Hello, 😊

This month is important to me: I’ve been working on a brand for nine months. It addresses a painful problem in a way that’s different from the competition. I believe it can bring fresh air to the market while also being a solid solution. 🌬️💡

But as I get closer to the official launch, I find myself asking more questions. I’m still in doubt: will it work, will people understand my approach, will they recognize the added value, will I be able to make it profitable, or have I just wasted all this time? 😬

I’ve invested €10,000, and I don’t want to mess it up. 💸

I have some questions I can’t answer—could you help? 🙏

1. Is my estimated acquisition cost reasonable? 💰

Initially, my product will be sold for €149 (which includes three items plus access to a virtual coach on the mobile app I’ve developed). 📱

The cost per product is €45, including shipping (this may decrease over time). My breakeven CPA is €75. This means that if the product sells, I don’t lose money, but I don’t make any either. 🤷‍♂️

Do you think this is achievable?

2. I’m relying on a 60% repurchase rate—this is where I’ll make my largest margin. Is this a good strategy? 📈

My product comes with a money-back guarantee. The €149 pack lasts for three months, and to qualify for the guarantee, users need to use the product for six months. This is why I’m counting on repurchases. 🔄

For €99, they can extend the usage for an additional three months. The profit margin on this sale would be 58% (€57.30). 💵

The mobile app will regularly re-engage customers and encourage them to continue with the program. 📲

Do you think focusing more on profit after the initial sale could be a profitable strategy?

3. My pricing compared to the competition 💸

To be clear: I’m convinced that I’ve created a more comprehensive and effective product than my competitors. However, my product is more expensive upfront (though not in the long term). 🤔

Competitors generally charge between €35 and €70 per month, offering only consumables. My €149 pack includes consumables (for three months) plus two devices to support their use. 💊🔧

Does my price seem like a problem? It’s easier for people to commit to €50 or €60 per month than to put down €150 upfront. 🤨

4. My goal is to have a CPA under €75. 🎯

The lower my CPA, the more profitable my first sale will be. If I can lower my CPA to €50, I’ll have a ROAS of 2.98 and make €24.65 in profit (16.54% margin… not huge, but acceptable). 📉

Is this achievable? It seems challenging. 😅

For now, I’m targeting the European market (France, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands). My sales price already includes 20% VAT, so the government is making more from my sale than I am—great! 😑💸

As you can tell, I have a lot of questions. 🤔 This is my first time launching an e-commerce business. I’ve learned a lot, but now it’s time to put it into practice. 🛠️

Just to clarify, I’m not a beginner: my field is web design and development, so I’m very comfortable with tech. My store is well-built and optimized. I’ve set up landing pages, email flows, and even notification flows within the app (activated based on specific criteria). 🚀

Where I lack experience is in ad creation (though I’m studying what others are doing), Facebook Ads, Google Ads, etc. 📢

I’m excited but also very nervous. 😅

Hi guys!

I'm a beginner brand owner, currently planning my pre-release marketing campaign. I'm planning to buy ads from instagram accounts and I have a question.

When buying ads from instagram accounts, such as archive pages, how do you determine who can be trusted and whether the engagements are real or fake?

For many archive pages I see a mismatch between the number of likes and comments, a post can have 2000 likes and no comments at all, which is very weird for me, and I want to protect myself from any type of bots or low quality traffic/engagements.

Will appreciate any advice/help/ or opinion. Thank you for your attention and have a beautiful day!

We have a large successful Ecommerce site running Magento 2. Busy site 20mn plus annual revenue. We are considering moving to shopify. I was wondering if anyone has gone from magento 2 to shopify and regretted it? Thanks

I want to run a little store where I can just toss my handmade creations to sell and not make multiples of any particular product. I've seen other artists on each of these platforms for similar, which one would be best?

I'm trying to finalize pricing for my launch and wondering about accounting for discounts.

Do you roll any possible discounts you might give out into your product pricing?

For example: if you have a 60% margin on a product, and you run a 30% off black Friday sale... Are you just taking the hit to your margin for the length of that sale? Or is the 60% margin inclusive of that black Friday discount?

Hope that makes sense. I'm aiming for a 60% margin on all my products but right now that's only factoring in landed cost, shipping, packaging expenses and doesn't factor in a possible discount for joining my newsletter, any future sales, etc.

