How to Create a Shopify Store That Sells From Scratch and Grow it with Facebook Ads with Christian Lovrecich from Pixlfeed Digital Agency

Today's episode, I sit down with Christian Lovrecich to talk about selling on Shopify and and Facebook ads to drive sales.  If you are just starting out with a Shopify store, or have been thinking about it, this is packed and I mean packed episode full of great tips and the exact tools he loves to use setting up successful sites.
Christian walks through great things you need to start in almost a rapid fire sequence so I have listed out a bunch of the key apps and themes.
If you want quick wins selling on a Shopify site, then this is an episode for you!

Shopify 14 Day Free Trial: https://www.shopify.com/?ref=jones-and-cosman-cpa

Facebook Ads Library https://www.facebook.com/ads/library 

Christians Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDgXJpL26EpZsC-OkdrOxiw

Frequently Bought Together https://apps.shopify.com/frequently-bought-together

Loox Product Review Referrals https://apps.shopify.com/loox

Unicorn Smash https://www.unicornsmasher.com/

Klaviyo https://www.klaviyo.com/ecommerce-integrations/shopify

Turbo Theme https://outofthesandbox.com/products/turbo-theme-portland

Lucky Orange Heat Maps https://www.luckyorange.com/

PixelFeed Radio https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pixlfeed-radio/id1492763906

Website: http://pixlfeed.com

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Transcript

[00:00:00.650] - Rob Cosman
On today's episode, I sit down with Christian Lovrecich to talk about selling on Shopify and Facebook ads to drive sales. If you're just starting out with a Shopify store or you've been thinking about it, this is a packed and I mean packed episode full of great tips and the exact tools that he loves to use for setting up new successful sites. Let's hit the intro music.

[00:00:25.800] - Rob Cosman
Welcome to the selling from the Beach podcast, where we talk about selling online, making money and creating a lifestyle that you want recording from the white sandy beaches of Costa Rica. Here's your host, Rob Cosman. Dana Christian was awesome. Well, I didn't do a whole lot of the ducky, I just let him go and I just tried to take notes along the way and follow up with a few questions because he was just spewing so much great knowledge.

[00:01:00.180] - Rob Cosman
Make sure you take notes. There's so much information about running Shopify stores. I've tried to capture a lot of the his tools and recommendations in the show notes, so make sure you check them out there. But this was just a great episode with all kinds of information. Now let's talk with Christian.

[00:01:22.300] - Rob Cosman
OK, so on today's episode, I have Christian love of Christian love of shopify,

[00:01:31.630] - Christian Lovrecich
We we go on my wrestling name that works for me

[00:01:34.510] - Rob Cosman
Exactly right love for the Christian love. So I knew I was going to brutalize it, that even no matter how many times I tried to do it,

[00:01:41.680] - Christian Lovrecich
everyone does man like everyone does. It's OK. My whole life. Well, unless your for Croatia, you're not going to get it. So that's all good.

[00:01:48.970] - Rob Cosman
So Christian is the owner of Pixel Feed, which is a digital agency company. And basically he does all things digital marketing. And and we kind of cross paths on a podcast group because Christian has his own podcast. And I was on his we were talking about I was talking about  Amazon and FBA. And then, you know, he's obviously into Shopify and Facebook ads. And you started telling me a bit about that. I just had all these questions I want to ask you.

[00:02:14.290] - Rob Cosman
It was like, no no no this is his show I just get high jacket it started interviewing him, so like no, Christian, I got to get you on because you know the level of knowledge and what you can do. I'm like, no, we get it. We just got to get on here. Tell us a bit about yourself. And let's just get into some Facebook and Shopify strategies, because a lot of people that are listening to my show have a private label brands are trying to get off Amazon and start their own websites and try to drive traffic and really have no idea where to start with. So do you want to just kind of first just give us a little bit of background, kind of when you get started online, kind of where you're at now.

[00:02:48.910] - Christian Lovrecich
Yeah, for sure. What's funny is you blew my mind with the whole FBA thing because I knew about it. I told you this when we did the show.

[00:02:55.990] - Christian Lovrecich
It's like I knew like about it obviously in the basics and all that stuff, but I didn't know how easy it was. That's what blew my mind. Man. I'm going to play with it. I'm going to the fourth quarter. I just can't right now. I'm too busy, which is a good blessing to have, but I'm definitely going to do it at some point just to play around with it, because I like learning about all this stuff but

[00:03:16.210] - Rob Cosman
Oh, you're asking me like, oh, I put up a listing that I get to do all these SEO at the back at this that I'm like, well, if you do your own product, you do.

[00:03:23.140] - Rob Cosman
But all the regular stuff no that it's already done,

[00:03:25.390] - Christian Lovrecich
I'm like what. Alight so I'll give you a little bit of background about myself. Dropped out of college you know my sophomore year, Florida State started my first business, which was a brick and mortar in Dallas it was a car restoration company. Then I hated it. Then the economy crashed and I was like, what am I going to do? So I messed around for a couple of years. I came back to Florida for Lauderdale.

[00:03:49.990] - Christian Lovrecich
And a long story short, I was working for a company that did I was doing marketing for them for trade shows, but in sales and marketing my whole life pretty much. And that's when I got a little taste of digital because I had to help them with SEO and Facebook ads weren't out yet and I just saw how much money they were making online. I'm like I always wanted to do something online I just didn't know what. And then they pissed me off.

[00:04:16.390] - Christian Lovrecich
They owed me like 7K. So I was like like I'm going to take you down and destroy you. And I paid somebody to build a website for me and then I had no traffic and I hire an agency and they rip me off. And I was like, you know what, I'm just going to learn this myself. And I did. And it was just perfect timing that it just this is why a little bit of luck is always involved. It just so happened that at the exact moment that that happened, I came across a Facebook ads course because Facebook ads were just being released to the public.

[00:04:51.580] - Christian Lovrecich
And I was like, well, I'm on Facebook all day, so I might as well get paid for it. Right. I was already addicted to Facebook at that point. I had since college. So I went in there, took my little course that I paid three hundred bucks for and changed my life man I became addicted to it. Those were like the golden era of Facebook ads where you would spend five bucks to make two grand back and one t shirt, you know, or even more 10, 20, 30, 40 grand, you know, just one design because there was barely any competition in the competition that you had that half of them didn't know they were doing.

[00:05:25.420] - Christian Lovrecich
So you always have like an edge on them if, you know, if you kept up with it. So it just kept going. Eventually I went from tee spring you know selling a couple of t shirts to like how it's you know always been into business  and I come from a family that had their own business so I knew it was all about the branding. So as soon as I had access to shopify, I got to make brands right that's where money's at  I created.

[00:05:49.000] - Christian Lovrecich
I launched three stores, three of them failed and then I did two more. Those two hit. I sold them, made a pretty penny. Then I started one more. And then I literally just launched a new brand a month like almost a month ago. And in between, people just kept asking me for help, like help me run ads, help me run ads. So at first I didn't do it because I didn't feel comfortable charging people money to do it because I didn't think I was good enough.

[00:06:18.160] - Christian Lovrecich
Which is weird because , I'm like printing money like it's going out of style, but I just didn't feel comfortable taking someone's money without the assurance that I could do it. I don't know. It's weird, man. Don't don't ask me why, but I was one of those that took forever to do it. And when I see people not like I have an agency because I took a course and don't even know how to run Facebook ads like, how do I do it?

[00:06:35.850] - Christian Lovrecich
That pisses me off to know and because I always took my time before I did that and it just it just kept snowballing man it's just you know one client start with little businesses, you know, and then referrals started coming through and then I just kept moving up from referrals and then marketing myself. And next thing you know, I caught the attention of some you know pretty big media buyers out there. And we just became friends and, you know, and now I'm in that quote unquote I don't want to say elite group because of me, but there in that little in that elite group, I mean, the amount of money to spend is unbelievable. And I learned from it. We talk every day. So it's like the amount of knowledge that I get from them and I learn from them daily and plus all my other stuff just from running you know half a million dollars or more a month just in budgets. I mean, you see patterns and you see what's working and what's not.

