1/ Found product that fills personal need.

2/ Product is newer and existing ones suck. Lots of poor reviews.

3/ Decent monthly keyword search volume.

4/ Product is in a market that is growing rapidly.

Dry test starts next week and ordering packaging mockups tomorrow

LETS GO

Just running traffic to a basic landing page with product shot, order buttons, benefits, FAQ, contact info. Very simple.

Packaging design mockups ordered. Should be done within 5-7 days pending revisions. Time to setup paypal, various analytics, and then draft some PPC ads.

Just received packaging design mockups - 3 versions. They did an amazing job. Might tweak some colors, otherwise everything’s perfect.

Excited to drive some traffic next.

Final version of packaging design mockups delivered. Just added to the landing page. It looks incredible. I'm sitting here looking at this thing and can genuinely say I'd buy it myself.

The packaging design makes everything look professional. Really excited to test this now.

Will be selling on ebay, etsy, and driving some traffic with Bing PPC. Have a feeling search volume will be too low on Bing so will probably setup adwords after those three as well.

Ebay listing now live. Etsy listing / store should be setup at latest tomorrow morning, but going to try and crank it out tonight.

Listing still not showing up in ebay search results. Have experienced delays like this before, but never this long. Kinda annoying. If not visible by tonight will dupe the listing and launch a fresh one.

eBay listing now showing up in search results

Let’s go!

Etsy listing now live. Up next is setting up Bing PPC ads.

Going to setup google ads instead first thing tomorrow, then export to Bing.

2 birds one stone.

Thanks for the tip @ryanckulp

Just got the first sale after setting up eBay a day ago, and the customer ordered 3.

Let’s keep this momentum going.

Just got second sale on ebay. Customer ordered 4.

Holy f*ck someone just ordered 4 more. Looks like eBay has officially turned on the firehose.

Will stop with ebay sales updates for a bit and get back to work.

Just got first Etsy sale. They ordered 2. Traffic much lower on etsy compared to ebay. Excited to try their paid promotion feature soon.

Basic google and bing ppc search ads now live. Going to look into setting up shopping ads for both later this week.

Etsy traffic has increased, but made mistake on listing quantity. It sold out yesterday afternoon and I just realized. Increased the qty available and renewed listing.

Hoping to see steady increase in etsy sales over next few days.

Impressions and clicks on both google ads and bing has been low. I need more data. Going to create some new ad groups soon for similar product categories with higher search volume. My gut tells me my product will sell well mixed in with them.

Also need to look into shopping ads.

Had perfect order button but swapped for paypal generated buy button bcuz it had drop down for qty since many customers want multiple

-Need to figure out how to track paypal button click
-Need to code custom qty dropdown w/ better order button, then submit form w/ data to paypal

Landing page updates ^

For both better CTR tracking, and most likely increasing CTR as a whole as well.

Just tested and went through paypal order flow from landing page. Ordered using debit card option w/o PP account. Failed first time but i think it's cause customer email matched account email. Worked 2nd time w/ diff email, but didn't redirect to thank you page

ALWAYS TEST

Also received an email from customer asking where they could buy product locally. Curious if paypal checkout is failing for people, or if they're worried about shipping issues due to coronavirus.

Going to add coronavirus banner to LP and further test paypal checkout tonight.

Just weird to me that not a single person has converted on google ads. The keywords are exact buy intent keywords for my product. I think all the shopping ads for sites like Amazon may be driving them away.

Ad and LP don't have the implied trust that ebay and etsy give for free.

Quick fix for LP issue:

Got rid of paypal button, added back original cta button. Button clicks will now be tracked as conversions in leadpages, so I can at least see lander's CTR.

If the CTR is high I'll at least know that and can test if paypal is borked or optimize checkout

Sales have been rolling in all day from eBay, and the only reason Etsy slowed is bcuz of the out of stock mistake I made earlier.

Change in the LP order button just sent me my first google ads conversion.

eBay + Etsy + google ads should print $ tomorrow.

Stay tuned folks.

CTR on google has been trash today. Need to write more ads and split test. Will probably do later this week along with launching shopping ads, another ad group targeting similar product, and prob building full checkout flow as well.

i really want to make google ads work for this

Bing ads sent a few clicks today but along with g ads i need more data otherwise test will take forever. Need to add more keywords for similar products + launch shopping ads.

Goal is to see if g ads and bing will convert enough within the next 2 weeks.

Today has been lowest day for orders since launching last weekend. Hoping it all picks up again tomorrow.

Just received email from VC firm that specializes in CPG. Could care less but thought it was funny. No idea where or how they found the product.

