hey what's up guys thanks for joining me
for a new video today's friday and i
like to keep my videos short on friday
so i just wanted to talk about
building a long-term business
and to me a long-term business
doesn't just mean focusing on future
profits and scalability although i do
think those two things are important we
do talk about those things
on occasion every now and then but i
want to also talk about
touch points
with your customer and maintaining as
many touch points as possible with your
customer base and building a customer
base in general you know a lot of us
think of building a business as carving
out online real estate on big websites
like amazon
etsy uh ebay i know i'm probably the
only person that thinks of ebay i love
ebay personally but
um guys when we
sell on those websites
you know the the shopify crew which i
don't talk too much shopify on my
channel but the shopify crew would
correctly say
that they're not our customers they're
not your customers or my customers you
know they're amazon's customers
that being said when you shop on amazon
do you think of yourself as amazon's
customer right you think of yourself as
just a human being who's making an
online purchase but
you know on the seller side of things we
do think of him as somebody's customer
and what i really wanted to touch on in
this video
was to just get
your mind thinking about ways that you
can maintain
um a communication
with your customers potentially now a
way that stands out in my mind of doing
this would be like on etsy and we've
seen a couple shops do this in the etsy
shop reviews
utilize that header space
and say
20 off your order click here
and put a hyperlink
to a simple splash page where you ask
them for their email address and when
they submit their email address have an
auto responder go kick back to them via
promo code or you can have it also on
the thank you page for when they sign up
doing something like that is super easy
to do
personally the email service i use is
called aweber if you guys actually want
to do this i will put a link to aweber
in the description it was the cheapest
service i could find and you can get a
discount if you have a edu
uh domain email so if you're a student
and you still have your student email
the only reason i get into the specifics
guys is because when i do these videos i
want it to be action-oriented content
you know i'm not just saying this
because in theory it might be a good
idea i promise you building an email
list and maintaining uh contact with
your customers is a good thing even if
you just sold them a hat on etsy or a
t-shirt on ebay
if you can get their email address
that's always a good thing now it is
easier said than done you probably need
to offer them something in exchange like
a promo code for the you know for their
email address and on etsy you can do
that you know what i mean on etsy you
can send them a message you can do that
on ebay you know you
i think can do that i think you get the
option yeah on ebay you can definitely
message your customers you can also
automate messages in your ebay shop but
also you could consider doing things
like including an insert in your ebay or
etsy orders now with amazon
you're not really supposed to contact
the customer about this sort of a thing
it's against the amazon terms of service
so i think it's probably too risky to
implement on amazon
in theory
do people still include inserts and try
to capture email addresses yes they do
if you guys are amazon customers i'm
sure you've seen it on amazon though you
know
you're risking so much if you risk
losing your account so i wouldn't
recommend it there but etsy ebay
guys there's ways of being strategic and
trying to get an email address and one
last thought to leave you guys with if
you're fulfilling orders through
printful uh you can pay them a little
bit extra i forget what the fee is i
think it's like 80 cents in order and
they will put a custom insert in your
order uh that you're shipping out to the
customer and on that little insert you
can say like hey scan this qr code or go
to this short url and take 20 off your
next order you know what i mean and try
to get that email address because this
is a true
long-term business as opposed to just
occupying online real estate on a big
website like amazon who could terminate
your account tomorrow for no reason now
it's probably more likely to be etsy
that's going to do that most of you guys
probably know what i'm talking about
etsy for some reason is notorious for
doing that uh but if you've got some
emails then you can
you know get your customers uh you can
get in front of your customers kind of
on demand by sending them an email and
putting some relevant content in front
of them anyways guys video's already
going on longer than i wanted to but
hopefully this was a good one please
like the video if you found it helpful
and subscribe if you're not already i
would appreciate that and have a great
day guys
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you