How Long Does It Take To Make Money With Your eCommerce Startup? | Darwin Liu

Matt Edmundson

Hi, and welcome to the eCommerce podcast with me, your host Matt Edmundson. This is a show all about how to grow your own online business. And every week I get to talk to amazing people from the world of eCommerce. Let me tell you it is such a privilege because I get to ask all kinds of weird and wonderful questions about what they know and how it's going to help us develop our own businesses online. Right. And today is definitely no exception to this rule. today. We are asking the question, how long does it take to make money with an e commerce startup? You know, it's a great question, isn't it? You've slogged through the hard work of researching your product. You've, you've you've planned your business, you've written your business plans, you've secured funding. However that's come, you've even created the website. And now you're thinking, well, I've made one or two sales, but when am I going to see the money come in, right? When am I actually going to start to make a profit? When is this all going to be the promised land? Like everybody tells me it is, when I set up a digital business? Well, to dig into that question, and a lot more, today's guest is Darwin Liu, who is the founder and CEO of X Agency, a results driven invite only digital marketing agency. And we're going to get into that now. Darwin is going to be digging into the areas in which we as entrepreneurs can stop wasting money and start making money. Why you should maybe should avoid heading to an eCommerce agency. What's that all about? And how long as we said does it actually take to start making money. So that's what we're going to get into today. In today's podcast, if you are watching the live recording on the live stream, you can say hi, join in on the comments and ask your questions. And we will definitely get round to those so great to see you on the live stream. Now, to give you a bit of background, Darwin is an entrepreneur and marketing expert who founded like I say that the successful invite only marketing agency X Agency, he has grown his business by helping companies and brands establish their digital presence, right. So he's helped people like you and me. And that's why we've got him on the show. And he's here to share some great value high impact lessons on how to start making money with your own eCommerce business. So grab your notebooks, if you're like me, you definitely want to grab it, because I'm a paper and pen kind of a guy, right. And I like to take notes as we're going along. So I hope you've got your notebook ready, and your pen at the ready. If you haven't, I don't know for whatever reason, then all of the notes from today's show will be available as a free download on our website, just head on over to eCommercepodcast.net/55 to download them. And you will get those totally free. And you can get them all the links from today's show, we'll put in them as well. Now, without further ado, that's enough for me. Let me find my magic button here. And then let's bring on to the show today's guest Darwin. Darwin. Welcome to the show. It's great to see you. Thank you for being here.

Darwin Liu

Well, thank you for inviting me, Matt, this has been fun the last time and I enjoy this one.

Matt Edmundson

Yeah, this is gonna be great. I've been looking forward to this. Been looking forward to It's been a while since we spoke. But it's, you know, it's always good when we have these kind of conversations. Now you're, you're over in the States you're in Minnesota. Is that right?

Darwin Liu

No, no, I'm actually in Boston, Massachusetts. We have two offices, though. You know, and I always slur my English. So?

Matt Edmundson

You never know. But the reason I asked that I don't know why I had Minnesota in my head. It's because Minnesota is an unusual place for you people, you know if they come on the show, Boston sure, why not? New York, sure. Do you know what I mean? There are certain cities that you kind of go, OK. And so Minnesota is a bit like OK. I was gonna dig into that. But let's not do that. Let's Let's move on. I don't know why I thought it was Minnesota. Anyway. Thank you for joining us from Boston. I appreciate it. And how long have you? I mean, just for the people listening to the show don't know anything about you? We How long have you been in this world of digital marketing?

Darwin Liu

Yeah, well, I can't even count time anymore. But I know I googled How To Get Rich in 2008. So I don't know. 13-14 years something like that? Yeah. 13 years. It's been a long time too long to be honest.

Matt Edmundson

Wow. And is that how it started for you? You just googled how to get rich online and then never started your journey?

Darwin Liu

Yeah. I think right out of college. I didn't exactly know what I wanted to do. But I knew that I did not want to be working at an office crunching numbers. So now I'm still crunching numbers. But just for myself.

Matt Edmundson

Yeah, at least you're in control with the crunching of the numbers. Right. It's, it's on your time from your time schedule. Well, yeah. So you've been around then a while and I mean, you know, 13-14 years in digital marketing. When you think about it I always say that digital marketing is like dog years. Do you know what I mean? Kind of every year is like seven years in real life. I mean, it's it's, you've been around over 10 years. You've been around in this agency a long time. How have you seen things change during that time?

Darwin Liu

So I guess a couple of good or bad things about digital marketing or what I really do like about you know, this field is that does change that fast, right? It is dog years. You know, and that's what keeps it interesting. But that's also what keeps you on your toes. I don't think there's ever a time where I can open the my, you know, website and open my browser and see that there isn't something new. So that's the crazy thing. What I would say is, you know, there was a lot of opportunities back in the day, it was sort of like the wild west where I was advertising scams, you know, I was selling rebuilds for fat loss, make money at home teeth whitening. They were out there, there was a tonne of opportunities. And what I would say is, there's still a tonne of opportunities today. It's just changes, right? Google is catching on. So, you know, back in the day, we were paying five cents CPCs. Nowadays, we are paying $1 CPC. So it has definitely changed that aspect. People were using that desktop back then, when mobile was coming. It was a huge change. And no one actually knew what to do with themselves. But now that that's a thing, right. So now it's what's new in 2021? I guess I mean, everything is new. It's privacy now. That's the big talk, privacy.

