First Store - Journey

bhldev

New Member
Hi All,
Started my first store and would like to share details with you. No sales yet!
  • Some minimum technical skill required such as DNS, cPanel, so on. I haven't used Shopify yet, but maybe this is one drawback of Wordpress -- more technical skill required. This is to be expected. One annoying part is DNS redirection takes 24-48 hours, so I had to wait before being access it after installing the HTTPS cert (yes, another technical requirement)
  • Importing the products and cleaning up the products is a major pain... taking the AliExpress descriptions and names and cleaning them up. I created a template, one sentence to draw them in, one additional sentence with additional information and one line of what they get. I have not tried the automatic import, because even if I automatic import I have to cleanup the link and description so I reasoned better to select the products.
  • I was setting up the prices manually, and it took a long time. Using my own knowledge of what people would want to pay. I was also selecting the products, based on my own knowledge of what people would want to buy. This is probably a mistake for making money.
  • I started by e-mailing Aliexpress suppliers about dropshipping, about 20 have said they support it (even if they say order must match purchase address) and only 1 didn't know what it was and no rejections
So, if I was to do this for real (as a real replacement / future replacement to my income) this is what I would do :
  • Definitely use the auto importer, to drop in all the items. There just isn't time to select the items, plus what I want is obviously not what everyone else wants
  • Definitely use price brackets and automatic update. There isn't time to manually price every item based on your own personal biases
  • Definitely pick a niche (or three or five) and rotate away from niches that need a lot of details and custom work. It seems like people are having success picking licensed merchandise. Well, I would never do that, but if I was starving and desperate and had no job and education, my morals might be corrupted! Better yet, create a general store with five "niches" or ten "niches" and import thousands of products. With the autoimporter this can take a matter of hours not days or weeks.
  • Definitely create good copy for the Facebook ad. Everything depends on the copy, and the Facebook video / Instagram ad. All the time you save on technical setup (importing products, updating products, pricing) you use on advertising. Everything is about the advertising. I would spend 95% of time on the advertising and 5% of time on the technical crap.
  • Buy dozens of AliDropShip licenses and dozens of domain names and do it en masse (very possible since it's only a one-time fee the MAIN ATTRACTION of AliDropShip to me). Hosting being 80-100 dollars / year, domain name 15 dollars, the plugin 100 dollars I think I would piss away 3k - 5k to really setup a business if I wanted to, all made possible due to AliDropShip. Suboptimally, create one general store with dozens of niche categories, and try to target the Facebook ads to the niche homepage instead of the landing page (internal link).
So, in the end, thumbs up to AliDropship plugin... but it's not as easy as it seems at first (not the problem with the plugin but selling in general), and you definitely have to throw away preconceptions and internal biases to have a successful business. And from what I can see, be very structured and mechanical and treat it as a business not as a hobby. Which I don't plan to do for now.

It's almost like playing the lottery, only with unlimited number of tickets. The value of the auto importer cannot be overstated. Cleanup of the item should take less than 2 minutes... the link, one sentence describing it, some witty remark, additional information (like batteries not included) and what is actually included was my template.

Doing it the hobby way, probably won't lead me to any sales at all. Still it was fun, and maybe I will dump a weekend or three to do it the "right" way later. Pissing away $1 dollar a day on Facebook, just to see how it works... seems no matter what parameters I use, it says "target audience is broad" which would be fine for a general store anyway...

Total true "non-luck" monetary cost (luck defined as picking a winning niche or hitting it big with a general store, non-luck defined as picking several niches / several stores since the first one is unlikely to succeed goes with anything in life) is probably several hundred to several low-thousand dollars, realistically. The technical requirement is also there. Still cheaper than anything, and easier than anything.

~ B
 

bhldev

New Member
First week, 1 visit (an accidental click in the first hour) and 7 dollars later with 600 impressions. No sales.

I am glad I didn't spend more money on Facebook ads... because I saw too many youtube videos of people who spent hundreds of dollars on Facebook ads and got nothing. So I knew what would happen.

Basically, spending $1 dollar to start was good to realize I was most likely pissing away money... without marketing knowledge, spending money on ads is useless. So next step will be to get that knowledge somehow, and spice up my site so that it works.

* All the BS marketing about "virus scanned" "buyer guarantee" etc., I will probably add back on (I took it out as superfluous)
* I will probably add PayPal back on (have Stripe only right now) because of people's paranoia.
* I will probably figure out a proper logo and Facebook page.
* I will redo my ads to target a certain demographic or at least a certain lifestyle (put some hot women, hot men, and pictures RELEVANT to the store). I will probably have to create funny/meme like video ads somehow... yet another skill to learn (video editing / video ad creation) before I can get real hits.
* I will think about using the bulk importer, but still don't want to because importing 500 duplicate items and cleaning them up is a massive time sucker
* I will think about instagram influencers, but will wait until the store is more complete.

One thing my girlfriend said is "you are not a shopper" well I have to put my mindset into that of a shopper or else it won't work.

One thing I will not do is sell copyright items, because some things are worth not selling your soul over... and I am not desperate for money and have plenty of time. Probably still 2 months away from a first sale.

Anyone wants to see the site send me a PM, I will send the link.
 
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