eComFuel Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Dangers of the Amazon and FBA Business Model Jul 08, 2016

Show notes

Amazon and the eCommerce merchant. It's a Shakespearean tale where love and hate is often a blurred line. There's no doubt that for many merchants, Amazon is a huge source of revenue for their product. But there's also plenty of pitfalls when you decide to sell on Amazon. To kick off our month-long series about all things Amazon, we've got a reality check about the potential problems with selling on Amazon. While it presents many opportunities for increasing your products' reach, it's important to be aware of the company's policies that have undermined many eCommerce businesses. Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher (With your host Andrew Youderian of eCommerceFuel.com and Bill D'Alessandro of Rebel CEO) Andrew: Hey guys, Andrew here and a quick note before we get into that official theme music. Today is going to kick off a four part month-long series on Amazon. If you're in eCommerce, which you probably are, obviously that's a huge aspect of what we're doing these days. So over the next month we'll be covering all sorts of different topics Amazon-related, and I want to kick off this series with just an episode just to make you think a little bit more carefully about some of the things you should be considering from a downfall perspective on Amazon. Obviously a lot of opportunity there, but given when we're focusing on it and given the fact that some people make Amazon sound like, you know, just a money machine, I wanted to kind of have a reality check to launch us into this series. So hope it's useful, hope you make a bunch of money on Amazon, and hope you enjoy. Thanks. Welcome to the eCommerceFuel podcast, the show dedicated to helping high six and seven figure entrepreneurs build amazing online companies and incredible lives. I'm your host and fellow eCommerce entrepreneur, Andrew Youderian. Hey guys, it's Andrew here and welcome to the eCommerceFuel podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in today. Today, talking about the dangers of Amazon and the FBA business model. You know, Amazon is the talked-about game in eCommerce these days. Big courses coming out, you know money seemingly just falling freely from the skies, it's incredible, right? It's like the old, old days of AdWords when they were three cents a click. There's no downside! But there definitely are some pitfalls that we want to talk about today as a reality check, hat tip to David Heacock for the inspiration and some of the finer points on this episode. Thank you, David. And joining me to really dive into it, a man who knows a ton about Amazon, Mr. Bill D'Alessandro. Bill, welcome sir. Bill: Yup! Glad to be here. This is the topic I love to talk about. Andrew: Yeah, it's interesting, and you've been on, like I said, I mean you've been on Amazon for years. I have very little experience with it. It'll be interesting to kind of take the opposite approach of what I think has been a lot of ra-ra-ra cheering over the last, you know, two years or so. Bill: Yeah, and some of it well-deserved, but not without potential other sides of the coin. Beware the Hijacked Niches Andrew: Bill, I think the biggest thing that stands out as a potential danger of going onto Amazon is that building your core business on Amazon is, ultimately, is going to lead to heartbreak. A lot of people, I'm not sure if they realize, Amazon is not your friend at all. They've got a long track record of hijacking niches, of selling directly out from under merchants, and if you don't own the platform off Amazon somewhere, you're gonna get hosed eventually. Bill: Yeah, I think talk to anybody who used to sell any of the products now covered under the Amazon Basics program. You know, all the cables, all the SD cards, you know Amazon is more than willing to private-label their own stuff and compete with you directly, you know, obviously at much lower cost and with preferential algorithmic ra...

Selling Right Channel Radios Jul 01, 2016

Show notes

New post from The eCommerceFuel Blog:

It's been eight years since Right Channel Radios first opened its eCommerce doors. After a cart migration, major website overhaul and lots of lessons learned over the years, the business has officially been sold. Today we're talking about the biggest takeaways Drew and Andrew walked away with after selling eCommerce businesses. It takes more planning, strategizing and moments of doubt than one might think. Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher (With your host Andrew Youderian of eCommerceFuel.com and Drew Sanocki of Nerdmarketing.com) Andrew: Welcome to the eCommerceFuel podcast, the show dedicated to helping high six and seven figure entrepreneurs build amazing online companies and incredible lives. I'm your host and fellow eCommerce entrepreneur, Andrew Youderian. Hey guys, it's Andrew here and welcome to the eCommerceFuel podcast, thanks so much for tuning in today. Joined by Mr. Drew Sanocki, the man from New York City consultant and business owner extraordinaire. Drew, how are you doing buddy? Drew: Good, how are you doing? Andrew: Good, I was looking at Nerd Marketing and things are looking sharp over there man, you've got a pretty beautiful brand and site with some awesome content. Drew: It's getting there. I read some book on design for founders, I think it's called "Design for Founders," taught me a lot about typography which I got into, you can sink a lot of time into that but I love it now, it's really interesting, I recommend it for anybody who is looking to brand a site or a blog. Andrew: Yeah, it looks super sharp, I was jotting a bunch of notes down and stuff that I'm totally going to swipe for the eCommerceFuel site, yeah it looks sharp man. Drew: Oh fun, good. Andrew: But yeah, today talking about some kind of crazy, crazy news. I sold the business. Drew: I know. Congratulations. Andrew: Yeah thank you. Sold Right Channel Radios which is the business I've had for, man, I guess where it all started back in 2008 so owned it for eight years and just this last couple of weeks ended up closing on the sale. Drew: So is this the first official announcement? Andrew: Publicly it is, I've been chatting with people in the community about it, the private community but in terms of public announcement, yeah, this is where it's getting broken. Drew: Well that's great, well congratulations, this is your second exit. Andrew: Yeah. Drew: Isn't it? Andrew: Yeah, thank you, this is my second one, sold TrollingMotors.net a couple of years ago and this is number two. Drew: That's great, got all sorts of questions for you. Andrew: Yeah, hit me man, it's kind of strange doing a podcast about selling your own business but you were kind enough to come on and help me do it so it wasn't just me talking to people. Drew: Well I'm happy to be here, I sold my first business, it seems like ancient history now, but back in 2011, 2012. Andrew: Yeah, Design Public, right? Drew: Yup and then we sold a business where I was the CMO, Karmaloop, we sold that about a month ago. Andrew: You're partnered up with a private equity group for that, right? Drew: Yes, I mean they did the deal, I did the diligence on the deal, came on board, helped return the company to profitability and we sold, they made most of the money off of the deal unfortunately, but yeah. Andrew: Probably it's safe to say they probably brought most of the money to the deal, right? Drew: Yeah, I was a mere pawn. Andrew: Yeah so I thought it would be kind of fun to just kind of talk quickly about why I sold, who I sold it to and then get into some lessons, both kind of some lessons I learned from the sale and also get your kind of thoughts on it. Drew: Sounds good. Long-Term Prepping Before Putting Up a "For Sale" Sign Andrew: So probably the biggest takeaway for me, and this is something I realized after the fact,

Managing a Large Virtual Team with Ezra Firestone Jun 24, 2016

Show notes

New post from The eCommerceFuel Blog:

A team of 40 virtual employees across multiple brands. Sounds like a dream team, but a lot goes into managing a large virtual team. Ezra Firestone of Smart Marketer shows us how he currently manages his businesses and builds his teams virtually, including how he determines who he needs to hire and how he keeps his employees productive and organized. Ezra weighs in with the current tools and strategies he uses to keep his team efficient and highly-successful. Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher (With your host Andrew Youderian of eCommerceFuel.com and Ezra Firestone of Smart Marketer) Andrew: Welcome to the eCommerceFuel podcast, the show dedicated to helping high six and seven-figure entrepreneurs build amazing online companies and incredible lives. I'm your host and fellow eCommerce entrepreneur, Andrew Youderian. Hey guys, Andrew here and welcome to eCommerceFuel podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in today. And today, I have a returning guest on the show. He sort of hasn't been on for a while. I've been just relentlessly going after his PR man. I keep getting turned down over and over and over again. And finally got through, and have the pleasure of introducing Mr. Ezra Firestone back as a guest. Ezra, how you doing man? Ezra: I'm doing great man, happy to be here. I can be difficult to get a hold of. I'm kind of a hermit. But no, I'm super excited to be back on your show. I think you've got the best show in the game so, happy to be here. eCommerce All-Stars Andrew: Thanks, man. Your gate keepers are brutal, dude, you know. I'm just kidding. You've got an event coming up which I want to talk about off the bat, eCommerce All-Stars? Ezra: Right off the bat, all right. Thanks, man. Andrew: Yeah. Ezra: Yeah. So you know, obviously, we do eCommerce and we love to share what works for us. And so our community has been asking for a long time for us to put together an event where everyone could kind of get together, get to know each other, and we could go in-depth over the course of a couple of days. And my experience has been that there's really no better way to experience, sort of, a jolt, a boost. What's that stuff in when they put in cars, like in the movies, and you press the button and you go really fast? Andrew: Nitro. Ezra: Yeah. There's no better way to have that experience in your business, to nitro it, I don't know if that's what you call it, but then to kind of let... Andrew: Maybe that's probably not nitro. That's actually probably not the right term. Ezra: Okay, whatever it is. It's like... Andrew: But yeah, all right. Ezra: We're internet nerds. We're not, you know, pop-culturally literate. But to sort of let go of the rest of your world for a little bit, step out of your routine in life and step into a couple of days where you just really focus on your business and the connections that you make and the people that you meet. And it's just been really beneficial to me over the years. And so we've always kind of done events. This is our first one in a while. We're going to make it a yearly thing. We're really excited about it. Andrew: Yeah, and in eCommerce All Stars, you're doing it in San Diego, I think, and it's in August. I actually...kind of ironic we're talking about it because it is already sold out, but you're doing a live stream of it for people who are interested in just catching the information, right? Ezra: Yeah. You know, if you want to have that same experience but from home, you can join the live stream which I think is cool. You know, I always love when I can't make it out to an event or an event sells out, to be able to get the live stream and get access to the content. So we will be doing that. You can check that out at smartmarketer.com/allstars and we'll do it every year, in San Diego at this time. So hopefully, I'll catch you at next year's, live.

From Dried Worms to Diapers: Stories of Crazy eCommerce Niches Jun 17, 2016

Show notes

New post from The eCommerceFuel Blog:

You can buy anything online, but that doesn't mean every niche is a profitable one. Today we spoke to three different pioneering niche merchants from our community to talk about their seemingly impossible niches and how they've managed to turn them into full-time enterprises. Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher (With your hosts Andrew Youderian and Laura Serino of eCommerceFuel.com, Chris Bosdal of TastyWorms.com, Josh Manley of IronFenceShop.com, and Will Samuels of EveryNappy.co.uk) The Full Transcript Will: I was worried about putting myself out there. You know, being the nappy guy. I actually have that on my business card for Every Nappy. It says, "Will, nappy guru." And that's fine. I think you can just sort of own it. Laura: Dried meal worms. It's a niche within a niche within a very popular niche online, the pet industry. Chris Bosdal is the owner of TastyWorms.com where he sells dried mealworms. Here's Chris. Meal Worms as a Viable Niche Chris: I started to grow these meal worms myself in our garage basically. And we quickly ended up with more than we could possibly use. So at that point in time, I kind of realized, hey, you know, this could be a business. These things grow pretty darn fast and we were spending hundreds of dollars on them, and now we have hundreds of dollars' worth of worms. So let's try to sell them to some people. Laura: Tasty Worms originally went after animal rehabbers for potential clients, but they quickly found out that despite having the need, they didn't have the money to purchase from them. Dried meal worms aren't cheap. A 10-pound bag costs around $90, so around the same per pound price you'd pay for a really good steak. Chris: We didn't really know who the customers would be, I guess is the problem. So yeah, we started up an eCommerce site with a product called Drupal and we started buying some Google AdWords and yeah, we quickly learned that that was also bad. We were basically, you know, paying money to not get any customers. Laura: eBay helped them find customers. They started to build their base simply by slipping in paper into orders that reminded them to visit their website instead of just their eBay store. Chris: I remember saying that when we got started, if we could make one sale per day, I would be happy, right? Because, you know, it's an extra $5 or $10 in my pocket or what have you, right, that $150 a month, I'd be happy with that. Now if we got one sale a day, it would be a complete disaster. Laura: After two years, Chris was able to quit his full-time job to work on the business. Chris: The problem with insects, even if they're dead, they have or had eggs. And insect eggs are notoriously hard to destroy. So there's always that possibility that there's something alive in there, you know. And sometimes you'll even find that with like if you purchase flour, or wheat bran, or oatmeal at the store, sometimes it will develop moths or beetles. And that's the same type of problems that we could run into. So yes and no. They're not considered alive but they are, you know, you can't just ship them to any old country you feel like. You Really Can Find Anything on Amazon Laura: There are definitely restrictions when you're dealing with selling insects online. For instance, their model can only ship to the US, but not overseas where customs are strict. One place they can ship to, an Amazon warehouse. Chris: I would say that they restrict dried insects less than they restrict chocolate. Laura: Their original commitment to welfare and rehabilitation for animals sets them apart from other sites in their niche. Setting Themselves Apart From Other Sites Chris: What makes us stand out is that first of all, we offer discounts to anybody who's like an AZA accredited member. That's the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. If you're a licensed animal rehabber,

