Today, I will share with you a case of a medium-level customer seller. Before sharing, I have obtained the consent of this customer friend. For the sake of privacy protection, I will block all the key information.
Why did I choose a medium-level seller as an example? Because I think the vast majority of sellers who are on the right track are at this level. After all, there are relatively few top sellers. The three-seven rule always applies to any industry. Top sellers who can easily make tens of thousands of dollars a day are always relatively rare.
Preliminary data
Let’s first look at his overall operation.
The website started registering domain names in February 2023.
This customer asked me to build a website last February, and I still remember it very clearly. From the time the domain name was registered to now, a total of 551 days have passed, about a year and a half.
In this one and a half years, his order volume was 84,00, the turnover was US$3.1 million, and the number of members was 51,00
Calibrated data
The preliminary data above is inaccurate because the number of orders here includes buyers who submit orders repeatedly and buyers who do not pay for orders. According to the communication results between me and him, this data accounts for about 1/3, because the actual operating data indicators after calibration are close to the following:
Order volume: 8400 * 2 / 3 ≈ 5600 orders
Sales: 3100000 * 2 / 3 ≈ 2066666,
Number of members: 5100
The actual average order value per customer is 2066666 / 5600 ≈ 369.05 USD, the average daily order volume is 5600 / 551 ≈ 11 orders, the average daily registration volume is 5100 / 551 ≈ 10 people, and the average daily turnover is 2066666 / 551 ≈ 3750 USD. This is his website data, a very representative indicator of the operational capabilities of a medium-sized seller.
What work did he do?
①. Clarify product direction
Many friends have no direction and are confused about what products they want to make before entering the industry. This is understandable. After all, a considerable number of people have never been exposed to this industry, even the big guys in the general goods industry are the same. When it comes to the imitation brand track, they are still clueless. Everyone starts from the same starting line.
Regarding products, there are mainly the following directions:
1) High-end luxury goods
These goods are most common in Guangzhou, China, such as watches, bags, trendy shoes, trendy clothes, belts, etc. The average customer price of these products is relatively high, especially bags and watches, which are around 250-350 US dollars. Of course, the profit margin is also relatively high, basically above 50%, and the average daily order volume is not pursued.
2) Sports shoes
China’s Putian shoes are world-famous, with a very mature and stable supply chain and technology, excellent quality, and a customer unit price that is related to the traffic method, but is basically between US$180-220, with a profit margin of about 30%. The proportion of logistics and freight is relatively high, and the average daily order volume is pursued.
3) “Small and beautiful” category
The average order value of this type of product is generally no more than $100, such as jewelry, perfume, sunglasses, etc.
4) Virtual products
Non-physical products, such as Windows 10 operating system,
Friends who want to sell this kind of counterfeit products need to have specific supply chain channels. However, most customers do not have such sources of products.
5) Stamps
Products such as stamps, like virtual products, require specific supply chain channels and are the product direction of a small number of sellers.
In the 15 years that I have been in this business, counterfeit brand products basically fall into the five categories listed above. Of course, a very small number of sellers will sell more niche products, such as American passports, which most sellers do not have access to.
In the 15 years that I have been in this business, knockoff brand products basically fall into the five categories listed above. Of course, a very small number of sellers will sell more niche products, such as American passports, which most sellers do not have access to.
②. Website building
Some friends have done general goods on Shopify or played around with WordPress to build their own websites. They think they have the ability to build websites and are full of confidence. They feel that it is not a big problem to build a website for imitation brands. So, they rent a store on Shopify or go to Hostinger to get a hosting and start working on it in a big way.
In the process of building a website, many people encounter many details that they don’t understand, so they search and add people to seek help in various ways, but the efficiency is extremely low. Either people don’t reply or they get cold eyes. Day and night, working overtime, influenced by the cross-border e-commerce thinking, decorating and polishing desperately, spending a lot of time and energy on insignificant details, and finally building a website that moved me after 2 months.
With a website, at this step, many people are confused, what should they do next? So, they go online to look for various promotion-related articles, and the information on the Internet is fragmented and trivial, with a lot of empty talk. Some people say that they want to do SEO free traffic, some say that they want to do Facebook paid traffic, and some say that they want to do social media SNS… As for paid traffic, they don’t know how to start. Based on the principle of “free traffic is the best”, they post links on Google everywhere, post videos on YouTube everywhere, or post on SNS everywhere. After a few weeks of hard work, a few visitors come in occasionally, and they feel that the world is so beautiful, but it seems that they are all invalid traffic and there will never be a transaction. So, they comfort themselves: hold on a little longer, the dawn of victory is just ahead!
…About three months later, they finally received their first order. The buyer paid, and when they saw the order in the backend, they were filled with tears, and sighed: God will not let down those who work hard, and all efforts will eventually be rewarded!
I had a good sleep, and my confidence level soared at night. The next day, I woke up and opened the website, and was dumbfounded:
Shoify shut down his website
Or,
The WordPress website did not avoid payment, and the PayPal account was blocked.
