LLM Book Knowledgebase

Ecommerce Empire Builders: The Definitive Guide To Starting & Scaling A Future-Proof Online Business

22 min read

Ecommerce Empire Builders: The Definitive Guide To Starting & Scaling A Future-Proof Online Business

Metadata

Highlights & Notes

Nothing is guaranteed. No one owes you anything. And no one truly cares about what you want.

From this day forward, you are going to bet on yourself. You are going to take personal responsibility for your own goals. And you are going to create the life you want for yourself and your family.

You are in control. You know that if you aren’t making the money you want to, that is your fault. You accept that your past choices, for better or worse, have brought you to where you are today. And if you don’t like how that looks, you don’t accept defeat. Because you know that YOU have the power to change your circumstances.

You are in charge of how you spend your time. You realize that it is the most valuable resource you have, so you guard it carefully. And you know that the only force holding you back is you.

You are going to be strict with yourself because you know that every choice you make has a direct correlation to your success or failure.

EMPIRE BUILDER EXERCISE Now that I’ve gotten you to start thinking about the New You, take some time to consider your legacy. How do you wish to be remembered? What will you leave to your children or nieces and nephews? In what specific ways will you impact the world? How will you achieve it? Describe your ideal legacy below.

They don’t mean that YOU are a failure, but simply that a choice you made did not turn out the way you expected. It doesn’t matter whether you have a great sales day or a bad one. It is only one data point, and you will adjust as you need to.

Here’s what your new feedback loops will look like: Take action. Measure. Analyze. Adjust. Repeat.

The key to learning from your failures is to treat each one as simply a data point.

But now you’ve met the New You, the one who… Doesn’t hope or expect someone else to make you wealthy. Surrounds yourself with people who have similar goals. Knows YOU are in control.

And remember…you won’t fail if you never quit.

To create your Ecommerce Empire, you need to start your business in a market that you care about. You are going to spend a ton of time totally immersed in this space, so do yourself a favor and choose something you actually enjoy.

A market is a broad category or industry. I have identified eight markets that encompass nearly the entire world of ecommerce. If you already have a product in mind, chances are it falls under one of those categories. Beauty Dating and Relationships Fitness Health Hobbies Pets Self-Improvement Weight loss

Who do you want to solve problems for? Consider exactly who you want to help. Will your ergonomic mouse for gamers work for people who have carpal tunnel? Will your potted plant business ship philodendrons and spider plants to first-time plant owners, or will you deliver rare orchids to collectors? Choosing the niche comes down to a single thing: thinking about your customers first. You will build long-term relationships with these folks.

Before you choose, consider this bit of advice… You must stand by your niche 100%. If you feel wishy-washy about it, then it’s not for you. If you think you’ll grow bored of it in a year, you’re in the wrong business. If you do not wake up excited to work on your business every day, you probably chose an unsuitable niche.

The only way to compete with the giants in this industry is to solve problems for your customer better than anyone else.

You can find out exactly what problems you can solve for your niche through online research.

EMPIRE BUILDER EXERCISE Think about the people in your niche and answer the following questions. My niche is: • What are they frustrated by? • What are they afraid of? • What do they want? • What do they desire?

So let’s figure out where your people are hanging out online. Where do folks in your niche have real, authentic conversations with each other? Those honest discussions are a gold mine. You’ll see their frustrations, fears, wants, and desires in every comment, post, and picture.

But that’s not all you’re going to find. You’ll also notice new trends within the niche, which could help you anticipate a new, hot product before your competition does. In addition, you’ll learn the lingo, which you’re going to use when you create your funnel.

Create a folder called “Niche Research.” In it, you’ll record information in the following categories. Influencers: Who is influential in your niche? These are the people who might help drive traffic to your funnel. Competition: This is the group you’ll learn from. They are going to teach you how to create advertisements and sell your product. Indirect Competition: You could have a mutually beneficial relationship with these folks, as they sell products that are complementary to yours. Trends: What are the latest trends in your niche? You will find out from these groups. Make sure to keep a list handy, as you’ll want to reference it when building out different offer types. Desires: What do your customers desire deep down? Maybe they want validation or a feeling of success. Maybe they want social affirmation through social media. Lingo: Vernacular in different niches is always changing. A new product or method will come around, and soon after, people will come up with new terms and phrases to talk about it. Make note of these, as you’ll use them to build your funnel. Problems and Complaints: Here you can note people’s frustrations, fears, wants, and desires that you find on these sites. You can even take screenshots of interesting conversations. Add information to these folders as you continue to research your niche.