Selling a Business, How to Invest & Building Community — A Discussion with Ian Schoen Jun 10, 2016

Show notes

New post from The eCommerceFuel Blog:

Wondering what it's like to sell your business? Or how much you can actually make through passive investments? Both are more complex than you might think, and it pays to hear from someone who knows both. Ian Schoen of TropicalMBA.com and the Dynamite Circle answers questions about recently selling his own small business, the idea that passive investments can build substantial wealth, and building entrepreneurship communities. Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher (With your host Andrew Youderian of eCommerceFuel.com and Ian Schoen of TropicalMBA.com) Andrew: Hey guys, Andrew here, and welcome to the eCommerce Fuel Podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in. Today on the show, I'm joined by Ian Schoen from the TropicalMBA blog and podcast. He's also one of the men behind the Dynamite Circle, which is a private community for location-independent entrepreneurs. I really always enjoy talking with Ian, and our conversation today covers a lot of different topics. We talk about his recent business sale, we talk about how to invest money. Both of those topics are a couple of episodes that I really enjoyed from his podcast recently, and we can get into those. And then finally, we talk about running private communities. We both run private communities for entrepreneurs and talk about some of the challenges, some of the things we really enjoy, get a little bit inside baseball on that. It's not eCommerce specific per se, but if you're in the community or it's something you're interested in, hopefully it's something that you enjoy. Ian, you and your partner Dan recently sold the business, congratulations sir! Ian: Thank you. Yeah. Andrew: Are you sick of talking about it yet? Ian: No, I'm not, I'm not actually. Andrew: What caused you guys to sell? Ian: Oh man. Well, I think essentially what happened was we started the business in 2008 – at the time I think I was about twenty-five, twenty-six years old, and you know that was a long time ago. I feel like I'm a different person than I was then. You know, I felt like I wanted different things out of my business and my life, and we just kind of reached an interesting point. I think one of the feelings, one of the emotions that I had at the time when we decided to sell was that it's all been like high-fives and good times, essentially. I mean, there was some growing pains and whatnot, but we never missed payroll, there was always plenty of cashflow, it was just really good times. And I thought, "let's just leave this on a high note, 'cause I'm not super passionate about the business anymore, and I don't wanna fake it to my employees anymore that I'm not into this business, so let's just leave it on a high note." Ian's Insight Into Selling His Business Andrew: And you said you wanted different things out of your life and your business – what specifically were you looking for in terms of change, things that the business wasn't fulfilling, apart from the passion aspect and selling at the top – which makes a lot of sense – what was that underlying thing you kind of alluded to? Ian: I think just change in general, you know? Like I said, I started the business when I was in like my mid-twenties and quite some time had gone by, so I just wanted to see kind of what other options were out there, you know? I felt like I had conquered that business in a way, or at least the skill set, and for me and I think a lot of small business owners, that's kind of what you do, right? I mean we were selling like hospitality equipment and although I was passionate about that in the beginning, it became more about the process of doing business. So through the process learned SEO, learned ad words, learned how to manufacture products in China, learned how to build a team of fifteen. So kind of all these things that I wanted to learn in that business I learned; I just didn't feel like there was much...

