The road Tiger Muay Thai and Signature Phuket are on is having extensive roadworks today, with power and water outages. This means no training, as I can’t shower afterwards and no Internet as there’s no electricity, so I’ve headed out to a co-working space to get some work done.
The SEA Coworking Space
The SEA co-working space is located in Phuket Town, next to the historical clock tower and has a lovely nautical ambience when you get inside, with orcas and whales everywhere. The vibe is peaceful, with chilled music playing and people whispering. This is not a busy office environment.
Internet Speed
I’m pretty sure SEA Co-working has 30Mb down as that’s what I was getting when I first arrived, but since then 6 other people have turned up!
Services
This is a co-working space, so you need to bring your own computer, but SEA has, obviously, wi-fi, printing, fax, a nice coffee shop, free water and snacks, a relaxing sofa space, a kitchen you can use to prepare food, books to read, a play area for children and toilets.
Prices
Prices are competitive, I’ve opted for the 199 Baht (£4) day pass for the time being. Prices are on their Facebook page but here’s a screenshot of their current price list.
Hot coffee goes for 40 Baht (£0.80) but you get one free with admission, the sandwich was 90 Baht (£1.80), they also have a daily dessert.
I like SEA Co-working Space, but they need to do more with their marketing. Having just a Facebook page isn’t really enough. They do update it regularly though, which was reassuring as some of the other co-working spaces I was looking at had terrible websites and social media pages that had been dormant since August, I had no idea if the others were really still open!
After the amazing last week at the Drop Ship Lifestyle retreat, due to all the questions I was asked in the evenings, I’ve decided to do a Drop Ship Lifestyle ride along. I am going to create a new drop shipping store and cover every aspect of the process from the very start for you guys. Along the way I will explain exactly what I’m doing, why I’m doing it and how the store is going!.
What Is Drop Shipping
The principle of drop shipping is quite simple:
Your customer buys a product from you for £x
You place an order for that product from your supplier for £y
Your supplier delivers the product to your customer
You keep the profit, the difference between the £x your customer paid and the £y you paid
Drop shipping can work in both physical stores and online stores. If you’ve ever ordered an expensive product from a small, specialist store and then had to wait a few days for that product to be delivered to the store, it was probably drop shipped. When I was fire dancing in Brighton I’d regularly have pyrotechnics drop shipped to the small, local shop that dealt with stage lighting!
As I am an Internet marketer we will be building an online store together, so it is manageable from anywhere in the world.
Niche Selection
Niche selection is the first and arguably one of the most important aspects of creating any e-commerce business. If you start out with the wrong niche you might find it impossible to find suppliers to work with or, later, impossible to make sales due to the cut-throat competition.
The niches I am investigating observe the following rules:
Over 2000 searches a month for the main keyword
Targeting small businesses or the upper middle class
Average product price is £200 or more
No famous name brands
Over 2000 searches a month for the main keyword
When picking a niche, you want it to have potential customers. If you pick a niche where no one is buying anything you will not make any money. I like to have my main keyword have over 2000 searches each month as you will need at least 1000 visitors to come to your site in order to track how well your sales pages are converting.
Targeting small businesses or the upper middle class
Small businesses and the upper middle class are good target markets but for completely different reasons. If you’re selling expensive products to small businesses then they probably need those products to run their business. If you’re selling to the upper middle class they probably have disposable income and are used to shopping online.
Average product price is £200 or more
Simply put, more expensive products have better margins, so we might make as much selling one product for £200 as we would selling 10 products for £20, but we’d have to do 10 times the work and drive 10 times the traffic to make that margin.
No famous name brands
Often niches are dominated by one or two famous brands and customers can often develop a strong bond to a specific brand, limiting what you can sell and how much you can sell it for. With a niche that only features generic brands there is less brand loyalty and you can make sales on the strength of your marketing and the strength of the product, rather than on the strength of someone else’s name.
Creating Niche Ideas
There are lots of ways to come up with niche ideas, some people like to only choose niches that they have prior experience in, either as a customer or a seller, for others that can be seriously limiting.
