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ferminriii1318 karma

Yeah, that's the "don't tell part". It's tricky. Sorry man.

ferminriii968 karma

That's why Conan stayed on the air too.

He had a bit every night where he would spin a coin his wedding ring to see how long he could keep it spinning. His whole shtick was talking about how with the writers on strike this was as good as it gets.

Fucking insane to think about how much work it took during that time.

EDIT - It was a ring not a coin

ferminriii595 karma

Why did you come out?

ferminriii537 karma

Could you please look into municipal cable franchise agreements? Why can't we buy cable channels à la carte? Why do so many places only seem to have one provider? Why is internet SO much faster in other countries? It's all in the franchise agreements! And people need to know they can help change it. It'll only take a few to topple to start a national trend. There's a place in TN that sells cable channels à la carte... The difference? No Monopoly (er, I mean franchise agreement).

Please.

EDIT: It wasn't TN (and I don't know if it's still the case). The place was: Glasgow, KY

ferminriii220 karma

For those of you who are asking how this works and are a little skeptical about if it is possible here is a brief explanation.

The idea is simple. He has a relationship with a company that makes stuff. They offer to sell him stuff at wholesale cost and ship it to the customer directly. So, he builds a site [which might look like THIS]. When he makes a sale an order is generated and the product is shipped to the customer. For this work he takes a cut of the profit. He has stated he only does sites which will provide a 50% or better margin. (Tough to come by)

Here is why: His sites probably don’t generate a huge amount of “organic” traffic. IE: That is traffic from people who say: “Hey, I want to buy some electronic cigarettes so I guess I will just Google it” Instead he has to “buy” his traffic because there is a good chance it will take a long time before his site can show up on the first page of Google results. This means spending money on PPC ads (those ads which show up at the top of your search results PPC). These can cost anywhere from 10 cents to 2 bucks per click (depending on your search term). So this has to be factored into his cost analysis.

He stated he looks for high search volume. This is because a low search volume product wouldn’t yield the “conversion rate” needed to turn a profit. For example: If he is selling socks on his site and someone buys a pair for $10 he keeps $5 of it. As long as it didn't cost him $5 to make that sale he just made money. To figure this out he would use a few numbers. For this example the math is easy. How many users clicked on the ad / how many users bought a pair of socks.

If he made one sale that day and 100 people clicked on the ad (totally possible) then as long as he didn’t spend over $5 on his Pay Per Click campaign, he just made money (minus any other overhead like servers and merchant fees). In this case that number needs to be below 5 cents per click. For “socks” this is possible but not probable.

But those are made up numbers to help you understand the basics. Lets apply some real numbers using a website conversion rate.

If our site converts at 3% (this is pretty high) that means for every 100 visitors three sales are made. Then we look at another metric AOV (average order value). Let’s pretend the AOV is $25.

How much money should we spend on PPC to justify a 3% Conversion Rate with an AOV of $25.

Let’s take 100 clicks per day average: 100 clicks = 3 sales = $75 How much could I spend MAX per click to make that money. Easy: 75 cents per click right?

You might say: Well what about organic traffic. Trust me; unless you are on the first page of Google your organic traffic is going to be small.

So what if I am only spending 20 cents per click on my traffic? For “socks” this is probable.

100 x 0.20=$20 With an AOV of $25 and three sales on 100 clicks we just made $55. 25x3=$75
75-20=$55

The cool thing about PPC is you can set limits too. So if you started with a $5k budget like the OP mentions then you can spread that out over 90 days really easy. $55 per day.

So the next question is: It sounds easy, so why isn’t everyone getting rich quick? The answer is simple. Most sites don’t convert at 3%. Especially sites you build yourself or build using a template.

What if your site is only converting at .75% (or less)? This is how you lose money and fast. I will let you do the math.

The easy answer is to pay attention to metrics and do some research into website optimization [NOT SEO] the SEO will come with time. Make sure your site is a selling machine. Not just a shit template you bought for $35 which looks like every other site in the world.

The eCigarette site I linked to above is my friend’s site and he is doing pretty awesome. [He got in early though]

I hope this helps.

TL;DR It can totally work but you need to do your research and make sure you pay attention to your key metrics.