Road to IM, eCommerce, SEO & Other stuff

okhan said:

Following your journey thread and I am very interested in the services site you are using. I'm starting my own ecom store, but I never though about doing a service through that where main costs would be for ads. Good luck!

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Thanks!

I'm not sure if service site is the correct phrase, but something to that affect. I will not say anything else about it for the moment, but perhaps in the future. I need to find the correct marketing plan.

I can say this though:

• It's comparable to creating websites for clients, but more complex.
• I have noticed that my (few) competitors that sell the same "service" charge ca $3.000-$11.000 per sale. I charge less. I actually got threatened by another competitor for selling my services TOO CHEAP! He wanted me to charge more. Quite bizarre.
• Competitor admitted to selling 4-6 of the "services" A WEEK, which is very interesting. He might be lying, but I'm quite sure he's making some sweet $!
  My issue: No idea where he gets his traffic from. Possibly Google Ads.

I will see how the "digital service site" goes with some paid ads. If it works, I'll keep it. If it seems like an endless ad money pit I will terminate the whole thing. I will make my research for the best target market first.

TO DO LIST:

• Investing in 500+ press releases (CNN, FOX, whatever) for my eCommerce
• Buying audience for my eCommerce FB + Insta (Followers, likes ETC. Will look more legit)
• Investing in some other SEO for eCommerce
• LEARN FB ADS & do $5 test runs
• Test ads for "service site", however not my #1 priority right now as it might be a loss. Hmm.

Let's see what happens. One day at a time.






Please doubt me! I like motivation

Social media likes/followers done!

• Instagram: 10k followers+100likes/post for the next 50 posts
• Facebook: 5K Page likes/followers+some 5 star ratings (Might get some more, we'll see)
  Mix of fake, real, active and so on.
• Invested in 11 uniquely written articles for the eCommerce. More content!

I am gonna have to check my on page SEO again, there are some issues that I need to deal with. Other than that the SEO part is going well, I think. I might be screwing things up, but my backlink portfolio should be pretty well diverse soon. Time will tell.


Time to focus on Facebook Ads
I'm watching videos from those $2k-$5k "FB+Shopify Courses" that you can download for free here at BHW They're up to an hour long per "episode" so it will take a while to watch it all, I'm playing in audience insights in between as well. Will start $5 FB ads test later this week.

Tips, tricks and whatever information I can get is appreciated!

Interesting journey to follow up. Best of luck to you!

daveinit8 said:

Interesting journey to follow up. Best of luck to you!

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Thanks, best of luck to you too!

Update:
I am now ranking for some long tail keywords with my ecommerce, far back on the pages. Some are sub pages, and for some keywords it's the home page.
I am waiting for 10x500 word articles and 4x1000 word articles for main & sub pages. I have updated my footer quite a bit too, with a lot more links and content. Also added a news/blog so I can add a lot of content to update the site regularly. Privacy policy, terms & conditions, about and so on is there as well.

The press release is submitted! Several places published the PR.

Also 'stole' 5 of my competitors backlinks, as in getting backlinks from the same site. Good niche sites!

What I am going to do (SEO)

• Add around 200-300 unique extra words on every product description. (Slowly, a few per day)
• Add the new articles to pages and reorder some stuff on homepage (ca 10,000 words total. Will replace most of my current content)
• Create and post some blog posts. Maybe buy some articles and put on automatic posting

I am changing things daily on my site. Better SEO optimising, changing/adding/editing products and other things.

Facebook ads
I have created and played around with different audience insights and ad sets. I have a few different ones that could possibly work so I will be testing soon, however I might postpone it to next week and read more about the subject of targeting. The power editor is quite complex and I want to feel ready before blowing away $.

The ecommerce I'm working on right now was for SEO purposes, not FB ads. The niche could be really hard to target with ads, so I will test but it might not work. If it doesn't, I will find a new niche and start a second store with focus on FB ads.



And just now while I wrote this, I realised there is another angle I could try with my current niche + FB ads.. Maybe even better than my first idea.

I Started running a Facebook post boost. Targeted, of course. Running on $20 budget for 5 days (ca $4/day).

So far I've spent $2.33 in total with these results:

• 14 likes
• One comment saying "Now I know what to buy when I get paid from work" and tagged a friend. We'll see the results when 5 days have passed. I have several target audiences, so I have more ads to try if the targeting is off and isn't giving me sales. I have a FB pixel on my site as well.
  

I got likes & emoji likes for the post before boosting it so there was a lot of interaction on the post pre-boost.

I'm still working on the website everyday for SEO. Adding reviews, updating product descriptions etc.

Will update how it goes with the ads.

SEO Update - 1 month since site start
Ranking position #19 for a long tail keyword.




I'll take it, considering the site is only around a month old. Ranking 50+ for other main keywords. Progress! One step at a time.

