Achieve financial freedom! A girl earns tens of millions through independent websites

In the vast ocean of cross-border e-commerce, success stories vary, but there are always some common tricks worth learning for every seller.

The girl has earned $1.8 million from handmade jewelry

A foreign girl named Mei Park has been selling her handmade clay accessories full-time through online channels since 2012. From 2020 to now, her sales have exceeded 1.8 million US dollars (about 13.03 million RMB), and her annual income has stabilized in six figures (US dollars).

According to Mei, she works an average of 5 hours a week, and the average price of her store's products is $30-40. It is worth mentioning that her product prices are higher than other similar products. So how did she gain a foothold in the market competition?

Mei said that she has tried many methods, but there are only a few things that really helped her earn six figures a year.

Contrary to popular belief, social media did not help her much, but media promotion was an important part of increasing her sales .

In the early days, in order to save money, Mei used a low-cost promotion method: she sent her products to magazines and blogs or websites with large traffic , and displayed her products in these places through reviews. The cost of this promotion method was only some shipping and material fees.

(The magazine in the lower right corner recommends Mei’s products)

Mei believes that third-party displays and recommendations are more objective than her own sales pitch . At the same time, magazines, websites and blogs also display products for longer periods of time than social media .

In this way, Mei increased her sales from three figures (US dollars) per month to five figures (US dollars).

Of course, there are skills to writing recommendation materials. Mei reminded that when writing recommendation materials, you must use the "altruistic" thinking to make the platform realize that recommending your own products is a help to the platform, because their job is to find reliable products to recommend to users, rather than just focusing on "me".

Another thing is to choose a platform to cooperate with. According to our idea, as a jewelry seller, Mei’s target platform should be locked in the jewelry category, but she focused on promoting her products outside the niche market .

For example, she recommended a scented popcorn necklace to platforms related to perfume, food, lifestyle, parenting, etc. What about the toasted marshmallow necklace ? Mei chose to send it to an outdoor camping magazine. In short, you need to think outside the box and be creative when it comes to promotion.

After having a stable income and a relatively sufficient budget, paid advertising on social media channels can be put on the agenda. In Mei's view, stable sales without payment are like healthy plants that have already sprouted, and paid advertising is like fertilizer. Only when the plant itself is healthy can the fertilizer help it grow more luxuriantly.

Therefore, Mei does not recommend using paid social media promotion methods in the early stages of a business, because social media promotion usually requires a certain amount of investment and long-term persistence to see results.

Beyond the platform, independent station revenue accounts for nearly 94%

Because they are original handmade jewelry, Mei chose Etty, known as her "grandmother's basement treasure", as the online platform. However, Etty only accounted for a small part of her sales revenue. The rest of nearly US$1.7 million (approximately RMB 12.31 million) came from "her own website" created through Shopify, accounting for nearly 94%.

Mei compared operating on a third-party platform to renting a house . “The platform can close your store at any time ,” just as a landlord has the right to decide to evict a tenant from his house. Moreover, sales on the platform are “like riding a roller coaster (up and down)” and “we don’t know when the next sale will come in.” In addition, the currency value of many sellers’ countries is much lower than the US dollar, so competitors may have more profit margins by selling goods at low prices.

However, your own website has relative autonomy and the chance of being closed is smaller; most importantly, the long-term sales of an independent website will be more stable.

Of course, independent websites require more money and more energy, so Mei does not recommend trying this option in the early stages of your business , especially when your business plan is not clear. But after your business is established, the focus of building your online business should be on independent websites.

A successful online business cannot be separated from best-selling products, especially for those who are in the early stages of starting a business. Limited costs mean that the selection and investment of each product must be made with great care.

In the early days of the business, most of Mei's orders were customized, which means that Mei would only start making products when customers had demand. However, this model can be implemented mainly because Mei's product production process is simpler and faster, so it is not suitable for all sellers.

In this way , Mei determined which products were more popular and avoided wasting costs. Mei said that she saw many manufacturers spend time on products that they "want to make", but for a business that wants to make money, it must take into account customer needs; only when the seller 's "want to sell" and the consumer's "want to buy" overlap, the seller is more likely to create a best-selling product.

We mentioned earlier that Mei's accessories are more expensive than similar products. In the minds of many sellers, if you want to achieve high sales, you need to sacrifice price. Mei does not deny this, but Mei believes that sacrificing price will not solve the sales problem, on the contrary, it may increase her workload .

Mei conducted an experiment where one listing of the same product was priced at $28 and another was priced at $49.99. The results showed that the listing priced at $49.99 had better revenue and made more money.

But this does not mean that everyone should blindly raise the price of goods . Mei has done a lot of work in this regard . The first thing to do is to improve the quality of raw materials, so that their products are visibly "better" than competitors .

(The above are competing products, and the below are Mei’s products)

Mei also upgraded its logos to make them look more advanced and valuable than before, in order to attract users with greater spending power.

( Before the logo upgrade (left) and after the upgrade (right))

In addition to business strategies, Mei also shared her after-sales experience. Mei said that she always treats her customers with a friendly attitude . Of course, she has also encountered customers who are difficult to communicate with, and she will eventually choose to refund the full amount, which Mei did suffer losses. But she thinks it is worth it because the business as a whole is profitable.

More importantly, Mei believes that most customers will feel her sincerity and will recommend her store to people around them. She has also accumulated word of mouth and gained a stable user base through this friendly after-sales service. Mei emphasized that a full refund is a "trump card" to be used at the last minute, and said that you should not show your "trump card" right away.

As a seller who only works 5 hours a week and has a stable income, Mei's success is commendable. But please remember that every seller's cross-border journey is unique. When learning from successful experiences, you need to combine your own business characteristics to better open up your own path in the field of cross-border e-commerce .

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