Hey all, earlier this year there was a large number of attempted transactions with card testing bots, I got temporarily disabled from processing transactions but was re-enabled. Unfortunately it happened again, but I got re-enabled. However this third time my processor has said I must do something to resolve the issue. The trouble is, they host the payment forms so it would have to be something imposed on the site itself, however I use wix and when I looking at the button options I see no way to enable some type of, ideally invisible, captcha. At a loss of what to do and am losing a decent amount of customer confidence and sales during this outage. Any help would be immensely appreciated.

Hi,

I would like to know if anyone knows if there are any returns centers or anything or if that is even a thing in the US or Middle East?

So that customers could return products within the country then the center would ship them out in one package back to us maybe once a week, month or when there are 30 products or whatever in the center?

We are based in the eu

Thank you

Hi there,

For the part on the bigcartel web software set up page where it asks for your address

Will customers know your address if you put it into big cartel at any time?

Cheers

I’ve started a website to sell my products, and recently, some strange things have been happening. Every day, there are a lot of visitors from Venezuela who keep adding products to their carts and going to the checkout page, but none of them actually complete the purchase. Does anyone know what might be going on? What steps should I take?

I'm currently shipping my goods domestically. Easy, just one simple flat shipping rate to deal with. No biggie!

But my business is growing and there's a lot of opportunities inside and outside of the European Union. That means I would have to deal with multiple flat shipping rates (per weight/size class) that can be different per country (even within the EU).

So, how do you deal with this?

• Do you calculate an average rate, round it up and use that regardless of the destination country?
• Or do you use different rates for each destination country?
• Do you take the weight/size of your shipment in consideration?
• What's something a starting global seller should definitely know regarding shipping (cost)?

Hi everyone,

For context, I run a small skincare brand that recently crossed six figures since launching in February, all while maintaining a full-time job. It's been an exciting journey, but I’m starting to feel stretched too thin as I’m managing every area of the business myself. For 2025, my goal is to scale up and delegate tasks so I can focus on the aspects I enjoy most.

One area I’m looking to outsource is Meta and Google Ads, as I don’t enjoy handling them and think an expert could help me grow more efficiently. I’ve been talking to an agency that seems promising, but I’d love some advice to ensure I’m making a good decision since I haven't hired one before.

Here’s the deal they’re offering:

• A $2,000 monthly fixed fee.
• An 8% revenue share for Meta and Google Ads, decreasing to 6% after $30K/month in revenue and 4% after $60K.
• A guarantee: if the ROAS falls below a certain threshold, they’ll refund the fixed fee and won’t charge the commission.
• 4 Month lock in period.

They have great reviews, compelling case studies, and our initial meetings have been positive. However, I can’t shake the nervousness that I might be making a mistake. I’ve saved up money to invest in scaling, but it’s still a big commitment, and I want to get it right.

Some key considerations:

• My brand has a 38% repeat customer rate, so I’m confident I can earn back revenue on the backend even if I breakeven or take a small loss on the initial purchase.
• My biggest concern is purchase tracking. For example, if existing customers click an ad but convert later through an email campaign, I’ll still have to pay a commission on those sales—essentially paying twice for the same customer.

Do you think this is a fair deal? Has anyone worked with an agency under similar terms? Are there any red flags I should watch for? I’d really appreciate your advice and insights. Thanks so much!

Did anyone else ended up paying for the “Mentor” Platform ran by Tony Matusiak?

He was a Instagram ecom guru (currently has deleted all his ecom related posts) that seemed really legit.

I paid $4500 for it, honestly my fault for trusting these online chumps, and this platform is more dead than ever.

They promised all these “mentors” that’ll be teaching on it with their courses etc. and it was active for the initial few months but now it’s completely dead.

They remove all the posts that community members make trying to complain to keep their image clean.

This post is just for awareness and to reach out to other people that unfortunately got scammed by Tony.

