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Talk-Commerce-Ben Knegendorf

The Drop-Ship Breakthrough with Ben Knegendorf

Ben Knegendorf is the co-founder of DropShipBreakThru.com, where he teaches people to start an e-commerce business in the next 30 days for $500 or less.

Transcript

[00:02:40] Brent: Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Ben Korf. He’s a co-founder of drop Ship breakthrough. But I’m gonna let Ben introduce himself. Tell us what your day-to-day role is, and maybe one of your passions.

[00:02:56] Ben: Yeah. Of the co-founder of drop ship breakthrough.com, where we teach people just like you to start an e-commerce business in the next 30 days, usually for around $500 or less. That that’s a big, bold statement. I hope to back up here. But to our passion, I saw the Minnesota on your wall.

[00:03:08] Ben: I am just over the border and I’m the absolute Minnesota twins junkie. Baseball runs through my blades for sure, runs through my veins. 

[00:03:17] Brent: That’s awesome. I just interviewed somebody who helped with, she was a teacher in the seventies, and she had a bunch of the early twins in her class. And it was, not early twins.

[00:03:29] Brent: The twins kids in their class before baseball got big money and people stuck around. So Tony Oliva still lives in the Twin Cities. Anybody’s baseball fans would know that. Rod crew, we might be back. I don’t know. Anyways Ben I know I warned you before we get started that I’m just gonna tell you a joke and you’re gonna tell me if that joke should be free or if we should charge for it.

[00:03:50] Brent: So here we go. Losing my hair made me sad. So I bought a cheap wig. It was a small price to.

[00:03:59] Ben: I think you should not charge for that one. . Okay. 

[00:04:03] Brent: I agree. That was a stretchy. All right. I’ll agree with you. Okay. So can I throw one back 

at 

[00:04:07] Ben: you then since we’re here? Yeah, go. Let’s do it. Tell me, how do mermaids wash their fins?

[00:04:12] Ben: How tied ? 

[00:04:14] Brent: Let’s see. That’s a good one. I like that. I’ll, I might reuse it. , actually, we’ll publish that one. Good. All right. Nice. Yeah. Free joke project. All right. Alright, so today we’re gonna drop, we’re gonna talk about drop shipping. We in our green room, I mentioned that, we’re a magenta partner and for 13 years now and all of our clients have done drop shipping, but I think you have some ways to get people into the business.

[00:04:36] Brent: So tell us a little bit about your story and why you decided to do that or this. 

[00:04:41] Ben: Yeah, I mean it all started quite a few years back, right? I was working at a Walmart distribution center and the holy grail, there was first shift, like your whole goal was to just get the first shift. It took me seven years to get there in this building, and I got there and I remember walking in and just everyone looked dead inside and I was like, oh my God, I’m 29.

[00:04:57] Ben: I’ve. Quote unquote made it at this job. Maybe I’ll become a coach again, cuz we’re all a team. Give me a w. But there’s, this was it. And I was very disappointed with what I saw. I was disappointed in how everyone looked around me and I knew there had to be a better way. And so that’s when I started looking for.

[00:05:11] Ben: A way to get outta there. And honestly, at the time I was working at a warehouse. My wife was a cna. My dad worked at a warehouse and my mom was a cna and like that, that, that’s all I knew, right? And so I had lived up to the box that was built around me and it took a little effort to look around at other ideas and start experimenting.

[00:05:27] Ben: Some of those were like going to clearance aisles. and flipping that stuff on eBay or Amazon, going to garage sales, things like that. Just trying to understand how to, make money while you sleep if you will or make money on the side. I just, I didn’t know anything other than go work at a warehouse.

[00:05:39] Ben: And my first pure a into this was flipping things or finding the arbitrage between clearance aisles and Amazon or fba or eBay. And then eventually I stumbled on the term drop shipping, which I’m sure many of the listeners have seen. The latest guru talking about drop shipping. I immediately was turned off by the low ticket stuff shipped from China.

[00:05:56] Ben: Stuff that really wasn’t big back then. But I did hear about high ticket drop shipping, which is basically how Wayfair got started. They had hundreds of different stores that they were selling, niche, high ticket, e-commerce, drop shipping stores that they brought together into Wayfair.

[00:06:09] Ben: And when I understood that, I was like, oh, this is, you’re building a real business here. You’re becoming a retailer. You’re selling brands people have heard of from companies within your country. And at that moment I realized, all right, this is what I want to do. This makes too much. . Yeah. 

[00:06:22] Brent: Do you think you had a little bit of that entrepreneurial spirit in you to drive you to do that?

[00:06:27] Brent: Or was it just you’re so sick of working at Walmart that you wanted to just get out of there? 

[00:06:32] Ben: Yeah, I think in hindsight I did, but I didn’t have anyone around me to spot that. So if I look back at my childhood I didn’t do, I didn’t pay attention in class, but I knew all the answers. Math was a good one.

[00:06:41] Ben: Like they would, here’s how you do complicated math. I’d have the answer in my head, and then they’d be like, you didn’t do the work this way. And I, I don’t understand why we need to do the work your way. I got the answer for you. And I was told I w wasn’t quote unquote normal. And I got told a lot of things as a kid that I think were just signs of, I’m an entrepreneur and I’m constantly questioning things and I’m unsatiable curious around everything.

[00:06:59] Ben: And I think in school they try to fit you into this little box. So in hindsight I think I saw the signs, but I don’t really think I noticed it until my mid twenties. I was big UFC fan and Joe Rogan, when somebody would get knocked out, he’d be like, oh, he got hit right on the button. So I started on the button fi gear.

[00:07:13] Ben: That was my first business I ever. Don’t ever, don’t sell clothing. People, whoever’s listening to this, don’t start a clothing line. It didn’t go super, super well, but that was, that, that was fun. Even though it sucked, it was fun. And then, realizing it didn’t work was a big l and that kind of, pushed me back down for a little bit.

[00:07:27] Ben: But look, that was my first adventure in entrepreneurship and it was fun. Like being able to solve my own problems choose my own path was fun. Yeah. 

[00:07:35] Brent: And I think, so I just wanna make a distinguish because my wife had a eBay business back. Nineties, early two thousands, and she actually had a warehouse, and I think what you’re talking about is not having an manage a large warehouse full of stuff.

[00:07:48] Brent: She did Wayfair, like every, there’s all those returns, right? There’s such a huge market for that return business. And she would get truckloads of. Stuff from where Wayfair and Fingerhut and put it onto eBay. You’re, it sounds like, just explain a little bit more about your, the model that you’re proposing and how that differs from what I just described.

[00:08:08] Ben: I actually had a buddy who did the exact same thing you just described, but did it for Golf Galaxy. And so he would go get all the trade-ins and then he would pay, pennies on the dollar and then he would flip them as well. So that’s interesting. The model I’m speaking of. So I’m sitting down currently, but I’m sitting at an Apex standing desk and so I was part of a company called Standing destination.com, which is a good example of what we teach.

[00:08:26] Ben: And we would sell these apex desks and we would. I can work through this whole process, but essentially we’d work out an agreement with Apex to become a retailer for their brand. We would go run Google, we would go acquire the customer, sell the product, then go to Apex and say, we need you to drop ship this product to our customer.

[00:08:41] Ben: And then they would charge our credit card and we would keep the arbitrage in between basically high ticket drop shipping. In a nutshell, it’s a marketing, it’s a customer acquisition and customer service business at the end of the day. Okay. Yeah. So 

[00:08:51] Brent: you’re Handl. So you’re working in effect, like a salesperson for that manufacturer and you’re, they’re, you’re arranging the sales and they’re doing the drop 

[00:09:00] Ben: shipping, correct?

[00:09:01] Ben: Yeah. But in the meantime, you’re building a real business. So I’ve referenced Wayfair. I’ll reference another one. That’s hopefully nationwide. I know it’s local to us here. Re e I is a good example. They’re very niche focused on outdoors people. And so that’s what we’re trying to build to.

[00:09:12] Ben: We’re trying to build a focused. Retail store on the internet that is not only just being a salesman for the other brands, but being a destination for anyone who’s interested in that type of product. So if you go to a standing destination, there’s articles on standing desk benefits there’s all sorts of content around the benefits of standing desk and around the brands and reviewing the brands.

