hey what's going on it's Doug Huntington
here and in this video I talked to John
Murphy and he specializes in drop
shipping sites and he's doing something
cool and he's been on a rollercoaster
ride but essentially he was doing drop
shipping ecommerce site typically he was
running ads like a lot of drop shippers
do he was running ads making money there
was an issue with his ad account which
we get into and what he's done is
converted the traffic source over to
organic SEO traffic and for the last few
months he's been making over $100,000
per month and his top-line revenue and
we don't get into the actual you know
profit margin but you can imagine he's
doing pretty well we get into the fact
that he quit his full-time corporate job
so he's doing well enough we can assume
he didn't mention this specifically but
we can assume he's replaced his
full-time income and it was a pretty
good gig so we cover a lot of ground
here the thing I want to point out is
how great it is that John has taken a
strategy and I in an idea from the
affiliate marketing world which is being
a pretty well-known in the affiliate
marketing world organic traffic is
really good you typically don't have to
pay for it and he's transferred that
over to the dropship in e-commerce side
so published content get free traffic
that is qualified and you can make sales
without having to run ads alright so
let's get to the interview now thanks a
lot to John by the way for joining me
he's not selling anything this is just
pure information and if you have any
questions for him please leave questions
in the comments we may be able to do
like a round two or something like that
so let's get to the interview Thanks
hey what's going on it's the Doug show
here and I am sitting with my buddy John
Murphy how are you doing today John good
thanks so how are you doing really well
and I'm pumped to talk to you today
because you reached out after we had
like a coaching session I guess a couple
are going well and I want to talk about
dropshipping and the cool part is like
you're not selling a course people can't
follow you anywhere you just have
knowledge that you want to share so I
appreciate you reaching out to me in
just to set the stage for you know
basically no one knows who you are John
so what's your like your gig right now
what are you working on and then what's
your background like how did you get to
where you are now
well briefly let's say I so I have a an
e-commerce store I dropship in the US I
live in Italy but my the market is us
and customers in the US so I it's
basically us store and I've been doing
it now for about two years and I've been
let's say I've been trying to figure out
the whole EECOM internet you know earn
money online get rich quick you know the
whole thing I've been trying to figure
that out for a few years and I finally
have got into a good place where I'm
making enough money that I quit my job
last month my corporate job I've been
working in corporate finance for the
last 15 20 years in various roles and
the last couple of years and just hated
working for the corporation and I just
always wanted to be able to work from
home or rather work from anywhere I want
to work from weather that's always at
home or not that's you know by design I
can do that and I'm now I'm they're so
awesome well congratulations it's always
a like a big like momentous occasion
so what was it pretty scary like
quitting your job
and it was that it wasn't in the sense
that I was I was over my job a year ago
and I just wanted out the whole thing
I did have a couple of sleepless nights
over the last month just because when
you're working in a job for a
corporation you can't blame other people
if something happens you get fired or
whatever it's always somebody else's
fault but when you're in charge if you
if you do well it's your fault if you
screw up it's your fault it's all on you
so that's very nice it's very reassuring
and very liberating but it's also really
scary as well you house it could just
disappear tomorrow so and we're gonna
we're gonna kind of jump around a little
bit so quick quick question so when did
you put in notice that you were gonna
leave your full-time job so I put in
notice so I had to give six weeks notice
so I did that in August and I I can't
act like because I've been this is very
premeditated I was due two weeks holiday
to go down to Puglia in the south of
Italy and just be on the on the Sun just
be in the Sun on the beach the whole
time I figured if I can make it work
that I handed my notice four weeks
before I go in like two-week vacation
when I come back from my holidays I'm
free and at the end of September would
have been the toward financial quarter
and it's a nightmare it's like 16-hour
days for a week straight Saturday Sunday
us timezone and I'm in Italy so it's
it's a nightmare every three months it's
a disaster so I just managed to get out
of it just in time sir it was timed well
very cool and let's rewind okay so in
April of 2019 you had a record month I
believe right so you you cleared revenue
wise new records so what what was going
on in April and what were you thinking
so I'd been putting in a lot of so I've