[00:07:24.270] - Christian Lovrecich
So you can grab one account alright test because every time you're running ads for big brands, you have your budget for the month, you have your KPI, so you have to hit. So inside those budgets, there's a test budget so you can test new products, test new audiences, whatever. So you know, the advantage that I have that we have as media buyers or as a small boutique agency, when I'm the one who really runs the ads and we're talking about this, I have two other media buyers who help me you know build out the campaigns and stuff like that.

[00:07:51.600] - Christian Lovrecich
But I'm the one who actually runs them instead, that I get to allocate that budget between all the clients and I get to try different things in each account you know. So I get to see what's working, what's not really quick, and then I can apply it to all of them. So it's an advantage of having vast amounts of data when you go to a big agency. I can't think of a name right now and I don't want to throw Gary V under the bus because the first one that comes to mind and I kind of like Gary V, I respect them.

[00:08:18.210] - Christian Lovrecich
But, you know, big agencies like that, I mean, the truth of the matter is, is that they hire a bunch of junior media buyers. They pay 30 grand a year, you know, and they're handling thirty accounts and they barely know what they're doing, you know what I mean? So that's why a lot of people are moving away from those big, huge agencies and we're talking about this like my focus is just to help you know a handful of clients that I like to work with.

[00:08:40.260] - Christian Lovrecich
And I have I built a reputation where I can actually I get to pick and choose who I want to work with. So that's pretty cool. And I just choose that small handful of people and that's it. My concentration is in my own actual brands. So that's similar events that I have. I know how to run a business and I know the numbers and profit margins and the overhead. And so, you know, it's not like, OK, we've got to do two x.

[00:09:01.830] - Christian Lovrecich
It's like, yeah, you've got to do two x, three x, five x, but you've got to take it to especially profit margins they're overhead and all that stuff. So it gives me an advantage in that sense. And I love what I do, man. It's like when I started with Facebook ads, I'm a I'm a PC gamer. I started with PCs back in the 80's, played video games. So to me, when I open up the Facebook dashboard its a video game, it's like, what's my high score today?

[00:09:25.080] - Christian Lovrecich
You not even look at it that's money anymore. So once you detach emotionally from that, which is it's hard to do when you're starting out, when you're own money.

[00:09:32.250] - Christian Lovrecich
I mean, I was watching every penny when I start I was like, oh, my God, I spent one hundred bucks, like, you know, it's like so I get it when when people are starting out and they're scared to, like, put money into it and then see sales come in right away and and there's a lot of competition now, it's it's a little bit harder, you know, to make it happen. And Facebook is not stable all the time.

[00:09:52.530] - Christian Lovrecich
They're always running on updates. They're always making changes. So there's a lot of up and downs. And then with the election that we just had, that was a mess of its own. So you got to keep up with the stuff, but you can be very, very successful with Facebook ads. And I mean, even Google, you know have one guy on my team that's all he does is Google.  He is the Google expert and how Google works and all that stuff.

[00:10:11.640] - Christian Lovrecich
But he handles that stuff. And I've done it so many times where I try to compete against myself with Google ads. And yeah, they do really well. But it's it's different than Facebook. Just it's powerful. It's I got to say,

[00:10:25.560] - Rob Cosman
OK, you've got you've got a few things that I definitely want to get into here. So your first Shopify stores said you had three and they all sucked and then you actually hit it and you sold them like what was the what was the niches that sucked and what was the actual winners like?

[00:10:41.070] - Christian Lovrecich
I've always been into cars obsessed with cars since I was a kid too. So of course the first store was like, oh, car related products like t shirts and stuff like that. Well, people who like cars are young kids you know who are obsessed with cars so they don't have the extra cash to drop around. The second one.

[00:10:57.960] - Rob Cosman
Were these drop shipping? drop shipping?

[00:11:01.650] - Christian Lovrecich
Yeah they are all drop shipping, drop shipping. The second one was fitness. And I mean, now that I look back, it could have done so well.

[00:11:08.640] - Christian Lovrecich
But I was I have extreme shiny object syndrome. So I was all over the place, man, all over the place. And I could have made it work, but I didn't. I sucked I picking out the designs and you know get it together, doing the market research, I was just like, oh, you know, it's fitness, everybody will buy it, you know what I mean so my products were all over the place. It wasn't really branded.

[00:11:28.890] - Christian Lovrecich
I have to look back. I'm like, oh my God, of course it failed, you know what I mean? And then the third one was like a gag store, but it was apparel like, you know, whatever was trending at the time with like know what was trending like a hired designers then I wanted to turn it into a real brand. So we will come up with our designs for women but we're guys and of course, then.

[00:11:50.210] - Christian Lovrecich
You know, this is the stuff you learn when you're starting out. And it's you know, I learn from it. And the ones that hit is because I learn from those mistakes. You know, it's like, you know, you you keep learning and then you're like, oh, this is why it failed. But now I look back, I'm like, oh, man, that would have been such a good thing if I would have just done it right.

[00:12:09.210] - Christian Lovrecich
But it is what it is. I mean, I'm good now, so it doesn't matter.

[00:12:13.560] - Rob Cosman
So those ones sucked. But then you had to you said that you actually did well and then you sold them.

[00:12:18.150] - Christian Lovrecich
Yes. Yes. One was fitness again when I figured out fitness and I broke it down to figure it out, I did really well sold it the person who bought it did well with it for like six months. And I don't know what happened, but I just that out on them, like, makes no sense. I have no idea what happened, that I don't talk to them or whatever. And it's not like I sit there and Google for it is just one of those things I just saw it kind of like disappear.

[00:12:40.860] - Christian Lovrecich
And it was a pretty good chunk of change stuff for them to mess it up and let it go I can't believe it. And then the second one, that one I can't tell you what niche it is in, but because I'm actually doing a YouTube series where you can see me like launching from scratch. So which right now it's been a failure. It hasn't been a failure it's just it's a very tough market and its your own design products and no one else has.

[00:13:05.640] - Christian Lovrecich
And it's I can I can tell you, it's in the fashion industry the things

[00:13:10.680] - Rob Cosman
Okay

[00:13:10.680] - Christian Lovrecich
for most of the women. So right now, with the pandemic, you know women dress up to go out and show off for other women. And it's not like we're going to clubs and bars and when some people are but you know what I'm saying? So it's it's working. We're getting organic sales because the partner on that one, it's one of my clients, believe it or not.

[00:13:28.230] - Christian Lovrecich
And she has a small organic following and we just open up the doors and we got a bunch of sales the first day, I think it was like seven thousand dollars in sales the first day or something like that, just from saying we're open up the store. So obviously people like the products. It's just it was a combination of, you know, the election messing up Facebook. I mean, it's just been the costs are a disaster updates, and when you have a new store, new account, new pixel so it's really tough, you know, and I'm not I don't care how much money I have I'm not just going to go out there and gamble, oh, let's just drop ten grand and get data like no, like, I like to go slow and make my money back as fast as I can right.

[00:14:06.880] - Rob Cosman
OK, so

[00:14:07.650] - Christian Lovrecich
it's getting there.

[00:14:08.880] - Rob Cosman
The one you sold, what was the multiple on that would you get for.

[00:14:12.810] - Christian Lovrecich
I can't talk about that

[00:14:15.000] - Rob Cosman
cant tell that the multiple.

[00:14:15.900] - Christian Lovrecich
I can, I can't. I signed a contract. I can't talk about it.

[00:14:19.620] - Rob Cosman
All right All right. Fair enough.That's that's what you know now I mean, people are talking like I see these all the time, like, oh, three times four times. I'm like, that's that's pretty significant. But now I've never paid four times for something, but especially 

[00:14:34.560] - Christian Lovrecich
Well at this point that I sold it, it was actually branded at that point. So the manufacturing was still in place it was all branded it wasn't drop shipping at that point. It was we're holding inventory at that point. So, I mean, it was it was worth a good chunk of change. And the people pay for and they knew it. I mean, you know, and I don't know what I really don't know what happened. I'm actually have been thinking about I haven't thought about it in years because it's so long ago.

