Your Marketing Podcast

Welcome to YourMarketingPodcast. This is Series One – How to Start a Successful eCommerce Business in Less than 30 Days. In this step-by-step guide, you will learn how to quickly launch an eCommerce store and start seeing those sales roll in! And here’s your host…Ishani DePillo.

I’m totally diggin’ the title of today’s podcast – “Taxes, Returns, Promotions, Oh My!” Because just like Dorothy and her crew, we were quite terrified of these scary monsters lurking in the forest. We knew they existed, we knew they would catch up to us soon, and we had little to no idea on how to combat the beast or more like, soothe the beast.  

So we’re going to cover what we learned, messily, haphazardly, so you can have a much smoother yellow brick road experience. But FULL DISCLOSURE: we are not accountants. It’s best to consult your accountant and ask for their professional advice and stick with that. And if you get good advice, don’t be selfish now, pass it on to us too!

Before we dive into taxes, I just wanted to quickly go over our last episode which covered all about Operations, like shipping, Customer Service, and more. Don’t overlook Operations because you want to be extremely prepared when orders start coming in.

Okay lions, I mean, taxes, let’s do this.

By the way, Sales tax has never had a more accurate depiction – big messy mane, sharp teeth to swallow you whole, and claws to take that money right out of your hands. Hm, I guess you can get a pretty good idea on how I feel about taxes. And I’ve got an inkling that you’re probably right there with me or will be after your first year in business.

Running an eCommerce store that sells tangible personal property means you have to collect Sales taxes. A tangible personal property is defined as any item that can be seen, weighed, measured, felt, or touched. Gift cards might be the only item that’s exempted from sales tax in your Store.

A sales tax is a tax paid to a governing body for the sales of certain goods and services, and it’s made up of your State tax + your local tax. So for instance, if you operate in Orange County, California, like we do, your sales tax is 7.25% (6% state tax + 1.25% local tax). This tax is collected from your buyers at the time of purchase and then you are liable to pass it over to the governing body during your tax schedule. Although the consumer carries the burden of paying the sales tax, you are liable for collecting and passing the sales taxes to the governing body.

For eCommerce, oy vey, it gets complicated. Not only does every State have different Sales Tax requirements and percentages collected, but you have to care if you have Nexus in these States. Nexus, you’re going to hate this word. Sales tax nexus is the relationship between you, the seller, and the state, that mandates that you have to register than collect and remit sales tax in that state. Usually this is because you have a physical presence in the state or you reach a certain sales threshold, like over $100k in annual sales. Let’s demonstrate this in an example:

You’re located in California and your home address is listed as the company’s address; it’s also where you house all your product. In this case, you have a Nexus in California and therefore have to pay California State Sales tax.

Now, let’s say you ship 50% of your goods to a friend on the East Coast in Maryland to send out items from her home to fulfill East Coast orders. Maryland will want a piece of that pie too, because you have a Nexus in that State. You just created a physical presence, or a fulfillment center, in the state and should therefore probably collect Sales taxes in case the State requests it. If you don’t collect sales tax from the consumer, you are still responsible to pay, so then you have to pay out of your bottom line.

Let’s add one more piece, just to make it even more messy – District taxes. A district tax can be anywhere between .10% t

Welcome to YourMarketingPodcast. This is Series One – How to Start a Successful eCommerce Business in Less than 30 Days. In this step-by-step guide, you will learn how to quickly launch an eCommerce store and start seeing those sales roll in! And here’s your host…Ishani DePillo.

Ishani: Hey, guys, we are so close to the end and yet have so much to go over still. Starting an eCommerce store is definitely for the strong-willed and uber-focused. But don’t lose heart, keep chugging along, we are going to get there. 

Today’s podcast goes over Operations – from package design to customer service options to shipping methods – we’ll take a deep dive into the necessary steps you need to take to have your store running at an optimal level.

