yakuzaemme
Senior Member
- Sep 18, 2016
- 1,005
- 2,930
So, there's a lot of tutorials on here how to monetize Instagram, Facebook and affiliates -
but very few on how to create your own product/offer - which in my opinion is much easier and faster.
This is a project I did myself, that easily (vague term) did a minimum of $1000 a week. And the
good thing is, you're in complete control.
What you need
1) Programming skills
Either team up with someone, or hire. I would suggest somebody that does html/css/js/php/sql.
System languages such as C# will help scale it in the future.
2) Basic design
Again, partner/hire or lurk themeforest.
3) PayPal and/or Stripe account (or equivalent of Stripe)
4) AliExpress account
5) Facebook Ad account
6) $100 for ads (hopefully less, but for trial and error)
The concept
Find cheap products with free shipping on AliExpress - list on your own website and charge
customer for shipping, and place the order on AliExpress for the customer.
If done right, profit per sale is around $4 (order value $5.99, product cost $0.50, acquisition $1.50)
The conversion rate will be a lot, lot higher than normal websites, as what you're selling
is "free".
Within a week or two after setting everything up - you should have a good data collection
and idea for better margins, and can scale to reach 50 orders/day.
The site I used (when this was running): https://freeium.com
Find products
Research product niches that is fairly cheap to buy. Some examples are
kitchen gadgets, electronics (headset, charger), makeup, pet toy, decoration etc.
My best tip here would be, the more niched, the better (CR, more of that later)
Set up a website
Despite of everything you hear of how wonderful Wordpress/Shopify is etc,
I suggest making your custom one for this. There's very, very little backend
involved, and the design and front end should be fairly simple.
Figure out what approach you wish to take. I chose to go with free products
that brands gives out for exposure. There's many ways to go about this.
List products, and create a simple flow from landing to checkout completed.
Full name, street, zip, city, country - no more. Don't gather email or phone here.
The stripe popup (recommended) will gather email for you, and so does PayPal.
Social profile
It's time to create your page. Keep it simple. Start off by selecting name and
profile picture for highest CTR. Selling pet toys? Consider something along the lines
of "Dogs of America" with the united state flag as picture (flag increases CTR a LOT, I
got no proof of this so you've just gotta trust me
)
Once that is done, start forming your ad. There's a lot of in depth tutorials out there,
so I suggest reading them - but here's an basic example of what I used.
Ads
Again - there's a lot more in depth on Google. But as mentioned above,
the smaller niche - the better. Familiar yourself with Ad Manager (do not use the
blue Boost button). Spend an hour or so with Google searching for your niche.
For example, if I'm selling pet toys, I want to find literally every forum in the
country about dogs.
Once that is done - add these websites as interest in your ad set. The audience
is now filled with people who actually engages with dog-related topics, and
is very likely to own a dog themself.
Go through the different websites on Ad Manager and remove the very big ones.
Again, the more niched the better.
Now go ahead and pair this with another interest - online shopping. Use the "must match"
selection.
You now have an audience of extremely likely dog owners, that shopped online in
the past. Go ahead and set the other settings such as age, location, gender etc.
There's a lot of data on the web about which age groups and genders shops online the
most.
For ad placement, skip Instagram all together. You may want to try 3rd party apps, but
I would start with desktop and mobile. Spend a few hours and set up different campaigns
for A/B testing - again, lots of info on this online.
Feel free to try different objectives as well, such as conversions or post engagement. I
used post engagement for this, but in hindsight I should of used conversion (InitiateCheckout).
Collect data
Along with A/B testing of campaigns - set up Facebook pixels on the different events
such as AddToCart, InitiateCheckout and Purchase. After 50 sales or so you may
want to create a lookalike from purchase.
Don't bother retargeting on failed conversion after they hit InitiateCheckout, they got scared
from the shipping and felt tricket and most likely won't convert ever.
Managing an order
You've got your first order. Great. Head over to AliExpress, place the order from the cheapest seller
with free shipping, and fill in the customer details (AliExpress seller -> Customer). Notify
the customer via email (collected by Stripe/PayPal) that the order has been processed).
Scaling
As you probably can figure out, placing orders is extremely time consuming for very little
money. Your time is better spent optimizing and finding other opportunities. Right?
Here's where a system developer comes in the picture. What I did was a bot
that got alerted when a new order was placed through the website.
It then went to AliExpress, searched for the cheapest seller of that item (with good reviews),
placed an order, filled the customers information, solved captcha and paid for the order,
then sent an notification to customer that order has been processed.
Video (terribly sorry for the quality, no screen recorder on my desktop):
Why I stopped it
Dispute rates
AliExpress shipping times (free ones) are extremely long, 30-45 days. Most customers
cannot wait this long, which I'm sure we all can understand. Therefore, I got a lot
of disputes (2.3% if I remember correctly). This is very bad stats, but as it's spread out over
two payment methods (Stripe and PayPal) it's under the limits. However, I run a lot of websites
using Stripe and PayPal - and this site alone ate up my breathing room, so couldn't risk it.
Dishonest (gray area)
You're practically tricking the customer by wording. It was a fun project to run as
the heavy tasks were automated, but not something you can show friends and family
and be proud of.
Unreliable sellers
As the bot was choosing seller based on price, sometimes, it chose a bad one, which resulted
in seller accepted payment and a few weeks later emails and says item is not in stock.
This was frustrating both for me and the client. The ideal way would be to build a connection
and pre-pick products, to make sure they can deliver and possibly negotiate prices.
Time I didn't and don't really have.
Questions?
If something is unclear, ask away!
Questions such as "How do I use power Ad Manager" is better asked on Google. There's
an incredible amount of tutorials out there on most of this stuff, it's nothing new.
