Listen to how the lovely couple Michael and Momo Fensterstock were traveling through Southeast Asia and discovered an exotic, botanical fragrance that doubles as insect repellent. It smelled so good and worked so well during their flight back, they started working on their business plan.

Their initial tips and strategies includes:

• Their marketing efforts in the earlier beginning involved family and friend outreach
• Door knocking retails shops all over the tri-state area
• Spent time marketing and reaching out to influencers
• Used referral marketing with their existing customers

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LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Ecommerce Platform: Shopify (start your free trial today)

Email Service Provider: Constant Contact and Mailchimp

Other tools: Olark for chat and Google Docs

Enter to win your very own...

Listen to how Noah Dentzel from Nomad, build his Ecommerce business. His story kind of reminds of rags to riches in terms of him and his partner started with basically nothing and bootstrapped their marketing outreach by spending thousands on shipping samples to influencers to help get traction, getting funding from Kickstarter to where they are now. Nomad is evolving. Their new Apple Watch products showcase the evolution of Nomad into a smartwatch first accessories company. They believe the smartwatch will soon eclipse the smartphone as the number one mobile device, including telephone and camera. One thing that isn’t changing is our uncompromising commitment to absolute portability in designing essential tools for the modern Nomad. They got our start on Kickstarter in 2012 with our first mobile charging product, ChargeCard, raising over $160,000 in 40 days. Since then, they have grown to a family of minimalist, portable and rugged smartphone and smartwatch accessories. Now,...

Listen to the great story on how John quit his job as a CPA (right after his honeymoon) to start his business education not through an MBA, but by working at a diner in Austin as a host, washing dishes and learning the ropes before he started his own cheese shop. 

After putting ourselves through cheese boot campss, running a cheese club out of our house, attending cheese conferences, interning for French affineur Herve Mons, journeying through Europe, and eating our way through thousands of tasty cheese morsels, we honed in on our true passions.

Then, over a bottle of wine one evening, we realized that working behind a cheese case would allow us to fulfill them all: eat great cheese, talk to whoever would listen, travel the world and spend more time together. Listen to the great story on how John quit his job as a CPA (right after his honeymoon) to start his business education not through an MBA, but by working at a diner in Austin as a host, washing...

In 1999, Elysia Tsai worked as a Certified Athletic Trainer helping injured athletes, physical therapy patients, and fitness clients return to sport and achieve their goals.

In 2001, she had an idea to improve the current balance board designs, which started with a cooler cover and a ball on the bottom! It wasn't until 2004 after returning home from graduate school that she began this journey.

After three years in developments, they finally had a product line and started sales in 2007.

Listen to the rest of the story now.

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LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Website: Si-boards.com

Ecommerce Platform: Volusion

Email Service Provider: Constant Contact

Material is a truly free Ecommerce platform coming out to the market, no transaction costs, monthly hosting fees. or plans.  

Out of the box, all themes comes fully responsive and has a marketplace for additional add-ons.  

This Ecommerce platform is built to provide you a great way to quickly build your website with a real-time editor. As of today (the day I posted this article), I have not received access to this Ecommerce platform, but I can't wait to check it out and tell you guys what I think.

5 Tips for Getting Sales After Your Launch!

• Social media is your best friend. It’s impossible to make it anywhere in the world of Ecommerce without having a strong social media presence. Master Instagram, Facebook and whatever other new social channels are popping up, and be sure to provide your followers with unique, intriguing content. People will only want to follow you if you have something interesting to say, so think abstractly about how you can capture their...

Today on the show, I have James Lees from Advantage Learn, a South Africa startup with passionate educators who started teaching in 3 facility centers before offering online courses with no VC funding.  

We'll get into his background and what it took for him to get started and his approach over the past year in launching his business and his plans to grow.

James talks about his journey on finding the technology behind Advantage Learn.  Launched "click to learn" as their minimal viable product, platform to allow users to find the course, make a purchase and take the course - two courses with multiple modules. James talked about the "Ecommerce triangle", Three Levers of Ecommerce: Price, Quantity, and Conversion.

1. How much it cost people to purchase your product and convert?
2. At what quantity they are buying your product and convert?
3. Conversion, how many people add the course to their cart and make a purchase.  Find your balance, the high price will only...

See how Evan Steusand started selling handmade women (and men) shoes from Peru – all started with a backpacking trip to South America.  He started selling with one style of boots and grew it to several dozen of show and accessories across multiple categories and eventually selling to retail stores.  

I had a great time chatting with him.  Take a listen to see what he did to build, market and grow his online business, Fortress of Inca.

SPONSORS:
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LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
Ecommerce Platform: Bigcommerce
Email Service Provider: Mailchimp
Payment Gateway: Stripe
Apps used: Instock Notify

Rose Nichols is a cosmetic making machine! She creates a new product every week on Lip Ink or one of her other sister sites. Hear her talk to us today about how she quit her job, started her cosmetic line from home and quickly expanded her production and website presence. And get this, she got started without a fully functioning
Ecommerce website. Take a listen to see what she did to build, market and grow her online business, Lip Ink.

Rose’s intent is to create a product so unique, so Powerful, so Revolutionary it empowers women
from all walks of life to experience the FREEDOM AND CONFIDENCE of wearing LIP-INK® Wax Free
Semi-permanent® Cosmetics LIP-INK® INTERNATIONAL will touch and enhance over 1 billion
women’s lives!
 
SPONSORS:
Convertkit – I partnered with Convertkit to get you 30 days for free, using this link.

Miva Merchant is a powerful ecommerce platform which has already powered more than 100 billion in online sales.  Every year,...