How We Tripled Our Revenues in the Last Quarter

And How We Are Going to Make Them x5 This Year

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10 years ago I initiated a large project that was bound to make a lot of money for the big company I was working for. I shared it with a colleague and she stole the credit for the project. The project still reached its goals and was very successful, but I really missed my pat on the back. Ego.. haven’t shared since..

As my new year’s resolution for 2017, I decided to share. Really share. Numbers. Successes. Failures. whatever you can can get value of. For a long time I have been inspired by fellow startup entrepreneurs that share and this way contribute back to the society. People like @IrisShoor who shares in details every new idea she explores without any foreseeable return. So, in the name of good Karma, I am going to take all the questions other entrepreneurs have asked me along the years, or that I think they should have asked, and answer them all here.

This is the initial list of topics I am planning on writing of (some are already waiting to be shared — follow me to stay tuned):

• From Zero to 150,000 SMBs — How do we get 1,000 new SMBs every week in the past 4 years with no marketing budget?
• From Zero to any number — How do we convert free SMBs to paid ones?
• How can one woman provide amazing customer service for 150,000 customers? And do so better than 77% of other companies!
• Working with 186 countries when you only know 2 languages — the secrets of working globally from the other side of the world
• How can one man manage 1,001 AdWords campaigns?
• How one kids game provided us with 10,000 feedbacks from our clients?

Feel free to add more questions/topics in the comments, and if I have something smart to share about them, I will.

Background

StoreYa was founded on 2012 by Eyal Reich (my visionary brother, a talented marketer and product person), Pasha Zaft (my friend and the smartest developer I know second only to his 11 years old gifted son), and myself (an ex-lawyer who converted to online advertising a decade ago).

We have developed and marketed 15 different online marketing solutions for eCommerce SMBs from an automatic Facebook store solution through onsite promotions, banners creator and lastly a targeted traffic booster designed to setup and optimize Google AdWords campaigns automatically.

We have integrated our marketing solution with the largest 35 eCommerce platforms, so that any SMB could use them in a click of a button without any coding or design experience required.

How we tripled our revenues in the last quarter

TL’DR:

• We tried a different business model with our 15th tool, one that allowed us to offer upgrades on a monthly basis.

Traditionally our marketing tools designed for eCommerce SMBs carried a low flat monthly or annually cost that fit the industry. The monthly subscriptions ranged between $20-$80 and the annual once varied between $120-$840.

After 14 tools of that nature and business model, we spent over a year to develop our Traffic Booster. We developed it for two reasons but a third one that didn’t guide us was actually the one that turned out as our rain maker.

We developed the Traffic Booster enabling us to launch and optimize Google AdWords campaigns on behalf of our merchants because:

1. We realized that no matter what new channel of revenues we are providing the merchants with and what increase to their store’s conversion rate we can gain for them, their main pain would always be getting more targeted traffic to their stores.
2. We had an extensive experience with Google AdWords and the technical abilities to automate its setup and optimization. We had the know how to create bots that would do in real time what an experienced agent would try to do on a daily/weekly basis in order to optimize the AdWords campaigns.

But as I mentioned there was a third reason that even though it didn’t guide us with developing this tool, it should have because its outcome was a tipping point for us.

3. The business model — this tool requires for us to purchase traffic on behalf of our merchants. For the first time, we got out of the freemium model with flat subscription and got into charging a marketing budget (even a very small one) that our fee is a percentage of it.

For a few months, we kept on playing our regular volume game enjoying the larger revenues that were now streaming in. Loyal to Dan Ariely’s 3 columns pricing table we were now getting $45-$500 monthly subscriptions (instead of $20-$80). We were in love with the revenues and we continued to improve our tool and its abilities, until it hits us.

It came from the field.

Some of the merchants were getting great ROI. They were already using the $500 plan (which was mainly there to make the middle $100 plan look like a no brainer), and they were seeking an upgrade. And another one. And another one. We developed an easy way for them to upgrade, and hired sales people as we realized that from a certain budget, people want to hear a voice that will make them fill they have someone to contact in cases needed.

Some of the merchants that tested our tool with a $25 budget were now paying $10,000 a month.

We were still playing our regular volume game as we needed as much of these $25 initial budgets, just so we can demonstrate to them a great ROI and upgrade them to larger marketing budgets. But now we were also playing a new game. The upgrading game. That game tripled our revenues in the last quarter when some merchants became x400 bigger than the others.

How we are going to make them x5 this year

TL’DR:

• We want the merchants to come to us :-) we will work with their agencies to make that happen.

Keeping our organic growth rate of 1,000 new merchants a week, and our upgrading pace, we could probably double our monthly revenues by the end of the year.

We decided it is time to top it up a notch. We want to make it interesting so we are aiming at x5.

How are we planning on doing that?

So far, we have been targeting the merchants directly through their eCommerce platforms.

We were integrating our technology with their eCommerce platform and try to drive them through its app store.

We are now adding agencies to the loop.

Merchants don’t develop their store alone. They hire a development agency that specializes in using the eCommerce platform they wish to use, and have the agency develop and design the store for them. Once the agency builds the store, the store needs traffic, and that is something that most agencies don’t provide as it is not their core business. Collaboration is inevitable.

We have always offered our marketing solutions as a white label to such agencies. In fact, we had to filter them out and we set a $400 fee as a ‘serious fee’ for an agency to be working with us. We are waiving that out now. Any agency that would finish developing an online store and would seek to help its client to drive traffic to it (and then maybe keep him on retainer, as the store would flourish and more development/designs tasks will be required), could have the merchant use our service.

Instead of reaching out to the merchants one by one, we will be working closely with their creators, their agencies.

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I am not going to post too often; but when I do, I am going to make sure I am sharing real case studies with real numbers that can bring you real value. I would love for you to follow me here and to comment about insights you wish for me to share, and if I have something smart to say about it, I will dedicate a post for it.