Reader Questions on Product Development, Buying Sites & More Jun 03, 2016

Show notes

New post from The eCommerceFuel Blog:

The dynamic duo returns to help answer listener questions. Today we tackle a wide range of topics from how to structure your business joint ventures to what the best sources are for buying and selling eCommerce sites. If you've got questions, Andrew and Drew have the answers. Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher (With your host Andrew Youderian of eCommerceFuel.com and Drew Sanocki of Nerdmarketing.com) Andrew: Welcome to the eCommerceFuel podcast, the show dedicated to helping high six- and seven-figure entrepreneurs build amazing online companies and incredible lives. I'm your host and fellow e-commerce entrepreneur, Andrew Youderian. Hey guys, it's Andrew here, and welcome to the eCommerceFuel podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in to the show. Today on the show, going back and doing a round of your questions, reader questions from the blog and online, just doing a random grab bag of questions we thought were interesting to tackle. And joining me to really answer all these... Drew: The tough ones. Andrew: The tough ones. I'm going to take all the softballs, Drew, and hand you off all the really, the ones I have been stressing out about. The men, all the hard answers, Mr. Sanocki, how are you doing, sir? Drew: Good. How are you? Andrew: Good, good. Drew, things in New York well? Drew: Things in New York are great. It's getting warmer and spring is just around the corner. Andrew: And you recently sold Karmaloop, correct? Drew: We did. I did not, we did, but yeah, that was a quick turnaround. We bought it out of bankruptcy last summer and just sold it a week ago to a sneaker retailer on the West Coast. Andrew: That's fantastic. Congratulations, sir. Drew: Thanks. It was a great chance to really try out a lot of the things that I preach on my blog, and they work so it was a good case study. Andrew: Yeah, well, you mentioned that a lot of the tactics and things you talked about at your talk at ECF Live which we'll link, well, it's available to all eCommerceFuel members in the community, but a lot of the things from that talk are the things you used to really turn that retailer around. Drew: Yeah, that's right. One of the first things I did was I talk a lot about figuring out who your best customers are and then building the business around that group of customers. And I spent about a month doing that at Karmaloop, and once I figured out who that group was, the next step was really developing the marketing campaigns that kept those customers around, acquired more of them and kept them buying. So that took about a year to implement and it worked. We brought it from a money-losing company, month-over-month losing hundreds of thousands of dollars, to about break even and that's when we sold it. Andrew: That's awesome. Well, congratulations, sir. That's a pretty big accomplishment. Nice little cap in the feather, that's really cool. Drew: Thanks. Andrew: All right, sir. Should we get into some questions? Drew: Let's do it. "In skincare, do you start in-house and small or go straight to China?" Andrew: So the first question we've got is from Matt, and Matt says, "Hey guys, listen to the podcast and love it. I'm looking at starting a store with beauty and face care products similar to Nurture My Body which is Bill's store, but in a different vertical. If you were starting a business like this, would you immediately try to set things up with a Chinese supplier and have them develop formulas for you, or would you do everything small in-house to perfect the formulas first? A little stuck on which avenue is the best to try and pursue." Drew, what are your thoughts? Drew: I don't really know a lot about this kind of production, but it seems like you'd want to do something like this domestically just to figure out the formulation before you deal with sourcing anything from overseas.

