[GUIDE] Eccomerce, Small Ad Budget - $10 to $1,000 in 48 Hours

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Hey BHW! Polar here again, today I want to make a short guide on how I got started by making my method. I will be sharing the method and how you can reproduce it! I have tested this 3 times, and have actually mentored people with this in the past and some of my students made $5k in a week with this! I made this back in January and actually used this when I had a super low budget. I only had a used $100 gift card and spent $10 on ads for $1,000 revenue in 48 hours and $700 profit in total in that time frame! This method will use Instagram and Shopify. Also, the adspend was $10(hard to fit in title). The store plan costs $30, domain $14, and the rest can be free!

So lets get started!

-------------The Method-------------​

Introduction
We are going to start with if this is for you. This method is aimed towards a quick cash grab and not as much building a brand. If you want to make some money then give this a shot. I have not used this since February, however it should still work. I have tested this multiple times and it has worked 100% of the time with positive returns of $100-$1,000 per attempt with $10 spent each attempt. We are going to be using Instagram and Shopify to locate small hardcore niche's and sell them items with low competition through the fan pages on Instagram. We will also be finding a person in the niche who loves it to guide our decisions with products/site theme!

Getting Started
What you will need is beginner knowledge of shopify and oberlo. You can use WholeSaleTed's "Oberlo and Shopify" video tutorial to get general knowledge on these two things. However, I will explain them briefly:

Shopify:

-This is essentially a service that will help you host and build your websites. Shopify sites tend to be aimed towards sales rather than site decor. What I mean is you do not have as much control on content and placement of objects in the site itself. However, it is still very very manageable and will help you essentially dodge the requirement of knowing how to code sites for $30 a month. ​

Oberlo:

-Oberlo is an app within shopify, it will help you bulk edit, manage, add, and fulfill products on your site. This is VERY essential for time management and prevents a lot of hair loss. Oberlo takes products from Aliexpress/their supply to add on your store.​

Deciding What Type of Store You Will Use
For this method, we are going to take into consideration two store types: Pop-up and General. Allow me to explain both.

Pop-up:
A pop-up store in this method will be a store that you quickly make, gain some money, then shut down once you deplete the niche. The reason why I personally used pop-up for this method is because when selling to hardcore fans of any niche its important to try your absolute best to appeal to them. Which sounds more appealing to a Teen Wolf fan? A store about Stranger Things, Star Wars, Teen Wolf, etc. Or a store ALL about Teen Wolf? I think the answer is obvious. I do not personally know if it increases conversions, I honestly think it does very slightly, but the reason why you are using this method is because you have a low budget and need to make it bigger. So every dollar counts.

The pros of making a pop-up store is that it appeals to the niche a bit more than a store that has a lot of different niches in it. The con is that you have to change the store every time you decide to switch niches.

General:
A general store in this method is a store that sells content from many niches. This is better than a pop-up store mainly because it allows you to target more than 1 niche at a time and you can quickly cycle through niches to test. Meaning that if a niche does not work out, you can just delete its section of products and quickly add another niche to test. The cons of this would be it doesnt make the hardcore fans feel as warm and fuzzy when looking at the store.

Choosing Your Store Name/Instagram Name
No matter which store type you choose, you will need to have a name. The name must also be a general name. What do I mean? Take Walmart for example. If you have never heard of Walmart and asked what Walmart sells you would not know. Your store name needs to work in the same way because you will be either selling multiple niche items with the general store, or rotating niches with your pop-up store. I always went with a random name then essentials. So it would be "PolarEssentials.com".

The Instagram must have the name too, and a bit of social proof if you can acquire some. This is mainly because you do not want the people who will be shouting your store out thinking that you are a sketchy account.

Picking a Niche
Finding The Niche:
So the next step will be picking a niche. Now, this may be peculiar to some of you, but it does work. I will tell you how I picked mine.

What I did was go to a public place and looked for people who were expressive of what they liked. What do I mean? Lets take this into consideration:

I believe there are three L's in any niche.

• The people who LIKE the niche.
• The people who LOVE the niche.
• The people who LIVE for the niche.

