Keys tips you need when building a Shopify store…(Update)

NewGen family! I got another fire blog post for you today. Let’s go ahead and dive straight into it right away. A few months have passed since I’ve given some insight on building your first Shopify store. A lot has changed in dropshipping since then, I mean A LOT! So without further a due, let’s begin.

 

Store structure:

So in 2020 and on as of right now the main goal is to keep it simple. If you’re new to dropshipping I highly recommend utilizing the one product store method instead of the general store method. You want the main focus to be the product and not the niche. If you find the right product then you’ve found your niche. The structure I’m about to show you is going to pertain to the one product formula.

So lets start by picking your theme. Me personally I use the default theme “Debut” because it looks the cleanest when you’re utilizing this structure. You can also use “Jumpstart” or “Minimal” as well, but “Debut” has worked the best for me. So how should you structure your store? Look at the points:

•  Header (Utilize the color black for the bar with white font)
•  Image (Make sure the intro to your store stands out to customers)
•  Featured collection
•  Image with text (The first text should be educating the customer, a small did you know or a statistic will be perfect)
•  Image with text (The second text should be asking a question to your customer and offering a solution)
• Image with text (The third text should be introducing the product)
• Image with text (The last text should be a very BRIEF description of the product)
• Video (A brief video of the product)
• Testimonials (Utilize the suppliers reviews)

This is how your front page should look like, a clean and straight forward page. Also another tip, eliminate all distractions. The average attention span of the human is 5 seconds (fun fact, the average attention of a gold fish is 6 seconds… Yes, we’re losing to f***king goldfish) so you really have about 3 seconds to show what your store is about.

With that being said, at the top of your store depending on what theme you’re using take out “catalog” and add “Home”, “About us”, “Track your order”, “Return center”. Everything else like refunds, shipping times, policies, etc…put them at the bottom of the store. That way your customers have to go all the way down and see your information about the product first. With this set up, it’s simple. Either buy or bounce.

 

Product page structure:

Now that we’ve discussed how your front page should look like lets go ahead and dive into what your product page should look like. So your product page is obviously your make or break when it comes to your converting in sales. You want to give a lot of information but in a clean, quick, and straight forward setting. Now will customers read everything on your product page? Hell nah, like I said the average customer is on a store for about 5 seconds. However, you still want to look like a professional store and still give the info just in case you get those customers who actually want to dive deep into the product.

Here’s what your structure of your product page should look like:

•  Clean product photo (White background)
•  Sales timer (Since most people are game’ d up on the sales timer, you want to do a different approach. I personally put a automatic discount in the ATC and I put the timer in to give the idea that you get an extra discount if you ATC before the timer ends.)
•  Trust badges (clean, not bulky)
•  15-30 second video of the product be used
•  Highlights of the products (4 to 6 MAIN KEY points of the product)
•  Product description
•  A fun and creative Gif to add more funk to the store (I use Giphy)
•  Product reviews (This is CRUCIAL. 300+ reviews or more to give more authenticity, if your product doesn’t have 300 positive reviews then pick a new damn product. Also the more reviews with pictures the better.)

This is one of my new stores I utilized this formula I came up with and ran ads to it and these were my results the first day. Now yes, the type of traffic you run towards your store will play a roll in determining your converting percentage, but at least you will have the store game on lock. There’s people paying hundreds, thousands of dollars to have a fancy ass store created and get no sales! Crazy right? F***king dummies. I’m only kidding… Or am I? You decide.

 

In conclusion…

Utilizing this formula will help you create a quick and clean store that’s right to the point that way you have the full attention of the customer. With that being said give this formula a try for your self and see if your conversion rate goes up. Now like I said it takes more even outside the store to convert genuine sales so with that being said I will be dropping an update on how to utilize Facebook ads this weekend and on top of that next week I will be giving game on how to structure your ad copy, offer, and call to action to complete your whole business to see a lot more sales, so be ready. Till then, deuces!

 

 

Top 3 ways to make money during COVID-19…

What’s up NewGen family! Man I don’t even know where to start, this whole entire year has just been crazy beyond comprehension. In my personal opinion biblical. Rumors of wars, the passing of Kobe Bryant (Rest in peace), COVID-19, and now a damn race war… Man I think it’s safe to say we need the remote from Adam Sandler and click to 2021! Never the less, today we’re here to talk about the top 3 ways to create income right now during this pandemic. Since millions on millions of people have lost their jobs and now collecting unemployment, making money right now is definitely more challenging now more than ever. With that being said let’s go ahead and dive right into today’s blog topic.