[00:14:55.530] - Christian Lovrecich
But I'm kind of curious to see what happen, you know, because, I mean, the only thing I can get so is like the person who bought it never had a business before. And I explain it to them like you got to know what you're doing here. You got to hire somebody who knows what they're doing with their ads. You got to know how to run SEO. You've got to know how to do organic marketing. All that stuff is like, oh yeah.

[00:15:14.340] - Christian Lovrecich
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. You know, the only thing I can think of is somebody who's never been in the online space and they thought it was easy and then, I don't know, I dealt with when I was starting out doing it for other people, I came across some business owners, but it was like their first time taking it online. And there are some people who are just macro managers and they don't let go and let people do their jobs. So that's the only thing I can think of, of, you know, they didn't let people do their jobs.site

[00:15:44.700] - Christian Lovrecich
And that's what I mean. It was it was a very data. I mean, anybody who was half decent, like Facebook, Ads or you know even Google ads could have kept it going, you know what I mean? So I don't know what happened there.

[00:15:55.260] - Christian Lovrecich
I really don't. 

[00:15:56.280] - Rob Cosman
OK, so let's talk then about, you know, just starting up a new store, because a lot of I got a bunch of people that listen to my podcast and my group are like private label guys and girls create their own brand mainly on Amazon. That's usually where they start. But obviously, you've got to have your own Shopify site or your own website of some sort. But that's a great thing about Amazon all the customers are there, the clients are there.

[00:16:17.550] - Rob Cosman
You just got to pay the PPC and try to get them. But then once you go off site, it's a whole different world. I mean, we're talking about pixels and driving traffic and this and that. So it just kind of take me through what you think  a brand new. OK, I've got my product. We're not doing the drop shipping. We're not doing that sketchy stuff. We actually have, you know, legit products, proper brand.

[00:16:36.990] - Rob Cosman
You want to build something up here? Where do you go with it? Where do you start?

[00:16:41.530] - Christian Lovrecich
You start small, man, this is what I tell people, just because you have the money doesn't mean you have to drop it all at once, especially if you don't know what you're doing. Listen, I just launched a store like I put the money to the store, obviously designing the store and making it look good because I know what converts and what doesn't.

[00:16:55.450] - Christian Lovrecich
And you know I put a little bit of money up front because I know I'm going to make it back. There's no doubt about it. I mean, I already did my research. I know the products were hot. It's just a matter of getting through this Facebook time right now that the roller coaster that it is with the cost and the updates. Once I get through that, you know, I have an email list, the email list. I sent an email out I'm already making sales. I'm not worried about it all. So you got to start small. The first thing that you have to know, what if you already have a successful product on Amazon that tells me that you already have a winning product, correct? It's selling in Amazon. So it's your own branded product. So now you just want to get it off Amazon so they don't take that chunk of change away from you and you own your list, correct?

[00:17:34.810] - Rob Cosman
Yeah, that's one is creating that list and being able to communicate with the customers. And two is the risking your business because when you're on Amazon, the wind shifts and suddenly, you know, the robot picks up something and you could be suspended or delayed and all of a sudden, if you know, all your sales stop on a dime when you need to have a backup. So a lot of guys are like, OK, great, I can start there now, let's get the contingency plans. Let's get you know a Shopify site, you know try to start building that up. It's not going to you know, it's not a flip the switch and all of a sudden everybody's going to show up. I mean, you know, you're talking about, OK, I have a list or, you know, I'm partnering with someone who has a following. Most of these guys and women have nothing, right? They're just like, OK, I have a cool brand that I want to start now.

[00:18:13.570] - Rob Cosman
Let's start to build it up.

[00:18:14.980] - Christian Lovrecich
Well, the first thing I'm gonna to tell you is if you're thinking about Facebook ads, it's the it's the evil empire as well. So you always have a backup is if I tell people you have access to what's called a business manager, if you don't know what business manager is, business managers, where you control your ad account so you control your pixels, everything, that's how you control everything for for for traffic on the Facebook  and most people don't know this, but you're allowed to have two last time I check it was two somehow I have five.

[00:18:38.890] - Christian Lovrecich
Don't ask me how I ended up with five, but I have five. There was a glitch or something, but you're allowed to have two, so you should always have two and have a backup account ready to go. Just run literally five bucks on it once a month just so it stays active and just keep it, keep it, keep it as a backup and a pixel as a backup. And then you have your main account.

[00:18:59.020] - Rob Cosman
What do you mean like a secondary account? Like I can only have one facebook technically I can only have one Facebook account. Is this a whole another separate Facebook account with an ads manager on the back or this is just still my one?

[00:19:10.420] - Christian Lovrecich
No, you're allowed to have a second business manager. So if one goes down, you're still you can use the second one as a backup under your own name.

[00:19:16.240] - Rob Cosman
Okay

[00:19:16.780] - Christian Lovrecich
But people like me, what we do you know since we handle so many client accounts and stuff like that.

[00:19:21.340] - Christian Lovrecich
I actually have backups under family members just in case something goes down, because it actually happened to me one time this is years ago but my business manager went down and it took me I have a rep and it took literally months to get it back. And when it went down, all those accounts were running on the background and had no access to Facebook spending my money and I had no access to so that's how I learned my lesson.

[00:19:44.590] - Christian Lovrecich
Right now it's like I have different people attached to them that, you know, I'm not going to go into details because I don't know.

[00:19:51.540] - Rob Cosman
No, we're not incriminating ourselves here.

[00:19:53.500] - Christian Lovrecich
Yeah, but there's ways that just say there's ways you can have access to it. But Facebook doesn't know it's you. And you know if something goes down, you can stop it type of deal.  Anyway but basics let's bring it out. But I'm getting carried away here. So you want to do your own store.

[00:20:08.560] - Christian Lovrecich
Obviously you want to have a product that converts. The first thing that you need to do is you need to stalk your first three competitors. You're going to go to your three your top three competitors that sell the same thing or something similar to it. And obviously, you probably already know your pricing, but look at the offers that they're making to their customers. The next thing that you're going to do is you're going to go to their stores. If they have stores, if you're an Amazon, you already know, I'm assuming you're right about upsells and downsells so you know products that go that you can sell as accessories or have upsells and downsells.

[00:20:42.910] - Christian Lovrecich
So what you're going to do is, is you're going to look at your competitors, then you're going to go on Facebook, just go on Google and type in Facebook ads library. And what that is, is that it's that's what it is the ads library. You go in there, you can search any brand on there and it will show you all of their ads on Instagram, Facebook. So one thing, you can actually have a video this on the youtube channel just look at the ads for each brand and you're going to see a date of when that ad what started.

[00:21:12.040] - Christian Lovrecich
So right now, we're in November. If you see an ad that's been running since like, let's say, July, what does that mean?

[00:21:17.990] - Rob Cosman
That's a winning ad.

[00:21:19.300] - Christian Lovrecich
Yeah, they're spending money, man. They haven't turned it off. That means that that ad is making a money. Right. So now you know, your product, that that ad is working. Look at the creative. Look at the ad copy. What is the creative look like?

[00:21:30.820] - Christian Lovrecich
Is that a pattern interrupt in that creative but a pattern interrupt is like a video there's like a filter or shakes or a picture, a thumbnail that will grab your attention. So do you want to write all of this down? That way you can you know, take the edge and it's not about reinventing the wheel, it's about grabbing what's already working and put your own twist on it because there's no reason to reinvent the wheel if it's working.

