- 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 being 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 was importing and reselling video games for this video game
system, the Nintendo DS. Back in the day, you could
by 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 their 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 time of
selling different types of items I ended up having to get
a job 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 case. 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. Which 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
it easily let's 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 than 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 the 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. who 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 direct 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 that 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 let's 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. 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.
