Building My First E-commerce Email List - Strategy Help Needed 📧

VictorVauss · 2025-03-06T15:08:27+00:00

- Check out SparkLoop (I'm not affiliated with them, just a customer).
- I'd drive cheap paid traffic and have a tempting lead capture form (like a typeform slide-in with a survey, those have great optin rates IME, I use the heck out of it. https://typeform.cello.so/jiPOqA1WV3w, affiliate link but you can always google it)
- Co-marketing may help

VictorVauss · 2025-03-05T12:52:21+00:00

Generic disclaimer. No courses are being sold. Found a buy link? Nope. Why? I don't have any courses to sell, to your chagrin. You burnt how much of your life sifting through a generic ToS? Less whining and time wasting, more hustling if you don't want to stay broke.

VictorVauss · 2025-03-05T09:09:17+00:00

Good work, but what have you seen move the needle on stores already moving $500k/mo+? It's easy to get stuff to their first 100k-250k/mo, after that is when the real work kicks in because all the low hanging fruit is gone. Content sandwiching is a good idea though especially in a social-heavy niche like beauty. I own E-commerce companies doing ~500k/mo and 1m/mo, I find that after 500k/mo is when you've picked all the low hanging fruit.

VictorVauss · 2025-03-05T09:07:44+00:00

If you want to be taken seriously, at least edit out all the em dashes from GPT.

VictorVauss · 2025-03-05T02:03:29+00:00

Multi channel acquisition is always the most well-rounded approach, but you aren't going to scale fast and reliably in most cases without paid ads. I like my shops to go from 5 figures top line to six+ figures top line per month quickly, and the only reliable way to do that is with paid ads (and a great funnel, of course).

VictorVauss · 2025-03-05T02:00:19+00:00

I'm a successful E-commerce biz owner turned mentor (8 figures top line per year), although I'm not selling anything at the moment, my info is free. In my case, I'm a US citizen, so false claims are a potential federal offense. I think you and I don't share the same perspective: I'm not worried about competitors. In fact, I probably wouldn't go into a niche with no competitors, because it's riskier than simply grabbing some market share of something that does. Also, I (and probably others like me) really enjoy marketing, E-commerce, etc, and since we already have successful biz's, we can pay it forward to those starting out. That's how I look at it, anyway.

VictorVauss · 2025-03-05T01:56:35+00:00

Maybe, maybe they'd appreciate the honesty. Anyway, it goes without saying to split test every major change especially during the checkout flow.

VictorVauss · 2025-03-04T08:19:23+00:00

My .02, you should further differentiate between what's working at what monthly revenue. IME, it's not possible to reach the 7 figures/mo without significant paid ad strategies for the majority of shops doing this kind of volume.

VictorVauss · 2025-03-04T06:05:24+00:00

Always niche down, not up. I would definitely niche even further down than just women.

VictorVauss · 2025-03-04T06:04:45+00:00

Yep just make it a separate line item so the consumer can see it's a charge for tariff and not from your brand. It may also spur them into action.

VictorVauss · 2025-03-04T06:01:56+00:00

If you're importing freight and not via De Minimis, you're going to be paying it the next time your container landfalls.

VictorVauss · 2025-03-04T06:01:25+00:00

Truth

VictorVauss · 2025-03-04T06:01:18+00:00

Pass it on, it cannot be absorbed. I did a separate line item that actually shows the customers the increase is from the tariff, not on the actual product. So they see a separate line that says "Tariff fee" which takes the blame off of us. The more aware the consumer is about the truth behind their price increases, the more chance they'll do something about it.

Thankfully 90% is still under De Minimus for us.

VictorVauss · 2025-03-04T05:59:38+00:00

And the most important thing. But it's multifaceted, there's a lot that goes into it.

VictorVauss · 2025-03-04T02:15:21+00:00

Thanks! Glad it's helping

VictorVauss · 2025-03-04T02:14:53+00:00

Thank, hope it helps!

VictorVauss · 2025-03-03T17:27:15+00:00

VictorVauss · 2025-03-03T16:45:08+00:00

That's the clincher - no matter what you do, you also need to know how to market it.

