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How to Set Up an E-Commerce Business from Start to Finish - BossProfits | EP. #32

May 11, 2022 | Author: Andrew Maff
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On this 32nd episode of The E-Comm Show, our host and BlueTuskr CEO Andrew Maff is with Dan Edmund of BossProfits, an e-commerce training, and mentorship business teaching people the most effective and scalable strategies on how to build e-commerce brands from start to finish.

In this episode with Dan, learn how to find winning products, build your Shopify site and discover the tools and strategies that will scale your small business into a seven-figure brand.

Tune in and enjoy today's E-Comm Show!

If you enjoyed the show, please be sure to rate, review, and of course, SUBSCRIBE! 



Have an e-commerce marketing question you'd like Andrew to cover in an upcoming episode? Email: hello@theecommshow.com

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to Set Up an E-Commerce Business from Start to Finish - BossProfits

SPEAKERS

Andrew Maff and Dan Edmund

 

CONNECT WITH OUR HOST: AndrewMaff.com  |  Twitter: @AndrewMaff | LinkedIn: @AndrewMaff

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About Dan Edmund

Dan Edmund has been involved in just about every form of online marketing since 2008 with his primary focus being eCommerce. After completing a 30-day in-patient drug and alcohol facility in 2008, he decided to turn his life around. Since then, he has successfully created several multi-million dollar brands and sites and continues launching new ones to this day. Last year, he started teaching others how to start and/or grow their own online business.

Transcript:

00:03

It's all kind of just take a grand tally of everything we won't eliminate the idea if it's let's say low volume on Google Trends

 

00:11

Hey everyone is Nicole B. the chief pretty chick in charge at shopprettypieces.com this is Rolando with global tech worldwide. Hey, this is Tanner Leatherstein with Pegai and you are listening today and you're watching and you're listening to  The E-Comm Show.

 

00:32

Welcome to The E-Comm Show, presented by BlueTuskr, the number one place to hear the inside scoop from other e-commerce experts. They share their secrets about how they scaled their business and are now living the dream. Now, here is your host, Andrew Maff. Hello,

 

00:52

everyone and welcome to another episode of The E-Comm Show. I'm your host Andrew Maff. And today I am joined by the illustrious Dan Edmund of boss profits and like 15 other businesses that we're going to chat about, Dan, how are you doing? You're right for the good show here.

 

01:06

Good. How are you? Thanks for having me.

 

01:08

Yeah, thanks for joining us. So as I mentioned in the intro, you have countless businesses, it seems. So it only seemed fitting to give you a minute here and kind of tell us a little bit about each of them and how you got into it. Tell us a bit about your background, we'll start there. Okay.

 

01:23

Definitely. Well, they're not 15 different businesses. It's 15. And 15 is definitely an estimate. You know, about 2008 or so my wife had worked with a lab, and developed a weight loss product. You know, I still had a day job, I was at no money really was working with computers back then. So I kind of tried to start selling it on the side, back then everything was different, you couldn't just build a website, like, you know, a Shopify and these pretty user-friendly sites now. But luckily, I had a friend, who had gone to college, got some programming degrees, and stuff like that. So he helped me out a lot with it. You know, we were able to get it going, after a few months, I was able to quit my job. You know, but as you know, everything was different back then. Not a lot of people were advertising online. You know, ultimately, things were easy back then easier, I guess. Not a lot of competition. You know, fast forward, a little bit of competition came around, we had to kind of change how we did things to stay on top. Ultimately, we stayed on top. But after a couple of years, I mean, we did very well, I believe it was 8 million in the first year or two alone. But wow. Like I said, being transparent, everything was different back then, would be very hard to do that today with a brand new business. So anyway, after a couple of years, we had perfected a system. So well we, you know, decided, let's see if we can replicate it into new products, new niches, new audiences. And we did. You know, we got into we started with a supplement company, I was a weight loss product. So we kind of branch that out similar niche with different types of supplements, you know, joint you know, damage or whatever. Then we got into pet supplies, we kind of got into everything. And ultimately, we were able to replicate it. So we fine-tuned it from start to finish on how to pick products and where to get products. And then really it was about a year, year and a half ago. It's like, you know, we've done so many of these sites, and that 15 number. That's it. I mean, it's probably three times that he's, and I mean these but we've just replicated it, we can do it now. So quick. So yeah, about a year, year and a half ago, put it into a program. And we started teaching people this is how we do it from start to finish. Literally, the exact steps we do. Yeah, and so doing good. So obviously, that's what boss profits is, right? Yep. It's pretty much just teaching people to do what we've done. From start to finish, you know, from finding products to building the site out. I mean, the tools that are around today, I would have killed for them to be around. We first started. I mean, it was all manual labor back then. So it's, it's nice.