[00:09:31] Ben: a destination on the internet for you to look at standing desk products versus just us being out there trying to be salesman for the brand. . 

[00:09:39] Brent: And so you’ve mentioned high ticket. How do you get started or why would you start on high ticket rather than just commodity items or lower ticket items?

[00:09:50] Ben: Yeah, I think this is what turned me on most to this business model was simple math, right? I also have a a brand myself, a pet supplements. And so I understand like the low end market, but if I want to make let’s just use $30,000 in revenue next month, and I’m selling a $30 product, I need to sell a thousand items versus if I’m selling a high ticket product that is $3,000, I need to sell 10.

[00:10:10] Ben: And you can imagine with 10 orders versus a thousand, you’re gonna need much less employees. You’re gonna have less damages in returns, you’re gonna have less overhead in general. The business model seemed to make a lot more sense for me. You could, we’ve, I have, and I have students who have grown a business as a solo operation to a seven figure business without needing the help of VAs or team members.

[00:10:29] Ben: And to me that was intriguing, especially when I was first starting out and wondering I, I didn’t know what I was doing as far as hiring a team or really doing anything. And the idea that I could work by myself and not be overwhelmed with orders or inventory or things like that was very intriguing.

[00:10:44] Brent: how do you differentiate then? Like the pluses versus having your own warehouse? I guess setting aside the fact that you don’t have to own it all. , do you have to, do you have to take back returns or do the re I’m assuming the returns go right back to the place 

they 

[00:10:58] Ben: were shipped from. Yeah, so that can vary, right?

[00:11:01] Ben: That’s gonna depend on the relationship you have with each brand that you are associated with. Everyone has their own rules. Some of ’em. Wildly creative restocking fees, we’ll just call it that. Others are like more generous than others. They’re happy to take it back. Other brands, there’s nothing you can do about it.

[00:11:16] Ben: Like it’s going back to you and you’re gonna eat that cost. And certainly I would say the, that is one part of this business model that’s a little bit out of your control. It’s like having a three pl, right? When you have a three pl, you hope they do good by you. They charge you all sorts of fees.

[00:11:27] Ben: You don’t really know what’s going on with your product. You hope it’s getting packaged well. And the only way you find out it wasn’t packaged well is when the customer complains to you. And It is a, I don’t wanna call it a downside but it’s certainly something that isn’t always fun when you’re dealing with this because it’s out of 

[00:11:40] Brent: your hands.

[00:11:41] Brent: And what about price point to get started? What do you recommend a user has or a person that wants to get started in this sort of thing? What does the pricing . 

[00:11:50] Ben: So again, I think that is one of the most appealing parts of this business model. Let’s imagine you wanted to open a franchise Taco Bell would fit right in, in your area.

[00:11:58] Ben: That’s gonna cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars to get set up and running on a Taco Bell. Or if you wanna launch your own brand, likely it’s gonna cost you thousands of dollars as well. To do the research, get the samples, place a big money. Order launch Hope people enjoy your product. I prefer cash flow, and that’s why starting this model for less than 500, which I’m happy to outline here.

[00:12:14] Ben: And also everything is cash flow in the beginning makes so much sense to me. So you’re gonna need a domain, right? That’s $12. I’d like to use name chief, you can use whatever you. , you’re gonna need Shopify. I know you’re a Magiano guy, Brent, but I’m gonna say Shopify’s the way to go here for sure. $29 a month for that.

[00:12:29] Ben: You might want a paid theme. You might want to, have something customized. You definitely don’t need one. But if you do, it’s 180 to, I think they’re up to $400 now. We give Superstore from out of the sandbox. We give that to every student of our course because we do believe a paid theme is important.

[00:12:42] Ben: You’re gonna need Google Workspace so that you have Brent at your new e-commerce domain.com. Not Brent Brents Commerce store a Gmail. That’s just not super professional. You’re gonna need an 800 phone number, so I would recommend Grasshopper. That’s $40. You might need a little branding. So fiber’s a pretty easy place to go get a logo done and get some homepage images and branding and things like that for your website.

[00:13:03] Ben: And then the biggest expense you’re going to have is Google Ads. That’s where we’re gonna acquire most of our customers. Google likes to give you a coupon. Spend one 50, get one 50 or spend 500. Get 500. Definitely look for the ladder if you’re gonna start this model. And within that first, Thousand dollars of ad spend on Google.

[00:13:19] Ben: You should have acquired one customer or multiple customers where you can then roll that cash flow back into, get the snowball moving and acquire more customers. outside of that, your biggest expense is time. Like you’re gonna have to put in the sweat equity. You’re gonna have to understand how to build your site, upload products, contact the brands.

[00:13:36] Ben: In the process you’re gonna learn Google ads, a little seo, a little conversion rate optimization, a little copywriting a little how to code a little bit in the back end of shop. But hopefully you’re doing all of this while making sales, while getting paid, rather than, paying a college a hundred thousand dollars to go learn something and hope you get a job.

[00:13:51] Brent: There’s a step before that though. It’s choosing what is the product that you want to sell. And there must be, I think getting the website is a big investment and certainly even Doing the theming part is even, is gonna be more time consuming. How? How do you choose which product 

[00:14:06] Ben: you wanna sell?

[00:14:07] Ben: So this is interesting. I think too often the world of e-commerce is focused on the product. . And the reality is you should be focused on the human behind the screen. So a good thing we always talk about like 2% is the average conversion rate. What about those other 98 people? Those were 98 people raising their hands saying, I’m interested in your product and you didn’t serve them, and you’re just letting ’em leave your website.

[00:14:27] Ben: That’s wild to me. So John and I, John’s my co-founder here we try to get you to focus on the human. Who is the human that you want to market to every day that you want to deal with in customer service? Ideally it’s you, right? If you have a passion ideal. Whatever you’re passionate about has products that are $800 and above, and you are going to be able to sell to that person better than anyone because it’s you.

[00:14:47] Ben: So we like to focus on the who first and then find the products that they buy. And if you get the who wrong, it can be a nightmare. I bought one of my consulting clients businesses, saw the opportunity, enjoyed the marketing, but the who behind it was an older. Less fortunate human being and they were awful to deal, literally awful to deal with.

[00:15:04] Ben: I got more chargebacks in the first three months of that business than I have anywhere else. And I ate my own dog food there of Hey, focus on the who rather than the products and the marketing. Who do I want to serve every day? Whereas I, the biggest company I was part of that we went 1 million to 11 million in two years that was serving the golf industry.

[00:15:18] Ben: I’m a golfer. I knew the pain the customer behind the screen had. I knew. How to speak to them. I knew the language they used, I knew the places they hung out online. I knew exactly how to write a headline that would hook them in because all they cared about was getting one more stroke. That was much, much easier than talking to a different who that I didn’t have any relation with.

[00:15:33] Brent: And I’m just gonna put a plug in here for Big Commerce. They have the exact same plans as Shopify. Nice. I’ll just do that my, cuz we’re a big commerce partner as well. and I, there’s no differentiator. Your checkout if you ever wanted to do, to customize your checkout. Big commerce is open source where Shopify’s lockdown anyways, so that’s beside the point.

[00:15:56] Brent: So I think, you’ve chosen something, you’ve built out a store. Google ads can be a money suck if you don’t do it right in your course. You give some sort of. Help around that. Even if you’re, and $500 goes nowhere, especially like if you’re gonna compete against I would imagine that you’re going to some, sometimes compete against the actual manufacturers that you drop shipping for at times in Google Ads.

[00:16:20] Brent: Yeah. I think 

[00:16:21] Ben: this is where we are different than anyone else who’s. Teaching something similar or really anywhere you go for Google ads. Once Google bought the Chinese Go AI and brought it into their system and started doing smart everything that’s where everything fell apart in Google.

[00:16:35] Ben: My ads back in the day. You’d have to build everything and do everything yourself, and there was a very specific way that you should do this. We still teach that, so rather than doing performance, or smart shopping or whatever you’re on currently we do use like smart list that makes sense. But most of the, like Google do it for you is a very bad idea, especially for high ticket products.