There is so much more to running an eCommerce business than just throwing a product onto a website. You have to think about the Operations. How will you get your products into the hands of buyers? Who’s going to be picking and packaging your items? Where are you going to ship from? Who will handle customer service inquiries? Initiating returns?

Those are all solid questions, and you need to have the answers lined up before you start selling your product.

So let’s start with the first one – Shipping. How are you going to get your product out to the customer? There are a couple of common shipping options for eCommerce stores:

Dropship. If you’re a reseller and shipping your product directly from the manufacturer, the manufacturer or supplier will likely have options where they handle the whole process of sending it out to the customer on your behalf. This is called dropship. How it works is an order comes into your website, you pass that order to the supplier who then ships the order to the customer.The main advantage of dropship is that you get to keep  low overhead costs, since you don’t need to purchase the inventory yourself, and store it in a warehouse, hire people to pick, pack and ship your products etc. but the margins can be small. You will have less control over the shipping process and you’re at the mercy of the supplier to get items out on time and delivered well. You also need to look into integrations to automate the process of passing the customer order to the supplier so you are not doing it manually. There are a lot of prepackaged options available depending on your platform but you should do your research beforehand.With dropship, it’s unlikely that you will be able to customize the packaging to your brand, unless they have what’s called private labeling or white-labeling options. So brand awareness might be lower when you use dropship method.Ok going back to other Shipping options… you could use a 3PL (also known as a “third-party logistic warehouse provider”), where your items are shipped from the manufacturer directly to a 3PL Warehouse to store and ship out of. Basically 3PL will handle your business’s distribution and fulfillment services. Always, do your research on the fees associated with this type of warehouse before you sign up. Fees can vary based on your product because bulky items will require a larger storage area and therefore cost more. Some companies we’ve heard positive things about are Whiplash and ShipBob.What’s great about 3LPs is that you can typically hold inventory in multiple fulfillment locations like one on the West and East Coast, so you lower your transit time to the customer and save money on shipping costs.Renting space and starting your own warehouse is another option. But OMG this is going to be a HUGE undertaking and not recommended for businesses owners who are just starting out because the overhead costs can get pretty expensive. Think: warehouse rent, software costs, employee wages, equipment purchasing and/or rentals, etc. It’s a hefty list and we don’t recommend it for eCommerce beginners.The last option we will cover today is what most small eCommerce business owners will start off with. Fulf

This is Series One – How to Start a Successful eCommerce Business in Less than 30 Days. In this step-by-step guide, you will learn how to quickly launch an eCommerce store and start seeing those sales roll in! And here’s your host…Ishani DePillo. 

Ishani: Hello Everyone, I hope you are doing well today!. Thanks for listening in. Today’s podcast is going to be about the big guy, Amazon. If you’re not familiar with Amazon… who am I kidding, we all know Amazon, right? Well, let me tell you a bit of history about Amazon anyway. 

Started in 1994 and in his garage, Jeff Bezos sold his first book on Amazon. Now over 25 years later Amazon records $4,722 each second? That’s $17 million per hour. Isn’t that insane?  To say that Amazon has flipped the retail industry on its head is understatement. You can basically order anything online, and get it delivered to your home within days, if not hours. There’s same-day delivery and then there’s Amazon Prime where you pay a subscription fee to get 2-day FREE shipping, free music and movie streaming plus additional benefits. And 1 out of 3 Americans have an Amazon Prime Membership.

So if that many people are using Amazon to purchase what they need, shouldn’t you be on Amazon selling?

Our consensus is yes, but there are some that say no, including some of our bigger clients. I’ll go over why they don’t want to be on Amazon. But before that, let’s quickly go over how selling on amazon works.

You sign up for the Amazon Seller Program and go through their approval process, You list your products on Amazon, Amazon customers find and purchase your products on Amazon’s Marketplace, You either ship the items to the customer or have Amazon ship the item for you if you have signed up for Amazon Fulfillment. We will cover both options in this podcastAmazon sends you the money, but not before taking out their fees.

