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Tell your email list when you sell out of a product When you actually sell out make sure you notify your list they gone. This may seem like such a simple no brainer, but many brands don't do this. Sending a thank you email for selling out can build your brand and tell your customers you care. (You should want to thank them anyways!) Sendint this type of email is very powerful This will build demand and urgency when they come back into stock. Give your website visitors a place to be notified when they are back in stock. Use the Klaviyo back in stock feature to insure that anyone who visits those sold out products can fill out their email and get in line. Movie Trailer Type Facebook Ads When a product has been sold out for a while, we want to hype that they are coming back. Even if the product isn't new, we treat sold out products almost the same as if it was a completely new product launch. We like to start running ads on a low budget to the sold out product page. The goal is to get people hyped up that they product is coming back in stock. Being very specific and setting a date and time is critical to turning a random back in stock into a true launch event. Reply Emails (Engage with your email list) As the launch gets closer we may ask our email list to raise their hand and reply back with a word for early access. This strategy gets people engaged with your emails, which means you have a better chance of landing in the holy grail inbox and not the promotions tab. We can tag those people to get early access which gets them super excited and builds urgency. Simple emails (Native to the platform) When you send your friend an email, do you send an overly designed newsletter with 10 calls to action or do you just blast plain text? As an e-commerce store you want to feel more native to the platform you are using. Mix it up and using plain text emails or lightly designed emails to give your customers a more native inbox experience. These types of emails can be very effective and building engagement and driving revenue - Send a mix of plain text emails - Try to use one call to action per email - Don't overly design your emails to feel like a brochure (It screams MARKETING - BUY THIS!)

When I think of making money online, it makes me think of those late-night infomercials, get-rich-quick schemes and those amazing Facebook ads that make it look so easy! Needless to say, there are a lot of people making money online by selling you on how to make money online, but never have made money online. It’s so meta. Remote work makes starting a successful online business "easier" With remote work now being the norm, most of us are working in our underwear and working from home, but how do you make money online for yourself? And enough money to replace your day job. Unlike the late-night infomercials, being “successful” in making money online requires actual real effort over a sustained period of time. Just like anything in life, I don’t walk up to the first tee at my golf course and expect to break par if I haven’t practiced everyday for years with a great coach. Making money online and building a real income is the same, you gotta put in the work. The difference from golf, is the fact that their are “gurus” equivalent to a golf coach that aren't qualified to coach! I don’t want to bash those that misled the industry but it drives me nuts! Regardless of the industry as a whole, you can build an online business to support the life you want to live. The easiest and quickest way to make money online (simple step-by-step guide) Start a service-based business in 5 simple steps Step 1 - Build a LinkedIn following and post about topics I already know. Be yourself and be authentic. Step 2 - Post helpful content around your consulting expertise on Twitter. Step 3 - Define your offer - This is the most pivotal piece of landing clients and building an online business. What can you offer that will provide value, save time or drive revenue for a business? Build out one service that you can have the biggest impact on a business. This is one of the reasons we built out an email marketing agency. We could easily measure and show our clients a high ROI on our service. This made paying for our service a no brainer, since your making them more money than the service itself! Step 4- Show your potential clients you can provide value by actually providing value! It’s so simple it actually works. Example: make a video showing a client something that is broken on their website and how to fix it. You may be surprised, they may hire you to do that! Software TIP: Use loom to make the videos, they don’t need to be perfect! Making a simple video of exactly what you would do for this business is the secret unlock to building trust. Once you land your first paying client. Keep going! I see so many people get distracted once they have a little success and they want to try something else. If you want to make real money online, you need to hone your craft just like your golf swing. It takes practice! It's so simple, it just may work!! The pros and cons of running a service based business online Online business owners have plenty of competition, but there is still room for you to start an online business today. Here are the pros and cons of starting an online consulting business around your expertise. Pros Easy to start Very low overhead No office needed Don't even need a website to start Depending on clients ROI - You can charge thousand a month per client Quick to start You don't need to buy inventory You don't need to buy advertising to start Cons Since it is so easy to start, it is very competitive Can be difficult to scale Must learn a skill that clients are willing to pay for (this is more of a challenge than a Con) Can be difficult to find your target market In conclusion: Starting an online business offering a service can be one of the fastest ways to make money online The beauty of consulting is the speed to cash. If you already have an expertise level in a specific field, it can help you build your online business even faster. Having clients on retainer can help you sleep better at night, since you won't be waking up with $0 in sales every morning like other online businesses, like ecommerce.