 

E-commerce/Dropshipping:

Now I’m starting off with this one is because we are in a time now where the shift is happening. Two years ago along my journey of learning dropshipping and going through the phases of creating, failing and doing over again, one thing that kept me going is that I knew that major department stores are going out of business and its due to people are shopping online. Stores like Toys R us, JC Penny, Sears, etc… are seeing their revelation of their companies, that was two years ago. Now, 2020 with the pandemic has pretty much headshot all of these businesses and many more. With majority of the world still under quarantine, everyone is on the internet now more than ever. More people on the internet means more online shopping.

Between 2020 to 2025, E-com/Dropshipping will dominate because, department stores are dying (or at least on life support). So what are the steps of building my first E-com/dropshipping store? Well it’s simple:

• Find a product
• Create an online store around the product
•  Create/run ads to your store
•  Start generating sales

Now of course there’s WAY more that goes into it, but this is just the basis of it. I personally recommend using Shopify when you’re creating your store, because it’s beginner friendly and they give you different tips and tricks to create and achieve your first successful E-commerce website. Right now they’re having a 14-day free so I highly recommend hoping on this opportunity especially at it’s beginning stages. Click here to get started! For more info on E-commerce/dropshipping check out my post, “Key tips you need to know when starting a Shopify store…” for more in-depth explanation.

 

Social Media Marketing Agency:

Now this is for the people who don’t necessarily want to deal with the responsibilities of running an E-commerce brand/dropshipping branded store. A lot of these physical businesses such as restaurants, dental offices, etc… the owners of those businesses for the most part are leaving a huge chunk of money on the table simply because they don’t know how to take advantage of the internet (Or in all honesty are just too f***king lazy to learn) that’s where you come in!

So what exactly do you do to get started? Well first learn how to market. My personal advice, take 2-3 weeks aside and actually learn Facebook ads/Google AdWords because that is the most crucial part of being able to do this. What exactly will you be doing? As a social media marketer, you’ll be creating/taking over the client’s social medias for their business and you will be running ads and you’ll be bringing traffic (potential customers) towards their business which will put more money in their pockets.

The more clients you take on and provide good results, the more money you’ll make. Now how do you get paid from doing this and do you have to use your own money? In the beginning you want to provide value ( a test run) to your client and show them that you’re worth the extra investment. You know when you’re in the mall and you walk past the food court and you got the people handing out free samples of their food. Well it’s the same concept. Give them a taste and if they like, you can write up a contract and they’ll give you a budget to utilize to grow their business. You can easily make an extra $1,500-$3,000 a month per client. Imagine having 4-5 clients paying you $1,500 a month, you do the math. For more info about SMMA check out this video by Kevin David for a more in-depth overview.

 

Print on Demand:

Now this is a unique take on making money online because, this isn’t talked about too much.  For all of my creatives out there this opportunity and the time we’re in right now is GOLDEN! Especially with COVID-19 most shipping times for online businesses are extremely pushed back and may be a good minute before they go back to normal. So what exactly is P.O.D ? It’s pretty much similar to dropshipping, but instead of already made products, you’re creating the designs. That’s right, YOU!

Clothing, accessories, phone cases, necklaces, etc… you’ll be creating the designs via photoshop. Afterwards, the fulfillment center manufactures it and sends it to your customers. Fun fact, my clothing line (01 Vision) started off as an P.O.D but will very soon become an actual clothing retailer. So what’s a good P.O.D company to go through? Me personally I use Printful. Very reliable, tons of different items to customize, fast shipping, great customer service, been using them now for 2+ years now.

Now how would you market this? I actually recommend using Instagram influencers, but of course do a lot of research on Instagram influencers before reaching out to them and utilizing their platform. They’re essentially cheaper then using Facebook ads if done right. $100 on the right IG influencer can bring in mad weight and build data so when you start using Facebook ads, you already have a head start.

 

In conclusion…

We are only 6 months into 2020 and as you can see a lot can happen in a mere 6 months. This pandemic will either do two things to you and that’s either make you more lazier than you already were or bring out that inner hustler in you. With all the bars, malls, clubs, etc… closed, you literally have nothing but time to invest in yourself and be a better version of yourself by the time this pandemic passes. Getcha ass up and get at it, no excuses! Y’all stay safe out here, especially if you’re protesting in the streets. Much love! New blogs coming this week.

The Pros and Cons to shopify… Is it worth it?