Half the FB page post engagement ad has ran. $10 spent and $10 left for the ad. NO SALES yet..



Good or bad engagement?

I don't know why FB is saying 3 abandoned carts or "22 website conversions" since that's not true.

Got comments with stuff like "these are too cool" and so on, but no one actually buys the item. I have hits on the website too, people check out the item but then leave. Price is on the ad, so people know the price before clicking my link.

Also have 800 pixel fires now, most since ad started.

I will let the ad run it's $20 course. After that, back to the drawing board and see what went wrong.

Got my first sale ($30) with $0.50 left on the FB AD budget!

Got all the money back for the ad cost so at least I didn't lose anything.

SEO Update

Keyword movements since 5 days ago:

1. #71 - #40
2. not found - #69
3. #96 - #26
4. #19 - #16

And a few main keywords has moved but still quite far back. At least it's moving in the right direction.

I didn't expect to move that much in just a month with a new site. Interesting to see what happens within the next 2 months or so.

Still thinking about what to do with the FB ads. I should've maybe let the ad keep going with $10 more. I made the money back for my ads, so I should've since it seemed like the ad had been optimised well right in the end and maybe started generating sales.

I also had a lot of abandoned checkouts, which was because of the shipping fee. I removed shipping costs and had free shipping on all orders, but after60% of the ad budget was spent. This probably affected a lot, and since I had one sale making my money back I could've made more with free shipping.. maybe. I have played with audience insights and power editor. I have created a new audience, very similar to before but this time it's hopefully people that are more "buyer intent". Will try ads again soon, $20 like before. I might do the same audience again but with free shipping from start, or the new one I created. Or both.

Also found a new niche for SEO. Might start on it soon. Even easier competition than the one I am currently working on, and with a much better profit margin.

There are a few issues with the niche though and I might have to buy the product and then ship from my home instead of dropship. I might try with one first and see if it's plausible.

I was in same situation as you, got one shopify sale with last few cents lol. Other then that didnt have sucess with FB Ads, I've watched alot videos aswell few hours of targetting tutorials etc. Hope you manage to succeed.

Yeah, I kinda find FB to be a cash sinkhole, I get a tons of impressions and clicks but nothing ever converts. I get further with other mediums tbh... But gotta keep trying and optimizing...

Classic Men said:

I was in same situation as you, got one shopify sale with last few cents lol. Other then that didnt have sucess with FB Ads, I've watched alot videos aswell few hours of targetting tutorials etc. Hope you manage to succeed.

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xxwgmxx said:

Yeah, I kinda find FB to be a cash sinkhole, I get a tons of impressions and clicks but nothing ever converts. I get further with other mediums tbh... But gotta keep trying and optimizing...

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Thanks for your inputs!

I will keep testing, but if it seems like a cash sinkhole I will stop it and try something else. Have you guys had any experience with purchase behaviours?
"Active credit card user"
"Engaged shoppers"
ETC.

Not sure if it would convert more having my audience targeting ran through one of them. Also thinking about running a conversions ad this time, not page post engagement. After all, PPE is just that: Likes, shares and comments. Everyone says different things on PPE/Conversions, so I guess the only way to know will be to try.

isnt shopify shop hard to make?

TheDutchLegend said:

isnt shopify shop hard to make?

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Hard to make? What do you mean? If you're talking SEO then I would disagree. I keep seeing Shopify stores ranking first position and pages constantly. Some html coding changes if you use free themes, but I like Shopify. They have updated quite well SEO wise and keeps doing it.

However if you are comfortable with Wordpress then it's probably a better choice, but I personally dislike Wordpress.
-

Started a second eCommerce for SEO today.
I decided to start with the niche I found 2 days ago.

Why wait when you can..

What I have done so far:

• Scouted good sellers and products
• Created logo/banner and designed the layout for the homepage
  
• Bought expired domain and connected the store

Will need to get quite a lot of content (text) for this eCommerce and focus more on the product descriptions, compared to the first store. Also need good blog content & lots of informational pages.

The niche is horrible to write for, so I will drop some $ on content writing.

Started my second FB ad yesterday night: 5 days and $20 again, but this time with a new audience.. And guess what happened.

I woke up to 3 new orders with only $3 spent on the ad so far!!




Fuck yeeeeeea! The new audience was much better. I can't believe it!

Not much money, but hey, progress:

Now it's been approx 12h since I started my second FB ad.

OVER $100 IN SALES TODAY

Result with $4 spent on ad



I will definitely add more $ to this ad if this keeps up. Double daily spend perhaps.

Will see what happens, a bit early to say anything.. but the results are pretty damn sweet so far.

WOOP WOOP!

Today is not going well:



Still a profit though, but $15 compared to over $100 yesterday even though there are more visits today? Damn.

