16/01/2021
Hello everyone! I am jason . I am a professional dropshipping agent .
This article is mainly oriented to independent website & shopify novice sellers. Those with experience will skip it. I will simply share some basic experience of doing independent station, hoping to gain something for novice sellers.
1. About building a website
Many new sellers want to build independent websites, and they will be entangled in what program to use to build a website. There are too many website building programs. There are several mainstream ones, such as Magento , Zencart , WordPress , Shopify , and domestic shoppy . There are many articles on the Internet about how to choose and the pros and cons of various programs (including soft articles). New sellers are estimated to be in the cloud after reading them. I will briefly share my personal views here. (We have used other site building tools before, and currently the new site master uses shopify )
Personal opinion, for new sellers
( 1 ) Development team: whether there are developers or full-time developers with budget.
( 2 ) Product type: whether there are heavy customized products
( 3 ) Order situation: Is there a ready flow, such as the existing flow, such as the flow of celebrities, etc., which can increase sharply in a short time, and the daily order volume is more than 50 orders per day.
If you meet the above two points, you can consider building your own website through open source programs such as magento . Otherwise, you should start with shopify first, and make it stable for more than 10 orders per day for a month .
2. About the selection
It is very important to select products independently. We have spent 3 months studying various ideas and practices of various foreigners.
( 1 ) Platform selection: Select products from the amazon/wish/aliexpress platform, mainly because these platforms have some data to refer to, such as sales data, review data, category data, and you can filter based on these data.
( 2 ) Supplier selection: Find products directly from 1688 and some specific suppliers.
( 3 ) SPY and selling products: spy products made by others, we do FB advertising, directly search for hot posts on Facebook and find products with high interaction through fb spy tools.
( 4 ) Sell with competitive products: Find a few competitors that you follow, and follow their advertisements and new products to sell.
We have tried each of the above methods in the novice stage, and we can find some products that can be sold. These methods are common methods for foreigners, but the details of implementation are different. We also know that we can choose products on a certain platform. I know spy competing products, but different people often choose different products and effects. Many details need to be tested and accumulated.
Of course, the above is for new sellers and grocery store sellers, who have no advantages in the product and supply chain, and have certain advantages in the product or category, you can skip it, just make your own category, and choose the product in your own category. .
3. About traffic
An independent station is not like a platform. The source of traffic does not lie in the independent station itself. No matter what platform you use to build a station, there is no built-in traffic. There are many more traffic sources for independent stations than platforms, which can be viewed from two perspectives:
Paid & free traffic:
( 1 ) Paid traffic: mainly refers to advertisements, advertisements on various platforms, such as mainstream FB advertisements, Google ads, etc.
( 2 ) Free traffic: SNS social marketing, SEO, etc.
( 3 ) Other traffic: For example, EDM , celebrity marketing, those without resources are regarded as paid, and those with resources are actually regarded as free traffic.
Paid traffic is mainly effective. Basically, results can be obtained in real time on the same day. Every day ROI can be seen. Most of the big sellers I have contacted are of this type. Free traffic generally requires a certain period and a certain technical foundation.
Active flow & passive flow:
Active traffic: generally search traffic, that is, traffic that users actively search for, such as google ads or seo
Passive traffic: It is generally the traffic of impulsive consumption, that is, actively pushed to the user, and the user may purchase it on impulse, such as FB advertising traffic.
We have done SNS , EDM , and SEO in our previous independent sites , and currently the new site is mainly for Facebook ads.
For new sellers who are just starting to do FB advertising, they can first learn some basic data from friends in the industry or know, in order to determine whether your products and prices are worthy of FB to promote. For example, if you work in European and American countries, how many thousands of impressions are, what is the price of a single purchase, and how much ROI can you maintain?
If you do FB advertising, you must understand what the FB pixel is. If you understand this basic thing, you will also understand many terms, including many operating models and advertising methods that are related to this.
4. About the cost
Compared with amazon as a platform, the initial investment cost of independent stations is very small. In fact, I personally feel that too much attention is not required pre-tariff issues, some new sellers started to calculate the fee rates too much, there is no need personal point of view, there is roughly the number of heart on the line, probably pre-budget 5k-10k RMB to Basic site building and FB basic placement training. Then just start paying attention to product and ROI conversion ( take the paid traffic method of advertising as an example). If you haven't cast a model, you can almost give up.
5. About collection & withdrawal
Shopify ’s payment collection recommends that new sellers use two types, paypal and stripe credit card payment. Paypal now requires a merchant account, but as long as you have a business license, you can apply, which is very convenient. Stripe is not yet supported in mainland China. You need to use a Hong Kong company or an American company.
Recently, shopify’s official payment has begun to support Hong Kong. You can also try it if you have a Hong Kong account. Stripe credit card payment supports both credit card and apple pay payments. Shopify payment is actually supported by stripe , but shopify payment also supports Google pay .
6. Independent station case
Judging from the current situation and understanding of the friends I have contacted, independent stations, especially shopify, are not wrong this year, but there are not many people who really make money. I mean small and medium sellers. For novices, it doesn't make much sense to pay attention to big sales. Their products, capital resources and models cannot be imitated. However, there are many people who can make dozens of orders a day. Basically, they are in this state. They save money and accumulate data, continue to test products, find ways to expand, and look for opportunities to find explosive products. At present, our own team is doing two kinds of shops, several grocery stores, several explosive stations (vertical categories), and the grocery store is mainly used for early-stage testing.