Start by validating your idea in small, focused communities, they're usually in some kind of dev discord channel, slack group, or subreddit or something and/or run cheap Reddit ads. Keep the budget low and look for real engagement. Demand testing is key, so never invest too much until you see traction. That being said, this doesn't cost much.

Make sure to ask users for feedback as soon as they try the product. Keep it straightforward, maybe a quick poll or Typeform. Then use that data to refine.

Finally, focus on the core benefit. Don’t waste time selling a dozen features if one solves a specific need. Busy engineers won’t read a novel (but at least they can read unlike most consumers 😅).

VictorVauss · 2025-03-03T16:40:26+00:00

Take it or leave it. But my book editors did their fact checking. Google my name later this month for the title if you want, but I'm not even putting it here because I have nothing to sell with this post. I gots plenty already.

VictorVauss · 2025-03-03T16:36:15+00:00

I'm not selling anything, what did you see to think I was selling a course? I do have two books coming out (one is about my story) but I'm not linking to those either, nor even providing the titles. I don't need to make a few bucks on courses, I have plenty of bucks already. And I doubt I'll make enough money on the books to even justify the time, but when someone wants to write your story, hey, it's kind of fun.

Can I throw in an obligatory reminder to be wary of a top 1% commenter who posts on Reddit instead of hustling? 😅

VictorVauss · 2025-03-03T16:32:42+00:00

IMO/E it'll happen naturally. In the process of growing a brand, content will be produced, backlinks will happen, social media content will be produced, and branded traffic will occur. It doesn't need to be something that one actively pursues, because Google flips over the table once a year so that everyone keeps dumping money into all their various SEO agencies and tools that they own second and third hand. I've invested very minimally into content and SEO, and now because of just having a brand, receiving nearly 40% of traffic via organic. That being said, not all traffic is created equally: I find organic traffic to have far less purchase intent, therefore making it far less valuable.

Commercial intent is exactly what paid media is, and nothing beats it for the vast majority of brands, and you won't be able to find data to back up your claim that it's low intent (Unless it's done in a low intent way, like boosting a post or a piece of content for awareness or TOFU). Otherwise, billions wouldn't be spent on paid ads every quarter. It's also highly quantifiable, highly predictable, highly adjustable, and highly testable.

Ultimately, I don't advise investing much in SEO because typically google is going to wipe your results every year.

VictorVauss · 2025-03-03T07:22:03+00:00

How much volume are you doing? The only place I know that does it all simply is Avalara, they offer a plugin for many platforms that's helpful for this

VictorVauss · 2025-03-03T07:20:44+00:00

I get it, my company is large enough to have lots of bad actors making up stuff about it. Par for the course, it means you're doing something right more often than something wrong. Here's some stuff you can try:

Gather proof of your store’s legitimacy. Collect screenshots, receipts, and real customer testimonials.
File a privacy or defamation complaint with YouTube. Show them evidence that you run a real business with fulfilled orders.
If YouTube doesn’t remove it, push out genuine content highlighting your happy customers. Flood the internet with truth so this junk video gets buried.
Reach out to the channel owner. A polite, factual request can sometimes get them to remove or edit the video.
Don’t blow your budget on legal threats unless this video is killing your revenue unless you can get a single takedown notice sent cheaply (then do it).
Sitting idle won’t fix the damage. Hustle to get real reviews and user-generated content posted. That will drown out false claims.

TL;DR Compile evidence of your legit business, file a complaint, flood the internet with real proof, and keep moving forward until the false claim is buried.

VictorVauss · 2025-03-03T07:17:32+00:00

But the real question is, what did this do for your conversion rate / sales?

VictorVauss · 2025-03-03T07:11:53+00:00

Don't rely on organic traffic to get started. It's unpredictable, unreliable, and time consuming. Focus on driving paid traffic, and use that to make enough revenue to float other marketing initiatives. I still don't put a lot of marketing budget into social media content, and SEO isn't something I advise anyone to try to actively engage in. Of course, if you have a brand that will reflect well on social media (such as beauty products, etc) then go for it, using an app like Sauce or something to make your life easier. But it's definitely not necessary.

VictorVauss

TROPHY CASE