[00:16:52] Ben: And I’ll say that because again, I sell glucosamine for dogs. If somebody’s searching glucosamine for dogs, they actually might buy this, right? That’s generic. But also like they’re willing to probably spend 30 bucks and see if their dog can stop limping. If somebody’s searching infrared sauna, they are so far from buying, it’s not even funny.

[00:17:08] Ben: And so if Google. Buy all that traffic for you and show you tiny price clicks cuz they’re serving you for infrared sauna. No one’s gonna buy from you, right? And you’re just gonna burn all your cash. So there’s a way to set up a manual shopping campaign and choose your priority. And anyone listening to this might understand that you can choose high, medium, or low priority.

[00:17:27] Ben: And if you set everything up as a high and seg segment, the brands by ed groups. Duplicate that and set it up as medium. The only thing that can go to medium priority is when you put a negative keyword in high, so all your junk, everything will go to high, right? And then you can pull out your semi-important keywords and move them to medium, and then you can segment your most valuable keywords and segment them to low.

[00:17:46] Ben: So now all your junk’s flowing into high where you’re bidding 10 cents, 25 cents, something like that, your branded terms likely your middle of the funnel terms, you’re paying a little bit more in medium. And then those exact match bottom of the funnel, people looking for this exact product terms you can pay more for and low and you’re not getting you’re not getting si, your cash isn’t getting siphoned away, which is what, Google’s very good at that, if I’m honest with you.

[00:18:04] Ben: I’m not a huge fan of everything they’re moving to do. I understand they’re trying to hit the bell curve, right? That, 80% of people just want this. But I’m not in that 80%. I’m, I’m at the other end of the bell curve. I wanna be optimized. I wanna be bringing the right traffic to my business, to the right pages.

[00:18:17] Ben: And so I, we definitely teach a method that I don’t think has taught much anymore out in the universe. 

[00:18:22] Brent: And you mentioned high ticket and. So I’m assuming no high ticket items like high ticket clothing or shoes or something like that. 

[00:18:31] Ben: Cowboy boots. Yeah, I definitely wouldn’t recommend apparel. That’s a return nightmare.

[00:18:35] Ben: But I’ve sold everything from 3D printers to tiny house products, to standing desk products to golf products. I’ve literally been all over the place and I’ve coached hundreds of students and whatever the first thoughts come into your mind. If you’re thinking about doing this, don’t do those.

[00:18:47] Ben: Those are the ones everyone thinks of. Spend some time writing in a notebook, gathering some ideas, and once you like point your reticular activation system at looking for things above a thousand bucks, you’ll start seeing them everywhere. And it honestly the list is endless. And there’s just so many things that you can build a business around and the Internet’s made it even more possible to really niche down and still find all of that audience looking for what you.

[00:19:08] Ben: How 

[00:19:08] Brent: about doing FBA fulfilled by Amazon? Is that the same type of model that you’re talking about? 

[00:19:14] Ben: Yeah, with fba. My pet supplements here on fba. I wouldn’t recommend selling someone else’s products. Via fba. I don’t If you have your own FBA brand, I’m sure they’ve been you’ve had people reach out to you that said we wanna ride your listing just in case Amazon cancels you.

[00:19:26] Ben: I’m not a big fan of that, and I don’t think selling high ticket products is a good idea. So again, I sell pet supplements on there every single day. I open my email and it says, refund initiated for this refund, initiated for that. Amazon is in total control. And I can eat that on these 20, 30, $40 products.

[00:19:41] Ben: But if that’s gonna happen on 800 to $10,000 products, the I’m in for a world of hurt because Amazon’s always gonna side with the customer. 

[00:19:49] Brent: Yeah. So you talked about you talked about Amazon and the price points. Is there a highest price point that you would recommend? You’re not gonna do a car, right?

[00:20:00] Ben: I think where you’ll run into issues is actually with Shopify itself, with the payment processor itself they’ll start wondering, who are you making these big sales? I knew some people that were selling 15 to $20,000 things and quickly Shopify payments shut them down. They went around the backside, just went to Stripe, who Shopify’s using and Stripe had no issue.

[00:20:18] Ben: But that’s where you’re gonna run into issues is. That’s a lot of money to be moving around without being questioned, why you’re moving that kind of money around. So I tend to stick in the two to eight range. I think that’s the sweet spot. The lower you get, the more you’re just eating your margins with shipping.

[00:20:31] Ben: So if you’re selling an $800 product where you have 25% margins rough math, that’s 200 bucks. You have to acquire the customer. You have to pay the 3% credit card fees when you take their credit card and you have to pay for shipping. And oh, by the way, you’re a business, you’re trying to make profit on the back end.

[00:20:43] Ben: So really anything below 800 doesn’t make a lot of sense. But if you’re selling a $5,000 product with 25% margins and it costs you $250 to ship, now you have a thousand dollars in arbitrage there that you can go acquire the customer. That seems to make a little more sense the higher you get. Got 

[00:20:58] Brent: it.

[00:20:58] Brent: You had mention. Alley Express no nonsense, no Alley Express nine. Explain that. What does that mean? 

[00:21:05] Ben: So that’s been the hot thing for drop shipping over the last, I don’t know, three to five years. And it is simply go find the hottest trending product. Go find it on Alley Express. Set up your store.

[00:21:16] Ben: It’s a turn and burn website, right? You’re gonna drive traffic and hopes you can convert a ton of people. On your website selling a, honestly, it’s gonna be a terrible product. It’s gonna ship from China, show up 40 days later in a heavily tape box. And you’re gonna have a bunch of disappointed customers who aren’t gonna reach you to tell you they’re disappointed cuz you’ve already turned and burned that website.

[00:21:31] Ben: So if you’re out there for a cash grab, maybe this makes sense, but I don’t know, my ethics and my integrity aren’t going to allow me to sell a terrible product with a terrible experience attached to that person. . 

[00:21:43] Brent: So that would be a, an example of that would be can 95 masks when the, when they got all sucked up in the pandemic and all of a sudden people got ahold of them.

[00:21:50] Brent: They’re gonna sell ’em on a quickly made up website, and then by the time they, they land in your doorstep, you’re they may not, it might be PA post pandemic. 

[00:22:00] Ben: The one I think of is there was I was flicking through TikTok. It’s like a girl on a beach and then he zooms out and it’s supposed to be this like monocle that can zoom, thousands of yards away.

[00:22:11] Ben: I can imagine who they’re trying to target. I’m a dude, so I understand why they were targeting dudes with that. I actually bought that cause I wanted to see the experience, so I bought it again 40 days later, heavily tape box the thing. You can’t see anything out of it. It does not work. And so it, yeah, you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment.

[00:22:24] Ben: Now, on the other hand, if you’re using this to judge demand, and go sell, I dunno, 50 of something, and see if your audience is into that. And then you’re gonna turn it around and actually make the product better and serve it to your audience as part of your brand. Maybe that makes sense. But the folks who were out there teaching turn and burn websites and just, destroying all customer trust, I, I can’t get behind that.

[00:22:43] Brent: Tell us a little bit about your course. You’ve mentioned that a few times that you’re teaching, you have a course on this te tell us a little bit about. 

[00:22:49] Ben: Yeah, so the beginning part of the course is, and we just did a podcast on this, so I might have the numbers actually. Yeah. So the beginning part is like 68 videos long.

[00:22:55] Ben: And that is simply how to get started, right? This is gonna help you choose your market. This is gonna help you identify the suppliers inside, upload products, build out your website, and actually have an over the shoulder look of John building all of this stuff in real time so that you can follow along.

[00:23:09] Ben: And then the backside of that. Something we’re continuing to grow. It has 150 plus videos currently, and that’s everything John and I have learned over the last eight years of doing this personally. And both John and I have taken stores to eight figures. And so there’s a lot of learnings in there that we wanted to put inside the course.

[00:23:23] Ben: And so that half of the course continues to grow as we continue to learn more as we continue to network with other experts who we can bring in and create some videos for us. And . Yeah. It’s an over the shoulder look like this model isn’t that difficult to understand. To me, it’s pretty simple.

[00:23:35] Ben: The work is hard. You have to do like hard work. That’s business. But the model of, it’s pretty simple. So we give that all away on our podcast, drop ship podcast. And if you want someone to hold your hand and walk you through it, that’s what our course is for. 

