E-Commerce Power: How the Little Guys Are Building Brands and Beating the Giants at E-Commerce

By Jason G. Miles

An online marketing expert shares practical steps for starting and scaling your e-commerce brand—plus interviews with successful online entrepreneurs.

In the age of Amazon, e-commerce is the name of the game. And over the past few years, the shift to online shopping has radically accelerated. If you don’t have an e-commerce business yet, it’s time to start one! If you already have one, it’s time to scale up.

E-Commerce Power teaches you how to harness the power of the niche brand model. It is filled with useful knowledge and practical tips such as proven online marketing methods, management and goal-setting techniques, and advice on developing new products from brainstorm to launch and beyond.

Plus informative interviews with entrepreneurs, including:

• Mike Brown, Death Wish Coffee
• Zac Martin, Yellow Hammer Tools
• Alex Shirley-Smith, Tentsile
• Lisa and Jared Madsen, Madsen Cycles
• Ashley Turner, Farmbox Direct
• Cinnamon Miles, Pixie Faire
• Daniel Leake, Catfish Sumo
• Atulya Bingham, The Mud Home

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781631950599

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

You Can Do This

Even a small amount of power can have a great effect when concentrated on a certain area.

–Satoru Iwata

As I write this introduction, we are in lock-down because of COVID-19. Many people are saying that the retail and e-commerce worlds will never be the same. I think they might be right. I just read a Forbes article, How COVID-19 Is Transforming E-commerce, that stated,

Stay-at-home orders will eventually be lifted state by state, but in the interim, there are millions of consumers creating and reinforcing new online buying behaviors and habits. In many families, online grocery, apparel, and entertainment shopping will replace store and mall visits permanently until a vaccine is available.

The shift to online shopping has been accelerated radically because of this pandemic. Are you ready to build a business that thrives in this new world? If so, then this book is for you. I am a huge fan of small e-commerce businesses and if you don’t have one yet, it’s time to start. If you do have one, it’s time to scale up. This book will show you how.

More Opportunities – Not Less

The core premise behind this book is that the Internet is becoming increasingly good at making very small niches viable. When established, they frequently develop a winner-take-all characteristic that makes them hard to beat. Those small niches are a fantastic opportunity for us as small business operators.

I believe it’s never been easier to launch an online business, and the universe of possibilities is expanding rapidly, not shrinking. More niche opportunities are being generated all the time, as more and more people transition from offline to online life.

For a more in-depth study of this topic, I highly encourage you to pick up a copy of The Long-Tail—Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, by Chris Anderson. It’s an excellent book that explains how the riches are in the niches.

Castles on Islands with Sharks and Landmines, and Moats, and All Kinds of Stuff

Think of these niche topic opportunities like little castles sitting on their own islands. There are thousands of eager customers that are on the island, too—and they can happily move around. But to competitors, the islands are hard to invade. The castles have doors made of the strongest steel with giant moats around them filled with crocodiles, piranhas, and giant anaconda snakes. Outside the moat, there is a vast minefield. And beyond the field, there is an ocean, and it’s filled with giant Great White sharks. Get the picture?

So, again, the only question is—can you get set up in one of these small niches? If you can, you win. And you don’t just win—you win big for the long term.

Now imagine one final mental image. Imagine island after island, each with this type of castle sitting vacant. Thousands of customers are on the island with you, but no tenant has moved into the castle yet. Everyone is just waiting for someone to set up shop—and begin enjoying the benefits of the winner-take-all situation.

This is the world I see—the world of small niches, waiting for an e-commerce seller to take them seriously and move in, set up shop, and start to dominate the niche. I see eager customers by the thousands, ready to rally around the brand that dedicates itself to them. I see a billion new people still waiting for high-speed internet access, and when they get it, they are going to come calling. The unique and interesting products they need are your opportunity to win.

How Most E-commerce Sellers Fail

The error most e-commerce sellers make is that they don’t identify a small niche to operate in that is available to them. Nor do they create a powerful brand to serve the customers in that niche with a vibrant and engaging website. Instead, they look at the big categories with envy and try to storm someone else’s castle with copy-cat products in similar ways. They get slaughtered doing it, ending up over time with no profit, and no real business.

Al Reis and Jack Trout outlined the correct battle plan for e-commerce sellers in their classic book Marketing Warfare. They said,

Launch the attack on as narrow a front as possible.

Instead of trying to invade someone else’s island, new sellers should work hard to identify a small opening in the market, then figure out how to dominate it professionally. Get a defensive foothold and learn to grow deeper and deeper into your small niche by serving customers well. Find, occupy, and dominate a small niche. Learn the ecommerce trade, rather than just the tricks of the trade. As time progresses, if you dominate a small niche well, you’ll discover additional opportunities and can take advantage of them from a position of strength. If you do this properly, you cannot be beaten very easily. You’ll have the power of the Internet’s winner-take-all attributes working in your favor rather than against you.