Did you know small-to-medium businesses located in the US sell more than 4,000 items per minute? And more than half of the items sold on Amazon are from small to medium-sized businesses. So yes, being an Amazon Seller might be worth it for you.

Let’s talk about the benefits and the disadvantages.

So the advantages to selling your products on Amazon are:

Reach: There are just so many users on Amazon! 112 million US Amazon Prime subscribers, to be exact. With that amount of shoppers on the marketplace, you are bound to make sales.Reputation: Amazon is one of the most powerful, respected and trusted companies in the world. Trusted by buyers that is. In fact, 89% of buyers agree they are more likely to buy on Amazon versus any other eCommerce website. And the #1 reason behind why consumers prefer Amazon over other eCommerce businesses is the their customer service. High Purchase Intent: Consumers go to Amazon to buy a product. Unparalleled shipping times: If you do end up using Fulfillment by Amazon, where Amazon ships your product from their warehouses, you get fast shipping that’s hard to beat. Amazon’s distribution warehouses are strategically placed across the US while many other businesses only have one distribution center.

All of this sounds amazing, right? But hold up, there are also some disadvantages that you need to be aware of:

Competition: There is a lot of competition on Amazon and it’s going to be hard to stand out and win. In fact, there are more than 2.5 million sellers currently actively selling on Amazon. Lack of Brand Awareness: Don’t expect Amazon customers to be loyal to your brand and make repeat purchases directly on your website after purchasing your product on Amazon. They will almost always purchase on Amazon.  Cost: Nothing is ever free. And Amazon is not the exemption. Meaning, there are fees. First, you have your seller account fee. Amazon sellers can choose between a Professional or Individual plan. Individual sellers pay $0.99 for each item sold on Amazo

Hello Marketers! It’s Ishani here – host of Your Marketing Podcast. We interrupt our normal broadcasting to bring you a special announcement. No, seriously, we are taking a pause for a brief second on our current Series – How to Start a Successful eCommerce Business in Less than 30 Days, to talk about 2020 Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

For e-Commerce businesses, the holiday season is huge! Most eCommerce business owners see the largest spikes in revenue from October through December, and with good reason: It’s really a mega shopping holiday! During the holiday season, a majority of eCommerce stores will double and even sometimes triple what they make for the rest of the year, combined. It’s pretty gnarly when you think about it. 

But this year is special, 2020 has been a wild ride for everyone. So should we throw-away the holiday season? I think not!  To get the most out of 2020 (even with COVID), you’ll need a good plan for great sales.

Let’s do a round up of what others in the industry are saying regarding preparing for the 2020 eCommerce holiday shopping season. Hopefully, we can recover some of the loss businesses had to endure during earlier days of COVID.

Earlier Holiday Shopping Season

    First thing’s first, experts are predicting the holiday season is going to start earlier than previous years. Here’s why:

An increase in online shoppers – More individuals are shopping online now more than ever before. Because most want to mitigate COVID exposure and also because many brick-and-mortar stores were closed, which has forced more people to shop online. We know this because eCommerce sales are up 55% year over year for the first seven months of the year due to the pandemic. I know personally I have experienced delays in shipping and also out of stock items. And So smart shoppers are going to order earlier to ensure they get their gifts on time.Being stuck indoors has been, well, depressing. Pinterest is already seeing increases in searches for holiday decorations. Everyone is ready to spread some cheer even if it’s 6-feet away from everybody else. So they are predicting people will be spending more to make this holiday season even grander!

So what does this mean for you? 

Start preparing for Black Friday and Cyber Monday now. Literally, now now. don’t wait any longer. The latest estimates from Adobe put 2020’s online sales matching 2019 levels by October 5th — that’s well before the holiday season.

