Online store - 15,000 euros for the first month
There is a well-known saying “First Pancake Com” among the people, which I cannot say about my recent experience in online trading. Most likely, this is just an exception confirming the rule, but, nevertheless, I want to tell you about those small findings that I have made over the past month.
So, a small story about how you can quite easily earn in one month at least 15,000 euros.
My professional occupation is web development. I am engaged in R & D in one small IT company, I write "heaped up" applications for corporate intranets and, in principle, I do not complain about life. Of course, in this situation, I would like to simultaneously conduct some interesting project, which I repeatedly did in the world of Open Source. Over time, however, I wanted to earn money on side projects, which turned out to be not so easy with Open Source, as it may seem from the articles on Habré :) That's why I decided to try something fundamentally new for myself - open an online store.
')
Before rushing into battle, I made a small list of personal restrictions:
The initial search vector, however, remained the same and brought me to the logical question: “What is MicroSIM and what is it eaten with?”, - after an hour of searching, I learned a lot of interesting things, in particular, that microsyme is an ordinary simka, just without too much plastic. . It also turned out that in real life microsymbols for the first time Apple will be used. It became clear - you need to do something in this direction. Further searches led to the idea that there will certainly be clever people who want to use the microsymbol in standard connectors. So they need a kind of "adapter".
Google search did not give ready-made solutions. The idea of selling only one type of product pleased more and more, since it solved all problems of dispatch logistics in one fell swoop. I started calling the manufacturers of the SIMs and found what I was looking for - plastic microsim adapters, 500 pieces for 400 euros, produced in Germany with all the ensuing guarantees. Ordered, and in the meantime began to put on his own feet the store. Points 3, 5 and 6 of personal limitations are fulfilled!
Then everything was simple: I bought a site design template (12 euros). I bought two beautiful domains (22 euros) and in one evening I collected a simple website of five pages describing the “goods”. I bought a pack of envelopes and plastic bags (another 37 euros). Total expenses - 471 euros. The first point of personal restrictions - made!
I decided to accept payments only through PayPal, as I assumed that only Americans would buy adapters, because only iPad 3G should appear on their market in the near future. I made a small backend for the store, where PayPal transmits all orders and from where stickers on envelopes are automatically printed, as well as notification emails are sent. In general, two days later, a working shop appeared. The seventh point of personal restrictions is fulfilled.
I once read a lot of interesting books about the irrational behavior of people, so I decided to approach pricing as simple as possible: one adapter for 4.99 euros or five adapters for 9.99 euros. Shipping worldwide is included in the price of the order. Everything. No more options. The fourth point of personal restrictions - done!
It remained the case for small - somehow start themselves selling. What do real jedi do? If there is no market, it needs to be created. We drive in Google “Microsim”, “Microsim Adapter”, “Micromsim iPad” and open all the top 20 sites for all three keywords. Most of the matches are forums or blogs, so it only remains to write a few topical comments (no spam, everything is strictly on the topic). And voila, the very next day the first order. A few hours later - the second. Then there was a couple of days of absolute lull, and suddenly it happened - some Brazilian blogger wrote about me, another Italian blog copied it, tweets flew from there and orders started to go slowly.
It was the first real day of the site, for him came 26 orders, about half of them for one adapter, the second half for five adapters. It is surprising that until this time there was only one client from the States. The rest are mainly from Italy and Brazil, and yet there was no iPad and it did not smell!
Inspired by the first success, he decided to plan the work on the store as follows:
Up to the release of the iPad 3G, there were on average few orders, only 20-30 per day. It is strange that most of the customers were not from the States. About once a day, different bloggers wrote, asking for a free sample to write a review. One Brazilian site even made a small video about adapters ! I decided not to lag behind and also pretended to be a satisfied client and made a video about how to make a micro-sim card from a simple sim card .
On the day the iPad 3G came out, a miracle happened. Orders began to arrive almost every 10 minutes. Americans began to slowly pull up. Gizmodo and Engadget slipped through the notes and 2,000-3,000 people visited the site on the day. The average percentage of conversion while it was already 9%!
I promptly raised prices to 5.99 and 14.99 for one and five adapters, respectively. Surprisingly, after that they only bought more. Periodically, requests for larger batches began to arrive (as I understood from ebay dealers) - we had to make a separate page for “partners and dealers” with prices for larger batches. Business went, the average turnover per day was 700-800 euros. After the announcement of the iPad 3G in Europe, the number of orders increased again. Now the average daily turnover is already slightly more than 1000 euros. In this case, the consumption is not more than 30%.
