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I recently started working at a company that sells poo poo online - basically a drop shipper selling medical supplies and physical therapy equipment. The site used to do ~$3m+ a year in sales but after getting hit with Penguin and just generally not keeping up with the evolving Google poo poo sales have dropped off significantly. The way things are going this year we might not even hit $1m in sales. I'm kind of in over my head a bit with the Adwords and marketing aspect of it, plus I'm trying to get a programmer to optimize poo poo and add proper markup. Right now there's no way to even track our conversions (ie out of 14k sessions Analytics says 0 added anything to the cart and 0 checked out) which obviously makes it difficult to see what is performing and what isn't. I want to convince the boss to start a new website selling other poo poo since we've got the server space and manpower to do it but he is pretty set on just selling in this one product area since he's been doing it since 1990 (old school office with sales reps until 1998 when the website launched) and we've got relationships with our suppliers going back quite a ways. Although a lot of our suppliers seem to think it is still 1990 and operate accordingly (API what's that? send us an email and we'll get back to you in 3 days!) and it's driving me nuts. I honestly think the way to go is to use our existing resources to expand into other websites and product niches instead of trying to keep this one afloat by itself. It still makes decent money but expecting it to make money like it was 2008 seems impossible - since then our niche has been flooded with tons of competitors and our organic traffic is dwindling away. Maybe I just don't know poo poo though. If anyone can offer some insight that'd be much appreciated. I know there's not really much specific to be said other than get the website set up with microdata yesterday but thought I'd post anyway and get people's thoughts. Armchair Calvinist posted:I'm taking over the role of adwords account analyst at my current job and am in the process of completing the adwords certification program. Does anybody have any other good material I should be reading for such a role? What are some routes I can branch out from with this sort of knowledge? What's up Sean if you're interested in making some extra money on the side or picking us up as a client for your company and think you can help me out I'd love to hear from you. Our AdWords campaigns are pretty amateurish right now. We've got ~40,000 products and it kind of makes me go  Also as an aside, MAP pricing is retarded. Moridin920 fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Apr 29, 2015 |
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Apr 29, 2015 21:23
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Sent you an email, thanks.
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Apr 30, 2015 15:58
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Just talked to Snatch Duster on the phone about all my AdWords and Google stuff, it was super helpful and informative! Thanks again man.
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May 1, 2015 22:02
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If it doesn't work out you've still got the ability to try other things, what with the LLC and the hosting and the SEO tools. I wouldn't expect to hit the lottery your first time, you know?
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May 19, 2015 19:10
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Can anyone recommend a good firm that builds ecommerce websites? Ours is reaaally outdated and I'm pretty sure it is affecting our conversion rate (even though my boss doesn't think so... the website was designed in 1998 however and has barely been touched since). Looking for something that can handle thousands of products and preferably a custom shopping card and an admin/backend tool. Something good and professional, not one of those $200 template websites for people just starting out.
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Sep 23, 2015 18:12
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Just got your email, I'll look it over and talk options with my boss. Looks like a decent chunk of change is required to build a good website but it sounds like it'll be worth it just from the operating expense savings from not having to host our own servers, not paying for a server farm location, and not having to have a programmer on retainer to fix poo poo when it breaks. Right now (I asked my boss, I think I told you $400/mo on the phone) we're paying $500/mo just to have our servers up and running. Thanks again Snatch Duster you're awesome!