Here’s what you should do:

Make sure you have inventory to support an influx. It would be horrible if you got traffic but they weren’t able to purchase. Make sure you are all stocked up or, at least, able to order more inventory in a timely manner.Start running advertising now. You don’t have to do huge sales or anything like that, but maybe start testing out different ad copy and promotions with your email list to get those early-birds in.Put together a gift guide on your website, like “gifts under $25”, “gifts for her”, etc. You can even make themes like “Stay-at-home gifts” etc. Since more people are shopping online, it’s key to give them a little push into what to buy for others. Make it enticing so they “buy.” Now.

This leads me right into the next BFCM prediction, #2, – items that are COVID-friendly might outperform your best-sellers. Crazy right? But everyone wants to give a gift that impresses and is usable right now. You may want to plan now to add more “COVID-friendly” items to your product lines. Items that skyrocketed in popularity since the Coronavirus outbreak include pajamas or loungewear, alcohol, skincare, electronics, fitness equipment, and furniture. Basically, fun stuff to do at home.

If you’re unable to add to your product line in time, then think about your messaging. Can you change your angle? Maybe use “at-home” language? Or “stocking stuffer”? Be creative and try to relate to the situation of your cus

Welcome to YourMarketingPodcast. This is Series One – How to Start a Successful eCommerce Business in Less than 30 Days. In this step-by-step guide, you will learn how to quickly launch an eCommerce store and start seeing those sales roll in! And here’s your host…Ishani DePillo.

Welcome, everyone. I’m your host, Ishani. So I must say Congrats! To everyone! You are more than halfway through our How to Start a Successful eCommerce Business in Less than 30 Days Series. I’m so happy that you are sticking to it! 

In today’s episode, you are going to decide on a platform to use for your online store and complete your basic store set-up. These are the things you MUST do to ensure that your store is set up for success. We will send you a printable handout so don’t worry about having to take detailed notes.

Let’s recap last week, we talked about creating worthwhile visuals in the form of videos and photos that will really speak to your target audience and drive sales. You’re definitely going to need some beautiful product imagery and video to set up your online store.

Choosing the right eCommerce platform for your online store is so important because you want to pick a platform that is not only easy to use, so you can get it set-up right away but also easy to maintain and allow you the flexibility to grow. Avoiding excessive developer help and complicated coding can really save you some money now and in the future. There are so many pre-packaged e-commerce platforms that can help build your online store in no time. But how do you choose the right one? 

Let’s go over what you should look for when choosing your ecommerce platform. 

Easy to set up – As I mentioned before, you should look for a platform that is to set-up and use. Especially if you are doing all the work yourself. As a business owner you already have a lot to worry about, and setting up your online store shouldn’t be one of them. Look to see if it Has pre-designed themes that fit your style and brand – Because again, you want to get set up quickly and get those sales rolling in fast, Easy user experience, especially the checkout process. It should be seamless.Speaking of checkout- Secure & provides multiple payment options – Customers need to feel safe entering their credit card information and also giving them a variety of payment options. For example, in addition to credit cards, perhaps allow PayPal checkout or amazon checkout options.Next Mobile friendly because over 50% of traffic will likely be from mobile devices. Search engine friendly. You want to make sure the platform has some SEO optimization capabilities to maximize search engine exposure. Reporting options. You don’t need complicated reporting, but it should at least have the basics like the volume of traffic, revenue, orders etc. Integration options. By this, I mean the ability to integrate with email service providers, reviews platforms, etc. You want a platform that gives you the flexibility to connect with other platforms.Monthly Fees/Transactional Fees. Pay attention to the fees.  They can add up quickly and cut into your profits.

Ok, now that you know what to look for, Let’s talk about the big boys in the industry: Shopify, WooCommerce, Squarespace, BigCommerce and Magento. 

If you don’t know what on earth I’m talking about… don’t worry, I guarantee you are not the only one. I’ll go over higher-level pros and cons of each platform. If you want additional details, head on over to yourmarketingpodcast.com/store to get really detailed and updated information about each one. 