Hey everyone! Today I’m stepping inside the e-com realm and giving you the pros and cons of utilizing the platform Shopify and is it worth it for you to start now. If you’re reading this is because, you’re heavliy thinking about joining the platform to create your own online business. You’re wanting to tap into the world of E-commerce and believe it’s a big ass world. Growing by the billions in terms of sales. Without further adue, let’s begin.

 

Pros

Shopify is trusted by over 325,000 entreprenuers (myself included) and is growing by the day. Here are some of the pros that you’ll enjoy when utilizing shopify:

• Cheap to get started ($30/monthly subscription)
• Beginner friendly
• The amount of control you have
• Thousands of apps that’ll help you run your business more effectively
• Staff accounts (when your business gets bigger and you need VAs)
• Small trainings the platform provides

Shopify gives you a chance to utiize the internet and gives you a platform to sell any product and recieve payment from it. Some of the most successful brands on shopify would be Kyliecosmetics, Fashionnova, MVMNT watches, and that’s just a few. These shops bring in millions of dollars a month. Now I know what you’re about to say, “Yeah but they have strong social presence.” Although that’s true, there’s thousands of other shopify brand stores bringing 6-7 figures a month. Besides, everyone starts at zero so don’t let that scare you.

Now these pros are important because, anybody just starting out in the online business world, you want to be able to set up everything without going through unecessary hills and hoops. Its as simple as setting up your store, importing your products and market traffic to your store. You also have massive control over your data information. Everything with who visited your store, people who added to their cart, abandoned carts, sales, and other key information you’ll need to keep track of your business results.

Best part about this, it’s only $29/month to get started. Now depending on the apps you download to your store (some of the apps aren’t free to use or have inside-app purchases) will determine your actual monthly price. Other than that, it’s super cheap to get started. To think all it takes now a days to start a 5-7 figure business, starts with less than $30. Man times have changed truth be told.

 

Cons

Now one thing we know about this world and everything in general, nothing is perfect. So with that being said here are some cons that’ll make you think about using this platform so you can double check to see if you really want to do this. So let’s go ahead and name some of these cons already:

• Low price = High saturation
• Limited theme customization
• You can’t actually use the store until you’ve payed for the monthly plan
• You’ll be spending hundreds/thousands on getting traffic
• Low profit margins

So two of these cons aren’t really a big deal. If you have a creative taste to you, having limited theme customization isn’t a problem. Also since the store is only $29 to get started, applying for the plan isn’t a deal bigger. You can still cancel however before your 14 free trial is up and you WON’T be charged. Now lets get into the other three cons that will probably 97% of people who won’t go for this.

High saturation is definitely a big problem when using this platform (specfically if you’re doing drop-shipping) because, people think all you need to do is pay for the subscription, set up everything & just wait for the customers to start coming in. Also some of these Shopify “gurus” on youtube give a false hope to most of these people wanting to make some extra money. Promising you, you’ll be making 6 figures your first month. Not saying it’s impossible because some have done it, but those people that find success in the first month 99% of them already had the marketing experience or had the resources already or both.

You’ll be also spending a lot of cheese on promoting your products on these social media platforms such as Facebook ads, Instagram ads/influencers, Youtube, Google ads, and many more. Now my best advice for people starting this platform is for one get good at using one social media platform at a time so you’re just not throwing money in the black hole. You’re also going to fail a few times as well so if you’re not okay with losing money in the beginning to learn I highly recommend STRONGLY do NOT do this.

Now with low profit margins, this will only be a issue when you’re scailing your store into higher numbers a day. For example you might have a product that cost about .29 cents to buy but selling it for $15-$20 dollars. You might be profiting big time right now, but when you start scailing your product, your ad cost will go up which will decrease the amount of profit you’ll be making. On top of hiring a few VAs to help you run your business, you’ll be paying them as well. You’ll also be spending money on creating content for your marketing. At the end of all of that you’ll probably be profiting 20-35% maybe 40%  of your actual sales. But I mean when you’re making $100,000+ a month you wouldn’t care about those margins to be honest.

 

So is starting Shopify worth it?

In my opinion, yes. Shopify gives you a very flexible platform to bring your dream business online and gives you a chance to start multiple streams of income and expand your variety when comes to monetizing your ideas. If you can deal with a slow start to a long lasting path then I highly recommend you start and take that chance. However, if you’re not willing to take the cons about this platform Irecommend your try a different business model, because truth be told you won’t last long in the world E-commerce. You could try affilate marketing, social media marketing, amything else, but Shopify wouldn’t be your best bet. Just being honest.

