Scale a medium-sized blog/e-commerce?

1 points by joelhlim 4 years ago | 3 comments

Hi, I am the founder of a blog/e-commerce store and I am looking to scale my efforts with a very limit budget - $2000-$3000 roughly.

It's in the preparedness niche - a high-paying niche me and a friend are personally invested in. I receive anywhere from 15,000 to 30,000 visitors a month - it's somewhat seasonal. My social media following is around 20,000 - most on Facebook.

I am outsourcing/delegating some of the non-executive work and we are using a couple of paid tools, PPC/Facebook ads, along with hosting.

Our income streams are diverse - we receive a monthly paycheck from Ezoic and Amazon Affiliates. We also just started sponsored posts and backlink sales. Additionally, we just started drop shipping and we're getting some on and off results from there.

If you were in my shoes, what steps would you take to scale it on a major scale?

chiefalchemist 4 years ago |

Is there a major market for your major scale? How much competition is there for that market?

joelhlim 4 years ago | |

Yes, there is around 20 million preppers, 3.7 million survivalists, 4 million homesteaders, and a boatload more that dip their toes into one of those categories (this is just in the US). The market competition is medium I'd say. I get a couple thousand organic visitors a month, exceeding 10,000 from my social platforms, and a couple thousand from other means - although this is with almost 200 content pieces - so it's medium because it's a highly paid niche.

chiefalchemist 4 years ago | | |

So, and pardon me for stating the obvious, this isn't about scaling the technology, this is a marketing issue. That is, traffic is good but you believe there is room to improve conversions, yes?

Both take this the wrong way but...that's everyone's problem :) Simply put, marketing is hard. And every (target) market is different. That is, what works for me might not work for you, and vice versa.

I would say, devote more effort to experimenting and analytics. Perhaps it would make sense to add a CRM? Etc.

There will no silver bullet. Just incremental bumps in understanding.

p.s. Did you list your stores domain?