Who are you (eg. Name, age, what country are you from, what did you do before ecommerce)?
Hello we’re Sophie and Carl and we’re from Brisbane Australia.
Sophie – I had done a range of things before finding Ecommerce… I actually studied Social and Criminal Justice at university which was fascinating but I wasn’t really sure what to do with it once I graduated. I fell into a marketing job which was a lot of fun and helped me to build a number of key skills, and more recently I have worked as a Project Manager for an accounting firm. In this role I managed the development of software that was needed to manage clients and ensure the company were adhering to recently introduced laws.
Carl – I have been in education for the past 13 years, initially as a mainstream secondary teacher and then as a special education teacher. I have worked in several schools within Australia and the UK and for the past 8 years have worked in leadership roles specialising in the development of curriculum for students with disability.
How did your business idea come to you?
We had reached a point where we were beginning to feel quite trapped by the nine to five grind of our jobs. While we loved the challenge of our jobs, we were craving more freedom and flexibility to enable us to pursue our other interests. Like many others before us, we discovered the concept of ‘digital nomadism’ through Tim Ferris’s book ‘The Four Hour Work Week’. The book opened our eyes to a way of life that we’d never considered possible before. We both love to travel and have spent a large portion of our twenties trotting around the globe. Tim’s concepts offered us a way to combine freedom, mobility and wealth in a way we’d never realised was possible. From that moment on we were convinced and utterly determined to find a way to build a location independent business which could help us achieve the lifestyle we had dreamed of.
We quickly began spending all of our spare time devouring books, blogs and podcasts dedicated to online business. We had absolutely no idea where to start and were desperate to find a business model or blueprint which we could use to put into action. One day Sophie heard Nathan being interviewed by Spencer Haws on Niche Pursuits and his and Tessa’s story really struck a chord with us. Most of the business ideas we had been learning about were centred around affiliate marketing or Google Adsense and those models didn’t really appeal to us. Creating real stores and selling real products was far more interesting and tangible for us and so we decided to just concentrate our efforts on ecommerce.
Did you face any personal challenges when first starting your business (eg. did your family/friends support you, or doubt you, was it financially risky for you…)?
Our biggest challenge in starting our business has been time. We decided to stay in our full time jobs and create our business on the side as we wanted to prove the model for ourselves. Being our first business initiative, we knew there would be a steep learning curve so we preferred having the safety and income of our jobs to support the process. This of course meant that we had to make use of any free time we had available so we quickly began working each night after work and for much of our weekends. This being the case, we had to give up some things. We stopped socializing as much as we used to, especially on the weekends, and instead dedicated that time to our business. Time became a very precious commodity for us.
There were two main problems with this. Firstly, we were having very little down time and were effectively ‘burning the candle at both ends’. We were already working quite hard in our jobs and then again during our spare time. This certainly put a strain on everything and life wasn’t much fun for us for a while. The work on the business could be quite exhausting at times, especially during the week after a day at our jobs. We were also having to give up a lot of the fun things that had previously helped our lives feel more balanced.
Time management is still something we struggle with at times but we have certainly become a lot better at it. We have started focusing more on our routines and have established set periods of time for work on the business. Having clear blocks of time has meant that we have become better at identifying our priorities and has also forced us to do our best work in shorter periods of time. When we are working during the week, we have established a routine that once we arrived home we spend one hour on the business straight away before doing anything else. This has meant that we don’t get distracted by the million other things we feel like we should be doing and means that we are consistently moving our business forward each day – even if it is by only a small amount. At the moment, we are working full-time on our business having taken some time off from our jobs and routine has become more important than ever
Where do you host your site(s) and would you recommend them to others?
We currently host our sites with Crazy Domains but we would be hesitant to recommend them to others. We think Crazy Domains and their shared hosting packages are fine when you are testing out sites to see if they are going to be money makers. However, we are starting to think they’re not great for any established sites you have as we have had some problems with servers going down and other connection issues. We’re concerned how these may interfere with our customer’s experience of our sites and how they may possibly be impacting us in search rankings due to site speed issues. We are currently looking for a new hosting company so we may end up starting our sites on a service like Crazy Domains and then move them to a better provider once they’ve proved their worth.
What platform do you use (eg. Woocommerce, Shopify, Bigcommerce etc.) and would you recommend it?
We use Woocommerce on WordPress and yes, we’d definitely recommend it to others. We have heard how other platforms like Shopify and Bigcommerce are much easier for beginners and so there probably was a steeper learning curve for us using Woocommerce. However, we feel that it has been better for us for the long term as it has helped us develop a number of important skills. We now have a good working knowledge of a platform that is extremely cheap to set up and run and this is important when you are setting up a number of sites and exploring possible niches. There is a lot of flexibility with Woocommerce and as it is widely used, you don’t have to look far to find tutorials or helpful tips when you run into trouble. The only problem we do have with the platform is that we are yet to find software that fully integrates our orders with our shipping system which can make processing our orders time consuming and open to human error.
Do you think social media is worth it? If so, what is your most successful platform?
We’ve dabbled in Pinterest, Facebook and Google+ but haven’t had great results as we’ve not built a full strategy around these yet. We believe that social media will become increasingly important in the future but to get the most from it will require a proper strategy and time. From our experience, using these platforms can be quite time intensive and so far they have provided few benefits so we’re hesitant to proceed any further until we know a little more about their effective use. We experimented and spent some time building out profiles and posting content however we found that few people were interacting with us and even fewer were visiting our stores from these funnels. We’re currently in site building mode but when we have a few more sites up and running it will be one of the things at the top of our list.