[00:23:47] Brent: What is your biggest win in terms of a product in the.

[00:23:51] Ben: The biggest one, I have two months left on a non-disclosure agreement, so I will say it’s in the Gulf industry. But we, yeah I coached two gentlemen. They brought me on as a consultant. I coached ’em to a quarter million in the first three months. We remained friends for the rest of the year as they were in Wisconsin.

[00:24:04] Ben: We would just rib each other on slack basically. And then they asked me to come on board and we went, they did 1 million in revenue in their first year. Two, two years later we did 11 million. And by far that was the biggest business I was part of growth wise and just big. And they bought me out about a week before the world shut down for Covid.

[00:24:18] Ben: And I can only imagine what they went on to do after that with everything shut down. Yeah, it was a good time. 

[00:24:23] Brent: And what was the biggest lose? . 

[00:24:26] Ben: Yeah, that one. Like I said, it was serving an older demographic. It would be like mobility products. The sales came in, but again, the chargebacks came in.

[00:24:33] Ben: There’s just, that’s not an audience of people I want, without bashing that type of audience. They’re just, they’re very difficult to deal with from a customer service front. A lot of handholding, a lot of walking them through the buttons to click on the website, like there’s just. It’s not a group of people I would like to serve personally.

[00:24:51] Ben: Whereas I would say middle-aged men who are trying or who are passionate about something, is the ideal audience. If that’s who you wanna serve and you have products that fit that is the ideal audience. Cuz men just lay in bed and will buy it on the phone. They won’t think twice about it.

[00:25:04] Ben: Whereas, women take a little longer in the buying cycle to make decisions. They also buy differently. They wanna see things on sale. Where men, I don’t think really care. They just, if they want something, they’re gonna buy it. And yeah. More on the, who there it’s the definitely.

[00:25:15] Ben: Middle-aged affluent men that are wonderful to serve. 

[00:25:19] Brent: You’ve mentioned a who quite a few times. Tell us how you as a business owner determine who is the best, who for you. 

[00:25:28] Ben: Trial and error, I think. But I’ll go back to what I said, like if it’s you, that’s gonna be the best. Like whatever you are passionate about, if you can build a business around that.

[00:25:37] Ben: you are going to wake up and wanna work on that business more than I’m gonna wanna work on the business I’m not passionate about, right? So every day work needs to be done. If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward. That statement is definitely true. And so if you’re passionate about it and you’re consuming content late at night about it, and then you wake up and you get to work on your business that is driving more content into the world or driving more people into the passion you’re just gonna work way harder than me.

[00:25:57] Ben: And so that, that’s what I recommend. Go find whatever you are into and build a business. 

[00:26:01] Brent: If you have a one kind of nugget of advice for somebody that’s wanting to start on this besides taking your course, what would you say to them? 

[00:26:10] Ben: Yeah, and just the kind of, I don’t think you need to take our, if you want to, great.

[00:26:13] Ben: We’d love to have you, but I think we have quite a few students in our Facebook group who have only listened to our podcast and they’ve built a real business that’s making decent money and That’s amazing. My goal is to. Help people change their life through e-commerce. The same way e-commerce changed my life.

[00:26:26] Ben: And so my advice would be just start you’re gonna learn. So I don’t understand why people are afraid to get going. If Brent, if you’ve never golfed in your entire life and you decided you’re gonna, you’re gonna go be a golfer, would you sit like months on end going, oh, what if I suck at this?

[00:26:40] Ben: What if I fail a call? Think no. You just go out there and you’d shank the ball around and it wouldn’t be fun, but you’d have a good time and you’d slowly get better. This is the same way you should treat business. So stop. Think. You are a failure. If it doesn’t work, first off, the business can be a failure, and the entrepreneur itself is not a failure, right?

[00:26:53] Ben: And so go in there, set up a Shopify store, start screwing around, run some ads, maybe make some sales, and then you might understand, oh, I, I kinda like serving this person versus this person. I kinda like selling these products versus these products. I kinda like working on big commerce over Shopify or whatever it is.

[00:27:06] Ben: Like you’re gonna learn a lot by doing. And if, yeah, my only advice would be just start, just get moving and iterate. 

[00:27:13] Brent: Yeah. And I just want to point out that my golf score and my bowling score are identical. You guys can take which one is good or bad. . Yeah. From a learning standpoint, I know that doing it for me there’s all kinds of different ways of learning, but I’m a big, I’m a big advocate of learning and doing at the same time, and I think that, You’ve hit it right on the nail right on the head, where that type of learning helps you to really see how it’s gonna ha what, what’s gonna happen in that, how you’re gonna get it done and how it’s gonna come out in the end.

[00:27:44] Brent: Last question in terms of this was I know that we, in the magenta world, we work a lot on say, firearms. Products that that aren’t like Google ads can’t serve up. Is there any model where that would work? Cbd, those type of products that say Google won’t work with or even sometimes PayPal won’t work with.

[00:28:05] Brent: Do you have any recommendations on those or just you’re clear 

[00:28:08] Ben: of them? Yeah, I think with what specifically I’m teaching, I would tell you to steer clear. On the other hand, the biggest revenue driver in any business is not gonna be your ads. So what we teach ads are definitely gonna get you started.

[00:28:20] Ben: You have to go acquire that customer first off. But if you aren’t like building SEO from day one, you’re doing yourself a disservice. And so whether you’re in CBD or firearms or wherever else which God only knows if Google suppresses that stuff too you have to get out there and create content.

[00:28:34] Ben: Now, I’m a big fan of seo. I think you should do it on your website. In this like retail environment when we’re, when we become a retailer, I take a drop show. You’re a retailer of brands. Creating collections that rank for a brand name is quite easy. You have a cluster built for you. The brand is the collection page, the products are the cluster content around it.

[00:28:49] Ben: And so it’s actually quite easy to do good SEO in an e-commerce store. Above and beyond that, you’re gonna want to also be someone who’s putting out best articles cuz you’re selling all the brands. So if you can put out the best standing desks of 2022, that’s gonna rank really well too. And then. Just loads of supporting content, right?

[00:29:05] Ben: Go to answer the public.com, put in your generic word standing desk and go look at all the questions everyone’s asking. Now. Go answer those on your blog. Go build content around that. Once that ball is rolling, it really turns into something amazing over time. But again, maybe you’re not a writer.

[00:29:20] Ben: Maybe you prefer like me to be behind a microphone or on camera, right? Gary V says, this salon, this is a world of content and so whether you want to. Or speak or be on camera, you’re gonna have to do one of those things to grow your business, in my opinion, or hire someone to do one of those things.

[00:29:33] Ben: And I don’t think it matters what in industry you’re in, that’s gonna be the biggest driver of traffic in your business versus ads. And so you should get started immediately. 

[00:29:41] Brent: Yeah. And I’ll just, I’ll second that, that we at Woto started a content Around magenta at the time, but Adobe Commerce now, five years ago and it, within the first year it took about a year to, for our SEO to start catching up.

[00:29:55] Brent: And it is a very competitive space. And, but that does work. And I know in WordPress they called Cornerstone content and HubSpot, they call it pillar content. But I think what you’re saying is that you have your product, then you start writing about that product and pointing all that content to that product.

[00:30:13] Brent: and I can test that. Yes. That, that SEO works. And we, one of our longtime clients was a gun seller down in South Carolina. The, if you are in that space, you’re all, nobody else can be using Google Ads. And so you are in, if you can do better at writing those articles, , you are gonna win it writing that.

[00:30:32] Brent: So that’s great advice. I 

[00:30:34] Ben: just pulled up a really good example of it if you don’t mind me sharing, so yeah, go for it. One business I was part of that, we worked on this the first year. The site got 7% of its traffic, 7,000 users via SEL for $0 revenue. In year number two, 27% of the users, 76,000 people came for $854,000 in revenue.

[00:30:55] Ben: Year three. As we continue to compound here, 43% of the users now came from seo, which was almost a quarter million people that resulted in 2.27 million in revenue. And so it just continues to grow and grow as you put the time in and do things right. Don’t do things crappy. Don’t go buy bad links, put out really good content and play the long game here and I promise you it’ll pay dividends.

