Post: #1

The Digital Marketing/Internet Marketing Data sheet:

A few years ago there was this site that I will not reference directly. It is a site for would be aspiring digital marketers but is mostly annoying idiots asking how to make monies. They come out with a wide selection of software and in the private section occasionally some pretty crazy stuff. I was fairly young at the time and got in with a creator of one of these crazy softwares. I talked to him about what he was working on and strangely he would tell me everything. He had created a software that whether a user came to your site and clicked on your ad or not, it would basically “stuff” a cookie into their browser for an affiliate program. He happened to sell it to people that began doing it with massive sites and with the biggest affiliate programs out there. People were making $50,000-$150,000 a month or some other ridiculous number. Well, one major affiliate program did not like this, and for the first time in affiliate marketing/digital marketing history, the criminal courts got involved but more importantly the feds. The owner was of a site called digital point and good lord was he making money as their biggest affiliate. Long story short, he got fucked over some, the software designer did too, and the whole thing hit the fan. This was when things really started making a transition from do whatever to make money in the industry to developing businesses.

There are people in digital marketing that have been in since the porn revolution making money. I have stories of guys doing anything and everything to make a buck, some were pretending to be girls and talking to creeps on chat sites for $300-$500 a day by getting them to sign up for dating sites. Some were pumping craigslist for every dime they could using auto posting software paired with companies that paid for leads coming to their site. Some were making $1000-$2000 a day bullshitting.

Now it’s a real industry whereas before it was somewhat underground and as a result it has lead to developments most people would have never dreamed of.

Internet Marketing/Digital Marketing is the use of technology to connect through a variety of methods with potential customers/consumers by using devices as an advertisement platform. Previously, through radio and tv for the most part advertising was expensive and ROI/conversion was limited due to what I like to call “shit at the wall marketing”. Why do I call it that? Basically imagine attempting to hit a target by taking a hand full of shit and seeing how it spreads if some lands on the target. Companies large and small were spending ridiculous amounts on attempting to connect with their target demographic who would either be interested in their product or brand. The issue was that large companies with large budgets made it hard for smaller companies to sneak in and compete on the same level and everyone was invariably wasting a lot of money incidentally targeting people who really wasn’t interested nor even knew someone who would be in their product.

Digital marketing which relies heavily on research/data and optimization in a way that before would have been impossible is like sniper marketing. If you have a few shots that can only hit your target, with proper research you are able to hit your target not just accurately with your ad but in some cases just when they are in the buying mood. Lead generation campaigns can be successful within a week or two with constantly updating lists and ever more in-depth data. Whereas before it was difficult to access say: White Males between the age of 23-30 that like basketball, boxing, and japanese swords that talk about traveling often these days it’s much easier to not only capture their lead information but put them through a sales funnel that will ensure a longer customer lifetime value than ever.

What’s customer lifetime value? Basically, if you go into a store 10 miles from your house and buy a product that ended up sucking and never go back again you had a very short customer lifetime value for that store. If however you go into a store once but because of coupon deals or the fact you like the store layout and product selection daily or weekly for say a year or two that’s a strong and decent length lifetime value. In the first scenario you were only worth $6 in the second you were worth $2,000. Website/Digital Businesses operate the same way. For instance, Roosh’s forum has a great retention rate because it’s a community that is thriving with useful information and constantly developing for free. But we’ll get back to that later. Long story short, these days you can make a lot more money for a lot less for a lot longer.

Three different profiles with slight details changed:

Three profiles of people I know in the digital marketing world to give you a perspective on how varied your money making pursuits can be in this industry.