Just recently setup my ecwid store (transitioning from etsy)

I have gained alot of traffic and views on my products, but no sales as of yet. Most of the listings sell frequently on my etsy site... So im thinking the design of my store may not be appealing enough to keep the customers from leaving.. I have put ALOT of time into the design after alot of research and ive got my SEO and google adds set up pretty well (getting around 1.6k views on google adds daily with around 60-70 clicks) $35 daily budget.

Can someone please review my store for feedback, no matter what it is, dont care. Im looking for honest, proffesional advice from seasoned eccomerce sellers. Wether it be font size, colour theme, descriptions, you name it. Straight up raw honesty would be appreciated. https://print3dresins.com/

NOT DOING THIS FOR ADVERTISEMENT!!! Please do not block my post for tagging my link, pretty please

I’m working on my website and want to know if I’m heading in the right direction. It’s not yet done but feedback is very much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

http://message-on-a-bottle.nl

I'm hoping the group mind can help me. I've been building a trade paperback exchange site for a little over a year. The premise is, what do you do with all those graphic novels/ trade paperbacks sitting on your shelf that you'll never read again? Trade them with other free members! We sell the shipping to the customers and there is a small upcharge to keep the site running. I've added news coverage on the landing page to help drive traffic. I am currently in the middle of building a database of books to make it easier for members to "add book to digital bookshelf" to trade with other members. I've gotten a fair amount of traffic, largely due to the news component. I've done adds on instagram, x and tick tock. I would get spikes in web traffic but no conversions. The news articles post to multiple social media accounts. I had a booth at a comic convention where the feedback was that it's a brilliant idea, people signed up. Unfortunately, so far, there have been 0 conversions. If allowed I will post a link to my site. Any advise would be greatly appreciated.

On Woocommerce product listings, there is a place in the product attributes where you can add “brand”. There is also a place in product info on Google Merchant Center where you can add “brand”.

Does adding it to Woocommerce product listings make it so that you do not manually need to add it to Google Merchant Center?

Hey im new here and would love some feedback on my store im not getting any sales yet and would love to hear what i could improve and do to get my first customers

www.Balanceoase.de

We have a small E-com and have been using the third party shipping broker GoShippo and are very pleased with their rates for cross border shipping especially for USPS.

Problem: our actual cross border shipper Stallion says it will no longer accept third party labels as of November 25th due to the GDE compliant standards for USPS which we use 95% of the time. They will only accept Stallion labels as of that date. For the last several orders I have done comparisons between the 2 and Stallion is always at least 50% more.

Does anyone have suggestions of other CBS that are still accepting third party labels in the East GTA/Pickering/Ajax area?

Just recently setup my ecwid store (transitioning from etsy)

I have gained alot of traffic and views on my products, but no sales as of yet. Most of the listings sell frequently on my etsy site... So im thinking the design of my store may not be appealing enough to keep the customers from leaving.. I have put ALOT of time into the design after alot of research and ive got my SEO and google adds set up pretty well (getting around 1.6k views on google adds daily with around 60-70 clicks) $35 daily budget.

Can someone please review my store for feedback, no matter what it is, dont care. Im looking for honest, proffesional advice from seasoned eccomerce sellers. Wether it be font size, colour theme, descriptions, you name it. Straight up raw honesty would be appreciated. https://print3dresins.com/

NOT DOING THIS FOR ADVERTISEMENT!!! Please do not block my post for tagging my link, pretty please!

Does anyone know how the ad platforms wanting to charge companies for browsers ultimately expect to attract buyers that are actually intending to buy something instead of just browsing?

Firstly, I believe in the ppc model and it's usefulness for a brand/company. I know some people don't stand for it and just do the organic growth/etc. How do places like Amazon expect to attract quality sellers? They offer no guarantee for finding intentioned buyers, buyers that are literally looking and ready to buy. I kind of know this because I am a customer too.... I've seen a lot of shady tactics from these ppc models and I haven't even been doing this very long. Just search on Google for one of the leading auto parts stores and wouldn't you know that Google pute the "clickable ad" up first when the regular website is literally the next result down the list... Very shady.