 

04:47

So it's essentially, you know, we'll call it a consultancy or a course about how to set up an E-commerce business pretty much from start to finish.

 

04:57

Right and the first one When you did

 

05:00

8 million in the first year, obviously, I highly doubt you're getting those results now. Oh, no. What do you have? Like, you know? Alright, so if you were to do it now, what type of results do you typically see in the first like, couple of years?

 

05:16

Well, we continue doing it now. I mean, realistically, I mean, I wouldn't say we got lucky back, then, times were just different back then and that's the biggest thing. But realistically, now, we do probably launch a few new products, new sites a year, we've had this weird goal, trying to do one a month, I don't know why we never do it. But realistically, most of our sites can do 100,000 profit within the first year. You know, 10,000 people I, that we're currently working with, they can easily do about 10,000, within about the first three to six months. You know, it's just about being consistent, you don't always get the right product. You know, and I think anybody can do this, really, if they just keep going, you know, sometimes the first product will fail, or the first couple products, but I think we do have such a good system, though, where we eliminate a lot of the risk, obviously, nothing's ever guaranteed, but But yeah, an average sight now. I mean, it's easy to get it to 10,000 a month, brand new product, no brand new audience brand new everything. I mean, that's realistic. So

 

06:43

I'm gonna ask so many prying questions. And obviously, you probably shouldn't give it away. Because then what's the point? Right, right. But because this is so wildly different from you know, typically, we have someone on the show, they own one, maybe two companies, and they have just been focused on it, you have more of like a spray and pray approach, where they build out new businesses. And I perfect world every month. So how does that even work? Like? How do you even get a site up in under a month? Or start promoting it? And like, how do you suggest around driving traffic to this site? Like, what? How does that work? Especially in the beginning stages there?

 

07:23

Yeah, well, I mean, now I have a team. So it's easy. But if I had to do it myself, I mean, it's still, I mean, very realistic with I mean, things like Shopify and these out-of-the-box, eCommerce platforms. I mean, it does make it pretty easy. I mean, you do need, you know, it's not a get rich, quick scheme, I mean, you obviously need a little bit of money to start advertising. But even now, even, you know, with the, with the advertising costs, we always still start low, we start as if we are literally brand new with everything, we don't come out of the gate, and you know, maybe lose a ton of money, we start low. And we scale just as if it was a brand new, brand new business. But really, it's I mean, we got the process we do. I mean, you can kind of set aside, okay, got about a week or product research, realistically, a week or so, you know, and this is assuming you're doing a solo to build out a site. You know, as far as the legal parts of it, a lot of similar products, we just put under the same business entity, we don't have to go through all the legal process, or they're just new sites, we don't have to set up new credit card processing companies. So a lot of the stuff that can kind of take a little bit of time, it's already done, we'll just inherit it into a new site. You know, no credit card merchant companies. You know, a lot of people don't know this. And fortunately, this long into it, we learned a lot of things the hard way. But you always have to get approval, hey, we're going to accept credit card payments on this brand new site, and they have to go through it and everything. And if you don't tell them and they find out, they get a little mad. But yeah, so a lot of the back end or, you know, a lot of the stuff that just, you know, is not fun, like the legal and credit card processing. That's already done because we'll inherit it if it's a similar, you know, niche-related product.

 

09:42

My mind is blown right now. Like, you know, yeah, we help sellers all the time with like marketing and stuff. And the fact that you come out and knock this stuff out and like a month or two is amazing. How large you mentioned it's maybe three times the 50 United vention so let's say you have like 50 some odd eCommerce businesses you're working with, right? How many employees? Do you have?