“David” is a 27 year old serial product developer. First, he or his partner researches popular trends within social media as well as read reddit and other online communities to see what issues people have that they can either research it, interview an expert, or copy and remake other products to be the solution. Then, they research websites that they can either buy ad placement on or can become established well enough to put their product in the mix to gain traffic and eventual purchases. They also build a list of keywords that they can target through google ads as well as SEO to gain more traffic, whether buying keywords (keywords people type in when they want to purchase something obviously) or research keywords (these usually become leads you have to nurture). They may or may not create a landing page and a simple lead capture form, basically a call to action (Subscribe for a free ebook on _____) with open space for email, age, name, a few clickable interests and then save their data. They might do a test traffic run to see if people would be interested. Once they have something, they hire a ghostwriter to use their research mixed with their own as well as the other products found available into one product. Whether an ebook or a series of short videos with an instruction manual. They then create a focus group to read it and see their thoughts on it. Once done, they find all the available market places possible and commence with either marketing it themselves and throughout this process of prospecting sites, setting up traffic and list exchanges etc. etc. they are cutting into their time. With proper work and focus, after launch they can make anywhere from $5-45k depending on if they hustled. They can accomplish all of this in a month or two with the help of VAs or less, and the beauty is after the product starts to die down in traffic, you can either keep developing new campaigns to market it or flip it for 4-10 months profit to someone else who will run it.
“Kenneth” has money but no time. He is a serial investor. He joins forums and with his partner who has all the time but no money: buys either developed or slightly developed websites or partners with their owners and his partner monetizes the sites, develops a community based around it, adds in loads of fresh content, fixes site load speed time (this is important for visitor retention as well as ranking) and basically just pumps his expertise into it. They all split the proceeds 35-35-30 and as Kenneth and his partner build up a portfolio of these ventures they are able to spend more on writers/managing the sites and collecting their proceeds.
“Qatar” enjoy managing people. With a small investment from a friend he operates a simple digital marketing firm out of his mother’s basement. He is young and still in college. He has been a SEO specialist for several years. He gains clients that he or his outsourcing team handle and essentially cold calls businesses or through referrals or direct mailing gains and closes clients and gets contracts from $1-3k one time or monthly which half of is spent on tools/team members. It sounds small but overtime it grows and can become a decent income after time investment.

The Diversity Of the Industry


You can't ask objectively the easiest way to make money. Everyone has a different situation. Some are good at writing, some are solid with numbers.

In addition to those profiles above, there are people who specialize, in web development, product design/development, site flipping, lead generation, site monetization optimization, media buying, cost per click advertising, content marketing, the list goes on. How you choose to make money within digital marketing is dependent on three things.

How much time do you have a week?
What resources do you have at your disposal?
Are you better at organization and managing talent/workers or are you able to work more efficiently predominantly self sufficient?

If you don’t have time, chances are you have some money, if you do, consider joint ventures. The issue is do your due diligence or get fucked. It’s that sample. It’s a risk, but if you ensure you know who you are talking to and the person is willing to be transparent you in many cases are fine. If you have time but no money, either get a job at mcdonalds until you can put aside a few hundred to start with because contrary to popular belief, you may be able to possibly start from nothing but the upward climb is much much worse. Compared to starting with $500-$1k, it’s like without the money you are starting with 30 pound balls on each leg and you have to climb with just your arms upward versus having a goddamn batman grappling hook.

The four hats

BlackHat
Whitehat
Bluehat
Greyhat

These are not something I really feel like explaining right now but it used to basically mean: Blackhat was more creative, but they were more focused on spamming/quick cash type deals that would only last so long. Never illegal, just unethical or temporary money as the methods never lasted long enough.

Whitehat is more straight shooting, it’s the much much harder route but it is long term solid as long as you diversify. Basically, doing seo along with google guidelines, not twisting anything, sort of just trying to ensure there are no repercussions to your sites or campaigns.

Greyhat: a mix of the two, most people fall in this category that are successful

Bluehat: The best, they are creative, slightly bend the rules, incorporate the best of white hat by ensuring long term ranking and development for their sites as well as somehow being able to turn sites profitable rather quickly comparatively. As well as just being on top of new developments.

The background:

I have been involved with digital marketing for years. Up until I left college, I had a lot of success as well as ALOT of failure. I was lazy, and whenever I would make money I would get bored and change what my focus was. This is good because it made me pretty diverse but it was bad because consistency is everything. So many times I halfassed things that should never have been just because I was lazy. And despite the fact you can work out of great locations or your bedroom in your underwear, that is simply not the way to do it if you want to be successful long term. it’s a business like any other business and you have to treat it like one.