1. If it so happened that I created a monopoly in the retail market of microsimic adapters in one month :) but it’s quite a well-known fact that if people have something to compare with, then they are more willing to buy - then I decided to make a competition for myself by opening the second adapter store with slightly higher prices.
2. I also noticed that the conversion rate is significantly lower than the average for visitors from Japan and Germany. Accordingly, it will be logical to open two more localized versions of the site in Japanese and German, respectively.
3. Well, perhaps the most important thing is to legalize. I myself did not expect it to be so simple and fun, and therefore no legal structure behind the store is yet worth it. This issue is also to be resolved in the near future.
1. Incredible, but true. Despite the fact that in searching for Google for virtually all the keywords, my store now takes if not the first place, then it definitely enters the top 5 - from there no more than 10% of the traffic comes (200-300 people per day) and conversion into buyers very low, not more than 4%. But the traffic on the links, on the contrary, is firstly massive, and secondly the conversion is 10-12%
2. Incredible, but true. It is most eager and most bought by Italians and Brazilians. The conversion rate reaches as much as 20%. The most indecisive customers are Germans, they watch a lot and buy a little, they also write a lot in support, demanding a phone for support.
1. One clever man tried to compete with me in the French market by buying 100 adapters from me at the wholesale price and selling by piece for 15 euros. In vain, only he took my photos - he quickly found him and scared him off with a court. Adapters from the sale took off the same day.
2. Two times the mobile operators (one from France and one and the Emirates) addressed me, both times it was a request for 50,000 adapters. Both ferried to the manufacturer. It burned out or not - I do not know.
3. There were two orders from Russia. They sent confirmations of sending in Russian, it seems it was well received.
Actually, this is how an interesting story happened to me over the last month. Ready to answer questions or somehow justify certain decisions. Any criticism is welcome :) For myself, I made a simple conclusion - a minimum of time for reasoning, you need to act right away! I think that the topic with my store will be burned before the end of the summer, by that time I hope I will find a new unique product that meets my personal list of restrictions.
PS For reference, shop - microsim-shop.com
So, a small story about how you can quite easily earn in one month at least 15,000 euros.
My professional occupation is web development. I am engaged in R & D in one small IT company, I write "heaped up" applications for corporate intranets and, in principle, I do not complain about life. Of course, in this situation, I would like to simultaneously conduct some interesting project, which I repeatedly did in the world of Open Source. Over time, however, I wanted to earn money on side projects, which turned out to be not so easy with Open Source, as it may seem from the articles on Habré :) That's why I decided to try something fundamentally new for myself - open an online store.
')
Before rushing into battle, I made a small list of personal restrictions:
- Share capital - a maximum of 500 euros
- Time spent at the store - a maximum of 2-3 hours per day
- Nominal value of the goods - less than 1 euro
- Margin - at least 500%
- No large size - the size of the goods is not more than a book
- The product is something very rare.
- Minimum problems with logistics
The initial search vector, however, remained the same and brought me to the logical question: “What is MicroSIM and what is it eaten with?”, - after an hour of searching, I learned a lot of interesting things, in particular, that microsyme is an ordinary simka, just without too much plastic. . It also turned out that in real life microsymbols for the first time Apple will be used. It became clear - you need to do something in this direction. Further searches led to the idea that there will certainly be clever people who want to use the microsymbol in standard connectors. So they need a kind of "adapter".
Google search did not give ready-made solutions. The idea of selling only one type of product pleased more and more, since it solved all problems of dispatch logistics in one fell swoop. I started calling the manufacturers of the SIMs and found what I was looking for - plastic microsim adapters, 500 pieces for 400 euros, produced in Germany with all the ensuing guarantees. Ordered, and in the meantime began to put on his own feet the store. Points 3, 5 and 6 of personal limitations are fulfilled!
Then everything was simple: I bought a site design template (12 euros). I bought two beautiful domains (22 euros) and in one evening I collected a simple website of five pages describing the “goods”. I bought a pack of envelopes and plastic bags (another 37 euros). Total expenses - 471 euros. The first point of personal restrictions - made!
I decided to accept payments only through PayPal, as I assumed that only Americans would buy adapters, because only iPad 3G should appear on their market in the near future. I made a small backend for the store, where PayPal transmits all orders and from where stickers on envelopes are automatically printed, as well as notification emails are sent. In general, two days later, a working shop appeared. The seventh point of personal restrictions is fulfilled.
I once read a lot of interesting books about the irrational behavior of people, so I decided to approach pricing as simple as possible: one adapter for 4.99 euros or five adapters for 9.99 euros. Shipping worldwide is included in the price of the order. Everything. No more options. The fourth point of personal restrictions - done!
