Hey it’s Opossum here! Welcome to my free monthly Q/A Roundup. Today’s post is on some of the best questions in the last month. Each week I write about a new topic or analyze a new digital business. If you’re not a subscriber, here’s what you missed this month:
A really good resource for question 3 is Management of Fashion and Luxury Companies from Boccini University(Coursera). Gives depth to the supply chains and setups of luxury brands(bonafide) and what separates them from premium brands(aspiring). LV and Gucci no discounts rule separates them from D and G , Armani and Prada who created spin off cheaper H and M type brands. As a start up "premium brand" , it would be better to gain traction first and than worry about discount strategy.
Whatever platform you sign up for should have a search function that has a ton. So if you run your program through Share A Sale for example, you can filter affiliates down and mass message them.
I was interested in your analysis of selling on a .com vs Amazon. Is there a downside to having a .com and linking a "shop" page to an amazon/etsy shop?
I've been involved in a business doing just that. You're going to want to be careful with running media at the .com since there's another step to purchase that is going to cause people to drop off in your funnel. Doable but shouldn't be your main acquisition strategy.
You might actually be better to just have the purchase happen on a Shopify and have the order fulfilled by Amazon. Have to run the calculation on the conversion drop off with the Amazon fee vs the Amazon fulfillment services (which are going to be higher than some fulfillment services).
Can you provide an example of how you visualize Google Tags, Analytics, and Search Console working together in relation to a site? Not fully seeing the interconnectedness between them all.
Also if I have an affiliate site, what do you recommend I setup to centralize tracking of clicks to the different offer sites e.g. Amazon without having to reference the dashboard on each? Perhaps setting up a GA goal?
Think of it this way. Search Console is just a UI that tells you how you're doing in the SERPS. This data can be passed to Google Analytics via the integration to make viewing the data a little easier.
GTM is just a JS tag that is used to deploy any code on your site with no development work. A central place to manage most everything. When that tag fires, it will deploy (load) GA, pixels, anything that you put in the GTM container. It is there to inject more code onto a site and make it easier to manage with a better UI and less visual code.
The real benefit of GTM other than it being a centralized repository of your tags lies in the fact that you can build custom events and tracking that would normally take a front end programmer to build. Instead of trying to code the events and tracking, it uses a simple UI and builds the code for you.
You can use goals, but I personally use events. Setup an outbound link event that tracks clicks on URLs that aren't the main domain. Your event category will be "Outbound Click", Event Action will be domain or URL clicked, and your Event Label will but page URL where the click came from.
Using those three, you'll be able to get a rough idea of what articles/pages are driving your affiliate commissions and by using segments of those events, you'll be able to see what acquisition channels are driving the revenue.
Had to read your characterizations a couple times, but it finally clicked for me. Thank you for this.
Also, really helpful that you pointed me towards GTM. Was able to setup triggers for each offer site then create a tag folding them all in. Now I can see them in GA in my event history. Appreciate it man!
A really good resource for question 3 is Management of Fashion and Luxury Companies from Boccini University(Coursera). Gives depth to the supply chains and setups of luxury brands(bonafide) and what separates them from premium brands(aspiring). LV and Gucci no discounts rule separates them from D and G , Armani and Prada who created spin off cheaper H and M type brands. As a start up "premium brand" , it would be better to gain traction first and than worry about discount strategy.
what's a source for finding quality lists of affiliates you trust? i'm in beauty+wellness.
Whatever platform you sign up for should have a search function that has a ton. So if you run your program through Share A Sale for example, you can filter affiliates down and mass message them.
I was interested in your analysis of selling on a .com vs Amazon. Is there a downside to having a .com and linking a "shop" page to an amazon/etsy shop?
I've been involved in a business doing just that. You're going to want to be careful with running media at the .com since there's another step to purchase that is going to cause people to drop off in your funnel. Doable but shouldn't be your main acquisition strategy.
You might actually be better to just have the purchase happen on a Shopify and have the order fulfilled by Amazon. Have to run the calculation on the conversion drop off with the Amazon fee vs the Amazon fulfillment services (which are going to be higher than some fulfillment services).
Can you provide an example of how you visualize Google Tags, Analytics, and Search Console working together in relation to a site? Not fully seeing the interconnectedness between them all.
Also if I have an affiliate site, what do you recommend I setup to centralize tracking of clicks to the different offer sites e.g. Amazon without having to reference the dashboard on each? Perhaps setting up a GA goal?
Think of it this way. Search Console is just a UI that tells you how you're doing in the SERPS. This data can be passed to Google Analytics via the integration to make viewing the data a little easier.
GTM is just a JS tag that is used to deploy any code on your site with no development work. A central place to manage most everything. When that tag fires, it will deploy (load) GA, pixels, anything that you put in the GTM container. It is there to inject more code onto a site and make it easier to manage with a better UI and less visual code.
The real benefit of GTM other than it being a centralized repository of your tags lies in the fact that you can build custom events and tracking that would normally take a front end programmer to build. Instead of trying to code the events and tracking, it uses a simple UI and builds the code for you.
You can use goals, but I personally use events. Setup an outbound link event that tracks clicks on URLs that aren't the main domain. Your event category will be "Outbound Click", Event Action will be domain or URL clicked, and your Event Label will but page URL where the click came from.
Using those three, you'll be able to get a rough idea of what articles/pages are driving your affiliate commissions and by using segments of those events, you'll be able to see what acquisition channels are driving the revenue.
Had to read your characterizations a couple times, but it finally clicked for me. Thank you for this.
Also, really helpful that you pointed me towards GTM. Was able to setup triggers for each offer site then create a tag folding them all in. Now I can see them in GA in my event history. Appreciate it man!