[00:21:52.390] - Christian Lovrecich
The second thing that you need to do before you build your Shopify store is I already know what converts, I already know what works so I can literally have my team build a store with their eyes closed. And I know it's going to convert because the experience I have. But the best advice that I can give you and I have another video about this in my YouTube channel is like pull up GameStop, pull up Best Buy and pull up  Amazon your Amazon, you know Amazon and look at the look at those three sites and what they have in common.

[00:22:19.390] - Christian Lovrecich
And I'm going to tell you a top of my head, what they have in common. The first thing that they have in common is multiple pictures and close ups of the product. You already know that because you have to be good at that to sell on Amazon, two on the top right underneath the price is going to show you the real price in grey and then the sell price in red. Right? So if you have a sale, you want to make sure you highlight that on your store.

[00:22:37.960] - Christian Lovrecich
Second, you're going to see the five stars with a number of reviews you want that under your price and make them Amazon yellow like you can literally Google Amazon Yellow Stars Color Code and you'll find it. You need to make those sorts of same exact color. The next thing that you can see in commons on those three pages, and these are multi million Fortune 500 companies there's a reason why they all do it because it works. The next one, obviously, scarcity, there's only so many left in stock or to sell ends X and when it ends, it ends.

[00:23:08.420] - Christian Lovrecich
So you want to add your scarcity to be there. The next thing you want to have in your page is what we call the trust trust badges. Don't do the generic crappy ones from drop shippers or like Visa, MasterCard, PayPal or like make your own like pay a designer to make you like. And it doesn't have to be the credit cards, just customer satisfaction guarantee fast shipping you know, whatever. Just just give them that security that to secure that they're going to get their stuff and there's money back guaranteed your give me that secure because they don't know who you are. You're not Amazon at this point. So you've got to build that trust.

[00:23:40.840] - Rob Cosman
So what do I say like to rob the rob customer satisfaction and a picture of me with my thumbs up? Are we talking like a

[00:23:46.420] - Christian Lovrecich
Yeah sure man? Yeah. Etsy look at Etsy too Etsy is another good example of how they lay out their product pages.

[00:23:51.760] - Rob Cosman
Okay

[00:23:52.240] - Christian Lovrecich
 I mean Etsy is a conversion behemoth, so just, just pay attention to it.

[00:23:56.140] - Christian Lovrecich
If you put if you look at those sites altogether, they all have the same things in common. The other thing you want to have is you're upsells, so you're frequently bought together. You can actually download an app called Frequently Bought Together and you have it just like Amazon. People who bought this also bought this, this and that. Prints cash all day long, I can tell you that. So now your average order value for a product is twenty nine dollars all of a sudden it's going up to sixty to seven hundred bucks.

[00:24:21.880] - Christian Lovrecich
Right. Next thing you want to know how you want to have its customers who bought this also bought this and then underneath that you want all your reviews. My favorite app for reviews is called Loox L o o x and that's the one that shows the picture of the products. People can actually upload the pictures of product and they have a good back end sequence where you know people you get people to submit their reviews and you can entice them with like you know a gift card or something.

[00:24:50.950] - Rob Cosman
 And this is all done on the Shopify site and the various plugins to show you, hey, they also bought this also bought that's. So if you only have one or two products, you need to figure out what the cost of your products are for the existing one before you start chasing something totally different at random if you want to build a real brand, right?

[00:25:05.680] - Christian Lovrecich
Yeah. If if you need ideas, just go to Amazon and just type in whatever your product is and then scroll down and see what Amazon what Amazon is showing you, that people who bought this also bought this. And that should give you ideas to get other products. Another app that I used to to check we talked about this last time. Amazon this is how  used to like when I used to dropship, I used to find winning products. It's called Unicorn Smash. So going on go on Amazon and download the Unicorn smash, what you call it, plug in for Chrome and it will tell you the sells number for each product.

[00:25:35.710] - Christian Lovrecich
But I'm sure you guys have tools like that already, but you know that's another one. So if you need ideas of what to bundle with, that's another idea. If you only have one product, then create quantity breaks. If there's an app for that, too. So if you buy one, is this much, if you buy two, is this much, if you buy and you give them a break, obviously the more they buy and your average total value goes up.

[00:25:53.560] - Christian Lovrecich
So that's on the front end. The other thing with Shopify, another app, will you? It's the one that I prefer, but there's a million out there to capture email. The thing I like about Willia is that I actually have optimized mine to a point where the conversion rate is through the roof when you offer you know up to 20% discount to get their email address because the money's on the list is what I tell people all that. If you watch any of my videos, I mean, people have to be sick of it because I say it on every video.

[00:26:20.980] - Christian Lovrecich
The money's on the list just to give you an idea. So think about it. If you have one hundred thousand people and your email list and your open rate on that email list, it's twenty percent, which is horrible. Like my list are between 40 and 60 and even more and so on. Really, that's how niche down you can get. Yeah. What people are passionate men trust me they'll open your email so. Think about it, so 20 percent open rate and then one percent.

[00:26:44.800] - Christian Lovrecich
Clickthrough rate that take you up on that offer, that's one thousand people out of all those people sell at twenty twenty. What is it, 20? That's 20 grand. Like know, it's just cash. And guess what? Google goes down. Facebook goes down. Amazon goes down. Guess what? You still have your list. There's a million email services out there so you can take I joke around you can take literally everything away from me and all I need is my list and I'll make money right back. Know it's just making an offer. So this is why it's so important. And if you still sell on Amazon, you're going to be in both. There's actually an app called the Zone Tracker where you can see the lift that Facebook ads brings to your Amazon store. So there's a way to track it. You install this like code or whatever, and it tracks the stats inside Facebook.

[00:27:35.740] - Christian Lovrecich
So you can see, hey, this campaign brought me this many Amazon sales. So I don't know if you heard of that one.

[00:27:40.810] - Rob Cosman
But how does how does that work?

[00:27:42.850] - Christian Lovrecich
Because I have no idea. Like, I had a client who installed it and it just works. I haven't eaten since that

[00:27:47.320] - Rob Cosman
You run the ad on Facebook and then they go to your website, but they ultimately buy on Amazon, Amazon, they will get it.

[00:27:54.160] - Christian Lovrecich
There's a way you download a report and then you upload it through the tool and the total attribute, the sales that came from Facebook. So that way, you know, your campaigns are working and bringing you a lift on the face on the Amazon side. But email list, I guess that's very important. So the the one that you want to use the app that you want to be, the service that you want to use. It's called Clavier. It's specifically made for Facebook and Shopify.

[00:28:21.820] 
And the cool thing about it is that you have Flo's, you have you can do your campaigns so you can have post purchase email sequences, you can have abandoned card sequences. You can have, you know, make him an offer to come back and buy from you and I mean, email my revenue, my lowest revenue on email. And one of my stores is 14 percent of all revenue just through email, automated flows like that, just the automated stuff that's in there after 14 percent.

[00:28:50.530] - Christian Lovrecich
That's a lot of money, man.

[00:28:51.610] - Rob Cosman
That's just that's cart abandament they came in, didn't make the purchase. You follow it up, made additional offers, give them a coupon, whatever, try to get them to come back. Kind of. Yeah. Those are the automated flows and one that's not even counting the campaigns.

[00:29:03.880] - Rob Cosman
What's it called again? Clavel Clivia,

[00:29:08.150] - Christian Lovrecich
Klaviyo

[00:29:08.450] - Rob Cosman
I'm glad you spelled it for me.

[00:29:10.210] - Christian Lovrecich
Yeah. Yeah, I have a video actually. I have a video to my YouTube channel of all the apps that I like to use, the only one that's not on there, it's frequently bought together by all the other ones that are on there that

[00:29:18.730] - Rob Cosman
I will put them in the show notes to and drive.

[00:29:21.610] - Rob Cosman
OK, so. But, you know, I mean, I'm just I'm picturing all this stuff. OK, so what's up? What's a budget for a Shopify site like this like? Not a whole lot of products I don't know, maybe like five products, 10 products max.

[00:29:37.570] - Christian Lovrecich
If you're going to build it yourself, you can I mean, you can build it for free, but I mean the free unless you really know what you're doing, I can tell right now, I mean, those free themes, they'll do OK.

