South West eCommerce

So here we are for another month.  It’s time to get honest, and get painful.  First thing to note is that we’ve worked hard for January’s numbers.  There was a break over Christmas and we knew that would have some impact, but since we got back, we’ve been going at a pace which to be honest, can’t be forever.

The cashflow numbers are down, and while we knew January was going to be soft, they’re down by more than we hoped, so for this month our call for how we feel should honestly be “not really excited”.  That’s what I wrote but then I reviewed it and realised that we really do feel the forward momentum and with a bit of knowledge about February, we’re still “a bit excited” about the progress.

So honesty time...  site by site, how did we do?  Remember we will eventually be living entirely on the stuff we report here and to break even we need two and a half bags of money.

Site A – Our earnings for this site have started to kick in.  Going from nothing to something should be really exciting, but it was a big opportunity and we didn’t make nearly enough traction from it.  Action for the month is to find more product to sell on it, and to re work the way we think to make better conversions from really good product.  We’re not selling enough because we don’t put the question clearly and strongly enough. Maybe 4% of a bag of money.(They’re BoMs now).

Site B – Up nearly 50%.  This is an ordinary result from what should be a powerful tool.  January saw us completely re think what we are doing and start on a new direction for it.  It’s soaked up work at an alarming rate but the redesign has got us a bunch of leverage and made us much more positive about the future of the magazine site.  Overall we’ve gotten this to a point where it makes cash from its own actions and not from our efforts, which is what the name of this game is.  It’s slow but we’ve developed a cashflow structure for it and can see another couple of products that will go onto the site and late this year it may just be what we’d always hoped for.  Still only 2% of a BoM. 

Site C – Ouch!  Down about a third.  It’s a summertime product and even though it’s the sort of thing that would be bought for Christmas, we’d hoped that as we do better on the search engines we’d have maintained our turnover as better performers in a weaker market.  We’re doing article marketing and watching our rankings in the search engines trickle up.  We thought in January that we’d cracked it big with this site’s rankings, but there were tricks that google played on us and we’ve since found that we are on the front page, but not in the top 3 yet.  We want a big jump but it’s a lot slower than we want.  This site attracted the attention of a merchant who is eager to have us replicate our success and we’re waiting on them to get their preparations done.... another thing that’ll be great when it happens but we’re waiting at present.  Just over 10% of a Bom.

Site D – Nyah – Down about 20%.  This is about what you’d guess after Christmas, and is an OK result.  We’re sure the market is fine and we’re doing better in January than in November so we can’t complain.  If we continue to trickle up, this will always pay it’s own bills and there are a couple of occasions that’ll be winners for us.  The up/ down nature of this is OK if we find other sites that work on contrary days or seasons.  Again, a bit more than 10% of a Bom.

Site E – Double ouch!  This was another site that was likely to fall in January, but we had a major system failure on the vendor’s site that cost us money and also cost us any sales we’d have made in the first third of the month.  The product would be the kind of thing that would maybe attract the cash people had exchanged for Christmas and we would have expected the front of the month to be stronger than the back.  We dropped about 80% and are at slightly less than our November numbers.  Careful analysis of this says that at nearly November numbers with probably more than half of our sales opportunities wasted, this is probably OK.  It doesn’t make it hurt any less and it’s a lesson to us all to watch what’s going on in the business.  This hurt a number of other affiliates too, I’m sure, and a third of the month in we were the first to contact them. 3% of a Bom.  Keeping an eye on it and expecting a bounce back.

Site F – Last month this cost us money and this month it made a trickle.  So small it’s not a real success story yet but motion in the right direction is always good.  We’re quite hopeful and they’ve got to start somewhere.  Action for the month, keep working on SEO and consider PPC activity. Income insignificant.

Site G – Down 50%.  This site is actually ranking well and isn’t taking a lot of work from us at present.  We believe that as a software site we need to continue with SEO activity and we also need to find a bunch of other products that will be complementary and make sales when traffic which has been arriving at the site gets there.  Income insignificant.

Site H – No sales.  This was a new site last month, and this month we’ve seen a rise in the rankings, alongside a reduction to zero in what we’ve spent.  Given all that, it’s actually an improvement.  We expect some to win and some to lose, but we’re hopeful for this.  Watch how we go next month.

Site I – No sales.  This was a new site last month, and this month we’ve seen a rise in the rankings, alongside a reduction to zero in what we’ve spent.  Given all that, it’s actually an improvement.  It’s different from site H in that it’s a real niche and we are near the place we need to be in rankings and we’re getting a flow of traffic, but no conversions.  The product is more expensive, and may require a little push to start making sales.  Really unsure about what to expect from this.  Watch how we go next month.

Site J – No Sales.  Sold a couple last month and we’ve decided we got the product wrong.  This was a case of “seemed like a good idea at the time” and we’re sure you have to have a go sometimes.  The lesson here is that even if a product seems like value to us, the punters can’t hold it in their hands.  We have gone with a budget item but it can be had at cheap prices in physical locations.  Without a brand name to rely on, clients don’t trust it.  That’s important to know because we are selling a similar product with designer brand name reliability, and at many times the price they’re selling well.  Action during the month has been to source some other good quality, named products from a drop shipper, and put them on the site.  That process is new, so we’ll see what happens for the month.

Site K – Brand new, no data.  Started with a recommendation from Market Samurai and some prior knowledge in that we know the product sells on the internet in Australia from our own experience, and this one is overseas.

So there it is.  On paper it looks a bit depressing.  Add to that how hard we’re working and it could feel pretty harsh.  Truth is though that we k new we’d have up times and down times.  If this led us to any recommendations they’d be – Start soon and start while you’ve got another income stream.  More than five years ago we knew that affiliate sales existed but we’ve never seriously pursued it.

We’d recommend anyone to get the labour saving tools and start maybe 3 sites at a time, working steadily but knowing that the first period of time was about learning and accepting that several months in, you may only be breaking even.

Start when you feel a bit resilient, because we’ve now gotten to understand that while we are not yet successful, we’re past the point where the majority of the affiliates who start, peter out and give up.  What’s good about where we are, is that the money we made this month is basically independent of the work we did this month.   Some months in we’re at a point where it’ll in no way keep us, but if we took the month off, it would pay us about 30% of a single person’s income.  Sadly then we worked our butts off for growth that didn’t put any this money month in our pockets.  That’s the game, and we are still happy to be playing, because we’ve learned to understand that we are going to win.

• Please note, it’s good I wrote this on an up day.  There are some days when both of us hate the business.  Our biggest challenge is to get past that in our own makeup.