David’s meteoric rise to prominence on Shopify was no fluke. He wanted to take a step back and establish an authentic e-commerce brand, rather than just focusing on the standard Amazon FBA rank and money thing, with this current initiative.
“When I think Amazon, I think cash cow, throw a product up there, get as many sales as possible, rake in the organic traffic and make money, right?” David asserts. “But this time around we were like, hey, let’s build an actual business online and that’s exactly what we did.”
Following the launch of their own Shopify website, David and his team generated a significant amount of paid traffic using Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube advertisements. “Our goal was, hey, let’s double down, let’s build a big list, right? Let’s build a list of five, ten thousand customers.
Let’s build that list, let’s acquire emails, phone numbers, first name, last name. Getting all that data was really important to us, and also being able to launch more products, have more SKUs, and just expand our portfolio.”
As part of their marketing strategy, they worked hard to increase the number of followers on their various social media accounts. Using influencer marketing, they ran a study. Everything and nothing. Self-sufficiency was an absolute necessity for them. They couldn’t compete in Amazon’s marketplace because the space they occupied was too crowded.
Products with thousands of reviews would be competing against them. To avoid wasting time and money, they decided to wait until they had a list of customers ready to buy before launching on Amazon. Waiting for it was worth it.
“One of the big things that kind of helped us too,” David continues, “is the fact that we really built out a solid funnel. We built out a ninety day nurture sequence in emails. So that means, literally ninety days worth of emails, going out every day or every other day.
So that’s a lot of people seeing our brand name in their inbox all the time. And then we also did a lot of upsells and downsells, which you can’t really do effectively on Amazon yet. But that’s where the benefit of having multiple products comes in.”
It was only an issue of ensuring that they remained in supply after that. Keeping the momentum from suffocating by cutting it too close. More of the same is likely to be seen in the coming years. In order to maintain a solid relationship with their followers, they are always adding new items, boosting the size of their following, investing in content creation, and hoping for favorable word of mouth.
It is important to note that if you’re just starting out and trying to earn your first thousand or two thousands dollars per month, you should avoid doing the things that David has described above. Keep things as simple as possible at initially. There is nothing wrong with relying solely on FBA-only to accomplish your monthly revenue goal of $5,000.
It’s all about baby steps. There are a bazillion buyers on Amazon’s site. Start with that. Increase the number of sales you make. Get to know the ins and outs of the game. Improve your skills and abilities. Then broaden your horizons. There are much more moving parts with Shopify than with other platforms. Most importantly, you must be an expert in media buying, which is something that the majority of people do not possess.
If you’re wondering when David will provide a course on the hybrid model, you can rest assured that it is currently in the planning stages. Viral FBA will be the name of the game. It will cover both FBA and Shopify, as well as the numerous free and paid traffic strategies that they employ.