Shopify. This is the most common and you may have heard of this one before. I can almost guarantee that you’ve experienced a Shopify Store if you shopped for anything  online recently. There are over a million Shopify Stores and it’s definitely growing in popularity for a  number of reasons:

It’s easy to launch and manage; it has a very clean, user

Welcome to YourMarketingPodcast. This is Series One – How to Start a Successful eCommerce Business in Less than 30 Days. In this step-by-step guide, you will learn how to quickly launch an eCommerce store and start seeing those sales roll in! And here’s your host…Ishani DePillo.

Hello, everyone. Ishani DePillo here. Today’s podcast is going to be an interesting one – talking about creating worthwhile visuals through an audio podcast. Definitely going to be a bit challenging, but I think we can pull it off.

Real quick, let’s recap the last podcast in case you missed it. It was all about product development and how to successfully create and manufacture a product to sell. By now you should have a prototype or a sample of your product. On Today’s episode, we are going to be covering some really stellar ways to capture photos and videos of your product, using that sample product or prototype.

I say sample or prototype because You don’t want to wait around for the bulk order to arrive because that could take months and you want to keep moving forward. Using the sample or prototype for photos and videos can help save you time and launch faster, especially since editing video and photos can take some time.

It seems like photos and videos are taking over the world! Ok, I’m exaggerating a bit. But with 1 billion active users on Instagram and 1 billion hours of videos watched every day on YouTube, the way of the world is heavily dominated by visuals. Your customers want to see, feel, and experience your product before they commit to making a purchase. And to be very successful in selling your product, you, the brand, needs to provide that.

So how do you create worthwhile visuals that speak to and engage your target customers? Let’s start with the bigger elephant in the room first: VIDEOS. Customers nowadays have the mindset of ‘try before you buy’ and that reshapes how people shop.

Did you know that in the past year, 40% of users turned to YouTube to learn more about a product before they bought it? Crazy right?

And according to Unbounce, adding video to a landing page can boost conversion rates by 80%. So what does this mean to you? The underlying take-away here is that you need videos that feature your products and you need them to launch your website.

So since your customers want to “experience” your product before they buy it, you need to create a video that brings life to your product. To do that:

Start with a video strategy. Think of your favorite product. Have you seen their commercial?  I’d bet that the commercial struck a chord with you. With this in mind… launch a video marketing strategy. 

Start with goals for your video: Your video needs bring awareness to your product, to have your target audience consider your product and lastly decide to purchase your product. So that’s awareness, consideration and decision.Next, think of your target audience because you need to create a video that will connect with them: What’s their age, are they male or female, or both. Also, use your target audience as a guide to choosing the talent to be on the video.Then, Start to think about the story you want to tell. Remember it needs to be one that will resonate with your prospective buyer. One that will motivate them to buy your product. The basic framework for your video should be to: Bring up the customer’s pain point or problem.Introduce your product.Provide the solution. This is how “the product your selling” solves the problem.And lastly keep it real. Authenticity speaks volumes.

We interviewed Emily Briggs, our in-house videographer for Your Marketing People. She shared some starting points when coming up with your video strategy for your first product video

Once you’ve got the concept nailed down, workout the details. How long does your video need to be? Which scenes do you need to include? Do you need a voice over? How will you film it – with an actor, w

Welcome to YourMarketingPodcast. This is Series One – How to Start a Successful eCommerce Business in Less than 30 Days. In this step-by-step guide, you will learn how to quickly launch an eCommerce store and start seeing those sales roll in! And here’s your host…Ishani DePillo.

Hello everyone, Welcome to Episode 5. I hope you are feeling good about the progress you have made thus far with your eCommerce business. Today we are going to cover how to design and build your custom product. Now, if you’re going to be reselling an existing product, feel free to skip ahead to the next episode, since this episode will not apply to you.

But if you’re designing a custom product to sell, you’ll want to listen close.

But before we get started…if you missed last week’s episode, I urge you to take a listen before tuning into this one. The last episode covers how to develop your brand and tell your story. This is super important to keep in mind as you build your product.