The training:

Don’t buy shit. Most courses and products you can find for free. Go bookmark AffBuzz, you’ll learn more from affiliate marketing industry news and free articles than you will really from courses. Join a few forums. Ask questions here or there. But above all, DO NOT buy anything. Your best bet is to try things, and make mistakes. Also checkout IMGrind as another great free resource. Find a mentor. And again, buying a domain and hosting and doing keyword research and just hammering things out initially will help you tremendously if you are one of the people trying to do it totally on your own. You will learn a lot more than by just reading and reading.

The top eight tools I use:

This will depend on your focus but a few that I use/have used and just do a simple google search for what they do:

Scrapebox: Linkbuilding software but more importantly scraper and all around kick ass tool.
Optimizely
Crazy Egg
Google Analytics
Wordpress as a CMS: basically what holds your website/the platform it’s built on. It’s flexible and simple to use
Term Explorer: “Keyword research tool”
Google Drive (Organizing things as well as sharing with others)
Hootsuite for Reputaton Management (It helps centralize social media)

I’ll post part 2 in a about an hour. Need to go get lunch.

I’ll go over systems vs. methods. How to get started. Five Donts. And More resources for reading. Feel free to ask any questions.

Ciao!

Post: #2

Hey OP,

are you familiar with dropshipping? of course sourcing a product is best, but for starters, what kinda advice do you have for a dropship model?

Post: #3

I wanna be Kenneth in this model. The issue would be finding honest partners.

Post: #4

Good stuff. I've been wanting to learn more about digital marketing. Most Digital Marketers can never really explain to me concisely what they do and how they do it and some actionable steps to take to get involved. I'm looking forward to your section on getting started.

Post: #5

What are you trying to dropship? What's your starting budget? What skills do you have/experience within ecommerce? Are you asking basically how do you make money from dropshipping? What methods of selling products are you looking into? Just a hosted marketplace site or are you trying to put products you source on craigslist/amazon etc. etc?

Post: #6

(12-05-2014 06:18 PM)trojans10 Wrote:  Hey OP,

are you familiar with dropshipping? of course sourcing a product is best, but for starters, what kinda advice do you have for a dropship model?

Answered you above.

(12-05-2014 06:35 PM)samsamsam Wrote:  I wanna be Kenneth in this model. The issue would be finding honest partners.

It's easier than you think, but it depends what your income goals are. Number #1 rule dont keep all your eggs in one basket.

Post: #7

(12-05-2014 07:38 PM)Black Quixote Wrote:  What are you trying to dropship? What's your starting budget? What skills do you have/experience within ecommerce? Are you asking basically how do you make money from dropshipping? What methods of selling products are you looking into? Just a hosted marketplace site or are you trying to put products you source on craigslist/amazon etc. etc?

Nice. Ive dropshipped before on ebay and my own site with a product that had a low profit margin and stopped. I did make quite a few sales. I have experience with every aspect of online marketing from web design to ppc on an intermediate level. I have a niche that I am in the process of developing a content strategy for, and adding products that would be dropshipped. Until I see if I can outrank my competition, i am going to dropship.

I know my main competitor brings in 3 million in revenue, but they are well established. They have ran the online market for 6 years now, but I want to create competition and take a piece of the pie. I guess, im more looking for insight or tips on creating a authority dropship site. I am going to use woocommerce, because im going to need a ton of content to get ranked. Shopify and bigcommerce are nice, but i think id prefer to use CMS, and I also know wordpress very well.

Post: #8

@Trojans I'll send you a PM.

Post: #9

(12-05-2014 08:27 PM)Black Quixote Wrote:  @Trojans I'll send you a PM.

Cool man!

Post: #10

Great post +1 from me. Looking forward to next post. Mainly my question is how to capture the lead information of the target demographic.

Post: #11

RVF, Here is Part 2. Sorry, it took a few days as I was busy as hell. I am going to do a few short profiles to stir more ideas, then write about starting/find your path, and share more and more profiles over the course of the next few days.

Now, I have received a few messages as well as questions on how to begin. So I am going to handle the basics for a few different systems of making money, what is needed, and a few guidelines as well as an example of what the process looks like and some common pitfalls.

