New User, New Journey [Long]

[Moha]

Thanks Tokay for sharing your experience. Very informative for new entrants like me who want to learn.

I came here after reading @yaro post on warrior forum. I am already liking it here.

On your journey, I think stripe can be given more time. My opinion.
Coz I dont see any real problem unless buyer bank dint approve payment. We will anyway require more payment options than just paypal.

 

[Tokay]

Depends. I'm still not sure whether my Stripe Account will be suspended or not because I didn't provide a valid SSN. I checked the account this morning to find that the payout was made, now just waiting for it to show up in my Payoneer account which could take up to 3 days or more. Hopefully it works out. But I have been reading stories of people who had their accounts frozen and all the money in them suspended over things like this, not sure if they just got unlucky or its a matter of time..

 

[Moha]

I see your point. But if ssn was an issue, your account would not have been approved, right?

 

[jubran]

As what I understood from the IRS & the internet, you don't need an SSN but you MUST have a valid EIN from the IRS that matches your details at stripe.

 

[Moha]

I am in India, but I have SSN coz I worked in US for sometime. Do I still need EIN?

 

[Tokay]

I am in India, but I have SSN coz I worked in US for sometime. Do I still need EIN?

I don't think so.

The method posted on this forum and around the web before worked with using an EIN instead of SSN - Stripe required either. Now the EIN is optional and SSN is mandatory. I received the first payout from them yesterday evening and another 4 purchases were made overnight using Stripe so it seems so far (touchwood) everything is working.

 

[Tokay]

As what I understood from the IRS & the internet, you don't need an SSN but you MUST have a valid EIN from the IRS that matches your details at stripe.

I didn't put an EIN, this was marked as optional during the registration and I used 1234 as the last 4 digits of my SSN since it wouldn't accept 0000. So far it seems to be working but it's only been 1 week and 1 payout, only about $150 has gone through Stripe. Hopefully they won't decide to freeze everything once the account processes a certain amount.

 

[jubran]

I opened a Stripe account and of course got a phone number from Sonetel but Sonetel doesn't send SMS for identity verification purposes and therefore I can't receive the SMS. Now I got an email from Stripe saying that the payout has been updated from 2 days to 7 days and I must verify the phone number in 10 days or the account will be suspended :/ Any ideas about how can I solve this?

 

[Tokay]

I

I opened a Stripe account and of course got a phone number from Sonetel but Sonetel doesn't send SMS for identity verification purposes and therefore I can't receive the SMS. Now I got an email from Stripe saying that the payout has been updated from 2 days to 7 days and I must verify the phone number in 10 days or the account will be suspended :/ Any ideas about how can I solve this?

I'm not sure, I guess try a different operator that lets you receive texts? I used the fax number I got with my US address and didn't get any notification for text verification or anything. What did you do for the SSN? I still haven't updated it but didn't get any deadlines or anything.

The 7 days payment is normal apparently, I get my next payment on Monday. One problem I found which could be a potential pain in the ass is that you can't refund customers when using the Stripe - Payoneer route. I tried a refund today and it was rejected since the account on Payoneer doesn't allow direct debits like a regular bank account. So I will either have to refund customers via PayPal or give them store credit.

 

[jubran]

I just have purchased a phone number with Dingtone since textPlus isn't working for me and giving me an error and I must say, it's GREAT! Phone number activated almost instantly and messages arrive within 1 second, mind blowing! So I activated my Stripe account and got an email saying that the payouts have been re-enabled.

As for the SSN, I put 1111 and it seemed to work but I have also called the IRS on 6 AM in the morning and got a sleeping employee So we've gone over the process of filling out the require field forms over the phone and she gave me the EIN number.

For refunds, from what I know is that you can deposit specific amount in Stripe itself for refunds. That way, you ensure a good customer satisfaction and hassle free refunds. That's if you can afford to deposit about 100-250 USD.

 

[Tokay]

That's good to hear. I don't have the option to put the EIN in anymore but haven't been told my acc will be suspended yet either. Haven't found the option to add funds to Stripe though, if there's a 100-250 minimum I won't bother then.

 

[jubran]

No I don't think there is minimum but I once heard from a dropshipper that you can put money aside for refunds.

 

[Moymoy]

I already know this method but it seems risky to me. The safest way I know to obtain an EIN is to have an LLC in the US. You can read it on the alidropship blog.

 

[Tokay]

I already know this method but it seems risky to me. The safest way I know to obtain an EIN is to have an LLC in the US. You can read it on the alidropship blog.

Like I said above just EIN doesn't work anymore. Even if you put the EIN, you still have to put a SSN. EIN is optional, SSN is mandatory so as of now this is the only option. Even if you opened an LLC and got an EIN, you still wouldn't have a SSN so you're in the same place and wasted the money.

 

[Tokay]

Ok so 3 weeks in and looking up. A bit of an improvement from last week, plenty more sales. As of last Thursday 21st I launched a FB ad campaign Initially $10 for 1 day. Because of the timezone difference between where I am and where my customer base is my ads have to be set to run at night, and this is when I make my sales (if any). On the 22nd I woke up to find 4 new sales, so I extended the ad another day and got 1 more sale, bigger than the last 3 put together so I was happy. No sales Sunday 24th and another 2 during the night of Sun-Mon. Mon-Tues I ran an insta shoutout and got no sales. I have a feeling this might not be the ideal time of week for sales. Tested another 24hr $10 fb ad with a different audience yesterday (Tuesday) and got a sale within 2 hours, but nothing else. At least I made back the initial ad cost + some change. Will run another ad tonight with the original audience. I want to know whether the sales were related to the ad or simply residual traffic from past shoutouts. If it gets me some sales tonight I'll start scaling as necessary. Something tells me FB traffic is better quality than instagram traffic (not that insta is bad) just because of the targeting as opposed to shoutouts.

Most of my sales seem to happen on the weekend, has anyone else experienced this?

Also, the number of visitors to my site has dropped but sales increased, which has increased my conversion rate to 0.92%. If I run no ads at all I get 50-100 hits a day just from instagram alone, which has now grown to 450 followers.

My target is $1000 gross sales by the end of the 4th week! If the next week goes as well as last week I just might make it.

Here are my stats;


And financials;
Sales: $604.20
Expenses (Hosting, Advertising, Plugin, etc): $476
Supplier Costs Inc. PayPal & Stripe Fees: $357.89
Net Loss: -$229.69



Getting to profit slowly but surely and learning every day! As always any feedback is much appreciated.

 

[Moha]

Isn't there a way to track traffic and sales source?

 

[Tokay]

Isn't there a way to track traffic and sales source?

Traffic yes, sales source haven't quite figured it out yet. Tried adding a conversion goal on Google Analytics and linked it to my Thank You page but it only tracked 1 order.
I have just set up Ecommerce on Google Analytics this morning (Thought I had already done that!) which should hopefully help.

 

[Ryan]

Most of my sales seem to happen on the weekend, has anyone else experienced this?

I have completely random sales times and days all the time.

And I also registered with Stripe. Got the first order. Let's see what happens next. Hopefully, I will get that money in my Payoneer account. Did you get yours, Tokay?

 

[Tokay]

I have completely random sales times and days all the time.

And I also registered with Stripe. Got the first order. Let's see what happens next. Hopefully, I will get that money in my Payoneer account. Did you get yours, Tokay?

Yes I did. Today another payout was sent and I got it right as I was typing this. There's a 12 hour or so delay between stripe and payoneer but so far works.

 

[Don James]

If I am not in US how to activate Stripe
Any suggestions