 Okay, so this video is gonna be the last video. I'm gonna be talking about generally e-commerce strategies or stuff, and also the last time I talk about if you wanna work with me on agency level or buy any of the courses that I have as well, any of the digital products that I have, then this is the last video for that and I'm gonna put the links down below for you to check it out as well. Okay, so I'm gonna try to condense like over three years, $10 million of e-commerce sales done, basically. Okay, if you are really, this is like, you've never seen me in my life. Okay, you probably should shut off the video. Okay, but if you've seen channel before and stuff like that and just wanna very, very quick summary, hopefully I can do this within eight, 10 minutes. For example, this is everything you need to know to be successful in e-commerce. It's not difficult, okay, really. Once you understand e-commerce, right? It's not difficult, okay? So it's really all execution afterwards. So obviously you need to actually be good at what you do. If you're not good at what you do, then no matter how much you know, you can't execute anyway. That's why ideas, if you steal my viral product, if you steal my winning product, right, it doesn't matter, you still need to execute. So that's why I'm not scared why people copy me and stuff like that, right? Because it's like, you still need to execute at the end of the day, okay? So let me go down the line of what I'm gonna be talking about in terms of what you need to know to actually be successful in e-commerce, okay? So you need to, as I'm looking from the standpoint where you are an e-commerce business owner, okay? So you own a Shopify store, you own an FBA store, okay? Mostly on Shopify, like you own your own ecosystem and stuff like that, okay? So these are the things that you need to know, okay? So I'm gonna be talking about what you need to know for marketing, what you need to know about product and how to scale. And when I say scale, right, I don't mean like one, $2 million. How to scale to five, 10, 12, 15, like mail per year, for example, okay? And then lastly, I'm gonna be talking about how to, like actually a supply chain, sorry, supply chain, okay? So let me start, okay? So for marketing, especially digital marketing, okay? So the skills you need is copywriting. You definitely need copywriting. If you cannot write copy, right? It's very, very difficult for you to really survive because everything on the landing page is normally copy. So if you do not understand human psychology, you're gonna get destroyed. So if you are a beginner and you literally have no skills or you have like no money and you just wanna get something happening, right? Copy is the number one thing that you need to know, copywriting, okay? Number two, it's really, e-commerce is simple. You are driving traffic from somewhere to a landing page and you are getting people to buy on the landing page. So you're just driving traffic to your page. It's not very, very difficult. So that is media buying. That's the second thing you need to know. Number three, you need to know is conversion rate optimization. So like understanding why people buy, why they don't buy and also how to place things on your product page and landing page that you actually, how do you actually sell those things, okay? Yeah, human psychology. And number five is video advertising. So if you are in the physical product business, especially, you need video ads. If you have no video ads, right, it's very, very hard to scale. Obviously, if you can do clothing and stuff, it's easier, but video ads is still king nowadays, okay? So you need to be able to know how to shoot video ads. So that's videography, that's knowing what converts and seeing what types of creatives that are actually performing on the advertising channel. So Facebook, Google, TikTok, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, so that is the marketing side. If you can nail down, honestly, these three things which is media buying, copywriting and conversion rate optimization, right? You can make a lot of money, serious, okay? Because a lot of people don't know how to do that. And not only that, a lot of people sell Facebook ads, for example, they sell whatever, blah, blah, blah. Okay, they, sorry, sorry. Yeah, they know how to do these things, but they don't know how to do it as full stack. So a lot of marketers, right, they are a one trick pony. They are like copywriting. They are like a media buying person or whatever. Okay, it's very, very difficult or expensive to hire a full stack marketer which knows everything because they can go in there, they can go into the business, they build out the entire funnel, they drive the traffic, they drive the creative, everything they do, right? That is the sort of person that you technically have to be if you want to be an agency owner, be a whatever, but yeah, that takes time, especially if you have zero knowledge. But if you're on this channel right now, you probably don't have zero knowledge. You're not a scrub, okay? So that shouldn't be the case for you, okay? So that is the marketing side. If you wanna be a digital marketer and like seriously, like make a ton of money through there, that you just