Matt Edmundson

is at the moment. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's interesting. Have you been following the sort of the apple Facebook debate that has been raging through social media?

Darwin Liu

Yeah. I mean, we were forced to follow it. Right. It's but I do laugh all the time. Just because it's a big corporation fighting a big corporation. At the end of the day, you know, they both point fingers. They both just try to make money for themselves to be honest. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. For the most part,

Matt Edmundson

Yeah. Yeah, it's very true. It fascinates me the whole wrangling about like you say, there's two big companies having a fight. And you just like, whatever, just just let me know the result when it's finished. You know, it's that kind of thing, isn't it? So you've seen a lot of changes, then over the last 13 years. And, and I, I liked the comment that you said, it does keep you on your toes, it just changed, isn't it? And there are a lot of things that you kind of have to get around with. And this is, I guess this is if you're starting out in eCommerce, if you're listening to the show, and you are starting out, this is one thing that you're gonna have to get your head around, it is constantly moving, right? And the goalposts are constantly changing. For you and your business and you, you have to stay up to date, you have to kind of stay connected with what's going on. Otherwise, you fall behind quickly. I don't know if you find that

Darwin Liu

100% I think it gets way harder for solopreneurs nowadays to run an e commerce business, right? Just because there's so much information out there. It's hard to stay on top of everything. But for the most part, yes, you have to stay on top of the info and more importantly, the correct info. You have to pick the correct industry because again, eCommerce moves at a lightning pace. What was being sold six months ago isn't hot now. Right? So if you find the right product, the right strategy, the right marketing deliverability then yeah, I think you definitely do have a plan. If not, then you're going to be like the I'd say what millions of other eCommerce entrepreneurs who have disappeared.

Matt Edmundson

Yeah, and I totally agree. It's a shame isn't in some respects. You see, a lot of businesses come and go because that, you know, the, I don't know if you had it in the States, you know, the fidget spinners. A guy came to me, a guy came to me a few months ago and said, Listen, I've got a, I've got a warehouse full of fidget spinners. What do you think I was? Like? I don't know, I'm not convinced you're gonna sell those very quickly, you know, the whole world moved on. It's quite fascinating, isn't it? And you do see that a lot, actually, with the products. So how do you stay up to date? I mean, how do you stay on top of things?

Darwin Liu

Well, for me, I think I care about a couple of things that are the most important, right? One is sort of, I know that in sort of what anyone does, whether it's Ecom, whether it's marketing, whether it's accounting, I think we're sort of limited by our time. So for me, I automate the majority of everything that I do, especially these articles, so I have RSS feeds set up, you know, for all the blogs that I read, um, so that I can stay on top of these things. I do force myself to read some of these things every other day, just so that I am on top of it. And usually, if, if it's a big enough issue, right, people do bring it up enough where I do see it. So you know, that's sort of how I stay on top of it. One thing that we know might get sidetracked is the fact that I try to stay on top of every marketing trend. So, whether it's SEO, Facebook, SEM, content, whatever it is, right and, and because of the fact that I am staying on top of everything digital marketing, I learned faster or I process the information faster. So I just to summarise, I get an RSS feed of sort of every digital marketing I guess channel, you know, that's what you call it. And I learned a little bit of each every time I read so that everything becomes sort of an approach.

Matt Edmundson

That's very good. And so you do that? Did you say every other day, you're sort of actively trying to keep on top of things every other day? So if I was starting out and the whole digital marketing thing, where would I know, three or four places to go straight away? Would you recommend that to help me stay on top of things?

Darwin Liu

Yeah, so a couple of simple ones would be, stay on top of the Google blog, the Facebook blog, search engine world, Search Engine Land are probably the four easiest things I can think of.

Matt Edmundson

So search engine world, search engine land, Google and Facebook. Okay, that's cool. And we'll link to those in the show notes. But I mean, just google them. And you'll find them. I mean, it's pretty strict. They're pretty industry standard, right? So beautiful thing about about the internet these days. So you read these blog posts every day, and you kind of pull out new things here and there to keep on top of things with digital marketing. And one of the things that we got into in our last conversation, which is hence the reason we're having this podcast now, you were pretty big on the idea that actually entrepreneurs waste a lot of money in eCommerce. And there are ways around that there are ways to mitigate that. So we don't actually unwittingly lose a lot of money, is that still something that you think is true?

Darwin Liu

100%. Yeah. Just to sort of jump in on that really quickly. You know, I guess just the question that we have as the main topic for today, right? How long does it take an e commerce company to actually start making money? Well, the answer to that is I actually I don't know, because does that go into what makes something successful? Right? I have one client, which we ran the same marketing programme on, that started making money within four months, we had this, you know, another client wanting the same exact sort of marketing strategy, and is still not broken even after a year, you know, Mo had the same sort of tactic. Same thing going on, same business, it's apparel business, and why weren't they making money? Well, the biggest issue that, you know, when we went in and looked at was, they want it to be like Nike, right off the bat. They had this huge brand new thing they spent so much money on, on this amazing looking website that you know, you know, cool catchphrases, big big photo, things like that. And they're not Nike, no one knows them, like you can sell anything on their site, even if it's crappy, right? And that's what, that's where they withdraw their money when it was just a little, you know, we said, Hey, Nike wasn't always Nike, look at how they used to look like ASOS wasn't always ASOS, backtrack to a crappy site that just sells you know, no one cares about your brand, right? I mean, they actually did that, then they slowly started to make money. And, and that's where they wasted, we wasted about eight months of sort of no conversions because of something like that, if that makes sense.