 

10:09

Six full-time employees.

 

10:11

So you have six full-time employees working on if the summer different businesses?

 

10:16

Yeah, I mean, you can, and there are a million different ways you can do this. But really, I got to do shippers, we ship everything in-house. You know, we'll start with drop shipping. And then the ultimate goal is to get it in-house. I mean, that's where the profit is, you know, we have a warehouse there over on the mainland still. But yeah, I mean, everybody kind of has their own roles. You know, we have one person that literally builds out the Shopify, by he coordinates, I got a graphic person, one person solely, it's hard to email, I mean, huge. Part of what we make is email. And yeah, everyone just kind of has their roles, they stay out of each other's way. You know, we'll kind of do a little bit of product research, we'll kind of, we'll do everything we possibly can to verify, you know, to validate the market. You know, that's most important, not validating the product, will spend a lot of time really, you know, before we put it all this time into it, I mean, employees cost money. You know, before we put all this time and effort, and you got to make sure the products allowed on Facebook and Google and but yeah, and then once it's like, okay, we're pretty confident this is a good product, the winning product, here are all the reasons why hand it off, and everyone does their part. And by the time it's done, it's complete sight. You know, in some of these turned into a full band. That first company I was talking about is still around. I mean, it's got 200,000 customers, the product, because its weight loss, ended up kind of being considered a high-risk product after several years, but it's still, it still does good. I mean, I could live comfortably if that was my only sight today. We also did another one, several years ago, it was a beard. Believe it or not, I used to have a pretty awesome beard. Awesome, but yeah, it's a beard, facial hair type beard hair company. You know, and that one turned into a full band. massive following, you know, I think a couple of 100,000 People follow it. You know, so some of the products it's it's very long term. We don't stick with you know, years ago, we did a couple of trending ones where they had a lifecycle. It's my camera. Okay, cuz I'm frozen on my end. No, yeah,

 

13:00

I'm seeing you well. All right, cool.

 

13:02

I can see you well. But anyway, so yeah. Oh, so years ago, we used to kind of do the trending ones where it had a lifecycle like selfie sticks and fidgets spinners. And it was just, I mean, three months, you kill it, but then it's like, die. So now we try to focus on, you know, the niches and areas that never die, you know, health, wealth, hobbies, you know, the typical stuff, they keep doing? Good.

 

13:34

So, I don't even know where to begin with this. Alright, so let's, let's try something else. So someone comes to you and says, so the accounting boss profits, they say, I want to do that. How do you get them started? What sir? Is it a service that you're offering them? I assume outside of like, a course or something? Like, what is that whole process? Like?

 

13:53

Yeah, so you know, I've always, I mean, I'm really a marketer, that's my job. I'm not a business owner. I don't look at it like that. As a marketer, my mind's always going 1000 different ways. But, I mean, how, you know, I've tried to kind of do some marketing, on the side, don't get always ran into the problem. When you own a business, you take different risks. And I was always the problem I had with working with people in the past, it's like, well, it was my business, I would do this. But your, your, you know how it is, when you start e-commerce or any business for that matter. You are risking losing money with advertising. And so that was always the problem. So now, when people sign up, they're in control, because it's their business. If they want to put in the money put in the work, they're gonna see the results. And so how we kind of set it up as it's a course. You know, it's 90 days. But you can go at your own pace. That's kind of the average amount of time that it takes people to complete it. And then the coaching, I mean, that's kind of a valuable part, this many years and this many products, we've probably done a lot of failing to, a lot of times when something isn't working, you know, we can usually figure out why real quick. And so that's pretty much it. We talked to him on the phone. And because we can, I mean, and I'm sure people probably just say this, but we decided when we started coaching people, you know, let's be picky. You know, I don't know why, you know, if we have to continue talking to him, I don't want to have problems, you know, you want things to be comfortable. And so, we are kind of selective, but because of that, the results are higher. We've never had a complaint, we've never had anyone ask for a refund, even, you know, they sign up and get access to the course. And then they scheduled calls, coaching calls. Seems to be average men, people, the average person, I guess, they usually schedule a call a week or so. But they also get access to me or my team via messenger anytime they get stuck, because a lot of the questions are just, you know, simple, one-line questions and answers that don't require a whole hour phone call. So yeah, that's kind of it. Did they

 

16:29

also, get to leverage your team in terms of the services? Or is this or as the coaching kind of, here's how you're going to create, here's how you're going to find the product, here's how you're going to create your website, here's how you're going to brand it, you go do it.

