i burnt my hands

So I dived into ECOM…again.

The outcomes were both good and bad.
For one, I realised it I don’t want to scale it further.

I started two shopify stores, we had huge sales but we couldn’t manage the RTOs despite hiring callers for COD calling. I realised COD is an inevitable thing to scale in india. With the first store we did around 7lakhs of sales in first store but faced around 3.38Lakhs in loss and for the second store we running profitably (90% Prepaid) with 3.6L in sales.

Summing up → idea is to go back to newsletter and other marketing stuff which I can do the best.

For ecom I will try to scale down and focus only on low effort products and move to 3pl solution.

This time for newsletter the plan is to scale through social media and launch one DTC newsletter too.

To have stable revenues in I am starting a service. (might not be the best decision but lets see)

I also had hired an consultant who was helping me decide GTM strategy.
The three ideas we discussed:

1. Newsletter growth services

2. Ecom tools - engagement bots etc

3. Automation services

High level thoughts on all 3 original options:

1st and 2nd are kinda greyhat so I am not feeling confident selling them.

3rd: Automation services - I am not sure I should do if at all, since its (execution + lead gen business), or finding a partner. And it could be time consuming unless I find a service that is plug & play -> like a prebuilt software.

My ideal requirements:

1. Proven demand

2. Recurring longer term clients

3. That makes real money: minimum $1000 ticket size

4. A real business, with real customers

5. Allows me to work reasonable hours

6. A lean team

Additional idea I'm exploring: AI video generation

I had mentioned little interest in exploring AI video generation. I would maybe pitch some kind of semi-automated service (as I did in the past for crypto-marketing) so we do not have to expand/manage a team.

My reasoning for AI videos service:

1. Fits both ICPs - individual consultants and ecom

2. This is something exciting yet sustainable (not backed by data) but I think AI videos - social content and AI ads are going nowhere

3. Accommodates my growth hacker persona and can be clubbed for newsletter services, and also reddit, X and IG dm bots

4. The ecom industry runs on creatives, consultants, apps and also niche industries like newsletters all want to throw out content

5. Will be helping us internally as I had to do it for my newsletter and later for my ecom. So I guess the demand is there

Cons:

• Not tested

• Might need video editors which might again need team + budget

• Problem is it could take 3-4 months to crack AI video gen, or something

Funnel thinking:

One thing I am sure of is that we would need to have a funnel like:

Indirect: Internet User → Follower → Email Subscriber → Lead → Customer → Client (recurring revenue)

or

Direct: Email/LinkedInDM/Instagram-DM/X-DM → Lead → Customer → Client (recurring revenue)

Thanks for joining me on this Ultrapreneur journey! Let's build something extraordinary, exposing vulnerabilities and the obstacles we face.

To your unconventional success,

Vaibhav

P.S. Got ideas to make this community even more badass? Hit reply. I would really love to talk.