Matt Edmundson

Yeah, it's a really interesting point. Because when you are thinking about this question, how long does it take for an eCommerce business to make money? I guess one of the first questions you've got to ask is, well, how much money do you need to make right to pay off your initial investment, because to actually make money, obviously, if it costs you 100 grand to get the business set up? Why anything less than 100 grand, you've not made any money, you're still, you know, making a loss, right. Whereas if you're setting up an eCommerce website, and you've literally paid the Shopify fees of 80 bucks, well, then that's a very different, that's a very different story, and a very different thing. And it's intriguing how you've come across a brand that's willing to invest a chunk of change at the start in the brand and the catchphrases and the flashy website and all that sort of stuff, with the belief that it will pay back later. I mean, do you think that? Do you think that was the right way for them to actually begin their journey?

Darwin Liu

No, there's, there's clearly you know, just just like sort of a map or GPS, there's many ways to get somewhere, right, there's this role is to get to the same location, but then there's obviously the dead ends, or something like that was definitely a dead end. Any company that sort of starts out, they they really, at least in my opinion, from what I've seen, and when we work with a tonne of mid enterprise level companies, there's two ways they're really sort of make money, right, One is to pay your way through two is to use equity. If you don't have any money, you're gonna use your time, you're gonna write your blog posts, you're gonna do fasteners, things like that, right? But having a website that is brand heavy, and wasting all this money on branding right up front, in my opinion has never been something that we should be doing, you know, the branding thing comes later when you do have enough coming. That is when you can start branding yourself. There is no point in having an amazing brand and no one knows. And that's what usually ends up happening when, when companies do something like that.

Matt Edmundson

And I think I just want to re emphasise this because this is such an important point. And it is 99 times out of 100 I'm gonna be in agreement with this idea that actually branding is not something you need to invest in at the start. So if you are thinking of starting your own eCommerce business, if you are thinking of, or you've just started this journey, be relieved that you don't have to go and spend 100 grand, right? I was working with a company, they spent 120 grand on a brand. And it took a really long time. And that was the brand that was, do you know what I mean. It's like they've not sold a single thing you like, a lot of money to try and now recoup, where was there a different way do you know what I mean? Or, maybe a better way they could have tested or developed or proven a concept before they went and invested all that cash? We'll never know, because they never did it. And I think, I think again, this is what you said is so critical. Because time and time again, you see people who want to start eCommerce businesses, and they feel like they can't because their website has got to attain some level of visual kudos to me before they sort of start heading down that road. Do you find that?

Darwin Liu

Yes and no. I mean, there comes a breaking point where your site is so crappy that no one actually ever trusts it right there is that. Around me nowadays, every site is almost pre built, Shopify has themes and buying just a pre built one for 100 freakin dollars is enough to get you through the door. You know, people don't need heavy brand messaging to buy things nowadays, I think we have been subconsciously trained to click the add to cart to get these abandoned cart emails to get these emails for, you know, things that we viewed already. So no, you just need a working website, right? For the most part. Look at any sort of big brand out there, whether it is ASOS, whether it is Nike, Adidas use Wayback Machine archive.org, look at how they started out, and they were all crappy sites, you know, yeah, they can, with what they have now on a brand heavy site, that totally sucks because they are the Adidas is they are the Nikes anyone would just go and buy a thing. And they will go through the frustrations of buying something because they are that brand. And if you're not, that's not going to work for you, you know, you need it to be nice and simple. You need the add to carts to be right there right in front of your face, you need people to be able to check out and then just run the correct marketing programme. The abandoned cards will be marketing, your marketing, marketing campaigns, your emails, things like that, and you'll sell.

Matt Edmundson

Okay, so that's, that's something, I think they're really good points. Because if you're not going to go and spend 100 grand on branding, and we're trying to, you know, conserve cash at the start. So it's easier to make cash a little bit down the line. So it's quicker to make a profit, I guess, what are some of the good ways that we should start? What are some of the things that we should think about?

Darwin Liu

Yeah, so this is sort of how I see it as a process. And this would be for whether you have no money or get a tonne of money, right? Um, traffic is traffic. So anyone who's ever been on your site, they're most likely never going to come back again. So you've lost that. So you, your job is whatever sort of effort I'm putting into marketing? How do I make it so that it's recurring. So step one is to set up your automated flows, right? So whether it is making sure that and doing all of this is just upfront, a manual labour upfront setup, fees, costs, whatever. And then you're almost golden, right? So it's going to be your email abandoned, flow programmes, whether it's your product, email, product, view, email, welcome series, email, abandoned cart, email, past purchases, set that up one time, you're good to go, it just goes automatically. If it's klaviyo, you pay to play. Then you set up your remarketing programme, say on Facebook. And again, it's not expensive, right? But marketing is the law of three or the law of seven. If people are coming to your site, they're not going to buy right away, you are not amazon.com you know, people don't know your brand. They need to see you over and over before they buy something. So if you're gonna put in whether it is your time or your money, you want to make it go further, set up your remarketing programmes on Facebook and it's the same thing abandoned cart viewed past purchasers and instead of your remarketing programmes on your sem programme, same thing has been in product via past purchasers and you get these sort of automated things going and doesn't cost that much ago, you know, that's that's cheap. That's fairly cheap compared to say, a fruit for a true marketing programme, right? So get those things you can do whatever the hell you want, whether it's your blogging, whether it is your, your, you know, brand ambassadors, affiliate marketing, things like that, but I would set up the automated sections first.