Thought I'd share some feedback here as our brand sold a product into Target. From past jobs I had, I knew that dealing with big box retailers was a challenge for many reasons, but as a business owner the feeling is different as it affects your own pocket. We are a 4 year old ecommerce brand that has gone from $0 - $9m in 4 years. I lived in China for about 15 years so this didn't exactly happen by chance, but has been a blessing after Covid killed another business I had.

THE DEAL

The program was for an $80 retail electronic item to be sold to all 1800 Target stores. We did not deal with Target directly but did have meetings with the buyer. We dealt with an agency that takes a 5% commission. Apparently Target prefers dealing with these agencies rather than dealing with individual brands likely to reduce the points of contact and ideally have someone that knows the intricacies of their business and can explain it to the brand, which didn't happen in our case. The agency we worked with had a rather green employee on our account which lead to a lot of problems later on. I won't mention their name publicly, but they are bad, and we are not paying them.

Our sale price was quite good, around $45 on a $80 item. This was an excellent margin for us. As a D2C brand, our CAC is around $25 to run ads to find a customer, so this was a healthy margin for a retail deal. We knew there would be some chargebacks and such, but we were happy with the initial sale price.

PROJECTIONS

Target predicted they would buy around 34,000 units. This was to be around a $1.5m deal. We were a $7m company at the time, so this was a significant deal for us, and one that I was super excited about.

We saw rather quickly that their projections were way off. We were not given a lot of shelf space only allowing for about 3-5 units per store. We were on the high end of pricing in this category and our brand isn't super famous. Perhaps our packaging wasn't great for retail either. Whatever the reason, once you are in the store it is too late to make running changes and it wasn't going well.

Throughout the journey, as cautious entrepreneurs, we wanted to understand what the down side would be. What would happen if Target over ordered and was left with a ton of stock? Our agent lead us to believe that "RTV" (return to vendor) was an option, which we later found to be.. wrong. This is our fault for not knowing exactly how much it would cost to get units back to us from the very start.

RTV = RETURN TO VENDOR

This is one of the most important lessons when dealing with big box retailers. This has to be negotiated up front, which our agent didn't do for us. We knew that the returns that were "defective" would be trashed, but thought that if Target over ordered we would be able to get the extra units back. This is not the case. If you do not negotiate this, Target will either sell your units to another discounter or throw your product into a landfill, neither of which you will be able to control or even be told about.

RETURN RATE

This was another area we grossly underestimated. As a D2C brand, our Shopify returns are under 1%. Our Amazon returns are under 3.5%. We have sold to QVC which had a 6% return rate. Target came in around 16%. I have no idea why it was this high as you will not get any insight into the returns. If any of the boxes get bumped, or returned with torn packaging, you can assume these will be trashed. We had no insight into the oddly high return rate, but our production is all from the same batch, so it had to do with this particular sales channel, not the actual product itself. I think they had trouble selling units and just randomly put a percentage onto this list. Returning online is a lot simpler than going back to a store, so it does not make sense to us that this would be so high.

OVER ORDERING

Target wants all of the upside, and doesn't care about your down side. We actually cancelled one of their orders for 10k pieces as we saw the projections weren't being met and we *thought* this would lead to overages coming back to our warehouse. Little did we know, overages will actually be thrown into a landfill somewhere, which you will be paying for.

DISCOUNTING

Not only will you have no insight into the return rate, Target will run random discounts online. This hurt us as we made the mistake of not separating our Amz SKU from the Target SKU. They ran a surprise online discount over labor day which essentially sent our amazon listing into "no buy box" status as we weren't the low price anymore. We lost six figures over holiday weekend sales as a result of this.

THE END OF THE PROGRAM

At the end of the program, Target will want you to pay for highly discounting the items. We told them that we would prefer to get the units back. We have no issue selling through our D2C channels so selling at 60%, 80% off is not something we wanted them to do. It was at this point that they told us RTV was not an option, and it would cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars to get our stock back. This was different than our agent lead us to believe when they wanted all of the up side of selling inventory. We ended up basically paying Target to throw away 5000 perfectly excellent units into a landfill. They won't tell you where these units go. I think they probably just don't want publicity for being wasteful. They won't send the units back to you though unless this was negotiated up front.

