FB or Adwords?

[pinno]

Hello all,
I have finally launched my store!! yay!!
and right away here comes the new and real problem...how do I get sales?
How did you guys get your sales? Do you guys prefer using FB ads or Google Adwords?
I have done a lot of ready of both but readings are readings they are not real experience,
so far both fb and google look equally expensive and both look equally useful/useless lol.
Would you guys mind to share your wisdom?

 

[pinno]

I heard that this is going to be a lonely journey and guess what
it looks like it really is...
how sad..

ok so i have started posting fb ads
no surprise that i have got tons of likes
and zeros sales
and i started to get worried

what if all these work was meant to be a waste of time?

i went on and did some research.
i found some other dropshipping stores, and those that are performing really well
although im not any better myself but to me, none of their design look professional
that doesnt matter at all tho, the important thing is to get sales
and their's are selling and mine is not...
apparently visual design doesnt worth that much when it comes to getting sales online
at least not as much as i thought it would

the more l think the more i got worried
so again i went back to google and did more searches
this one article i found may be helpful for those who are in the same situation as mine
https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshsteimle/2015/02/07/how-long-does-seo-take-to-start-working/
the author basically says there is no way to hurry
it takes about 6 months, especially sites with new domain names, no history and no big budget, to start seeing leads/sales
there are many other articles on this topic and they all basically are saying the same thing: 3-6 months to start seeing results
please pay attention to the word "start",
the good news here is if we're doing things right, 6 months is the time to start seeing good changes, but whatever we will see in 12 months should be a lot more, the forbe guy says
this is apparently true for even big companies
so let's hope this is true indeed
I have read some gurus saying that they make $XXXXX over night or in just a few days/weeks,
probably are just lies...

by the way, those dropshipping stores that i did research on have traffic info from the past three years that actually make mebelieve that what that forbe guy says is true
one of those sites is three years old but their traffics started picking up only two year later, which is when the store owner said he started dropshipping
the other site was two years old, not much traffics until about a year after it was started
and saw a dramatic jump in traffics at the start of its second year
i wonder what the owner did then to create that surge in traffics...
also, both are ranked among top 500,000 websites worldwide
which is of course impressive, i mean, they are sites that dont even visually look professional but they are both huge success.
whoever own those sites must be very smart and talented in SEO
if we give up before the first 6 months, it is no better than just thrown away our money in the garbage
so guys, worry less about your visual design and pay more attention to SEO

there's not too many things we can miss when it comes to seo, or are there?
create fb pages,
promote using fb ads, booast,
buy google ads,
get backlinks,
post on instagram,
post on pinterest,
and as many major social media as you can
add more content to site: better descriptions, better titles, discount coupons, blah blah blah
is there anything else we need to do?
i hope i didnt miss anything here...thanks if youre kind enough to point out

thank god instagram wasnt too hard,
surprisingly im one of those who dont usually use social media at all
i sort of had to force myself to get going with posting at those places
and today, i guess i have put out my first step
and it wasnt too hard =)
which im happy about

we'll see what happens in 6 months,
i keep my fingers crossed.

 

[pinno]

Oh my god it is so so so much work when it comes to SEO
there is not much we can miss when it comes to SEO,
i still thik what i thought is correct
but there is so much to repeat with those tasks....
and they are not as straight forward as finding and adding products to your store
i have been posting and buying ads but no real results yet..
lots to do but outcomes are not predictable at all....
we can sit for a day and import products and we will see the products in our store at the end of the day
but when it comes to SEO, who the hell knows if things are done right and if we are even getting results, when??
Guys, if you ask me I would say building the website is only perhaps 20% of the work
Alidropship is great really because it helps us complete this 20% of work much much much more efficiently so that we can move on to do the rest faster...for that i am really thankful for Alidropship.com
guys it is totally worth it to get this plugin because we cant afford to spend our entire life adding products to our store by hand
and no, alidropship doesnt pay me to say this
this is a great product, alidropship!!

without the store we have nothing
but even if I have the online store built now
without traffics it still is worth nothing....
to be precise, i think i should add, even with traffics, without buying customers, everything STILL worth nothing...
so hurry up and get things finished so that we can move on to the seo part that decide if we make it or not

urghhhh....why is there always endless work to do????
god i have been losing sleep these past few days thinking and working on how to get traffics and this is NO fun haha
i am so so tired
wish i started this 200 years ago

 

[omktg]

Hey @pinno

Tell me, have you already decided whether to choose Facebook Ads or Google Ads?