Matt Edmundson

Okay, that's pretty useful. So set up your automation sections first. And you talked there about getting your remarketing done on Facebook and so on and so forth. And for those who are watching the show, that may be a really new and they're not quite sure what you mean by remarketing. How can you briefly explain that?

Darwin Liu

Yeah, so I'm just I would say look inward into your own shopping behaviour online, right. Picture The last thing you bought you go on Google, you type in bathrobes and you're searching on bathrobes, and you're clicking on the bathrobes, you go to the site, but you're still doing your research. So you do it multiple times and you go out on multiple sites. What remarketing does is it brings that company back up into your face. So for Ecomm, we do dynamic remarketing. So if you clicked on an extra large pink bathrobe with elephants on it, we made sure that bathrobe is following you around, right? So that's what actually sells something, you know, again, it was Amazon, you go there right away, you buy right on the same spot on that day, right? However, as marketers, we know that people need to see it at least three to seven times before they actually buy something. So again, if you're gonna spend that dollar to get someone to your site, or if you're gonna spend that hour writing that blog, just to get that one person you want to export, you want to, you know, make that that time or that money go exponentially further by running remarketing, because that's the only way it really does so.

Matt Edmundson

Okay, thank you for that. I think that's a really helpful explanation. So if you are, if you are starting out in an e commerce business, you think how long this is gonna take to make money? I think the bottom line is, well, how long is a piece of string slightly? You know, it's not actually that straightforward to predict. A lot of it depends on how much you've invested at the start. This is what we've covered so far. But there are things that you can do to help yourself. And so what you're saying here is the first thing you can do to help yourself to get those profits quicker, is set up these automations and remarketing things. And they're the foundations.

Darwin Liu

I would say that's the second thing, sorry for jumping around. I would say these are tactics, right. So setting up remarketing, setting up things like that these are marketing tactics that anyone can sort of do to make a good marketing programme. I think the biggest thing that we see whenever we take over clients, what they're really amazing missing, are actually proper metrics or proper KPIs. There's no baselines, they don't know how much they made, they don't even know what their cost of goods are. And then they don't know what the goals are. They don't know where the traffic coming from, they don't know what the next benchmark is. So for me, right, I would say the first thing anyone or any company really should do is set up Google Analytics, get a simple spreadsheet, figure out what the traffic is, figure out how much people actually buy something. And if there's no one buying yet, you know, figure out where the traffic is coming from. And even if it's 300 visits a month, your job is to say, okay, for next month, I want to get 600, I want to get 900, I want to get 1000. And then with that, then you can actually go say, Okay, what marketing tactics do I want to do? How much money do I have to do this? How much time do I have to set up this programme? What do I do first? So yeah, that comes to first is tracking and metrics.

Matt Edmundson

Okay, so that's, that's a bit of a head spinner right there, isn't it? The whole tracking and metrics thing I can do, I think is quite, I can imagine people listening going, I don't even know where to begin or how to do that. And so your advice is quite straightforward. You've got to make sure your analytics is on, and basically be looking at the data. Where are your customers coming from? Or your visitors coming from? And let that data start to shape how you then market to those people? Right?

Darwin Liu

Yeah. Correct.

Matt Edmundson

It's, it's fairly straightforward advice. And I kinda isn't that straightforward to do, though, is it actually the outworking of that. Actually, that's straightforward?

Darwin Liu

So this is what I would say, right? It's a two part answer. One is if you're a solopreneur, you're either using Shopify or WordPress WooCommerce. Anyways, just plugins for that for Shopify, you just door right into the interface. So technically, it is kind of straightforward to really just draw it on really quickly. Second piece is, is it actually straightforward in terms of learning Google Analytics, and learning how to read your numbers and things like that? I would say no, but if you can't learn it, or if you can't handle it, don't be an entrepreneur. I mean, this is just sort of the name of the game that we do, right? If you want to do this, this is not for you. Yeah, it takes great effort to get great rewards. So if you can't, you know, brace yourself to do these hard things. And the setup is hard to learn these hard things. If you don't have the money. They should just quit now.

Matt Edmundson

Yeah, yeah, no, totally true. I think it's such a wise thing. If you want to be an eCommerce entrepreneur, get your head around the data, you've got to understand the data, what data is relevant to your business, and track it ruthlessly? I'm always amazed when people don't do that. Simple things like, you know, we're talking about not wasting money. And for me one of the plays. And I learned this the hard way down, right. So in my own eCommerce business, we'd be spending 1000s and 1000s of pounds or dollars every month on Google AdWords, right, just let's just put this chunk of budget into Google AdWords. And it wasn't until about 18 months later or two years later, someone came to me and said, is that been worth it? You know, is that paid anything back to you? And I'm like, I don't know, I, and it's really bad that I don't know. But I don't know. And so we looked at the data and went man alive, we would have been just as good going outside and throwing pound notes down the street, right? Because I think we would have, we would have definitely won more customers by doing that. And so no, I learned that the hard way, you've got to track the data, especially when you're spending money on ads, whether it's Google or Facebook, right?