What sounds more approachable with ppc is something where the company/seller only pays for the click if the customer makes a purchase. I heard Etsy does this. I also heard Etsy is going down hill, is this true?

Trying to keep up with ad bids appears to be like the stock market to me, expecting to have to constantly sit there when the platform decides to jack the ad bids up and wants you to stay on top of it all day.

Has anyone gotten rid of their Amazon account due to the low intentioned buyers? I like the idea of selling there but I have to be honest and call the shots like I see it, their model seems more predatory based than a model searching for quality brands.

This post too long already. Did you give the Amazon the boot? Is Etsy worth anything these days? I'm considering licensing my idea to a brick and mortar and mostly keeping it off Amazon right now, I really don't care about the Amazon or Etsy and I basically dont even ship there myself. I think quality consumers are are opening their eyes too(it really seems just a timing and learning thing). In the mainstream population I usually only hear about the Amazon when it's a unique interesting one-off product maybe every 9 months or so.

My brand launched in March and we placed around 6 purchase orders from him through Alibaba. We are preparing to make a new order which will be our biggest by 2x. I noticed in the latest proforma he sent me the factory name changed, he told me it’s because Alibaba charged them too much fees so they opened a new factory name.

I worked with him for almost a year now and he’s always been very responsive and fair so I trust him, but this smells a bit fishy. Is this normal?

Hi all, should be easy fix but I've been trying to solve it on my cousins Shopify site.

She wants to change on the checkout page under delivery from saying ship pickup in store

to ship pickup in store Melbourne, Victoria only

Can anyone help me out? These love jobs are the ones that end up costing you the most time. TIA

Hi, I wrote my own software for my ecommerce site at tnarmsco.com and everything was going swimmingly until i integrated Add-Ons and Product Options.

I think the database interactions with the site might be bogging the site down and causing errors on what is initially the big product with all the addons and then it is cascading into the whole site causing load failures.

please go to https://tnarmsco.com/product_171

and then navigate to the homepage and tell me if you are having long load times or any errors adding to the cart or anything.

This problem is super intermittent and I am having a hell of a time tracking down the issue. If you guys could collectively run my site through its paces I would greatly appreciate the load test.

For those that care it is a Sveltekit site with a redis cache database connected to a Golang CMS i wrote just for this market as a SaaS. the backend is fine just having this one issue on the Add-ons im trying to troubleshoot.

Thank You,

I want to start doing anything online ( I have the plan to start selling e-books ) I’m 20M and I’m barely 3 months in the U.S. I’m wondering If I really need any permit or licence to start selling on internet (I just have my passport and my N.Y ID) because I want to do anything ASAP. I have some money. What you guys recommend me to do in the meantime, while I wait for my legal process to have my SSN and Work Permit? Any possibilities to try out?

Our company was recently invited to sell on Temu and I would like to share our experience so far. Looked like they were serious about trying to attract local businesses.

Tldr: Don't do it.

So of course I was skeptical going in, but with the traffic they are getting I figured it was worth a peek.

1. We have a very large catalog with thousands of skus. We were assured for months that a bulk upload option would be made available. It wasn't. The third party platform offered does not function just throws out endless errors. We had to accept manual one by one uploads. Fine...

2. Here's where it gets fun. Multiple manual corrections will need to be made to each listing. Then come the nonsense compliance issues, all of which are 100% incorrect, requiring documentation that does not exist.

3. No one is able to help you with these issues. Instead, you will be gaslighted and told that they understand your industry better than you and that you are required to submit these documents for every single listing. It's just never ending bs issues at every step for every listing and no one to step in and resolve them.

4. Pricing. Here we go....We were told there was some sort of price negotiation, but no it is not a negotiation. You set a price, and they come back with some random counter, between 30% and 85% of the price you offered. No rhyme or reason. No understanding of my industry, product, etc. Completely arbitrary. You can counter, but they will reject and offer the same price. Not to mention that if you accept the lower price, certain other platforms will most definitely flag those products on their platforms for pricing violations.

5. End of story. You cannot set your price on Temu. No negotiation.

Terrible experience. Dysfunctional. Cutting losses and not investing any more time, effort or labor into a platform that is not serious.

So, we are at a full stop with Temu. Leaning in on tiktok as a potential next platform. Who knows.