There are nine steps to learning about your customer and your niche. Familiarize yourself. Find the influencers in your niche. Identify direct and indirect competitors. Pay attention to the trends. Find out what they want. Learn the lingo. Find opportunity. Note common problems and complaints. Find out what they desire.

Remember, desires are different than wants. A fly fisher might want to catch more fish, but they might desire to beat their last record. A leatherworker might want to design a new type of shoulder strap, but they desire comments, likes, and shares when they post pictures of a new bag. A trail runner could want

That’s because you aren’t a gambler with pockets full of cash to burn—you’re a scientist conducting an experiment, remember?

As a general rule, if a product is ranked around 20,000, it transacts about 100 times a day.

Write down 20 different products in your niche that you think you could sell. In your EEB folder, create a spreadsheet called IPOs. From your Amazon research, record the following details: Product description Current price Related products (from “Frequently bought together” section) Overall star rating Number of reviews Best Sellers Rank Customer review info (such as features people like or dislike) General notes Use product categories, New Releases, and Most Wished For info to get inspiration for additional IPOs. Out of the 20 products, choose the one item that you are most excited to sell and highlight it.

Unbeatable offers generally include the main product as well as one or two additional “freebies” that are perceived as high-value to the customer but are low-cost to you. Unbeatable offers include items such as these: Free low-cost bonus item with order Information products that help solve a problem Information that helps the buyer enhance their experience with your product Access to private Facebook Groups

EMPIRE BUILDER EXERCISE 1. What kind of offers and additional products might go well with your IPO? Jot down at least five ideas below. a. b. c. d. e. f. 2. What kind of unbeatable offers are already out there in your niche? 3. What kinds of products are your competitors bundling together? 4. Note the sequence of any ads that you would actually buy from. 5. Identify the elements of each ad that you find most compelling and add these to your EEB folder.

If you’ve never heard of dropshipping, just sit with that information for a moment, because it is truly revolutionary in the ecommerce world. The implications are tremendous. You do not need to design or manufacture the product. You do not need to store it. You do not need to fulfill orders or drive to UPS several times a day. You do not need to come up with a massive investment to begin. Dropshipping is a low-risk and low-cost way to start an ecommerce business from scratch. It is the secret to my success and that of my students. It is a total game changer.

Dropshipping works like this: A customer goes to your funnel. They make a purchase. You collect payment and shipping details from the customer. You contact your supplier. The supplier ships the product to your customer. You take a cut of the profit. Bonus: Steps 4 and 5 can be automated!

EMPIRE BUILDER EXERCISE Head to AliExpress.com or Alibaba.com. Type in a product you’d like to sell. If you don’t already have an IPO in mind, just type in any product. Compare the price of that product to what it sells for on Amazon. At the time I was writing this book, a set of 40 flies in a case was selling for 2.20 and $3.40 a case, depending on how many units you purchased. From both of these sites, you can also see items that are often bought together, which you can use to create upsells in your funnel.

EMPIRE BUILDER EXERCISE Depending on your product, you’ll likely find many different suppliers selling essentially the same thing. Compare similar products from different suppliers. Which one gives you the best deal? Go ahead and play with your profit multipliers too. To get an idea of what your initial sale price should be, check out what similar items are selling for on Amazon.

Why don’t shoppers just avoid salespeople? Well for one, it’s much ruder to walk (or run) away from an actual person than an online cart. And two, it’s because they aren’t constantly reminding you of how much more each item will cost. Imagine if a salesperson did some quick math to give you an updated price every time you added an upgrade. They wouldn’t make much on commission! A funnel, on the other hand, processes the payment for the initial IPO and then, with one click, automatically charges the card for any additional purchases, creating an experience much closer to face-to-face sales than to typical online transactions.

The profitability of multi-product funnels is particularly underscored when you consider the cost to acquire each of those customers. Remember, traffic to your funnel won’t be free. Whether you pay Facebook, Google, or an influencer to get potential customers in, there will be a cost.

FUNNEL FUNDAMENTALS Learning how funnels operate will open your eyes to the possibilities of making tremendous amounts of money in the ecommerce space. A sales funnel is a guided step-by-step process you take your customer through. It has the benefit of making your business the most revenue while also giving your customer the best possible experience. Your customer is moved through a funnel, a sequence of offers that are tailored to present solutions to their problems through your products. You understand your customer so well that you know exactly what kind of offer will help them, therefore you can also suggest additional related products that will improve their experience.

(Or as I always like to say, just because you think you’re done selling doesn’t mean your customer is done buying).