[00:31:17] Brent: Yeah, and I think you, I think earlier you also mentioned just testing it, making sure that your con what whatever you have on that page, your product display. Maybe doing some eBay AB testing on that. And even in Google you could do AB testing on those things. There’s so many things that you as a user, that as you dig in and especially if it turns into your for full-time job, like you said if you’re not moving forward you’re moving backwards.

[00:31:41] Brent: That’s a good good advice there. Ben, as we close out the podcast, I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug. What would you like to plug? 

[00:31:49] Ben: Yeah, I think if you’re listening to this, you’re a podcast junkie, as am I. So just go check out our podcast. Like I I think you’ll enjoy the banter between myself and my Australian partner, John.

[00:31:57] Ben: I like to make fun of the words. He says he likes to make fun of the big orange guy in this country. And maybe you’ll enjoy that, but we literally give away the entire business model. You started episode one. It’s what is drop shipping? What is high ticket drop shipping, high ticket versus low ticket?

[00:32:07] Ben: If you start at episode one, you’re gonna learn this entire business model from us. And then if you decide. Work with us further. Obviously the information’s in there, but I would just say start with the podcast. It’s called Drop Shit Podcast and you can find it on any of your favorite players.

[00:32:19] Brent: Great. Now, we’ll put all those links in the show notes today. Ben, thanks for being here. It’s been a great conversation. Yeah, thanks for having me. 

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Learning about Buy with Prime with Andrew Maff

Why would I list my product on Buy with Prime by Amazon?

Listing your product on Buy with Prime by Amazon allows your product to be seen by millions of Amazon Prime members. This is a great way to boost your visibility and sales on Amazon.

You’ll also benefit from Amazon’s Prime shipping benefits, which include free two-day shipping and reduced shipping times. Additionally, since Buy with Prime is a program exclusive to Amazon Prime members, you’ll benefit from the increased loyalty of the Prime membership base.

This can help increase sales and build long-term customer relationships. Andrew is the Founder of BlueTuskr, a full-service marketing company for e-commerce sellers. With over 13 years of experience, he has proved himself to be a leader in the field.

Andrew’s entrepreneurial knowledge and success allow him to excel in his industry and help others grow theirs. His knowledge in branding, social media, SEO, web design, graphic design, email marketing, and more, providing exceptional results consistently.

Highlights

  • Andrew started his journey in e-commerce marketing 15 years ago, when his dad acquired a company selling car shocks and suspension stuff. 
  • He was interested in the creative side of marketing and was drawn to the immediacy of digital marketing. 
  • He started his own agency while in college to promote his band and other bands and venues. 
  • He pivoted to retail when the music business got ugly and partnered with a family member before getting bought out. 
  • He then started Blue Tusker in early 2020, the name is derived from his love of elephants and his high school colors. 
  • The biggest mistake Andrew sees e-commerce sellers making is being too reliant on Amazon and not knowing where their customers are. 
  • Sellers need to understand that Amazon and off-Amazon are different beasts and that launching a website with a random theme will not bring in sales. 
  • They should test individual areas and have an understanding of where their customers are before investing. 
  • Sellers should not just assume they need to be everywhere on social media and other channels just because they heard about it on a podcast.
Some notable time stamps

[00:16:04] Brent: Suggest creating a strategy and roadmap to pick off the low-hanging fruit first and test what’s working or not.

[00:16:14] Andrew: Guide sellers through testing the waters to diversify away from Amazon safely without spending an arm and a leg.

[00:16:26] Andrew: Create a storefront on Amazon, run ads to the storefront, add a landing page and track the button to see if it converts.

[00:16:49] Andrew: Add a “Buy Now” button and incentives for first time customers to grow the audience list.

[00:17:05] Andrew: Add “Buy with Prime” button to increase conversion rate and credibility.

[00:17:29] Andrew: Test off Amazon traffic before building a website to ensure it converts.

[00:17:44] Andrew: Investment in the beginning is limited to advertising spend and a semi-decent landing page.

[00:18:09] Brent: Benefits of having “Buy with Prime” button is it builds credibility and increases conversion rate.

[00:18:59] Andrew: Building a brand on Amazon is difficult because it’s a pay-to-play platform, but registering a brand

Transcript

[00:02:42] Brent: Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Andrew Math tone. Andrew, go ahead introduce yourself. Tell us your day-to-day and maybe one of your passions in life. 

[00:02:54] Andrew: Yeah, thanks for having me, Brent. Appreciate it. So I am the founder and and CEO of Blue Tusker. We are a full service digital marketing company for e-commerce.

[00:03:03] Andrew: We essentially act as like an outsource marketing department for the most part. I’m also the host of the e-com show, so I also have my own fun little podcast where I interview other e-commerce sellers. My day-to-day is talking to awesome people like yourself, and then herding cats. At least that’s how it feels.

[00:03:18] Andrew: And then let’s see, one of my passions in life, that’s an interesting one, obviously. I’m, I do this as a job, but I also do this as a hobby. Like I really love doing what I. The difference will be like, on the weekends, I’ll do something that I really wanted to do during the week that I couldn’t get done.

[00:03:33] Andrew: But I know that’s a cop out answer. I’m also a drummer so if I got time I’m, I work outta my house. I work outta my basement, so I’m next to my kit all the time. So I’ll usually walk over and play for a little while, which the neighbors love. And then I got a gold retriever and a Corgi who are my two best friends that I play with all the time.

[00:03:50] Andrew: And my wife, I’m sure my wife’s gonna yell at me for her being laughed, . 

[00:03:53] Brent: Yeah. Okay, so you’re my second drummer this week for an interview, which is awesome. There we go. I play piano. I, and my, I used to be in a bedroom in our house from my office. There was a guitar behind me and I always. , oh play piano, but I just can’t get the grand piano on the wall.

[00:04:09] Brent: . Anyways and then it’s hard. I have two dogs as well, so I have a hound, like a lab hound mix. Who’s 13. We uh, we still run together. And then I have a two year old Jack Russell Terrier. So both ends of the energy spectrum. One sleeps 20 hours a day and one is energetic. 20 hours a. . Nice.

[00:04:27] Brent: Before we dive into our content, and I know we’re gonna have some, we’re gonna talk about marketing and e-commerce marketing specifically, and I’m excited to talk about that. I have a little project that I’m working on right now, it’s called The Free Joke Project than I believe there should be more free jokes out there.

[00:04:43] Brent: So I’m gonna tell you a joke, and all you have to do is say, do you think this joke is free? Or do you think we could put it behind a paywall from the, from a software standpoint, is this an open source joke or is this a closed loop joke? Anyways, ready? I’m gonna tell you this joke. You just tell me your feed feedback on it.

[00:05:02] Brent: All right? A dog was drowning in a lake and a German man swam out and pulled it to safety. I asked the man, are you a vet? The man. Am I a vet? I’m soaking

[00:05:15] Andrew: Oh man. It depends on what you’re gonna charge for it. . Wow. I would think that could be free . Yeah, I’d get that. Hook ’em in. 

[00:05:24] Brent: Yeah. And I realized that my, my pitch so far is should it be free or should I be charged for it? And it is the free joke. So the goal is to have all these jokes free and let’s be honest, there’s an open ap, there’s an API you can get for dad.

[00:05:38] Brent: If you’re so inclined. Of course there as a developer, you can call an API and you get a dad joke anytime you want. That’s 

[00:05:43] Andrew: amazing. Thank you developers for doing doing the hard 

[00:05:46] Brent: work, . Absolutely. Andrew, you mentioned herding cats and I am old enough to go, remember going to Comdex in Las Vegas. and a not a now defunct technology company had a fully produced herding cats commercial that they showed on the big screen.

[00:06:05] Brent: That was so funny. It was cats running everywhere and some guy and a cowboy trying to herd cats together. Do you think that herding cats sometimes for business owners, that’s how they see marketing. Like they don’t even know where to. . 

[00:06:21] Andrew: Yeah, that’s actually a very interesting way to put that.

[00:06:24] Andrew: Maybe that’s why I feel that way. And it’s a really good point. Depends on like the direction you’re, it depends on your business and all these other 10 different things, but that’s usually the biggest problem, especially if they’re first starting off, is like there’s so much you can do between like email and then social.