need to know these things, okay? You can also pot over the skillset. If you learn all these things, right? You can go into any industry, serious, okay? So like I have ran ads for, I'll just tell you, okay? So I've ran ads for people who have gone on to Shark Tank, for example, we scale the company and the company goes on to Shark Tank, for example. We help apps, we help services, we go lead generation. We help like graphic design. I help even, for example, BTS, Big Hit Entertainment, right? For example, they reach out to me, ask for advice and stuff like that, right? So it's quite crazy because if you think about it, I'm just someone sitting in my bedroom, right? So if you know the skillset very, very well and if you can produce results, right? Anybody will pay you any amount of money to produce results for them. So generally, if you become, try to become a full-stack marketer, don't be a one-trick pony, is what I'm saying, okay? So that is digital marketing for you. Second thing is product, okay? So a lot of the times, right? Especially the online entrepreneurs, all they sell is marketing. It's like, oh, you need to be good at marketing, et cetera, et cetera. But people don't understand that the product itself is fundamentally what you're selling, what people are paying you money for. So a lot of the times, there are a lot of marketers, right? Especially dropshippers, they can get to $123 million per year, for example. They're very, very difficult to scale beyond that because the product is simply not good enough or simply not viral enough or good enough for other people to recommend it. So in terms from a product quality standpoint, they can't compete with other people in the marketplace. They are just a promotion company. So they can go to $0 to $1 million very, very fast, but they're unable to scale purely because the product sucks or whatever it is, okay? So in order to scale or see 100, 200, 300K months for example, you actually need a good product. You need product market fit, okay? If you cannot solve cold traffic, okay? You're not gonna make it. What do I mean by cold traffic? If you go into cold traffic, right? You sell to people who do not know you, do not like trust and respect you, right? And you're unprofitable, you're gonna die because you're burning money acquiring the customer, okay? If you are able to get cold traffic, break even or profitable, then you can scale, okay? So a lot, if you see the other case studies or other videos on this channel, for example, right? A lot of them solve cold traffic. That is why they can scale, right? If you cannot solve cold traffic, you can forget about running the business because it's honestly very, very difficult. You don't have venture capital here. You don't have funds or big billion dollar wallets or like $15 million in funding, for example, to just go and spend and be reckless. You can't do that. You have to be bootstrapped and profitable, right? So if you wanna do that, you need to solve cold traffic. That's the first thing. That's why in the marketing skillset, you need to know how to write copy. If you do not write copy, write your script, like serious, okay? That's the second thing, okay? So the next thing in product is that in e-commerce, you'll be surprised, okay? I talked to a lot of people, right? So there are a lot of people in this space who have a lot of scarcity. They have scarcity mindset in this space. They think that if they share the ideas with other people and stuff like that, oh, they'll steal the ideas and stuff like that. Also, that is why you have to be very cautious, right? If you listen to anybody, you need to stick to people who actually know what they are talking about. So they actually have done something in their life, right? And you can learn from what they have done, right? If they're just talking and talking, right? You probably shouldn't listen to them, just being honest here, okay? Also, I receive a lot of DMs sometimes, and some of them spam, et cetera, et cetera, where people are too cheap to invest in themselves or invest in their business. So they don't want to hire, they don't want to buy inventory and stuff like that. And so if you never level up, right? You will never make it as well, okay? This is like, I don't know what to call it, law of attraction, whatever, BS, right? But it's serious, right? It's like, if you never level up yourself, your business does not level up. And that is the truth that people cannot handle, for example. Okay? The next thing is, in terms of product-wise, let me just tell you, in e-commerce, if you're selling physical product, it's actually quite easy to hit $1 million revenue, okay? And so people who are not at $1 million revenue now, you might be thinking, John is just speaking cap. But if you go and ask literally anybody who has done, at least a meal rev per year, for example, they're going to tell you one meal is actually very, very easy, right? It's just hitting three, four, five, six, eight, is the difficult part, okay? And to hit one meal, all you really need is one acquisition channel, one channel, sorry, what? Yeah, one marketing channel, one acquisition source, one messaging, and one persona, okay? So let me just say it, one channel, one acquisition