Selling your own online store is not easy, in fact, it is likely the hardest thing you will ever sell. Hopefully, the biggest thing you sell is as well. It was for my own business, which I sold in February 2022. Are you really ready to sell your online store? (Know all your numbers, not just net profit, profit margins, average net monthly profit, and sales) I first attempted to sell one of my online businesses in 2016, but I truly wasn't prepared both mentally as well as financially. The biggest thing that prevents an online business from getting to market or listing on an online marketplace is your bookkeeping. You should know your average net monthly profit every month as a baseline but having a detailed monthly P and L is critical to selling for what you deserve and fast. Are your books clean? Do they include other companies, personal expenses, accurate inventory, and the list goes on? Think about it from a buyer's perspective. How can a buyer trust you if you can't provide accurate and timely books? The ability to provide great books in a timely manner will make selling your online business 1000X times easier. Do you have an online sales forecast? (Save time by knowing this) This was probably one of the hardest things for me to put together for my investment bankers. I candidly have never put together a formal forecast outside of my inventory. The ability to put together an online sales forecast will give buyers confidence not only of your past performance give them much more confidence if you hit your forecast. This is key, dont miss this. A forecast that is way too high and is missed is a warning flag. Put yourselves in the buyer's shoes (If I was buying this company, would I want to know this) It is much easier to say than to actually do, but if you can truly picture yourself as a buyer of your business it makes the process of selling so much easier. This was the one mind-shift that allowed me to run a super clean process. Every time I was doing something to sell my online business, I would run it through my buyer's test. "Would I want to know this if I was a buyer?" Who are you going to sell your online business to? I have only sold one online business, so I don't have experience with every buyer profile that is out there. These are the most common type of buyers for companies that sell products online. Ecommerce Aggregators - Selling online is nothing new, but eCommerce generally has grown dramatically since the pandemic. More customers than ever are comfortable buying online. With that momentum, there has also been a large uptick of Aggregators. These aggregators typically buy one type of business like Amazon or DTC (direct to consumer). These seem to be the most popular for direct-to-consumer or Amazon brands like my eCommerce business sold. Strategic buyers - These would be a company that is similar to your industry but larger. Typically, you need to be fairly large to catch the eyes of strategic buyers. Other buyers also include private equity and individuals. The wild part of selling an online business is that you won't know who your buyer will be until you actually go to market. The reality is, you don't need a lot of buyers you just need the right ONE. Is your online business sales-ready? I truly believe that every business should be “sales-ready” at all timed…Because you just never know when an opportunity may come up to sell your Ecom brand or you may just want to do something else. Realistic Valuation (are you ready for the pay day?) First, you must be realistic about your business. Every business is special to the person that started it, but that doesn’t mean it will be valued at some insane multiple because you worked so hard to build it. It is a math equation, if you are not 1000% ok with what the net payout after fees and taxes will be…Don’t try to sell it. I recommend getting a few estimated valuations from 3-5 brokers and/or bankers. Everyone is guessing, but most will estimate higher in hopes of getting you to start the process of selling. I’m not saying this is done with malice but it can happen. I would run the numbers on the lowest multiple they gave and then you can do one of 3 things… 1- You can accept that your business may sell for x and be content. 2- Grow it to a number that gives you the net cash out you want. or 3- Just continue running as is. Are you actually comfortable with the potential payday? If so, go to step 2! Who should sell your online business? Next - this was a tough one for me. You will need to decide on how you will sell your business. Will you use a website broker (where your business is publicly listed with a price tag), will you sell it privately to someone you know, or will you use an investment banking firm that will pitch buyers for you in a more discrete way? From my experience, you should be really doing at least $1 million EBITDA but really over $2 million to use an investment banker. Their fees are high and many will only work with brands doing at least $3 million in EBITDA or higher. Every deal takes an impressive amount of time and effort, even small deals. Hence, why do larger investment banking firms only do larger deals? Online businesses (under $1 million in ebitda) may want to use a website broker If you are under $1 million Ebitda - a website broker who has a database of buyers may be your best chance of getting a deal done and they typically work with deals of almost any size within reason. Regardless of if you go with a broker or investment banking firm, I would ask them to do a “bake-off." I think it’s called that, but it’s a process they do all the time. They put together a deck of how they would position your brand, who they would pitch to, and my favorite part - how much they think it will sell for! This can take some time but is worth it to choose the right banker or broker to get you…because you will be working with them A LOT! Once you have chosen a banker or broker it’s time to get to work. I candidly never worked so hard in my life…but it was worth the effort. Dial in your marketing materials to sell your online business The next step is to get your CIM or deck put together- this will be painful for most. For the select few that have a firm grasp on their financials, it won’t be as bad, but still be painful. If you don’t have a bookkeeper and accountant that creates accurate monthly p and ls….STOP, you will not be able to sell your business. Having impeccable books and the ability to update them as the process goes on is the most important thing to getting a deal done. It took me roughly 2 years of prep to get to a place where our books were dialed in and could be updated at any given moment. This is the type of prep work that you have to do to get a deal done. And quickly! Stay organized and sell your business fast One of the most pivotal things I did pre-market, was setting up a Monday dot com board. Well, I set a lot of them up. I then uploaded all of my most important documents…All of them! I organized them in a logical way that I could actually search through. This way, when we went to market, I could present any document to a buyer, lawyer …whoever. I don’t care if you use google drive or Dropbox, but you need to have your documents in a place where they can easily be presented. This homework will give buyers confidence in your business and help you close faster. "Speed is a big part of a successful close, time kills most deals" I gotta take a step back, I feel like I’m lecturing Have fun as