Do you do any SEO? If so, what is your strategy (and how much do you love Google:)?
We love Google! Mainly because we have to but also because so much of our traffic is generated by organic search results. We paid very close to attention to SEO when we first began developing our sites and that times seems to of helped us greatly. Our sites always begin with keyword research so we are immediately ensuring that we are entering niches where our efforts at SEO can make the biggest impact. We ensure that our sites are very SEO friendly, making sure that our pages are not overly optimised for keywords and that we have enough good quality content in our blogs. We use several link building strategies to improve our rankings in the SERPs and have recently begun guest posting for other sites in similar niches. SEO is a constantly changing beast though and we’re frequently reminded of how fickle it can be when we hear about others losing their places after a Google update. It’s an area we always try to stay up to date with.
What has been your best source of traffic (eg. SEO, PPC, social media)?
SEO is definitely our best source of traffic at the moment and it’s been very effective for us. We are going to test Google’s Product Listing Ads (PLAs) in the next few months to see if can reach more customers who are further down in the buying process. We also think PLAs could be a useful way to test out a site early on in its development. We have experimented before with Google’s pay per click advertising and while we had good click through rates it didn’t seem to convert very well in terms of customers actually making purchases. We’re looking forward to developing a consistent social media strategy in the near future to generate traffic but for the moment we’ll continue to focus on SEO as our main traffic generator.
What was the last business book you read? What was your one take away from it?
Sophie: The One Thing – As you might have guessed from the title, this book explores one concept: figure out the most important thing you can do to move your business forward and focus on nothing else until that is complete. Then rinse and repeat. When you’re starting a new business it can get overwhelming to think of all the things you have to do and this book helps to peel away the distractions and realise what will actually get you to your end goal faster. I don’t quite so many pages were needed to explore the topic (ie it gets a bit repetitive) but it’s a great concept and one that helps me establish my priorities.
Carl: ‘The Millionaire Fastlane’ – Don’t be fooled by the incredibly cheesy title of this book. I was very hesitant though was referred to it by a friend who had made some dramatic changes to his life. Basically it explores the paths different people use to generate wealth and highlights the importance of business ownership as a way to quickly generate high income without trading all of your time. A big take-away from the book, the “Get Rich Slowly” approach (working at a 9 to 5 and investing) is faulty because it takes a lifetime of work, is dependent on getting lucky with your investments, and even if you do manage to pull it off, you’ll likely be way too old to enjoy it.
What has been your biggest challenge in ecommerce?
We’re going to cheat and have two for this:
1) Google and it’s ever changing algorithm. We love them for providing us with a business opportunity but we hate having to play their game. SEO tactics that involve creating content that is questionably useful to people is something we are still getting used to. We know it’s necessary to employ tactics to get to page 1 and we know our websites deserve to be there as they provide excellent value to those that find them. It’s just a requirement that places a big risk on our business and a game which you are never completely in control of. If Google decides to change its algorithm tomorrow and something on our websites conflicts with this then we’re in a risky position.
2) Suppliers & Shipping – As we drop ship a number of our products, we are regularly reliant on processes that are out of our control. The process of getting the product to our client safely, in a timely manner and with excellent customer service, is often dependent upon others who may not be as passionate or caring about our customer’s experience as we are. It means we have to rely on our suppliers and shipping companies to provide the type of service we want to offer our customers and sometimes our expectations aren’t met. It’s difficult but we’re building systems around the process to help us create the best experience for our customers.
What is one online tool you could not live without?
Sophie – Skitch! It allows you to take a screenshot of anything, annotate it and send it or save it as an image. It’s been invaluable to me when working with overseas contractors which I do a lot in my consulting work and also in our business. You can also use it to annotate articles saved to Evernote. I love it!
Carl – Trello! We use it as part of our day to day task management system and we love it. It has a super simple interface, is very flexible and most importantly is intuitive to use so we actually make good use of it. There are so many other options out there for task management but many become tasks in themselves just trying to manage them. Trello is simple and effective.
What is your favourite business quote and why?
“Being overwhelmed is often as unproductive as doing nothing, and is far more unpleasant. Being selective, doing less, is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.”
Tim Ferriss – The Four Hour Workweek
We could easily have pulled another 20 quotes from this book but this was a favourite of ours. It’s easy to become overwhelmed in life, at a job or when running a business but the seemingly never-ending lists of tasks that you may have. This quote reminds us that getting ‘analysis paralysis’ is just as ineffective as doing nothing and so we are always reminding ourselves of the importance of prioritising what is important.
Have you ever doubted your business idea?
Yes! All the time. Everyday. We’re constantly wondering if this was the right place to start our entrepreneurial journey and if relying on Google is a sound business choice. But, we always come back to the same answer… we think eccomerce is an excellent place to start, to build skills and to learn to be an entrepreneur. We’ve learned so much in the last year and all of these skills will be invaluable to us in any future endeavours we take.
We’ve actually got a lot of business ideas bubbling away that we would love to get started on but we know that they will require more time, knowledge and skills to build. With ecommerce, we can learn from others who have gone before us and we can use this to teach ourselves the skills we need to know to become successful entrepreneurs.
What is one tip/lesson you can pass onto other entrepreneurs?
Be patient and work hard. It takes time to build something from nothing and it also takes a lot of hard work and effort. It’s a massive rollercoaster of a ride and we are still experiencing that everyday. But the most important thing is to keep the end goal in mind. We want control back over our lives. We don’t want to work on someone’s schedule and live in the monotony and mediocrity of the rat race. Any time that it seems too hard then we think about the alternative and that gives us the motivation to keep on going.
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