- Hey everyone!
So, today I was reflecting on my first store,
and the several mistakes I made in it
that cost me a lot of money.
In fact, some of these mistakes were so bad
that they caused my once-successful online store
and business to pretty much, well, fail.
And unfortunately, the reason why
I was reflecting on these mistakes
was because I've recently received a string of comments
from several of my viewers
that indicate that they are making
these mistakes in their stores as well.
And so rather than have you go through
the painful and expensive process
of learning these mistakes yourself,
I thought I would share with you the ones that I made today
so that you can check to make sure
that you aren't doing them
and if you are, you can stop making them.
Mistake one: I focused on selling products
that had a limited lifespan,
and I was not prepared for it.
So, while my regular subscribers know this,
most people, funnily enough, who watch my videos
aren't subscribers.
So for those of you that don't know,
I launched my first successful online store
when I was just 16 years old.
I imported second-hand video games
direct from tradE-IN stores and dealers in the U.S.A.
and resold them here where I live, New Zealand,
for a big profit.
It's very different from the types of stores
and online selling strategies that I teach today.
I actually ended up pivoting
and completely changing what I sold
and how I sold it for many reasons
which I will explain in this video.
One of them is that, because of the way
that I started selling items, I was no longer stuck
to only being able to sell them within New Zealand,
but nevertheless, my original store
was, for a time, very successful.
And it made me a lot of money,
or at least, it did for a few years.
Yep, my store's bread and butter
were importing and reselling video games
for this video game system, the Nintendo DS.
Back in the day, you could buy a Nintendo DS game
in the United States,
and then play it on a New Zealand Nintendo DS.
This, however, was unusual.
Most other video game systems
have not allowed you to do this.
Blocking you from doing that is called region locking.
Yeah, the reason why Nintendo has historically
usually chosen to block people from doing this
is so that they could charge higher prices
in smaller countries like New Zealand
and force us to have to pay those prices.
And do it surprised pretty much no one
when Nintendo released its successor,
the Nintendo 3DS a few years later
and removed the ability to play international games on it.
By doing this, not only did Nintendo remove the ability
for New Zealanders to play cheaper imported games,
but they also removed my ability to keep making money
from items that I was selling.
Now this story does actually have a happy ending.
I ended up pivoting and selling
a completely different type of item
in an evergreen niche.
I ended up selling modding devices
that allowed you to play imported foreign games
on your systems even if they were region-locked.
So, I'm sorry, Nintendo, but you can't stop us.
But nevertheless, I was not prepared for the pivot
and in the between the time of selling different types of items
I ended up having to get a job to tide me over.
And so my advice is that if you are out there
looking to start a new store, is to ask yourself,
"Does my product have a limited lifespan?
"Is it based on a trend?"
For example, these were once hot relevant products.
Now, however, they are not.
So if you're selling a product with a limited lifespan,
that's okay, it can still make you a lot of money,
but keep in mind you will eventually need to pivot
and you should be prepared for it.
Mistake two: I focused on selling one-off products.
So here's the thing.
Most people do not switch out their mobile phone cases.
My phone case has multiple parts to it.
There is no way I'd take the time to take it off
just so that I could have
a different colored phone for a day.
Now don't get me wrong, some people might
switch them out occasionally,
if they find a new one that they like,
but it's not like with tee-shirts
where you wear a new one every day.
And so, if you build a store around mobile phone cases,
if a customer comes into your store and buys one,
chances are, they'll buy one and that's it.
Now back to my original store.
I was selling video games and for quite some time,
only video games.
So what would happen is people would come into my store
and then go and purchase the video game that they wanted,
and that's it.
Now, let me ask you a question.
Why on earth would you need two copies
of this single-player game here?
The answer is that you don't.
Once you have this game, that's it,
there is no advantage to having
two or more copies of the game.
This is a real shame because one of the easiest ways
to drastically increase your profits
and your average order value as an online store
is to get customers to purchase multiples of the same items.
Let me ask you another question.
Why would people want to purchase multiples
of these LED light-up dog collars?
The answer is, of course,
because many people have multiple dogs.
This is a big reason why my friend Adrian
made literally hundreds of thousands of dollars
dropshipping them from China
and charging three to four times the price.
My favorite Shopify app
for encouraging customers to purchase
multiple of the same items
is Discounted Pricing from Booster Apps.
What this app does is easily let you add
a discount table to a product listing
and it will calculate the discount for the customer.
You can then give people discounts
for purchasing multiple items in bulk,
greatly increasing the chances that they'll think,
"Hey, why not?" and add extra copies to their cart.
It's how I've been able to get customers
to make orders like these,
where they bought four of the same item at once.
