Doing it right with E-commerce (Not an easy journey)

Hi BHWers,

It's been awhile since I've been on BHW ever since last year(2019) 30th may nuke from instagram. Time has flown right pass me since that happen, as I shut down my services and reach back to absolutely 0 daily/weekly/monthly income which then I realize that growing instagram accounts or providing it as a service will not be and will never be a long-term investment OR a reliable skillset which you can depend on.

Hence after giving it up on november, I've always wanted to try out e-commerce and never had a chance to. I grab my balls, and go in head first.

Have you every heard of dropshipping ?
It is a fulfillment model for e-commerce where-by you sell something without having inventory of the item you're selling. Basically means that when customer purchase on your store, you purchase the equal daily amount of stock required to fulfil the orders.

By far, it was a GREAT business model. But we all know what happen during feburary...


Back-tracking to november - feburary before what I'd considered as success and what did I start my first store with ?
After november when I throw my towel and gave IG the win, I decided to be a good boy and play by FB/IG rules. My plan was to do dropshippping via IG/FB ads, which basically means I'm officially whitehat now ? (I'm not sure too).

But the first store, what I did was I walked around my house finding products that I used and felt incredible confident in. In which I did, it was a "Fish filter", as I'm a fish hobbyist. I knew the in and out of keeping fish and know that it was a pain to do water changes weekly so I marketed the product to help reduce water changes, I had absolutely no idea how to run ads but I went deep head in first and knew that VIDEO ADS and my main three tips for anyone who is doing e-commerce and want to run video ads are these followings.

1. Suitable for tech, innovative, smart products which you can't find on aliexpress.
2. Make sure the first 3 seconds of the video you create a HOOK. In my case for my fish filter, the hook was to dump out all of the fish poop it amazingly collected.
3. Create GIF video and point explains text.
4. Create valuable review by copying the reviews into the website. (Technically it's a real review, but it doesn't belong to you)

What happen next amazed me was that, I was making decent amount with running ads 30$/day. But the problem with that is I'm breaking even or making only a little since the margin is really small.

Problems with item breaking because the filter is in plastic, all other related issues such as ads underperforming because I'm spending too little to allow the ads to learn.

What happened from march 6 till now.

I dumped that idea, and find a job. Before I wanted to quit my job, which I had quite a good connection during my time spent there. I initiated a proposal to my CEO regarding on running e-commerce website and I'm now able to run my own brand on products, setting up my second store, and third store(on my own as family business) and scaling easily.

As I'm not currently doing the fulfillment model of drop shipping due to extended delays from shipping, I'm keeping inventory. With a country of only 3 million reach for ads and after filters and etc I'm only being able to reach 200,000+ in audience if anyone do ads, they'd know that that is a REALLY small size compared to other country. But my product was selling out and during this whole time I'd say I was out of stock for about a month in between this period.

I'm looking into partnering with fulfilment centre around different countries and looking to scale, this 3 months has taught me whatever I need to be able to sell anything I want as long as I can vision how to market it, which will definite be a indespensable skillset and even easily charging other companies for ads manage 5 figure monthly for managing and optimizing. I even have my own photo/video studio set to do my product shoot, with proper funds backing I could easily scale and achieve what I could never achieve with minimal efforts. I'm managing 3 employees full-time helping with fulfilment while I build more and more stores.


I'm setting my journey for this thread to end when I hit $1,000,000 in sales OR by the end of this year december 31st. Lets see if I can hit the sales number, I'm pretty confident!

FEEL FREE TO ASK ME ANY QUESTIONS, I'LL TRY MY BEST TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS WHENEVER I"M ON BHW.

Following, are u getting profits with those ROAS values?

Hi, nice figures! Which types of ads and placements perform best for you? What is the percent of your IG traffic? Do you direct traffic to the product page? Did you try lead forms?

Bro,
Good luck and nice job
I just want to ask about what is the best way to fullfill your products? Which company or agent do you use? I contacted alot of companies and agents but nothinh works, Can you recommened one?

Following and good luck..
I'm also planning to make a e-commerce (dropshipping), but only with organic trafic by IG page, i'm now groing the account...what do you think about this? only organic or put ads too?

TooCorny said:

Following, are u getting profits with those ROAS values?

Click to expand...

Yes as stated in my OP, profits are between 35-40% after COG(Cost of Goods), Shipping, Local Courier, Advertising and etc.

Flask said:

Hi, nice figures! Which types of ads and placements perform best for you? What is the percent of your IG traffic? Do you direct traffic to the product page? Did you try lead forms?

Click to expand...

I'm utilizing video ads and image ads for retargeting.

Placement I've set it to automatic, I recommend for all campaigns as well as allow fb/ig to decide for you as they'd take in the data and distribute your budget in a more effective manner than you tempering with the ads too much.

I'd say 45% of the traffic are on instagram, even if you think that your product will not work for either one. Try it out with a good 7 days to allow data come in before making a decision. My first store(Which is now abandon) had 70% of the sales from instagram traffic and they're from the USA with age group between 45-65+ so you never know who are purchasing your product.

Even if you think your product are for youngster, you should still run the test before deciding.

iBeyond said:

Bro,
Good luck and nice job
I just want to ask about what is the best way to fulfill your products? Which company or agent do you use? I contacted alot of companies and agents but nothinh works, Can you recommened one?

Click to expand...

Could you explain more in details what is "Nothing works". I do not use any agent/companies but however I've a connection recommended from a friend, he is someone in china who helps purchase inventory, sourcing of products, QC and everything.

As I keep inventory, it's nice to have someone QC through my stuff and tell them to package it however I want. From product design to even packaging design every step of the way.

If you're looking for a reliable agent to do dropshipping, I'd recommend buying from supplier who keep their inventory in the US else it'll be a HUGE pain at the moment of pandemic. I can guarantee you that no one is able to ship 7-10 days to the US, EU,CA and etc at the moment due to the virus.

You should look into keeping inventory.

c4s4rin said:

Following and good luck..
I'm also planning to make a e-commerce (dropshipping), but only with organic trafic by IG page, i'm now groing the account...what do you think about this? only organic or put ads too?

Click to expand...

Organic traffic really depends on the quality of followers, are they following you for the sake of following or are they really engaging people who follows you as a brand is a totally different thing.

If you're running a niche page and converting it into business the engagement might dip all the way down, it's quite troublesome to convert. In my experience it'd be better to have a page with real engagements and running ads through it giving people who view your ads a little bit more trust.

I can't stop enforcing this more than anything else is the key to selling lies in whether if your customer build trust with you from the purchase. You should look into sales funnel for advertising and optimize from your ads to your product and even to your checkout process which is how you build trust.

This is very inspiring, good luck OP!

If I may I have questions as for your targeting audience - do you target interests or mostly remarketing/LAL?