been building this store for two years
and momentum had been good in the sense
that it
I'd been profitable every month for the
previous twelve months or so so I have
about a year where I was steady profit
but and not not a huge amount maybe like
two or three thousand dollars profit a
month and but not like leave Leave might
leave the job money and then in April I
was getting ready to have the start of
my like April would be the first of my
six months of high season so April the
season starts and May June July August
all i season September October starts
today and feign again and then it picks
up again March April next year and I was
I was said to have a very good year
actually because April I made a hundred
and six thousand in revenue for the
month and I was thinking okay so this is
April and it's only just gonna if
there's a bell curve in my mic season so
it's just gonna get bigger and bigger
and then it's going to slowly dissipate
it go back down so I was probably
looking at a million dollars in revenue
for the year this year so I was I was
very excited about where I was going
okay
and so everything seems great in April
you're probably thinking hey maybe I can
I can quit soon maybe I'm gonna clear a
million in revenue which would have been
the first time that you've done that
right yeah so then what happened and I
don't maybe all of the all of the sales
and all the traffic I got in April
Google I decided to go and crawl my
website and my ads and there's a small
clause in Google shopping ads policy and
what I sell apparently is in violation
of the Google shopping ads policy and
they swiftly just turned off all of my
ads and all of my traffic so they just
said
you're not running ads here anymore have
a nice day okay and did you have any
recourse like what can you do if your
ads are shown you can request a manual
review just in case the crawl picked up
something that maybe was a bit off or
maybe you put a description in and it
was just a blatant error on your part
maybe you said something like sex drugs
and gambling in the description and then
boom you're gone and you know and maybe
you're not selling anything in that
market at all and then somebody can go
in and see ok maybe there was a
misunderstanding you're you're good to
go
but since it's it's written in black and
white that my products are not allowed
there is no coming back from that it's
basically on me until we decide to
include them um you're on your own and
how much of your traffic was coming from
just ads
I would I at the time I was thinking it
was probably around 80% because I sell
very expensive items are in around the 4
or 5 K range each unit before there's
like let's say before there's a sale I
could have like somebody visit my store
75 times
so like attribution was was hard to
identify with where did the sale come
from and how do we first discover my
store you know that sort of thing so I
wasn't always because google analytics
makes my it makes my head hurt when I
when I get in there so I tend to just
close my eyes and go yeah okay
I have traffic that's fine I I would
think it was like maybe 70 to 80 percent
google shopping because that's the
classic ecommerce process you build a
store you use targeted keywords to get
traffic to your abs ads you because if
you're looking on Google shopping for a
specific product and the price and the
image is there and you still click true
then you're a buyer you're at least
you're a warm lead so that's how we
would traditionally get traffic that's
the fastest way to make a sale fastest
way to get traffic and that's the that's
the default free commerce okay and in
world debt we're gonna dig in for people
listening out there we'll dig in deeper
into like the drop shipping model but
that's pretty standard right you set up
the store wherever you set it up however
you handle the e-commerce portion of it
and then you could just drive traffic in
as long as you know your your margins
you know the price of the product and
you know the price of the lead then you
can I guess run an ad and put as much
money into it because you know on the
back end you're you're making a profit
right yeah yeah like you know the way
you were you run an ad in the sense that
in Google Shopping it's very visual so
on the image there's like that there's
the product there's the there's the
amount and it might even say free
shipping or you know no sales tax or
whatever so for somebody to click on
that anyway
have already seen the price so if it's
not too expensive it's it's it's likely
that it's a warm lead so you know that's
the sort of that's good traffic so
that's good that's the target cool in
May your traffic dropped by a ton you're
because of that issue that you had and
you were like okay we're in trouble here
your revenue dropped a bunch as well in
the back of your mind you're thinking I
kind of quit my job also sometime
because I hate it so you I can't
remember when we had our coaching
session but you were like hey I really
need to turn up some stuff on the like
on the organic side and I guess do you
happen to remember when that was yeah it
was like the third week in August okay