 

16:39

Yeah, we don't really do much with done for you. It's kind of how you do it. But we've revised the course, you know, really, based on the feedback we got it got from, you know, beta testers or whatever. We've revised it, where there's a lot of sharing on my screen. You know, like, Okay, this is how we're doing this. I mean, I kind of half build a new site, I, you know, go through the whole process from there. But yeah, I mean, if people maybe need help, just build out the site. I mean, I do work with people that aren't employees, you know, that I'll send to people, but it's very hands off. And that's all for reasons because we tried to be hands-on and it was just, yeah. It's hard to sometimes be me, I die. So how have you worked?

 

17:39

How have you been coaching? Through the past couple of years, like between, you know, some products obviously didn't do as well, during COVID. Some did even significantly better. Some had supply chain issues others didn't? Like how were you able to help coach through that whole

 

17:56

process? Well, so that was something I mean, the last couple of years. I don't think anybody could have predicted and, you know, I kind of, you know, looking back, I probably had the wrong attitude. But I felt horrible. I live in Maui where, I mean, over half the people depend on tourism here. And, you know, I was seeing companies get shut down, people were losing their jobs, and I felt horrible. But you know, in my head, I'm like, I'm so glad I'm doing e comm. You know, e-commerce is online, but that was not the case. I mean, a month later,

 

18:35

people,

 

18:36

I mean, between, you know, people were losing their jobs, people didn't have money. On top of that, I feel people were hesitant about what they were spending money on. And we had a lot of products that we thought were actually going to blow up during that time, like immune system-type products. But then the whole shipping issues came into I mean, there was one thing after another and you know, we kind of had to get creative, we focused on email lists. And we stayed afloat, but everything caught us off guard because we thought we were just everything proof you sell online, it's like well, yeah, I mean, we're, we're solid no matter what, but you don't expect you know, something like that to happen where people aren't spending money anymore. Unless you're selling you know, hand sanitizer or something. Yeah, really. So we, you know, how to do a major pivot as everyone seems to be calling it these days. And then change how we did things we focused on, just treating our existing customers well. You know, given them the VIP, you know, codes and everything, and ultimately, we stayed up. Nice

 

19:58

is the whole process. So like, with, with Bas profits in general, and how you're, you're teaching new sellers, is it to get them set up to kind of build a brand? And, you know, kind of, I guess, more or less what I would consider going the traditional route of E-commerce? Or is the whole course really around what you've replicated, which is essentially sourcing product, creating a website, launching it move on to the next product? New

 

20:24

Website? Yeah. I mean, ultimately, I only teach what we do. And what we do is continue replicating it. You know, we do have a few, as I mentioned, you know, major brands, I guess, I mean, not major, major, but big. But, but are primarily what we teach is the, you know, get this top-notch, get it as fully optimized, as you can eat, you know, the thing that I've always kind of looking at is, you can put all your time, okay, we've, we're on the top on Google or Facebook, you know, we've kind of done just about everything you can or, you know, we can spend all this time, you know, let's go redo all of our campaigns, let's go get some new ad creatives. Or this is the way I look at it, you know, obviously, it's just an opinion, the way I look at it is, it's a lot easier just to do product research and build out a new site. I mean, when you build a couple of stores, I mean, you can almost do it your sleep with Shopify, I'm not a programmer, I'm the worst coder in the world. I'm not a coder. But every time I've attempted it, I am horrible. But that's the way I look at it a lot easier trying to think of new ways to how can this existing site, try to make 10,000 more a month with everything is already doing, I just go right to the new product, because it's, for me, it's a lot easier. I always feel, and it's not, I always just feel you kind of hit this, this cap where it's like, Alright, now we got to start working harder because we're maximizing everything. You know, it's E, that's just the way I look at it, it's just a lot easier to get a new product going new site. And you started learning how to do it real quick, too. It's always the same.