you sell your business (Even the fastest sale takes time) Selling your e-commerce business should be fun, and exciting and hopefully bring you a life-changing amount of cash! I wish I could say it won’t be exhausting, both emotionally and mentally but if you're ready it will be worth it. I hope! Once you provide your team with all their requested financials and information about the company. They will start marketing your deck and update you with any traction. I took it upon myself to try and find potential buyers as well. I’m glad I did! At this point, you will start to get a rough idea of what your business may be worth and what type of deal structure you may be looking it. Everything is negotiable! I found it 100 percent transparent, candid, and just open was insanely powerful to build trust and find a buyer that I wanted to sell to. Because both parties have to be happy for a deal to be considered a win. Collecting accurate data through the selling process and hitting your forecast is critical to getting a deal closed If you have received an LOI, it means your getting close but are far from closed. At this point, for my own store, I focused on collecting accurate data, hitting the sales forecast I set out, and lastly providing the data requested insanely fast. The best thing I did in the selling process, was what I did years before I decided to sell the business. I put together a detailed operating manual and hired experts to run each part of my business. This gave me tons of free time to focus on providing the buyers with the information they needed. If you are still working 40-plus hours a week in your business and need to hit the forecasted numbers, it's going to be difficult to do both. Selling your online business is like having a full-time job and I treated it like one. ' Due diligence doesn't haven't to be difficult I truly believe every small business owner should set up their own business for sale. You never know when you may want to sell and it is so much easier to make your business sellable from the first day you start selling online versus 3 or 5 or 10 years into running the company. I took a lot of time before I had my second child to make sure the business could operate without me, this was my secret to being able to provide all the information for due diligence quickly. A buyer will know you're serious and have a great business if you can provide info quickly and accurately. It only took me 2 kids to get my systems in order, but I am glad I did well before I went to market. Be clear on the transfer process and what you want life to be like after the sale Most of my offers had some contingency that wanted me to stay on, so it was incredibly important that I sold to someone that I could work with and for in the long term. You may get a number of offers and some may offer a better price but make sure you take into account the likelihood to close and ease of transition. There is so much that goes into selling an online business and everyone's experience is truly unique. Have fun with it, it's an amazing learning process and can provide more cash than ever running a business ever could!

I am never one to tell someone what to do. But I am selfishly wanting more people to break free from their regular 9-5 jobs so I can go play golf with them during the day. Nonetheless many still have to go to work each day for 40-plus years. This is the exact reason, I think you should start a profitable online business. So you can be your own boss and work when you want to. It is truly an odd experience when you are making money from an online website. I will never forget the moment that I got my first sale from my first online store in 2012. I sold something while I was on a boat Looking back at it, this was the epiphany moment that got me so excited about my online store and making an income from the internet. It was nearly 6 months into making the world's worst website when I took my wife on a boat ride. We had a small powerboat on the lake and went out for a cruise and to do some fishing. Occasionally, I would even get lucky and catch something. On this day, I don't remember catching a fish but I do remember the beep from my blackberry. It was an email from my online store. I can't recall exactly what the email said, but it was to the effect "You received an order - 001." My mind was instantly blown that someone I did not know would order some from my own website. Did I just become an internet millionaire? Absolutely not, but this gave me the initial spark and showed me that it was actually possible. This is the biggest hurdle because it seems impossible that you could actually sell something online, let alone online while you aren't working behind a desk. I was on a boat! Starting an online store is far easier that starting a traditional brick and mortar business Starting a traditional business requires a lot of capital, fixed overhead, and employees. I am personally a fan of running low overhead variable cost online businesses that just don't require as much of your time and money as traditional businesses. Not to say that you can't make a sustainable income from a brick-and-mortar business but you limit the scale you can take it. The true beauty of running online stores is that you can sell to anyone anywhere and it doesn't need a lot of overhead, unlike many small businesses. How many hours does it take to start an online business? I think it truly depends on the type of business you want to start. For me, I could work as many hours as I wanted or as few hours as I wanted because I could do it at home after work. This gave me the flexibility to spend time on it wherever I could not just on the weekends. The first time you start anything new it takes longer to do everything because it is new. The real benefit here is that you have the creative freedom that you would not have in the corporate world and if done successfully you could set up your day however you like. When I first started my online business I knew nothing and there wasn't a lot of helpful information out there, so I ended up working literally every minute I could. I do not recommend doing that. But for me, it was my true passion and I honestly loved it. If I did not love what I was doing there is no way I could have worked that hard. So no matter if you are just looking for a side hustle or make a little more income from an online business try to do something you actually enjoy. You don't want to turn this into work. Aren't all businesses now considered online businesses? The obvious benefit to running an online business is that you can truly run your own business from anywhere you have an internet connection. The pandemic which I don't love to talk about certainly fast-forwarded a lot of people's perceptions of what online meant and even transformed what work means. Remote work is the new normal now, which makes starting an online business easier than ever. You can't have too many income streams This was a huge eye-opener for me. The last job I had was in 2013 and I was fired the week before thanksgiving when I just found out my wife was pregnant. Did I think I was going be fired? Absolutely not! I was crushing it for the company I was working for. But regardless of my results, it did not matter, I was fired. This new perspective made me realize that any one income stream, whether from your corporate job or one online business puts you at some level of risk. I am not saying you should go out today and start 