First shopify project

swon · Dec 29, 2016

i launched my first shopify aliexpress dropship project. its been about 16 hours since i went live. I'm:

using instagram to drive traffic - CAREFUlLY following/liking followers of product related pages.
7 product pictures uploaded and link in bio on instagram page.
paypal payments only (Paypal business account).
US Customers only.
using oberlo, and google analytics.
i bought my own domain name.
offering free ePacket shipping on all orders.

Please dont ask what niche or what products i'm selling.

I've converted my own instagram aged PVA account into this shops "official" page. I'm getting good engagement i believe:

270 following.
206 followers.
79 likes at most.
37 likes on least.
between 2-11 comments/tags on each.

all products are below $10. Product+shipping is going to cost me between $3-5 at most. profit margin is at 70-100%. ($4 average profit margin).

However, i've only gotten 28 visitors (24 unique) to my store since going live 16 hours ago, (not counting the instagram crawlers visiting the link, they seem to be coming from "facebook"). 1 abandoned cart and 0 purchases. is this normal?

people seem to like the product, but whats stopping them to visit the store? its not fake accounts, i've been very careful as to who i follow and who follows me and all likes and comments seem to be genuine, e.g. people tag their friends and be like "you need this!" etc.
the store is functioning correctly, because i've done a test purchase and everything worked great. based on experience, how long would you say until the first purchase?

any advice or suggestions are greatly appreciated! thanks!

swon · Dec 30, 2016

bump.. Input really needed.

TheDutchLegend · Jan 4, 2017

hmm maybe you can your accs let grow and then start promoting?

Motherdex · Jan 4, 2017

With 24 unique visitors I would say it is a bit early to expect a sale. You need to drive a bunch more traffic to the site and then analyze the behavior to see if people are abandoning carts or not spending much time on the site.

stelios0 · Jan 4, 2017

if you only made 1 sale with 28 visitors you would be godlike.

for 280.000 unique visitors you would have 10.000 sales * $4 profit = $40.000

Probably you are asking too much.

MatteoMatt · Jan 4, 2017

I would reiteriate what most here said. It doesnt sound like your accounts are big enough to send much traffic, you will need to grow them a bit before you get more.

sampaioj · Jan 4, 2017

Do you have anything more information so I can do some additional research?

She · Jan 5, 2017

How can you get 206 followers within 16 hours? I ve been trying to gain followers these past two weeks and I only manage to get 30 followers...People unfollow my account when I follow too many people, so I can't follow more than 100 people in a day and out of those 100 people, only may be 10 people follow me back...so I really don't understand how can you get that many followers within a day manually(and only 7 images?)?
And How do you know if the account is fake or real?

swon · Jan 5, 2017

She said:
How can you get 206 followers within 16 hours? I ve been trying to gain followers these past two weeks and I only manage to get 30 followers...People unfollow my account when I follow too many people, so I can't follow more than 100 people in a day and out of those 100 people, only may be 10 people follow me back...so I really don't understand how can you get that many followers within a day manually(and only 7 images?)?
And How do you know if the account is fake or real?

Content matters, also the right hashtags. I manually target my followers. And the product i'm pushing is also interesting worth following. I'm confident that in the worst case scenario 90% Of my followers are real. I occassionally take the time to check profiles.

She · Jan 6, 2017

swon said:
Content matters, also the right hashtags. I manually target my followers. And the product i'm pushing is also interesting worth following. I'm confident that in the worst case scenario 90% Of my followers are real. I occassionally take the time to check profiles.

I am doing everything manually too....but I really have a hard time gaining followers...I do check their profiles, but I think the fake accounts have good pictures too? so how can you really tell?
Do you usually follow private accounts? How many people do you usually follow per day?

swon · Jan 6, 2017

She said:
I am doing everything manually too....but I really have a hard time gaining followers...I do check their profiles, but I think the fake accounts have good pictures too? so how can you really tell?
Do you usually follow private accounts? How many people do you usually follow per day?

depends what your page is about?

FOR EXAMPLE:
if your page is about hunting, fishing or outdoors then you should be following people from pages like guns, donald trump, "redneck vids" etc.
if your page is more about viral vids and stuff then you should be following younger generation, people from pages like justin bieber, kylie kardashian, etc. the more "teenage" age group.

it doesnt matter if its private profile or not for me.