Mastering User Experience with Jason Broughton from Zappos May 27, 2016

Show notes

New post from The eCommerceFuel Blog:

User experience. This phrase has been tossed around a lot in the last few years, but few have actually mastered applying it in all aspects of their business. Most businesses focus on the wire-framing and usability testing, but there are some even easier ways to reel in customers and keep them coming back. Jason Broughton, head of UX for Zappos, weighs in on how to make your website useful, usable, and an experience that will ensure customers will keep coming back for more. Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher (With your host Andrew Youderian of eCommerceFuel.com and Jason Broughton of Zappos.com) Andrew: Welcome to the eCommerceFuel podcast, the show dedicated to helping high six and seven-figure entrepreneurs build amazing online companies and incredible lives. I'm your host and fellow eCommerce entrepreneur, Andrew Youderian. Hey, you guys, it's Andrew here, and welcome to the eCommerceFuel podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in today. Today on the show, talking about UX, otherwise known as user experience, and joined by Jason Broughton, who's the head of UX at Zappos. Zappos, of course, is the very well-known shoe and apparel retailer. Jason's got an incredible depth of experience doing this both at Zappos and a number of other companies. And we dive into what UX is. UX is one of those issues that is a little bit ambiguous, sometimes. What it is, the process at Zappos for improving UX, how data-driven they are, some of his favorite tools. We talk about the future of site usability and what's coming down the pipe in terms of changes, things that are coming down the road, a lot of different ground. So I came away with a pretty substantial to-do list for my own site, and I hope it's something that you find applicable as well. We'll go ahead and dive right in. Jason, UX is a term that gets thrown around a lot online, and I think people are very familiar with what paid advertising is, what web design is, what programming is. But UX is a little fuzzier for a lot of people in terms of what it actually means. Can you give us a sense of what it means to you and what it encompasses? What Exactly Is UX? Jason: Yeah, it's a good question. To me, UX is a lot of the things that you just mentioned, plus it has a lot to do with the usability of your site, the accessibility of the site, and the overall pleasure a customer has interacting with your site. It needs to be both useful, usable, and delightful, and not necessarily in that order, but we try to encapsulate all three of those. If your site isn't useful, no one is going to come to it. If it's not usable, people have a hard time interacting with it. And lastly, if it's not delightful, the loyalty of your product is not going to be what it could be. Andrew: That puts a lot of weight on your shoulders, it sounds like. Jason: It can. Yeah, it does. But we have a great team. And it is a lot of stress at some times. The Most Important Thing to the Zappos Customer Andrew: What is most important to the Zappos customer in terms of user experience? Obviously, Zappos is a brand, is immensely focused on customer service, that's what you guys have built your brand on. But how does that translate into the actual user experience of the web experience, of the website? Jason: Yeah. I think that customer experiences encapsulates all of your customers' touch-points, whether it's over the phone or on the website, or when they un-box to package. User experience is more about the interaction touch-point on the website. So it's when someone's interacting with the website, specifically. And so a lot of the things that we have to worry about, and our users care a lot about, is accurate information from pricing, to being sure that there's trust when they're going through the checkout process, so the usefulness, the usability is quick. And then also,

How to Pitch the Press and Get Life-Changing Coverage May 20, 2016

Show notes

New post from The eCommerceFuel Blog:

Trying to drum up some press for your brand or business can be a full-time job. And with all the effort that goes into trying to get media coverage, how worth it does it end up being for your brand? Today, we're looking at three success stories of landing major press and how each business was affected differently. Join us as we dive into how you can get press for your business and your eCommerce store and what you need to do in order to woo reporters. Even more importantly, we uncover whether expensive PR firms are worth the price and whether you can build a business with one big press mention. Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher (With your host Andrew Youderian and Laura Serino of eCommerceFuel.com, Kirby Allison of HangerProject.com, Mac Bishop of WoolAndPrince.com, Allen Walton of SpyGuySecurity.com) and Elaine Pofeldt of ElainePofeldt.com Andrew: Hey guys, Andrew here with a quick message before we get started. If you remember from last week we are running an experiment with one of our community members David Heacock to help him decide if he should advertise on the podcast for the Tim Ferriss Show. So we gave him a couple spots on the eCommerceFuel podcast and we're going to follow up and let you know how this pans out, what the response was, what it a success or a flop. Stay tuned for that. David owns FilterBuy.com where he sells high-quality air filters for your home or office furnace that he manufactures and here's three reasons why you should pick one up. First, the air quality in your home or office is probably pretty terrible. Think about it. When was the last time you changed your filter? I know I can't remember either. It's probably been years and years and you've got filthy air floating around giving everyone you love asthma, like I mentioned last time, potentially allergies. Get a new filter. The second reason you should is that David makes this incredibly easy. Go to FilterBuy.com, sign up for a subscription, you get a new filter on a regular basis right to your door. And finally, it keeps away these crazy expensive HVAC repair guys. I had one come to my house, it's astronomical what they charge. He left $500 later and it's money well spent to invest in the longevity of your heating system. So check them out at filterbuy.com/ecommercefuel. You'll get 15%-20% off everything he offers. We'll be following up with the results of this experiment in the coming weeks so stay tuned on how it all turns out. Mac: He said he hadn't washed his suit for an entire year. That got worldwide media attention. So something about not washing your clothes freaks people out, and people want to read it. Andrew: Earlier this year I was starting my morning with a cup of coffee and a copy of the Wall Street Journal when a familiar name jumped out at me. One of our community members Kirby Allison and his business The Hanger Project were profiled in a page one story, right on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. My first reaction was excitement as it's so cool to see someone you're rooting for get major press like this. And my second reaction was one of immediate curiosity. How in the world had Kirby managed to pull off press of this magnitude? Well thats what we're gong to talk about today. How to get press for your business? How do you woo reporters? Are expensive PR firms worth the price and can you really build a business with one big piece of press? Our podcast producer and community manager Laura Serino talks with three of our community members about how they did it and how you can too. Laura: Kirby Allison runs the Hanger Project, a luxury clothing and shoe care line. Kirby has always taken a traditional approach to getting press. He started out by mailing Hanger samples to fashion reporters, and it landed him his very first big break in a column in the Wall Street Journal called "The Catalog Critic,

80/20 Marketing & AdWords Changes with Perry Marshall May 13, 2016

Show notes

New post from The eCommerceFuel Blog:

The art of sorting out your customers, weeding out the qualified from the non-qualified, is one of the most important skills you can develop in business. There are hundreds of tools out there that claim to help you to weed out these customers, but none as effective as the 80/20 rule. This week AdWords guru Perry Marshall is here to discuss the 80/20 rule of marketing strategies. We discuss everything you need to know about predicting what your market will be spending, getting those higher-ticket sales, and making your mark in your industry. Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher (With your host Andrew Youderian of eCommerceFuel.com and Perry Marshall of PerryMarshall.com) Andrew: Before we dive into the episode, I want to tell you about an experiment we're going to run over the next couple of weeks. One of our private community members David Heacock posted a discussion about asking for advice about if he should advertise his eCommerce store on the Tim Ferriss podcast. And its really expensive to do that given Tim's reach and before he made the plunge and made a huge investment we said well hey, tell you what, what if we use the eCommerceFuel podcast as a little experiment to gauge if potentially it would be a good idea based on the reaction of our podcast listeners, the percentage that listen to the episode and take action and compare to Tim Ferriss' rates and get an idea if this is a good investment. So thats what we're going to do. And we're going to follow up on this after they run to let you know if they worked. Did you guys actually respond? Was it useful? If you have an eCommerce store, should this be something that you consider? Should be kinda interesting. At this point you're wondering what does David sell. David is the owner of Filterbuy.com where he manufactures high efficiency quality air filters for your home furnace. And if you're listening I could tell you to buy one of these filters because it's going to increase the life of your furnace and keep away the $500/hour HVAC guys. I could try to scare you with that. I could also try to scare you by saying hey you've probably got a nasty filter in your home right now, the air quality in your home is terrible and more than likely it's giving all of your family, everyone you love, your young children, chronic asthma and allergies. I have asthma and I'm fairly certain it's because my parents didn't change their furnace filter as much as they should. I could try to scare you about all these things and those things are all true. But I think the most compelling reason for me is that you don't have to make those terrible trips to the home hardware store, where you waste an entire morning or afternoon, you drive across town, you wander around a store, you run into a couple of acquaintances and before you know it, it's been a few hours and $200 later you're finally home. You don't have to do that. David will ship these filters right to your door. And if you sign up with one of his really convenient subscriptions services ever year, or however often you need them, a filter magically appears on your doorstep. No home depot run required. So check him out at filterbuy.com/ecommercefuel. David is going to give you 15% off all his stuff or 20% off all his filters if you sign up for a subscription. That's filterbuy.com/ecommercefuel. Check them out, grab a filter for your home and make it a better environment and be a part of the experiment. We're going to follow up in upcoming episodes and let you know how it worked out. Alright. On with the show. Today on the podcast joined by Perry Marshall who is a fairly familiar name online, and in the eCommerce world, most notably for AdWords. He quite literally wrote the book on AdWords, "The Ultimate Guide to AdWords," which has been one of, if not the definitive guide in the space, and so we do, we definitely talk about AdWords.