At the end of the program, we basically agreed to pay nearly $100,000 out of the deal to Target for them to throw away our product. Originally they wanted somewhere around $240,000 but we were able to negotiate this down. The total number of units ordered was around 20,000 pieces which was way off of the original estimate, but they only sold through maybe 15,000 of those pieces.

THE AFTERMATH

After agreeing to the $100k going back to Target, we did get in writing from them that this would signal the end of the program. However, due to Target having so many different departments that do not communicate with each other, we still get hit up by different audits showing that they want another $5k, or $30k, or $12k, for random discounts or chargebacks. We then have to explain to them that we have already terminated the program and were told nothing else was due. We won't pay anything else but who knows if they will continue to chase us for this. We have written confirmation from the buyer that there is nothing else due so we will stick to that.

CONCLUSION

I love being a D2C brand. I like owning the customers and marketing to them directly. I like that we are able to offer a better service or support than retailers ever could. We probably still made a little bit of money off of the deal, but not much. Our agent was horrible. We made mistakes in that we didn't push the agent early on to give us certain answers. Payment terms with retailers are bad. They will pay you 60 days after delivery and still take out 2%. They will nickel and dime you for everything.

Would I do it again? Actually, yes.. But I would get certain things in writing next time. First, its only worth it if the margin is excellent. Second, I'd understand the downside of stock overages a bit better. Third, I'd work with a better agent that knows the buyer a bit better. Retail deals are tempting because we currently run ads to find 1 customer at a time. We do this successfully, but being able to sell 5000, 10,000 or 30,000 pieces at a time is hard to turn down.

Should you ever bring your D2C brand to a big box retailer, thoroughly understand defect calculation, where defects go, how stock is ordered, where stock overages go, how and when they discount and who is responsible for this. Hope this helps someone else when they think about going to the giant retailers. It's not as sexy as it may appear to be.

Hi guys. We have a brand with over 200 positive (5 star) reviews. We got 2 negative reviews this month and we’re expecting some more next week as people ordered very late and we cannot deliver in time for Christmas. One of the reviews stating we are a scam and liars - her order is delayed for a couple of days due to the courier’s own fault but it’ll still be delivered in time for Christmas.

We’re also experiencing a lot of bullying and insults from customers via email if we don’t reply within 2-3 hours.

Its our first proper Christmas so any advice is appreciated please!

I have been struggling with the account page on the Impreza Basic Shop. I have been on the demo theme "https://impreza9.us-themes.com/my-account/" and it works perfectly for what I want. On my site, the sub-page redirects (my-account/orders/, etc) always end up as 404.

Additionally, I have not been able to find a way to remove the download button or menu listing.

In Woo the status shows that I am not calling the shortcodes for cart, or account - but I figure that is ok if these are working properly. 

I have been searching forums and videos but have not found any insight into this particular problem. I'd hate to get another plugin when the demo site does exactly what I am looking for.

Thank you for any insight you can provide. 

Hi everyone,

I’m currently selling a product on Amazon and trying to figure out if I’m managing my costs effectively or if there’s a better way to approach this. Here’s a breakdown of my current situation:

Product Details: • Product: Hydrogen Peroxide Whitening Toothpaste with included floss. • Cost per unit: $1.50. • Weight: 155 grams (~5.47 oz). • Dimensions: Approximately 7 x 2 x 2 inches (~12.2 cubic inches).

Costs and Fees: 1. Amazon Fees: • Fulfillment (FBA): ~$3.50 per unit. • Referral fee (15%): $1.80 (based on $11.99 sale price). 2. Ad Spend: • Average: $0.50–$1.00 per unit sold. 3. Storage Costs: • Current inventory: 6,000 units. • Monthly storage fees: • Regular season (Jan–Sep): ~$37/month (42.6 cubic feet). • Holiday season (Oct–Dec): ~$102/month.

Current Profit Margin: After accounting for all fees, my net profit per unit is around $4.19/unit, which equates to a 34.9% profit margin. However, with ad spend fluctuations and Amazon’s fees, I feel like there might be a better way to optimize costs or increase profits.