[00:29:50.170] - Christian Lovrecich
But you still got to manipulate everything to make it look real good. So if you're an Amazon and you're branded, you're already making money. I would say spend the money on a good theme right off the bat. So it depends on what you're selling. But one of my out of the sandbox, they have the best teams out there, in my opinion. I'm a big fan of Turbo because its fast it loads fast. You can make it look really, really good and most type of brands.

[00:30:14.350] - Christian Lovrecich
So definitely go with Turbo from out of the sandbox right off the bat.

[00:30:19.930] - Christian Lovrecich
The other thing that a lot of people don't do when it comes to their stores is like you've got to have a story. A lot of people, believe it or not, they'll check your story like, you know, they just want to make sure you're not going to rip them off. So make sure you have a good story there. And it's not like, hey, I just heard a story because I felt like it make it emotional, make a story behind the whole brand and a pictureA

[00:30:38.650] - Rob Cosman
 picture of your face, a picture of yourself. Don't be afraid. You don't need It

[00:30:41.440] - Christian Lovrecich
It doesn't have to be a picture yourself. You can do a video of the process of making the product or just the brand. I mean, just have something there and then the other things. Another app, it's called Lucky Orange. You can actually record everyone who goes to your site and create heat maps. So it's like a security camera. You can watch their behavior as they go on the site and they're purchasing from you.

[00:31:02.630] - Christian Lovrecich
So, one, you'll get to see what's working and what's not working. You can see if there's a bottleneck and you can see what people if people get confused with buttons or anything like that and you can make changes accordingly. Like I tell people all the time, when you launch a store, you need to sit there and watch the first one thousand videos. And I can assure you you're going to find a lot of shit that's broken and a lot of stuff that doesn't work.

[00:31:24.310] - Christian Lovrecich
And you're going to be making constant changes for the first month. I still do it to this day and I know what I'm doing and I still find stuff like, oh, I misspelled this word. Or when you build big stores, it's like, you know, after looking at it for like weeks and weeks and weeks, like, stuff just starts looking the same.

[00:31:43.330] - Christian Lovrecich
And when you step away and you go back, you'll catch stuff left and right. I mean, I make stupid mistakes, you know, and how people build it for me and tell me exactly what I want. And I go back, I'm like, what can I do this? Like, why? What was I thinking?

[00:31:56.950] - Christian Lovrecich
It's like, so make sure you watch those videos. Another thing for social proof, you can hook up your Instagram feed to the homepage. So do that. If you have an Instagram account, make sure the feeds hooked up to your homepage because people check that to do everything you need to have on there as well as your faq. You frequently asked questions to talk about what are the products made and how long it takes to process the order, how long it takes to ship.

[00:32:23.500] - Christian Lovrecich
Then you have a shipping it. You want to have a shipping and returns policy laid out. Spell it out. Don't be scared of saying, hey, only fifteen days or thirty days like this is your lawyer man. This is where you can go back to is like, hey, we have it on the site like this is. It is what it is. Right. So make sure you have that on there as well. But no live chat, that kind of thing.

[00:32:44.440] - Christian Lovrecich
Customer service. No, I don't do that or not. I know a lot of people use live stuff. I don't because now you've got to have somebody watching the chat. Twenty four, seven. And I can say right now it gets to a point where you scale that, no, unless you have a whole army, you're not going to be able to keep up with the chat and the face, not only the chat, but now you have DMS on Facebook and DMS on Instagram.

[00:33:05.350] - Christian Lovrecich
So you got all these messages coming in. I know you can get out of control. So what I prefer to do and it works for me because my customer service people, they're on top of it, but we have automated messages on Facebook and Instagram to say, hey, we're busy right now. If you need if you need, you need help right away. Send us an email support at the domain and then because we'll get back to you a lot faster.

[00:33:30.670] - Christian Lovrecich
And people do people have a contact us page as well with all your information in a form where they can contact and you'll be amazed when people just email you. It's a lot easier. I've never had an issue. I mean, I've done the phone number thing. I've done the the live chat and I got rid of both. And did it make a difference? It only makes a difference if you have a crappy drop shipping stop. But if you have a real brand and you have a clear contact page, you know that all people be like, oh, well, call.

[00:33:57.790] - Christian Lovrecich
I'm like, we have the generic answers like, hey, sorry for the inconvenience, but we have so many orders and it's just quicker for us to get back to you and then just fix the problem right away and then they're happy anyway.

[00:34:07.240] - Rob Cosman
So, yeah, I agree. But one of my businesses in e-commerce and our average ticket value is pretty high so I handled the customer service because, you know, someone calls and they want to buy, you know, a thousand, two thousand, three thousand dollar item. I'm like, let me talk to you again.

[00:34:24.490] - Christian Lovrecich
That's different. I'm talking about if your product is like a hundred bucks or whatever, you know, but you're selling something for like three, five grand. And yeah, you need a phone number, you to get back to people. I mean, that's the sell side of me. Get close them on the. Oh, man,

[00:34:36.970] - Rob Cosman
Absolutely. OK, so we had a Shopify, if I say we've got our products, we've got a bunch of plug ins.

[00:34:44.690] - Rob Cosman
Crickets now what we need the people to come in traffic is wherever they come from.

[00:34:51.050] - Christian Lovrecich
Oh, man, that there was if there was only one platform that anybody can start with basics and go from there.

[00:34:59.030] - Christian Lovrecich
All right, I'll tell you right now, this is where most people dropped the ball, so before you launch your Shopify store, what you need to do is you need to start posting on your page like at least three to five times a day before you launch

[00:35:13.430] - Rob Cosman
Your page, like your Instagram page or your Facebook page or

[00:35:16.460] - Christian Lovrecich
Both. If you have those both, you can you can actually post from Instagram and it will automatically posted on Facebook.

[00:35:22.340] - Rob Cosman
And this is a business page.

[00:35:24.080] - Christian Lovrecich
Yes. The business page. And you can connect them all together on the inside business manager so that this is what I did with this brand. And that's why we got seven thousand dollars in sales, like literally the first day with barely any following is you hype it up for at least three weeks or a month if you can, or maybe two weeks at least. You I know it depends on everybody's budget, but what you do is you post a picture, post the various videos, don't bother anything over 30 seconds because they're not going to watch the whole thing and make sure you do the captions.

[00:35:56.450] - Christian Lovrecich
Facebook gives you the options to turn the captions on. So make sure the captions are on because eighty five percent people don't listen when audio because they don't work or whatever. So you do that and then you go into your page or from your phone and just boost those posts. Right. I know I'll be all digital markers like never boost, never boost. And they don't know what they're doing. You boost the post for a dollar or two dollars a day.

[00:36:20.240] - Christian Lovrecich
You can start with a dollar or two hours a day. You set it up for a year and you just let it run one dollar a day, two dollars a day, and it's going to add up. So whatever your budget is, if you if you can do more, then you go into your insights, see which one of the organic post did the best on their own and then boost those until your budget, your max out budget for the day before you get sales.

[00:36:40.010] - Christian Lovrecich
Right.

[00:36:40.910] - Rob Cosman
So that boosting just the people that are following or does that boost to anybody else doing?

[00:36:45.110] - Christian Lovrecich
Well, that's what I'm going to get at. So when you're going to boot into boosting, it gives you the option to boost to people who already like your paycheck, boost to people who like their page and their friends, which is one of my favorites starting out, because show me who you hang out with and who you are. Right. So they're most likely to like the same product because I'm a car guy.

[00:37:03.770] - Christian Lovrecich
All half of my friends are all car guys, too, right? So it'll show it to those people. So if you're starting out, that's the best way to get engagement right away, little by little. And then if you know what you're doing on the back end, you can create your first custom audience based on the interest that you're going after. So let's say you're going after dogs. So I love just like I love dogs or dog breeds or whatever, you know what I mean?