100 online businesses, but I think having 1 or 2 extra streams of income that aren't related will help you sleep at night. When I started my other online business in 2017, I already had a system in place to run my other company and made sure it would not interfere. When my new marketing agency started to provide income it was like a weight was lifted off my back. It took me years to build companies that can run without my dedicated time but neither would have been possible unless they were 100% online. Run your own business or businesses while having a day job The easiest time is to start now. Although I am running an eCommerce brand and an email marketing agency, I felt excited to start this blog. Both my other companies require inventory, people, and capital. But, starting this blog has been an extremely simple process. All I am doing is writing blog posts about my expertise. This is my first content site that I will be monetizing via ads, referrals, and some affiliate offers. The barrier to entry to starting a simple blog is very low, but it takes time and some relevant experience. When I try to start a new type of business like I am now, I take the following actions. How I break into a new online business vertical without any experience The first thing I do is try to find an authority in the space, someone that has actually had success doing exactly that. For this blog, I wanted to find someone that has be able to make a significant online income from ads. I will be doing an in-depth review of his course, but the community he has built has been amazing. Here is a link to his free course and what I am using as a framework to grow this blog with SEO. Once I find a so-called expert, I will take their course and see if it makes sense to me. I am not a great student, so I like businesses that even I can understand. After I do a deep dive into a new business vertical like monetizing a blog via ads, I like to hire an expert to coach me in 1-hour sessions. Each one-hour coaching session will be a hand-on-screen share. I don't have the expert do anything, other than tell me what buttons to press and their thinking behind it. This usually helps fast-track my hands-on learning and also help me see if they are actually an expert or not. If I think I understand something well enough, I personally will give it a try for a short period of time. Just enough time to see traction. Once I have some traction, I will then look for independent contractors, an agency, or a solo expert to do the actual daily fulfillment of the work. My best case scenario for working online is to learn it and then delegate it. The hardest part of starting an online business or any new business is that you need to actually know what you should be working on and get started. Once you break through that initial roadblock, you can start hiring and turn this into a business that doesn't require you to do all the day-to-day work. This is the only way to actually build a business not only that can scale, but also could be sold one day. This is the biggest trap I see for new small business owners, they feel so busy because they are doing all the busy work. It is so hard to delegate tasks and trust others to do it, but you must do it to scale any online business. Can you generate passive income from an online business? Truly passive income typically doesn't come from a business. You can absolutely build systems, hire and get free from 99% of any online business. But that doesn't make it truly passive. I would not start an online business if my only goal is passive income. I would rather try to earn money from an online business as I grow it into something that is sellable. The benefits of an online business Only need an internet connection and a laptop More scale than a local business Can work after your day job and on weekends Location independence Typically low cost to get started At a certain size, you could sell an online business (I did this in February and it changed my life) Don't need to work traditional 9-5 like in the corporate world Anyone can start an online business Making money online doesn't require you to exchange hours for dollars There have been many successful online businesses - proven A successful online business needs to be simple to start and stick with One of the biggest hurdles to starting an online business today is simply starting. But, starting online websites can seem overwhelming. There are seemingly endless options of business types that a business owner could choose from. I think to actually build a profitable online business you need to focus on one thing and that one thing you actually enjoy. Let me give you an example. There is a very famous social media icon who talks about providing value and just slamming social media content out on all channels. This is the type of advice that is far too vague to take action. What does value mean? What will I sell? What channels? How often? The list of questions on how to execute and the outcome is not clear. For this blog, I ran into the exact situation. How will I grow it, how will I monetize it and what simple strategy can I focus on that will grow it and let me have the creative freedom that I want from a personal website? As of today, my strategy to grow this blog is simple For me, I want to grow this blog by doing one thing. Writing content from my actual experience in e-commerce and running an email marketing agency. But not just write content for writing content's sake and providing "value." Although I want to provide value to anyone that is reading of course. Write content that will be found on google. Once I am ranked for a number of keywords, I will then monetize that organic traffic. That is my entire strategy. My blog strategy update to make "good money" that is also "simple" Search for low keyword difficulty keywords around my niche using Ahrefs (Update: I am using RankIQ for my keyword research) Keyword difficulty for any keyword I am targeting will be under 30 Write content from my unique perspective in SurferSeo Try to score a minimum of 70 on SurferSeo Monetize via Google Adsense, Adthrive, or Ezoic Secondary but not core focus: Affiliate offers and Agency referrals That is it. By having a simple strategy, I can actually stick with it. Since it's my personal site, it is something I can always write about. The challenge is that this is a low barrier to entering an online business which means I have to write creative content and that is how I will provide value. Anything else I do at this point in the online business would be a distraction. Building a blog from scratch can certainly take time, I hope that because I have 2 other online companies I can leverage that experience and network to grow it faster. I will be updating you as I go. Wish me luck. So should YOU start an online business? Not everyone is built to run their own online business or e-commerce store. I do believe in the freedom that it can bring and the stability that having multiple incomes can give you. I would rather have a day job where I really don't need to go. How empowering would it be to be able to quit and not be worried about making a living? For me, I am able to spend time with my young family. Or I can decide to go golfing or skiing any day of the week. I don't have to clock into work. The sad reality is that we spend so much of our lives working, we should do something we enjoy like writing this blog post, and have time to enjoy life. It is just too short.

