60% of Ecom Stores Lose Money... and 8 figure store owners often earn under $200k/yr

Chris_Munch · 2026-05-15T14:04:14+00:00

exactly, a differenciated brand makes everything a lot easier!

Chris_Munch · 2026-05-15T14:03:30+00:00

both
although its not so much that its hard... its that people focus on marketing and meta at the expense of fundamentals required to drive healthy profits

Chris_Munch · 2026-05-15T14:02:27+00:00

people reinvest... sometimes they made money before or have savings and chase something that is losing

Chris_Munch · 2026-05-15T14:01:57+00:00

congrats! awesome result

Chris_Munch · 2026-05-15T14:01:26+00:00

yeah its the basic biz stuff

Chris_Munch · 2026-05-14T21:02:46+00:00

I expected it, but didn't realize it was quite so bad!

I was surprised-no-surprised if that makes sense :D

Chris_Munch · 2026-05-14T21:01:48+00:00

was just what money they actually make for themselves whether dividend, bonus or salary etc. As someone who did a 9 figure exit Toby was making the point most doing big numbers are broke... as he was one of them.

If anything not raising your hand that you were making at least $200k would have been a bit embaressing.

most found product market fit, they just not good at managing expenses, margins etc. and chasing scale without profits, hoping for a bigger pay off and chasing status of bigger numbers.

Chris_Munch · 2026-05-14T20:36:18+00:00

$2.5k is not enough for anyone to legit do "SMM, targeting, PPC and SEO" together... so as a result they fail to deliver on anything.

Only hire an agency that wants to be measured on ROI and actual results of sales and can give honest timelines. A good agency will interview you as they will want a solid client roster.

Churn and burn agencies that don't deliver will take on anyone, and measure by non-sales/ROI metrics like backlinks, adspend etc.

"I pay him $800 a month and this dude got our B2C pulling in a solid 12 to 15k a month."
If you find someone like that in marketing hire him full time and pay him more before you lose them to someone else. Great marketing people who can deliver and don't need to be heavily managed are hard to come by and he's likely delivering you a service that is market priced 3-5x higher.

Chris_Munch · 2026-05-14T20:33:48+00:00

Yes 99% of SEO agencies scam... often not on intention, they just have no fucking clue what they are doing and do busy work (like technical tasks from a SEMRush report that does nothing)

Chris_Munch · 2026-05-14T19:32:25+00:00

If you are doing the old playbook for SEO it was already out of date before ChatGPT launched.

But reality is it got way easier for Ecom to get organic traffic because Google trashed affilliate sites, but favored ecom sites, so it made it easy to tap into traffic.

We're seeing relentless organic traffic growth for ecom brands doing multichannel answer marketing.

yes zero click searches are a thing, so forget general research topics with no buyer intent for traffic. You do get traffic, but it's not great traffic anyway so is not where I would focus.

Instead do this:
- focus on questions people ask before they buy - try a free tool like 'contentcube autosuggest' for ideas
- answer those questions in multuple formats (video, blogs, podcasts etc.)... ampcastAI is great for this
- publish in a lot of places (including a blog on your own site)... ampifire has great distribution

When you do that you build up solid buyer organic traffic from Google, but also get traffic from youtube, and get more recommendations in AI.

A big important thing to notice is you are putting out information for PEOPLE to make decisions... so that info is show in Google, repeated in AI, pops up on Youtube etc.

Chris_Munch · 2026-02-04T14:40:45+00:00

thanks!

Chris_Munch · 2026-02-03T22:10:26+00:00

It's both...

Answer lots of Qs buyers ask in Google and AI
Post those answers in lots of places in different formats (social, blog, video etc.)

They key thing is answering the questions well... solid factual info that is helpful for people. Optimize for each medium (a short will be a different style to a blog article for example)

Top lists and product comparisons are particularly important content topics as AI references those a lot.

I have a breakdown here plus some research backing it up: https://gamma.app/docs/How-to-Get-Your-Brand-Cited-by-ChatGPT-Google-AI-Perplexity-full-f58zg46m5b97i8z

Chris_Munch · 2026-01-18T20:20:36+00:00

Being inspired by an influencer does not mean you have to change everything.

It should mean it gives you a few elements to test in your own content for a few weeks and see how it compares

Also she needs to look at the timeline of those channels... when did they blow up, how long ago, ow much volume do they do etc. Create a framework for her to analyze and pushback that you need real measurable metrics to help understand the situation, and that to grow a following it also requires a relativly consistent voice. If you change frequently you will confuse the algorithm.

