

Ask HN: My jewelry business has ~500k yearly gross on Amazon. What's next? - klbarry

I'm looking for other effective forms of online selling and advertising for direct-jewelry.com, which is the online retail arm of a 30 year old jewelry wholesaler. We have plenty of budget to pay for ads if they are effective.<p>We've found Adwords to, at best, break even for us, pointed towards our site or Amazon. Amazon works great on its own and is growing as we develop our strategy.<p>I'm looking into Affiliate, consignment on Ebay, and other new sales sites. Any recommendations?
======
bigohms
Don't switch from Adwords yet: optimize. I don't know how your campaigns work,
but we have clients in the same niche and run hundreds of campaigns each with
hundreds of creative. Then look at the heuristics of buying cycles and ramp up
in periods of lower buying cost and higher output. Also make sure you try
Facebook, that also works very well when you undersand the targeting and
optimization. Ads are mostly persistence and optimization. I would forgo
affiliate. Try to avoid eBay as it will commoditized your product. Focus on
the experience, your site is already quite nicely appointed. Also try specific
branded experiences to draw people in, take a cut from how the open heart
pendants are sold by a reputable retailer.

If I can answer any specific q's, hit me up at omid at Rennzer dot com

------
helen842000
Hi!

It sounds like you have a well established network of advertising that is
working well for you currently!

Instead of looking to increase traffic, why not look to reduce traffic (i.e
adwords cost) and A/B test actual conversion on your pages. Try to get more
sales from fewer visitors.

Perhaps your Adwords are too broad, meaning that you get less qualified
visitors. What can you do, to convince the customer to make a buying decision,
today?

For new advertising methods, you could always focus on advertising on sites
that pre-qualify the need to purchase jewelry. e.g popular wedding sites,
people searching for expensive holidays (honeymoons), gift guides.

Analyse your online customer base. Are they all individuals, some businesses?
Make a point of speaking to them, how they found you (who your referrals are
coming from) what they liked about you, what occasion are they buying for. Go
the extra mile for them.

If you notice patterns in your sales cycle how can you use this information
(i.e more sales at the beginning of the month after pay-day) Find new ways to
make your previous customers become repeat customers.

It sounds like you are already reaching far and wide with your Amazon business
and that it's paying off.

I think if you use the information and data that you have at your fingertips
you can ensure that you are making the most of the traffic sources you already
have.

~~~
klbarry
Thank you for your detailed advice! I will definitely consider opening up
older campaigns to test them carefully. I figured however - if Amazon isn't
converting profitably when I send very product specific ads to it, with
millions spent on conversion testing, how could my site stand a chance?

------
bmh100
hele842000 is on the right track with testing your conversion, but you need to
go beyond A/B testing. The next step is multivariate testing, where you change
several parts of your landing page at the same time. Finally, there is the
holy grail of customization: having the landing page adjust to not only the ad
that brought the person to you, but also that individual's buying style and
demographics. That way, your landing page will be more like a rifle than a
shotgun.

------
coryl
Just an idea: are your adwords passing through your Amazon affiliate link?
Could funnel some of the profits back if that's possible.

~~~
ffumarola
Against Amazon TOS, they won't pay out on these links.

------
enoptix
Have you looked into SEO? Organic search can be a great source for quality
traffic/customers

~~~
klbarry
Yes, but this takes time and we don't have experience targeting competitive
words. We have a bit of long tail traffic (1000> month).

------
MarlonPro
Would you be interested in Drop Shipping for online retailers?

~~~
klbarry
100% absolutely.

------
edomain
Nice problem to have :)