[00:37:26.510] - Christian Lovrecich
Just put them all together. Don't get fancy with it. You're starting out just gathering data. And the reason why you do this is two reasons. One, you're you're hyping up your launch for the store.

[00:37:37.700] - Christian Lovrecich
You've got to make people excited. So the more you're hype it up, the more I want it right. And if you have a good product, you're going to beg you for it to release. That's why. What's with us with this new brand? Right.

[00:37:46.580] - Christian Lovrecich
So you do that one. It's going to be sales the first day when you launch because there's engagement on your page to your ads are going to be cheaper because Facebook likes engagement and what you buy cheaper costs in your ads. And three, you can create custom audiences of anyone who interacts with your page for your Instagram post or your Facebook page or your ads. So now you have a killer audience right up from the get go that you can start running your ads with.

[00:38:11.910] - Christian Lovrecich
So that's the big advantage, so it's going to pay off if you invest a little bit of money on it and you know what you're doing on the back end, it's definitely going to pay off. So that's how I start. That's why I started this new brand, actually. So it works, you know.

[00:38:25.690] - Rob Cosman
OK, so you just start boosting, put it out to their friends and you're just creating a little bit of content, getting excited like coming soon.

[00:38:32.710] - Rob Cosman
Here's the here's the couple bucks we're going to like, OK, we're going to launch it a couple of weeks or a month or what? What is it, like a week?

[00:38:42.860] - Christian Lovrecich
I used to it, we did it for a month. I've never done it longer than that, but we did it for a month. Again, it depends on your budget. I know I'm always going to make my money back with Facebook, so I don't care. But I still I'm still like, you know, I don't go crazy with it.

[00:38:55.250] - Christian Lovrecich
I still treated us back in the day. You know, it's like people are amazed, like want to just double this line.

[00:39:01.580] - Christian Lovrecich
I like to go slow. And then once once I have my all my data that I want, then I go hard on the scale, but I'm not in a hurry. I'd rather because again, you go to your store and you start seeing mistakes all over the store, like one plug updated and it messed up the layout on the product page on a tablet, you know what I mean? Stuff that you don't think about. So I always get to that month, the first month slowly, you're going to have customer service issues because not everything is going to work perfectly.

[00:39:26.300] - Christian Lovrecich
If you're hiring customer service people, you got to train them. They're going to make mistakes. I don't know about your shipping. I mean, you guys are pretty good with shipping, so I barely made mistakes there. But just make sure customers are happy and all that stuff because what Facebook does oh, this dealer thing before I forget, every page, every account and every page has a customer feedback score. And automatically when you start a page, Facebook sets that are two weeks.

[00:39:53.380] - Christian Lovrecich
OK, so if you guys have inventory, I'm sure you ship your stuff right away so you don't have to worry about it. But what what Facebook does do is they'll send a survey out to anyone who purchased from the store the after two weeks. And if they complain or whatever, your score goes down. Once your score goes down past three, you're going to get a warning. When you hit two, they're going to double the cost in your ads.

[00:40:16.580] - Christian Lovrecich
Now, what is it to. Now, three to double the cost in your ads and then to go back on your account. Because they want everybody to have quality in their platform, they don't want all the drop shippers from knocking down all the scams and all that.

[00:40:32.090] - Rob Cosman
OK, so make sure this is someone who went through the Facebook ad that went to your Shopify site, bought and bought for trying to get on the Facebook platform. But they are still coming through Facebook because they went through the ad but still executed the final sale on your Shopify site. They're still going to get that from Facebook as a check against are you legit or are you just selling crap?

[00:40:53.520] - Christian Lovrecich
Yeah, they want to make sure you're offering quality products.

[00:40:55.760] - Christian Lovrecich
So make sure when before you launch your store, just just Google, it's hidden, too, so that'll make it easier for you to find it. So just go to Google and type in Facebook customer feedback store for my page. And then there's the first page. You'll find it. Just start digging in somebody. There's an article with a link to it, I will tell you. But I can't remember top of my head how to get to it.

[00:41:14.810] - Christian Lovrecich
Sometimes that's what I do. I got to Google my Facebook feed, that's all. I find it even though I live in business manager all day. But actually, I think they I think they updated it on your actual page and it's on the menu somewhere now. But anyway, that's how you find it. But make sure when you start before you launch the ads, you can change that to eight weeks. So I change it to eight weeks when I start, because if I do have issues and people are pissed off and I'm a pretty good customer service, I usually turn around.

[00:41:42.290] - Christian Lovrecich
But there's always those few days you're never going to make them happy no matter what you want to give them enough time so they cool off. And if they do see the survey at some point, they don't go that hard on you and they just skip it, you know what I mean? So keep it at eight for like a couple of weeks, like a month or two. And then when you know your you have your stuff, your processes set in place and everything's good, then you can bring it back two weeks or whatever, because the higher your score, if you're a five all the time, your ads are cheaper.

[00:42:07.130] - Christian Lovrecich
Facebook rewards you on the option.

[00:42:10.960] - Rob Cosman
Wow, dude, this is awesome. It's great, it's fun. I understand a bunch of what you're saying and it makes sense. But then I'm like, and I'm not going to learn all this.

[00:42:23.120] - Rob Cosman
I'm not going to be able to do like I know some people will do it.

[00:42:25.810] - Christian Lovrecich
I literally people ask me all the time, it's like, why don't you have any more views in your videos on YouTube? I'm like, I don't know. I mean, I just I first of all, I've been doing it organically, so I haven't seen it. I could have cheated and gotten like a million subscribers right away if I wanted to, but I wanted to do it the hard way.

[00:42:41.230] - Christian Lovrecich
It keeps growing, but I've never been good at SEO. So I think it's an SEO issue that I get to hire somebody to read the descriptions now that it's finally going to be monetized. But I literally have. I just checked one hundred and forty seven videos and about one hundred of those. It's all Facebook ads from a A-Z, so I could literally package that and stuff for a five thousand dollar course if I wanted to. So if you want to learn Facebook ads and you watch my videos, you can easily get started with information that's very easily, easily.

[00:43:14.260] - Christian Lovrecich
And then I have the group on Facebook, but I answer your questions. Do you have any. I have two questions. One. How do you how do you cheat youtube? You always want to know how to do it. I just always want to know what the angle is.

[00:43:30.320] - Christian Lovrecich
There's two two underground services out there that you can go in and you can actually send traffic to your videos and you can buy subscribers and stuff like that. I don't recommend it. You can just see what you can do. You can do the same with ticked off, you can do the same with Instagram, you can do it with any any platform. Really. The problem with that is, is that when you do that, if you're doing it for Klout.

[00:43:56.150] - Christian Lovrecich
Right. Like if I just wanted recognition just to say, hey, I have a YouTube channel with like one hundred thousand subscribers used to hire my agency. I know my main competitor does that because I check the stats and one hundred subscribers a day for six months straight. Never missed a beat. Something's going on there, right. So, you know, I could do that. But then it's not real data. It's like everything else. Right?

[00:44:20.180] - Christian Lovrecich
Like, for example, I just told you, I'll build audiences out of that engagement with my Instagram account and my Facebook ads and post and all that stuff. Well, if you buy followers and from all over the world, now you have that data. It's not people who are interested in your product. So I know for a fact that, yeah, it's harder. It's been a hard road to build up that challenge because it's been hard work.

[00:44:41.900] - Christian Lovrecich
I never thought it would take this long, but once I started, I can't stop now. Right. So but now I know the people who watch my videos are like interested in what I have to say. And once I, I throw the ads up there, they'll sit through the ads. You know, it's like I don't want all this crappy traffic, but if you have a channel that you don't care about and it's just like. You know, just experimenting or you just want to get views, just whatever, there's two two platforms you can go in and you can literally say, hey, I need forty thousand views today, how much you just pay and the magical traffic just hits your channel and goes that way.

[00:45:19.690] - Christian Lovrecich
Semillas describers and everything from all over the world. Yeah. You can actually pay for them to sit through your ads to God.