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Sep 24, 2015 17:19
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thegasman2000 posted:I found a niche! I have a test site up and am running bing ads as they are cheap as gently caress. 100 impressions and no clicks though Not too much to worry about. My campaigns could probably be more efficient but fwiw in the last 7 days I've had 88k impressions and about 1200 clicks on one of them. iirc the average CTR is about 1-2% so yeah I'd expect maybe a click or two from 100 impressions assuming the ads are fine but it varies wildly based on all kinds of things. Bing in particular I think isn't going to be as good about that as Google's adwords depending on your market. At least you're not paying for tons of clicks with no conversions; that's what really sucks. Moridin920 fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Oct 29, 2015 |
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Oct 29, 2015 19:12
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Mantle posted:My cousin has a factory that manufactures a specific type of condom, but they don't do a good job marketing it. I think I've identified a keyword niche that I can win, but the overall market seems to be dominated by Trojan to the point where if I search for "condom" Google automatically includes the search term "Trojan". Is there an opportunity here? My other concerns are margin since the retail price for a box of 12 is only about USD $18. A couple thoughts; seems like they are better off seeking larger suppliers to sell to but can't hurt to set up a quick website and take orders if their shipping department can do it easily. It's hard to compete with such established companies like Trojan - is there a particular thing that sets your product apart? Try long tail keywords and ads focused around that aspect. Trying to outcompete Trojan's per-click price on words like 'condom' seems like a quick way to blow your budget for no gain. Personally, I'm less likely to buy a brand of condoms I haven't heard of before. I might be adventurous but not when it comes to my condom busting - so if it's a question of 'we make the same thing as Trojan but slightly cheaper' I'm not sure that would generate the online revenue you need to cover costs. If you think you have a niche and it won't cost you a ton to set up a website you can always put a small daily budget on AdWords to see what kinds of returns you can get. As far as profit goes it just depends on shipping and operating costs. Without any volume discounts from carriers it's probably going to be at least $6-7 per package. Then you have to make sure you're actually making enough of a profit to cover the advertising + website costs. Depending on what it costs them to make 1 box they could turn an okay profit but I can easily see shipping costs destroying any profit margin after 'residential fee, fuel surcharge, out of area fee' all get tacked on. Depends on your RoI on ads, too. If 100 people click your ad and you're paying $0.50 a click but only 1 person buys a box of condoms you're making like $3-5 on then you're losing a lot of money. Snatch Duster would know more probably but he's in kitty jail. Moridin920 fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Nov 16, 2015 |
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Nov 16, 2015 22:20
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Mantle posted:The thing that would set the product apart is that it is the world's thinnest condom as verified by Guiness. The market samurai results above were for a term specific to that niche-- I wouldn't plan on competing in paid search for broad terms like "condom". There is also a very good .com domain available for that niche search term so I think my chances of ranking #1 for that term are decent. Sounds good to me. I'd buy some. Just a question of how much you make per box sold and shipping + ad costs associated, then. Also the ability of the shipping department at the factory to handle orders for just a couple boxes that come in (I'm assuming right now they ship in bulk to retailers?). It's fine with small volume but after a bit it can bog shipping down if there isn't a good plan. You'll also need to pay for customer service at some point, for the inevitable angry unreasonable calls you'll get from individual customers. You might already have all that 
Moridin920 fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Nov 17, 2015 |
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Nov 17, 2015 00:15
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Mantle posted:They are already selling direct on Amazon and using Amazon fulfillment. Unfortunately it looks like they are trying to do direct retail business at the same time as selling through distributors. In effect, their strategy is to compete with their distributors. I don't think this is going to work long term but they're offering to drop ship so it's very low risk for me. fwiw there's a lot of big companies that do this (and yeah it is infuriating as hell and I don't really get what the point of competing with your distribution is). I have a vendor who runs a website registered in his wife's name selling everything his distributors sell but even cheaper since of course he can give himself better pricing than he offers to others. I still make sales with his products but not as much as I used to obviously. What's kind of really annoying about it though is that he then goes 'ah, you're selling less stuff, that means you're getting bumped to a higher cost column!' and now my prices are even less competitive (unless I want to make my tiny margins on his stuff even more razor thin but at that point I'm not even making money). It's been working for a couple years now, though, but of course I can't tell you what sales figures look like on their end so who knows if it is really worth it. Moridin920 fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Nov 19, 2015 |
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Nov 19, 2015 19:36
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For what it's worth I saw your keyword and there are more than 2 competitors in that market even if they don't all have a domain name that is exactly that. Just sayin' because I know websites selling those things already although you might end up ranking better on SERPs if you are exclusively centered around that product and have the keywords in the URL.
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Nov 24, 2015 20:07
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