Top 4 reasons why starting a online business beats starting a brick and mortar business…

So recently I seen a statistic about the fail rate of small online businesses and the stat was compaired to the fail rate of starting a brick and mortar business and even though both the numbers are high, the argument was that you’d be better off going to a business school and learning how to start a corperation or brick and mortar business than to utilize the internet and starting a online business. Although I disagree with the statistic I’d like to point out why I don’t agree and give 4 plausable reasons why starting a online business would be a safer bet than starting a business the traditional route. Check out the statisitc by Forbes before reading if you’d like to! Let’s begin.

 

 1. The internet is the new wave

As social media and the power of the internet continues to grow and become more mature, we have the power to guide people’s attention to stores, offers, products, etc… All from the comfort of our home. With the internet and the endless amount of possiblities that it provides us, we cut out most of the tradtional ways of learning and can learn straight from the horses mouth about any skill we want to learn about. No degree is required to start an online business, so you’re not wasting four years of time learning information that hasn’t updated from a professor that hasn’t practiced what they’ve taught.

Now yes, 80% of new businesses(brick and mortar) fail within the first 5 years so when you compare the stats together you would think that brick and mortar businesses would be a better and safer bet to go into, but you have to think about some outside factors that most businesses classes or colleges won’t teach you. How would you start a brick and mortar business? Well first you would have to take some business classes in order to know the ends and outs of why they’re created. When I took some I realized a few things, there’s way too many factors of starting one like for instance:

• Are you starting it by yourself or partnering with people
• What’s the business plan/blueprint you’re going to be using
• Business loans
• Picking buildings
• Hiring employees
• Legal list(contracts, lawyers, etc)

There’s a shit load of factors you have to consider before even starting a business the traditional way, can it be done? Absolutely, but it will take longer while for it to actually come to life and that’s why not many people will do it.

 

2. Smaller risk

Now to go ahead a debunk that statisitc a bit further, the reason why small online businesses are being created at a higher rate and why traditional businesses aren’t being created as much is pretty much one thing… Risk. The average cost to start a business back in the day was around $150,000-$300,000 and thats before even turning a profit. In this day and age with platfroms such as Shopify, Woocommerce, and Amazon you can literally start a online business for less than $30 dollars. So obviously more people are going to start online businesses even if most people who start one don’t even take it seriously( just for shits and giggles).

Now let me ask you a question. Which loss would you rather take? Losing a few hundred to thousand dollars on a small online business or losing 4 years of time, hundreds of thousands that’ll you’ll have to pay the bank back, risk messing up your credit and putting yourself in debt? Me personally I wouldn’t mind losing a few hundred compare to what you could lose if your business fails on that scale. Remember, it’s not the smartest people who make it in this world, it’s the people who can adapt to change. So when these businesses schools and classes aren’t updating their methods on how to create a business for this day and age you’ll literally be setting yourself up for failure and on a greater scale.

 

3. Location neutral

Now one thing that puts online businesses on top of the hill is that where ever there is internet connection you can work. So that means at home, traveling, hotels, beaches, etc… Where ever you go your business goes. In this day and age we are always on the move and there’s nothing more restricting than having a source of income that you can’t take with you. You would have to prioritize your trips and outings accordingly so when you do leave you can have an idea on how your business is doing. Now you could just hire someone to look over your stuff, but me personally it would be more setteling to have full control of my business anywhere I go wether I’m on a vacation or not. I believe having a online business gives you the freedom to set your own hours and set a schedule that can work with your lifestyle and with a brick and mortar business you’d actually be putting 40 more hours than normal employees that work normal 40 hours a week.

 

4. You can create muliple businesses in a short amount of time

Now this is a factor that actaully brings my point home. One thing about starting online businesses is that once 1 business goes up and starts generating you great amounts of money, you now have the skill to start another 1 and another 1. Remember the average millionaire has 7 streams of income. With brick and mortar businesses, more people rely on that 1 business to take off and rely on that one source of income. Nothing too bad about that, but as we look at dying brick and mortar businesses/department stores such as Sears, Toys-R-Us, etc… Yeah they made millions, but it’s not about how much you make it’s about how much you can keep. They’ve lost millions and closed hundreds of stores all because times have changed and E-com giants such as Amazon and Shopify have blown the competition out the water.

