It's hard to put in words how I feel right now. It elation + optimism for the future + the world being more colorful. If I could turn this feeling into a pill, I'd be the #1 store on Shopify. It's like I have a new life.
I don't know if I got lucky or it was persistence.
Here are the things I did differently from all my failed attempts that I think made the difference:
I don't know if I got lucky or it was persistence.
Here are the things I did differently from all my failed attempts that I think made the difference:
- I stopped pouring my time into the relatively unimportant things. Should I use WooCommerce or Shopify or BigCommerce? Should I sell on Amazon or create my own eCom store? Should I use Amazon FBA or Merchant By Amazon? Will this YouTube video teach me something new? Instead, I focused solely on the two most important things a) Am I selling something people actually want to buy? and is that item different than what's out there? b) Do I have a cost effective way to get this out in front of the customer? On a side note, I originally tried to find products just by browsing Alibaba or trying to find potential niches on Amazon. Although I didn't realize it at the time, I shifted this into what do I actually know about? and what do I wish existed? If you're super into fly fishing ask what you wish you had but doesn't currently exist?
- I tested my product ideas BEFORE I manufactured them When I had my product idea, I found a subreddit (and later had success with Facebook Groups and forums) related to that product and messaged ~20 people telling them what I was trying to do and asked for their honest feedback. My first few product ideas were torn to shreds. It really helped me realize that not all of my ideas are good. My fourth product idea started to get some positive feedback. People told me things like "Dude, I would totally buy this" or "This thing is so cool." It really didn't take more than a few hours to understand whether my idea was good or bad. A few of these people even turned into paying customers. On a slight tangent, I asked these people lot's of other questions along the way. Everything from product naming, to my pricing strategy. I think the technical term of this methodology is customer development. I got a lot of questions around this when I posted to r/Shopify so let me elaborate a little bit. 1) I didn't post in these forums / subreddits asking for feedback right away instead I DMed people directly saying something like this "I know this is a lot to ask, but I'm thinking of creating a ABCD that does XYZ. Would it be okay if I ask you a few questions to see if my idea is actually worthwhile? I don't want to make something if people won't use it." I would say about 50% of people responded. 2) I egnaged in open minded conversations with people about how they would use my product, if they buy things like it already, what things would be most important to them, etc. 3) After I've had 20ish good conversations and feel that my idea was polished, I posted in the community asking for their advice.
- I stopped importing trash off Alibaba / AliExpress I've tried getting samples from Alibaba 1/2 a dozen times. It always failed.Quality was too poor or the manufacturer was etchy or the pricing seemed too high. AliExpress shippers were unreliable, forced you to peddle the same products as everyone else and led to customer service nightmears. I saw a post (I think on r/Shopify) a few months back about a free tool called ImportYeti. So epic. Just find a competitor that already makes a product similar to what you're trying to sell, search them on Import Yeti, find their supplier and then message the supplier. I found these suppliers were more professional and a lot cheaper than the people I messaged on Alibaba.
- I marketed by being a part of the community Instead of trying to use FaceBook ads, PPC, etc. I focused 100% on interacting with the relevant communities and trying to find new relevant communities while my product was being manufactured. I got 100% of the revenue above from posting my product and then getting shares, retweets, upvotes, etc. It's interesting that nobody said my posts were spam. I'm guess it's because I was actually giving back to those communities. I was posting all of the time and really trying to add value. I got a lot of questions around this section when I posted in r/Shopify so let me clarify a bit. 1) I don't think all niches have communities related to them. E.x. Shower Door Handles. 2) A lot of niches do though. I started out finding a subreddit related to that niche. If I'm going to use guitars as an example there is r/Guitar but also r/Offset, r/AcousticGuitar etc. when you spend a lot of time in those guitar communities you'll likely find other communities, discord channels, etc. I also would have googled guitar forusm and found TDPRI, Strat-Talk, MyLesPaul, etc.
- I stopped putting get rich quick eCom stuff in my head I think a lot of the "gurus" out there are kind of full of it. I started reading more normal business stuff and it led to a shift in my mindset and taught me actually helpful technical skills.
- The Corona Virus made me more creative I was furloughed due to the Corona Virus. It gave me large chunks of time to think through things versus just spending a 1/2 assed hour a night working on things. It wasn't a "make it or break it" situation for me. My "day job" hired me back... but having those 6ish weeks of thinking really made a big difference. I'm not 100% sure how I'm going to replicate this in my life going forward.
- I focused on "building a brand" @decarlo pointed this out during a discussion. I didn't really think of things in these terms when originally writing the post becuase I think of brands as Apple or Coca-Cola. I did focus on creating a product with a name, unique value / selling propisistion and actually innovated on what's currently for sale. A good analogy would be, I created a guitar pick in a different shape and different type of grip that metal players were looking for -- and I knew this because I am one.