source, one messaging, one persona. If you nail down these four things, right, and you're profitable, it's very, very easy to hit one meal. You just need to ramp up ad spend afterwards, right? So for example, like Vlad, Vlad, you hit 100K a day, right? Very, very simple, right? One meal rev is like nothing to you nowadays, right? Okay, yeah, so not a lot, sorry, lots of people can't make it consistently, right? They are unable to scale consistently because a lot of the times they're not running a business here, just running some traffic to a store. You're not actually a real business, you actually need a moat for you to actually scale up that revenue, right? A lot of people come in, can copy your products and stuff like that, so you don't have a moat, okay? So the only way to scale in e-commerce especially, especially if you're going in broad market, if you're going TikTok, Facebook ads, for example, right? The only way to scale is for you to have broad offers that everyone can buy, okay? Let me repeat that. You need to have broad offers everyone can buy. If you run ads, right? And not everybody of them can buy. And so the targeting is very, very specific. It's very difficult for you to be profitable, especially because of iOS nowadays, okay? So you either sell broad offers everyone can buy or you sell high ticket or you sell recurring, okay? So let me repeat, broad offer, high ticket, recurring. If it's not any one of these, right? I'll just say that it's very difficult to do business in general, or it's very hard to be profitable, okay? It's not like you can't make money, it's just difficult. And if you are running a business, you probably don't want to do things that are difficult. Am I right? Right, I don't know about you, but I don't want things to be hard. I want things to be easy. If it's easy, that's why you have Peter Teal competitions for losers, right? You don't want things to be, yeah, you want to be easy because if you are really the monopoly in the space, you're gonna just kill it. And that's why you can scale very fast. Once you scale right, it's very, very hard for people to come in purely because you have a mode already, okay? So that's the only way to scale, okay? And the last thing is supply chain and when people copy your product, okay? So keep in mind, okay? There are a lot of people who will source their products from China, from Germany, from Vietnam, or whatever it is, whatever country you're sourcing from, even from the US, for example, you sell supplements, okay? People are gonna copy your product, okay? So for example, the supplier, or whoever it is, your sourcing agent, right? You're gonna sell a ton of units. They're gonna see the orders come in and they're gonna try their hand at competing against you as well. So if you don't have a good relationship with your supplier, they're gonna basically directly compete with you, right? And they're gonna take your product, they're gonna sell it in the same market as you. Sorry, they're gonna make your ad spend less profitable as well, okay? And so that's one side of things, okay? Your own supplier is gonna copy you, number one. Number two is that your supply chain is harder than you think, okay? So a lot of the times, especially us online people, we don't see anything, right? We are like online, everything's online, there's no physical stuff, right? So supply chain is actually very, very important, but you don't see the backend of the shipping, the packaging, the fulfillment, the boxes, the logo, the SKU, the planning, inventory planning, cash flow, if you need to buy inventory, for example, you need to, you know, if you start, you start scaling, right? And then most of the time people fail because of cash flow. So they can drop ship, not an issue, but if they're buying inventory, for example, they need to buy 10,000 new units. You don't have 10,000 units of cash just sitting around in your bank account, right? So you cannot, you know, buy more. So you generally need to loan, take a loan, for example, and then you need to leverage that. And then you're banking on the fact that your ad spend in the future is profitable for you to basically sell your entire product. So cash flow is gonna be a situation, it's gonna be an issue, especially if you don't have someone dedicated working that department for you, for example, okay? Yeah, so that's basically the e-com sign of things for cash flow and stuff. Okay, you definitely need an expert, so go and hire an expert if you have that cash and stuff like that. Okay, and then the last thing is that if you don't make at least five mil per year in e-com, right, it's actually not worth it. So I just break down the numbers for you, okay? So people don't understand, like actually running a business is very, very difficult. You need to pay employees, okay? You need to pay Stripe conversion fee, which is 2.9% plus, 30 cents for every single transaction, okay? You need to account for refunds sometimes. You need to account for shipping fee. You need to account for cost of goods sold. So if you have ever done an accounting class, you know this, but if you run a real business, you really know this, right? You got so many things that people don't see. People only see the top line, okay? So if, for