 

22:26

You know, it's really interesting, I hear business models like yours all the time, in terms of like Amazon stuff, like all these FBA guys, you know, they're you use something like a helium 10, or a Jungle Scout or something like that to source whatever product you want to get you to figure out through their algorithm, like what you can get a lot of sales from, and then they just kind of put it up and really build a brand. They're just kind of selling products. In your case, you're doing a similar approach, but it's primarily all off Amazon, it's through Shopify, how is it you are figuring out what this prot is like? How do you figure out the market for these products?

 

23:07

I mean, there are a bunch of different ways to do it. You know, biggest, when you're figuring out the product, or the I'm sorry, the market and not products, most of it is just free tools that are already out there. You know, groups, for example, you know, Google preview tool, that's probably been our most powerful, I mean, not our most powerful, that's probably our number one thing that we do very first when we just think of a random product idea. We'll go use that. You know, and I'm actually surprised more people don't talk about that tool. They will literally tell you how many people are searching for that product on Google, you know, but you don't, you don't hear a lot about it. But you know, there's, there's Jungle Scout, there's a lot of other tools out there. And it's really just a combination of multiple different things. I mean, Google Trends, you know, I know, that's kind of one that a lot of people talk about, but I  found that's not always 100% accurate. So we'll kind of take a combination of a few different tools out there. It's like, alright, this wasn't very good on Google Trends, let's say, but look at, look at all these Facebook groups, look at all these people on look at all the views on YouTube, I mean, people like this product being used or look at the Google preview tool, and so on, kind of just take a grand tally of everything, we won't eliminate the idea. If it's, let's say low volume on Google Trends, for example. Yeah. So it's just kind of a, I can't remember the number. I think there are about eight different things that we do. And as long as about three of them look good, then we'll go for it.

 

24:51

So you're judging the, I guess, you know, the, how much the market is interested in that certain product, obviously. How are you deciphering In the amount of competition you may be going

 

25:02

up against. So I actually think this subject is the only reason we lasted. I don't look at Amazon as competition. You know, and I know a lot do. And I only know that because of a lot of people we start working with, that's the first thing they say, How am I going to sell this? For $30, when Amazon sells that for 20, you know, long before Click Funnels and stuff came around. I mean, that's kind of how we stayed on top was we created funnels, manual labor back then. But so instead of selling the exact same product, we would turn it into our own product by adding additional products. Sometimes it's a digital product, sometimes it's a physical product. So now you're not selling apples to apples, the same product that Amazon selling, you're selling kind of a package. I mean, this is kind of one different way. The other thing too, is when people are spending 20 or 30 bucks online, and I've proved this with our products anyway, they're not price shopping out there, to save a few dollars, you if you can impress them enough, in a few seconds, when they come to your site, they're not gonna leave. Let's go see if I can save $3 on Amazon because you've already impressed them with your reviews or your copy on your site. Yeah, so that's kind of when the competition came around back in that with that first business I was telling you about, that's really what we had to do was, we didn't want to lower our price. I mean, I think we did at the beginning. It's like, no, no, let's so we kept the price. It was a weight loss product. But that was, what, 13 years ago. But I think we ended up adding it was an ebook with a bunch of recipes. And then we create what was free digital. And then we created a weight loss was a weight loss and inches tracker, all it was was an Excel spreadsheet. In our office assistant at the time, she knew all these Excel formulas or whatever to make. So they got that with it. And I believe that was it. And that's how we beat the competition, we just offered a different product.

 

27:22

It was the same product that is more value-based, right?

 

27:26

That's it, we just increased the value in the customer's eyes. And now they're common words, perceived value or funnels, I mean, we never call them funnels, you know, we call them microsites or something. We had our own name, we still call him that. But you know, but then everyone kind of caught on. And, you know, so it's somewhat common now. So yeah, we don't look at Amazon as a competition. If Amazon has a ton of reviews, we look at it as further validation of the product because of its selling. You know, it's a good product. Yeah, we don't we don't try to do new products. We're not trying to do some on Shark Tank or anything. Yeah.