so you were trying to do some stuff so
what like mentally what were you
thinking when the ads like your ad
traffic went away well I was for two
days I didn't speak because I had the
letter written my letter of resignation
been written for a while but I was like
I have to I have to quit my job I can't
do it anymore and the more I was
successful in my what was then a side
hustle I was making more money in two
hours a day than I was eight hours a day
in like an office job so I just became
more and more resentful to those eight
hours that I could be dedicating to
something productive or something you
know at least something I was working on
and I was passionate about so I was
desperate to quit when I when the robe
got pulled out from underneath me
I was thinking does this mean I can't
quit my job now and now I have to go and
suck it up again for at least another
year so for two days I was just
devastated I was thinking what do I do
now how do i how do i recover from this
and it was was was mentally challenging
you know to try and figure out what I
should do because also I was trying to
convince my wife the whole time that I'm
gonna quit my job you know because
that's it's a it's a
it's a two-person decision I'd already
decided you know it was it was gonna
happen but it had to happen in a way
that it made sense and in for those two
days I was thinking it doesn't make
sense now to do it and that was what
really bothered me so I had to find a
plan B so when you can't run ads the
plan B is organic traffic just a quick
quick note I know exactly what you're
talking about I I was laid off otherwise
I probably would still have my job
because probably like you you were doing
something for you know 15 years pays
pretty good it looks like you had a
pretty flexible schedule which we can
probably maybe talk about in a future
episode I mean you were working remotely
for your full-time job right yeah okay
yeah that's a whole other topic which we
can get into later but you had a
flexible work schedule a pretty good gig
externally right like if people saw what
you were doing they're like hey you got
a B well yeah it's it did look like that
from the outside I was working the
classic office hours just from my home
but that's because in in the company I
used to work for massive American
International they I was wearing two
hats I was working two roles because one
guy got laid off and they just gave me
his role so I was doing two jobs and
when I had to relocate for my wife's job
I said can I work from home and they
were like if we let him go we'll have to
hire two people so they were like okay
yeah let's let's let's see how it works
out and I mean I worked Zoey yeah it
worked out for them too so gotcha okay
so in May lost a bunch of traffic you
were like okay let's try and get some
organic traffic in here a lot of your
competitors in the drop shipping world
and e-commerce they're running ads so if
you can come at it from another
direction maybe you can solve your
problem so how did you approach it like
how successful were you in that like
early time frame in may/june
and so I had I had planned on building
some organic traffic but as to work in
parallel with my ads because I figured
okay my ads are working or at least I'm
making sales I'm spending like $3,000 a
month on ads but I'm profitable so
that's okay I can keep doing it but I
would like to also get organic traffic
because who knows what will happen I am
I didn't I figured maybe if it's not
profitable to spend I would stop
spending I didn't expect to be you know
cut off and cut off early as well so I
had already a few blog posts and I
didn't haven't really talked much about
it because I just figured woody come we
don't we're not really let's say trained
to think about content it's you have a
really good product page you drive
traffic to the product page not even the
home page it's the product page because
people want the product you send them
directly there it's the quickest route
to the checkout so the idea of just
producing content and more content and
more content it's sort of counter to the
idea of driving valuable buying tired
buying traffic like the right audience
and so I just I felt like I needed to
have a blog to make to make it look a
bit more let's say the legitimate as I
like a website so I just started
producing some content but it didn't
really have a purpose it didn't really
it wasn't really guided and they and
they weren't working together so I did
get some traffic because I'd also tried
to get some backlinks to it so and when
it didn't come naturally like my organic
traffic wasn't coming in
you know in spades but I did get some
sales from it so that's good okay so you
were getting some a little bit of
traction here in the organic area but
you didn't have to do it until you lost
the ability to run ads so in June there
was an algorithm update of June 2019 and
what happened was that at June 2nd yeah
I remember that day because I'd been I'd
been about a month where I was trying to
figure out how do I grow my organic
traffic and then on June 2nd overnight
my my organic traffic was down 50% and
it stayed down and never like it didn't