[00:06:39] Andrew: And then which social platform are you on in paid ads? Which paid advertising platform are you on? What content are you gonna run? What keywords are you gonna target? Should you do seo? How should you do seo? Should you try influencer marketing affiliate like it. It’s exhausting even trying to do that as a bit.

[00:06:50] Andrew: But yeah, I would imagine that’s gotta be a very similar feeling. 

[00:06:54] Brent: If, I just of gave away my age, actually I didn’t, if people don’t know what convicts was then they don’t even actually know how old I am. I’m in my, I’m in my early twenties and I have a 27 year old daughter, so that kind of gives you my age.

[00:07:05] Brent: Interesting. How did you get started in marketing and what made you interested in it? . 

[00:07:09] Andrew: So I started in marketing, specifically in e-commerce marketing actually a little over 15 years ago, which is always insane to tell someone cuz they’re like, that was it a thing 15 years ago. But it was, so my dad actually acquired a they sold like shocks car shocks and suspension stuff and it was some small, like nothing company, I think they were.

[00:07:30] Andrew: Maybe might even be clearing six figures a year if that. But they were all just like local and they’d go to like car dealerships and stuff. And my dad was involved in like cars.com and all this fun stuff years and years ago. And so he wanted to buy this company and put it online. And so I ended up, I always knew I wanted to be in marketing.

[00:07:49] Andrew: I don’t really know why. It was really more specific like advertising. And so I, once he bought this company, I was like, I want to, I wanna learn how to do this stuff. And he goes, okay, I need help in the warehouse. If you do that, I will also teach you how to do the marketing side. So I had help in the warehouse during the, like beginning of the day and kind of help with prepping orders and stuff.

[00:08:08] Andrew: But then I would work in the office and I’d work with some of the marketing team. They were actually one of the first companies to get offered to sell on Amazon besides books. So right when they started getting away from books, they were one of the first ones. and that was where it was Rick.

[00:08:23] Andrew: He said, by the way, he said no. Which is like my favorite thing to make fun of him for. But that, it started back then and it was really interesting cause I always wanted to get into advertising. I thought it was really creative and really fun. But then when I got into more on the digital side, it was really interesting how it was almost like a game to me.

[00:08:39] Andrew: Cuz it was like immediate. You would do something and it would more or less be immediate, especially back then. It would more or less be like immediate results or you would start doing something and within a short period of. You would see results to me, like even seeing paid ad dollars going up or ROI going up or anything like that.

[00:08:54] Andrew: It was just like points to me like it was some kind of video game or something, which is ironic cause I’m not a big video game guy. But then in college, starting my own agency, I was in a band, I was a drummer and we all had our own role outside of the instrument that we played. And so my role was promoting the shows and basically the marketing side of things.

[00:09:12] Andrew: And so I guess I, I did decent with it. I had a bunch of other bands asking me to help them with it. I then started having venues asking me to help them with it. So I started my own agency and it was mainly on the music promotion side, but then the music business got ugly and so I pivoted it, kept the venues, but then also was able to go retail, which then got me back into e-commerce cuz by then e-commerce was picking up a little bit.

[00:09:33] Andrew: I ended up partnering with a family member, which I will never do again. Ended up getting bought out of. went in-house to an e-commerce company for a little while. They were a little over te eight figures. It was just me running the marketing. And then I met someone there where we ended up starting another agency that was specifically e-commerce focused.

[00:09:53] Andrew: We exited that in late 2019, and then in early 2020, I started Blue Tusker and now I’m here on this. Full circle. 

[00:10:02] Brent: Wow. Cool. Let’s tell us a little bit about the name Tusker. How did you come up with Blue Tusker? 

[00:10:07] Andrew: I love this question cuz it’s always interesting to answer it. There’s really not any logic ish behind it.

[00:10:13] Andrew: When I first started the company, I knew I wanted to have something that was a little bit off the wall because a lot of agencies I find. Power Digital and like growth marketing, digital and like they have all these boring names that are impossible to find when you search for ’em. So I was like, I wanna build a brand and I wanna build a name that you can find me no matter what, that you’ll remember.

[00:10:33] Andrew: So I’m just gonna come up with something. I’ve always been a big fan of elephants. . They, there’s a little bit of theory behind that of like how they all kind of work together. And in marketing it’s the same thing and they don’t forget stuff and then you just like tracking data and I don’t know, I pulled that one out of a hat but didn’t want to be called like Elephant something.

[00:10:48] Andrew: I liked Tusker, I thought it sounded cool. And then my wife and I met in high school and our high school colors were blue and silver. And so I knew that Tusker was probably gonna be like an elephant color of. And so I stuck with Blue Tusker, and then I took the E out because the company that acquired our last agency rebranded changed their name and took the E out of their name, and they drove me crazy.

[00:11:11] Andrew: So as a little bit of a nod to them, I took the E outta Tusker too. Wow. But 

[00:11:17] Brent: it’s fine. , that’s a great story. I can recall I was also working as a contractor inside of a e-commerce company and the president of Magento at the time was just super, he is super encouraging and got me to start a digital agency.

[00:11:32] Brent: Not on the marketing side, but on the technical side. , how do you keep so talking a little bit about maybe your podcast, how do you keep it more interesting when it comes to e-commerce? Do you focus on the marketing side of things? What I found, my, my podcast is called Talk Commerce and you’re on it right now.

[00:11:53] Brent: Thanks for 

[00:11:54] Andrew: having me, Bob. Yeah, 

[00:11:55] Brent: you’re welcome. But what I’ve found is that people sometimes aren’t that interested in the technology. They’re more interested in the stories about what solutions that people have solved. Yeah. 

[00:12:06] Andrew: So our podcast, it’s, I would say it’s 90% e-commerce sellers.

[00:12:11] Andrew: Every now and then I’ll have someone that’s, a CEO or CMO or something in that’s in a vendor space. But I like to speak to other seller. And really to me it’s a little bit more about honestly, it’s more for me than it is for our listeners because I’m really interested in how people run their business and why they do what they do and what their logic was for doing it.

[00:12:31] Andrew: So it’s very much like what was the story? What were some of the issues you got through? Everyone that we interview is at least cleared seven figures annually, so I try to figure out like, what was it that got you over that t. Because I know for a lot of e-commerce sellers when they’re first starting off, like that’s one of the hardest things to get over, at least in the beginning there.

[00:12:49] Andrew: So we go through what was your process for going through that? What were some of the hardships you went through past year or two? We’ve talked a lot about like how they’ve helped with or how they’ve solved like any supply chain issues or stuff like that. I obviously tend to cater towards marketing just because it’s outta habit.

[00:13:03] Andrew: But otherwise it’s mostly like trying to get inside of their story and then a little bit of like hacks that they figured out that helped them get over certain thresholds. 

[00:13:12] Brent: Yeah, I think the I’ve had the same experience. I interviewed A person who had a candy store and I was focusing really on big commerce cuz that was their platform.

[00:13:20] Brent: And 10 minutes in, I’m really, wow, this is super dry and let’s talk about your business. And when we started talking about candy and freeze dry skittles, that was a game changer. So freeze dried Skittles, it smell delicious. They are really good. And you sent me some bulk candy store.com.

[00:13:36] Brent: I should have a little pre-recorded button that I can push for a commercial right there. the mistakes you’re seeing, like in some, like you see, you must see tons of e-commerce sellers. Is there a common mistake that people are making over and over again, or is it run the gamut on what they’re trying to do?

[00:13:56] Andrew: Kind of depends. Really. It depends on the situation of the business, but like the common mistakes I. are sellers that are so painfully reliant on Amazon. You’ll never, chances are they’ll never make as much money off Amazon as they will on Amazon. But I’m a big believer in not being so reliant on one channel and diversifying.

[00:14:18] Andrew: Plus, I know that building a brand outside of Amazon and actually having a community or a big email list, you get a significantly higher multiple than if you’re just an FBA seller pumping out product. I find that a lot of sellers make that big mistake of not wanting to do anything else outside of Amazon, but then also when they do wanna do it, they just go, they jump into creating, they throw together some horrible website that they just grabbed some random th theme and threw up some pictures, and then they don’t know what to do with it.