They are completely different. In my opinion the main difference is the User Intent.

When you run a Facebook campaign, your target audience usually is not looking to buy anything, they are only looking at pictures of their friends, or reading anything in their free time. So they have no buying intent.

This means, that if you want to sell them anything, they will have to view your ad/offer more than once. This applies for most campaigns.

But when you run a Google Ads campaign, things are different. Because if its a search campaign, you already know that your users are looking for what you are selling, because they are searching for it.

So according to this, choose the platform that suits you best.

You also talked about SEO... well that is a completely different subject. Paid Traffic [Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Outbrain, etc] and SEO are not related. But the way to optimize a page has not changed much in recent years, so if you know/have some strategy in mind, it would be good to apply it.

Just stay away from scammers selling you software that you dont need, stay away from WSOs, and try to find blogs with good content that can help you develop the necessary skills for what you want to achieve.

 

[pinno]

Hello omktg,
Thanks for your good piece of advice. It didnt take me long to realize that there's no way to pick just fb or google, we have to try both.
5 days since my site launched, i have spent 50USD to test fb ads for 2 and a half days
and i got over 2000 post likes and only 26 page likes so far
if this is how it continues to go
i should expect to spend 10k usd to get 5k page likes
with no ideas of how many sales that may bring
what do you think? how do we estimate sales using such numbers?
what makes this more fun is everyone says google ads are more expensive than fb ads
what about email marketing? have you ever tried those?

 

[omktg]

Hey @pinno

If you are trying to make sales, then why are you running an engagement campaign?

Engagement is a campaign type to make people engage with your content, or get some page likes, but not for sales. Facebook will show your ads to the users it thinks will engage the most.

If you want, you can try to run an engagement campaign, for post engagement. But you will need to optimize that campaign later, based on the clicks you get, and not on the actual engagement [likes, shares, comments]

The reason, as i told you before, is because of the user intent. People who click on your ads have a higher buyer intent than people who don't [and the ones who don't are the ones liking and sharing, etc]

You can also test with a conversions campaign, and optimize the delivery for ViewContent, AddToCart, or Purchase, to see if it converts better.

 

[pinno]

Hello omktg,
Thanks again for your suggestions. Why do you think that i am running an engagement campaign not conversion? im curious..
anyways, i have run actually both
very few reactions from the conversion campaign so i started the engagement campaign too
with engagement campaign i did get a lot of likes and some comments & shares
but none brought me sales

trust me i have done my homework and read a lot of articles about ads and seos
what i have read is 99% similar to what you said above
but i dont think theyre enough
so far what is your experience like?
how long did it take for your store to make the first sale?
how many unique visitor do you have per day for your site?
how many page views?
and what, in general, have you done to get that?

 

[pouria]

There it is the sweetest part
once done all the homework and finish the website and with hopeful spirit looking for your first sell! but then, here it is nothing come out of it...
waiting 1 day, 1 week, 1 month ..errrr nothing out!
I totally feel you Pinno.
but dont give up if this shop is your real intention you need to treat it like a real store.
anyway, about facebook, I have watched a video somewhere that it was talking about how FB ads are useless nowadays as it's only a place to make money for Facebook and some low rating countries. which those people are getting paid to like certain amount of posts and how this can effect your ads as eventho you get like but they are not engaging enough and just waste of money.

personally i am going to try google, as I found it more cheaper since most of people focus on FB. and as it mentioned above, people are using google are those who are seeking for something.

Wish you best of luck. and update if you get sale

 

[pinno]

Hello Pouria,
Is this the sweetest part really? I was just venting a bit lol but seriously this is really puzzling me
I dont mind doing research I actually love investigating stuff but this time there is just too much uncertainties
and too much money, for me at least, can possibly be involved.