Methods vs. Systems and A Few Examples:

Within the digital marketing industry, there are product creators, search engine optimization specialists, general traffic specialists, optimization experts (site, campaign, or monetization), affiliate marketers, “laborers”, shit peddlers aka gurus, jv brokers, content marketers, CPA network owners, lead generators, site flippers, site generators, project managers. There are more variations and ambiguous mixes of each, this is only a few of the “routes” taken. I will tell a bit about each, what those without capital start with and what those with do, difficulty, and returns.

Product Creators

What They Do

Most successful product creators are people that usually possess both strong organizational and research skills as well as capital. As mentioned before, they either with or without a partner research market opportunities within communities (usually problems or needs) that can be solved by either creating a product such as an e-course, book, or physical product. The goal of most is to automate as much of the process as possible as the better the system they have for developing a product more efficiently/quickly the more they are able to refine the product and spend more time on ensuring it both gets the attention of those that should know about it but connects with their needs.

A Few Things

If you can afford to get it outsourced, do. A professional oft times can do a better job than you can. Don’t waste your time stumbling through something, stick to what you are good at. This doesn’t mean don’t enrich your skills as over time it will make you a more competent manager but your 3rd grader drawing photoshop ebook cover may be enough but could cost you longer term.
Network: Network with relevant site owners, writers, affiliate marketers, users in your niche. These connections can do everything from expand your potential lead base to offer cross promotion opportunities to even just ensure a review. Relevant site owners want to make money also, if you can connect with them and show them your product is quality it can be easier to gain their traffic. Giving copies and tools to affiliate marketers can aid in their campaign creation and if you can get them behind your product, well it’s obvious.
Most fail their first time. Don’t get discouraged. Treat every failure as a learning opportunity. Which reminds me KEEP A JOURNAL. This will ensure you can go back and re-evaluate where you succeeded and failed. This isn’t just when you are learning but is a tool for ensuring you are constantly getting better as well as if you wish you can share with others who can offer feedback.
Almost all fail due to lack of a real plan/conducting research. Don’t get lazy. Do your research, and that doesn’t just mean on your targets, understand what niches are related to your niche, know where your target spends their time, quanacast it, google it, do whatever is necessary. Also, know your competition, there are tools and services available for spying on their marketing efforts as well as revenue, watch what content they share, study their ads. If their ads are up after awhile chances are it’s successful. Good artists copy, great artists blah blah.
Testing Is Everything. This is self explanatory.
Look up “Product Launch Case Studies”, they are everywhere, see what others did right and did wrong.

What is Needed To Start:
-Keyword Research Tool
-Domain
-If you can afford it: a VA
-VPS
-a website creator if you can’t do it on your own. If you need recommendations, pm me.
-A quality ghost writer for if your product is informational, as well as content writers for your site content/marketing efforts (good writers for a moderate price are hard to find)
-WhatRunsWhere (recommended)

GO READ IMGRIND.

Difficulty: 4 out of five. It’s tedious.

Laborers:

These are the VAs, the content creators, the site designers etc. etc. basically the people that are responsible for carrying out someone else’s plan. The advantages are that the work can be consistent if you are good at what you do, the disadvantages are that your income most of the time has a ceiling that is tied to your time unless you are able to outsource but that risks your reputation. I’ve seen $10-$45 an hour for work. It all depends on how good you are, if you have a portfolio, how quickly you are able to work, and your customer service.

A Few Things:
Get Reviews, Keep Reviews. It’s been said on here before initially reviews are everything whether on forums, local businesses, or on freelance sites. Maintain a good relationship through customer service and being as straightforward as possible. Let them know you want to provide the best service possible and that upon providing it, you would like a kind word.
Have a website, it’ll be your portfolio, whether just articles, designs, etc. etc. It will also basically act as your sales page, so taking time to ensure why visitors know why they should use you/that you are good at what you do is essential if you want it to be an effective tool.
Provide something your competition does not. There is always something the competition lacks, turn their weakness into your unique selling point. They need a week to get something completed, try and find a way to get it done just as good or better in shorter time. They only provide limited contact options? Offer more. Take more methods of payment. The weakest unique selling point is price. If someone is cheap, usually they don’t understand the worth of what they are looking for, as such if someone is looking for a free website, they don’t understand how powerful of a tool it is. This client usually from what I have seen is going to be hard on paying and long term just a pain in the ass. Just a heads up. Deliver quality for the price you know it is worth, not think or feel, but have researched and know what it’s worth.
Your basis as a laborer will help you when you want to become the manager, that’s always the goal transition.
Your time is tied to your money.