……
It’s over, what’s going on? ? ? Ten thousand horses are running through my heart!!! The greater the hope, the greater the disappointment. they are completely hopeless. Thinking about the past few months, I have worked day and night, but I haven’t touched a single US dollar. I have also lost all the hard work I have put in over the past few months. At this moment, they have no motivation to continue.
In this industry, the website is the most basic tool. If you make the wrong choice at the beginning, the result is doomed to be wrong. For example, if you build a website for a fake brand, you need to meet some technical requirements. The best way is to outsource it directly.
Without mature industry experience and development team, exploring alone is no different from producing wheels and reinventing cars by yourself. It is best to build a replica independent website, or the only safe thing is to build your own website. SaaS will be blocked.
Not only will the platform be blocked, but the PayPal account will also be blocked:
The reason why I emphasize this point is that this young man actually has a good ability to attract traffic. It’s just that he used SaaS to build the website at the beginning, and found that after the flow of money came in, the store was closed. Then, he asked someone to create a pure AB jump wordpress site, but his paypal account was blocked. He went around in circles and wasted more than half a year in the second half of 2022. Only then did he urgently ask me to help build the website in the first month of 2023, when I was on vacation in my hometown.
Many times, choice is more important than hard work. Hard work, diligence, and struggle are not enough, because most people who want to start a cross-border business basically have these qualities. What they lack are methods, directions, and resources.
After the website was built, this young man had a very good learning ability. He was one of the few students with good learning ability among my customer groups. To this day, I still think his ability to solve problems independently is really good.
While using the website, I basically didn’t ask the customer service lady any questions. I set up the website by myself according to the tutorials and official theme instructions. It was very fast, and all the products and decorations were put on the shelves in about 10 days.
③. Traffic promotion
After the website was built, the core promotion work was naturally. At that time, this young man had done some SNS social media and bought some old domain names with their own traffic, but the overall effect was not good. The traffic was intermittent, the orders were very unstable, and there were often no orders for a week.
At that time, he also joined many so-called communication groups and seller groups, but as he said: “Everyone is here to ask for it, no one will share, it’s all useless!” It’s normal. They are all in the same industry. Who would selflessly share things like making money? They are not your father or mother. It’s normal human thinking.
At that time, my company had not yet launched an online promotion plan, but because he built the website on my side, I shared some of my own operating experience with him. There were roughly two directions: Facebook advertising traffic and Youtube celebrity KOL, which were more suitable for him.
So, he followed the usual thinking of most novices: traffic, it must be the fastest!
I roughly told him the process of advertising, including accounts, virtual cards, materials, cloaks, crowds, pixel codes and events, and went through them roughly. Because it was not as detailed as the current boutique plan, many skills and details were left to him to explore on his own. Fortunately, his learning ability was really good.
Maybe it was too hasty, or maybe it was because of the limited budget. After more than a month of advertising, the young man said to me: I think advertising is not suitable for me. My materials are not good, and the budget is too limited. The ROI investment ratio is not well controlled. I’d better try KOL. So, I roughly told him some steps, templates, words, cooperation models, etc. on how to be an Internet celebrity, and encouraged him to look for KOL celebrities on YouTube first.
Later, he really opened up a new world on the KOL path. To this day, Youtube, TIK TOK and Instagram have a large number of his website landing pages, which continue to bring traffic and orders to his website.
In June last year, he had a small peak, with a daily turnover of 15,000 US dollars. His account was not enough, so I told him: You should first mobilize the resources around you to register and use them, and take turns to collect payments, which is safer. If it is still not enough, go to the channel to buy some, which is generally enough to cope with it.
In July, he encountered an Internet celebrity scammer and lost a batch of goods.
Complained to me: Internet celebrities are also bad nowadays…
From the pitfalls of building a website, to the failure of Facebook advertising, to being cheated by Internet celebrities, perhaps, this made this guy lose some money, but these are not important. What is important is that he is on the right track, and his traffic and orders are stable.
Stability overrides everything.
④, Private Domain
This year, my working concept has undergone a significant change. I am no longer obsessed with the daily turnover of tens of thousands of dollars, but pay more attention to the repurchase and sedimentation of the private domain. This is a major change in my thinking in more than ten years of working, and I have synchronized this thinking with my clients and friends through online training programs.
This guy responded immediately, and after communicating with me, he started to build his own private domain pool: Instagram / Tik Tok / Youtube -> Independent Station -> WhatsApp
Forming traffic processing, sedimentation and closed loop.
He told me that he was doing it by himself. He was not like other big companies, which often had 20 people and tens of thousands of dollars a day. A young man in his early 20s, who made his own products, traffic, internet celebrities, shipping and after-sales, had a really high per capita output value.
He had a really good learning ability, was good at independent thinking and problem solving, and had strong execution. The fact that he had 10,000+ orders in a year and a half was the best proof of his entrepreneurial spirit.
Excellent people are always worth learning from.
That’s all for today. The above is just based on my experience sharing with customers, for reference only.