[00:14:49] Andrew: They don’t always realize that Amazon versus off Amazon is a wildly different beast. . So you really have to know like where your customer is and how are you gonna reach them. And then testing individual areas instead of just coming off of Amazon, creating a website that they probably got done off of fiber for nothing, and then expecting it to all of a sudden bring on sales like it, this isn’t 2000 and.

[00:15:13] Andrew: 10 anymore. You can’t just launch a website and start making money or you can’t launch a social platform and then all of a sudden, or social profile I should say, and all of a sudden have thousands and thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers. Like it just doesn’t work that way anymore. You actually have to try now.

[00:15:29] Andrew: And most of them I find, don’t realize that. So the biggest mistakes I always see are basically half-assing leaving. Or not knowing who their actual customer is, probably because they were on Amazon, they don’t really tell you. And then just assuming that you have to be everywhere okay, I’m, I have to be on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and email and doing sms and just because you heard it on a podcast like this doesn’t mean that your business needs it.

[00:15:57] Andrew: So to me it, the biggest mistake is not really knowing what you’re getting into and not knowing where your customers are actually. , 

[00:16:04] Brent: do you often say to them, back up, let’s create a strategy and let’s make a roadmap and let’s pick off the low-hanging fruit first and let’s keep growing as we’re going.

[00:16:14] Brent: And I think one of the things that I see is people aren’t testing what they’re trying and they don’t really know if it’s working or not. They’re just doing it because they heard about it on a podcast. 

[00:16:26] Andrew: Yeah. So I, funny enough, I actually do it’s like the one thing I talk about the most is like, how.

[00:16:32] Andrew: Diversify away from Amazon safely without spending an arm and a leg. And I actually just spoke at helium Ten’s conference about this whole thing, and I’ll give you like a brief synopsis on it cause it’s long. But essentially what I do is I walk sellers through how to test the waters.

[00:16:49] Andrew: Like basically dip your toe off of Amazon before jumping into the pool. And usually the problem is they, when they do a horrible website, it’s like jumping into the shallow ends because you’re not going. But basically it’s creating a nice storefront on Amazon, run ads to the storefront, make sure the storefront converts.

[00:17:05] Andrew: Once you’ve done that, start running ads from off Amazon to just the storefront. So now you’re testing that off Amazon traffic to see if that storefront will still convert. Once you do that, then you create a landing page that still sends people to. But you want to track the button on a, on that landing page so you can see okay, can I send them somewhere else now that still showcases the same product line, but still let them go and convert on Amazon.

[00:17:29] Andrew: Plus, at that point you can get email, all that fun stuff. Then you start adding okay, let me just add a buy now button and see if I can keep ’em on there. Then you add all your bells and whistles of, popups for first time customers, some kind of incentive newsletter, something like that to start growing the audience list a little bit.

[00:17:44] Andrew: But now you’re testing can I. Pur get people to purchase off Amazon, then my logic is just sit there and do that for a while. I wouldn’t do it for your full product line. Maybe do it for one product that you can go after and then maybe you wanna replicate that same concept for other products, but then start to generate more capital that you got off Amazon so that you can justify not half-assing your website.

[00:18:06] Andrew: When you do that, then you go in, build the website, and I’m a big fan, especially when you first start a new. Of adding let’s say underneath the buy now button, having a button that says available on Amazon. Or you can use, now Amazon is already caught onto this, so they have the Buy with Prime button, and what you can do is you can add a conversion tracking code to that so you can still see how many people are you sending to Amazon that may or may not be actually converting.

[00:18:29] Andrew: And if you use like Amazon attribution or something like that, you can actually see if they converted. But the problem is when you first launch a new. , you don’t have a lot of reviews on there. So sometimes people will be like, I don’t really know if this is a new brand and whatever. So if you allow them to go to Amazon, not only is it actually proven that having those marketplace buttons on there can increase conversion rates on the site, but it’ll also increase credibility cuz they may go to Amazon C, that you actually have reviews and either A, they’re gonna buy from you, Amazon, or B, they’re gonna buy from your website.

[00:18:59] Andrew: So it’s like letting your customer shop where they’re a little bit more comfortable, but for that whole transition. . Really the only investment you have to make in the beginning to test the waters is the advertising spend for off Amazon stuff, and you’re still driving traffic to Amazon, which is what all Amazon sellers care about, is that their Amazon business growing and then a semi-decent landing page that’ll probably cost you anywhere, if you do it right, anywhere from a thousand, 2000.

[00:19:25] Andrew: So that’s all you need to start testing off Amazon before you jump into creating some horrible website that’s not gonna convert. And then you blame all of your other marketing because the one place that all of your marketing’s being sent to looks horrible. 

[00:19:39] Brent: That, that buy with Prime thing. I saw that at the Big Commerce Summit, I think, and they, that I’m always a little bit weary about why a customer would want to have buy with Prime on their.

[00:19:53] Brent: and it’s going to tell them they’re gonna pay with pay on Amazon. . And it also, tells ’em that they’re they’re available on Amazon as well. But you answered that question. Is there a reluctance though, in that, to put that by with Prime on for some clients? Oh, 

[00:20:09] Andrew: all the time. All the time.

[00:20:11] Andrew: Because there’s, you obviously are gonna get hit from the margin side of things and they don’t love that. There’s, at the end of the day, that comes down to the business owner and what, what they think is best for their. What I know from a marketing standpoint is a, that there is studies done that even we’ve done that are, when you have those available on Amazon, available on Walmart, eBay, wherever you’re available, having them on there actually builds credibility and will actually improve the conversion rate of your website.

[00:20:37] Andrew: So sometimes they get worried about oh, I don’t wanna send them there. But if you take a page outta Amazon’s. and you cater to providing value to the customer and focusing on what the cust like, making sure that they’re having a good experience. They can shop easily. They are comfortable with the purchase they’re making.

[00:20:56] Andrew: Having that makes a lot more sense to me than complaining about the little bit of margin that you’re probably gonna lose. Because I would also say that doesn’t mean you don’t want to have every bell and whistle on your website to make sure that they stay on the site. But you can also, what we do is we’ll add like a conversion tracking code to each of those buttons.

[00:21:14] Andrew: We’ll then know, okay, here’s a big list of everyone who clicked the button in the past 30. Let’s run and add to them with a nice size discount to shop on the site. And so now they’re gonna come back to the site anyway. So eventually you start to phase it away and then if you test like wanting to get rid of those buttons, you can do that kind of thing as well.

[00:21:32] Andrew: But everything’s about testing. 

[00:21:34] Brent: Yeah. I’ve seen customers who are excited about being on Amazon and then I’ve seen customers who are very excited about getting off of Amazon. Is there an ebb and flow that kind of goes back and forth? 

[00:21:46] Andrew: Yeah, I mean it, it depends. It’s really difficult. I know there’s gonna be sellers out there that are gonna be like, this guy’s wrong, but they’re, it’s really difficult to build a brand on Amazon because you can’t showcase your product without spending an arm and a leg on advertising.

[00:22:01] Andrew: It’s a complete 100% pay to play platform. So building a brand solely on Amazon where you don’t have any other marketplace is very challenging. Most of the sellers that we’ve worked with over the years were, they’re private label and they have their own. They’re still paying for product specific terms, not brand specific terms.

[00:22:21] Andrew: And that’s the other thing is if you start to build it off Amazon, people start searching for your brand name, which you’re gonna get a crazy great conversion for conversion rate for, which means you’re always gonna outrank your competitors, which means your cost per click’s gonna be lower. So it actually reduces your advertising costs on Amazon.

[00:22:36] Andrew: But then in the reverse of the people who are really excited to get on. They also don’t entirely understand sometimes that, okay, it’s like starting somewhere new because you don’t have any reviews. You’ve got no traction on these listings. They’re gonna be brand new. The benefit to that is if you do have an off Amazon business, You can then, which is what we cater in, is basically taking your marketing strategy and pointing the traffic wherever you want it, right?

[00:23:01] Andrew: So if we were to launch a new product on Amazon and the seller was really excited to finally get on Amazon, we would actually take their full email list, maybe even like some, run some ads to like a warm audience and offer them like some kind of discount to go shop on Amazon and just offer it to them the one time and let that listing start to get its snowball effect and then stop doing that because obviously you’re gonna hurt your.