I may be a bit bias to answer this question. Because I was forced to take my side hustle to a full time gig quickly because I was fired from my day job with no warning. I know...You can give me your congratulations on getting fired in the comment section below! Although, when I was fired from my day job I thought it was the worse day of my life, it ended up being the best thing that has ever happened to me. It was the kick in the ass I needed to take my side into a full-time business and full time income. I am not recommending that you get fired from your day job...Please don't. But, it taught me that I was replaceable and it changed my mindset on work and my value of working for someone else forever. Why build someone else's business for them when you can build your own business for yourself. Other than the obvious reasons, a salary, health insurance and enough money to pay the bills ha. But, it takes does take serious effot time and energy to turn a side hustle into a full time income. I'll tell you how I turned my side hustle into a far more money than any full time job. My results aren't typical! I had passion, drive and a new born baby to give me more motivation than I every thought possible. Start A Side Hustle When You Have A Day Job Was the timing great? Absolutely not! I just had found out my wife was pregnant with our first child and it was the week before thanksgiving. And we all know that no one is actively hiring right before thanksgiving and going into the holiday season. Regardless of timing. Getting fired sucks, but having a side hustle makes getting fired suck a little less. If I didn't already have a small business going it would have been incredibly difficult to start it after I was fired. It takes time to get traction for anything new and that is why the best time to start a side hustle is when you have a full time job. The same scenario would be true if you decided to quit your job. The best case scenario would be to generate as much money as your day job from your side hustle before you quit your job. I would debate that I would try to run it even if it was outpacing your job income for awhile. The one thing about a side hustle or side gig is that the money is not as stable as a salary from a job would be. I wasn't so lucky to keep my full-time position when I was fired. Not only did I have a new child on the way, but I barely had an emergency fund and I needed this side gig to earn enough money to become a successful business and fast. Make A Business Plan When you start a side gig and are ready to become your own boss it's so easy to spend your precious time on every business idea and create a lot of busy work for yourself. I wish I put together a business plan when I had my full time job. In hindsight I should have included different scenarios such as being fired or when to quit my job if it was going well! But, for my situation, I was having fun with my side job and really didn't have the time to think about it in that way. It truly wasn't until I was fired and I had no money coming in that I felt the pressure of making money from my online store. How do you start a side hustle? Turn something you already are doing into your side hustle. For me, I was competing in the "home run derby" of golf and I became obsessed with golf equipment. To the point, that I decided to design a golf driver with my local University. This is not your TYPICAL way to start a business but it was my passion. If you like to ski, start a ski company. If you like to mountain bike start a mountain biking blog, or community. I just think it's so much easier to be successful when you are already doing the thing you love as your side hustle. Because if you try to chase a trend, the trend is already gone by the time you try to catch it. And reality is that you likely will hate it if its just to make money. Why start a side hustle you will hate? My point is, don't just start a side hustle to only make money. Money will come far easier if you actually love what you are doing. You will be spending a lot of time doing it too, so you might as well enjoy it. What are the different side hustles you can start? There are no shortage of lists out there...But I wanted to go over the side hustles I have experience with that have opportunity to grow from side hustle to a full time income and real business that could be sold one day. One of the companies I own is an email marketing agency. The team writes copy, designs and sends email for ecommerce brands that drive revenue and engagement for our clients. This business was started by my first employee at my own ecommerce brand...and guess what he was doing, he was writing and helping me with my email marketing! This type of agency is called a done for you and I want to go over what I love and what is challenging about that business model. 1 - DFY - Service-based business (typicaly can start freelance and build a team with traction) PROS - You can make a full-time living pretty quickly - Low barrier to entry (legit anyone can start one, maybe its too easy) - Only need 2-4 clients to replace income (depending on the service) - Retainer model provides recurring income (if clients are happy of course) - Great CASH FLOW - Great margins if kept small CONS - Hard to find ideal clients in competitive B2B landscape - Requires more and more people to grow - High fixed overhead with scale - Margins shrink as company size grows This type of business can easily turn into a job because it requires a lot to service clients Done for your services have a LOW barrier to entry and is a great place to start. You could do graphic design, email marketing, facebook ads, social media marketing, seo, write product pages, take product photos. Really anything that is of value that would save an business owner time and get a better outcome. If you have product expertise, start there! A done for your service business can charge thousands or even tens of thousands per month if the ROI is high enough. The limitation with a DFY model is in scaling. Its very difficult to scale up a service-based business without extensive training, standard operating procedures and you need PEOPLE. GREAT PEOPLE. Which aren't easy to find. The second business model that may be a good side hustle that I have experience is in ECOMMERCE. 