Of course, even though I would have always had the advantage
that customers were unlikely to have ever bought more
then one copy of the same game,
it would still have been fine
to build my store around this niche
if I hadn't made the third mistake.
But before I tell you what that mistake is,
if you are enjoying this video
and you would like even more videos
on how to make money online with an online store,
then be sure to subscribe
and click that little notification bell next to it
so that you don't miss out on any of our videos.
Mistake three: I didn't have any upsells.
Yeah, for a long time, I just didn't have any.
Yeah, like, to be honest with you,
I can't defend that at all.
The only thing I can say is that I was 16
and I was pretty dumb.
"Hey there, we see that you're interested
"in purchasing that Macbook.
"Do you know what else you'll need?
"A sleeve for it, to keep it sparkling clean,
"and don't forget to buy a bag to carry it with.
"However will you manage without one?"
And really, for most stores out there,
this is the true way that they make serious money.
It's not by having customers come in and purchase one item.
It's having them come in and purchase multiple items.
And yes, one way to do that is by getting customers
to buy multiples of the same item,
but it's not the only way.
If you were like me and you're selling items
that are one-off purchases like video games,
then think about other ways that you can encourage customers
to purchase other different items from you.
And trust me, you can get pretty creative
when it comes to upsells, even if it feels impossible.
For example, yes, I did initially make this mistake,
but I did figure out that I was making it after a while.
So let me ask you another question.
I didn't just sell Nintendo DS games.
I would also sometimes sell older Game Boy games too,
such as Pokemon Yellow.
If this was an item that you were selling,
what upsell could you offer for it?
Well, I can imagine that some of you watching there
are thinking, "Well, obviously, the customer likes Pokemon
so why not offer them Pokemon merchandise?
Like a Pokemon tee shirt?
Or sell them Pokemon toys,
and hey, you could have tried selling them Pokemon socks!
And well, you know, funnily enough,
you can buy all of these products on AliExpress
to dropship and resell right now.
Just one problem.
Of course, all of it is illegal.
These AliExpress manufacturers
are breaking copyright law by producing them.
Yeah, there just wasn't an easy way
for 16-year-old Sarah to get her hands on
a bunch of legal Pokemon merchandise to sell.
So here is what I ended up actually doing.
In Pokemon games, you run around the game
finding Pokemon and collecting them,
which you can then use to battle your friends.
I quickly figured out that a lot of my older customers
were purchasing these old nostalgic Pokemon games
not for the collecting side, but for the battling side.
And so when a customer bought
a copy of Pokemon Yellow from me,
I'd say, "Hey, I can send you a card
"that has six Pokemon you want already included on it."
Yes, that includes hard-to-find, hard-to-catch Legendaries.
And do you know what?
A lot of people said, "Yes!"
This doubled my average order value.
I'd then take my cheating device
and, in a matter of minutes,
installed the pokemon into their game
and then ship it out to them for a higher price.
I didn't realize that what I was doing at the time
had an actual name, upselling, but once I figured it out,
I started making drastically more money
from my Pokemon games.
But, all of this really highlights one big disadvantage
that I had with my old store.
Mistake Four: I didn't have a reliable source of products.
To run my business and grow and scale it,
I needed a constant stream of products.
To achieve this, I had an ongoing relationship
with a bunch of second-hand mom-and-pop stores
in the U.S.A. that would sell and ship me their games.
I would usually get a discount for purchasing them in bulk.
Considering how hard it was
to import products, back in the day,
it was a pretty complex operation for a 16-year-old.
Nevertheless, while it was a pretty neat operation
for someone my age, it still wasn't a very good one.
I was completely reliant on customers trading in their games
to the stores that I had a relationship with.
And some weeks, they would trade in lots of games,
and some weeks, they'd trade in none.
That is why my advice to you is that,
while thrifting and retail arbitrage can be a good way
to learn the ropes of buying and selling,
it isn't a reliable source for products in the long term.
And this is a very big reason why, of course,
I moved from selling video games
into selling modding devices like mod-chips
when I revamped my store.
With these, I could purchase them
directly from the manufacturer,
and so I always had a constant, steady stream of products.
Not only did that mean then that my income was stable,
but it meant that I could actually grow and scale my store.
And it was through this, I discovered
that some manufacturers will let you do
something magical called dropshipping.
Dropshipping is when a supplier will let you list items
that they manufacture for sale in your store.
When a customer buys one of those items from you,
the supplier will let you purchase that one item from them.
They will then ship it out directly to the customer.
Discovering this fulfillment method
meant that I was no longer stuck
to just selling within New Zealand.