Darwin Liu

Yeah. And you don't have to feel bad. You know, everyone does it. So you're in the same boat.

Matt Edmundson

Yeah, still, I should, I should know better, Darwin, that's the fundamental problem. about these things.

Darwin Liu

Yeah, yeah.

Matt Edmundson

So um, so step one, then is understand the data. Step two, we were going to set up our basic automations now for remarketing. And these things are fundamentals and get those basics right. And in order, rather than just doing what I did. And just actually, rather than doing what a lot of people do is to set up a website and go to Facebook advertising straightaway and throw hundreds of dollars hoping it's going to sell products. And it doesn't, right. And so, this is all very, very good, sensible advice. So what we're going to do now is we're just going to take a quick break, we're going to thank our show sponsor, and I'll be back with Darwin in just a few minutes. So don't go anywhere. We'll be back very, very soon.

Let me give a big shout out to one of our show sponsors, Kurious Digital, you know what I love, it's flexibility. It's such a great platform, you know how when you start out, you might typically use an online platform, because they're cheap, they're easy to use, super accessible. But you know what, they aren't that flexible. And as your business grows, you end up moving to an agency, right? Because that's just what you do. And at some point, you're going to have this nightmare to deal with. And it can be incredibly expensive. And the thing for me that I love about KD is it will grow with you, you can start out on the platform easily and as your business grows, then KD will adapt with you. And I don't know of any other platform that does all of that. So if you're in the market for a new e commerce platform, make sure you follow the links from mattedmundson.com. Take advantage of the offers that they've got for you. And let me know what you think.

Okay, I'm here with Darwin and we're talking about all things to do with eCommerce, and how to start making money on our eCommerce websites. So we have in the first part of this looked at some of the fundamentals of foundations, you know, and let Darwin let's get back into this conversation.

What are some other ways youth that you've come across that are kind of time wasting or money wasting things that most people get involved with that we should avoid?

Darwin Liu

Ah, yeah, so let me think, right. time wasting things are I think I have seen a lot of people do, or focus a lot on the shiny objects. So they jump from one shiny object to the next shiny object one day, it's Facebook, and then they'll jump to talk and they'll jump into something else. Right? What I would say is sort of stick to something, pick something, put some metrics towards it, stick to it, whether it is Facebook, whatever it is, just stick to it. Some other time wasting things might be even blogging, I've seen a lot of people sort of just just blog and just a blog, right? They, they, they don't do their keyword research, they do a 500 word article that they would never ever rank for. And they're just writing and they're just writing to their heart's desires. You know, it's not what people want to read is not what's actually being searched. And they just write so it ends up being a waste of time. A lot of posting, so they do all these posts on Facebook and Instagram and and all this, you know, time thinking about what to do without doing proper hashtag research, without understanding that say only about three to 5% of people see organic Facebook posts, right? Without understanding that any sort of work that they put to a social post sort of is gone because they didn't do the proper hashtag research. So it's not that it's indexed, right. It's not like someone's searching for, I don't know, fitness apparel. Their post is gonna come up. It's just gone. They've spent all this work and it goes nowhere versus say Yo, and they did do their research. And they did write something that does get searched, whatever work they put in is going to, you know, pay dividends going forward. So, yeah, I would say just to summarise shiny objects, you know, SEO with 500 word article finding research, and then a lot of just social posts of it sort of research. Yeah.

Matt Edmundson

Yeah. It's the belief, isn't it that if I posted on social media, my business will grow?

Darwin Liu

Yes, exactly.

Matt Edmundson

It's, it's not a helpful belief. I mean, I think it is one of those sacred cows that people will have. You know, I've got 2000 followers on Instagram, Matt, surely I can build a business that's going to rake in millions now? No. Yeah. Because I bet you're not one of those 2000 people are going to buy from you. Right. It's a really fascinating conundrum that people have in their heads, isn't it? Surely I've got 2000 followers now I'm an influencer? Yeah. It just does, it intrigues me how people think about, you know, what they do on social media. And I think sometimes people do stuff because they, it makes them feel good. Do you know what I mean? Which is fine, but it's not a business growth strategy.

Darwin Liu

Yeah, I think a lot of you and I try not to throw around the word entrepreneur, right? Just because I feel like people masquerade under that, that title. And instead, they are actually just trying to promote themselves, not the business. This will just make me feel better as an influencer. I tell all my friends, I'm starting a business or something. But that is a totally different topic.

