The problem with learning how to start a business on YouTube Google or Tick Tock is that there’s just too much content to consume and much of it is outdated and worthless so to help you sort through the junk in this Blog.
I’m going to tell you about all the outdated e-commerce strategies and tips that no longer apply all right so outdated tip number one is:
Stop Relying on Amazon , Ebay Or Etsy
For all of your sales relying on a single platform can be risky because it leaves your business vulnerable to changes in that platform’s policies or algorithms which can instantly tank your sales also diversifying your sales channels can help you reach a wider customer base and increase your overall Revenue so let’s start with Amazon first off Amazon doesn’t care about you at all for as long as I’ve been selling on Amazon there are thousands of malicious sellers on the platform who game the system and try to sabotage your sales for example my friend Sameer & Sara started a company that sells kitchen products and an evil seller in China decided to knock off its entire product line including his box with his photo on it this Chinese company sold a crappier version of his product range on his listing at half the price and totally destroyed his multi-million dollar brand now when Sameer and Sara complained to Amazon and showed them his patents and copyrights they ignored his problem and did not suspend the malicious seller and in fact it took him two years and multiple million dollar lawsuits for him to get Amazon to take any action whatsoever now from my store every year we have sellers who try to buy out all of our inventory over the holiday season to prevent us from selling and then they return all their merchandise in January after the holidays are over.
Amazon is also getting harder and more competitive every single year and roughly 3700 new sellers join Amazon every day and it’s a Cutthroat marketplace now I’m not telling you not to sell an Amazon eBay or Etsy but you should never put all of your eggs in one basket especially on a platform that you do not own the only thing that these platforms care about is their stock price and they are constantly raising their prices to make it harder for sellers to make money now in this day and age you must have your own website and a property that you own and control now the biggest disadvantage about selling on third-party platforms is that they hide all customer information from you in the heart of any business is your repeat customer base by the way if you’re enjoying this blog then follow me on Linkedin.
Stop DropShipping from AliExpress
AliExpress Drop Shipping is an e-commerce business model where you take orders online and the orders are fulfilled by AliExpress products are much cheaper on AliExpress than they are in the US or Europe so you can make a profit on the sales without ever seeing the product or touching any inventory sounds easy right wrong do not use this business model here are the disadvantages AliExpress is based in China so shipping times can take several weeks or even months can you imagine ordering something online and having it delivered in 60 days the shipping times alone will kill your business before it even gets started now if you need faster shipping the shipping cost will often cost far more than the product itself most sellers in AliExpress have poor quality control measures in place as well most of the stuff you find on AliExpress is just cheap junk that is made in China you want to build your online store and brand on top quality products and not garbage some products are also counterfeit if you end up selling counterfeit products by accident then you are liable for the damages not AliExpress now lots of people are using AliExpress to drop ship the same exact stuff as a result prices erode quickly and you end up having to jump from one fad to the next there’s no longevity when it comes to drop shipping from AliExpress and you constantly have to find the next trending product but most importantly it is against the terms of service to drop ship from AliExpress on Amazon eBay or Etsy if you are caught you will be suspended now since we’re on the topic of Drop Shipping I also want to say that Drop Shipping overall is not a good long-term business model sure it’s easy and cheap to get started but your margins are low and you probably will not make life-changing money with that business model now Once Upon a Time Drop Shipping was more viable but Amazon basically killed this business model.
Stop Using Amazon Automation
The next outdated tip is to stop using Amazon automation Amazon automation is a service where a business owner outsources all the processes of their e-commerce store to a third party basically you just pay a company tens of thousands of dollars and then they go and find your product to sell listed on Amazon and you split the profits now when I first saw these ads all over YouTube My Senses started tingling immediately why would a company start an e-commerce business for you from scratch and split the profits when they could just do it on their own and keep all of the profit Amazon automation had scam written all over it and it’s proven to be true now I’m not going to call out any specific Amazon automation businesses in this blog but all I can say is that if something sounds too good to be true it usually is now even if some of these Amazon automation companies were legit most of the Amazon aggregators went bankrupt during the downturn and it’s an extremely difficult business model the
Stop Running Amazon Giveaways or Soliciting Reviews
Amazon is majorly cracked down on solicited reviews in the past couple years it is now extremely difficult to get people to inorganically leave a review on your products so just don’t do it if you were caught then you risk a product or an account suspension and it’s just not worth it the best ways to get reviews now are through Amazon’s back end where they allow you to send a single can email to ask for an unbiased review now the same goes with giveaways Once Upon a Time you could spam giveaways to increase your sales velocity and rankings but these no longer work the next outdated tip is to stop using public rebate sites Once Upon a Time people were using rebate services to get sales on Amazon and then reimbursing buyers through PayPal this allowed sellers to get a full price sale which helped boost rankings while attracting many buyers looking for free product essentially it was like running a giveaway except you got a real sale now.
Amazon Crackdown hard on these rebate sites were one of the most popular product rebate giveaway tools rebate key was suspended anyone who used the rebate service was also sent a scary letter warning them against these actions going forward Amazon also changed their terms of service with the following new wording manipulating sales rank such as by accepting fake orders or orders that you have paid for or making claims about sales rank and product titles or descriptions is against terms of service.