there are so many videos out there all saying different things
it's hard to know which is telling the truth and if i am understanding what they are trying to say correctly
but after this week,
i feel that a lot of them really are just bullshit
i am not sure if fb is a waste of money now because i do see a lot of business still invest a lot of money in fb
and im surprise to hear that you think google ad is cheaper than fb ads
from my experience it is not cheap at all, and wasnt helpful at all last time i tried it for my local market
actually if you search online, many say fb ads are cheaper than google ads
im not saying that what you say isnt correct but it looks like it also depends on many other factors
perhaps we all have to actually do it ourselves in order to find out whats best for our own cases

i toke a day off today to get some rest and calm my mind down
there must be something i havent found out yet
i did some through researches and yes there are people doing dropshipping and they are making good money for sure
i just need to find out the tricks and this is going to take time and likely much more efforts than i expected

at this point, all those info from those online gurus looks a lot like garbage to me
yeah they sound informative and make a lot of sense but when you look closer and when youre actually doing it
you find that they never touch any important points that really matter
none of those gurus will tell you the exact steps they themselves take to get 10 thousand unique users everyday
and how they sell at least 80 items per day etc
they tell you what products to pick but in real life it looks more like anything can make sales if you can get your customers
they tell you how to create fb ads but we dont need that, facebook has the best tutorials and thats all you need
they tell you how you should design your web store but in reality a few of the best selling sites i found looks quite ugly
they tell you not to do this not to do that but those are what they copied from the text books, sound right but useless
perhaps they dont even know how to sell themselves....theyre probably just making things up trying to sell you more garbage webinars and tutorials etc
on the other hand tho, there are people out there who never say a thing but are making good money doing this
thats why i wont give up
not so much fun doing all these work trying to find their tricks
but it is kind of addictive haha i cant stop wondering for a single second haha

enough venting lol i probably have made myself look silly enough saying so much stuff online like this
it's time to shut up and get work done

thanks again for the message and i wish you a great weekend

 

[omktg]

Hello omktg,
Thanks again for your suggestions. Why do you think that i am running an engagement campaign not conversion? im curious..
anyways, i have run actually both
very few reactions from the conversion campaign so i started the engagement campaign too
with engagement campaign i did get a lot of likes and some comments & shares
but none brought me sales

trust me i have done my homework and read a lot of articles about ads and seos
what i have read is 99% similar to what you said above
but i dont think theyre enough
so far what is your experience like?
how long did it take for your store to make the first sale?
how many unique visitor do you have per day for your site?
how many page views?
and what, in general, have you done to get that?

Hey @pinno

I thought you only made engagement campaigns, because you were talking about "I got over 2000 post likes and only 26 page likes so far" That is why i also said, that if you run an engagement campaign, you should focus on button/link clicks instead of likes/shares/comments.

Apparently the saturation of incorrect information is what makes most people lose interest in a platform. Youtube, is full of guys/kids who started their stores and managed to make 10K and already feel that they should create and sell their own course, and they feel like gurus on all issues related to Dropshipping. Maybe they are making more money selling their course, than with their stores.

I think that most people who are really earning thousands or even millions with their stores/websites, do not spend their time making videos on YouTube.

When watching some of these videos, I have identified a couple of guys that in my opinion help people to understand a bit more Facebook. But of course not everything they say is correct, like most Dropshippers, they are also newbies in marketing.

So if you really want to know about marketing, look for videos/blogs about affiliate marketing, direct response marketing, and how affiliates run campaigns on Facebook/adwords.

My background is on Affiliate Marketing.

You will noticed, that many of the things a Dropshipper just discovered this year, were commented 5 years ago or more by an Affiliate Marketer.

About my experience in Dropshipping... I got my first sale the same week I started running Facebook ads, then i ran different campaigns for that same testing store. [18 campaigns/26 adsets/70 ads]

After reviewing the campaign data, I noticed that something wasn't right. So i turned everything off, and i started modifying the theme i was using to make it convert better [my data showed that the theme design was the actual problem]

Then i saw here in the forum, that there was a new theme called Raphael, so did a little CSS test to see if it was easier to modify than the other, and it worked. So i decided to use only that new theme.

And that is where i am now with my Dropshipping stores.

I got many sites, only a few of them are Dropsshipping sites, and one of those sites is the one I did all my tests on.

About traffic, well i got sites with 6K page views a month, and more. my Dropshipping test has about 700 page views a month without paid traffic. But for affiliate offers, I had sites with over 70K page views a day, with paid traffic, and you can do a lot more than that. For those sites i use Vultr, because you can deploy a site today, killed it in 1 week, and they will only charge you for those 7 days of hosting... but thats affiliate stuff, and a little more advanced.