come back it wasn't like a two-day thing
it was just down and then it's just
stays down so I mean II come a really
really well converting income store they
say 2% visitors will convert but 2% of
paid traffic visitors because they're
already people looking to buy organic
traffic is is a lot more diluted because
it's people just curious it's people
looking for information so it's a lot
less so if I have very little traffic to
begin with sales are not forthcoming
let's say ok so you without goes without
saying you felt even worse after that
you were like okay now my ads are taken
away now organic traffic is gone
and how did you how did you deal with
that you're like okay I have to get out
of my day job we will figure this out is
that kind of your what you were thinking
in your approach there I I was just sort
of scrambling I started trying to absorb
as much as much knowledge as possible on
how to grow organic traffic or how to
find out what like how to analyze my
website what to look for how to look for
potential and like easy wins what are
people doing so I started hanging out in
I I started listening to your podcast
and I now I get here your email
and so I read your blog's I do the same
for Spencer Hawes I hang out in his
Facebook group and I stalk I'm sort of
lurking in the background because I
figured if I can figure out what these
guys are doing to get traffic because
it's a similar process in the sense that
you guys want to build a website to like
to generate traffic as much traffic as
possible in a let's say in a niche
environment so people will then click on
something and go buy it on Amazon I
figured if I could try to learn how
these guys are doing it and I apply it
to my store I've just direct them to my
product page instead of Tammuz on and
that might work
so I started having some sort of a an
objective let's say what I was trying to
accomplish with organic traffic so I've
just been sort of like being a student
of niche websites since then and it has
worked it has worked I'm still trying
I'm still doing I'm still trying to
figure stuff out I mean I still haven't
completed all of the things you told me
to do and obviously I've done most of
them but it was a long lesson yeah so
how is the organic traffic now so we're
recording this in like mid October so
you got hit in June like have you
recovered like where are you at now so I
was getting after my ads were turned off
I was reduced to about 500 visitors a
day then June 2nd iowans down to 250
visitors a day because it was like split
in half now I'm around the 7 on the
visitors a day so I'm back up again the
June the September 24th algorithm update
seemed to win in my favor this time
because I open till around that point
I'd slowly got back up to the 500 the
day mark just by putting out new blogs
and giving it you know direction and
then in September the last week of
September I've seen like another
increase so now I'm better off than I
was before so I did hear from I spoke to
guys in an SEO audit agency last week
and they told me that
what they're seeing is who got hit in
June gained in September and vice-versa
because it seems to be Google are still
trying to figure out the the
repercussions of June and whether it
went okay or not so unfortunately they
cut me off at the knees in the height of
my season and then they let me back in
at the end of my season but ok I can't
help that and ok so that said so your
traffic is better organic traffic is
better than ever and is it safe to
assume that your revenue is back up
where you're comfortable and that's I
mean you quit your job so I think you're
probably and moving in the right
direction but we revenue at now so
revenue now is at August and September
I eat month I broke 100k again for the
second and third time this year after
the April episode and then on this this
month I'm at 67 so it looks like I'll
break 100 again this month which I'm
already beyond my season so I wouldn't
expect to do that again in November in
December but we'll see we'll see where I
end up so my last three months have been
my my best 3 months so far so that's a
good direction you're going yeah very
good and let's get into like the nuts
and bolts of like the content side of it
cuz really that's what this is all about
so you're doing you know solid keyword
research you're pulling people into your
funnel in an organic way so it's free
traffic instead of having to get the
paid ads which like I'm not sure why
more ecommerce sites don't do that other
than the fact that the people teaching
yeah it's hard it's hard it takes a lot
longer than the people teaching the the
courses and stuff for dropshipping they
stick with the the fastest path the
easiest path to get results and see an
ROI quickly with content marketing it
may be six months or a year or 18 months
before you really know
like what is gonna happen so tell me
about like the amount of content on your
site your approach to content who's
writing it all that stuff so I still
don't have a lot of content um
I've sort of I've approached it now in a
few different ways all of the fluff
content I put up like two years ago
which was just just to populate the blog