[00:45:27.160] - Rob Cosman
It's always somebody trying to beat the system.

[00:45:29.910] - Christian Lovrecich
Right. But here's the deal. It works. There's no doubt about it.

[00:45:33.780] 
But you got to remember, man, these platforms are getting smarter and smarter and smarter. And do you really want to risk like me? I've been working so hard on my channel for a year. It's a year right now in November. That's how I started last year in November. You think I want to risk running that type of traffic to my channel so the algorithm flags it and then just bounce my channel? No fucking way after a year. No way.

[00:45:55.110] - Christian Lovrecich
I'm not risking that.

[00:45:56.280] - Rob Cosman
It's the same with Amazon, same with anything. You know, you just try to keep your nose clean and play by the rules and hopefully, you know.

[00:46:01.230] - Christian Lovrecich
Yeah, but those tools you used for like one time cloud type of deal. So let's say you have a product, a one off product that's limited and it's not a brand or anything like that, like a drop shipping a product. Yeah, I open up a textbook account and then go on one of those services and then run one hundred dollars worth of traffic just to get that the video kicked up and get that traffic right on top of it. Sure.

[00:46:24.300] - Christian Lovrecich
Because you don't care if it gets bad, you just open another one. Right. But that's just your personal channel. You don't do it, man. If you're real or don't do it, it's not worth it.

[00:46:32.380] - Rob Cosman
OK, so let's say I don't want to do any of it, I just want to hire someone like someone like you, obviously a pretty selective. But I'm just saying, if I want to outsource the whole thing, what would you say my budget is about?

[00:46:44.650] - Rob Cosman
You know, to get somebody to do a decent Shopify side and then to run some ads, you know, like how what's the model is usually like a a retainer. Is it a percentage of what you call what you spend? How does that work?

[00:46:55.630] - Christian Lovrecich
Every agency is a little bit different. Like the way I do it, I charge a retainer based on that's fine. But the companies that I'm working with, big budgets and then we cap it off at a certain number because they have to make money and we can we scale with them then at one point it's not worth it to them. So you've got to cap it out at some point. But there's everybody's different. There's agencies that will just do a flat fee that wants to charge you, let's say, five hundred dollars a month until you can start with five dollars a day, run right away, run the other way you've got to do.

[00:47:26.410] - Christian Lovrecich
I hate to say it because I've been in this game for a long time, but back in the day, let's just say there's a couple of gurus who released Facebook out courses, how to start an agency. I'm not going to name any names, but I can do top of my head. And yeah, a lot of people took those courses and now they think they have an agency. You're going to Facebook would be like, hey, I just saw my first client.

[00:47:46.900] - Christian Lovrecich
How do I run ads? Like, how do you have the balls to do that? That pisses me off, you know, because that just gives everybody a bad name. So the first thing you got to do as far as budget goes, I always tell people for e-commerce, you're not going to be able to test what you need unless. Thirty five hundred dollars a month to start. So thirty five hundred dollars a month when you break it down by 30 days.

[00:48:10.220] - Christian Lovrecich
That's only one hundred and sixty dollars. That's enough for literally one top of the funnel campaign and a retargeting campaign. And you can protest for audiences, max. So if you're starting out, that's the bare minimum that I would do. It's just it's the days of five dollars a day and starting a store and spending a thousand dollars in the first month there over man. There's too much competition. Auction prices are up, CPMs are up. You know, there's there's a supply and demand.

[00:48:40.740] - Christian Lovrecich
You know, actually, Facebook lost like I think it was two million users last quarter because all the politics and all that crap. So now we have even less space for ads. They're pretty good about buying people out and stuff like that and getting more placements. But costs are up. When I remember its example that I called you five dollars a day, make two thousand dollars on a t shirt. I mean, that was over five years ago, you know, six years ago.

[00:49:03.870] - Christian Lovrecich
So costs are up. It's your cost per acquisition. That's the other thing. If you're starting a store, if you don't have a minimum of an average order value between fifty to seventy five dollars, and that's if you know what you're doing, you're not going to make it. I tell you that right now, because between your overhead, your cost for acquisition and everything else that manufacturing cost shipping and all that stuff, it's just not enough. You're going to be barely at 70.

[00:49:30.450] - Christian Lovrecich
You'll make profit if you're good at running ads. But anything less than fifty dollars average order value, you're going to lose money or barely break even if that and at that point is isn't even worth it, you know what I mean? Unless you know how to how to use your email, you know, if you're really good at emailing your email campaigns and stuff like that, so.

[00:49:48.960] - Rob Cosman
Right. But you're saying, you know, average value. Seventy five. So if you've got two fifty dollar items, you want to make sure they're buying two of those items, then figure out what the complementary ones are and launch them before you start going down this road. Right.

[00:50:00.630] - Christian Lovrecich
Or else you're always sort of. Yeah. Always offer the fries with a cheeseburger like McDonald's. You know. You want fries with that. Yes. I always said I mean, the worst I can say, it's no know. So I mean, I have. One have to obsess on the new stores, the ones the frequently bought together, and then not three actually that frequently bought together, if they say no, there they go to the card page, there's another down sale for something cheaper.

[00:50:30.270] - Christian Lovrecich
And then there's the post purchase of sale as well. And then on the email back is a post purchase offer as well.

[00:50:39.150] - Rob Cosman
Do you charge shipping or do you offer the free shipping or how do you do that?

[00:50:42.180] - Christian Lovrecich
What's your free shipping? Over one hundred bucks. Yeah. Yeah. And I've tested this numerous times. People people will pay at the most like seven dollars and ninety five cents for shipping. They have no problem with that and they'll pay you even more for that shipping. So I always, always, always offer expedited shipping. That's just extra cash. Yeah. The other thing, people pay for insurance too. So I have an older bump on the checkout page for like insurance.

[00:51:08.080] - Christian Lovrecich
You want to share your package in case it gets broken on the way there. Bova. Yeah, people pay. So that's an extra 12 bucks right there for doing nothing. You charge twelve dollars for insurance on the new store and the new store because of the high price value.

[00:51:25.560] - Rob Cosman
OK, let's let's talk about what to avoid now, because, you know, like, I see people, they're like, oh, I'm doing my research on products and stuff. And, you know, that's mostly Amazon focus. But what would you say is the things that, you know, I mean, people like we talk about this, people always want to chase the shiny object. Right? Like, what should they avoid right now? What do you say?

[00:51:44.010] - Rob Cosman
You know, this looks good, but don't get into that space, know? I mean, obviously, the big ones are always we talk about fitness. Great relationships are great. Make money online is great. But, you know. What type of product that people should avoid right now that they might think is sexy.

[00:52:00.590] - Christian Lovrecich
I'm the worst person to ask that because I believe you can sell anything if you know how to steal the traffic.

[00:52:05.400] - Christian Lovrecich
So this is what I this is what I tell people. Nothing is saturated. You just got to know how to divert that traffic that's going to them and bring it to your store. If you can do that and you know what you're doing as far as conversion goes, you'll be successful. Now, it's not going to be as huge as your own original product that no one else has. But you can still be. Think about it. How many fitness stores are out there?

[00:52:29.570] - Christian Lovrecich
How many people sell leggings? Think about that. And they all make the good brands. They'll make cash, gym, shark attacks. They all make cash that it's there. You can do it. You just got to know how to sell. And that's when the marketing side of things comes in. So if you and being able to spend the most to get that customer right. Yeah, well, yeah, he whoever spends the most wins. Those are famous words for Dan Kennedy.

[00:52:52.250] - Christian Lovrecich
That's one of my marketing mentors like I'm obsessed with. If you don't know, Dan Kennedy is he's Russell Brunson's mentor. So that tells you something. But anyway, you can sell anything if you attach the emotional side to things. So there's three there's everybody wants to be rich, everybody wants to be healthy, and everybody wants to have relationships, family, friends and all that. So if you touch any of those three to your product, you'll sell it.