Next Time I’ll Go Into:

General Traffic Specialists
Optimization Specialists
Lead Generators

But before I finish for today, I am going to do a simple “what questions to ask yourself” explanation:

Everyone asks the easiest way to make money. So, before you ask me from now on what you should do/your options via PM. Make sure these questions are answered:

What is your background? What skills/network have you accrued?
Have you ever done anything related to digital marketing, site development, content creation, sales, etc. etc?
How much time do you have a week/day?
What resources do you have at your disposal?
What state/country are you located in?
What are you interested in learning about and why?

It makes it easier for me to recommend courses, sites, things for you to look at if you help me out by giving me information. I can’t contribute much besides, go do read this and this and see if those are things you are interested in unless I know more about you. I’m going to try and follow up TODAY with the few PMs/questions I got.

Post: #12

Solid info! Thanks! Also have you a Rep point.

Any advice on giving reliable VAs?

Post: #13

@NEO: As in getting traffic? getting them to convert? or what software to use? I mean on wordpress there are plugins you can use but if you're starting out something simple is wp profit builders, aweber or leadpages. You create the lead form with whatever criteria you want them to have to fill out. Go simple initially because over a week or two you can screen and get more information from them with a follow up form. Anyway the more detailed questions the better.

@fucksong: Yes, this can be difficult you have three options:

1. Go through a company
2. Find them on your own
3. Find competent people and train them
4. Go through recommendations

Each has its pros and cons. The first and the fourth are your best route. Usually you can expect to pay anywhere from $400-1000 a month for a decent to good VA with varying hours and skills. Some will be talented and just looking for an easy job and others are just located in an area where this is a good job and pays enough to survive and save some. If you buy American, make sure you get to know them. Finding a good VA outside of recommendations will be a pain in the ass but well worth it. Some companies are on the more expensive side but a great VA should be a tool to profit, not just a money hole. Check freelancing sites, forums, etc. etc. I'll go more into detail about finding VAs, questions to ask them, tools to manage them etc. etc. Im trying to answer things on the fly.

Post: #14

Also, researching note: Checkout FAQ Fox. It's a nifty little tool for finding out what people are saying about your target keyword.

An example people here can appreciate for research is, you can find out using message boards/quantacast/what sites link to other sites but, after you find the sites and need to scrape them for keywords/related threads and for finding out more about the issue as well as people who you can possibly network or well pay, you can simply use FAQ Fox.

Post: #15

Still open to any insight in ecommerce and/or dropshipping OP. Look forward to any advice you may have. Cheers.

Post: #16

Sorry. Shooting you something around 9pm est.

Post: #17

(12-09-2014 08:09 PM)Black Quixote Wrote:  Sorry. Shooting you something around 9pm est.

Hey Black Quixote,

Mainly in getting traffic. You mentioned above how it's now easier to find your chosen demographic example you gave was white males ages 23-30 who like basketball etc. How do I direct the demographic I want to a site? I assume ppc campaign (facebook, adwords, etc.) any other methods?

For example let's say I have two things. An ebook I want to sell and the ability to write a solid sales letter for it. But at this time I don't have a platform to do content marketing, so aweber forms etc. don't apply yet. Since content marketing is more of the 'long game' I'm just looking to drive traffic to a sales letter and get some quick sales or even just drive traffic to test out an idea.

Post: #18

Great post. I disagree with your black/gray/white/blue hat breakdown, though. That's a very general way to categorize how a small segment of people operate. You can't apply that generalization when looking at internet's link graph at the macro level. Also, Google is anti-competitive and abusive; what's okay per their guidelines today can sink a ship tomorrow, especially if you don't have experience fixing a website with a scorched link profile. If you're not used to seeing and fixing charred sites on a regular basis, trying to figure that out from the noise that is the SEO publishing community can be a bit stifling for most people. Penguin has created a huge disincentive to share effective tactics in any public forum and that includes rapidly recovery a site some noob SEO burnt to a crisp.

