|
About 3 years ago, a relatively unknown "under the radar" affiliate marketer decided to take a gamble a launch his own web biz selling – of all things – belly button rings. That decision to take on a highly competitive body jewelry market while building a business that (by necessity) would need to be virtually self-funding presented it’s own unique set of challenges. Today we’ll talk about what AllPiercings.com’s owner did right those first couple of years – and what he did wrong.
Q: So, ….you’re hip-deep into your 3rd year online with your body jewelry business. How’s it going?
A: Not bad. Not bad at all. As you know, we've been profitable since our 4th month in business (how many "brick & mortar" business can say that?), and things have grown steadily year in, year out. Having said that, there's always room for improvement.
Q: You say "profitable"....but does that mean your business is paying the bills, or that it's covering it's expenses and allowing you to expand?
A: A little of both, actually. Since the business is so young (and is, in reality, just a small "piece" of my little online empire), most of the profits get plunged right back into the business in the form of more advertising, more inventory, etc. etc. We are pulling a very small percentage out now to fund other ventures, but I'd say until we hit the sales numbers that I have in mind as a goal, we'll be putting the majority of the profits back into the business.
Q: Let's talk a bit about those expenses. You mentioned advertising costs - where are you spending most of your advertising dollars these days?
A: I'm not going to go into specifics here, of course, as many of my competitors seem to take a great deal of time to effectively try to emulate our every move in this area. I will say, however, that we've (at least for the foreseeable future) moved away from PPC (pay per click) and into other forms of quantifiable sponsored advertising. PPC has, over the last 18 months or so, gone down significantly in terms of ROI (return on investment), not to mention increased fraudulent [click] activity. Until the engines come up with a better solution for stopping fraud, we'll probably stay away from it. Luckily, there are plenty of other channels to gain targeted traffic, and we've actually been able to increase our monthly sales while decreasing our ad spend.
Q: What other expenses are you encountering?
A: The usual, or course. Postage, packaging, shipping, inventory, etc. As we grow, cash flow becomes more of a problem....but we've recently secured a business line of credit to deal with that.
Q: It would seem the body jewelry business would be a bit seasonal -have you encountered that?
A: Of course - but we've also been working on expanding our product offerings (we'll be carrying a plethora of hand-made earrings and other jewelry early next year). to counter that. In general....the end of summer leading up to the holiday shopping season is our slowest time of year - but we still get a fair amount of business.
Q: Fair enough - what's on the horizon for AllPiercings.com?
A: I've always said it's important to have a business plan, and we're sticking to ours. We do have specific goals in mind, and a "roadmap" to get us there, but in an online business environment, you always have to roll with the punches. Adapting to the rapidly changing online marketplace can be challenge, but I think we've done quite well. The good news is that, even if I should decide to "move on" to another challenge, we've already received several nice offers to buy our business, and are always open to entertaining them. None have been "sweet" enough to make me hit the "sell" button yet -but you never know. |
|