2 - Ecommerce - Selling physical products on an online store like Shopify. PROS - Can become a full time income - Easy to scale with proper teams in place - "Easier" to find ideal customers with Facebook and Google ads - Very low overhead in terms of people needed to scale (I scaled to 8 figs with my brand with 2 in house employees) - Can be sold to an ecommerce aggregator if done well CONS - Will need significant capital for inventory - Cash flow can be difficult when making your own products - Many moving parts in terms of operations, logistics and marketing to scale - Paid traffic costs are on the rise Selling physical products online has existed for A LONG TIME, but ecommerce was put on a fast track when Covid first hit in 2020. Potential customers who would never buy online are now 100% comfortable and actually enjoy buying online. This is a pro and con...Ecommerce is far more established then ever before and many large brands now know how effective it can be. Paid traffic prices are only going up. 3 - Start a blog and monetize from ads and affiliate offers Although my other website has around 180 blog posts on it and I wrote around 100 of those! I now outsource the blog writing for it. Blogging is a way to get Google to say this website has great content and we should show it at the top of the search results. As I am learning, it takes time to make money from a blog and you do need to learn SEO and actually produce quality content that deserves to be found. This website is a more traditional blog. I will be documenting how the journey goes! I think like all businesses your positioning is the most important key to your success. Stand for something unique and be passionate about it. I will add that I recently found a pretty amazing blog called Fat Stacks. I mean, who doesn't love that name. I am not a great student, so taking online courses are usually a complete waste of time for me. But I did buy his course and I am halfway through it. I will be doing a review it on another blog post and will connect it here. His overall strategy for growing the blog is fairly simple. Go after low competition long tail keywords and write create articles that will naturally attract backlinks. Hopefully like this one here. I will be doing updates on this blog as I build it out further. PROS - Lower barrier to entry - Almost no expense to get started minus the website software and domain (under $50 a month) -Can take a lot of upfront effort to see any results -No guarantee you will drive enough traffic to monetize in a significant way -What I really love about blogging as a way to earn money, is that it requires no inventory, no people, and really anyone can start one. CONS - Time - It takes time to build enough traffic to make monetization from ads meaningful - Difficult to scale revenue to significant size without signifcant traffic - Crowded marketplace and tons of people writing about money and side hustles What will you decide? Side hustle or full time One last thing. All the type of side hustles I mentioned are really businesses that can run without you. I see a lot of side hustle lists that mention side gigs that require you to do the work forever. You are still exchanging time for dollars. I wanted to talk more about side hustles that could turn into real businesses. Because one of the best ways to make real money is to build a business that you can actually sell at one point. I am a huge believer in putting time, effort and money into something that can be sold. Not just a side hustle or side gig that makes some money. That is great, but I want you to think bigger than just extra income!

What makes the Facebook Ads agency the best? That one is pretty simple, can they hit your ROAS metric at a cost that provides you a ROI. I see a lot of small business owners who don't actually have clear goals when trying to find the best facebook ads agency. They merely just know they need traffic to their store to be successful. The best way to hire a digital marketing agency is to be clear on your KPIs and ideally, you should know how to run facebook ad campaigns yourself and truly understand what makes profitable facebook ads. Facebook ads are not social media marketing One thing to clear us is that Social Media and Social Media Marketing Services can be very different. For example: I pay a social media agency to create content for my Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok and Twitter accounts. They do NOT make or optimize the Facebook and Google ads. The Goal of Google and Facebook Ads is to drive the highest return on ad spend possible. Any other goal would be unclear and a waste of your money. Unfortunately, organic Social Media is less effective than it once was at driving revenue. Some social media experts may argue that you can still drive revenue with Social Media and even the newest player, Tik Tok. For Facebook, they updated the algorithm in 2016 I believe and in doing so throttled reach for most business pages. Mine included... Also the goal of Social Media is to engage with your potential audience. Its difficult to post a link direct to your website via social media now. Facebook did this so you have to pay for ads to drive significant website traffic and revenue. Hopefully this adds some clarity on what a social media agency versus a facebook advertising agencies. So what do you need for your business? Do you want to reach more people or do you want to increase your revenue and sales? For reach = invest in more content and social media For revenue = invest in Facebook and Google ads The bigger challenge is finding the Best Facebook Ads Agency. Paid traffic and specifically Facebook ads are crucial to scaling your e-commerce brand. I do encourage organic efforts but you truly don’t have a business until you can make Facebook ads profitable. So…how do you find the elusive best facebook ads agency that can drive profitable ads at scale? There are so many agencies and so called experts that truly aren’t experts and simply can’t perform. I want you to be empowered to be able to hire and fire a facebook ad agency with confidence. Most Facebook ad agencies want you to sign up for a monthly retainer or even a longer contract with no proof they can actual outperform your current paid strategies. They may have some impressive case studies and some mind blowing ROAS stats that they pulled from a specific day during a launch or when numbers look good. But this doesn’t mean anything for your business. We need to put them to the test, expand your expertise and find someone capable and fast. What type of Facebook Advertising Services exist? Because there are so many agencies that offer Facebook ads the service level can vary greatly. I have 2 Best Facebook Ad Agencies that send referrals to. My current agency is my preferred resource because they make the creative in house and edit is as they need. This was a huge bottleneck previous as I would make content in house then would try to understand which creative was effective or was not effective. Now that the ad agency makes all the creative content in house it makes the ad optimization more full circle with no previous bottlenecks. The ad agency would certainly know which facebook advertising campaign would be effective and what ad creative they would need to do so. I know merely approve content for Facebook marketing campaigns and often I don't need to approve it at all because we have been working together for so long. The Facebook business page is also in their wheelhouse but not much is needed to be updated outside the ads themself. You certainly would consider Facebook to be a part of an overall social media advertising management. There are other ad channels you can add into social media advertising such as Tik Tok, Twitter, Pinterest, but Facebook and YouTube (which I consider part of Google Ads) are