The Model I’ll Teach You in this Book

The book follows a logical framework. We call it the Ecommerce Engine Flywheel. We’ve used it in our coaching and consulting practice for several years now. We decided it was time to publish it and share it more broadly. We’ve done our best to cover the topics chapter by chapter in this book.

Let me explain a little bit about how we developed the framework and give you a brief overview of each of the steps in the model. I’ll start at the beginning by explaining how we work with ecommerce sellers. Then I’ll explain the model itself, so you get a sneak peek of the upcoming chapters in this book. Finally, I’ll share my ecommerce journey, so you understand my experience with these concepts.

Several days a week I do e-commerce consulting. It’s a fun business I run with with my friend and business partner, Kyle Hamar. Our clients come from all over the world, from London, to Hong Kong, and of course all across the U.S. Some days we are strategic advisors. Other times we are technical teachers, occasionally accountability partners, and frequently just cheerleaders. We are part e-commerce mechanic – troubleshooting when things are broken, and in a way, we act as an insurance policy against making stupid decisions. Mostly though, we show up and do our best to serve their mission—to help grow their business with an emphasis on profitability.

The E-commerce Engine Flywheel

Most people come to us with a pressing need. Usually, it’s a desire to get more traffic to their website. Other times, they are struggling to make sales, have frustrations with Shopify, or maybe want to learn a new marketing strategy like Instagram. What we’ve found over time is that there are frequently broader issues that need to be resolved for healthy, long-term e-commerce growth to occur.

As a result, we developed the E-commerce Engine Flywheel model as a framework that covers the major aspects of setting up an e-commerce business. It has eight areas of emphasis. Our core thesis is that it takes small accurate decisions in each of these areas to launch and grow a healthy e-commerce business. Here is what the model looks like:

Goals: We start working with new clients in the area of goal clarity. As Steven Covey wisely said, we should begin with the end in mind. So goal clarity must come first.

Branding: Then move on to branding. We work with clients to create a powerful, engaging brand that customers love. This goes well beyond the name, and into the invisible aspects of the brand.

Product: Next comes product strategy. Great businesses are built on great products—and finding a good one is a challenge. We explore free products, digital products, physical products, and what we call the Integrated Product Suite—a combination of products that satisfy your customers in holistic ways.

Pricing: Entrepreneurs who succeed over time learn to be master price managers—understanding how to keep their customers happy, while making a good profit.

Presentation: The use of words (copywriting) and images (photos, videos, and graphic art) are critical to ecommerce success. We work with clients to tune up and professionalize their approach to these aspects of the business.

Placement: Placement is our word for Sales Channel Management. Where you sell online is one of the most important decisions you can make. What marketplaces should you use? In what priority? Straight to Shopify? Only on Amazon? Both? When? How? Getting this right is critical to success.

Promotion: Getting traffic to your product or website is one of the most challenging aspects of growing an ecommerce business. I’m honored to have written three books about social media with McGraw-Hill and have spent the last ten years learning how to generate profitable traffic. With our coaching clients, we use a model we developed called the 9 Mountains of Traffic. It’s time for you to learn it.

Growth: The final step in our journey deals with profitable growth—in the area of staffing in particular. How you scale up and enable additional growth is vital.

I’m not arguing that the steps in the E-commerce Engine Flywheel are the only set of activities you’ll need to follow to grow a business. Of course, you’ll need to develop skills in areas such as legal, finance, facilities, logistics, and more. Growing a business isn’t easy. It’s filled with lots of starts and stops; highs and lows; joys and sorrows; thrills and bills. I know the feeling from first-hand experience.

My Story—A Decade of Dreaming

I still remember the exact moment I heard about someone making $1,000 a day on the Internet. It changed my life.

It was a Wednesday night in the Spring of 1998. Cinnamon and I had just had our first child, Jordan. I was a Compensation Analyst for a large Christian non-profit and also served as a part-time Pastor at a small country church on the weekends. Neither of these jobs paid very much, so I needed to make more money if we were going to survive. We weren’t trying to get rich or anything; we were trying to fund our ministry efforts.

A few years earlier, before we had gotten married, Cinnamon had served in Europe with a ministry called Youth With A Mission (YWAM). We both felt strongly about serving others. We were trying to figure out how to be tentmakers (the income model of the Apostle Paul)—make tents by day; do ministry work in the evenings and weekends. I guess you could call it a holy side hustle.

That unforgettable night in 1998, we went to our church Bible study, and I was candid about the situation. I asked for prayer about finding another part-time job. Someone said, You should talk to Joe; he’s making $1,000 a day on the Internet. My mind echoed that phrase over and over,

A Thousand Dollars a Day on the Internet!

A Thousand Dollars a Day on the Internet!

A Thousand Dollars a Day on the Internet!

I was mesmerized, but back then, most people still had dial-up modems, and lots of people didn’t even have computers. Email was the killer app. Making money online seemed really out-there. Really far-fetched.

