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Congrats on your launch and success, and thanks so much for sharing a lot of useful info, apps, and stats! Appreciate it. I'm about to launch my 1st Shopify st

Congrats on your launch and success, and thanks so much for sharing a lot of useful info, apps, and stats! Appreciate it. I'm about to launch my 1st Shopify store in a very niche market. Some questions for you in that context... 1. When you came up with the idea for selling your products -- and it looks like you invested about 8K in initial inventory -- did you do any kind of research to see if there might be a need and it would take off, or did you go with "gut feeling" ? 2. How many days from the site going live did you make your 1st, 10th and 50th sale? 3. Did you spend any time at all "evaluating competitors" / existing ecommerce sites that sell your product(s) or things close to your product(s)? 4. Did you do any pre-launch marketing either offline (by way of flyers) or online (by way of ads) before the day the site went live? 5. Did you use any copy editor or stock images for your products, or did you do both copy and images (photos) of the products on your own? 6. How important is it to have a supporting blog / news section? Do you do it to drive traffic? 7. Any "hacks" you can share to acquire new customers and retain existing customers? What worked for you, what didn't? Thanks again! EDIT: Needed to see this in your conclusion. > On Instagram, you will see stories of millionaire dropshippers and other lies.

kentf 8y ago
Congrats on getting started, few people actually do. It's a celebration regardless of what happens. Now onto your questions. 1) I used the products myself and had friends asking me lots of questions. Dogfooding at it's best. 2) 3 days after going live I got my first sale. 3) No, except when it came to free shipping. 4) No, all SEO and intentful Facebook Ads 5) No, I used Hubba for pictures and product descriptions. And Unsplash for backgrounds. I am a software engineer that has been on the marketing side for 8+ years, so I know how to write good copy. But it's really not that important. Your products, pictures, and prices do 90% of the selling. 6) If you have a product that people want, and can target them with SEO + ads, you don't need content. I have two blog posts and definitely would love to do more social + content but I limit myself to spending 2 / hour a day on this per night. I am sure that if I invested in content, it would be a good investment. Just need to prioritize based on my self-imposed restrictions at the moment. 7) No hacks. Great products, hassle-free returns, fair prices and fast shipping :)
- justboxing 8y ago
  Thank you!

kentf 8y ago

Congrats on getting started, few people actually do. It's a celebration regardless of what happens. Now onto your questions. 1) I used the products myself and had friends asking me lots of questions. Dogfooding at it's best. 2) 3 days after going live I got my first sale. 3) No, except when it came to free shipping. 4) No, all SEO and intentful Facebook Ads 5) No, I used Hubba for pictures and product descriptions. And Unsplash for backgrounds. I am a software engineer that has been on the marketing side for 8+ years, so I know how to write good copy. But it's really not that important. Your products, pictures, and prices do 90% of the selling. 6) If you have a product that people want, and can target them with SEO + ads, you don't need content. I have two blog posts and definitely would love to do more social + content but I limit myself to spending 2 / hour a day on this per night. I am sure that if I invested in content, it would be a good investment. Just need to prioritize based on my self-imposed restrictions at the moment. 7) No hacks. Great products, hassle-free returns, fair prices and fast shipping :)

justboxing 8y ago
Thank you!