[00:23:22] Andrew: I think that it’s really smart to have your product available wherever your customer is, whether you run ads on that platform or not, or different. Sometimes we have sellers who have a really nice size brand. They have all their products available on Amazon, but they don’t run ads because they know people are just gonna search their brand name and they’re gonna purchase their.

[00:23:42] Andrew: Sometimes we’ll do what we just refer to as like brand defensive ads where we’ll run ads, but only on their brand name at a really low cost so that they keep the ranking. But outside of that’s it. So it kind of depends on the brand and where they’re at 

[00:23:54] Brent: when you’re on Amazon. I’ve also heard that it’s very important to have a brand, and if you don’t have a brand, if you’re just selling some kind of a commodity item, that it’s much more difficult to succeed on.

[00:24:09] Andrew: Yeah. There’s a lot of, like if you, so if you get your brand registered, so if you you have a trademark, you go to Amazon, you get it registered with them, it takes a day, I think maybe a week for them to approve it. There’s a ton of stuff that you get when you have a brand so that you don’t get, if you don’t have one.

[00:24:25] Andrew: So there’s the a plus content, so it’s essentially. I, the layman’s term to me is it’s like a landing page in the middle of your listing. For the most part. It’s like a big, when they’re done right, they’re a big, well-designed area that really showcases the brand as well as more about the product. Then you also get your storefront, so you can actually have like your own Amazon website more or less that you can control, like what’s on there and how people purchase and all that fun stuff.

[00:24:50] Andrew: And then you also have sponsored brand ads, which is right at the very top of any. You’ll see like a picture of someone’s logo and then three pictures of like different products that they sell, and that main link will link over to their storefront. So you can really take like more generalized keyword traffic to your storefront.

[00:25:11] Andrew: And so building a brand on Amazon is still incredibly difficult because it’s expensive, but. Not having your brand registered and having all those bells and whistles, you’re already going up against people that already have that stuff. So you pretty much have to build a brand on there. Now, 

[00:25:27] Brent: if we look into next year what do you think the landscape of e-commerce looks like?

[00:25:33] Andrew: Oh, next year. It’s gonna be interesting if we end up in a recession, it’s gonna end. sep separating the men from the boys a little bit. There’s gonna, it’s unfortunately, know, a lot of people are probably not gonna make it through. So competition may get smaller. I don’t really know.

[00:25:49] Andrew: But I think that definitely customers are gonna get a little bit more like price centric. So they’re gonna want to make sure they’re getting a deal. They’re only spending money on like the right stuff. Now is the time, although it might be a little late depending on when this starts to happen more and more, but now is the time to actually have a quality brand and a community and focus on selling to your existing customers as much as possible and focus on retention.

[00:26:17] Andrew: Then worrying so much about acquiring new customers, cuz that’s always gonna be your most expensive thing anyway. So having a great experience, building a brand, building a community, keeping conversation going around your. That’s gonna be a big focus. I think in the next, like probably even further down the line, I’m starting to see these little niche marketplaces show up.

[00:26:37] Andrew: So you have Amazon, which is really like the Walmart of the internet, that Walmart was. Way back when, and then you obviously have Walmart now. But I’m finding like these tiny little marketplaces that like solely focus on fishing, solely focus on golf stuff and solely focus on pets, so obviously Chewy.

[00:26:53] Andrew: So what they’ve done is they’ve built these great communities around specific things that people are interested in. And so when you go to buy stuff, you immediately go to them. Like I’m obviously, I love my dogs. I don’t even think about going to Amazon when I need pet stuff. I go to Chewy. If Chewy doesn’t have it, then it doesn’t exist and I’m just not getting it.

[00:27:11] Andrew: So like by starting to segment out those different marketplaces, I think that’s gonna be really interesting because I think a lot of e-commerce sellers are gonna end up on these like smaller marketplaces and really start to hone in on their audience instead of the spray and pray approach that everyone’s trying to do.

[00:27:26] Brent: Yeah, I interviewed a lady last week who has a hair care brand and she’s on a specific streaming marketplace, so it’s similar to QVC, but only for these types of sustainable products. , skincare hair care products, and it’s all about, you would get an hour live livestream. You sell on that specific.

[00:27:48] Brent: That’s very interesting. The other one that I heard the CEO of of vtech, which is another platform, he was big on conversational commerce, where you may not have a platform there at all. You would just have, you would be you would go on to TikTok or WhatsApp or, and you’re talking to a salesperson who’s then going to enter that order for you directly.

[00:28:09] Brent: They might push you a. A payment gateway through the platform. But you’re going to skip no, I guess no UX commerce, right? That’s what it’s called. 

[00:28:19] Andrew: Yeah. I’ve poked around in that a little bit. It’s really interesting. I find it to be really challenging cuz you’re so reli. It’s like turning e-commerce into a service business, which is very difficult to scale.

[00:28:30] Andrew: But there is definitely something to be said about people like to buy from a person, not from a. So even when you think about especially on the service side of the world, which is why you and I do podcasts like people want to know who’s the person behind the business and do I want to work with them even if they don’t actually talk to them.

[00:28:48] Andrew: If they’re still buying their products or using their service, they never actually talk to the owner or anything like that. They always want to know who are they working with and who runs that business. And so I find that whole. Let’s say you’re going through WhatsApp, you’re almost working with like just a sales rep the entire time.

[00:29:01] Andrew: I find that to be very interesting. I think that there’s a nice way that e-commerce sellers can still have their cake and eat it too, sort of thing, and not have to solely rely on that. But it does make a lot of sense to me. It’s taking customer service and really focusing on it hard to the point where it’s like a c.

[00:29:20] Brent: Yeah I I spoke to a person who just started a company that’s doing video from, it’s like a plugin, I think it’s specifically for Shopify, but they, it is a one-to-one video, so to help people purchase that product. So he gave an example of high-end cowboy boots. You can go on to the store and then they will direct you to.

[00:29:43] Brent: Expert who is gonna help you pick out your boots. 

[00:29:47] Andrew: That’s genius. I love that. Yeah. I think there’s a certain customer profile that would really like that, and there’s a certain customer profile that would be scared out of their minds. But I think that it’s really no different than if you had a retail store and someone was a sales.

[00:30:04] Andrew: But the nice thing is that the salesperson will sometimes come up to you when you don’t want help, and they won’t leave you alone. In this case, you just hit X and they go away. I like that. I’ll have to look into that. 

[00:30:13] Brent: Yeah. The funny part too is he gave that one and I asked him what, like what is on your roadmap?

[00:30:17] Brent: And he said that they have retail on the roadmap and he gave the example of being at a Best Buy and you’re standing in front of this tv. Very specific technology things and there’s a QR code next to it and you scan it and then you get a person who is an expert on that device that you can talk to directly in their, in the Best Buy store.

[00:30:38] Brent: And then you could even check out and pay right there and then pick it up as you leave . Huh? So anyways, 

[00:30:47] Andrew: look at that. I like that idea. Yeah. For complicated products, that makes a lot of. 

[00:30:52] Brent: Yeah. Good. So Andrew we’re running out of time here towards the end of the podcast. I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug.

[00:30:59] Brent: What would you like to plug today? 

[00:31:02] Andrew: Oh gee, let’s do, all right. We’ll do e-comm show, we’ll do my podcast. Oh, however, only if you stay listening to Talk Commerce. I’m not trying to steal any listeners right now, , but check out our podcast. You can listen to both at different times. It’ll be totally fine.

[00:31:19] Andrew: But we interview e-commerce sellers. Just head over to the e-commerce show.com. You’ll see all of our past episodes we’re on, I think every podcast platform available as far as I know. And our YouTube channel, which is, we also record ’em like this. But yeah, I’ll plug. 

[00:31:32] Brent: Excellent, Andrew. Thank you.

[00:31:34] Brent: I I applaud you for also shopping at Chewy’s, a big employer here in Minneapolis. And I have a lot of their wares going to the job fairs. Not me looking for a job, but trying to hire people. And I wish you all the best this week. 

[00:31:48] Andrew: Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

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