Matt Edmundson

Yes, that was big, that was a thing going around in England a few years ago. I have not seen him for a while now. It was going around in England A few years ago, basically people, it was like a cartoon of people saying I'm an entrepreneur, and you're the guy replying back Oh, so you're unemployed? Is that kind of? Because it just became such an overused phrase, wasn't it really, and people didn't know what it meant. I totally agree with you. I like that, I think. I think we all suffer from in some respects to shiny object syndrome. And I think recognising that is important. But I like what you said there about just, you know, pick one thing, get some metrics, stick with it, and just become good at that. Especially if your customers are there. Right? So just focus in on that. And don't worry about the rest of it, just do that. So the blogging thing I can I can attest to, you know, just writing pointless articles because you think you should do it. Rather than just taking the time beforehand to go actually, what are people searching for? How can I help them? So back to your Nike example, the idea that came into my head, as you were talking was, if I'm, you know, selling tennis shoes online, I'm not going to write an article why these are the best tennis shoes ever. Right? Because it's just I'm not going to rank for it. And if people read it, they're never gonna believe it. Right. So I've got to approach this differently, haven't I? And so I like that. I think that's that's top top advice along with social media. So that's a lot of time wasting stuff, right there. And what else do you think? What about do you see a lot of people wasting money on maybe?

Darwin Liu

Okay, so I mean, at the end of the ads, I don't think the majority of people are doing it right. You know, a lot of I would say eCommerce companies about two years ago, and these are solopreneur companies, they hopped on the dropship wave. So, you know, people on Facebook were selling master courses on how to become an eCommerce dropship business and everyone jumped on that right? What they paid, you know, whatever, it was 100 bucks for that course, they thought that they could start a drop shipping company. And then they do all these ads and realise that they were not making what they thought they would be doing. And that's really what it is. It's wasting money on marketing and not really knowing how to do it. What I would say is, I don't know how much money you have, right? If you're dead broke, go the free route. Don't even spend money on advertising. If you have some advertising, find a verified expert. It doesn't have to be an agency, it could be a consultant, someone who, who has years of experience under their belt, managing a Facebook programme managing an AdWords programme, right? The 500 or $2,000 that you're paying them is going to be worth way more than the 1000 you're gonna lose trying to manage this yourself. So you know, it's bait so you know, big waste is just sort of almost anything ads heavy. I don't think I've ever seen a sort of eCommerce solopreneur or someone starting out actually run correct ads properly and they usually end up wasting 10s of 1000s of dollars before they end up going to say an agency or an outsourcer, or something like that.

Matt Edmundson

That's very, very good advice. And just the thing, which stuck out to me there was the $1,000, or whatever, you're gonna pay the agency to run your ads is worth more than the $1,000, you're gonna lose trying to figure this out yourself. And I think a good ad agency is worth their weight in gold. That's my experience, right? With running my own business. We don't do internal paid media. We just like, there's a great guy we have involved, called Ross. I should get him on the show, actually. But we're just like Ross does it because he's great, right. And you know, the guys are in there every day, they're checking the results, they're looking at what's working, what's not working, they understand concepts like ROI, or return on ad spend. And it's like, it's like their laser targeted on this, as if they're fixated on it, they've got to hit their goals, they've got to hit their targets. And it's brilliant. And they're worth every penny, because we wouldn't be able to do that. I wouldn't be able to do that and wouldn't have the time or capacity to do that. And maybe you could set it up. But then next week, I'll have totally forgotten that I'd set it up because my head is somewhere else, right?

Darwin Liu

You shouldn't really be focusing on every single thing that you're doing in the company, you're you should try to, you know, focus on the tactics and strategy of how to grow. So yeah.

Matt Edmundson

Yeah, that's totally right. I think this is one of the lessons you learn, isn't it? How quickly are you gonna make money? Part of me would say, How quickly can you get rid of doing just about everything in the business and give it to somebody else? Because there are people much better at it than you, right? I mean, I have my own eCommerce business, I'm really fortunate our company is doing well. Or my companies are doing well, my eCommerce businesses are doing well. And the trick I learned years ago was to go and find people smarter than me to do a lot of the stuff, do you know what I mean? Exactly. It's such a critical lesson to learn, and ads, especially ads, just just go get some really good people. How do you, I suppose if I'm listening to myself talk here, Darwin, I'm going, this is top advice from you. But how do I do that? How do I find a good ads agency? How do I know who to trust? Surely there's a lot of charlatans out there that I want to try and avoid? Right?

Darwin Liu

Well, I would say this, how did you find Ross?

Matt Edmundson

Recommendation, actually, that's a very good question. And he was referred to me.

Darwin Liu

Perfect. And so we'll hop on that topic later for how to actually make money. Okay, so just keep that in top of mind. Okay, with that said, though, you know, referrals are obviously the best you would ask a, you know, business owner in your realm, who would they go to right? I have used up work extensively I have used and then there were the other two elements or sites back in the day when I first started out that you were able to hire people. And it was so hard, right? They had the recommendations, they had the reviews, but it's actually still super hard to vet someone. What I would say is, if you don't have anyone in your network, if you don't have anyone else, if you can't ask around Upwork is usually the place to go. If you want to find someone good. What I would say is stick to the Americans or the Ukrainians, Ukrainians, if you want to save money, don't go to the Middle East or Pakistan or things like that. Everyone there is an expert, because this is you know, this is the way to make money. So do not go there. Look at the reviews, get referrals from sort of, you know, their current clients, and just shop them just like you would shop any product. Read what people have to say about them, you know, see if they've done good, good by their current clients see what kind of history they have. See if they have experience in your current category. So yeah, the gig economy is huge. Upwork is the one I go to I don't use anymore, but back in the day it is. There's a bunch out there now. I just don't know what they are. But yeah,

Matt Edmundson

Yeah, no, it's good. So I've used it a lot over the years as well. So yeah, definitely check that out. Okay, so that I think that's all helpful advice. You know, don't, don't waste time. Don't waste money, especially on ads, when you don't need to get some expert help and outsource as much as you can use sites like Upwork to help you because it's relatively inexpensive. And so I want to circle back a little bit then to this referral thing that you mentioned. Otherwise, I'll forget if I don't do it now.

