I’ve been getting a lot of emails about eshops lately, I’ve been getting a lot of emails about anything, but there was this one email that made me write this article.
I was asked to take a look at an eshop and give my advice.
I don’t have enough time to personally coach each person (even when they pay), it’s just not possible, which is why I run this blog and decided to take care of you with this article.
Before I start, since the person asked whether I wrote generally about blogging (I write about internet marketing), running an eShop is not much different from running a blog, or any other type of online business.
It’s all about the promoting.
I’ll be honest with you, this person’s site was horrible, even though the products were cool, the site was a total disaster.
You can’t make money with an ugly site, you just can’t.
And to make an eShop look awesome, it takes more than just a nice theme.
You have two options:
1 Build it yourself
Takes a lot of skill, time and money… but I’ll do my best to help you do it with this article.
Takes a little bit of money, no skill and no time.
Perfect for people who want to concentrate on the selling side of business.
I’m affiliated with Shopify, but I want you to understand I did it for you, I wanted you have the option to get ahead of the competition with a few clicks, I’ve built many shops and know what it takes, I’d choose Shopify anytime now.
I just applied the other day and, to tell you the truth, their affiliate paying terms are not that great, you can be sure I didn’t write this article to just sell Shopify.
But you can think whatever you want, I’ll still do my best to turn your ecom business into a badass selling machine.
If you choose to build it yourself, here’s what you need to do first:
1 Secure with HTTPS
Most don’t realize the power of HTTPS, they think it will pass like most projects Google tried to push in the past (like, you know, the author rank they later decided to ditch because it decreased ad CTRs) .
Nothing like that.
I’ve moved up in search even for keywords I had no idea I could ever rank since I switched.
Fuck yes.
Read this:
https://wealthmagnate.com/http-to-https/
Google announced HTTPS was a ranking factor that gave like 1% boost, but it’s way more than that… well, of course if you have awesome content.
Nothing could help if you wrote crap.
You need a blog for HTTPS to really kick in, will get there in a sec.
Even if you don’t care about ranking on the first page, you should still secure your site, cause Google chrome notifies people when a site is not secure, soon all browsers probably will.
2 Optimize for lead generation
You have to build your list.
I should code that shit in the header of the site, it’s that vital.
Nothing is more powerful than email, and I don’t see too many eShop owners collecting emails, they just don’t know marketing that well.
People think they should concentrate on selling, well, before you make sales, you should build a list of people ready to buy what you have to sell.
In short, you need a popup, a main form (preferably positioned above the fold, that means visible before scrolling) and an exit popup.
Optimizing a shop is not that different from optimizing a blog, I’ve searched a few articles for you:
https://wealthmagnate.com/?s=lead+generation
You can of course test more options… but you have to concentrate on collecting leads before selling.
3 Blog
You can either run it separately, or code it into the shop (most platforms have plugins), but you have to run a blog.
Let me give you an example how powerful blogging is.
My blog gets 100,000 people each month, the main purpose of my blog is to inform as you can see from my style of writing, but if I wanted and pushed it, I could sell to at least half these people.
And that means a lot of sales.
I’m already rich, money is no problem.
Building a blog takes time, but it’s the most powerful online marketing method, I’ve made a lot of money with it.
Here’s what to read to learn how to build a kick ass blog:
https://wealthmagnate.com/?s=blog
Speed is vital, everything moves fast in the world we live in.
People just don’t have time to wait, neither do Google.
Now that you know how to build the perfect eShop, let’s talk traffic.
The blog itself will get you tons of traffic, but it takes time, and you need to get things going fast to avoid frustration and other bad shit.
As someone who needed years to start making money online (mainly because I had zero money, you can read my book if you want the whole story), I can tell you working day and night for no money is no fun at all.
You gotta avoid that stress.
Paid marketing is what I recommend to jump-start any business, everything else is too slow.
I’ve searched a few articles for you to get boat loads of cheap clicks, not only social, but search too:
https://wealthmagnate.com/?s=ppc
While SEO’s ROI will continue to rise long after PPC has peaked, PPC gets instant results and can generate visitors fast, which is vital for any business.
Once you start making money, everything becomes easy, you can even start ranking on page one of Google with no links.
It’s just how everything works:
If you have money, you make money.
If you don’t have money, you struggle.
The amount of invested money is proportional to the growth time.
Mobile traffic
I’ve just recently realized the power of mobile traffic.
I’d never really taken seriously traffic coming from phones and tablets until a few days ago.
I thought people on mobile devices did not buy almost at all, I was wrong big time.
Let me tell you about it.
The other day I was shopping for Nikes at a UK eshop, while browsing they offered free delivery when ordering with their app.
I installed it and finished my purchase in about 2 minutes, as if I was on the desktop (well, forgot to switch the currency and Paypal charged the shit out of me for the exchange, but it’s my fault for not taking the time to look around the app).
I’m still not a huge fan of those small screens and having to tap 50 times to switch currencies, but I then realized why mobile users increase while desktop such decrease by the day… buying on mobile is not that uncomfortable as I thought.
This might be nothing new to you, but I wanted you to get how vital it is to have an app.
Advertise it on your site and run some promotions to get people to use it.
They have their phones with them all the time, while few are like me – constantly on the desktop.
Ebay (or Amazon, or any other huge retailer)
You can redirect a ton of traffic off of Ebay to any eshop.
I personally don’t get people who shop there, the place is full of wannabes ready to do anything to make a buck, read this:
https://wealthmagnate.com/ds-domination-amazon-ebay-lots-of-cash-really-well-not-really/
…but they do, and they even think they can get the cheapest price there, which makes it even more popular.
Anyway, you can build a seller profile, build a following and redirect it to your site later on.
It takes time, but is powerful… there are sellers there who import in bulk and make solid money even with no eshops.
Read the blog for more traffic ideas.
Solid Gold.
Let me know if you liked this article and keep being awesome.
Vladi
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