 

[pinno]

Hey omktg
Thanks for sharing your info.
Im not familiar at all with affiliate marketing but ill follow your advice and look into it as soon as i can.
Regarding fb ads, you said you run 18 campaigns 26 ad sets and 70 ads, how much did you spend for those 18 campaigns combined? For how long and in total how many sales did you get from that? If you dont mind sharing. I mean, we can get sales sooner or later if we buy enough ads but are they profitable at the end? Hows your strategy like?
Paid or free, it looks like youll need to get about 10k users per day with page views 2-3 times that number daily in order to be as successful as the other site i was checking. If someone as experienced as you can get only 6k views per month, then it obviously is going to take me much much longer to be where youre at....i guess theres no way to hurry... Or are there any shortcuts?
Where are you chatting from and what niche are you in? If you dont mind, can you point me to some useful info about affiliate marketing?
Again thanks for your sharing. It's nice to meet with people in your journey especially passionate people like you guys.

 

[omktg]

Right now I am using my phone.
But I got 6k a month views without paying for ads, just organic.

Of course you can do that too. Crate a massive social account, it depends on your niche, because each social network has a unique type of users and behaviors.

I spent like 300$ and I did not get that campaign profitable. And the reason was the site.

Have you ever read/heard someone asking why do I have so much clicks and no sales?

The unswer is super simple, it is your site. When you are running a campaign you need to understand what are the stats saying. For example if you see that your CTR is super low, what do you need to do to improve it? And if you increase that CTR what is going to happen?

Once you fixed all that stuff within the campaign, and you still not profitable, then something is wrong in the other end.

Your product maybe... But if you already know that the product is selling somewhere else, then there must be something wrong with your site.

Trust maybe, layout, colors?

If your site is not getting at least 1% conversion, then something is wrong with it. And that was why I decided to change almost everything.

Look, this guy is one of the good Dropshippers, that in my opinion are helping others to understand the business:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_Ic8HZSPfIW9TES3jPgpCg

And if you want to know more about affiliates, and how they run campaigns, then check this channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRK_TJzJBzwbOAy80vjtSwQ

That info alone cost thousands, and years of research. Because most of the times newbies arrive at the warrior forum, and other places to just get scammed.

Forget about the warrior forum. And forget about kids on YouTube.

Those affiliates are the people you should follow, and that really know what they are talking about.

 

[omktg]

And for SEO, this is the guy you need to follow:
https://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk

 

[pinno]

Hello again omktg,
Thanks for the info. Ill check them out this weekend. So, im super curious about your 300usd campaign. What happened after you made all the changes? What is your average profit margin for your products in that site? How much do you invest in your ads for that site now? Share if you feel comfortable of course and every bit of info is appreciated.

 

[omktg]

I haven't finish those changes

But I think It will be ready for a new test in about 10-15 days.

I couldn't do it before because Raphael is still in beta.

 

[pinno]

Alright, hope everything goes smoothly for you. I dont know anything about Raphael theme but what makes you decide to stick with it so much that you dont even consider switching to a different theme? I mean it can takes a long time until a beta version of anything to become finalized. I use flatsome with my wordpress site and so far it is already a lot of work even with their ux editor, i can imagine how much work it is to redo everything. So perhaps ill go ahead to study my seo stuff while you redo your site, and we'll discuss more after 2 weeks.
Do you work fulltime for yourself? I dream of working fulltime with this dropshipping thing myself but at the same time im afraid that this is not supposed to be a stable income source even if we become successful, especially with craxy trump is shaking up everything so much almost every day now...

 

[Direct Webstore]

FB ads or Google Adwords

Just try both and experiment. You get different results depending on what you're selling and who you're targeting.

Someone here may say they get great Adwords results selling fashion, but another may get terrible results selling pet gear.

Oh my god it is so so so much work when it comes to SEO

Sales via SEO and sales via Advertising are not related at all. Don't listen to anyone who says otherwise. They have no idea what they're talking about. You could have the most terrible SEO optimized site and sell heaps via advertising.

With the number of sites out there now, you'd die of old age waiting to make lots of money via SEO sales. Many are also saying that SEO is just about dead anyway ... almost. You still get some sales. But the older your site gets, the better SEO sales get. Initially, concentrate on Advertising, Instagram shoutouts and Email campaigns.

 

[pinno]

Hey buddy thanks, what do you suggest as our daily budget for fb ads?

 

[Direct Webstore]

Hey buddy thanks, what do you suggest as our daily budget for fb ads?

Everyone starts with $5 and sees how it goes. If it works ... increase it. If it doesn't, scrap it and try another ad design and/or targeting demographics.

 

[pinno]

I did but it was gaining impressions super slow with 5 bucks