Could've been lucky sales yesterday, or unlucky today. We will see.

Total ad spend: $10, half of the budget.
Sales in total: $123.50

Still good though.

tglr said:

Hello there people,

I am starting this thread to keep motivation up and track my progress. I am quite new to IM, I found BHW 6 months ago and that's where it all started. I have tried a lot of methods, some failed, some made a bit of money, but nothing sustainable. I have a background in graphic & web design, self taught. I started a Journey thread with Amazon affiliate, but quickly realised it's not my thing.

I have two websites for making money online at the moment:

1. eCommerce Shopify website
   Will try and rank and make sales with SEO. Competition isn't the best, so long term it should make some sales. It's a waiting game at the moment while BLs are getting indexed and what not.
   
   
2. "Services" site
   To get sales I will try classified ads, bulk email and other stuff. I won't talk much about what this site is since I want to keep it a secret. It doesn't make sales often, but when it does it's approximately $2000 in profit and I can do it all from home. I am gonna try some marketing stuff with this site, no SEO since it just won't work well with it.. I think, I will look into it more later. Two sales a month with this site and I would be golden.

What I've done on the eCommerce:

• Created logo and branding for eCommerce
• Created social media accounts for eCommerce
• eCommerce connected to domain and set live
• Full on site/page SEO with lots of original/quality content (some still needs re-editing)
• 100-150 backlinks in various forms
  Hopefully some sales from my service site can bring in some budget for backlinks.

I have gotten 60 hits on the eCommerce via Google

No sales yet though. But hey, it's been two weeks - Patience.
I have never tried ranking a site before (except my old journey with an affiliate site that was up for 2 weeks). I learnt what SEO meant recently, and I've read and studied it for 2 months so, I am not a pro on it.

I have some leads for my other site, but most clients always fall through. They're interested, ask questions, then bolt. Will update with how my marketing shit works for this one.

Wish me luck.

Click to expand...

Hey mate, you got a nice strategy back there! Good luck on your journey and God speed!

I

tglr said:

Thanks!

I'm not sure if service site is the correct phrase, but something to that affect. I will not say anything else about it for the moment, but perhaps in the future. I need to find the correct marketing plan.

I can say this though:

• It's comparable to creating websites for clients, but more complex.
• I have noticed that my (few) competitors that sell the same "service" charge ca $3.000-$11.000 per sale. I charge less. I actually got threatened by another competitor for selling my services TOO CHEAP! He wanted me to charge more. Quite bizarre.
• Competitor admitted to selling 4-6 of the "services" A WEEK, which is very interesting. He might be lying, but I'm quite sure he's making some sweet $!
  My issue: No idea where he gets his traffic from. Possibly Google Ads.

I will see how the "digital service site" goes with some paid ads. If it works, I'll keep it. If it seems like an endless ad money pit I will terminate the whole thing. I will make my research for the best target market first.

TO DO LIST:

• Investing in 500+ press releases (CNN, FOX, whatever) for my eCommerce
• Buying audience for my eCommerce FB + Insta (Followers, likes ETC. Will look more legit)
• Investing in some other SEO for eCommerce
• LEARN FB ADS & do $5 test runs
• Test ads for "service site", however not my #1 priority right now as it might be a loss. Hmm.

Let's see what happens. One day at a time.

"WHEN YOU WORK FOR OTHERS, YOU ARE AT THEIR MERCY. THEY OWN YOUR WORK; THEY OWN YOU. YOUR CREATIVE SPIRIT IS SQUASHED. WHAT KEEPS YOU IN SUCH POSITIONS IS A FEAR OF HAVING TO SINK OR SWIM ON YOUR OWN. INSTEAD YOU SHOULD HAVE A GREATER FEAR OF WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO YOU IF YOU REMAIN DEPENDENT ON OTHERS FOR POWER. YOUR GOAL IN EVERY MANEUVER IN LIFE MUST BE OWNERSHIP, WORKING THE CORNER FOR YOURSELF. WHEN IT IS YOURS TO LOSE-YOU ARE MORE MOTIVATED, MORE CREATIVE, MORE ALIVE. THE ULTIMATE POWER IN LIFE IS TO BE COMPLETELY SELF-RELIANT, COMPLETELY YOURSELF.”
― 50 Cent Great entrepreneur, believe it or not.​

Some day. ​

Please doubt me! I like motivation

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Won't doubt you! As I can see, you got a clear goal in your head and I know you will achieve your dream!

Syrus Enriquez said:

Hey mate, you got a nice strategy back there! Good luck on your journey and God speed!

Click to expand...

Syrus Enriquez said:

Won't doubt you! As I can see, you got a clear goal in your head and I know you will achieve your dream!

Click to expand...

Thanks a lot friend, hope you achieve your dreams too!