Don't Believe These Ecommerce Lies! Here's The Worst Advice For Selling Online

in this video I'm going to help you sort through all the terrible advice and online business schemes you'll find online and tell you what is real and what's going to waste you time and money now chances are this isn't your first start your own Ecommerce business video that you've watched now the web is littered with get rich quick schemes and outdated business models starting in e-commerce business is hard enough as is but there's a lot of misinformation out there that can lead to cost of mistakes so I'm gonna help you guys today by sharing some of the worst advice that I've come across this year now the first piece of bad advice relates to finding profitable products to sell online one Guru is advising that you look at bestseller lists find trending products and sell them online now on the surface this sounds like great advice right if you find something that is popular then there's going to be lots of demand and it should be easy to sell well here's what most people don't tell you by the time a product hits a bestseller list or a trending list it's already saturated today there are many tools out there that will tell you instantly what is trending and selling well across all marketplaces for example jungle Scout will tell you what's selling well on Amazon zic analytics will tell you what's hot on eBay and Google Trends will tell you what people are searching for on Google there's no scarcity of information online these days and if you find a trending product using these tools or on social media Outlets like Tick Tock by the time you find a supplier and Source these products you've already missed the boat and there'll be a thousand sellers competing against you remember fidget Spinners my buddy Nick Shackleford actually used to sell these and he hopped on the curb relatively early so he was able to actually make a couple bucks but this product eventually crashed and burned once everyone and their mother started selling them within six months by the way if you're enjoying this video so far then make sure you sign up for my 360 mini course below the next piece of bad advice that is way outdated is to find whatever products you can make a profit on and list them online for sale on Amazon now Once Upon a Time back in 2016 you could literally find something on Alibaba at really low prices throw it up on Amazon and it would sell and the way the Amazon gurus were teaching e-commerce was that the type of products you sold did not matter as long as you can make a profit so you'd see sellers selling a hodgepodge of random stuff like spray bottles dog collars toothbrush holders and floor mats basically whatever they could find they would just throw it up and it would sell well today Amazon is much harder and you can't simply throw up random products and make a profit now you might be able to make a couple bucks this way but even if you were to find something good you would eventually get knocked off and the price would spiral to the bottom so listen up as a successful e-commerce owner that's been selling the same family of products for over 15 years I'm here to tell you that selling a jumble of random disparate products online is a recipe for disaster when you're just starting out it's crucial to have a clear focus in a consistent product offering that aligns with your brand and your target market trust me I've seen it time and time and again entrepreneurs try to sell everything under the sun and it just doesn't work you are diluting your brand making it harder to Market and promote your products and creating confusion for your customers now can you imagine if you visited my handkerchief store over at bumblebee Linens and found that I sold cell phones and dog biscuits too not to mention if you're not an expert in the products that you're selling it's going to be hard for you to provide accurate and detailed product information it's going to be hard for you to understand exactly what your customer wants which will lead to a high number of returns and negative reviews selling random despair products also means that you'll have problems ranking in Google search these days when Google crawls the web it is categorizing a website based on what it thinks you are good at so if you sell pet supplies and Google Sees lots of products and content related to pets well then Google will put you in the pet supplies bucket and you'll have a higher chance of ranking for pet related pages but let's say you decide to sell yoga mats on your pet supplies website because you found a great deal on yoga mats on the Alibaba well then guess what that's going to confuse Google is this a site About Pets or yoga and at this point Google won't know what to do with your site and you'll end up not ranking for anything so bottom line if you want to be successful in e-commerce you need to be laser focused on a specific Niche and build your brand around that if you sell pet products focus on pet products and do not sell something random just because you can make a quick Buck because it will hurt you in the long run General Stores never rank well in search another piece of bad advice that I've heard online is that Niche online stores are dead Amazon owns over 50 of e-commerce so why even bother selling anywhere else well here's what they don't tell you well Amazon is getting harder and harder to make money not only has Amazon consistently raised prices over the years to squeeze sellers but it's perhaps one of the most Cutthroat and evil marketplaces to sell on here's just a short list of what evil sellers do to purposely sabotage other sellers they create fake buyer accounts to leave negative reviews on competitors products usually a string of bad reviews will actually lead to a suspension they use automated tools to repeatedly click on your ads driving up your advertising costs they make fake reports on your listings for violations of Amazon's terms of service in an attempt to get you banned they'll copy your product listings including images and descriptions to create a nearly identical listing and steal your sales they'll send fake warnings to Amazon to file false infringement claims against your listings which almost always leads to a suspension for Amazon it's actually guilty until proven is sin and they'll create many different seller accounts to purchase their own products and artificially inflate their sales numbers in fact there's a podcast episode that I recorded with my friend Kevin Williams where malicious sellers knocked off his product in packaging with his face on it sold inferior product under his listing and basically destroyed his entire product line now even though he owned the trademark and the patent for his products Amazon did nothing and after two years and many millions of dollars spent on lawyers Amazon eventually took down these evil sellers but the damage had already been done one of my students in my class Amanda mutenborn she sells her own party supplies and has had numerous listings of hers taken down for copyright infringement when she actually owns the copyright and Designs all of her own stuff Amazon is not what it's cracked out to be now I'm not saying that you shouldn't sell on Amazon but that you shouldn't put all of your eggs in Amazon's basket it is near impossible to build a brand on Amazon here's another piece of horrible advice that I recently found watching a YouTube ad this person who obviously sells advertising courses said that pay-per-click advertising is the most consistent and reliable way to generate sales online he then went on to say that you should focus all of your efforts on paid advertising because it's deterministic and you are in full control now first off I'm all in for