We are looking for people who LIVE for a niche. These people tend to be the ones walking around with a Rick and Morty shirt or any apparel that represents what they LOVE. We want to try to dodge people who are mainstream and like/love a niche. Personally I LIKE Stranger Things, but I do not LIVE for it, therefore I will not buy anything Stranger Things related. ​

So what you are looking for in public, or online, is a person who seems to be particularly expressive of any niche. The reason why you look for these people is because they clearly show they love a niche, and they very well may know some other good niches that have other hardcore lovers too. You are then going to proceed to meet them and ask them these questions once you have established what you are doing and why. The objective is to get them to tell you some niches that have hardcore fans, and low competition. Lower competition tends to mean cheaper shoutouts and more money per shoutout.

1. What other niches(use a different word if they do not understand) they love and that have a hardcore fan base.

2. Do those niches have a lot of sellers?

Once you ask these questions, you need to try and mentally make sure these niches check out. Remember we are going for niches with hardcore fan bases and practically no competition. If you feel as though they gave you a good list(5-10 niches), grab their contact information and tell them you will contact them later for more help.

If you decide you want more, continue to find more people. If you feel like you have enough or that the ones you received match the criteria, head home and begin niche research.

Researching The Niche:
Now that you have a new list of potentially profitable niches you need to decide on which one(s) you are going to venture into. I suggest checking all the fan pages in the niche for other promotions. SOME promotions are fine but we do not want over saturation. Then check for amount of accounts over 10k followers. Ideally you want 10-20 accounts over 10k followers in the niche you will be broadcasting in. You then need to check if those accounts are getting 1k likes on each post and check if those likes/engagement are legit. Honestly, if the account is 5k followers and gets 1-2k likes then that account is good too. We want to target smaller accounts in this case if we can because it allows us to test if the niche will be profitable for a lot cheaper than using an account with 200k followers. I only did a shoutout on a 50k follower account and got $1k revenue in 48 hours. The reason that I managed to get that many sales is because in this particular niche(Percy Jackson) all of the Like/Love fans eventually unfollowed, leaving the account with a higher concentration of fans who were hardcore and loved the niche.

Once all of the criteria is met with these accounts we need to DM every single account we can. Since you tend to find the best hardcore fans in dying niches, a lot of these accounts will actually be dying off. Thus many of them will be inactive. So, we want to DM as many as we can to prevent us from making a store/section dedicated to the niche and not be able to advertise because all of the accounts are inactive. I suggest using this script I designed a few months ago:

"Youre going to want the first part of the message to get their attention, because when you scroll through your DM's all you see is the first part. So what do I use? I do this for my first part

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Ex:
(Money or fire Emoji)BUSINESS RELATED(Money or fire emoji)

(Money or fire Emoji)SHOUTOUT RATES(Money or fire emoji)

(Money or fire Emoji)BUYING SHOUTOUTS(Money or fire emoji)

NOTE: Make sure it lets them think it is money related and that they will be potentially getting money. Money attracts

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This lets them scroll through all their DM's, which can be a ton and why they don't respond, they may be getting and it will catch their eyes. Especially the money and fire emoji. In the DM you want to talk about having a first post as a test post to get it a bit cheaper and talk about doing business in the future with them, because future business means more money for them. Like so

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Ex:
Hey, we are looking for new influencers for our company and were wondering what your shoutout rates are. We are looking for a long term relationship, and want to set up for a test. Get back to us when you can, thanks

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Personally I use the test post to get a cheaper rate for the first post and say if the statistics are good then we will be willing to pay more for future posts. They want money, so give them the thought of getting it and lure them like a little puppy into doing what you want for it.

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FINAL MESSAGE:
(Money or fire Emoji)BUSINESS RELATED(Money or fire emoji) Hey, we are looking for new influencers for our company and were wondering what your shoutout rates are. We are looking for a long term relationship, and want to set up for a test. Get back to us when you can, thanks.​

Once we get atleast 5 responses from one niche, we can begin building to store and making the products."​

Making The Store
Apps:​

Now that you have some influencers(The Instagram Accounts) to market through, we can begin the store production. For the store you will need to add a few apps:​

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In this list you will only need: Globo Reviews, Free Trust Badge by Hektor, Oberlo, Privy, Mailchimp, and Countdown Cart if you want to add some incentive.