My Questions to the Community: 1. Are there more cost-effective fulfillment options outside of FBA (e.g., FedEx/UPS fulfillment or other 3PLs)? 2. How can I reduce my ad spend while maintaining or increasing sales? 3. Would switching to FBM (Fulfilled by Merchant) with direct shipping via FedEx/UPS save money? 4. Any tips for better inventory management to avoid high storage fees? 5. Are there strategies to increase the sale price without losing sales?

Goal: I’d like to achieve a 40–50% profit margin while still providing great service to customers and maintaining sales velocity.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, especially if you’ve faced a similar situation or have expertise in Amazon FBA and e-commerce. Any advice or guidance is much appreciated!

Hey everyone,

It took me months to get this sticker set off the ground, starting with absolutely zero knowledge about how to do it... haha. I’m finally at a point where I feel ready to share my work, but I’d really appreciate some feedback from fresh eyes!

I’ve managed to give away a number of stickers so far (which has been super rewarding!), but I haven’t made any sales yet. I’d love to know if my website feels appealing enough or if there’s anything I could improve to make it more inviting.

My goal is to share my artwork and connect with people who enjoy whimsical designs and stories. I’m happy to ship my stickers worldwide, and I’d be so grateful for any advice or thoughts you might have.

Here’s the link to my website: https://carefulmind.blog

Thank you in advance! Your feedback means the world to me. 😊

Hi I'm looking to try to increase the conversion rate for this site:

https://coronadospiceandtea.com/

We really want to just focus on the top sellers, which are the three molé pastes ("Mulli Mole"). Everything else is kind of secondary to those. Any ideas or critiques are welcome! Have at it, no need to pull punches here. Thanks in advance!

Received the following from Paypal today:

Subject: Our pricing is changing, but your pricing will remain the same

PayPal continues to support merchants with expanded capabilities across payment processing, authorization optimizations, and fraud protection. As we continue to expand our offerings, we will be adjusting some of our pricing on January 13, 2025 (as further described on our PayPal Policy Updates Page).

However, after reviewing your account, we’re exempting you from the applicable pricing changes at this time. As a result, the following pricing will continue to apply to your PayPal business account if you receive domestic transactions using the following payment type(s):

Anyone else get this? We do pretty substantial volume, so not sure if we're exempted from these changes because of that, or what, just posting in case you use Paypal to be aware rates might be changing for you.

Hi all my UK Ecommers, you can use this page to paste your product description and it'll scrape a few ecom sites and will return a CSV of similar products and prices. It's been really useful to me thought i'd share as its free. https://myquants.co.uk/product_checker/

When running an online store, there is the question of how to take time off, is using a fulfillment center an option? Can it be affordable for a very small online store? Thanks.

Hey, I wanted to ask you about something, that doesn't let me sleep. We all use a lot of spreadsheets right. But we use also other apps, for social media, for ads, to manage product listings etc.

And these also present lists of items for example products, campaigns, posts, orders.

My question is for such tables with a lot of data, where you spend a lot of time in, do you prefer them to be concise and clear like a spreadsheet or esthetic?

I'm asking because I see various approaches I use as a merchant and can't decide what I like more. I like good design, but sometimes the apps I use display tables in ways that make it hard to work with them (too big cells, too many unnecessary information, little contrast, no color coding etc.).

Please share your thoughts, I'd love to know if its only me-problem

I am afraid to do this but I see everyone else getting such great tips. I have been out of stock for a while but my new inventory arrived at port today and I will be shipping orders in the next week or so. I want to spruce up the site as I start trying to send traffic again. Any feedback is welcome, thank you!!

www.vommat.com

Like the title says

I’m interested in selling handmade items there

Is the Amazon Seller app the one to use for it, or is it web- based only?

Were you able to make a good amount of sales as compared to other selling platforms?