Darwin Liu

costs. So, you know, I think we talked a lot about the mistakes that we make. But we haven't really dived into sort of maybe some key things that people should think about that they normally don't think about when they start, you know, eCommerce business or any business, right. So even when I was starting out, I sort of knew that what I think based on sort of the Small Business Administration, 70 or 80 or 90% of businesses fail, and the first start out, right? I knew that I was sort of limited by a couple of things. One is time and two is I'm a me to company. How many you know, marketing agencies are out there? 10s? hundreds, right? How many ecom companies out there? You're not the first one to sell pants? Right? You're not the first one to sell dogs. There are a tonne out there. So, yeah. And many of them are running marketing programmes with experts. Again, 1000s 10s of 1000s. So it really is, alright, how do I do something else that is different than what everyone else is doing that isn't talked about on Search Engine Land that isn't talked about everywhere else, right. And one key marketing tactic that people really truly don't have to remember or don't don't even sort of realise or look into is partners, partnerships, referral programmes like that. And if we were strictly talking about an ecom business, right, the two things I look at is our limiters time and two is how do I get the big boys to become my partners or to talk about me so that I can actually sell something. I can actually take my, my, my, you know, brand from relative obscurity to everywhere, right. And that's, that that's how you jump. So it was an ecom company, I really would say, look for partnerships and automate that process. Somehow, if I am writing a blog, right, I would figure out how to automate it so that I can reach out to all the big, and if I'm selling female apparel, I would try a female gym apparel, I would try to reach out to as many sort of blog writers that are talking about gym for females or working out for females to talk about my product, you know, if I could just get one person to do that, that is going to be paid 700, you know, 100 100 times dividends compared to, you know, me trying to write my own blog by myself on my own blog where no one reads, right? If it was for social media postings, how do I actually get someone big in the fitness industry to actually talk about me? How many people that do reach out to, you know, what is the best process of that? For that? How do I go to these networking events? How do I meet them in person, so I can sort of do something where, where they will talk about me, you know, so that if you just spend some time doing that, whether it is writing down your top 100, you know, people in your category, whether it is writing down, people who you really aspire to be and just reaching out, things like that is what sort of jumps that company from nothing to something big. And that is all you need is one or two people to start it. And once you do, you're golden, you know, everyone starts talking about you. And your company, relativity seems, came out of nowhere, but actually, you know, you spent all this time doing the right thing. So this is sort of a thing that I I try to always look at, which is how do I build my partnerships? How do I get people to promote me, right, because you know, that's a warm lead. So that's that's way, way easier than sort of any marketing that you can do.

Matt Edmundson

Now, it's, again, a very, very good top advice. I remember, there's a product called San Tropez, I don't know if you have it in the States, but San Tropez is a fake tan. It's like a spray tan type thing. This was years ago. And I've always been part of the beauty industry. And I remember this story, and I think it was, it was a relatively obscure company. Until one day the paparazzi photographed Victoria Beckham that had like a clear plastic bag that she was carrying stuff in, one of which was San Tropez, self tanning. And then that one photograph just catapulted that business from relative obscurity to sort of international stardom overnight. And so you see the power of it. And I think you can also I don't know, if you've had an experience that you can also reverse engineer the process, like, you can look at well known people who are the people that you admire the people in your industry. And, you know, I could have reversed engineer, I could have kept having photos of Victoria Beckham coming up in my feed in my RSS feed. And I could go, it's interesting, she started using that product. Let's put that on our shelves, right? And so we did that when William and Kate, you know, that Prince William and Kate started dating, we found out what skincare products she used. And we started selling those on our website, because you know, somebody somewhere was going to ask and it was going to appear in a magazine and people were going to go, where do I buy this stuff from? And we just wanted to appear, you know, top of the ranks in Google so you can reverse engineer it.

Darwin Liu

You just gave away your secret, Matt. Yeah, and there are definitely people doing that. Especially someone like you right. And I think you just basically proved that you can make money online in almost any way that you can think of you just have to think a little bit right so definitely that's a good great tactic and great that you told your listeners.

Matt Edmundson

Yeah, okay. This is all fantastic stuff. Now, one of the things that is in my notes to ask you about, and one of the things I said at the top of the show was why should you not go to an eCommerce agency? Perhaps straightaway? What was your thinking behind that?

Darwin Liu

Yeah. So in terms of sort of how I see an e commerce agency, agency charges, fees, right, so we, we go have to meet the price level clients, and our, you know, our fees are actually pretty high and a solopreneur, wouldn't be able to afford these kind of fees. The only time you should actually go to an eCommerce agency is when you actually have the funding or, or the ability to, you know, if you're a brand new brand, if you're okay, with not making money or being profitable within the first six months to about a year in a year and a half, then I would say go to an eCommerce agency. But usually, you know, this is upfront, is going to be too much for someone who does not have the product who does not have everything ready. And then going forward as a solopreneur, what I really would do is go to a solo contractor who has, you know, credibility, I wouldn't go to an agency right away.