[00:53:23.390] - Christian Lovrecich
So, for example, hey, here's my protein check. Here's my protein supplement. If you drink our supplement protein, you live a longer life, better health boom. That will hit the emotional point. If you drink our protein shake and get in shape, you'll get that check relationships right. If you if you drink our protein shakes, that gives you extra energy. That extra boost of energy during the day, you're going to be more productive, which means you going to work harder and you can make more money.

[00:53:48.560] - Christian Lovrecich
You'll be rich. So if you hit those marketing angles in your ads and you always attach one of those three to your ads, you can you can steal that traffic. And so that's when copywriting comes in and you're creative for sure.

[00:54:00.680] - Rob Cosman
So what are you seeing right now?

[00:54:02.390] - Rob Cosman
That's like a cool new trend. And some Facebook ads, like, you know, it's always things happen and, you know, it's hot for a week or two. But what do you think right now that you see and you're like, oh, man, that's a good pattern interrupt, right? Because we all just get used to the same thing. And what do you see? That's cool, right?

[00:54:17.210] - Christian Lovrecich
The one that drove me nuts for a while and it's actually slow down, but now it's picking up again because of the holiday season as people will post pictures of them with their girlfriend or model. Don't ask me why, but it works because

[00:54:32.100] - Rob Cosman
Frank Kern has that rankers for anyone black and white.

[00:54:35.550] - Christian Lovrecich
Yeah, I see it all the time. Yeah, black and white can't, does it. Yeah, that's a that's a pattern. Interrupt another one. That's I'll give you a little golden nugget that I don't think I, I don't think I ever said this on my own stuff, any of my videos or my podcast.

[00:54:48.810] - Christian Lovrecich
But one of my favorite things to do is if you're running video ads and picture ads, you always do both to see which one is best. But what you do is you grab the winning image from your image ads and you used it as a thumbnail for your video at. So now convert's, because it converts as an image that so that's one another pattern interrupt, it depends also on the product. I like to do if it's a video, like to shake the screen and the first like three seconds.

[00:55:17.900] - Christian Lovrecich
So when you're scrolling, it looks like something and there's a glitch in Facebook or something like that, you got to be careful with that. You can only push so far. So let's get your account ban on those to me.

[00:55:28.010] - Christian Lovrecich
So try your own risk.

[00:55:31.160] - Christian Lovrecich
But you should be fine. If you don't make it too obvious or too crazy, you should be fine. So Pattern interrupts with video. That's what works with image ads yuser-generatedou can only do so much user generated content. That's what convert's amounts. People think that the most the most professional pictures are going to do the job. No user generated content always wins. Always. It's the social network. People want to see real stuff. So when they see the picture of the product being used by a real person, it resonates with them.

[00:55:58.670] - Christian Lovrecich
So I do that. And then I like to do like the five stars, like the Amazon starts and then the review for a while they actually bound starts start. Now you can do it again so you can do a testimonial if it's real. Just to a real testimonial as the ad copy when I call to action and a headline and those convert pretty well.

[00:56:15.380] - Rob Cosman
And you put the stars of the Amazon color. The Amazon orange color.

[00:56:18.410] - Christian Lovrecich
Yeah, yeah.

[00:56:18.860] - Christian Lovrecich
Just go to you can just grab the emoji start. You have to be the Amazon call it but the start emoji. So it looks like they just put the five starts and then the testimonial put a call to action and a headline and those come out pretty well. Yeah.

[00:56:31.670] - Rob Cosman
Beautiful. All right, go ahead. I'm so excited, there's so many things to do, but you're

[00:56:38.880] - Christian Lovrecich
We are going to have to do it again when I'm out of time, unfortunately.

[00:56:43.560] - Rob Cosman
Funny, you know, I listen to all that and I'm just like, yeah, this is all great. But I'm I'm the guy that would be like, here's my money. Just tell me what the budget is.

[00:56:53.270] - Rob Cosman
Let's do it. But I do like your videos on YouTube. I see one here that I pulled up and it was funny that SpongeBob hiding in the back. And I'm like, oh, that we're kindred spirits, you know? So yeah, I love

[00:57:06.420] - Christian Lovrecich
I love my meems and stupid stuff. Like I try to keep a semi professional on that, on that but stuff as a background because I wanted to. But yeah, if you look at the bookshelf, it gives you some secrets that if you pay attention, some of the best books there and there is ones I learn a lot of stuff from, you know, so it's about the books and you got to do the research and experience to.

[00:57:27.180] - Rob Cosman
But all right, we're working.

[00:57:29.400] - Rob Cosman
Everybody find you. What's the best place? Give us your YouTube channel. Your group.

[00:57:33.300] - Christian Lovrecich
Yeah. So podcasts, since you guys are listening to a podcast. It's called Pixel Feed Radio Pixel feed radio. That's I talk to entrepreneurs just like I just had you on a couple weeks ago. So that episode should be coming out soon. And I just have people on tell their story and then how they sell their business and then YouTube. Just search pixel feed p l f f f ed and then my name. But you can butcher my name but I'll still come up and you'll find a channel.

[00:58:01.840] - Christian Lovrecich
I literally just checked it out about like one hundred and forty videos and at least one hundred of those is Facebook ads. And then the rest is like conversions and apps and what works, what doesn't. Not good stuff. And you can follow the journey of the new store. I just started that series, which I've been failing miserably, but I promise you I'm going to turn them around once they get these costs under control so you can follow what I do there.

[00:58:22.680] - Christian Lovrecich
And then if you have a store that's a proven product of proven sales, you're remaking at least six figures. And you want my team and I to take it to the next level with me heading the ads. That's pixel feed media. It's an invite only. So you've got to put your information. And then if it's something that we can work with and I know it can work and it's proven and you have to budget and we can have a conversation, if I have the space to do that, the bandwidth to do it, then we'll definitely take you on as a client because we want partnerships.

[00:58:52.230] - Christian Lovrecich
We just don't want to just take anybody just to do it. I want somebody that that works because we want to bring you results. So that's pixel feed media.

[00:59:01.900] - Rob Cosman
That's that's the right attitude. Same thing, right? Like I get a cat and clients. I'm like, you know. Crappy product. Are you really serious in this game? I need you around second or third or fourth year to keep following your taxes, right? I don't I don't want a flash in the pan.

[00:59:15.740] - Christian Lovrecich
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like I remember starting out people's cards wouldn't go through and they will freak out if you help the budget one day. And it's like, I can't do that. I mean, luckily I worked my ass off to get to a point where I can do it this way now. But listen, I get it and I get it when you're small. I was small once, so I get it, you know, but.

[00:59:34.430] - Christian Lovrecich
I specialize in scaling and taking it to the next level now, so absolutely you pay the bills.

[00:59:39.380] - Rob Cosman
Yeah, we first start out, you like, and I'll take anybody drops for sure.

[00:59:45.170] - Rob Cosman
Not a problem for sure. Well, I never show up. Who cares?

[00:59:49.520] - Christian Lovrecich
And it's exciting for both parties because I get worked up when I see the success on their end and they get worked up when they get that success. So it's a good it's fun and it really is.

[00:59:57.710] - Rob Cosman
So, yeah, absolutely. I dig it. Awesome. Thank you so much for your time. And this is just wicked. Now I got to go back through and I had to write down all the friggin apps and stuff you dropped and put them all in the notes, has videos for all that stuff on the channel. I just don't know my favorite apps. Good. I'll put a bunch of that because it's great. But thanks so much for your time.

[01:00:16.520] - Rob Cosman
And this was this was killer.

[01:00:18.280] - Christian Lovrecich
Any time you want to have me on, man, just just holler at me. I'll come on in and people have questions. Will make a second episode. I'll answer all of them.

[01:00:26.510] - Rob Cosman
Thanks so much for your time, buddy. Have a good day. Thank you, man. I appreciate it.

[01:00:30.770] - Rob Cosman
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