It remained the case for small - somehow start themselves selling. What do real jedi do? If there is no market, it needs to be created. We drive in Google “Microsim”, “Microsim Adapter”, “Micromsim iPad” and open all the top 20 sites for all three keywords. Most of the matches are forums or blogs, so it only remains to write a few topical comments (no spam, everything is strictly on the topic). And voila, the very next day the first order. A few hours later - the second. Then there was a couple of days of absolute lull, and suddenly it happened - some Brazilian blogger wrote about me, another Italian blog copied it, tweets flew from there and orders started to go slowly.
To battle!
It was the first real day of the site, for him came 26 orders, about half of them for one adapter, the second half for five adapters. It is surprising that until this time there was only one client from the States. The rest are mainly from Italy and Brazil, and yet there was no iPad and it did not smell!
Inspired by the first success, he decided to plan the work on the store as follows:
- To devote one hour a day to “marketing” - search for thematic blogs and enter into correspondence with the authors, participate in forums, look for opportunities to exchange links
- Half an hour every evening to devote to packing orders for the last day - from the backend print stickers on envelopes and pack adapters
- Every morning, before work, run into the mail and send all orders for the past day.
- In the afternoon, set aside half an hour to answer all letters of support.
Up to the release of the iPad 3G, there were on average few orders, only 20-30 per day. It is strange that most of the customers were not from the States. About once a day, different bloggers wrote, asking for a free sample to write a review. One Brazilian site even made a small video about adapters ! I decided not to lag behind and also pretended to be a satisfied client and made a video about how to make a micro-sim card from a simple sim card .
On the day the iPad 3G came out, a miracle happened. Orders began to arrive almost every 10 minutes. Americans began to slowly pull up. Gizmodo and Engadget slipped through the notes and 2,000-3,000 people visited the site on the day. The average percentage of conversion while it was already 9%!
I promptly raised prices to 5.99 and 14.99 for one and five adapters, respectively. Surprisingly, after that they only bought more. Periodically, requests for larger batches began to arrive (as I understood from ebay dealers) - we had to make a separate page for “partners and dealers” with prices for larger batches. Business went, the average turnover per day was 700-800 euros. After the announcement of the iPad 3G in Europe, the number of orders increased again. Now the average daily turnover is already slightly more than 1000 euros. In this case, the consumption is not more than 30%.
Plans for the near future
1. If it so happened that I created a monopoly in the retail market of microsimic adapters in one month :) but it’s quite a well-known fact that if people have something to compare with, then they are more willing to buy - then I decided to make a competition for myself by opening the second adapter store with slightly higher prices.
2. I also noticed that the conversion rate is significantly lower than the average for visitors from Japan and Germany. Accordingly, it will be logical to open two more localized versions of the site in Japanese and German, respectively.
3. Well, perhaps the most important thing is to legalize. I myself did not expect it to be so simple and fun, and therefore no legal structure behind the store is yet worth it. This issue is also to be resolved in the near future.
Interesting Conclusions
1. Incredible, but true. Despite the fact that in searching for Google for virtually all the keywords, my store now takes if not the first place, then it definitely enters the top 5 - from there no more than 10% of the traffic comes (200-300 people per day) and conversion into buyers very low, not more than 4%. But the traffic on the links, on the contrary, is firstly massive, and secondly the conversion is 10-12%
2. Incredible, but true. It is most eager and most bought by Italians and Brazilians. The conversion rate reaches as much as 20%. The most indecisive customers are Germans, they watch a lot and buy a little, they also write a lot in support, demanding a phone for support.
Incidents
1. One clever man tried to compete with me in the French market by buying 100 adapters from me at the wholesale price and selling by piece for 15 euros. In vain, only he took my photos - he quickly found him and scared him off with a court. Adapters from the sale took off the same day.
2. Two times the mobile operators (one from France and one and the Emirates) addressed me, both times it was a request for 50,000 adapters. Both ferried to the manufacturer. It burned out or not - I do not know.
3. There were two orders from Russia. They sent confirmations of sending in Russian, it seems it was well received.
Actually, this is how an interesting story happened to me over the last month. Ready to answer questions or somehow justify certain decisions. Any criticism is welcome :) For myself, I made a simple conclusion - a minimum of time for reasoning, you need to act right away! I think that the topic with my store will be burned before the end of the summer, by that time I hope I will find a new unique product that meets my personal list of restrictions.
PS For reference, shop - microsim-shop.com
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/297010/
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