I got Joe’s phone number and called him the next morning. He explained how he had set up an online traffic school website a few years earlier. He started it because he was frustrated by having to sit in traffic school all day and miss a full day of work. So he went to the traffic court judge in Sonoma County, California, and asked if he built a website that delivered the same training—would the judge allow it to be an alternative to the all-day class? Surprisingly, he worked out the details, and the judge started referring people to his website. Then, he began signing up judge after judge, county after county. Napa County. Marin County. Solano County and beyond. He was on track to have it available all over California. It was one of the first online traffic schools on the Internet, and it was a very profitable micro-niche.

While I was fascinated by his business, I still needed to feed my family. So, in what was one of my more dim-witted career moves, because he only needed someone a few hours a week to do data entry, I turned him down. I remember thinking that the data entry work was beneath my skills. Wow—so dumb. Instead, I decided to apply for a job at Kinkos, now called FedEx Office, so that I could make copies for people all night long. All I can say is, out of financial stress and desperation, I chose safety over adventure. Ooops.

I remember that Joe was a nice guy. Hearing about his website gave me a vivid dream; I wanted to create something similar someday. Not to get rich, but to make my living online so we could fund our ministry efforts.

• I wanted it to be a business I could set up and run from home.

• It needed to be something that allowed me to make a growing amount of money, the harder I worked.

• I wanted it to be scalable with no upper limit on the potential for growth.

• It should be something that made enough money so I could retire from the 9–5.

Sadly, it took me a full ten years to turn that dream into a reality. I didn’t know what to sell or how to sell it. I floundered and stumbled from one bad idea to the next, never figuring out how to get an online business set up. Fortunately, I had my 9–5 career in non-profit management, and it was progressing along reasonably well, but…

• Every time I had a negative encounter with my boss at work, I dreamed of having an online business.

• Every time we had to use a credit card to cover a household expense, I dreamed of it.

• Every time we were forced to have a stay-cation instead of vacation.

• Every time I was passed up for a promotion at work.

• Every time there were lay-offs, or I worried about my job getting eliminated.

• Every time I got a new boss and had to re-establish my value in the eyes of my employer.

• Every time we had another baby and needed to figure out how to make ends meet.

• When we needed to get a bigger home.

• When we increased our food budget.

• When the car broke down.

On and on and on. My fantasy of an online business was my emotional escape from hard times. In all those circumstances, and more, I would say to myself, One day, I’ll do an online business.

So, in the early 2000s, when I saw the Dave Espino Auctions for Income infomercial on TV, I had to buy it. I remember being so conflicted about spending the money on it. Was it just a stupid dream? Was there really a way to set up an online business? By then, we had three kids. Wasting money on an infomercial product seemed like indulging a silly fantasy at their expense. I remember getting the course and going through it, but I still couldn’t figure out exactly what to sell, so I did nothing. Years passed.

By 2007, almost ten years after learning about Joe and his traffic school website, our financial situation hadn’t improved. In fact, it had gotten worse—much worse. My dream of an online business was about to be put to the test.

We had made a huge mistake in 2005, and it was starting to really hurt us. I was offered a promotion at work, but it required that we move from Seattle to Northern California. During the move, we signed up for a mortgage we didn’t understand, now commonly called a neg-am loan. As a result, and to our surprise, our monthly mortgage payment tripled in 2007. We were so incredibly stressed out. We needed to make additional income like never before. We were in real trouble. It was time for the fantasy of an online business to turn into a reality.

Our youngest daughter was entering Kindergarten that year, so Cinnamon now had a few hours a day free that could be used for working. Rather than having her pick up a part-time job, we discussed the online business dream. However, we still had no product. But then a funny thing happened.

Cinnamon was insanely good at making doll clothes for our daughters’ dolls. All the moms in the brownie troop frequently asked her where she got them. Since we had no other product strategy, and with the enthusiasm of the local moms behind her, we dusted off the Dave Espino infomercial course. We started setting up online auctions to sell her doll clothes on eBay. It was a humble start for sure—but it was a start.

By 2008, a full ten years after hearing about Joe and his traffic school, we had an online business of our own up and running on eBay. We named our store Liberty Jane, after our youngest daughter. We weren’t going to get rich with it, but we had finally found a way to start something. It was a first step toward the goal of having a real online business. Plus, we were doing it together—Cinnamon would make the doll clothes, and I would run the auctions and work on the marketing during evenings and weekends. We began to have a shared dream of what this could become.

Sadly, we ended up losing our house. Our little ecommerce effort just wasn’t a big enough source of new income to salvage the situation. I did my best to cover it up socially by accepting another role in my organization back up in Seattle. To our friends and family, we could say we were moving. However, the truth was, we couldn’t make it work financially and had to go through a humbling short sale as we lost our house. I’ll never forget standing in the kitchen