Orders have been slow again today. Hoping it picks back up this weekend. Very close to doing $500 in revenue this week. If I can do $1k by end of next weekend (2 week test) I’d be very happy.

I think this should be easy, especially if I get better checkout flow setup for ppc ads

Just realized that leadpages won't suit my needs anymore. Product is small and customers want multiple qty, but their checkout + stripe doesn't support that w/o custom code. So now i have to switch to either clickfunnels or shopify + shogun if I want a good test for PPC traffic.

Wow.. it's been a couple years and I had forgotten just how bad clickfunnels is. All coming back to me now as I'm trying to work with their janky editor.

Going to signup for shopify + shogun real quick, and see if I can quickly launch single product store + clone landing page.

Decided to say YOLO and roll my own quantity drop down for original landing page. Paypal checkout will dynamically update price based on selected quantity. Should increase conversions while still letting me use my high ctr order button.

PS. i hate javascript

It works! LP now has quantity selection after writing custom code. Only downside is I still can't track conversions with basic paypal, but I added metadata to product so I can see which paypal sales come from PPC.

Will hopefully see increase in conversions for PPC traffic now.

Tomorrow will add some CVR boosters near order button to increase trust. Should be all set this week to do a solid test on PPC.

Despite not adding the cvr boosters near order button, the qty dropdown changes I made this weekend has PPC traffic converting well now. Many customers ordering multiple units too.

Next step is sending them to shopify checkout instead of paypal, since personal pp doesn't redirect to thank you page, and I can't fire tracking pixels to know what's converting.

Going to send customer to dynamic shopify checkout url based on qty dropdown selection.

I will post exact numbers tonight or tomorrow, it's harder to calculate since platforms will remove refunds from sales $ data, but it looks like i did about ~$500 rev in a week across ebay, etsy, google ads, bing ads. Would have been much more w/ current PPC lander changes too.

This doesn't include SEO (i own exact search domain name), Amazon, other ecom (wholesale), B&M/retail, etc. There's still a ton of channels to get on and I'm still early with this product. I'm feeling very optimistic about it all.

Anyways I've decided to move forward with this product. Need to do some sourcing and R&D the next few weeks. Will be difficult with all the corona BS but still confident I can make significant progress.

Just switched over to using shopify checkout so that I can track conversions via thank you page (basic paypal has no redirect for this).

Tracking pixels setup for google and bing ads. Still need to test for pixels firing properly.

Testing is officially paused on both ebay and etsy. Have a killer list of beta testers to send free product to now.

Will be focused on the following for next few weeks:

- Product R&D
- Google ppc ads
- Bing ppc ads
- Possibly test pinterest ads

Spent 2 hours this morning setting up Shopify checkout w/ google and bing ads conversion pixels.

Just got first sale and sure enough conversion wasn’t tracked

typical

Earlier I paused eBay and Etsy. Going to turn back on to run another test.

Only selling 4+ unit bundles. Will need to create 3 more variants of product design. Sell 4 packs of each and 4 pack variety.

Going to push on PPC as well. Want to see how high I can get the AOV.

Shopify checkout update

Good news: PPC is converting better than ever, and profitable today w/ zero optimization done yet at all.

Bad news: Conversions still not tracking.

I think I know whats wrong and have 2 things to try, but won't be able to implement till tomorrow morning

Just spent all morning trying to get conversion tracking working for google ads. Still not working but hoping it’s just delay in showing data.

Not sure if its because the user flow goes from root domain to sub domain

Super frustrating wasting limited time over BS like this.

No idea if it was just a delay or what but google ads conversions are tracking properly now. I just wish I knew which changes fixed it. I made a bunch of them and not sure now which ones were needed

I think linking g analytics may have fixed it too. There's a special cookieDomain param you can set for tracking across subdomains eg. http://rootdomain.com  -> http://shop.rootdomain.com 

and i think I remember reading that it auto gets set when linking GA with ads.

future ref

Only selling 4+ unit bundles now live on ebay and etsy. Literally got a sale 5min after going live on ebay. Hoping that's a good sign.

4 packs will be live on PPC shortly

So this is an awesome feature I just discovered in ebay for product testing... went to edit my listing, and under item specifics, for a variation that I won't be naming but just use your imagination here.. they give you recommendations w/ search volume!

Right now my 4packs are 4 of the same "variation". Next step is to dupe listing and test a variety bundle. Ebay basically just gave me the top searches (w/ search volume per 30days) for the category I'm in. So I know exactly which variations will sell well in my bundle

This is WILD. I'm not sure if they're only showing me this bcuz I've been collecting sales data, or if it was visible all along, or maybe after a timed delay?

In theory you could just target categories you're curious about, and they'll hand you the "types" that are hot sellers.