by far the most effective for my industry. Here is how I hired the best Facebook ad agency, who I have been working with for 3 plus years. First, let me say that I screwed up. A few years ago things were going great, sales were growing every month and it looked like we could literally fly over the moon. I had great facebook ads management previously. Then, January happened, as it should. It was an off season month for my e-commerce brand which means sales will be slower, there isn’t a ton I could do to combat seasonality…but I blamed my ads guy because candidly I didn’t know enough about ads to be able to hire or fire an ad agency. So, I fired an amazing agency that was performing because I felt like they could do more but the reality was it was just the off season and more we spend would be just wasted regardless of the creative, copy or offer. After making the worse fire of my career, I struggled to find someone to replace him…I hired, fired, hired fired for 11 months! I heard excuse after excuse for why they couldn’t perform. During those 11 months I was forced to learn how to run Facebook ads myself! I had some experience from a couple years prior but as you may know, Facebook changes all the time. I bought multiple courses, hired a Facebook coach and got my skills up to a level where I understood how to run ads and truly if an agency was performing or not. After my 4th cup of coffee and months of running ads myself…it hit me…offer to pay them for one hour of their time via a screenshare, exactly the same way my ads coach would teach me. I figured, worse case I waste a few hundred bucks and hour of my time. Best case, I learn something and find someone who can outperform me! I formally invited I think 15 or more agencies/experts and some declined because they knew they couldn’t perform. For the ones that took on the challenge, we jumped into my actually Facebook ads platform and I asked them to talk me through what to do and build an actual ad campaign with me. They were not allowed to click any buttons! I wanted to be the one who did it so I actually would know how to replicate this if it was successful. I’m more of a learner by doing then listening… 11 screenshares later, I found someone that actually beat me and I truly understand the strategy of how they would operate. Which also gave me more confidence in them, therefore I wouldn’t just keep pinging them when ROAS was down for a day, which if you don’t know how ads work can be your default as a founder. My to do list use to be. “Ping Facebook ads agency and ask about roas….been 5 minutes… do it again” That created an unhealthy relationship for everyone involved! They have been my ads agency since that moment! Wish it didn’t take me 11 months and 11 screenshares! Weird how that worked out. Now I’m often asked who I use. Please hit me up and I would love to introduce you. Hire My Expert Facebook Ads Agency Oh and one last thing I forgot to talk about. How much does a Facebook ad agency charge? This one can be tough to answer because it really depends on what services they offer. I measure our ROAS and overall ROI instead of worry about their specific costs to run Facebook ads. You can certainly find a facebook ads expert that can provide no marketing strategy but simply build a targeted audience and use your own creative to get started. But, I prefer a more hands-off approach and pay more for it. I prefer to pay on a variable cost model, which means that the facebook ad agency will charge me a percent of our ad spend. I pay a higher percentage of ad spend if they hit a specific targeted ROAS metric. If they are below it they are paid a smaller percentage of ad spend. The last thing...I swear. I use to pay for Facebook ad consulting which is more like a coach. I would build ads along side the Facebook ad consultant and then he would review them. That was a good way to get a baseline to really understand how Facebook ads agencies optimize and think about setting up Facebook Ads and the same can be done with Google ads.

When I started my ecommerce brand in 2012, I honestly didn't even know what an agency was...and I certainly did not know how to hire a marketing agency to grow my ecommerce brand. I was just trying to build something around my passion and find a marketing strategy that would drive growth. In 2012, digital marketing and selling online was a fairly new concept and there wasn't a proven marketing plan I could follow. So, I started out by simply following where I found traction and doing more of that... I did not start out by saying I need to hire a marketing agency to run Facebook ads, send emails, design our website, increase our conversion rate or even an agency to help us rank on google..the list goes on. There is no shortage of marketing agencies. My only goal was to try and put my effort into things that were showing me signs of traction and growth. When should you hire a marketing agency? Before I go into how to hire a marketing agency, I think it's important to take a step back and talk about WHEN you should hire a marketing agency for your ecommerce brand or really any online business. So...When do you hire a digital marketing agency? I am a slow learner and a stubborn business owner so it took me longer than I care to admit to finally say I need to hire someone whether it was an in-house expert, a marketing agency or a freelance expert. I was always pushed by some life event such as having a child or being sick to finally say I can't do EVERYTHING myself an admitting that their are true experts that can do it FAR better than I ever could. I feel that once you hit $1 million in revenue it's time to start looking for an ecommerce agency to help you where you are the weakest. Not to mention, free up your time to spend it on bigger lever things than looking at the back end of your Facebook Ads account and or Klaviyo email accounts. I hope at this level you have SOME cashflow to afford an expert or marketing agency and also know enough about each silo of your business to be able to hire the right marketing agency and fire them as well. What makes a good marketing agency partner? So...Your doing $1 mil or more a year...Congrats! That is most than many small business owners out there! That is no easy feat, and now that you are ready to hire an ecommerce agency...HOW do you hire a legitimate agency that will IMPROVE results, FREE up your time and have a ROI. The unfortunate truth is that their are so many agencies out there that are mediocre at best. And the reason that there are so many meh agencies out there, is because the barrier to enter is very low...Filtering through these so called experts can be wildly expensive, painful and frustrating. Don't worry...I can introduce you to marketing agencies that actually understand marketing strategy that I personally have used in the ecommerce battlefield... How to hire a marketing agency But..before I do that, I want to finish the concept of how to hire an agency. First, you should truly know enough of each category yourself to be able to know if a marketing agency