I'll try to explain everything here and this is probably going to be my latest update for this store.

The main problems

- The first thing I noticed soon after the coronavirus situation hit Europe & US was that shipping times started to become crazy long, the average 7-14 days e-packet was going for 20-30 days, orders were processed way slower and I've started to receive refund requests because of these.

- IG campaign's results started to drop even though I was focusing more and more on finding the right influencers, improving my ad's content and everything, but it looks like people were just scared to order packages from China. Some of the influencers told me that they were getting 5-10 messages from people asking if it's safe to order online, where the packages were coming from and things like that.

- My plan was to find and test some US suppliers as quickly as possible, but my main business kept me busy during March and I didn't find enough time to properly take care of the dropshipping thing. As soon as I was ready to get back into it, I found out that all 3 US suppliers were out of stock and my whole store & social media channels were branded and marketed towards that product. That was basically the one and only product I've tested so far.

What I did

I had a lot of pressure on my shoulders at that point because my main business's (source of income) engagement & conversions started to drop because of the lockdowns and everything, but I couldn't do much so I've decided to wait until everything gets back to normal and adapt my strategy when things are recovering.

In the meantime I've seen that bigger ecommerce stores went to the moon during lockdowns, so I was motivated to keep searching for an alternative product and get a piece of this pie but I've decided not to run any ads because until that as I had a really hard time fulfilling the orders with Ali.

I posted some questions regarding US suppliers on other forums and I had no luck finding that product or anything close to it. Somebody sent me a message asking if I was interested in selling my store with my social media and everything after sharing some insights with him. Initially I was thinking he is kind of a scammer as the store was not bringing any great results or high profits as you all know, but he kept insisting that he has a great idea to market that store and that he was really impressed by the branding I've done to it, so we agreed on a price and 48h later we did the property transfer.

Looks like the guy is actually an active member of bhw and he told me that he might start his own journey here in the near future and he asked me not to mention his name, the domain and the price.

However, when I started this journey I wanted to be 100% transparent with you guys and answer to all the questions.
I will not mention his name or the domain's name but I'll share the price and some info about the store.

- SOLD FOR: $850 including IG (940 followers and 31 posts), FB ( 31 posts and 84 likes), a list of 100+ targeted influencers & micro influencers, access to previous insights and order details, full external branding (vectorial versions for the logos, icons, banners), and 8 original articles based on SEO research as I was planning to add a blog section to my store in the future.

I'm pretty sure some of you will ask me why I did this and I will say that it was an impulse reaction, he came with the right offer at the right time when I had absolutely no idea about my journey's next step and I was feeling down because I couldn't find a US supplier for the same exact product.

Plans for the future

I don't want to be a drama queen, but huge tank you to everyone who supported me during this journey, and I'll definitely be back and update this thread with a completely new store as I currently have few ideas for a long term run.

As soon as things will get back to normal, I'll be back and give you guys some details about the next step of my dropshipping journey, as I plan to do a better research on the product & marketing before starting everything and I really consider finding a permanent US manufacturer or supplier for it.

I'll still be around asking your questions so feel free to ask me anything about this or my journey.

Happy to see you again!