A funnel has a few basic components, which include… Opt-in/sales page Order plus quantity breaks and order bumps Multiple upsells Thank-you page

Each of these pages is carefully designed with a specific purpose, with the end goal of growing your business assets, current sales, and future sales. On many platforms, these pages will be built for you—you just have to provide the sales copy and images.

When you’re checking out at the grocery store, see a pack of gum at the register, and toss it into the cart, that’s an order bump. It’s a quick, inexpensive item that a customer can easily toss in the cart without much thought or hesitancy.

In the ecommerce world, order bumps include items like limited-edition versions of the product, expedited shipping, and e-books.

Note: An order bump is technically a type of upsell. The distinguishing characteristic is the point in the funnel at which each takes place. An order bump always happens before the payment info is captured. You can think of an order bump as a pre-purchased upsell. In contrast, your upsell pages always appear after the first purchase is made.

Upsells Most of your funnel will consist of various types of upsells, which could be any of these: A small, inexpensive item The same item they just bought but at a better price Complementary products Information products A package deal A subscription A service

Funnels don’t use cart pages like traditional stores do. Cart pages tend to result in a lot of buyer’s remorse, and this is one of the main reasons that storefronts have such small conversion rates as compared to funnels.

Remember, you’re a scientist conducting an experiment; therefore, you need to limit your variables. When you’re ready to grow, instead of adding more products to your existing funnel, you’ll build a new funnel with new IPOs and upsells.

Another advantage to funnels is that the basic structure will stay the same as you test out different products. Your IPO might change; therefore, your order bump and deep discount upsells may change as well, but unless you change your niche, the continuity piece as well as any complementary products and your thank-you page will stay the same.

With a free-plus-shipping offer, the great deal you offer on your IPO will pull prospects into your funnel. Then you’ll make most of your profit through upsells later in the funnel. Earlier, I mentioned that this strategy is called a loss leader, which suggests that you’ll lose money on the IPO. But in reality, you’ll break even (or possibly make a little profit), even if the customer declines any upsells.

Item price can help you figure out whether to use a F+S or deep discount sales angle. For example, if your IPO will sell for less than about 10, try using deep discount.

EMPIRE BUILDER EXERCISE 1. Return to your list of possible IPOs. • Does the one you’ve chosen still make sense? • Does it lend itself to a free-plus-shipping or deep discount offer? • Or does the IPO you’ve initially chosen work better as a complementary product? 2. From Amazon, type in keywords for your IPO. Look at the products under Most Wished For. Would any of those items work in your funnel? 3. Write down at least 10 different complementary products to prove.

Will you opt in with your email address? Yes or no. Do you want more of this product for 20% less? Yes or no. Do you want to add in this order bump? Yes or no. The moment you give them a third option, you’ve lost the sale.

As you know by now, the opt-in is the first page of your funnel. You can play around with different features here, but generally, I like to include the following: Sales copy Images and/or video Reviews and testimonials Opt-in/sales page

Reviews and testimonials are key for repeat business. When you first get started, you won’t have any, so reach out to your supplier and ask for some reviews you can use. You can also give products away for free in return for testimonials, as I mentioned earlier.

I’ve found that about 40% of web traffic will opt in, with about 12% converting to sales.

Usually the two-step order form has a conversion rate of about 10% because the lead is higher quality, given that they have already entered much of their personal information.

The goal of your upsells is to increase the average cart value of each customer who buys from you.

How can you build continuity into your funnel? Write down at least one idea in each category below. Consumable Easily lost or broken Collectible Information product Group access Which of these ideas get you most excited? Remember there are pros and cons to each. For example, if you offer a physical product, you will have to make sure that it is shipped monthly and on time. If it is a collectible, you might have to come up with a new design every month. An information product takes a lot of effort to create on the front end, while group access takes a while to build up a community and requires monthly, weekly, or even daily attention.

And always remember, just because you’re done selling doesn’t mean someone is done buying. That’s why it’s so critical to continue to sell on your thank-you page.

That is, when your units sold divided by the total number of customers is greater than 1.6, it’s time to raise your price.

There could also be times when you need to lower your price. Maybe no one is biting on your offer, so you’d like to narrow the margins on a loss leader to entice more prospects to buy. In this case, I recommend lowering your price if the number of units sold divided by total customers is less than 1.6.

Typically, I suggest shooting for a 20% margin on the front-end offer.

A word of advice: Don’t make any changes to your funnel without data to back up that decision. So many people fall for this mistake. They will just start tinkering with their funnel without understanding why (or whether) those changes might make a difference. Always let the data tell you what to do.