example, you make five mil per year, which is I think 450,000 per month or something like that, right? And then you still need to pay all of these things. Okay, sorry, I forgot. You need to pay for ad spend, right? People forget about that. So if you're not even good at marketing in the first place, it's very difficult. Your ad spend is gonna be like massive, right? So it's gonna be very, very unprofitable. That's why a lot of companies nowadays, they make like three mil and then they spend like 2.7. And then after cost of goods sold, for example, they're unprofitable, right? So it's a very, very dangerous situation, especially in that scenario. So you don't want that to happen, okay? So let me say again, you need to make at least, or you need to try, try to make at least five mil per year top line, okay? Because five mil per year, 400, for example, 400K per month, right? You pay employees, for example, four, five, six, 10 people on your team, whoever. That's what, 30,000, 60,000 people on your payroll, for example, right? And then transaction fee 2.9%, so that's a bulk of it already. Your cost is a good sold, right? If you don't price correctly, you're gonna get screwed, okay? So you need to have at least, for example, like 30, 40, whatever percent of your cox is going out the door already, and then shipping fee. So like nowadays China supply chain, US, right? The shipping fee is very, very expensive, right? It's much higher than most of the time. So that is like gonna into your margins once again. So if you see the entire game is like, if you're not making that amount of money, right? It's very, very difficult for you to pull cash out of your business because you need to buy inventory once again, okay? And so e-commerce in general is more difficult than it looks, okay? The revenue numbers look very good, but if you know that in the D to C space, for example, Casper, Casper mattresses, right? Did you know they're not even profitable? I didn't even know that. And then I went to do some research and stuff like that. And then they're not even profitable. So even if the, sorry, Warby Parker, Warby Parker, you know the sunglasses brand, the sunglasses brand, right? I don't even think they're profitable if I'm not wrong. And I think they are listed company as well now. So like if those companies, the biggest guys in the space, right? Obviously they're going for scale. So if they spend money, it doesn't matter. They don't care. They just raise more capital and stuff like that. But you as a bootstrap entrepreneur, you need to think about these things. For example, that is why most of the time, the number one choke point for people is acquisition. It is acquisition, okay? It is not supply chain. If you have money, right? You can just buy how much supply chain whatever you want, right? But if you cannot solve acquisition, that's why it's the most painful pain point, okay? And that's why if you like build a real company, most of the time e-commerce, most of the time, you are looking to either have consistent cash flow or you want to sell the company. So for example, you run your company, you go three to four years, for example, and then you sell that company in the future, right? And then that company, you can liquidate for X amount. You sell to a PE firm, you sell private equity, you sell the venture fund, whatever it is, right? And then you sell to Unilever, right? A lot of the CPG brands basically sell to those people as well, right? And then you have a big cash out. You have a big payday and congratulations. But if you think about it, right? For every like 10, 15 successful exits in the space, there are a ton of people who lose money and just die, okay? So obviously you look at the upside and you are seeing that, okay, a lot of people are successful, but also don't forget, there are like a ton of other people who fail at this, okay? So you just need to really, really understand how you're running your business because a lot of the times as the operator, sometimes you're not good enough and sometimes it's okay to say that, okay? So you really need to level up in terms of entrepreneur because if you're just a level one entrepreneur and everybody in the market, right? It's a level 10 entrepreneur and they have more money than you. It's very, very difficult to compete, very, very difficult. And that's why people sell dreams of or drop tripping and stuff like that, okay? So let me, I'm gonna close off. Sorry, it's gonna be quite long, sorry. Yeah, but basically you think about it now, right? So as the e-commerce market seasons and matures, for example, right? So the big guys are coming into the space. All of the brands, right? Every single brand you can think about is running Facebook ads at this point in time. They're running TikTok ads alongside your brand as well. So in terms of competition, right? Let me put demand and supply, okay? So in terms of demand, right? Ad inventory is there, it's fixed already. I can't see any more people on Facebook, going on to Facebook. So in terms of ad inventory, you are limited already. And then in terms of advertisers, it's going to cap out already because everybody is forced into advertising because of COVID, for example, right? They are forced to go