section and it was very generic
information that but it wasn't it was
remotely helpful but it wasn't very
helpful so I'm none of it ranked no
never none of it got any traffic there
was probably ten or fifteen blog posts
all maximum 1000 words each so they
weren't getting there were the no
traffic so as a standalone piece of
content none of them were worthy really
so instead of switching them off I
decided to make a definitive guide to
the niche and I I just put them all into
one blog post on each one of these
miniature blogs was a chapter um so now
it's like an 8,000 word piece and and it
ranked it does rank now and for like
inflamed keyword that you were trying to
rank it for so pretty high volume one or
is it sort of a yeah it's a pretty
pretty high volume search term now like
it's like the generic product category
let's say okay so and it wasn't
something that I was trying to do to
drive sales it was more about okay I've
got all this content at least I'll try
to make it work instead of just
switching it off or removing the pages
so that was that was one of the first
things I did and then I noticed that
well what I did was I went into a head
chefs to see who was ranking for
keywords that I wanted to rank for and I
found a couple of websites that were
much bigger than me with bigger domain
Authority and they were ranking for
things like
top five product for 2019 or the best
nine product for this specific activity
that sort of thing and I noticed that
them a lot of the a lot of the websites
that were ranking on page one had a
similar structure to them you know the
titles were very catchy they were let's
say date appropriate so they looked up
to date and they were very enticing to
go and click but some of them were not
very good like some of them were just
like literally just a list of five
products and a link and then maybe the
image didn't even correspond with the
actual product so they weren't done very
well so I figured well if I could do
something similar may be bigger more
valuable that people can read and go
okay I've I've got all the information I
need I don't need to go elsewhere
because this answered every possible
question I could have and I started
building a couple of these I did that I
have three categories in my niche which
would go after three different
demographics so I made three of these
types of posts two of them are doing
extremely well they're like page page
one position one which is fantastic and
luckily they're printing me money now
because when they were on like page tree
I didn't get any visitors now I go to
page one and all of a sudden like you
know I've got hundreds of visitors a day
on one blog post so by default I do get
sales so it's great and I did go be
above and beyond for example like in
smoothies posts I have maybe the first
two thousand words I haven't even
mentioned one of the products yet it's
just about education what the product
does how it's gonna change your life and
who's it for and who's it not for and I
did I do listen to a lot of podcasts
about what way is a blog post supposed
to be and by trying to apply what you
teach and what other like you know
serial bloggers let's say that you know
that do it as and for a living do I'm
using h2 tags in an in a TG way maybe if
you're answering a question and the
question has the product name are like
the let's say that the country
in it and you make the question h2 tag
and then the paragraph answers the
question so it makes it very easy for
Google to find answers to questions
people are asking and I found very very
good results you know writing the
content that way and then the obviously
link to my product pages ok very good
and for poor the content are you writing
it yourself or you're hiring writers I
have experimented recently with content
pit but basically I just gave them five
topics and I gave them a word count and
just to see what the content was like
the content was very good I didn't even
have to change it so if I do decide to
go the route of producing I don't know
ten pieces of content a month that would
be the way to go because I don't I don't
write content it doesn't come to me
naturally and I can spend a week on one
piece I could order ten pieces of
content and in a week and get them all
back and then I could be doing something
else
so I would content pit I see that the
the work is pretty good out of five
pieces I didn't have to change anything
on all five and when I did ask them to
do like a mammoth piece just to see what
it would be like they just said it
wouldn't be good you know they didn't
want to take my money to do like a
10,000 word piece because they said the
best piece of content on the on the web
was my 4,000 word article and there was
no point in making a 10,000 word version
of that article because you've already
done it so I thought that was very good
of them so I wouldn't be against you
know hiring outsourcing good writing
again got it
so you and I had the coaching session
back in August and I don't remember
specifically any of the activities that
I in action items that I told you you
need to do but you I mean I hope you got
results I probably did otherwise you
wouldn't have emailed me