@trojans10 - Most dropship businesses started in the current climate will likely fail unless margins are fat enough to afford run on paid search. I get probably 2-4 SEO leads from the web per week from people who invested money in designing a store, setting up systems, cc processing, etc. The big issue here is 95% of these people are running stores with 1-15K products and they have the same manufacturer descriptions as every other person slinging the same goods. Not gonna happen. Sure, you can work on moving category pages for the larger terms, but you longtail traffic--which always converts better--is going to be minimal at the product page level. I learned SEO via slinging vitamins, herbs, and supps on a litany of different properties, but that was a different time...before I had to invest a bunch of cash into bunch of descriptions, which also had to be FDA compliant.

If you're not making 33-40% on dropshipped goods after shipping, it's likely not worth your time unless you're very sure you have the SEO chops to hang in competitive ecom markets. If the competition in organic search is weak, go for it, but before I build out anything I make damn sure I have content covered from all angles. For ecom, this means unique descriptions. One option is to start with a core group of products you know sell/have great search volume with commercial intent, noindex the rest of the products, and slowly pull back the noindex veil as you build it out. Also, most of the best suppliers that dropship don't advertise as to avoid wasting time sending out wholesale info to a litany of people who aren't going to move product for them.

Also, I love WordPress but for a cart at significant scale, it's a PITA to manage. I have stores on BigCommerce but will be eventually converting them to CS-Cart which I started using and love. Not having access to the htaccess file bugs me on BigCommerce and I believe Shopify is that way as well. The word "authority" gets thrown around a lot in often overly ambiguous ways. If links and website optimization are equal (which never happens), the easiest way to beat someone is via stickiness/engagement. If people stay on your website longer than your competitor's, you'll see gradual lifts in search placements, but it's easier said than done, especially in eCom where price plays a major factor and you have product listing ads from droves of different sites showing for any keyword with commercial intent.

Post: #19

Hi Black Quixote, are there any historical statistics on roughly how long after setting up an "online business", that one could start to see cash flow? For different industries, etc?

In my current field of work, commercial real estate, there are actually statistics for specific areas for specific types of buildings and the types of returns one should expect. An example would be retail buildings should give you higher rates of returns compared to apartment buildings because they carry a higher risk/reward profile so am curious if online businesses have similar "profiles" Or say a building in the middle of Manhattan or San Francisco would be worth a lot more money to buy but give lower returns vs a slumlord building in the hood but would give you higher returns because of it's riskier nature.

Thanks again for all this great info!

Post: #20

Alpha Mind: Have you any experiences with Fulfillment By Amazon? I am shipping one of my products through them and it saves me a lot of time. In some ways it is similar to dropshipping as they take care of everything, so long as you get them product. Shipping product can be a PITA as they often have you ship to multiple Amazon locations. And of course, Amazon is always finding some new fee to tack on to their bill.
Right now I'm shipping 2-3 units with FBA a day and this seems to be steady. Can't figure out how to ship 10-20 per day, which would allow me to quite my day job and do this full time.

Post: #21

(12-10-2014 01:43 AM)Alpha Mind Wrote:  Great post. I disagree with your black/gray/white/blue hat breakdown, though. That's a very general way to categorize how a small segment of people operate. You can't apply that generalization when looking at internet's link graph at the macro level. Also, Google is anti-competitive and abusive; what's okay per their guidelines today can sink a ship tomorrow, especially if you don't have experience fixing a website with a scorched link profile. If you're not used to seeing and fixing charred sites on a regular basis, trying to figure that out from the noise that is the SEO publishing community can be a bit stifling for most people. Penguin has created a huge disincentive to share effective tactics in any public forum and that includes rapidly recovery a site some noob SEO burnt to a crisp.

@trojans10 - Most dropship businesses started in the current climate will likely fail unless margins are fat enough to afford run on paid search. I get probably 2-4 SEO leads from the web per week from people who invested money in designing a store, setting up systems, cc processing, etc. The big issue here is 95% of these people are running stores with 1-15K products and they have the same manufacturer descriptions as every other person slinging the same goods. Not gonna happen. Sure, you can work on moving category pages for the larger terms, but you longtail traffic--which always converts better--is going to be minimal at the product page level. I learned SEO via slinging vitamins, herbs, and supps on a litany of different properties, but that was a different time...before I had to invest a bunch of cash into bunch of descriptions, which also had to be FDA compliant.

