Dropship aftermarket parts
While adding this new case study to our growing list I have made two notes in my to-check-later list:
- The guy sells auto parts, products supplied by a direct dropshipper. I have just recently read a few articles in Internet Retailer reporting that auto part e-commerce is on the rise though my opinion was that it is not the best products for selling online – it looks I was wrong.
- The owner marries dropship business and AdSense as an extra revenue for his e-store. Certainly, top e-commerce retailers will never add AdSense as they do not want to lose their traffic clicking on AdSense ads. Common dropshippers can hardly compete with top retailers and AdSense as a method to convert your traffic into some cash is a good solution if you get this traffic for free or for very low cost. Anyway I think it is a good idea to give a try to add AdSense adds to those dropship stores that get some organic traffic AND do not convert into sales properly.
So, here come the details of our latest case study for you to make conclusions:
1. if dropship business is a good fir for you or not
2. what products sell online with drop shipping
3. how much can you earn
4. how much do you need to invest
5. what time is required to keep your online store running properly
6. what pitfalls to expect
7. what marketing techniques are effective to promoe your dropship stores
8. etc…
• URL: eclipsecartuner.com
• Established: 20 Mar 2007
• Uniques/ Month: 10,615
• Page views/ month: 237,000
• Monthly Revenue: 3,500.00
• PageRank: 4
• Listed: 21 Nov 2007
• Min bid accepted: $3500
• BIN: $7500
Description:
I am selling my e-commerce website that generates revenue by selling Mitsubishi Eclipse aftermarket parts from a reliable dropshipper and through the use of Google AdSense. The contact information and website of the dropshipper will, of course, be given to the winning bidder. The site is a PR4 site that is almost one year old as of date.
What is the Amount of Work Required to Maintain?
To properly maintain this site it usually takes about 2-3 hours a week to process orders and maintain customer service. The most time consuming part of maintaining the site is updating prices, adding new products, and removing products that have been discontinued. The site uses the CRE B2B shopping cart and the drop ship supplier gives out datafeeds with all the products to easily upload them to the cart. However, it is not actually that easy. You have to modify the datafeed if you want the products to look nice and if you want customers to be able to pick options on many of the products like colors and stuff. Otherwise, you have a separate product for each color or attribute assigned to the product, making it difficult for customers to navigate.Why Are You Selling EclipseCarTuner?
I’m selling this website because I’m currently working on my bachelors degree and don’t have the time necessary to keep the prices and products updated in the store. Furthermore, I have lost many, many potential sales because I don’t have time to answer customer phone calls or inquiries. This site has a lot of potential and should maintain $4,000+ in monthly sales if the owner has the time to answer phone calls and maintain the site properly.What Kind of Experience is Needed to Run this Site?
I would recommend you have prior experience with the CRE B2B shopping carts, datafeeds, and/or oscommerce. Or, if you don’t, at least know someone who you can pay to do the updating for you. If you need help, my supplier has many 3rd parties that can keep the datafeed updated for you for around $50-$100/month. I can help you get in contact with these people.Why the Sudden Drop in AdSense Revenue in October?
I switched the layout of the website and removed 3 adsense text ads from the top of the site to try and increase sales. I did not experience an increase and sales and the ad revenue dropped from an average of $7-$8/day to about $1.50/day.Will You Help the Purchaser Transfer to Another Host?
Yes, I will help with the transfer process and I will offer 30 days of help (from the purchase date) in assisting you in learning how to run the site.Revenue Details:
Adsense (screenshots posted):
For a few months I had 3 adsense ads on the website. One small text ad with 4 text links on the top, another with 4 text ad links on the left top-side, and one in the footer. From these ads I was able to average between $5-$14/day. However, I removed these ads to see if I could increase sales, and left only the ad in the footer. After doing this on October 19th, I reduced my adsense revenue to an average of $0-$3/day. My sales have seemed to increase very little if any from this strategy. I would likely suggest to the winner of this auction that they place more ads on the site to generate more revenue from adsense.
Over the past 3-4 months I have averaged about $120/month in AdSense revenue. Feel free to verify this via the AdSense thumbnail on the top right.
Gross Sales (Screenshots will be posted):
August: $4,072.89
September: $3,562.00
October: $2,749.28I would say that the average sales for the past 4 months is around $3,500+ but its hard to estimate because November is not yet over. I get to keep about 17% of this, as that is my profit margin after paypal fees. This amounts to $595 a month in profit from sales. The average profit from adsense over the past 3-4 months has been about $120 a month. The total average profit between adsense and sales is about $715 a month. I would say that since 10Xmonthly revenue = $7,150, and the site requires a bit of work to maintain prices and datafeed that it is worth slightly less than this. The site is probably worth about $6,000 – $7,000, but it is hard to estimate because AdSense revenue has declined after October.
The site has had sales revenue averaging about $3,500. Paypal screenshots are provided along with scanned checks and money orders paid from customers. Most of the sales revenue (about 80-90%) was paid via PayPal and the rest through money orders and checks.
The profit margin of the products I’m selling with the site’s current pricing structure is about 17% after paypal fees or 20% before paypal fees. The site does enough volume that I receive the products for cheaper from my supplier (wholesale discount). With an average sales per month of approximately $4,000 that’s an average profit of $680 per month after paypal fees. Total fixed costs are insignificant: $4/month for hosting from GoDaddy, and $30 a year for SSL.
Traffic Details:
According to Google analytics between Oct 20th and Nov 19th (last 30 days) I received 10,519 unique visitors. In the last 3 months, the site has average at least 10,000+ unique visitors a month.
Last 90 day statistics (averages):
Bounce Rate: 28%
Avg Time on Site: 00:05:42
Average Pageviews: 16.04The traffic is 100% organic from all 3 major search engines: Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The site is ranked high for the following terms:
- Mitsubishi Eclipse #3 on Google
- Mitsubishi Eclipse Parts #4 on Google
- Mitsubishi Eclipse Body Kits #1 on Google
- Eclipse Body Kits #2 on Google
- Eclipse Parts #9 on GoogleThe traffic was generated from one-way and reciprocal link exchanges. These links have been up for months now and the site will likely maintain its rankings for a while.
I ran a small PPC ad campaign (about 7 months ago) when I first started the site but only for about 30 days, and the campaign brought little traffic.
[tags]dropship aftermarket auto parts, dropship turnkey website, drop ship, wholesale, ebay, e-commerce, dropshippers list[/tags]