TheReturned
Newbie
- Sep 22, 2018
- 6
- 6
So im looking for advice, for other points of view, i started a small vape bussiness like 4 years ago, i was working fulltime in a big company (IT, programming, web design, etc) at the time and was ok there but i always been more of a self employed guy than to work for someone else, i started the bussiness because friends at work would just go like "wtf is that thing" and i ended up explaining and selling to them, one thing led to the next and before i knew it i had quit that job to do the vape biz full time, which i started with like $200 usd investment 1 month before lol.
1 year or so went by and i already had a couple distributors, was selling online (on an ebay of sorts site), some days i could walk with 1k usd in sales, life was good.
One day i wake up i was banned on the ebayish site, my product had been banned from being sold on the site and was illegal to sell on the country, i still tried to sell making fake accounts and stuff but they eventually got too good to detect the product so it was insta banned, so that income went out the window, i kept going since i had my distributors and the big list of returning customers, so i was ok, my bad move here was to never care about social media (FB, Twitter, etc), all my sales where always from returning customers, word in the street, etc since i was pretty scared to be found and get my stock taken or something.
Besides all this i was on a dying marriage that lasted way too long, quite depressed, i finally divorced 2 years ago (i started the divorce), meanwhile i kept selling but it was slowly less and less, and well today long gone are the days where i sold 500-1k usd daily, im lucky if i sell 50 us a day.
I took steps, late steps, on trying to save the bussiness since the start of the year, made a website, ranked it (currently on top 3-5 of Google for what i believe is the best keyword in my niche but im not sure now), site launched around March this year and has made... 4 sales... xD, my prices are fairly competitive but i feel this vape and liquids niche is just too crowded now or im doing something wrong.
Meanwhile i never had any problems with customs, but last month like 80% of my new stock got sized by customs, they required me to provide papers, call an agent, and a lot of shit that was just too much money so i had to have it returned to origin, however they never got back to me now and im afraid someone in customs just took everything regardless and i lost a lot of money in the process.
I have managed some stock to keep the clients i have happy and keep selling, 1 distributor remains which is pretty much what makes me afford a living atm, but if this distributor bails im going to be royally fucked.
At the start of the year i also made a FB page which i rly did not care to promote or post in, i must have like 3 comments on it (couple year sale offers from last year), even so it reached like 150 likes/followers on its own, made a twitter accound which stands at 0 tweets lol, and a week ago i started a IG which i have still to even upload a profile photo in, i also recovered the ebaish site account, was unbanned since the vapes have been kinda legalized now but not legal still so this site stip caring however regardless of my rep on the site its now crowded with people that is selling the same for way too cheap, managed to sell 2-3 things since then but is pretty much not even close to the volume i was selling when i was the king there.
As you can see i took a huge shit on social media, not caring about it, and i feel this costed me a lot now, i see my mistake but i wonder if its just too late now, i dont have the money to invest on it, maybe once i regain some sales but not now, the biz has been so kind to me while i was just too depressed to care about things, i want to save it and make it better but im not sure if its worth it anymore, maybe im going to be better just returning to what i was doing before, so final question would be if in your opinion if i put the time and effort on social media will it bring sales? will FB, twitter, IG be able to breath new life on my almost death vape biz?
1 year or so went by and i already had a couple distributors, was selling online (on an ebay of sorts site), some days i could walk with 1k usd in sales, life was good.
One day i wake up i was banned on the ebayish site, my product had been banned from being sold on the site and was illegal to sell on the country, i still tried to sell making fake accounts and stuff but they eventually got too good to detect the product so it was insta banned, so that income went out the window, i kept going since i had my distributors and the big list of returning customers, so i was ok, my bad move here was to never care about social media (FB, Twitter, etc), all my sales where always from returning customers, word in the street, etc since i was pretty scared to be found and get my stock taken or something.
Besides all this i was on a dying marriage that lasted way too long, quite depressed, i finally divorced 2 years ago (i started the divorce), meanwhile i kept selling but it was slowly less and less, and well today long gone are the days where i sold 500-1k usd daily, im lucky if i sell 50 us a day.
I took steps, late steps, on trying to save the bussiness since the start of the year, made a website, ranked it (currently on top 3-5 of Google for what i believe is the best keyword in my niche but im not sure now), site launched around March this year and has made... 4 sales... xD, my prices are fairly competitive but i feel this vape and liquids niche is just too crowded now or im doing something wrong.
Meanwhile i never had any problems with customs, but last month like 80% of my new stock got sized by customs, they required me to provide papers, call an agent, and a lot of shit that was just too much money so i had to have it returned to origin, however they never got back to me now and im afraid someone in customs just took everything regardless and i lost a lot of money in the process.
I have managed some stock to keep the clients i have happy and keep selling, 1 distributor remains which is pretty much what makes me afford a living atm, but if this distributor bails im going to be royally fucked.
At the start of the year i also made a FB page which i rly did not care to promote or post in, i must have like 3 comments on it (couple year sale offers from last year), even so it reached like 150 likes/followers on its own, made a twitter accound which stands at 0 tweets lol, and a week ago i started a IG which i have still to even upload a profile photo in, i also recovered the ebaish site account, was unbanned since the vapes have been kinda legalized now but not legal still so this site stip caring however regardless of my rep on the site its now crowded with people that is selling the same for way too cheap, managed to sell 2-3 things since then but is pretty much not even close to the volume i was selling when i was the king there.
As you can see i took a huge shit on social media, not caring about it, and i feel this costed me a lot now, i see my mistake but i wonder if its just too late now, i dont have the money to invest on it, maybe once i regain some sales but not now, the biz has been so kind to me while i was just too depressed to care about things, i want to save it and make it better but im not sure if its worth it anymore, maybe im going to be better just returning to what i was doing before, so final question would be if in your opinion if i put the time and effort on social media will it bring sales? will FB, twitter, IG be able to breath new life on my almost death vape biz?