 

28:12

So if, let's say, you know, someone starting off, they launched their site. I know, it may be kind of dependent on the product line. But what is the first channel that you start going after? Do you help tell them, hey, focus on SEO to get going? Or Facebook ads? Or Google ads? Or like, what do you tell them to start getting things moving?

 

28:30

Absolutely. The first thing is to validate the market and product first. Yeah, I mean, actually, people will usually spend the most amount of time doing that a lot, a lot of times and I do this bill, you'll think you have a really good product idea. And then after a little bit of research, you find out it's not the case at all. But once you have validated the market in the product, that's the absolute first thing. You know, I tried to get a few organic sales, to begin with, you know, don't spend a whole bunch of money find out you can move it for whatever reason. So yeah, that's kind of the first step. SEO, SEO is kind of how I started in all this at the very beginning. I wanted to learn SEO. And you know, I did for a while but then Google changed their algorithms so much and so often. Now the only SEO I really focus on is the basic you know, all tags titles. I don't worry at all about the backlinks or anything like that. Just because an SEO is very valuable. Don't get me wrong, but I think our time is valuable. And I think when people are starting with a business, there are a lot quicker return-type things that they can put their time into. So yeah, after they bow All day that will usually start by doing kind of a drop shipping method. You know, so they'll build out a Shopify, just with a template. And we'll usually just start with a drop shipping method. You know, that shouldn't be, you know, I guess how we do it, people do it a million different ways. You know, we'll kind of start dropshipping, once the momentum is there, then we'll focus on working with an actual manufacturer, you know, get branding on it, depending on the product, and then get it over to us. We're buying in bulk. So that's kind of uh,

 

30:36

yeah, I like that model. I've spoken to a lot of sellers about doing that as well, like, even some sellers that have pre-existing, like private label brands, we're always talking about considering like adding in some drop shipping, because it's a really inexpensive way to expand your product line, but also figure out what else your customers are willing to buy, and then go for it. Right. So it's a very interesting approach is staying in dropshipping. I'm always kind of like, I wouldn't stick to solely drop shipping. Sometimes as margins are rough. Being able to have a little bit more control and end up private labeling yourself. Mark. Yeah, like, yeah,

 

31:12

that's, that's how we do it. I mean, I don't drop shipping long term, the shipping time alone, it's just not worth it. You know, if it's coming from overseas, it's it's still taken several weeks. I mean, a couple of years ago, it was taken months. It was horrible. Yeah. So but yeah, it shouldn't be a long-term thing. But you know, I know companies are making millions, and drop shipping is their end goal. They don't ever want to move beyond that. And I can understand it, you never have to worry about the product. Talking it or, you know, but it's hard. Just have a fulfillment center. Ship it for you if you don't want to ship it. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah.

 

31:57

Dan, really appreciate it. Have you been on the show? I don't wanna take up too much of your time. I know you have like 8000 businesses to get to. So why don't you go to the beach? Hey, that's the way it's done right? That's why we do this. Why don't you take a second to tell everyone a little bit more about where they can find more on boss profits up well,

 

32:16

thank you again for having me. I mean, most information you just be on bossprofits.com Not sure how up to date it is but you can only schedule a time to talk to someone I think there's a little video kind of tells you what we do and how to schedule a call talk, someone, I try to take as many of these calls as I can I still believe in the feedback that's how you improve every company business. But yeah, all the information bossprofits.com Yeah, can get everything from they're

 

32:54

both beautiful. Dan, thank you so much for being on the show everyone who tuned in of course thanks you as well please make sure you head out or ecommshow.com Check out all of our other episodes, make sure you rate review, subscribe, all that fun stuff on whichever podcast platform you prefer or over at YouTube. But as usual, appreciate everyone tuning in and we will see you all next time. Have a good one. Thank you every day.

 

33:17

Thank you for tuning in to The E-Comm Show. Head over to ecommshow.com to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform or on the BlueTuskr YouTube channel. The E-comm show is brought to you by BlueTuskr. Full-service digital marketing companies specifically for E-commerce sellers looking to accelerate their growth. Go to BlueTuskr.com now for more information. Make sure to tune in next week for another amazing episode of The E-comm Show.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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