advertising and I spend tens of thousands of dollars a month on paid advertising that is profitable but I would never say that you should focus all of your efforts on paid ads nor are you ever in full control when it comes to paying ads to acquire customers the winner is always the person willing to spend the most money if you don't have high converting ad copy or if your margins aren't that good then you will be priced out and it will be hard to make a profit on ads PPC ad costs have gone up in the double digits year over year and they will continue to rise in order to make ads work your margins have to be good and you have to have a compelling product running ads will not fix poor margins or poor product you're also not in control remember when Apple released iOS 14 basically the new privacy policies that Apple issued on this OS release decimated Facebook ads so many companies who relied on Facebook ads for all their sales went bankrupt now PPC ads are a great way to acquire new customers but you should never depend on them instead this is what you should do now I've been teaching e-commerce for over a decade now and what I found is that people are generally so obsessed with acquiring new customers that they neglect to focus on their existing ones and according to studies it is 65 easier and cheaper to convert existing customers than it is to acquire a new one and I sincerely believe that these numbers are conservative the real number is actually much higher let's take my store as an example I sell handkerchiefs and linens to the wedding industry now you might think that I don't get a lot of repeat business because people only get married once right actually the divorce rate here in the US is close to 50 so technically people might get married more than once but I digress my repeat purchase rate is only 12 percent but guess what that 12 makes up over 36 percent of our annual revenue now how is this possible here's what we do first off we have a loyalty program where people who just love our products get free Linens after they purchase a certain amount think of it like a frequent flyer miles for an airline except for handkerchiefs we also have automated processes in place that send emails to our existing customers recommending related products to get them to buy again for example we sell three flavors of napkins in our store cocktail napkins tea napkins and dinner napkins if someone buys dinner napkins in our shop then we automatically recommend our matching cocktail and tea napkins via email but most importantly we look at our customer list and treat our best customers like royalty here's exactly what we do we go through our purchases and find people who purchased an abnormally large quantity of products so for example if someone buys 40 dozen napkins chances are they are a wedding or an event planner so we get on the phone call them up and offer them a special coupon code and a dedicated representative to handle their future orders and by offering our best customer special treatment particularly event and wedding planners they buy from us forever in fact even if we turn off ads 100 our store would be just fine so moral of the story here is to focus on your existing customers just as much or even more than new customer acquisition which brings me to my next piece of the worst advice that I've ever seen so far we talked about establishing a strong brand as a way to start an e-commerce business today but what exactly is a brand a brand is essentially a promise to your customers that you will deliver a high quality product or service based on name recognition alone so for example people buy Apple products because they deliver great quality products with an amazing design I buy tied laundry detergent because that's what I've been using for years when you have a strong brand people will buy from you even if they find cheaper prices elsewhere people will buy from you just to support your brand whenever you have a new product release so what is the best way to establish your brand for your business is having a trademark name and a website good enough not even close the best way to establish a brand is through content creation after all you can establish a brand and get people to like you unless you put yourself out there and communicate with customers so here's what we do with our online store on our blog we put out DIY craft tutorials that Brides love now this content is 100 free useful and our customers love them our most popular craft is our wedding dress hankies which are these cute miniature wedding dresses that can be monogrammed and make excellent gifts by giving away content and information for free customers are much more likely to remember us and buy from us instantly content is also the best way to rank in Google search another example is this YouTube channel that you guys are watching right now right now you're watching this video and if you resonate with all the advice and tutorials that I've been giving you you are much more likely to make a purchase from me right now I sell a course that is thousands of dollars and I have over 5 000 students in the class now with these 5 000 people have bought for me without seeing my content no way even the best sales page in the world will have problems converting new customers unless there's compelling content behind it so if you're going to start an e-commerce business today make sure you set aside some time to create content you can start a blog a YouTube channel a podcast or you can just be active on social media doesn't matter what you choose just pick one and focus on creating content on a regular schedule now most of you who found me on YouTube probably aren't aware that I run a top 10 e-commerce blog over at mywivequitterjob.com and in e-commerce podcast called my wife quitter job that is literally one of the top 25 shows in all of Apple podcasts in the marketing category I'm also on Tick Tock Instagram and Twitter every piece of content that I put out brings people to me and I never have to resort to sleazy sales tactics to get customers in the door they always come to me this is what you need to achieve with your Ecommerce store now if you don't want to produce content at a bare minimum you should do email marketing entice people to sign up for your email list by giving out coupons quizzes guides tutorials and then email your list regularly once you have email down then sign up for an SMS provider and send text messages to your best customers the more often you can bring people back to your website the stronger your brand will be remember you got to play the long game when starting any e-commerce business if you ever see an ad that promises you can make money with very little effort then just stop watching that ad we live in a world today that is filled with information but most of it is outdated or false now that you know what the worst advice is out there follow this tutorial here for the right way to launch an e-commerce business today in this video I'll walk you through the exact steps that I would take if I were to start an online store from scratch right now

Channel: MyWifeQuitHerJob Ecommerce Channel

Views: 22,100

Keywords: how to make money online, increase ecommerce sales, ecommerce business, online business, grow ecommerce sales, make money online, online marketing, online business ideas, ecommerce marketing tips, ecommerce website, how to grow your ecommerce business, e commerce business, ecommerce solutions, online marketing strategy, ecommerce growth, ecommerce store, email marketing, amazon fba, selling on amazon, amazon seller for beginners, amazon fba for beginners, ecommerce advice

Id: tH5LL5Q0GNg

Length: 13min 2sec (782 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 03 2023