So even if you had 7 online businesses and 4 failed, you’d still have 3 to fall back on and you have the knowledge, skills, and capital to create more streams and that’ll put you ahead of most business grads who went to school that learned a whole dated way of doing something instead of adapting to the change which is the internet. So in conclusion with these points, don’t let that statisitc scare you because at first glance with those numbers it would seem to be safer to start a business the traditional way, but when you factor in all of the risk, cost, restrictions, and the drawbacks of starting a business that way, you see that starting a business with the internet in this new age will cut 85-90% of that headache and have a quicker return on investment, creating your financial freedom.

How to utilize Facebook ads part 2…

So I’m extending the How to utilize Facebook ads into two parts, because it’s a slue of information that if I literally type it out all in one blog post you’d be reading for hours and I want to make sure you grasp every aspect to this in a well thought out manner. Last time I went over the different categories on ad sets such as PPE, ATC, VC-PP and how to utilize your pixel code to track your traffic in order to study your data. Today I’m gonna go over how to set up your audience and how to target/retarget your audience in order to make sure you’re not wasting your money on audience that don’t give two shits about your product or service.

 

Audience insights

So they’re many factors in your advertising, but one of the key factors is picking your right audience. People who are already interested or have shown interest in what your selling. Now in order to do that you got to know how to pick that out and that’s what leads up to audience insights. Audience insights is a tool that Facebook incorporates inside your ads manager in order to help set up a custom audience you can sell to.

So go inside your ads manager and then click the top left corner where it says “ads manager” and under “Plan” click audience insights. Once you’ve clicked it it’ll give you two options, “Connect to everyone on Facebook” or “Connect to the people that’ve already connected with your Facebook”. Click the first option and now you’re in audience insights. The benefit in this is that you can create multiple audiences that you can test to see what your winner is.

In here you can tailor your audience by their demographics, the pages they’ve liked, where they live and how active they are. Remember the name of the game is to take that 150-200 million people and shrink it no bigger than 1.5milliom people but no lower than 250,000 people. You need a audience size that’s between those numbers so not only will it not get saturated quickly, but you’ll be able to scale if that audience likes your product. For example lets say I’m selling a streetwear T-shirt and I want to put that shirt in front of people that love streetwear. First I would see what states are more into that sort of fashion and then add them in.

Afterwards I would check the age and gender to see if my product fits more with boys or girls and the age group that would relate to this product more. After that I would then list off the things in common(interests) this shirt has, like Supreme, Bape, Stussy, Obey, etc… anything that involves streetwear in order to grasp those fans and put this shirt in front of them. When that is done I could either go with the audience size I have now or narrow down even further to see if I can get my audience size a bit more specific. At that point I could list off everything from what education level, type of work they do and many more. Once I’ve got all of my information I then save the audience and then utilize for my ad post.

This will help you when it comes to targeting your key audience because these people will be your fans, the people who will keep buying from you and see your brand at least once a day. If you can master creating effective audiences you will be on fire simple because that’s one of the make or break components you need to make it.

 

Targeting/Retargeting your audience  

Now this for the people who are getting ready to scale and this is also for the people who have gathered enough data from their previous ad from a cold audience(cold traffic). Once you’ve gotten this far, you’re ready to see results for what you’re promoting. So you have two different types of audiences such the following:

• Look alike audience
• Custom audience

Both do different things. With a look alike audience you can reach new people who are similar to audiences you already care about. You can create a lookalike audience based on people who like your page, conversion pixels or any of your existing Custom Audiences. With a custom audience you can connect with the people who have already shown an interest in your business or product with Custom Audiences. You can create an audience from your customer contacts, website traffic or mobile app. Depending on where you’re at with your ad will determine which one you will utilize in order to move on to the next level.

When creating a look custom audience all you need is 100 conversions of either of the following;

• Page View
• View content
• Initiate checkout
• Purchase
• Add to cart
• Add payment info
• Search

And out off these 100 conversions you can create a custom audience and Facebook will go out and find people who are likely to do what ever option you select. With a look alike audience you can literally take the custom audience and put it in the lookalike source and Facebook will go and find 1million to 10 million people who look like the audience you’ve gathered. That’s right I said it, 1-10 million people! Scaling is going to be something vicious when you’ve finally reached that point. This is how most businesses and brands are able to make 6-7 figures a month and are continuously able to do this.

Once you’ve studied part 1 of utilizing Facebook and grasp it you’ll be able to take this and have a really great sense of direction. Now remember there’s no one really right way to do this, it’s like the saying “There’s more than 1 way to skin a cat.” there’s many ways to become successful with Facebook ads, but you will have to test and find your methods and see what works best for you. Once you’ve find it, keep doing it over and over until you reached higher levels of success in your business. I hope this information helps you on your journey in the jungle of Facebook advertisement!