online, right? So in terms of competition, competition is the highest and most supply chain cost shipping is highest the most plus iOS stuff is really like making everything very, very difficult, for example, right? So you just need to think about what is your competitive advantage? It is not that e-commerce is not feasible. I'm just saying it's more difficult. And because it's difficult, right? You need to level up your business. If you don't level up the business, right? It's very, very difficult for you to see any reasonable or like the big exits that you wanna see is what I'm saying, okay? Okay, right? It's like, if you really wanna grow, you really need to compete. And if you wanna compete, you need to level up, right? If you don't level up, right? These level 10 guys, right? So who are you competing against? For example, Coke, whoever it is, they're coming out of Facebook, they're spending money. So technically, they're your competitor, technically, right? So they are level 10 because they are very well capitalized. They have more money than you and me and whoever and everyone, right? They have more money than everyone. So if they throw money and they lose money, they don't care, okay? That's number one, right? Then number two, they have teams of people. So you might think that, oh, I have a team already. I have like a remote team, four or five people, for example. These guys have like 30, 40 people on one single project, okay? So you're competing with those guys. They have more people, they move faster, they have more money than you, for example. So you need to have a competitive advantage. That is why in the last video, for example, I keep talking about you need a mode, you need a mode, for example, okay? Yeah, so that is really how you succeed in e-commerce. It is not as easy as it seems as people see it is. And maybe my videos, I'm so sorry. Maybe my videos, the way I portray it is like super easy, right? But every single day is a slog, right? Every day I open up the ads manager, I check the sales dashboard and stuff like that on Shopify and then I see and then it's like, if there are some days that are down days, right? Then it's like, oh, shit, okay? What do we do? How do we fix this? How do we try the problem solve to help reduce the cost acquisition or increase lifetime value and stuff like that, okay? So yeah, that is basically $10 million of e-commerce knowledge in 20 minutes. Whoops, I thought I could do it in eight minutes. Okay, yeah, and basically this is the last video that I'm gonna be talking about, e-commerce and stuff like that. I think I've said everything in that space. And if you still wanna work, for example, this is the last time I'm gonna promote e-commerce stuff. If you wanna work with my agency, you make at least a meal a year already, you can click down below. If you wanna buy any of the courses, okay? I have a $37 e-book that you can buy. I think it's the best thing in the market, but obviously, yeah, like everybody who has bought it, I think it's quite happy, I think. Yeah, so I think it's really, really good buy. And then if you want, there's a $399 Facebook Ads Mastery course at the end, sorry, the second one. And then the third one is a flagship program which is basically a 6K offer. But if you don't make at least 50K in the next 12 months, for example, I'll just give you back your money, basically. But if you actually work hard and know what you're doing, which if you go through the course, you know what you're doing, there's no way you don't make 50K, okay? People in e-commerce is like, if you don't make at least like a meal per year, for example, you're like poor. It's very, very funny. It's a very, very funny culture, but that's basically e-commerce culture, right? Okay, so yeah, thank you so much for watching. I can't believe you're still watching up to this point. And yeah, so in terms of the direction of this channel, we're gonna move into gettingpaid.io. So if you're interested in selling online courses, digital products and have a scalable income, basically, scalable income, yeah, okay, so okay. So that one's a different side thing, right? Moving forward, gettingpaid.io, okay? But I'll just give you the caveat, okay? If you are actually good at product, how do I say this? If you're good at product, like physical products, you can design physical products with a competitive edge and actually create really good physical products. I actually do encourage you to stay in e-commerce. Like to actually be in e-commerce. E-commerce is actually a great way if you're good at physical product and you can build their mode generally and you can systemize teams and stuff like that, okay? So yeah, so that's pretty much it from me. If you're watching this, you're a legend because it's 20 minutes in and I'm talking to you with my FaceTime camera, okay? So thank you so much. Yeah, hope to see you soon and yeah, stay tuned for more content. If you do unsubscribe, I'm so sorry to see you go, but no worries. And for the people, I do wanna help and for the people who are still watching, for example, yeah, thank you so much and see you soon. Okay, I don't know why I'm saluting you. I don't know how to end all this video, but yeah. Anyway, okay, thanks so much, yeah.