Okay, let’s dive in. 

I’m going to start with a warning: Product development is hard. You will get frustrated at some point during this process.

You will want to pull your hair out; I remember my business partner, Alisha almost going bald over developing products for Roam Often. But stick with it – and it will be rewarding, I promise you. So get in that mindset now – plan for challenges, be patient, and you can overcome it. And we’re here to help.

Skip to 1:44 Step 1 in product development is drafting up a cohesive idea of the product. This is the phase where you come up with your great ideas as solutions to your customer’s problems. Basically, what problems will your product solve? 

Create a bulleted list of all the problems your target audience is facing and how your product will address each of the problems. Jot down the solution next to each bullet. 

For instance, let’s say you are designing a new chalk for kids, because you’re tired of your kid getting chalk all over their hands and clothes, then they go about the house touching everything and getting chalk all over the furniture, beds, etc. Can you tell I’ve had this happen to me?! The goal of step one is to figure out what problem your product needs to solve for your customers before you make it. But what else?

How about figuring out what your customers think about this goal? Ask other parents! Look to your target audience to learn their pain points and feedback on what’s currently on the market. 

Parents may say that the colors are dull and boring and they wish it was brighter. Mark those problems down and prioritize which ones you really want your product to address and fix. 

The easiest is to find friends and family members that fit your target audience and create a focus group. More than likely they will be happy to give you feedback and it’s all FREE market research! You could also put a listing out there, on Craig’s List or a post on Facebook. You will be surprised by the number of people who will provide good feedback.

Step 2 – Let’s narrow down to product features. What features does your product need in order to help solve the problems you’ve listed? 

For instance, for the chalk, you might want to add a plastic case around it to make it less messy and offer brighter chalk color selection. 

Make a list of all the bells and whistles that you want your product to have to entice customers to buy and solve their pain points. This list will come in handy when the product is being manufactured and for when you are marketing your product.

Step 3 – Keeping your bells and whistles list in mind, look at your competitors. Go back to the competitor list you created and hone into those who are making a similar product to yours. Review their products –  make note of the positives and negatives of each product. You’re going to use this information to shape your product design. You may eve

INTRO (Male Voice Recording): Welcome to YourMarketingPodcast. This is Series One – How to Start a Successful eCommerce Business in Less than 30 Days. In this step-by-step guide, you will learn how to quickly launch an eCommerce store and start seeing those sales roll in! And here’s your host…Ishani DePillo. 

Ishani: Hi, everyone, Ishani DePillo here. Welcome to another episode of Your Marketing Podcast. I’m so excited to cover today’s topic with you. It’s all about branding, and how to determine your target audience.

So last episode was packed full of helpful tips on business fundamentals. We covered getting your entity set up, keeping your personal finances separate from your business finances and funding for your eCommerce store. If you haven’t had the chance to listen to that episode yet, I recommend that you do because we go over a lot of recommendations that are essential to creating a new business.

Okay, so You have your product. You know it’s going to be in demand and you know that it’s going to be profitable. Now, we need to build your brand by talking about your story.

You might be asking, “What? Why does it matter who I am? I have a product. It’s going to sell on its own. Why do I have to tell my story?” 

But is it going to sell on it’s own? Is the product truly enough nowadays to compete with SO MANY online businesses?

Well, let’s take a look back…to 2006.

A man travels around Argentina, noticing the hardships faced by kids who can’t afford a pair of shoes. He then starts a company that donates a pair of shoes to a child in need, for every pair of shoe sold. Now over 50 million pairs of shoes have been donated and in 2014, the company was valued at $625 million. What’s the name of this company?

If you guessed, TOM’s shoes, you are correct!

What a great brand story – it pulls at your heart strings and makes you feel positively towards the brand. But a brand story doesn’t need to be altruistic. It could be many things.

Let’s take another walk down memory lane.

