When will I make money

[thehappyappy]

I know this is a bit like asking how long is a piece of string but I'm getting a bit worried that I've not made any money yet. At the end of May we launched our business which allows people to search for various proteins and supplements depending on what their requirements are then buy them direct from the seller at the best price. So are we've had one sale and I'm a bit worried about why this is so slow.

We've spent around £50 on Facebook adverts but the sale we had didn't come from FB.

I'd be grateful if anybody could offer any advice on this please. I've not put the site address in the post because I don't want it to come up in Google says that we've not made any money.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Page]

Possibly never

What do you offer over Amazon

How are people going to find you - google ads - and then your margins are hit and ??

 

[MBE2017]

Without seeing your site and how you are trying to market your service it is impossible to say, but as with everyone else you are in a a very competitive market.

Success depends on out performing your competition, what extra value are you offering? As an example writing an article on the importance of vitamin D with a link in the article is IMO more likely to be used than a straight forward affiliate scheme.

 

[Mr D]

When you will make money?
When the customers come beating down your door to get your product. How likely they are to do that is down to you.

You spent £50 on facebook adverts. There was a guy on another thread spending a couple of grand a month on google ads.

What other marketing have you been doing? A million websites started up since yours, how are you standing out?
Are you getting visitors but they aren't buying? Are you getting low numbers of visitors?
You have done the right things on the website regarding SEO, tags etc?

 

[thehappyappy]

Thanks guys, I can't links at the meant but our site is <removed>

 

[wayzgoose]

Well I just Googled your first product and found plenty cheaper than you . . . and people are good at Googling these days !

 

[Anderz]

I Googled it too.

You have to have a traffic plan that works! Then you know if your website can handle it.

What do Google search control say at this point? Analytics? SEO done? What your product is listed at and what people in Google search for must match otherwise they will not find you.

When it comes to Facebook ads you need to learn how to use it and led with 1-2 products to start with making offers on that then tailor the ads to that and sort the people with the pixel option so you find the purchase ones.

Still you can get help by finding dedicated people on the topic to help you on Facebook ads and so forth on Fiverr and up work.

 

[finleydesign]

So you might need to step back a bit and re-evaluate your business model/plan, if you sadly dived in with a "build it and they will come" plan then this is where you will fail, so start at the beginning

1. Why would they buy from you?
2. Whats your marketing strategy (pleased don't say it's spend £50 on facebook)
3. Consider your sites layout, it's quite clean, but looks a bit USA if that makes sense, it's doesn't flow very well, tons and tons of choice which makes it look complex
4. What authority are you? Why should anyone believe you regarding comparisons/recommendations
5. Price - as above, product base tends to be led by price, how competitive are you

If you have done your planning well enough, you can kind of work out why they are not buying from you, if you have build a website in the ideal they everyone shares the same enthusiasm as you for the product range, than that again can be a red flag

 

[antropy]

We've spent around £50 on Facebook adverts but the sale we had didn't come from FB.

What else have you done in terms of marketing?

 

[fisicx]

I know this is a bit like asking how long is a piece of string but I'm getting a bit worried that I've not made any money yet.

You aren't going to make any money.

There is no point in investing any more time or money into this business. There is far too much competition all selling the products at better prices than you are offering on a range of platforms.

And it's not helping that you have a pretty naff website. Sorry to be so blunt but you aren't going to make this work.

 

[antropy]

You aren't going to make any money.

I found an old photo of @fisicx

 

[fisicx]

That made me laugh.

Still doesn't mean they are going to make any money though.

 

[antropy]

That made me laugh.

Still doesn't mean they are going to make any money though.

Well yes that's true and it's very tough.

I mean you can't stick up a website with noncompetitive prices and expect people to buy them.

 

[serendipitybusiness]

It may be negative but he may also be doing the OP a favour and saving them months and thousands trying to market and build a no goer. What many of you are missing is that this isn't even a supply site, it is a comparison site. Unfortunately the market you are in is extremely competitive and that is between the actual suppliers with more margin and repeat business value to attribute to their cost per customer acquisition calculations.

The OP has duplicated content therefore seo value is very low and will need to concentrate on marketing spend, facebook is hit and miss so no guarantees there. As it is a comparison site then even ppc would need to be constructed with more general terms.

Now for some basic maths, lets take the phrase Whey Protein for example. The suggested bid is £1.84 per click. At a average of 6% conversion rate, the cost per customer acquisition is over £30 on a £44.99 product tops, with what, an affiliate commission of 12.5%? Therefore net profit of £5.62, which means the op will need to sell over 5 units to break even or average retail spend would need to be around £250 per customer to make a little profit. As it is a comparison website, the user is new to the industry so not buying bulk and will likely buy one months supply to test it. As the average affiliate cookie lasts 30-35 days, the OP may get commission for the next sale but there is a chance they won't as many protein purchases are a months supply.

Therefore PPC is probably not going to be profitable. If you are looking for protein powder and don't know where to start, what is the first thing you do? Google it.

Therefore you are going to have to heavily invest in seo and content to be even in with a shot, bearing in mind the suppliers are doing the same thing, in a competitive market, with a large marketing budget. The OP could get very creative with their marketing and do some private advertising deals with companies serving their target market. However, the only problem here is that they are an affiliate so there is very little money in the pot to share and even then, there is the potential that their actual suppliers could come in, do the same deal and pay the company more as their margin is higher.

Sorry to say it but on the face of it, this one is a no goer unless you remodel the business plan from the ground up.

 

[antropy]

It may be negative but he may also be doing the OP a favour and saving them months and thousands trying to market and build a no goer.

Agreed that that is a possibility!

 

[Nico Albrecht]

It seems you use static manual links for your products. I clicked on a couple ones and none of them is in stock or available Also totally agree with this might be a bad idea. You need to spend 1000s a month in this market segment to get any sales