yeah yeah but yeah what kind of stuff
did I tell you to do on the site and
then did you see any results or impact
from it and so I did implement pretty
much most of the all of the easy stuff
and then the like the not so easy stuff
I did later and I saw I think that's why
in September I got rewarded for it
because my site makes sense now instead
of having three essay 3 big posts and
they're all independent and then some
other stuff around the edges they were
all in the they were all standalone
pieces and they all sort of did okay but
one of the one of the major changes you
told me to do was to bunch them into
silos so having three categories since
those are my let's say my money blogs
I've already got lots of other content
that are relatable but they're not going
to like they're not gonna do me any
favors really on their own you help me
structure them in a way that I would
have one main blog post which would be
let's say my top 7 products for 2019 the
one that's in position like at the time
it was like position tree 4 and now it's
in position 1 so something's working
so that gets supported by these smaller
relevant but secondary blog posts let's
say smaller one towers a good blog posts
relevant keywords and they let's say I
have one massive post and then 5 to 10
smaller secondary posts all linking to
that one so it's telling Google what's
relevant on my site out of all of those
blog posts all have similar keywords and
I'm in position one and I'm busy in
position zero today as well I saw so for
the same post I'm getting like Rich
Snippets and then I'm answering the
drop-down questions as well so I'm
pretty much dominating the page one of
certain keywords which is fantastic and
for the people that don't know this silo
wing
like can get more complicated and like
website architecture can get more
complicated but generally if you just
internally link like that generally does
the same sort of thing so I could put a
link for folks to check that out a
little bit further and good the whoops
there was also one massive mind shift
when we were on our call and I was
saying you know because in in
preparation you had said give me a link
to your competitors the ones who you are
looking to let's say emulate or improve
on and and my answer queue was nobody
any calm is trying to do what I'm trying
to do everybody's running ads so I don't
know anybody that's doing it and when we
get on the call in one sentence you've
completely changed my my philosophy you
had said but you're not competing
against the e-commerce stories you're
competing against in each web sites and
that was just like a aha moment for me
because I was thinking that's right I
have to you know I'm doing content to
get organic traffic to my website with
the with the intention that maybe to buy
and it just for me it was like oh my god
like that makes so much sense now and
I'm one of the bigger things that you
had me do was to completely restructure
the visual aspect of my blog post to
resemble more of the Amazon affiliate
let's say listings where's like there's
the like check price on Amazon those
things because I didn't have anything
and it's just looking at it now it just
didn't make sense for visitors and they
would may not have even known to to go
visit the product page so that was that
was a big shift also mentally for me
cool I don't even remember saying that
but you know it sounds brilliant now
that you're mentioning it wasn't the big
thing like to lay the context I mean
basically like we've been talking about
most dropship drop shipping sites and
e-commerce sites like they have this
civic business model but in a similar
way like I do YouTube videos like people
are watching this now and I'm competing
against like cat videos and like every
other like I mean it's hard to compete
with cat videos in fact I published a
short video of my dog and it got like
three times more views than like my best
video ever within like 48 hours so yeah
definitely a big aside right there but
let's get her back on track and any
other like changes that you like made on
the site before we shift over to like
just talking about drop shipping in the
business model in general no massive
structural things because you know
because we're I'm on econ it's a you
know he comes so we use Shopify so it's
not exactly the same as WordPress so
there are some there are certain changes
that would make sense WordPress but I
would be going against the grain in
Shopify so there wasn't a lot of major
changes but each blog post needed to be
changed so it needed to be let's say
more
Miche website style so and and they're
still not that pretty you know they
still don't look as good as some of the
niche websites I see you know like
really fancy table of contents and then
like comparison charts I'm still not
there yet but I you know they will they
will come as well and they'll be added
to the old ones and then they'll be in
the next one so it's still a work in
progress have you done any link building
I have I have done some intentional and
some not so intentional in building it
just so I what I do is for link building
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