It’s 2009, San Francisco, California. An app launches to “evolve the way the world moves” and “make cities more accessible.”

Can you guess this giant who’s worth over 14 billion? Uber, yes, uber.

Their story was all about going against the status quo and redefining the ride-sharing experience. And it worked!

But not all brands are going to disrupt the market. And that’s ok! You should still highlight your brand story.

Skip to 3:19Let’s go over some great ways to build a memorable story for your brand:

Highlight a problem, a problem that’s relatable, that almost everyone experiences. Remember in episode 1 when we talked about developing a product that solves a problem? If you used that method to come up with your product, then you can use the problem as part of your brand story. In fact, that’s exactly what we did for Roam Often. Three tangled necklaces. That’s all it took for Roam Often to be born. After untangling necklace after necklace—in Napa, in Greece, and in Spain— my co-founder Alisha, was fed up. She wanted a functional, beautiful way to transport her style without the hassle. And being a fellow jewelry aficionado myself, I agreed. And so Roam Often was born. We used a problem to draft up a compelling brand story that most women can relate to.

Embrace your uniqueness, what makes you stand out from the rest. Are you an underdog in your market? Did you face hardship? Have you experienced something unbelievable that made you stronger, professionally or personally? If so, then talk about it! All of that makes you, you, and your brand, your brand. People want authenticity, and realness. You need to find a way to feel connected to your customers and they need to connect with you and your brand.

Can your brand be more than a brand? Can it be a lifestyle? By creating a “lifestyle” centered around your brand, you are essentially creating a fanbase who follow the same ideals and live and breathe your brand. A good example here is what R

Welcome to YourMarketingPodcast. This is Series One – How to Start a Successful eCommerce Business in Less than 30 Days. In this step-by-step guide, you will learn how to quickly launch an eCommerce store and start seeing those sales roll in! And here’s your host…Ishani DePillo. 

Hello, it’s Ishani. Thanks for being here. This is episode 3 of  “How to Start a Successful eCommerce Business in Less than 30 Days”. This is exciting – In Episode 1, you came with your product idea and in Episode 2, you’ve analyzed demand, competition, and profitability. Now, it’s time to complete some fundamentals of starting an eCommerce business. And we should get these going now, rather than waiting to do it later.

Today’s podcast is going over:

Setting up an entity, and how to determine which type is right for you

Setting up a business bank account and why it’s important to do so

Applying for a Seller’s Permit

Understanding Sales taxes for  your State

Exploring your funding options 

Before we get started, just a quick reminder that this podcast is about going over all the steps it typically takes to get an eCommerce store up and running, like what we experienced with launching Roam Often. But not every case is going to be similar to ours and different states have different regulations, always consult a professional accountant or attorney when needed. 

Okay, now that we have covered the disclaimer, let’s go over the first topic Setting up an entity. Generally speaking, there are 3 types of entities you will want to explore, LLC, S-corp, and C-corp.

There are a number of reasons for setting up a business entity. You want to limit your personal liability, maximize your tax benefits, your ability to raise money for your business and much much more.

Skip to 2:35 For those who are starting out, you are most likely going to be deciding between an LLC versus an S-Corp. 

LLC stands for Limited Liability Company and S-Corp is named after subsection S of Chapter 1 of the Internal Revenue Code. Both entities come with limited liability, meaning they shield your personal assets from business liability. 

For both entities, you are required to keep your finances separate – one for the business, one for your personal finances. And the best part? Both entities allow you to deduct expenses like travel, uniforms, computers, phone/internet bills, advertising costs, promotions, car expenses, and so on. There are some intricacies involved with these expenses, so always check with your accountant.

To be quite frank, many business owners just starting out will most do an LLC because it’s easy to set up, and depending on the state you are in, it will most likely cost less than a grand to get started. For example, an LLC formed in California can be done by:

Filing Articles of Organization with the California Secretary of State and the filing fee is $70 

Within 90 days of filing the Articles of Organization, the LLC must file a Statement of Information and the fee is $20.