is doing a great job, good job or terrible job...Hence, you will continue to work with them or fire them. This is where small business owners struggle, I often see start ups or those new to marketing and they think that they just need to find the right marketing firm. First you must prove it out whatever marketing channel you are attacking out yourself before wasting time, money and effort with marketing agencies that may not be able to have an impact. Plus if you have some proof that your marketing is working you should have more cash flow for an actual marketing budget. Not having enough to spend is a sure fire way for marketing to be ineffective. Hiring a marketing agency the right way The easiest way I have found to truly vet any agency is to have them do a small project for you. Here is an example of how I found my facebook ads agency. I first learned how to run ads myself, as an ok student that was difficult for me but I was able to learn the basics and run them to be profitable. This baseline knowledge allowed me the ability to know if someone was blowing smoke or could actually get the job done. From there, I invited as many agencies and experts as it took to find someone that could outperform my results. I then paid them for a one-hour screen share to show me what I was doing wrong and teach me what they would do. I didn't ask them to do it, just show me and I did it. It took me 12! Yes, 12 one-hour screen shares with experts to find a boutique Facebook ad agency that could outperform my current results. And this was NOT the first time I have done this exercise. Another option is to simply hire an agency for a smaller project that doesn't include an ongoing retainer. A good example of this would be for hiring an Email Marketing Agency (full transparency - I am an agency partner in an email marketing agency EcomGrowers.com). A good way to hire an email agency would be to ask them to do a FLOW project where they can build out emails for you to see how they perform and how you like working with them. This is a shortcut to finding an email marketing agency for your ecom store that can actually drive results versus directly hiring them for retainer work like sending campaigns. You can take this same approach with any agency you are looking to hire. What other marketing agencies do I use and how can you vet them? As previously mentioned I use a digital marketing agency to run our Facebook and Google ads and I own an email marketing agency. On top of those I also use the following agencies to help drive growth via digital marketing. There are other marketing channels like Tik Tok, Bing, Pinterest and many more. But I found that Facebook and Google to be the true core for any effective marketing strategy for a successful online business although many marketing strategies exist. Dial in these two first and you can scale into other channels that may not be as profitable at the start. Here are some of the marketing companies I use in my own business. CRO - Conversion Rate Optimization - Ask them to build 2 A/B Tests or make a loom video of how they would do a test SEO - Search Engine Optimization - Have the agency write a blog post and you to review the work. Having experience ranking content for search engines is a special skill set and I personally have become obsessed with content marketing and inbound marketing, especially as I launch this blog with those goals in mind! Organic traffic can be a great way to grow your small business without spending a ton on paid traffic in the process. Social Media Marketing Agency - Have the Social media agency make a Facebook post or Instagram post. Before hiring them on retainer to do ALL of your social media work. Maybe they don't get your brand, or you just don't enjoy working with them. This is your business, you get to decide who to hire. Web Design - I like to start with a small one time project like a logo design or landing page design to see if we can work together and have a similar vision. They can be a great marketing partner if they understand your brand, but a lot of times design can turn into a lot of back and forth without getting to the ideal outcome you want. Customer Service - Send them 5 different questions and how would they answer them. At the end of the day - No matter who you decide to hire, make sure you know how to do each task well enough to know if they are performing or NOT. Should you hire an in-house marketing team or outsource to a marketing agency? I personally am a huge fan of outsourcing to a marketing company or agency that can run effective marketing campaigns and truly understand your strategy. There are many reasons that I prefer to outsource versus hire an in house marketing team. My reasons for outsourcing to an experienced marketing agency Costs are variable and not fixed which means more profit. Each agency is a true expert in each category. If someone leaves, I am not stuck trying to hire a new marketing manager in house Marketing agencies typically have insights from other accounts that we can use Less time and oversight if they are good. The hardest part is finding a marketing agency that can perform and make your life easier. Many marketing agencies simply aren't great because the barrier to entry is so low. Anyone can start a marketing agency, offer web design, do pay per click advertising, inbound marketing. All they need to do is be able to sell you, which doesnt mean they can actually perform. Hence why I always vet my agency partners. Small businesses have enough to worry about, and hiring and firing a good marketing company should not be one of them. As I found success in my own ecommerce business, I have had a lot of other brands reach out to ask how I use. Now, I help others find a marketing agency. Most of my marketing partners are small and only work with a handfull of clients. I found these boutique agencies typicaly have the best results in their marketing industry. If you want to hit the EASY button and save time and money - I would love to introduce you to pre-vetted agencies that I use. Ask them to show you how they would do it. If you don't like what they have to say or their work..Don't hire them! A great agency or many great agencies can truly build you an ecommerce business that can scale without your personal effort, time and energy. For me, I found it amazingly freeing to have 90% of my business outsourced. It also was very effective for selling my ecom brand for almost 8 figures. Which is a different story for a different day! Want help finding an expert marketing agency? Hire my agency experts by clicking here. One last thing, I think having realistic sales goals and previous experience in each marketing channel is critical to finding and trusting a marketing firm to improve what you are already doing. The best way to think of it, is that a good marketing firm can add fuel to the fire but they typically don't start the fire! No matter if you decide to hire a marketing director in-house or outsource to an agency, I hope you hit your sales goals and have the growth you desire.