Matt Edmundson

Yeah, that's a very good point agencies are good, but agencies are expensive. And it's, and you've got to marry those two things together, you're buying relative expertise. And you've got to figure out at what point that's going to be useful for your business. No, that's great. So if I circle back to our opening question, how long does it take to take to take? Let me start that question again. How long does it actually take to finally start making money? What are some of the benchmarks? I mean, it's it's an interesting question, and difficult to answer. But what are some of the benchmarks maybe that we could leave people with?

Darwin Liu

Yeah, so what I would say is this. by year one, if you are not breaking even in any of your endeavours, then you really should relook at your marketing programme or what you are doing. By year, one and a half, if you are actually not profitable, at least in some sort of way. Again, you're doing something wrong, right? I think we've personally, I've personally helped three companies go from nothing to say 100 stores physically, our company has helped I think, I don't even know anymore off top my head, I think double digits, companies, you know, just just go go from nothing, right? And I don't think I've ever seen any of our clients take more than a year and a half, that's sort of in our experience, or at least in my experience a year and a half is sort of the longest I would go. Unless, of course again, you know, this is a loaded question. If you're a solopreneur, who's sort of dilly dallying, and putting two hours here, two hours there, that doesn't really I don't think time is a great sort of benchmark for anything, right. Um, but just just to, you know, use this as the benchmark, say, a year break even if you're not there, then then really, you know, re-evaluate your programme, a year and a half, if you're not making any sort of money. Change industries, I don't know, pay someone, I don't know, change something. It's really not working too well.

Matt Edmundson

Something's got to give.

Darwin Liu

Yeah, we've had companies make money within the first four months, we've, I have friends who started, you know, high end dropshipping products, running a marketing programme, literally profiting within the first two months. So out, what I would leave your listeners with is, the product doesn't matter, the time or the money doesn't technically really matter. But having the correct marketing programme does, if you don't, or if you don't actually have the strategy that matches your time or your money. Nothing you do will work, you are literally just wasted. So you really do have your whole strategy, right, you can sell a pet rock nowadays, and people will buy it, if you actually put it out.

Matt Edmundson

If you tell the story the right way, people will definitely buy it. Yeah. And that there are people that will do that. And you just got to it's telling the story the right way and finding those people isn't it and getting them to engage so and that's what marketing is all about. And so that's been super helpful. And again, it's been great because actually you know, if you're listening to the show, and you kind of go that's great. If you go to the show notes, get eCommercepodcast.net/55, because it's episode number 55. And just read through the notes, read through the transcript, and all of the things that Darwin's talked about, you know, all of the basics, all of the fundamentals, get those right in your marketing strategy, you know, and if you're not making money yet, maybe go and check those things, how are they working for you, you know. Darwin, listen, I really appreciate this. I really appreciate your time, and you sharing stuff with us. How can people get a hold of you, but how can they reach out to you if they want to connect?

Darwin Liu

Yeah, our company website is xagency.com. You can always reach me by email at [email protected]. I promise that you know, I will respond when I can. I just won't respond right away. But if you guys do have questions, I definitely do love to help. So reach me there at [email protected].

Matt Edmundson

That's awesome. And like I said, we'll put all of the links to Darwin in the show notes, and you can get them. Darwin and listen, it has been an absolute treat for me. I've really enjoyed the conversation to know I've really enjoyed if I'm honest with you, I've just enjoyed the fact that you've been totally blunt. And just straight down the line. No, no wishy washy, kind of just just tell it as it is. And I've, I've really enjoyed the straight talking nature of it. So thank you for being with us. Really, really appreciate it.

Darwin Liu

Hey, man, I loved your show. So you know, definitely that's why I keep coming on. So yeah, I love it.

Matt Edmundson

You're, you're gentlemen, sir. Very kind of you will speak soon. Yeah. Well, I wasn't Darwin fantastic, there. I mean, I just love my conversations with him, such a cool guy, very generous with what he shares. And like I said, I just, I just love the straightness of how he talks. No fluff, no nonsense. If you're doing this change, why are you doing that? And I quite like that. That's, that's, that's, that's good. And that's refreshing. So as I said to you, if you want to download the show notes they are available to you for free, you'll be able to get those at eCommercepodcast.net/55. And you can connect with Darwin and all that sort of stuff, I'm sure he'd be more than happy to reach out and talk to you. He's, he's such a generous guy. And so cool. What a great show what a great show. Thanks to those of you joined by the livestream, it is always great to connect with new people. Do connect with what's going on here. Because every week, we do an eCommerce podcast, we're doing a new show where we get to talk to some amazing guests, just like Darwin, who bring insane value. And hopefully if you got some great stuff out of it tonight, then I would appreciate it if you could do it if you could rate the show on iTunes to head on over to iTunes and give the show a rating. Share us out on social media if you feel like it because it's always great to connect with new folks around the world. And just head on over to eCommercepodcast.net/55 like I said for tonight's show notes. Thanks for listening. Do come back next week as I get to interview some more amazing people. That's it from me. Have a fantastic week, wherever you are, and I wish you every success with your eCommerce business. I will be back again soon. Bye for now.