Why should your customers buy from you? They’ve never seen you or your business before. They’ve never even heard of you. Why would they give you their payment information? Before you respond, I have another question for you. When was the last time you bought something from a Facebook advertisement? My clients often respond, “Oh, I’ve never done that.” Yet we expect our customers to buy from us anyway. How can we ensure that others will do something we rarely do ourselves? We have to combat that skepticism.

There are three foundational points to selling anything to anyone. Credibility Emotion Logic You are going to use these factors in every advertisement, email, and funnel you create to ensure that your customers trust you with their credit cards.

EMPIRE BUILDER EXERCISE Make a plan for how you will establish credibility, emotion, and logic within your funnel. Refer to the lingo you included in the Niche Research folder, and include any special keywords or phrases that will assure your customers that you understand them and your niche. Make sure to snag some reviews or find some articles talking about the benefits of your product.

You can also think about traffic in the context of control. Within this schema, there are four different types. Traffic you own Traffic you earn Traffic you control Traffic that you do not control You’ll vary your marketing approach depending on these different categories.

Traffic You Control Traffic you control comes in three flavors. Paid advertising: Consider Facebook Ads or Google Ads as traffic you control. You put money into the machine, and it turns out customers. Paid influencers: When you start reaching out to influencers in your niche, many of them will be willing to promote your product for a fee. Affiliates: These are people who promote your products in exchange for a commission. They might put a link to your product in one of their blog posts or under a YouTube video. Every time someone clicks on the link and purchases the product, the affiliate gets a commission.

Traffic That You Earn This is all about business relationships with people who have the eyeballs of your target niche. While this could be an influencer, that isn’t always the case.

Your success on social media depends on two things: frequency and consistency. Your posts don’t have to be perfect, but you should be putting up new stuff on a regular basis.

EMPIRE BUILDER EXERCISE Find out which social media sites your ideal customers hang out on. Check out your competitors’ social profiles. Note the kind of images and hashtags they use and how often they post. Read their bios. You can use this information to help build out your own profile. Create or update your profile for each social media site you’ll use to market your funnel. Create a schedule for the next week noting when you will post to each platform and the topics you will use. There are plenty of social media management tools out there to help automate this process. Notes Posting Schedule Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7

Why would you want separate buckets? Because different buyers need to be reengaged in different ways. The practice of grouping your prospects and then engaging them to buy more products is called retargeting. Essentially, this is the practice of following up with that warm traffic—people who have shown interest in your products through ads, emails, and other marketing content—to get them back into the funnel.

If retargeting sounds like a lot of work, remember this fundamental rule of marketing: the warmer the traffic, the easier the conversion. A person who gave you their email address is much more likely to buy from you than someone who has never heard of your brand. Likewise, someone who bought your IPO is much more likely to sign up for your subscription service if you present the offer again. Perhaps they just need to see more social proof or credibility, so you’ll retarget them by emailing testimonials and reviews from existing customers. Advertising platforms can retarget by showing your product advertisement in someone’s feed. Imagine a potential customer visited your site but then left for whatever reason. Maybe they had something more important to do or they just didn’t want your product right then and there.

One feature of advertising platforms that you’ll want to use is called lookalike audiences. These are a way to reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business because they’re similar to your existing customers. How they do this is somewhat complicated, but actually using the program is quite simple. Essentially, you choose a source audience, or a group created with information pulled from your pixel or fans of your page. The platform’s algorithm will then identify the common qualities—for example, demographic information or interests—of the people who are already engaged with your brand. The platform then digitally crawls across its giant user database and finds all the people who fit the description of your ideal customer. They can find you hundreds or thousands of people who are like those in your group.

Always remember, now that you’re an entrepreneur, you will only get out of your business what you put into it.

To truly succeed, you must clearly envision your future self and sincerely believe that you can and will become that person. Because if you don’t know who you want to become, how will you ever get there?

If money were no object… How would you spend your free time? Where would you live? What would you look like? What would you own? Who would you learn from?

What will you achieve one week from today? (Add date on line below.) [Hint: You can grab these from the Empire Builder Exercise you did in Chapter 8.] By _____________, I will… B: U: I: L: D: What will you achieve one month from today? (Add date on line below.) By _____________, I will… B: U: I: L: D: Here’s who I will be in 1 year, on _______________________. I am age: My income is: I work as a: I look like this: I live in this house: I have these things: I spend my time doing: My relationship with this person is strong: My Ecommerce Empire produces this much: I have this amount saved for retirement: Other goals:

Here’s who I will be in 5 years, on _______________________. I am age: My income is: I work as a: I look like this: I live in this house: I have these things: I spend my time doing: My relationship with this person is strong: My Ecommerce Empire produces this much: I have this amount saved for retirement: Other goals:

Backlinks