Then annually, you must also pay an $800 franchise tax fee. 

Additionally, depending on how your business is set up and depending on who does your taxes, you could save on accountant costs because a single-member LLC doesn’t have to file a tax return for the LLC since it’s reported on their personal tax return. 

Also, you can elect to be taxed as an S-Corp while remaining an LLC. I highly recommend setting up an appointment with your accountant to figure out the best entity for you. And we did just that for both our businesses. 

One thing to note is that it’s beyond important that no matter which entity you go with to not pierce the “corporate veil” which means you have to operate the business entity completely independent of your personal income. If you don’t operate separately, you could lose the protection of your personal assets. 

S-Corps offer some key advantages, such as tax benefits when it comes to profits. Your accountant can advise you on when it makes sense to sw

Welcome to YourMarketingPodcast. This is Series One – How to Start a Successful eCommerce Business in Less than 30 Days. In this step-by-step guide, you will learn how to quickly launch an eCommerce store and start seeing those sales roll in! And here’s your host…Ishani DePillo.

Hello, hello. This is Ishani DePillo. Welcome to the 2nd podcast of the series “How to Start a Successful eCommerce Business in Less than 30 Days. I’m so happy to have you.

We had such a great start to the podcast. In the first podcast, we covered how to best identify a product to sell. The podcast was full of great tips for discovering a product to sell. You could trend-hunt or use your own passions and interests to come up with a product to sell. If you haven’t heard it yet and you are struggling to still come up with a product to sell, I highly recommend starting with that podcast first and coming back to listen to this one.

Okay, so hopefully, you already have a product idea in mind for your eCommerce store, maybe even a couple of different ideas that you’re contemplating? 

And that’s awesome, because today’s podcast, the second podcast in the series, is all about evaluating your product’s demand, competition, and profitability.

I am going to show you how to assess the true demand of your product idea, how to strategically (and discreetly) spy on your competition, and how to crunch those numbers to ensure your product is going to be profitable.

Profits are really important not only because you need to make money, but it also helps you grow your brand to make even more money. And while money isn’t everything, it does give you the freedom to do what you love to do. Whatever that may mean to you. Anyway, as I mentioned, I will be addressing product demand, competitors, and profitability all of this in this podcast. It’s a LOT so bear with me and let’s dive in.

Skip to 2:16 Let’s get started with the first concept: product demand. 

How many people actually want your product? 

What is the current demand out there for a similar product? 

What can you expect in the future? 

 Those are some tough questions to answer. Especially if you don’t know how or where to find the answers.

Thankfully there are a couple of helpful tools out there to find the product demand:

The first one that we are going to look at is the Google Keyword Planner. It’s a free tool and super easy to use. But there’s a catch: In order to use the Google Keyword Planner, you will NEED to have a Google Ads account. You just have to enter information about yourself and your business, and you’re in. When you do a search related to your product on Google Keyword Planner you will see monthly search volume for your keywords. Ideally, the higher the search volume, the better. Because that means your product already has demand… meaning that people are actively looking for the product. Anything over a thousand is generally worth exploring in my opinion.

Another product by Google, that could help you identify product demand is  Google Trends. This is also a free tool and it will show you how much your product has been “trending” for the last few years. You can see whether the interest for your product has grown over time using Google Trends. It’s very helpful in making sure your product is on the rise, rather than on a downturn.

The two tools that I mentioned by Google are Free, but we also use a paid service called Ahrefs. Let me spell that for you, it’s – A-H-R-E-F-S.com. This tool is pretty affordable and they are currently offering a 7-day trial for $7. And you can use their Keyword Explorer to find searches related to your product, and then get the search volume. We have an SEO expert here, Chris Casarez, who recommends Ahrefs as his first choice when it comes to SEO tools:

“I’m a huge believer in Ahrefs. I’ve been using that for years. It’s got pretty much everything that I need. Now, it’s not