Open to any thoughts or discussion.

So my problem is that my biggest passion is the gym. Logically I would love to create my own gym wear that I could sell and wear myself. This is the one business I am really passionate about. But after doing market research and a competitor analysis I feel like there is no opportunity for me to sell anything that is differentiated significantly from the existing gym wear brands and clothing is a difficult market in general. What should I do? Any advice?

I have applied for GST so that I can start an Ecommerce store. Will the government will visit and verify my business place? I have applied for sole proprietor, amd given my home as place of business. Is there anything I am doing wrong or anything missing? Whats the proof that Its my base of business

Help me out guys😇

Thinking about redoing my Shopify store.

I've been using the Minimal theme for years, but I want to essentially relaunch to force myself to redo everything without cutting any corners.

I sell consumer goods in the outdoor recreation space. Probably under 300 SKUs these days.

Any recs?

Started out doing flea markets buying and trading sports cards, went to Mercari last year and do decent ... 10-12 sales a week.

Long story short I figured, why not try Shopify. Before I dump even more of my inventory onto the site (I have over 1500 listings on Mercari) I wanted some feedback on the site quality. Please .... Be brutal if needed.

Thanks in advance!!!!

https://lsrcollectibles.myshopify.com/

Currently running Ads to test the potential of a self discipline course.

Ran it last month with an "enroll" page that took user name, email and phone number. Had 370 clicks and got 6 "enrolls".

I'm retesting it again with an actual pre-enroll so user has to give their money. So far nothing.

https://www.disciplinedtoday.com/

Please let me know comments or suggestions.

Is it better to have free shipping and have a higher price per product or is it better to have lower prices products and charge shipping. What sells better? I sell handmade jewelry if that info helps.

(I know free shipping really isn't free.)

I’m from Latvia, doing my typical e-commerce work. I decided to start a second store to sell my own handmade products, and it went well. I connected my store to an older (only one) PayPal account that was about 4 months old, thinking it might be less likely to get banned for no reason as I had bad experience before.

As my sales increased, PayPal started holding my money, which meant I couldn’t fully reinvest in my business to scale up. I contacted them, explaining that I needed the funds to fulfill orders, but my request was denied. So, I scrambled to fulfill all my orders with what I had. PayPal was always updated with the latest tracking numbers, etc.

For over 5 months of owning the account, I had zero disputes from customers, which is generally a good sign. But then, I got my first and only dispute from a customer whose email I hadn’t answered for 3 days—my mistake for missing his only email. He was the only customer I hadn’t replied to in time, so as soon as I saw the dispute, I checked his email, replied to him, and sent his tracking number. Everything was good between us.

However, PayPal then required me to verify some documents (receipts, tracking numbers, proof of fulfillment, etc.). I gathered all the info and submitted it as quickly as possible. Just an hour after submitting it, my account was banned. Am I crazy, or is this insane?

Title sums it up - curious to see what the recurring issues are for growing ecom brands and how you're solving them.

I'm about to launch a service based subscription service and I am not very tech savvy. If you were going to launch a business that either charges $8.33/month or $90.00/yr up front, what program would you use to build out a website and what payment processor would you use?

Would it be best for me to just start on Shopify even though I'm not selling a physical product and their fees seem a tad high?

TIA!

My team has documented a number of entities selling a copy of items that we originally designed and created. They are in amazon, etsy, and others have their own website.

How to go about this?

I have searched on reddit and most Flippa posts are saying it‘s a scam or if it was a successful, easy to run business whey would they sell? But, these posters are buying $500 to, maybe, $5k websites. Does Flippa become more legit while purchasing a more established and higher revenue generating site?

There are sites in the $100k to $200k that are generating $50-100K pre-tax every year. This seems like a decent deal to me. I know verifying these numbers are tricky, but I was wondering if anyone has any experience with Flippa in the $100k+ range?

Over the past 90 days, my website has seen roughly 700 visitors. 9 of them have added to cart and 1 has made a purchase.

These numbers aren't great. It does tell me that people are interested as they make the effort to visit my website, but is it just not optmized for conversions?

Sharing a link to the landing page to see if anyone can offer some suggestions or feedback.

https://blacksisyphus.com/products/hair-pick-home-decor-set

Thanks