The Bare Minimum You Need to Know About Accounting May 06, 2016

Show notes

New post from The eCommerceFuel Blog:

Knowing how to read a financial statement and a few other basics of accounting is vital in an eCommerce business. Without basic knowledge of accounting, you may think you're raking in the cash when you're actually in the red. We're covering everything from the basics of reading an income statement to the ins and outs of your store revenue. Subscribe: iTunes | Stitcher (Wth your host Andrew Youderian of eCommerceFuel.com and Bill D'Alessandro of RebelCEO.com) Andrew: Welcome to the eCommerceFuel Podcast, the show dedicated to helping high six and seven figure entrepreneurs build amazing online companies and incredible lives. I'm your host and fellow eCommerce entrepreneur Andrew Youderian. Hey guys, it's Andrew here and welcome to the eCommerceFuel Podcast, thanks so much for tuning in today. Today on the show, extremely gripping topic we've been wanting to cover for a long time. The absolute bare minimum you need to know about accounting. And joining me, an ex-finance guy who is the perfect man to geek out about this. Bill, I'm sorry we don't have whiskey this time to chat but hopefully you'll still stick around until the end of the episode. Bill: I really should have put that in my contract, shouldn't I have? Andrew: Top shelf, $400 a bottle whiskey otherwise I'm not coming back to the show. Bill: That's right, I need whiskey or we'll not record this stuff. I won't hang out with you if we don't have any whiskey. Andrew: To keep things interesting without the whiskey and also, let's be honest, accounting unless you're Bill may not be the world's sexiest topic, we've inserted a couple fun little secondary scenes shall we say throughout the episode. You'll have to listen real carefully to hear them but yeah, just keep your ears perked for those. And Bill, should we get into it? Bill: Yeah, we should get into it. We should call this episode "Front Lines Accounting." The Function of Your Income Statement Andrew: "Front Lines Accounting," I love it, I love it. So Bill there's really three crucial financial statements that you need to know. The income statement, the balance sheet and the cash flow statement. And we're going to tackle each of those individually and we'll go ahead and start with the income statement. So Bill, how do you describe the income statement in a nutshell? What is its function and how do you look at it? Bill: The easy way to think about an income statement really is, this is the amount of money that your business made over a certain period. Most income statements you'll see are kind of yearly or monthly. And you in theory could do a daily income statement but I don't think it would be very instructive. So most people will do monthly, will do an income statement and it will show a total for the year and then broken down by month. At the top you'll see revenue and then you will subtract from revenue your cost of goods sold, which is basically the amount of money it cost you to make that revenue. Then you'll have a gross margin, and that's basically the amount of money you have after selling your stuff, the amount of money you have available to use to pay overhead. And then you'll have a section called expenses or sometimes you'll see it called SGNA or selling general and administrative expenses and those are all the overhead expenses of your business, salaries, rent, your subscription to the eCommerce Fuel private members forum, all sorts of things like that go in the SGNA expenses section and then at the bottom you have a number called net income, also or hopefully known as profit and not loss. Andrew: Yeah and it's kind of important to clarify that revenue is equal to sales, revenue is at the very top. It's not how much you make, it's just the gross amount of money you collect from your customers before you pay any expenses. Sometimes you might hear that called top line,

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected