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Hi Jared and Trevor, I'm cofounder of a start up within the beauty space. We have small but active group of users that love creating and consuming a unique typ

Hi Jared and Trevor, I'm cofounder of a start up within the beauty space. We have small but active group of users that love creating and consuming a unique type of content only available on our platform. The revenue stream is to eventually sell tangible products so we would like to make use of all this content to convert purchases. Is there a way we can test out how well the conversion rate could work without shipping tangible products? We don't yet have capital to stockpile.

tlb 11y ago
Why not start with affiliate links to Amazon? It's minimal effort on your part, and you can see what your users are interesting in purchasing. Even when you eventually have your own inventory, it's worth throwing in affiliate links in case you discover that people watching your beauty content actually buy something else more often than your own products.
- wootcamp 11y ago
  Hi Trevor, thanks for the reply. We had that thought as well but we're from Southeast Asia with most of our traffic originating from here. Only some of the products related to our site actually ship here from Amazon and incurs international shipping costs so it might hinder orders. We'll still give it a shot since it can give us an idea of how the conversions do. Would you happen to have any further insights on if affiliate marketing really works especially when it comes to visual content?
  - tlb 11y ago
    Or instead of Amazon, whomever your customers currently buy from. The affiliate revenue isn't the most important thing: the important thing is to find out what your users will buy. Once you know that, you can invest in inventory. For beauty products, affiliate marketing works great. That is how the e-commerce world should work: you show users the results they can get with such-and-such product, and you get a percentage of sales.
    - wootcamp 11y ago
      If its not by affiliate then maybe we can find a way to accept pre-orders for a bulk purchase. We notice there are lot of products used by our audience that are not carried by local distributors so they find ways to import it themselves. Right, didn't think about sales for the sake of getting data. Currently we have a way to map out the products our users use most and made an assumption that these are the ones that they will buy. Would be interesting to compare the data and see if it matches. Hope the conversion works out well once we activate it. Also just to share that showing users the results they can get with these products is exactly what we do and its in a visual manner, especially since this industry is driven by imagery. Would love to continue this conversation in a private space if there’s any chance for it. Anyhow thanks for your input and we’ll be sending in an application for YC!

tlb 11y ago

Why not start with affiliate links to Amazon? It's minimal effort on your part, and you can see what your users are interesting in purchasing. Even when you eventually have your own inventory, it's worth throwing in affiliate links in case you discover that people watching your beauty content actually buy something else more often than your own products.

wootcamp 11y ago
Hi Trevor, thanks for the reply. We had that thought as well but we're from Southeast Asia with most of our traffic originating from here. Only some of the products related to our site actually ship here from Amazon and incurs international shipping costs so it might hinder orders. We'll still give it a shot since it can give us an idea of how the conversions do. Would you happen to have any further insights on if affiliate marketing really works especially when it comes to visual content?
- tlb 11y ago
  Or instead of Amazon, whomever your customers currently buy from. The affiliate revenue isn't the most important thing: the important thing is to find out what your users will buy. Once you know that, you can invest in inventory. For beauty products, affiliate marketing works great. That is how the e-commerce world should work: you show users the results they can get with such-and-such product, and you get a percentage of sales.
  - wootcamp 11y ago
    If its not by affiliate then maybe we can find a way to accept pre-orders for a bulk purchase. We notice there are lot of products used by our audience that are not carried by local distributors so they find ways to import it themselves. Right, didn't think about sales for the sake of getting data. Currently we have a way to map out the products our users use most and made an assumption that these are the ones that they will buy. Would be interesting to compare the data and see if it matches. Hope the conversion works out well once we activate it. Also just to share that showing users the results they can get with these products is exactly what we do and its in a visual manner, especially since this industry is driven by imagery. Would love to continue this conversation in a private space if there’s any chance for it. Anyhow thanks for your input and we’ll be sending in an application for YC!