If you're not making 33-40% on dropshipped goods after shipping, it's likely not worth your time unless you're very sure you have the SEO chops to hang in competitive ecom markets. If the competition in organic search is weak, go for it, but before I build out anything I make damn sure I have content covered from all angles. For ecom, this means unique descriptions. One option is to start with a core group of products you know sell/have great search volume with commercial intent, noindex the rest of the products, and slowly pull back the noindex veil as you build it out. Also, most of the best suppliers that dropship don't advertise as to avoid wasting time sending out wholesale info to a litany of people who aren't going to move product for them.

Also, I love WordPress but for a cart at significant scale, it's a PITA to manage. I have stores on BigCommerce but will be eventually converting them to CS-Cart which I started using and love. Not having access to the htaccess file bugs me on BigCommerce and I believe Shopify is that way as well. The word "authority" gets thrown around a lot in often overly ambiguous ways. If links and website optimization are equal (which never happens), the easiest way to beat someone is via stickiness/engagement. If people stay on your website longer than your competitor's, you'll see gradual lifts in search placements, but it's easier said than done, especially in eCom where price plays a major factor and you have product listing ads from droves of different sites showing for any keyword with commercial intent.

Thanks for the response man. Yea, my margins aren't too high. I am going to outsource the product descriptions and really build the website around content. I have a decent amount of quality writers that are knowledgeable about my subject. My plan is to just test the market in this niche and see if its doable. If it is, I don't mind investing in stock to sell. I just think that this niche could be doable. That being said, the reason I wanted to go with Woo Commerce was because of content and the flexibilty. Since itll be a 50/50 website in terms of content/eccomerce. Do you think I am better off still going with something else? Keep in mind, my nich would have aprox. 30-80 products. Please let me know.

Overall, I am a FT employee, with a ton of knowledge in online marketing. Id love to make this fulltime, and I love eccomerce.. so I felt like it was only right to go this route. What aspect of online marketing are you or OP running right now? Id love to go international with a store.

Post: #22

@ColSpanker - FBA is great. If you know your demo, you can run Facebook ads to a landing page with a coupon code, which should provide some degree of conversion tracking since Amazon doesn't give you all of that data. Amazon ranks products within A9 based on reviews, price, engagement, and how people end up on your product. For example, if you're selling an iphone 5s case, customers that search iphone 5s case, click your product and order it, that'll impact your search placements within A9. You can also send mediocre links at an Amazon page and it'll rank in Google, eventually. If you do that, make sure to vary your anchor text a lot and *avoid* exact match anchors, i.e. "iphone 5s case" people get carried away with that and even on Amazon pages, you can overcook the anchors. This is assuming there's a larger market for the product you're selling.

If you want to game the system a bit more, you can hire people to buy your product and leave positive reviews so it'll show up as a verified purchase.

Post: #23

(12-10-2014 11:43 AM)ColSpanker Wrote:  Alpha Mind: Have you any experiences with Fulfillment By Amazon? I am shipping one of my products through them and it saves me a lot of time. In some ways it is similar to dropshipping as they take care of everything, so long as you get them product. Shipping product can be a PITA as they often have you ship to multiple Amazon locations. And of course, Amazon is always finding some new fee to tack on to their bill.
Right now I'm shipping 2-3 units with FBA a day and this seems to be steady. Can't figure out how to ship 10-20 per day, which would allow me to quite my day job and do this full time.

How did you stumble upon your product? And was this something you imported? What kind of margins are you having after the sale?

Post: #24

Apha Mind: Sending you a PM
trojans10: I have the product manufactured and packaged here in the USA. Believe it or not, there are still some of us fools trying to make things in this country. It's my design. The margins are sweet, but the product just doesn't move like I wish it would.

Post: #25

@Black Quixote - Recently, I've been looking at Amazon affiliate marketing and even iTunes affiliate marketing but from other research online, it looks like Google has penalized websites in the past that had even one affiliate marketing link on their site despite having some content on there. Do you have any opinions on that? If websites are penalized for having affiliate links on their site, what's the point of setting shop if Google is actually cock-blocking you.

Thanks again in advance!