Am an E-commerce bookkeeper and CPA, focusing on how the E-commerce platforms integrate to accounting softwares to make the process seamless, and my question is how are some of you simplyfing this process? With each client comes a new set of challenges which makes me wonder; this must be one of the most daunting tasks for E-commerce business owners. For starters let me know which ways/apps/ integrations are working for you. Thanks

I am a 7 figure AMZ seller that sells my own brand. We are the only seller of our brand and really can only be found on amz and Shopify. We are a D2C company so we generate awareness mostly by running ads on other platforms, not organically through amz searches. I found the walmart platform to be annoying and not something I wanted to deal with especially because we use amz as our warehouse so I imagine every Walmart order would need to be a manual amz FBM entry.

Our product is 79.99 on amazon and listed for 99.99 on walmart. Basically, anyone that is window shopping for the best price will find it on amazon and I just use walmart as a benchmark to show a higher price so that amz looks like a good deal.

This means that my amazon sales are 7 figures, and my yearly walmart sales are like low 4 figures :)

Is this a terrible strategy? Is the customer base the same? Am I missing out by not having it on Walmart?

Anyone have any code snippets to use for displaying the trust pilot rating with stars and Named "Excellent" rating on site?

hey all, I'm working on a project that would basically require some sort of product catalog for an insurance company.

It's not as extensive as your typical commerce sites, it's just the title, description, image url, image2 url, price, discounted price,etc..

Would there be by any chance an open source tool for this that includes UI? could be locally hosted, it's okay.
even it has some costs, something on the lower end is fine.
Something similar to feedonomics..

Cheers

Hello!

I'm looking for a module of e-commerce portal script for providing the customer ability so search the parts by make/model/year or VIN or registration number with analogues. I found only one, parts-mod.com. Seems very good, is there any competitors available?

Thanks.

I don't like that Paypal holds money and having read a few stories over the years, it seems like a singular disputed transaction can result in Paypal suspending your entire account, rather than the aforementioned transactions. This is particularly bad if it's clearly the customer in the wrong, rather than yourself. It feels like this could be a huge risk, especially if you're scaling.

Thoughts?

Hey All 👋

I'm building a new startup and team around business intelligence and looking for feedback on why you might be skeptical of our idea.

We got some initial feedback that tiktok trends might be insightful to ecommerce businesses or business owners. See landing page here
https://www.noodleiqnewsletters.com/generaltiktoklanding
I know there are businesses in this group so wondering if you could give me feedback on...

1. why or why not you might be interested this product?
2. If not interested, is there data you might be interested in but don't necesssarily know how or want to put in the effort to get?

Thanks!

Decided to take this Christmas break to just improve my store, get an idea on angles I can take and kind of build an identity for my brand. Will not be running ads until the new year because 1) everyone’s Christmas shopping is probably done and 2) if they did order it wouldn’t arrive in time for Christmas. So I’m just looking for people to give me some tips so that I can set myself up as best as possible going in to 2025

Store is: https://arfre.com

Did you carry seasonal products this year? If so, a couple questions:

1. Were your estimates of sales volume close to actual? Did this leave you with insufficient or excess inventory?

2. If you have excess seasonal products, will you store them for next year as carry over? Or liquidate?

3. If you were insufficient, what was the cause? Better than expected marketing ROI? Supply chain? Or cash flow?

4. Any surprise lessons that will change how you prepare for next year?

Os produtos seriam aproximadamente uns 4 ebooks de exercícios terapêuticos e os serviços seriam uns 3 tipos de consultas terapêuticas. Já olhei alguns sites, mas todos tem um valor de assinatura muito alto e uma taxa cobrada em cima da venda muito alta também. As consultas dá pra eu marcar pelo whatsapp e eu tenho feito isso, mas os ebooks eu não sei por onde vender sem ter tanto prejuízo, até porque são produtos simples. Mas caso eu fosse usar uma plataforma, já colocaria pelo menos a divulgação dos meus serviços também.

Like the title says, I'm curious if people run ads for their products. I used to sell Sherpa clothing and would run ads every now and then. I did get a few conversions off of that but maybe I was lucky.

If you do run ads, how long do you spend on the creatives? FB Ads manager was kinda hard for me to navigate at first so it took me an entire day to create one ad.

Any info would be appreciated!