I will briefly explain each and why we need them-

Globo Reviews:

-This will allow you to import aliexpress product reviews into your store for more legitimacy. I strongly advice you use this, however it is not mandatory. It does cost $7 a month if you decide to use it.​

Free Trust Badge By Hektor:

-This will give your store the "Safe checkout with x" images with a very very clean look. It makes the store look more sleek since it is all one organized color. This is a free app.​

Oberlo:

-Oberlo is an app within shopify, it will help you bulk edit, manage, add, and fulfill products on your site. This is VERY essential for time management and prevents a lot of hair loss. Oberlo takes products from Aliexpress/their supply to add on your store. This is a free app.​

Privy:

-This will enable email sign-up popups on your store. I would suggest adding "Sign up for 10% off your first order" to get more sales and an email list. This app is also very easy to edit to your liking. This is a free app.​

Mailchimp:

-This is an app that allows you to send out organized emails and perform other email functions. We will just be using it to send out emails in this Method after Privy collects them. This is a free app.
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Countdown Cart by Beeketing:

-This app will add incentive to our store with countdown timers, and other decent features like stock reduction. I do not personally use this, however you can. It does cost money monthly, but from the last time I checked it has a 14 day free trial.
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Products/Store Theme:
Now you need to pick products, however you more than likely are not a hardcore fan of the niche you are now in... So this is when you contact the person who gave you the niche. It is very important YOU DO NOT pick products yourself. You will stereotype what products the fans like 90% of the time which will reduce your sales dramatically. Once you contact your new partner, you need to discuss what products that he will buy and what someone in the niche would want. Let me show you guys a quote:

“Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I went fishing, I didn’t think about what I wanted. I thought about what they wanted. I didn't bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangled a worm or grasshopper in front of the fish and said: "Wouldn't you like to have that?" Why not use the same common sense when fishing for people?”
-Dale Carnegie​

You need to bait your shop with products that the 'fish' you are trying to catch like. In other words do not guess, or you will spend more time trying to figure out good products yourself rather than actually selling them. Think of your new partner like the passion of the business, while you are the business part of the business. You work on selling, not content. I personally always pay my niche adviser 10% of the profits so he wants to willing work with me. Anyways, you can show him oberlo and get him to add some products that he searches for and such while you work on the site. If you are working on a pop-up store it is important to periodically ask your niche adviser whether or not it looks good to him, since you are trying to appeal to him and people like him. Once the site, apps, and products are in place you need to work on ads. It is important to know I only spent legit like 4-5 hours on my site and still made money. When getting sales it truly comes down to how to targeting is, not the way the site looks. One of my students had the WORSE site I have ever seen, and proceeded to make $2.7k in revenue in 48 hours.. That shocked me but opened my eyes about what is important in a store, targeting. My store looked like this and still made a TON of money(all my other stores followed the same patterns):

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If you feel threatened by copyright, then just look up some products that show resemblance to the niche and sell those. For example, I looked up random god symbol necklaces and sold those, which made me the most money. Or having random scarves on an Lord Of The Rings niche and calling them "Elf Scarves".

The Ads:
For my ads I always made a story giveaway ad that was Free + Shipping, and a normal post ad advertising. I STRONGLY suggest you get help from your new friend on making the ads too. Here is what mine looked like(the idea was my niche advisers):

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As you can see, my F+S (Free Plus Shipping) ad actually looked like a giveaway, resulting in about 30 sales, and a lot of emails.

Retrying/Moving Forward
If the niche you tried did not workout, then try the next one. Normally I spend about $10 on ads, if I get a positive return then I keep using the niche until its exhausted. If I do not make a positive return, I convert the store to the next niche or make a new niche in my general store. I have had success with this 100% of the time with 4 stores and 4 different niches.