Make sure you have a decent profile pic, a name, bio. something that makes your profile look appealing and active. don't be afraid to experiment.

hero76 · Jan 6, 2017

keep in mind after christmas noone in usa is really looking to buy anything. my friend's amazon store used to average $1000 a day in sales every day from November 1 to December 22. in the last two weeks after christmas he has only made $300. wait a couple of weeks please.

Percival90 · Jan 6, 2017

swon said:
I've converted my own instagram aged PVA account into this shops "official" page. I'm getting good engagement i believe:

270 following.

206 followers.

79 likes at most.

37 likes on least.

between 2-11 comments/tags on each.

all products are below $10. Product+shipping is going to cost me between $3-5 at most. profit margin is at 70-100%. ($4 average profit margin).

However, i've only gotten 28 visitors (24 unique) to my store since going live 16 hours ago, (not counting the instagram crawlers visiting the link, they seem to be coming from "facebook"). 1 abandoned cart and 0 purchases. is this normal?

people seem to like the product, but whats stopping them to visit the store? its not fake accounts, i've been very careful as to who i follow and who follows me and all likes and comments seem to be genuine, e.g. people tag their friends and be like "you need this!" etc.
the store is functioning correctly, because i've done a test purchase and everything worked great. based on experience, how long would you say until the first purchase?

any advice or suggestions are greatly appreciated! thanks!

Once you get more engagements, you'll start seeing sales. I had been building a certain niche account for a while before deciding on my next venture, and used that niche for my ecommerce store. At 8k targeted followers, get several hundred likes within an hour on each post. Usually make sales every day, with no money spent on ads. Currently working on expanding the reach with other means. Definitely a good way to make easy money.

I do recommend building your own store via Wordpress if you have the ability, as it will save you quite a bit. Shopify costs $660 a year.

arkelRMCF · Jan 30, 2017

Percival90 said:
Once you get more engagements, you'll start seeing sales. I had been building a certain niche account for a while before deciding on my next venture, and used that niche for my ecommerce store. At 8k targeted followers, get several hundred likes within an hour on each post. Usually make sales every day, with no money spent on ads. Currently working on expanding the reach with other means. Definitely a good way to make easy money.

I do recommend building your own store via Wordpress if you have the ability, as it will save you quite a bit. Shopify costs $660 a year.

does wordpress provides specific add ons needed, to psychologically force purchase? (fomo, oberlo etc.)

swon · Jan 30, 2017

arkelRMCF said:
does wordpress provides specific add ons needed, to psychologically force purchase? (fomo, oberlo etc.)

what do you mean by "psychologically force"?

FunkyBlues · Jan 30, 2017

You need a lot more potential customers. Have you thought of contacting accounts and requesting a shoutout?

swon · Jan 30, 2017

FunkyBlues said:
You need a lot more potential customers. Have you thought of contacting accounts and requesting a shoutout?

Actually from the initial thread opening until now i have made good progress. I've been using facebook pages and instagram follows.

Now i was thinking of buying some shoutouts. Do you have any suggestions on picking a page? What do i look for? and what is a reasonable price for shoutouts per 1k followers?

MySideHustle · Jan 30, 2017

Nobody on instagram buys anything, 70% of accounts on there are just IM's like you an me, following and unfollowing each other in a big IM circlejerk.

Sure I'm exaggerating a little, but you get my point.

stelios0 · Jan 30, 2017

MySideHustle said:
Nobody on instagram buys anything, 70% of accounts on there are just IM's like you an me, following and unfollowing each other in a big IM circlejerk.

Sure I'm exaggerating a little, but you get my point.

maybe 20-30%

swon · Jan 30, 2017

MySideHustle said:
Nobody on Instagram buys anything, 70% of accounts on there are just IM's like you an me, following and unfollowing each other in a big IM circlejerk.

Sure I'm exaggerating a little, but you get my point.

stelios0 said:
maybe 20-30%

Aaaactually... I've revived this project in the last 4 days, I posted 6 products (pictures),172 visits from Instagram via the link in my bio. And I've had 4 purchases. I'm taking the time to manually follow people; I quickly check each profile I follow to see if the user fits the criteria I am targeting. Takes 5-10 seconds to quickly look at the profile, or if it's a private profile sometimes just look at the profile picture and read the bio.

4 sales is not huge, I know. But what matters to me is that it proves to me that this niche works, and I can make a buck. Now i need to look at which products have the most engagement, cut prices if necessary, or add more variations of those products. A couple more sales then I will test Facebook Ads and automate Instagram follows. - Then scale into other niches.

I'm happy to say: yes people on instagram do buy, and you can make a sale using Instagram.

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