Also 4 unit bundles now live on PPC and budget cranked up to $100 per day. Hoping to get enough data over next 72hours to know if the bundles will still convert well.

Ended up pausing google PPC. Have numerous ideas as to why it wasn't converting. CTR on order button was very high, but lots of room for improvement to optimize conversion rate. Will revisit in the near future.

For now just focused on scaling etsy and ebay.

4 unit bundle test started last Friday. Current revenue at ~$620. Will probably be $700 by tomorrow. I have another test I want to run with this same bundle, and if my assumptions are correct, it should significantly increase the revenue.

Goal is to get up to $1,500/week.

Really excited about this upcoming test

It's one of three final tests that I think will really kick the revenue up a notch

Unfortunately I don't think it'll be up and running till next week. Other obligations have been taking up most of my time.

Will also need to coordinate with designer for more product mockups and updates which will cause a slight delay as well.

All good though. Progress is keeping steady and really happy with the way everything is going right now.

Just need to be patient and keep moving.

Final revenue for 4 unit bundle week long test was ~$680 across ebay and etsy.

In other news someone ordered 6 four unit bundles last night which is our biggest order yet. Our customers seem extremely passionate about our product and niche.

After doing hundreds of orders, we just received our very first negative message for refunding the customer. This lady is furious, despite the fact that I fully refunded her and offered to send double her order for free.

Kinda funny it took that long.

Designer is working on additional product mockups for final 4 unit bundle test. Should be ready by mid next week. Like I said earlier hoping to get weekly revenue up to $1500 across ebay and etsy

In other news have another product I'm working on testing. Much bigger market and potential, but will be harder to test and make work. Will need great landers, ad copy, and lots of testing, but the payoff will be much bigger.

Going to try and make subscriptions work too.

I may revisit google PPC. Put a giant banner on the site that basically says shipping is still free and fast w/ zero delay due to the virus. Put a USA flag everywhere that says made in and shipped from the USA.

On the ad, lander, and the checkout page. https://twitter.com/memechll/status/1249393504129650689

Everything paused while waiting for new product mockups. Still getting some 4 unit bundle sales on Shopify. Pretty cool getting residual direct sales even after traffic is paused.

Received new designs. Big launch day. 4 pack variety bundle now live on both ebay and etsy, as well as 4 pack bundles of individual variations.

Also launched a completely new product under the same brand. Hopefully can increase (double) last week's revenue

Will also be creating 3-5 new products this weekend under the same brand. These products are already widely available and proven, but still within my niche.

Will be ordering more product mockups for these by tomorrow night, and then will have one final massive test next week.

With this final massive test, the goal is to hit a revenue of $2,500+/week across ebay and etsy, and selling significant amount of new products that are already popular. Basically want to see if I can still compete in an already "crowded" niche.

Should be fun.

Oh also I lost all the existing sales stats from my listing on ebay by ending it! No idea how I "paused" it differently a couple weeks ago, but I can't remember or figure it out.

So now it's a fresh listing. Worried the ebay algo won't show me love as fast as before. We'll see.

New thread for new product/brand. Will continue to test this current one and keep this thread updated as well. Will basically be working on both of these simultaneously until it makes sense to focus on one clear winner. https://twitter.com/memechll/status/1251608657562726400?s=20

Don't sleep on bing ads. The traffic volume is much less but has been converting much better than google ads. These are just basic text ads.

They've generated ~$200 sales on ~$30 spend in the past 1.5 weeks. Small numbers but still the point is it's quality.

So this new week long test is going well. The last one did ~$680, this one's done $540 already and its only Wednesday. I actually made some mistakes that probably hindered this test, so its cool to see it still being more successful despite all that.

Most importantly this test came with a bunch of new learnings, and confirmed some assumptions I had. I'll share all of the details later this weekend once the final results are in.

this is a reminder to myself to include details on ebay listing distractions, losing the ebay listing juice, etsy's google shopping ads and how that ties in with my google ads ppc issues.

Week long test ends tomorrow afternoon. Currently on track to double the previous test's revenue. Its at $920 right now. Etsy has been hot lately.

Have also learned a lot, and was cool to follow intuition and see it pay off in the test results.

Will post final results tomorrow.

Ok so cutting this test several hours short but final results are $920 across ebay and etsy. Will probably hit $1k though this afternoon. It's a been a fun test with lots of learnings, but won't be pursuing this project anymore. Will maybe revisit in the future.

This has been a good warmup, but from now on I'll be focusing my efforts on products that have higher demand and can generate more revenue.

Will be updating this thread going forward: https://twitter.com/memechll/status/1251608657562726400?s=20