Anyone own a succesful E Commerce business?

dubcorp

BANNED
Joined
Sep 29, 2011
Messages
206
Reaction score
26
About to start mine up again, had a few very quick questions.

Thanks blackhatters!
 
I have several clients that do 100% of their sales online. One does drop shipping and pulls in $30k+ a month, another makes their own product and does $15k.
 
I don't have one myself but I have an SEO client that does about $90k per month. There is
money to be made if you're selling the right product(s).
 
OP, it would probably be best if you would just post your questions in your thread. That is the fastest way to get them answered. I would not mind answering them for sure..
 
Let me just hijack thread a bit. The ones that make their own products, are those physical products? Also, how does one go about researching the market for what products to sell?
 
Ask away questions.....I might be able to help you as well. Have a few good performing e-commerce sites.
 
Mostly Physical products and 1 digital product. I usually research using the G Keyword Tool and G Insights.
 
Let me just hijack thread a bit. The ones that make their own products, are those physical products? Also, how does one go about researching the market for what products to sell?

If you're making your own (physical) product then you should have no need to research the market. All markets sell. Hand made usually means high quality and nearly no chance of defects or problems. Just make what you like making and sell it.

Digital products are much much harder to sell. For example, if you're trying to make a legit guide on how to make money with quality info it stil may not sell well. One reason: The dumbasses at warriorforum normally put out useless crap and may make the user think all guides will be like that. Just another rehash with 12 pages of affiliate links. Templates/Skins/Themes may sell well but you need to have an eye for design and possibly a coder.
 
Beside having the right products, market research, web design, seo..... what other things need to note for? i.e payment gateway. I too wanted to start e commerce site :)
 
I always wondered the main e-commerce website traffic source for those who make 40-90K monthly ?!
I don't feel like it's SEO, because today you rank, tomorrow you don't appear,
I don't think it's eBay, because a lot of competition.
Adwords must be having a killer price for a retailers.
Anyone had real experience with big ecommerce shops?
 
imperial444:
I personally prefer PPC to drive traffic to my ecommerce sites. I dont have to be on the mercy of SEO/ google's penguin, bear, giraffe, panda updates.
 
Beside having the right products, market research, web design, seo..... what other things need to note for? i.e payment gateway. I too wanted to start e commerce site :)

Know what you're selling and do proper research on how to make the customers convert. Some tips:
- The products need to have information and high quality pictures. No pictures or information = No sale.
- Keep them near the CTA. If they have to look or scroll for it you're losing sales.
- Provide an easy way to contact you for help! A 'contact us' section is important. Live chat with actual people there to help is a bonus. Depending on what you're selling you may benefit from a ticket sysem.
- Have an SSL certficate for your domain which is provided by a trusted provider. If the users see no SSL or get a warning (doesnt matter what the warning is either. It could be about not offering pie..) they will leave. It costs $50/year but it should pay off within the first week.
- Do not ask for information you do not need. Selling a digital product does not need a shipping address!
- Do not require registration (unless you technically require it and there's no other way [ex: membership website])
- If you accept credit card info on site then you should ease the consumers concern that you're going to steal it or have it stolen. Site scan seals, SSL seals and other security seals usually boost conversions 5-20%. Put these next/very near to the CC# form. Also put them in the footer.
- DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE STORE CC INFO! Do not store the card holder name, the CC#, the expiration date or the cvv! If you do and your site is compromised you will be able to be sued for millions. The only way you can store CC info and abide by visa/mc/amex rules is expensive (think $5k+/month) so just use an off-site processor like...
- Authorize.net . They have low processing fees and the best part about them is the AIM Gateway integration. The person can put all their CC information on your site and never leave. Your server will never see that information. It removes you from several parts of PA-DSS compliance
- (Done with payment info)
- Always keep your response times low. Anything over 24 hours is bad.
- Collect emails with email lists! Newsletters can boost your sales tons. Assure the customer you will not use it to spam, sell, trade or otherwise give away! Let them know right next to the input area!

So much more but I'm getting a bit bored typing this up lol.
 
I always wondered the main e-commerce website traffic source for those who make 40-90K monthly ?!
I don't feel like it's SEO, because today you rank, tomorrow you don't appear,
I don't think it's eBay, because a lot of competition.
Adwords must be having a killer price for a retailers.
Anyone had real experience with big ecommerce shops?

The two biggest factors:
SEO and return customers.

If you're worried about google updates removing you then you're black hatting or over optimizing. Ranking will be tough depending on your products but it's normally worth it if researched and determined to be a money maker. Also, as Suzie said you can try PPC. That is also dependent on your keywords/phrases but can deliver some great results. You could try doing media buys. Usually much cheaper and alot more effective.

Return customers are important. If you have good support and good follow-ups you can usually get the customer back atleast 2 more times. This is of course dependent on your product (if you sell cars, dont expect them back anytime soon) so profile your customers. Find the newbs, the experienced and the big spenders.
 
Well, return customers could usually have a nice % of the orders. So that's a good thing.
But To make them return, you need to make em first.
PPC and Media Buys looks like a good start from the day 1, but a lots of money spending and analyzing is required.
Basically for all the guys who wish to start ecommerce shop there is no such a thing to start a online shop with 0 investments nowadays.
Thanks guys
 
what a great thread this is turning out to be! much appreciation for posting helpful info and answering questions

ill be sending PMs out shortly :)
 
Thks zapdos. Typicall apart from products, what range of investment plus recurring fees we will be expecting? And for setting up a ecomm site, how much will a fully functional site costs designed in wordpress form? Thks
 
Thks zapdos. Typicall apart from products, what range of investment plus recurring fees we will be expecting? And for setting up a ecomm site, how much will a fully functional site costs designed in wordpress form? Thks

Really depends on your market. Generalization costs:

  • LLC registration (USA) : $50 -> $2000
  • Paypal: 2.9% + 0.30 per transaction (no startup fee)
  • Authorize.net: $75-$150 setup + $30/month + %fee and flat fee per transaction
  • Merchant account: $0 -> $200 setup + fees like above
  • Bank account: $0 -> $1000 (business account. Never use your personal bank account!)
  • SSL certificate: $50
  • Hosting: $25/month (Note: I never go budget hosts like hostgator/godaddy/1and1/hostwinds for critical sites)
  • Quarterly PCI scans: $75->$400/year
  • Tax software: Whatever quickbooks costs
  • Email sending: $5 or so (amazon SES)
  • Newsletter software: $0 -> $1500 (I like activecampaign which is $500 for 50k subs, $800 for 250k and more)



  • Ecommerce platform license: $free -> $1000
  • Mods: $0 -> $sky
  • Custom coding: $0 -> $sky
  • Template: $0 -> $250 (for premade)
  • Skin: $450+ (custom made, usually you should expect custom designs to be $1000 minimum for ecommerce)

Legit + legal ecommerce sites are not by any means cheap to get into. If you're passionate though, the cost is minimal and you should be able to make it all back very easily.

To answer your wordpress question, I don't know. If clients wish to sell, I suggest ecommerce platforms. If they wish to blog, I suggest blogging platforms. Essentially just using the purpose-built tool for the job. You may be able to get away with it costing nothing if your lucky. Anything beyond simple functions like listing products, having users add to cart, checkout and invoicing would probably need to be custom coded for your specific case.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top