E-commerce journey to build two brands

So a little background of myself. I'm a guy who lives in a 3rd world country hoping to make it big, really big using the internet. I've been on bhw browsing about for quite sometime now and did some experiments here and there and built a drop shipping site which did fairly decent for my first attempt at it, which I ended up selling to a guy local to me for $25k. After that I've just been doing some different work online and such which got me to an amount which allows me to live quite well, but majority of it goes into expenses, rent bills, siblings tuitions parents treatment etc. So at the end of the month I don't have as much left as I'd like to. So thinking back to my drop shipping attempt, I'm doing two new ecom websites.

The plan
I'm going for two different websites, one apparel site for the masses. I'll be drop shipping on this one and I've got my suppliers ready, everything is priced very competitively and Shipping and handling will be done by a fulfillment center. The other being a more upscale one, bespoke leather accessories and custom design limited run clothing. These are being sourced locally instead of China since my country is known for these.

My progress:
I've got the leather accessories ready, the supplier for these is also the supplier for Tommy Hilfiger so the Quality is definitely there. For the clothing for the upscale one I've got some of it ready but still looking for a supplier for t-shirts. And for the drop shipping one I've got my products listed on the website and I just have to do my custom descriptions and front end design.

Marketing plans:
For this, I've got just one thing planned, influencer marketing. If anyone here knows about fashion nova, this is how they got big so fast. And I plan on using the same method but with some black hat techniques involved.

Goals?
My aim for now is to have things ready and started so that I can target black Friday, I know extremely tight but I'm still going for it.
Long term goal?
I don't know to be honest, I'm moving to Japan in April and I'd want to get these two upto stable mid 5 figure revenue per month

Plans for tomorrow
I'm going to meet with a t-shirts supplier I think are pretty good but can't really afirm anything unless I see them in person. After that I'll be visiting the leather goods supplier to pick up some bags and jackets and take those over to a friend of mine who'll be helping me with product photography. Tomorrow is gonna be very busy.

Seems very well thought-out journey. What exactly do you mean you will use black hat techniques for influencers marketing? Also do you do the shipping or will the supplier do that?

mhtro said:

Seems very well thought-out journey. What exactly do you mean you will use black hat techniques for influencers marketing? Also do you do the shipping or will the supplier do that?

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Mass Instagram botting to boost the main accounts to boost credebillty. Shipping will be handled by me separately for better quality control

Good luck on your journey, you seem to have a lot of experience, hoping to learn from you.

BakaUsagi said:

Mass Instagram botting to boost the main accounts to boost credebillty. Shipping will be handled by me separately for better quality control

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Oh ok gotcha, pretty straightforward you will be paying influencers to promote your product /main page (which will be botted to seem more trustworthy). What I suggest you do that will get you a shit ton of shout outs for (mostly free) is pay a influencer to post in their story your giveaway (something like a 300£ gift card for your store) make their story link back to your original post and make the requirements to join the giveaway something like this:

1- Follow [store profile]
2 - Like this post
3 - Tag [X] amount of friends
4- Post this to your story (or something along those lines)

A guy I know did this, he paid the influencer 130£ for a story and I think a 13 hour post, and he got more than 3k shout outs from the influencers followers and more people. he got a shit ton of sales that 3 days.

This is a giant spoon-feed LMAO but I hope you appreciate it(if you have any special discounts for me hmu ).

mhtro said:

Oh ok gotcha, pretty straightforward you will be paying influencers to promote your product /main page (which will be botted to seem more trustworthy). What I suggest you do that will get you a shit ton of shout outs for (mostly free) is pay a influencer to post in their story your giveaway (something like a 300£ gift card for your store) make their story link back to your original post and make the requirements to join the giveaway something like this:

1- Follow [store profile]
2 - Like this post
3 - Tag [X] amount of friends
4- Post this to your story (or something along those lines)

A guy I know did this, he paid the influencer 130£ for a story and I think a 13 hour post, and he got more than 3k shout outs from the influencers followers and more people. he got a shit ton of sales that 3 days.

This is a giant spoon-feed LMAO but I hope you appreciate it(if you have any special discounts for me hmu ).

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Well that's the plan, well sort of. The free shout-out strategy I'm going for is the same one as for the zarainfluencer strategy

Good luck on your journey. May I know from which country you're? I'm also planning to start a drop shipping store soon, but seeing only obstacles .

Sounds like you are on the right track. Goodluck op

share4win said:

Good luck on your journey. May I know from which country you're? I'm also planning to start a drop shipping store soon, but seeing only obstacles .

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Bangladesh

Good luck OP, Instagram can do wonders if you know what you are doing.

For your store, are you gonna run Google/Facebook Ads? Are you gonna invest in SEO?

Or are you mostly relying on social media platforms?

BlueBuzzy said:

Good luck OP, Instagram can do wonders if you know what you are doing.

For your store, are you gonna run Google/Facebook Ads? Are you gonna invest in SEO?

Or are you mostly relying on social media platforms?

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I'll definitely be doing SEO but not now, if I had to say when, probably be January 2019. And as for ads, yes I'll most definitely be running ads on Facebook but only for the upscale one. And only Pinterest ads for the drop shipping one. Other than that it'll be Instagram for the most part

BakaUsagi said:

I'll definitely be doing SEO but not now, if I had to say when, probably be January 2019. And as for ads, yes I'll most definitely be running ads on Facebook but only for the upscale one. And only Pinterest ads for the drop shipping one. Other than that it'll be Instagram for the most part

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Do you see potential in Pinterest adds? Been looking into them quite a bit lately myself.

BlueBuzzy said:

Do you see potential in Pinterest adds? Been looking into them quite a bit lately myself.

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Most definitely, with one of my store most likely being mostly for the female demographic and Pinterest's majority users being women in their late 20s - mid 30s, it'd be dumb of me to not run ads

October 6, 2018
So, as per the previous post, today was vastly spent talking with the t-shirts supplier but they weren't up to my standards so will have to keep searching for something better. Successfully collected the new batch of products from my leather's supplier and went over to my friend's place to do the product photography. And boy oh boy was it something. We had to do some sketchy diy stuff for the setup, used cfl bulbs stuck onto stands made out of pvc pipes, light diffusers out of tracing paper and shoe box lids and chart papers as back drops. I know at this point it sounds like I just don't have any budget for this journey. Don't get me wrong, I could've bought all the proper equipments, but it'd end up costing like $300 in total and having someone else do it for me would've been at least $100 each session. What did my sketchy diy setup cost? $5. Yes, that's right 5 dollars plus a few drinks for ourselves, and I mean my friend doesn't do indoor photography so he doesn't own any of the indoor photography equipments either. I got it done for $5 and I'd say quality wise the photos came out as good ad if not better than it would've been if I hired someone else for the job. Ended up being on the other side of the city for over half a day due to this, but we'll worth it.

And plans for tomorrow would be to take those photos and do all the required post production editing. That's it.

Thanks for the update. Good luck for what's coming and keep us updated!

A really interesting journey. following. good luck

Great plan. It seems very well thought.

One thing I would suggest is to make sure to utilize a Facebook pixel for your website. The tracking can do wonders and you'll be able to create a lookalike audience; which results in higher conversions on your FB ads since they're targeting users related to those that bought from you.

Good luck!

Where are you getting your dropshippers? Aliexpress?

blackbeans said:

Where are you getting your dropshippers? Aliexpress?

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No, suppliers were sourced during my last visit to China not too long ago