After spending 20 years in the financial insurance industry, I’m enjoying my new life as an online entrepreneur! I’m building something I feel good about. I’m making a good living. And I’m never bored.
Most importantly, I love the freedom I now have. My import business can be as big as I want it to be. I can create more stores and trial and error my way through even more growth. Or I can work just 3-4 hours a week and maintain what I’ve already built.
Some months I like to travel and golf, so I choose to work just a few hours a week. Other months, I get I get the urge to build something, so I dive back in and create a new store to sell products online.
Here’s, basically, what this looks like for me…
Right now I’m advertising exclusively on Facebook. If you buy the Importing Fortunes program, they have other methods listed inside. But Facebook gives me the highest return on my investment, so it’s all I use.
To recap what I said yesterday, you first need to know what kinds of products you’re going to import and who is going to buy them.
Facebook makes it easy to find buyers because they let you select different audiences. You can say: Show my ads to members who like Cat Fancy magazine if you’re importing cat toys. Or show my ads to members who say they like yoga if you’re importing yoga mats.
If you think on this small scale, you’ll have a small audience of buyers. So I like to totally immerse myself in the audience… conjure up the largest number of potential customers I can.
I call this: niche immersion. I basically walk myself through the following questions about my products…
***Who is publishing books or magazines on the topic?
***Who are the top celebrities associated with this niche?
***Who is buying this product?
***Who has the products you want to sell?
***Who has good reviews?
***Who has a good track record of selling the product?
***Who will offer the best and quickest shipping?
Let’s use the example from yesterday and say I want to put together a yoga product. First I’m going to figure out who is publishing the most popular books on yoga. People on Facebook like to follow celebrity trends, so I’ll look for celebrities that are yoga enthusiasts.
Then I will figure out who is buying yoga products. I’ll check out the top five yoga channels on You Tube and see what products are being used.
Next I’ll check out websites selling yoga products and see how they are constructed, how the products are priced, and what are the current yoga trends.
By patterning my yoga products after the current yoga trends, I’ll be able to attract more buyers. I know my potential buyers are going to want to use the same products as the instructors and celebrities who are very active in yoga and highly visible, so I will pattern my products the same way.
After I’ve put together a product bundle, I’ll test it by advertising on Facebook.
The good thing about Facebook advertising is that the ads are very targeted. You’re not advertising to everyone, just to the people who are interested in yoga. By immersing yourself in the niche you’ve chosen, you will know who those people are and be able to target your Facebook ads to them specifically.
The process is the same no matter what product you want to sell. Do your research, learn all you can about the product, and most of all have fun and be flexible. Trends change, so flexibility is key in keeping your business up to date and profitable.
It’s a fun process, and I’m much happier doing this than I was in the financial insurance industry. That’s because I’m building. I’m growing. And I’m making the kind of money I want. I also like the flexibility and freedom. I couldn’t be happier.
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