Now there’s still Amazon sellers issuing rebates but definitely not with a paid service it’s just not worth the risk the next outdated tip is to stop spending all of your efforts on customer acquisition and sell more to your existing customers now when most people run a business they focus on spending all their money to acquire new customers and they often neglect their existing customers now let’s face it we’re heading into a downturn and there are many reasons why you should be focusing on selling to your existing customers more it is 66 percent less expensive to sell to an existing customer than to acquire a new one existing customers already know who you are and they trust you after all they’ve already opened up their wallets once as a result the cost of getting someone to buy again is super easy just send them an email or a text existing custom members are more likely to make repeat purchases and spend more of your time which means that you can greatly increase the lifetime value for every customer you have repeat customers are more likely to be loyal to a brand which can lead to more positive word of mouth and referral marketing this is saying that on average every happy customer tells at least nine people about their experience Now by focusing on existing customers you can gain a better understanding of their needs and preferences so for example with our store once I started communicating with existing customers I actually discovered that many of them were event and wedding planners and by getting on the phone with them and offering them coupons and special treatment I could get them to buy in bulk from our store forever.
Stop Focusing All In On Ads and Focus More On Content
The next outdated tip is to stop focusing all in on ads and focus more on content, paid advertising is expensive and it’s short-lived platforms like Google and Facebook are getting more and more expensive every year and this isn’t even taking into account iOS 14 which pretty much decimated the effectiveness of Facebook now the best way to attract long-term sales for free is by creating content and absorbing the tactics and strategies that I’m teaching you and by consuming this blog. I’ve gained a little bit of your trust and by trusting me you are far more likely to buy a product that I have for sale now the beauty of content is that it’s free to produce and the effects are Everlasting videos and blog posts.
It’s all about building a brand which requires you to create content after all you can’t build a brand unless you can get your message in front of customers so just pick a medium whether it be blogging YouTube or social media and start posting on a regular basis and once you’ve gained someone’s trust you can easily sell them products that you create.
Focus More On Email Marketing
In the last section I talked about creating content to build a brand the average conversion rate in e-commerce is only two percent which means that 98 of people consume your content and then bail now the best way to bring these visitors back is to grab their email or their phone number so create a lead magnet this could be something as simple as giving out a coupon or free shipping in return for their contact information now here’s the beauty of email and SMS marketing visitors may not be ready to buy from you right this second but by emailing and contacting them on a regular basis you’ll keep your company in their mind so that when they are ready to buy they buy from your store now email and SMS marketing can also be used to promote products offer discounts and provide valuable content to subscribers and the best part is that these are customers that you own and no one can take them away from you. This also can help you to reduce your abandoned cart rate want to now about email marketing tools read this blog: Email Marketing Tools.
Stop Doing What’s Easy
The next outdated tip is to just stop doing what’s easy if you go with what’s easy there’s always going to be more competition now one of the most common questions I get asked is Steve what is the easiest way to make money online Steve what’s something that can start and make money today well this is the absolute wrong mentality and let me explain why if you go and start something that is easy that means that thousands of other people are doing it too and when you do something easy there are no barriers to entry and the competition will be fierce let’s take Drop Shipping as an example pretty easy to start Drop Shipping online because you don’t have to carry inventory and you can start selling immediately but guess what chances are there are thousands of other people Drop Shipping your exact same products now as a shopper let’s say I find 10 stores selling the exact same product I’m gonna buy from the store with the cheapest price and when you do something that’s easy the price always spirals to the bottom so instead of asking yourself what’s easy you should ask yourself what’s difficult or a pain in the butt to start what unfair Advantage do you have over other people for example with our store we do custom embroidery we have five machines that cost over 10K each to do customer embroidery for our customers now not only these machines obtain the butt to maintain but they’re also expensive to buy not only does the thread break all the time but the machines need to be recalibrated and the machine’s chew up product all the time furthermore requires someone trained to operate them now because doing custom embroidery is such a pain there are very few people who will try to copy me in fact custom embroidery is our main value add that is extremely difficult to copy sellers in China can’t copy us because they can’t offer this level of service from twenty thousand miles away so instead of asking yourself what’s easy ask yourself what is hard that you are willing to tackle.
Stop Throwing Up Random Products To Sell Online
The next outdated tip is to stop throwing up random products to sell online now back in the Heyday you could go on Alibaba find a product for cheap as is listed on Amazon and make a killing well those days are over now to be clear you can still make money this way but only for a short time especially on Amazon sellers are constantly using research tools like jungle Scout to find good products to sell and eventually someone will find your product and copy it that is unless you have a strong value proposition and a brand a unique value proposition or UVP is what makes your product different or special now your product doesn’t necessarily have to be better it just needs to be different for example my brand at bumblebee Linens offers the largest selection of handkerchiefs on the internet and I’m pretty sure that companies can’t make this claim because we specialize in hankies my friend Dave over at Saddleback leather sells bags and bags are a pretty huge commodity but his value prop is that his bags last forever his slogan is that they’ll fight for it when you’re dead so instead of throwing up random despair products to sell think in terms of niches or families of products that you can build a brand around you can start with a single product sell it well and then expand into related products or accessories this way you are creating a business that focuses on a specific area which will eventually lead to a brand now that you know what not to do watch this video here to learn how to start an e-commerce business the right way.