If you are successful then you can keep expanding by using your new email list to find new niches. Simply make a giveaway email, and send it to all the emails you gathered. To enter they must submit some new store ideas in niches they love that they wish existed. My email format was:

"Hello again fellow Camp Half-blood member! We are hosting a giveaway for you! How can you enter? EASY! Reply to this email with three movies, books, TV shows, celebrity, or even game themed stores you would buy merchandise from and wish existed!! Do not put something like "dogs" or "cats" because stores already exist! We are panning to open another store soon with another theme and need some ideas! What can you win? ANYTHING! Just pick anything you want off the store and we will pay for shipping and handling and cover ALL costs. Remember, reply to this email with three movies, books, TV shows, celebrity, or even game themed stores you would buy merchandise from and wish existed!

If you win you can pick ANY item off of our site and it will be sent to you completely free!"​

You should easily get a lot of emails back, after all they are writing about a topic they love and in return getting an item from another topic they love. Once you feel as though you have some good niches from the emails, repeat the process and look for a hardcore fan of that niche (or contact the person who sent the email).

Conclusion
This is how I started IM back in January. So this method is very very special to me since it is one that I made when I had no money and was ever so hungry for success. I hope that it can still be of use to many of you and start your IM ventures!

“Do not fear failure but rather fear not trying.”
― Roy T. Bennett​

-Polar

 

Thank you for this. It is so very refreshing to read. I happen to have a shopify store already setup. This is just what I needed to up my game

 

OMG, this was a good start for a newbies! Thank you so much mate. I also working on dropshipping, and mainly use Instagram to promote as it is cheaper.

 

This might help a friend which chose a general niche and is trying IG + Shopify

 

ANOTHER ONE

Nice little spin on IG E-Commerce

Might give this a try.

 

Good method OP and quite original however lots of work in relation to the research element of the method.

 

You are very welcome! You can for sure get some ideas with this method, personally I never was passionate for any stores I made. So I hired someone to be passionate for me haha!

No problem! Instagram is a PERFECT place to start as its easy to learn, and cheaper to make money than other methods.

Awesome!!! Glad to help!!!

Thank you! Glad you enjoy!

Awesome! Happy to have helped!

Thanks man! This was for sure a good method for me back when I first started and I am happy to share it!

It can be! But for me the entire process took less than an hour to find the niche, 4-7 hours to make the store, then I posted the ad and made the profit. Making the store from scratch takes the longest, however once you have one store made its SUPER easy to make it into a new store if you go with pop up. Probably 1-2 hours. If you have a general store its even easier to change up niches. And honestly with the amount you can make back when beginning, its well worth it

 

Hay mate, I have couple of questions-
1. Any tricks to find a profitable niche ?
2. How much initial budget should I spend ?

 

Interesting approach I must say!

 

well detailed, on point guide for anyone who want to start e-commerce business! thanks for sharing! Bookmarked.

 

Thanks for the Guide and Giving me an Good Thought to earn money. I think same method works with Shopify

 

Very nice guide and shows how easy it can be to get started with almost nothing and make some decent bank - will definitely help some people out

 

nice guide, but to long can you try to make a shorter version becouse it get so boaring have so many words like a novel.

where the building up the ig account to get all this woderfull traffic?

where the details to build the ig account to sucessfully get conversions.

shoutouts that IT?

where this dm script to dm all the ig users?

 

thanks for the extensive guide, surely will be a great contribution to the ecom content of BHW
is the trick here "get x free + shipping" or am i missing something else

 

no. look at the samples, it has price on it but discounted

 

nice guide, now I regret that I stopped this method cause I don't have money to invest. thanks for sharing

 

so what is the trick that turns 10$ into 1000$
i think im missing it

 

investment. the $10 is your capital from buying hosting, domain,etc. the capital that your going to use to buy items is the money that they pay to you when getting order. it depends on your niche on how you will gain profit

P.S you also need capital for shoutout on IGor you can do it manually for DMing and commenting on popular posts

 

When I use shopify + Oberlo. Will it autofulfill the orders? I don't need to spend money on purchasing the product on aliexpress site? I'm planning to this for a long time but don't have CC to use in aliexpress.

 

I think that giving up at just $10 spent is kinda too fast. Why not give it a try longer?