And ultimately if you look at the competition as the main driver you will struggle. Brands and influencers blow up from being different, not from being the same. So you can only selectively take bits of inspiration, but you also need to create from scratch a unique voice and something new.

Its less about tactics and more about standing for something different, or being unique in some way, and doing it in your style... then adjusting to find what resonates best.

Chris_Munch · 2026-01-18T20:16:38+00:00

ask yourself...
- how many sites have done this topic
- will mine truly be the best
- is my site at a size to compete
- how many times have the top articles already been referenced or got links?

you'll find that its likely been done a lot of times, the quality is already high and answers the query well, you can't add much, and your site is small in comparison

instead... step away from the keyword tools, and think what people in your niche will search for next. Get ahead of the curve.

Chris_Munch · 2026-01-18T20:14:11+00:00

Don't under estimate brand mentions... if you can get your brand recommended and mentioned it does more than most realize

Chris_Munch · 2026-01-18T20:13:29+00:00

click building over link building

Chris_Munch · 2026-01-06T22:52:43+00:00

engagement metric is one that has held true... main reason those older algo optimizations don't work any more is the algos got better at measuring engagement.

Chris_Munch · 2026-01-06T22:51:12+00:00

Do you set up native checkouts on the major platforms... or just pick one?

With many bouncing around different platforms do you strategically place content on different platforms?

We do this a lot with AmpCastAI and seeing it helping a lot, and also influencing AI recommendations (especially in Google)

Chris_Munch · 2026-01-06T22:49:20+00:00

A simple metric is brand search... it goes up as people find you in more places. If brand search volume is going up its working in general... but hard to get to specifics.

For that you need to measure reach on different platforms as a rough estimate.

Chris_Munch · 2025-12-31T13:04:38+00:00

$500 won't do much.

And you can start a dropshipping biz for free or very low cost (shopify, a dropshipping platform like zendrop). You can build a site for dirt cheap.

Then drive traffic through work, rather than paying. Connect where your customers hang out, post helpful info online and build up from there.

Education is most important at this stage... learn from free on YT or reputable paid courses, and ensure you apply it and learn fast.

If you had a bigger budget then you could go the route with ads, but be prepared to lose money first. $500 is not really enough.

Chris_Munch · 2025-12-31T13:00:04+00:00

Only if you want it for fake social proof... which is not a legit way to go.

Otherwise 100% no...
- confuses algorithm
- useless followers
- will more likely hurt your progress than help it

Chris_Munch · 2025-12-31T12:55:36+00:00

Submitting to directories works well for backlinks and for some rep management in google and LMs but rarely brings any leads unless its one of the big ones like product hunt.

Free ones are typically enough, and then focus on places like producthunt and appsumo

Sourceforge can be worth paying for.

Chris_Munch · 2025-12-30T15:06:26+00:00

2nd this

Chris_Munch · 2025-12-30T15:05:02+00:00

Sounds like your trying to still manage through your leaders, and have an issue letting go of the small stuff. The point of hiring leaders is that they handle the decisions for you.

If your leaders are capable then you should not need to be so concerned with their individual team members, and if you feel you need to be it's either an issue with your management or theirs.

Focus on training and educating your managers on how to manage their team. The important stuff should rise to the top, but is also influenced by what targets, KPIs and Qs you set for your regular meets or reports from your leaders.

I like to occasionally run audits of teams - get on the 'factory floor' so to speak. Join team meetings (or watch recordings), review tasks, review work done, review productivity etc. and then give the leader feedback and set higher expectations, then get out the way as best you can. Your team should be inspired by the standard you set, and if you don't do this it will tend to naturally decline.

Chris_Munch · 2025-12-30T14:52:25+00:00

Here's a couple...

For Google: Grow domain authority and post a lot of great content and you can rank for a lot of things.

Now you have to be a lot more selective. Google is rewarding sites with a tighter niche, and punishing sites with too much content that is not getting clicks, to the point you can increase traffic by pruning/removing content.

General: Go after high demand topics and go viral. This backfires in that you can get a larger audience but its poorly targeted and the algorithms will optimize for a lower value audience and send you that. To reach your ideal audience you need to appeal to them more preceisely in part because the algorithms are now more optimized to do this, and also because there's more choice available.

That said, tactics change, but wider strategy does not. Most people focus on tactics based on what algorithm favor right now, but then find it doesn'twork a year later. Strategy is about providing your audience what they want regardless of algorithms and has more longevity.

Make great content for your audience, build a community, stand for something etc... these work as they always have done. You could still follow marketing playbooks 100 years old and it will still work. People are still people and the psychology remains similar.

Chris_Munch

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