E-commerce Power

Author – Jason Miles

The Goal – Eliyahu Goldratt
Blogging for E-commerce
Pinterest Power
Warfighting
The U.S Marine Corps Book of Strategy
Tactics for Managing Confrontation General A.M. Gray
The Book of Five Rings – Miyamoto Musashi
The Art of War – Sun Tzu
The Art of War for Executives – David Krause
Phrases that Sell
The Adweek Copywriting Handbook – Joe Sugarman
YouTube Marketing Power
Priceless, the Myth of Fair Value – William Poundstone
Financial Management for Small Business – Edward Raush
No B.S. Pricing Strategy – Dan Kennedy
Double your Profits – Bob Fifer
Pricing Strategies for Small Businesses – Andrew Gregson
Craft Pricing Power
The Long-Tail- Why the Future of Businesses is Selling Less of More – Chris Anderson
Marketing Warfare – Al Reis, Jack Trout
Growing a Business – Paul Hawken
Positioning – The Battle for your Mind – Al Reis, Jack Trout

“Even a small amount of power can have a great effect when concentrated on a certain area.” – Satoru Iwata

The Internet is becoming very good at making very small niches viable.

The error most ecommerce sellers make is that they don’t identify a small niche to operate in that is available to them.
Nor do they create a powerful brand to serve the customers in that niche with a vibrant and engaging website.

Instead of trying to invade someone else’s island, new sellers should work hard to identify a small opening in the market, then figure out how to dominate it professionally.

Learn the ecommerce trade, rather than just the ~~tricks of the trade~~.

The Ecommerce Engine Flywheel: GOALS → BRANDING → PRODUCT → PRICING → PRESENTATION → PLACEMENT → PROMOTION → GROWTH → back to GOALS

Goals: goal clarity. “Begin with the end in mind.”
Branding: create a powerful, engaging brand that customers love. This goes well beyond the name, and into the invisible aspects of the brand.
Product: Explore free, digital, physical products-a combination of products that satisfy your customers in holistic ways.
Pricing: Understand how to keep customers happy, while making a good profit.
Presentation: The use of words(copywriting) and images(photos, videos, and graphic art) are critical to ecommerce success.
Placement: Where you sell online is one of the most important decisions you can make. What marketplaces should you use? In what priority? Straight to Shopify? Only on Amazon? Both? When? How? Getting this right is critical to success.
Promotion: 9 Mountains of Traffic Model(will cover later)
Growth: The final step deals with profitable growth-in the area of staffing in particular. How you scale up and enable additional growth is vital.

Cinnamon, my wife, was insanely good at making doll clothes for our daughters’ dolls.
We started setting up online auctions to sell her doll clothes on eBay. It was a humble start for sure-but it was a start.
That fall, we upgraded to a better business model. We began selling downloadable digital sewing patterns on our own website.
Then in 2013, we launched an even better business model, a marketplace for sewing patterns, www.pixiefaire.com. We built it on the Shopify platform and started getting really good at generating traffic and doing online marketing. That site changed our lives.
On January 1st, 2014, roughly six years after starting our online business, I was able to retire from my 9-5 career.

There are so many business models that can potentially work online. Here’s a partial list:

retail arbitrage
garage sale-ing
wholesale arbitrage
online arbitrage
sample sales and liquidation sourcing
private label products
manufacturing and selling items you designed
handmade items
merch and print on demand items
self-publishing
online teaching/course creation
membership communities
coaching
social media influencer income
advertising/affiliate income
service work

Niche brand E-commerce model:

Create a powerful brand in a small niche.
Use it to sell a product that customers love.
Use marketplaces and sales channels wisely, including your own website via Shopify.
Grow a tribe of loyal and enthusiastic repeat customers.
Generate good income and scale up a team.
Run your business as an owner, rather than a technician doing day-to-day tasks.
Use it to give back and make a difference in the world.

In our model, we are going to emphasize building a brand and identifying a niche as a key component of the work. Therefore, the products you source will be laser-beam focused. They can’t be random.

Is my business model defensible?

Is my business model scalable to a large number?

Trading hours for dollars is no fun. That’s called a job-not a business.

Start with Goals

The scientifically proven best way to achieve a goal is to:

Write it down.
Formulate action commitments.
Send them to a supportive friend with a weekly progress report.

The most critical goals transcend money. They are about relationships, making a difference in the lives of people, creating a legacy, or supporting your family or community. Money is a tool to achieve an outcome.

What is the outcome you are trying to achieve?

Just by starting on the journey, entrepreneurs become aware of new and lucrative opportunities they would not have seen, nor taken advantage of if they had not begun.

Questions to help you identify your niche and goals:

What customer do you want to serve—what niche?
Why do you want to serve them?
What evidence do you have that you can serve them well, and that they’ll be receptive to you?
What does your dream business look like?
Will you work alone from the beach, or have a team of people helping you in an office from 9 to 5 Monday through Friday?
Will you be a well-known business owner with articles written about you, or a behind-the-scenes mogul with quiet but powerful success?
Why is having this type of business so important to you?
Is it about recognition of your work, money, a passion for making a difference, or something else?
What will it mean for your family or community if you create your dream business?
What will your life be like if you achieve your highest ambitions?
Can you crystallize a life mission or purpose you’re aiming for?
What pitfalls or problems will you have to avoid along the way?
How do you want to behave, as a result of achieving your big goals?
Are there character traits, behaviors, or personal development goals you want to master along the way?
Are there current activities you’re doing that need to change or stop to reach these goals?
What behaviors do you need to replace those activities to begin moving in the right direction?
How should you make those changes?
What’s your financial goal?
Who can you share these goals with that will affirm your dreams, speak positively and optimistically into your life, and encourage you along the way?

Q: What advice would you give to someone just starting out?
A: Make sure whatever you’re making or doing is something you genuinely love. Turning a hobby into a business is so hard. It will test you in more ways than you think you can handle, especially if you want to grow your business.

Q: Is there a tactic or strategy that you’ve tried that has helped you get noticed?
A: Social media is the best way to grow your brand-especially since you can use it for free.

Q: Anything else you’d like to share?
A: Customer service is the most important thing.

Create a Powerful Brand

“A Brand is a Promise. A Good Brand is a Promise kept. – Muhtar Kent

A brand is the most powerful ecommerce business asset you can create. It's the foundation of success. A powerful brand is more valuable than a product, patent, customer list, team, or even piles of cash in the bank.

If you can create a powerful brand early in the online selling venture, you’ll be doing yourself a huge favor.

The Iceberg Framework
Brands are like icebergs, where the bulk of the important stuff resides below the visible waterline.

Invisible aspects: These are aspects of your brand that you actively create and manage, but your customers do not directly see them.
Visible aspects: These are the aspects of your brand that you create and manage, that your customers interact with and directly see.
Social adoption: This is the response you get from individual customers and the community of customers that make up your niche, and is part of the brand-building effort.
Category leadership: This is the position you attempt to install yourself into that your customers ultimately vote for with their purchases.

The Bold Promise: The start of any good business brand is a promise. One bold promise. You promise something to the customer, and you deliver as they buy your product or service. The strongest coffee. The longest-lasting battery. The safest car. The funniest airline. Your promise makes you stand out. It makes you unique.

It needs to be a unique idea for your category.
It needs to be a permanent characteristic you cannot change.
It’s woven into all you do.

“What’s the most (insert a unique attribute) I can get for my customers?

Here are a few promises you could consider installing into your brand:

The strongest
The most secure
The most stable
The most certain
The most durable
The most reliable
The most truthful
The most conservative
The safest
The most reassuring
The most expert
The most authoritative
The most beautiful
The most intelligent
The smartest
The most creative
The original
The most elegant
The most stylish
The most compassionate
The most giving
The friendliest
The most progressive
The most innovative
The most exciting
The most adventurous
The most luxurious
The most contemporary or on trend
The most historically accurate

The Personality: When you are creating your brand, you want to think about the personality you want to project into the world.

You want people to like your brand-like a friend. Create a personality for your brand that your customers can bond with like they would a person.

Archetypes
Pick a common one that most people would be familiar with and begin applying it to your brand.

The Innocent: a pure, modest, and innocent characteristic or quality. Focused on purity and dignity. The innocent is angelic, clean, and humble.
The Outlaw: a rebel that revolts against the status quo, offers a counter-culture option, and makes an art form out of non-compliance.
The Caregiver: a kind-hearted soul that serves with respect and compassion. Caregivers want others to do well, and they work quietly to ensure others are blessed.
The Explorer: An outdoors enthusiast that lives to get outside, explore the wild places, and find their path.
The Hero: A victor or champion that strives for mastery. They push themselves to new levels of success and achieve world-class outcomes.
The Jester: The jester is someone that can make even boring things fun. An entertainer at heart, the jester tries to put a smile on other people’s faces and makes jokes a regular part of his communication.
The Magician: Magicians make dreams come true. Disneyland is a good example.
The Sage: Respected, thoughtful, and wise. Sage brands offer deep insights and uncommon wisdom.
The Regular Guy or Gal: This every man persona wants to get things done with no drama.
The Creator: This genius inventor is making things no one thought possible, and they make it look easy.
The Ruler: Kingly and in charge. Ruler brands portray an air of luxury and status.
Lover: The lover brand focuses on seduction and pleasure. They attract you with sensual appeal and draw you in with a call to intimacy.

The Author’s list:

The Hippie: The hippie brand is not age specific, but it represents ideals from the 1960s. Love, peace, relaxed, carefree living, and a focus on nature. When you add the hippie ethic to various activities, you get a whole set of spin-off ideas. Such as:
The Surfer (Hippie + ocean): The surfer persona is beach crazy. Good waves, good friends, good times.
The Homesteader (hippie + anti-city bias): The homesteaders are off-grid and rugged individualists that value freedom, nature, and simple living.
The Survivalist (hippie + anti-governmental paranoia): The survivalists have an anti-governmental theme mixed with a rugged individual’s attitudes.
The Earth Lover (hippie + nature lover): When a hippie and a homesteader have a baby, they are nature-loving folks with a hippie ethic. If in the city and wealthy, they shop at Whole Foods. If in the country, they grow their own or buy farm fresh.
The Cowboy: Cowboys and cowgirls are patriotic individualists that love freedom. They can be from anywhere in America, from Alaska to California, to Florida. This is another top-level archetype that can be combined with locations and activities to create lots of sub-archetypes, such as:
The Outdoor Enthusiast: Cowboys or cowgirls that like to hunt or fish. These country kids enjoy life outside on their terms.
The Urban Cowboy: City kids that like to act like they are from the country. Expensive jeans, baseball hats instead of cowboy hats, and trucks that never get muddy.
The Southern Charmer: Country living has a design all its own, a southern charm, and a focus on family, hospitality, and heritage.
The Nerd: The nerd archetype is a relatively new persona, but it’s becoming a modern classic. Like my other top-level personas, the Nerd can be applied to various locations and activities to create sub personas.
The Hipster: Young, on-trend, with a dash of panache from a by-gone era, the Hipster has developed as a cultural persona that doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon. This is about more than clothing choices; it’s a lifestyle.

“If you’re going to be something or have a product, go all the way, be extreme, be the best, be world-class, be the expert, and work the hardest.

Polish the Visible Brand Aspects

“Design is the silent ambassador of your Brand. – Paul Rand

Name
Logo
Tagline
Backstory
Colors
Fonts
Brand Rituals

Styles of Brand Names:

Last Name: Simply using your last name is a standard and effective naming option. It can work well for many types of products and companies in many niches. Famous examples in the Seattle area include Nordstrom and Boeing.
Compound Word: Putting two unique words together can form a compelling and exciting brand name. The most famous recent example is Facebook.
Portmanteau: A Portmanteau is a word mash-up—two words abbreviated together. Two famous examples are Microsoft (Microprocessor + software) and FEDEX (Federal + Express).
Initials: Initials can create a valuable brand name if you can find a way to explain them to prospects in a simple way. They also need to be memorable on their own. Sometimes they work well, and sometimes they don’t. Famous examples include U.P.S. (United Parcel Service) and R.E.I. (Recreational Equipment Inc.).
Descriptive: Sometimes, brands are most influential if they simply describe the product or the benefit to the customer. A well-known example is Whole Foods.
Neologism: A Neologism is Latin for a “new word.” Rather than trying to pick from the current dictionary, why not make up a new word? Well known examples include Kleenex and Xerox.
Geographic: A geographic name can be straightforward and persuasive. Also, they are generally more available than other name ideas. Popular examples include Kirkland (the Costco brand) and The Maui T-Shirt Company or Tommy Bahama.
Co-Opted: A co-opted (taken) brand name can be very successful. The strategy is generally to take an existing word and re-apply it to your product or company. Famous examples include Apple, Alphabet, and Amazon. Each had a meaning before the company took them as their own.

Tagline: descriptive statement or slogan:

Like A Good Neighbor, State Farm Is There
A Diamond Is Forever (DeBeers)
Be All You Can Be (United States Army)
Breakfast of Champions (Wheaties)
Do the Dew (Mountain Dew)
Eat Fresh (Subway)
Good to The Last Drop (Maxwell House)
Got Milk? (California Milk Processor Board)
I Want My MTV (MTV)
It Takes A Licking and Keeps on Ticking (Timex)
Just Do It (Nike)
Pizza Pizza (Little Caesars Pizza)
Taste the Rainbow (Skittles)
When It Absolutely, Positivity, Has to Be There Overnight (FEDEX)”

Don't even consider for one minute the idea of buying a lesser URL extension other than .com.

Create Engaging Brand Rituals

“It’s about leading and connecting people and ideas. And it’s something that people have wanted forever.” – Seth Godin

“Brand building is work you do with the hope of influencing the opinion of others. You want to break through the noise and create awareness in the mind of key people by installing your name, logo, and significant promise into their life. Then you want them to take action to choose your product over the competition repeatedly.
Your goal is to have them know, like, and trust you; to be a solution to a specific problem they are facing. You want them to see you as the leader in solving that problem ultimately. You want them to remember you so well that they repurchase again and again. Furthermore, you want them to mention you and your product to a friend with confidence when the timing is right.
The pinnacle of brand adoption is when enough people go through that process, then begin to identify each other socially because of it—organized by your brand. You want a tribe to be born. Devotees.”

“As tribe builders, our job is to engineer a campaign of social acceptance and adoption so that prospects see our product as the inevitable choice and begin using it. They believe it’s the smart thing to do and that everyone else is also making that same decision.
The reality is that customers are social creatures. We follow the crowd. We take our signals from other people. Likewise, we like what other people like. Furthermore, we choose what we see other people choosing. Social proof is a shortcut to decision-making.”

The Power of Product Reviews and Testimonials
The simplest way to reinforce the idea that you are successful and need to be considered by new prospects is by liberally using customer reviews and testimonials as widely as possible. Get them in front of your prospects.

Ask your customers for their reviews and feedback. Do it in your descriptions, on your packaging, and your website. Encourage them to tell their stories of success with your product. Be a collector of reviews.

Creative Brand Rituals
Expert brand builders are masters at creating rituals. Ritual Methods:

Regularly scheduled events
Purchasing ceremonies: box opening, buyer bragging(share on SNS), keepsake packaging(a package that has a purpose after the purchase)
Loyalty programs
Displays of support

Launch your First Successful Product

Generally, the simplest way to find out if your product is going to be a good seller is to sell it via a large marketplace.

One Product away from Success
The good news is that you are only one product away from having a successful small business; one product away from living a new and exciting lifestyle, getting out of debt, upgrading to fancier things, removing the stress of financial insecurity, and making your financial future bulletproof. Just. One. Product.

Nothing can solve the problem of a bad product.

Your opportunity is clear:

Identify a niche with a smaller, but valuable TAM.
Find the right product for your micro-niche, and then develop other products they will like.
Brand it with professionalism in terms of the name, logo, website.
Scale it up to a number that liberates you financially.
Stick with it and install yourself as the category leader in your very small, but financially rewarding niche.

Attributes of a good product

problem solver
loyalty creator
sourceable
defensible
high margins
purchase frequently
high price point
pricing power
high switching cost

The only time you can sell a low-margin product for the long term is when you're doing it as a part of an integrated product suite. Aka "loss-leader"

“I’m suggesting that your best idea for a business will be something that’s deep within you, something that can’t be stolen because it’s uniquely yours. Anyone else, trying to execute it without the unconscious thought you have given the subject, will fail. Begin where the tool breaks, the service slips, where the shoe pinches.“

Product brainstorming questions:

Can you enhance the commonplace?
Can you raise the ante?
Can you reveal a business within a business?
Can you restore a business that’s been lost?
Can you be the complete provider?
Can you be the low-cost provider?
Can you make it fun?
Can you bring it online?

Creating your Integrated Product Suite:

Product level 1: Start by brainstorming 2~3 free products or content pieces that can be delivered instantly to customers via your website and will add real value to them as gifts. It could be a free report, a technical manual, or an e-book. The goal is to use these products to get people’s attention and collect their email addresses.
Product level 2: Look for low-priced items that can deliver high volume. You might not get much profit, but you’ll start to create a customer base in your specific niche.
Product level 3: Begin to look for mid-level priced items that you can affordably deliver. As you start to stack these types of products on top of your free and low-priced products, you’ll begin to create real revenue in your space. This might be an educational program or a “done-for-you” service.
Product level 4: High-priced items that you can sell infrequently, but have high revenue. This might be an event, such as an auction or conference, or another high-value product offer.

Scale Up and Beyond One Product

“Great companies are built on great products.” – Elon Musk

Product audit: “I sell X number of (product name) each month. My average price is X amount. That adds up to X each month and X for the entire year. This takes me X number of hours and requires X dollars of expenses.”

As a rule, marketers are looking for a sales markup of three or more times the cost of the product. Five times is a better target.

Questions for Scaling:

Can you affordably make or purchase the product you want to sell?
Does it require low upfront investment or cost-of-goods-sold(COGS)?
Is the product concept scalable?
Is it a business asset for a commodity?
Do you love doing it or managing it?
Is there a position available to you in the marketplace?
Can you be the market leader?
Can you create a sub-category and be the leader in it?
Will it enhance or strengthen your brand?
Will it lead to additional, higher sales of another product?
Will it take away sales from your primary product?

The Costco-sized packages are a product strategy that allows Costco to lower prices on a per-unit basis. Customers buy more than they want, but at a price they can’t resist. This is both a pricing tactic and a product packaging tactic combined. It’s a genius-level product maneuver.

When to walk away? – One of the hardest decisions to make as an entrepreneur is the decision to walk away from an idea or product. Generally, you should be able to go through that process in 18~24 months. If you can’t make progress toward income goals in that time frame, then you need to consider moving on.

Develop your Pricing Strategies

Your job as an entrepreneur is to master the game of pricing in a creative and interesting way. You want to become the smartest price in your niche. Become the person that has studied the most, tested the most, learned the most, and ultimately made the most money by wisely pricing your product.

13 Pricing Principles:

You need a pricing strategy
Don’t start a war you cant win – The best way to avoid a pricing war you can’t win is to sell direct to consumers on your own website.
Align pricing and marketing
Align pricing and business goals
Pre-selling creates pricing power
Timing creates pricing power – back-to-school | Mother’s/Father’s day | wedding/funeral
Location creates pricing power
Price is relative – The best-selling product in any niche holds the anchor price.
There is no perfect price
Differentiation creates pricing power
Free is the most powerful price
A good business has pricing power
Charm prices have power – sale/discounted price. Prices that end in 9.

Commodity: A class of products for which there is demand, but which is supplied without differentiation or uniqueness.
So unbranded products are a commodity. Unbranded anything is a commodity.

Customers want you to be unique and charge a special price.
People are willing to pay a higher price if you give them a good reason. That reason is generally tied to how your product is unique. The more unique customers believe your brand to be, the stronger your pricing power.
Go for originality. Go for having a very different Unique Selling Proposition. Go for premium prices.

Free is your friend. Customer love it. Consider ways you can give generously to your customers. You'll be rewarded for it.

A charm price that has been specifically marked down as a discount price to point out that the new price is a legitimate discount, customers respond.

Master the Art of Presentation

“Good, engaging creative has one core feature: stickiness. Stickiness is the quality of something which catches our eye and makes us stop; something original, intriguing and enjoyable; something that pushes the attention button in our brain and makes us investigate further.” – Jimmy Maymann

The heart and soul of merchandising:

product photography
copywriting
video making
graphic art

9 Ways to Improve your Photography:

Learn as much as you can
Effectively use natural light
Don’t rely on the flash
Take more pictures
Don’t always put the subject dead center
Don’t forget to check the horizon
Don’t select a low-resolution setting
Don’t try to include too much
Use your camera a lot

If you shoot something like it is art rather than just a product, people take notice. When you use angels and composition to capture interesting details, you stand out in a crowded space.

"Never sell a product or service, always sell a concept." - Joe Sugarman

For clearer and more powerful copywriting:

Write clearly
Assume the buyer knows nothing.
Use stories.
Be complete.

People want an item out of emotion. People justify a purchase out of logic.
One of the most potent elements of copywriting is the use of emotional triggers to engage with prospects and then give them logical reasons that they should purchase it.

Always include an emotional trigger in your writing:

create a feeling of involvement or ownership
demonstrate honesty
show integrity
credibility
show value and proof of value
justify the purchase
customer’s greed
establish your authority
satisfy customer concerns through guarantees
explain the drama inherent within the product
fulfill a desire to collect
provoke curiosity
create a sense of urgency
fear
provide instant gratification
emphasize the product’s exclusivity, rarity, or uniqueness
storytelling
guilt
hope

Decide Where to Sell

“When the world changes around you and when it changes against you, what used to be a tailwind is now a headwind, you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining is not a strategy.” – Jeff Bezos

Ecommerce lifecycle:

Testing Phase
Growth Phase
Niche Leadership Phase
Exit Phase

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Free trial + 3 months for $1 per month

Mountains of Traffic

Google is keeping 49% of all search traffic for themselves. This is not to say that blogging and SEO isn’t vital. Thus, you need to build your own email list, create a strong brand, and learn to generate traffic on your own in multiple ways.

Build your Team

“Teamwork is so important that it is virtually impossible for you to reach the heights of your capabilities or make the money that you want without becoming very good at it.” – Brian Tracy

You need 5 mindsets to scale up a business successfully:

A Chief Financial Officer(CFO)
A Manager
A Talent Scout
A Long-Term Investor
A Short-Term Return-on-Investment

“How much will it cost me to do X, and how quickly will it start to pay off?”
If you don’t develop this near-term ROI mindset, you’ll destroy your business with bad decision making.

Time to Take Action

“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lured into inaction.” – Bill Gates

Ecommerce Black Belt Mastery:

White Belt: has a branded Shopify site live on the internet.
Yellow Belt: has generated a sale via their Shopify site.
Orange Belt: Has ongoing sales occurring via Shopify.
Green Belt: has achieve three months of $1,000 a month in sales.
Brown Belt: can generate $1,000 sales in 24 hours, at will(and has previously done it).
Black Belt: can generate $10,000 in sales in 24 hours, at will(and has previously done it).
1st Degree Black Belt: generated over $1M in sales via Shopify.
2nd Degree: over $2M
3rd Degree: over $3M
4th Degree: over $4M
10th Degree: over $10M
Shopify Sensei: over $10M or more