And I could sell now to almost anywhere in the world.
That is why inside my premium video training course
the Ecomm Clubhouse, I teach two methods of product sourcing
that let you source products direct from manufacturers,
dropshipping and something called print-on-demand,
and they let you sell to, again,
almost anywhere in the world.
And I'll have the link to the Ecomm Clubhouse
in the video description.
Mistake five: I was really lazy at shipping out my products.
I honestly have absolutely no excuse here.
When customers bought products from my store,
I was really bad at shipping out those products on time.
And while I was actually surprisingly good
at placating customers with follow up emails
if they emailed in and complained,
the truth is that I probably lost a lot of repeat buyers
and thus lost a lot of potential sales as a result.
That is why I always recommend that,
if you're doing print-on-demand
and using a service like Printify
that lets you choose which manufacturer you work with,
try and choose suppliers
with faster shipping and production times.
If you're doing AliExpress dropshipping,
be careful to only work with suppliers
with a proven history of happy customers
getting their items on time.
Mistake six: I was really bad at doing things
that I didn't want to do.
You know, when I was 16, I was surprisingly good
at creating product page copy, which is kind of a miracle
because most people I see, when they start an online store,
are really, really bad at it.
But you know what I was not good at?
I was really lazy with taking and uploading product images.
Do you know the reason why that was?
It was because I simply didn't enjoy it.
When I was 16, I was incredibly undisciplined
and really bad at doing things that I didn't enjoy.
And so, while it was great
that I enjoyed writing product page copy,
the truth is that images
are the number one conversion factor
as to why someone does or doesn't buy a product
after landing on your product page.
So I definitely lost out on sales and money.
So, do not be like teenage Sarah.
Do not be lazy at completing important tasks,
simply because you don't like doing them.
And then wonder why you aren't getting any sales.
Of course, when it comes to photos,
don't overdo it either.
This just looks ugly and it looks unprofessional.
And remember, if possible,
customers don't want to see the product
on a plain white background.
They really like to see it in a real-life context too.
Mistake seven: My store was not automated.
So taking photos and uploading them to product pages
was something I was really bad at because I didn't enjoy it.
I can tell you now that packaging up products
and dropping them off at the post office
was not on my list of favorite things to do,
which was why I put it off and potentially lost out
on repeat customers, because at this point in my life,
I had not figured out how to use things
like dropshipping and print-on-demand
to make the manufacturer do the shipping for me.
Because of that, it was all on me to ship out my products,
and I didn't have a choice.
Well, sort of, you see, that's kind of not true.
In reality, I could have massively automated
the shipping part of my business
if I'd just taken a little bit of time
to do a little bit of research into it.
Here in New Zealand, while our public Post Office
doesn't offer the service,
a private company called Fastway does.
They'll let you put packages outside your front door
and then they'll pick up those packages
and they will ship them out for you.
Eventually, I did discover this
and started working with Fastway
rather than going to the Post Office,
but it took me over a year to end up doing this.
So don't be like teenage Sarah.
While it's true in business
that you need to be prepared
to do tasks that you both do and don't enjoy,
with research, you can often automate a lot in your store.
I use TaxJar to automate the process
of collecting and paying sales taxes
on products, I sell online,
and Oberlo is my favorite app for beginners
to automate the process of ordering items from suppliers
and shipping them out to customers when dropshipping.
Print-on-demand apps like Printify
will connect with Shopify and WooCommerce stores
to be automatically notified of sales.
When they see them, they'll produce
and ship them out for you, totally hands-off.
If you're producing products yourself
or buying them in bulk,
ShipBob is a great service that I use.
You can store items in their warehouse.
They'll track your store for sales,
and when they see a sale,
they'll automatically pick the items
you're storing in their warehouse,
package them and ship the package
out to the customer for you, all automated.
You see, when I was younger,
I still had a lot of lessons to learn in business.
One of the lessons that I still had yet to learn
is that in life, you don't get rich by hoarding your money,
you get rich by hoarding your time.
If you can learn how to use apps and stuff
to automate your store, then you can free up your time
and then you can use it
to create another money-making store,
and another one, and another one.
And as you grow and scale your stores
your money grows, and grows, and grows.
So, yes, while I did eventually learn from my mistakes,
it was not fun to watch my sales plummet in the meantime,
so hopefully you will learn from my mistakes
and you won't make them yourself.
And if you like this video,
and you would like even more training
on how to create your own online store,
then be sure to download our free ebook,
The 6 Steps That Six-Figure Online Stores Follow
to Make Over $10,000 a Month,
and you can find a link to download that ebook
in the video description below.
English - Default
No comments:
Post a Comment