2 months in and bad results...

Teno

New Member
Hi guys,

I wanted to share with you what I had been doing since starting about 2 months ago, as well as ask for advices.
I have sort of a japanese products niche, although it's pretty broad.

I keep testing, changing many things but so far my results have been pretty bad. I have earned 300 dollars in total.
I am from France, near Lyon, and I have sort of an engineering/luxury/medical background (I tried many things), and 0 web or marketing knowledge. This is all completely new to me, and very disconcerting (I'm used to dealing with products made to extremely high standards, so I often feel like I'm stealing people :/). The business is extremely interesting and I keep pushing but I'm getting a bit discouraged. Besides, I would like to ask how you guys are working : alone, with a partner ? I am alone and isolated and I find it hard psychologically.


2 months ago, I purchased the made-to-order website building service from Alidropship. I am very disappointed by it (I want to review it somewhere else). I like learning by doing things myself, or copying what works, and I got to learn nothing, only do reverse engineering in the end. I wouldn't recommend it if you're completely new as you'll need to learn anyway. Plus, I feel like it was not professionnally done (some incoherences and grammar, ...).
Now the plugin is excellent and intuitive, though there are some minor bugs and annoyances (I also want to report them).

So far, I have been building my facebook page and instagram, and testing, testing, testing.
Some facebook ads have netted me followers, but the majority have been useless. I almost always get a ctr of 3 to 8% but no conversion. I advertise using product images, in carousel or single image form.
A fullscreen ad I made netted me a lot of likes at the beginning (I am at around 1k), but facebook has now disapproved it (no idea why ?) Yet, I feel like I get no engagement from facebook followers. I made a giveaway which brought 2% of my followers to participate.

My instagram also gets very low engagement, with around 50 followers and a few likes on landscape pictures I take (I often go to Japan).
I have not done shoutouts as I struggle to find influencers (given my broad niche I feel lost and can't seem to find anyone related to what I sell), and the few I found asked me 100€ for 10k followers.

Right now, I am launching a few facebook ads (5€ daily budget) for a sakura necklace which I have sold 3 times (the "best" performing product) to different audiences in different countries, and I was considering narrowing the niche to a particular aspect of Japan (like sakura flowers).
I currently have 4 big categories (accessories, jewelry, decoration, traditional garments) and 4-5 subcategories for each. The michelangelo theme is clearly not adapted for this (no collapsible subcategories) so I am considering using the theme many of you use here (the one from world of harry).

This is the point I'm at. I'd really like your input and help, I feel I'm not progressing as fast as I'd like to. I'd also like to thank the alidropship team, which has always been very responsive.

Teno
 

waqas gulzar

New Member
hi,
its really sad .. and now a days its really hard to sell please share with us your website so that we can figure out about your website negative points ..

thanks
 

jubran

Active Member
Don't be sorry nor sad but work on it and don't expect much when your brand isn't well known so instead on focusing on sales, I would personally focus on brand building and let's say at least 2k on IG and 3K on Facebook so people would believe you and influencers would actually consider negotiating a good price.

I also believe that your targeting is wrong. Let's take one FB audience, could you tell me what you've done to sell which product? and I'll give you my feedback.
As for the theme, loads and loads of bad sellers have ruined the buyer's trust and now when people see the layout, they connect it with other websites which they had bad experience dealing with but that of course doesn't apply for everyone as also many buyers trust this layout of website. And if you want to edit the layout to be compatible with what you are selling, you should consider switching to WooCommerce from THIS MOMENT as you'll need to reupload the products.


And finally, I would suggest you to work on SEO as you might have a good placement for that niche. Get PR - Backlinks - loads of useful free content....
 

Teno

New Member
As for fb ads, I have tried it with similar interests in the USA, Canada, India, UK. So far I have tried to focus on a theme. I have done ads with pretty much every category on my shop to see if a specific product would fare better or not.
 
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jubran

Active Member
Hi there!

Let's begin with the product. It is sold for around $5, placing it at $39 is very high considering the brand awareness you already have. Try placing it at $19.
Another thing is the reviews. I suggest that you remove Russian language reviews. From my experience, people tend to not trust these reviews.

As for the latest ad, add urgency or promotion to the creative part. For example, add in the description a 10% coupon code and say it's only for 24 hours.
As for the targeting, you are basically targeting only the UK. Try this:
US, UK, Ireland , Canada & AU
Interest: Cherry blossom or Japan or 1 other interest related to your niche or product with high number of audience - Now press AND must also match then add one more interest related to your niche with high number of audience. If the audience ends up too high, add and must also match: necklace or pendant or engaged shoppers.
Age I would say 19 - 42

And finally, I suggest that you add hotjar to your website so you can see if there is any problem with your website and how the visitors behave on your website

Try that for $5 and see if the relevance score gets better.

Good luck
 

Teno

New Member
Thank you for your help jubran ! I'll test with your inputs and let you know how it goes. I had initially priced the necklace using the initial alidropship formula and wanted to try a higher price with a better product description.
 

crystalcelebi

New Member
Hi Teno :)

I'm new to the forum but I know people who like Japan and buy stuff. Most of them are Cosplayers (people who dress like fictional characters, in this case, Japanese). Take the advice of Jubran and have another test audience of people who like Cosplay and popular Japanese animation like Sakura Card Captors, Ranma Nibun no Ichi (Ranma ½) and so on. They are people who genuinely love Japan.

Wish you success and let us know how it goes.
 

Teno

New Member
Hello guys,
So a quick update : I have been focusing on improving product descriptions and make a few better and more focused facebook ads. I still have made only a few sales (4 sales totaling 100€ in a week, one of which was 60€, for approximately 150€ invested), but I have better engagement on social media as I think 2 ads have been really popular on instagram. My ads on higher priced products all get a low relevance score (4-5), while those with socks/bags get a 8-9.
I have been using hotjar and it has given me a lot of insight on things that prompted people to leave so thanks jubran ! I noticed product reviews and especially pictures from clients were what people always clicked on. The trial ends soon so I'll need to make more money before using it again.
I plan on developing a newsletter, write content on the blog, and look again at influencers on instagram. The latter is what I'm doing right now.
 
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