Good luck!
but very few on how to create your own product/offer - which in my opinion is much easier and faster.
This is a project I did myself, that easily (vague term) did a minimum of $1000 a week. And the
good thing is, you're in complete control.
What you need
1) Programming skills
Either team up with someone, or hire. I would suggest somebody that does html/css/js/php/sql.
System languages such as C# will help scale it in the future.
2) Basic design
Again, partner/hire or lurk themeforest.
3) PayPal and/or Stripe account (or equivalent of Stripe)
4) AliExpress account
5) Facebook Ad account
6) $100 for ads (hopefully less, but for trial and error)
The concept
Find cheap products with free shipping on AliExpress - list on your own website and charge
customer for shipping, and place the order on AliExpress for the customer.
If done right, profit per sale is around $4 (order value $5.99, product cost $0.50, acquisition $1.50)
The conversion rate will be a lot, lot higher than normal websites, as what you're selling
is "free".
Within a week or two after setting everything up - you should have a good data collection
and idea for better margins, and can scale to reach 50 orders/day.
The site I used (when this was running): https://freeium.com
- The site is not active. You should not place an order. It is for demonstrational purposes.
- I repeat: Do not order. This is no advert for that website. Study and learn from it instead.
- I repeat, once again: Do not place an order. I am not looking to promote the website.
Find products
Research product niches that is fairly cheap to buy. Some examples are
kitchen gadgets, electronics (headset, charger), makeup, pet toy, decoration etc.
My best tip here would be, the more niched, the better (CR, more of that later)
Set up a website
Despite of everything you hear of how wonderful Wordpress/Shopify is etc,
I suggest making your custom one for this. There's very, very little backend
involved, and the design and front end should be fairly simple.
Figure out what approach you wish to take. I chose to go with free products
that brands gives out for exposure. There's many ways to go about this.
List products, and create a simple flow from landing to checkout completed.
Full name, street, zip, city, country - no more. Don't gather email or phone here.
The stripe popup (recommended) will gather email for you, and so does PayPal.
Social profile
It's time to create your page. Keep it simple. Start off by selecting name and
profile picture for highest CTR. Selling pet toys? Consider something along the lines
of "Dogs of America" with the united state flag as picture (flag increases CTR a LOT, I
got no proof of this so you've just gotta trust me
)Once that is done, start forming your ad. There's a lot of in depth tutorials out there,
so I suggest reading them - but here's an basic example of what I used.
Ads
Again - there's a lot more in depth on Google. But as mentioned above,
the smaller niche - the better. Familiar yourself with Ad Manager (do not use the
blue Boost button). Spend an hour or so with Google searching for your niche.
For example, if I'm selling pet toys, I want to find literally every forum in the
country about dogs.
Once that is done - add these websites as interest in your ad set. The audience
is now filled with people who actually engages with dog-related topics, and
is very likely to own a dog themself.
Go through the different websites on Ad Manager and remove the very big ones.
Again, the more niched the better.
Now go ahead and pair this with another interest - online shopping. Use the "must match"
selection.
You now have an audience of extremely likely dog owners, that shopped online in
the past. Go ahead and set the other settings such as age, location, gender etc.
There's a lot of data on the web about which age groups and genders shops online the
most.
For ad placement, skip Instagram all together. You may want to try 3rd party apps, but
I would start with desktop and mobile. Spend a few hours and set up different campaigns
for A/B testing - again, lots of info on this online.
Feel free to try different objectives as well, such as conversions or post engagement. I
used post engagement for this, but in hindsight I should of used conversion (InitiateCheckout).
Collect data
Along with A/B testing of campaigns - set up Facebook pixels on the different events
such as AddToCart, InitiateCheckout and Purchase. After 50 sales or so you may
want to create a lookalike from purchase.
Don't bother retargeting on failed conversion after they hit InitiateCheckout, they got scared
from the shipping and felt tricket and most likely won't convert ever.
Managing an order
You've got your first order. Great. Head over to AliExpress, place the order from the cheapest seller
with free shipping, and fill in the customer details (AliExpress seller -> Customer). Notify
the customer via email (collected by Stripe/PayPal) that the order has been processed).
Scaling
As you probably can figure out, placing orders is extremely time consuming for very little
money. Your time is better spent optimizing and finding other opportunities. Right?
Here's where a system developer comes in the picture. What I did was a bot
that got alerted when a new order was placed through the website.
It then went to AliExpress, searched for the cheapest seller of that item (with good reviews),
placed an order, filled the customers information, solved captcha and paid for the order,
then sent an notification to customer that order has been processed.
Video (terribly sorry for the quality, no screen recorder on my desktop):
Why I stopped it
Dispute rates
AliExpress shipping times (free ones) are extremely long, 30-45 days. Most customers
cannot wait this long, which I'm sure we all can understand. Therefore, I got a lot
of disputes (2.3% if I remember correctly). This is very bad stats, but as it's spread out over
two payment methods (Stripe and PayPal) it's under the limits. However, I run a lot of websites
using Stripe and PayPal - and this site alone ate up my breathing room, so couldn't risk it.
Dishonest (gray area)
You're practically tricking the customer by wording. It was a fun project to run as
the heavy tasks were automated, but not something you can show friends and family
and be proud of.
Unreliable sellers
As the bot was choosing seller based on price, sometimes, it chose a bad one, which resulted
in seller accepted payment and a few weeks later emails and says item is not in stock.
This was frustrating both for me and the client. The ideal way would be to build a connection
and pre-pick products, to make sure they can deliver and possibly negotiate prices.
Time I didn't and don't really have.
Questions?
If something is unclear, ask away!
Questions such as "How do I use power Ad Manager" is better asked on Google. There's
an incredible amount of tutorials out there on most of this stuff, it's nothing new.
Good luck!
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