My favourite way for coming up with new niche ideas is to simply abuse Google shopping. By entering really generic keywords, e.g. red, large, etc as well as a high minimum price, e.g. £200 you can quickly come up with a huge variety of products to get inspiration from.
Determining Search Volume
I use a tool called Market Samurai for all my keyword needs. As you can see from the image below, it can produce incredible insights on niche selection, “lava lamp” get’s over 6000 searches in the UK alone, not to mention the dozens of other related keywords you can target.
My Task
Using both Google Shopping and Market Samurai, I am now going to compile a list of 100 different niche ideas, for our next step, market research!
If you want to get the jump on me and want more information about drop shipping, Anton’s Drop Ship Lifestyle course offers a 60 day money back guarantee if you’re not satisfied.
As everyone at the Drop Ship Lifestyle Retreat had such an incredible week, Anton and Johnny wanted to show everyone how they celebrate reaching their sales goals for the month and took us all to the Four Seasons Resort in Chiang Mai. Apparently it costs between $400 – $800 a night to stay there, but for 1500 – 2000 Baht (£30 – £40) you can spend the day there which includes a buffet lunch and, if you wish, a never ending supply of drinks.
Four Seasons, Chiang Mai
The resort consisted of a series of infinity pools and beautiful bamboo huts on stilts, surrounding a simulated, rural Thai farming village, complete with rice paddies, a huge lake and water buffalo! It was beautiful. Relaxing here was easy as we all grabbed a seat on the sofas (which were suspended from the ceiling) and chilled out to the awesome music they were playing.
The buffet lunch was phenomenal and you were also able to eat off the a la carte menu too so lots of steak and chicken tikka was flying around the table along side salads, pastas, fruits and the most amazing Crêpe Suzette which featured it’s own cooking team!
You have to be careful when sitting down though, as the initial glass of champagne isn’t complimentary with the 1500 Baht (£30) price of entry and buffet. It is part of the 500 Baht (£10) drink as much as you like menu addition, which none of us realised. For the most part everyone was “behaving” but when we realised, at the end of the buffet, we’d all paid for unlimited alcohol, even those of us like myself who weren’t drinking decided to double stack a few delicious Lychee Martinis!
As relaxing as the Four Seasons was, I wouldn’t want to visit too often as portion control went completely out the window. The food was absolutely amazing though and the scenery idyllic.
Chiang Mai is a walled city and the market seemed to completely fill the walled area as well as sprawling out the gates, it felt much larger than Phuket’s night market and there was a lot more available.
The food was delicious, more meat on sticks, donuts and noodles
Rooftop Bar, Chiang Mai
After we’d walked round the market we headed off to the Rooftop Bar at Toto, of Dropship Kickstart, was having a leaving party. The Rooftop Bar offered an amazing view of the walled area of Chiang Mai as well as the market itself and reminded me a lot of the parties and festivals I used to do with the Poi Passion crew back in the UK! No shoes allowed, everything was vegetarian and there was lots of awesome neon, psychedelic graffiti all over the walls
Now, after a fantastic week with the Dropship Lifestyle army I fly back to Phuket later today for another 6 weeks of solid training, not drinking, healthy eating and a lot of work. I will definitely have to come back to Chiang Mai as it is an amazing place.
If you need to mail a postcard or a parcel in Chiang Mai, Thailand, there are two helpful places in the Maya Lifestyle Shopping Center in town.
Mailing A Post Card In Chiang Mai
On the 3rd floor of Maya there is an awesome little book shop called Asia Books. These guys will sell you stamps for your postcard as well as mail the postcard for you! Postcards in Thailand are around 15 – 20 Baht (£0.30 – £0.40) and at Asia Books, 3 stamps to mail postcards internationally costs 60 baht (£1.20).
Mailing A Parcel In Chiang Mai
If you ever need to post something substantial back home there is a Mail Boxes Etc. on floor B1 (down in the basement) where you can post things via UPS. It felt extremely expensive though, circa 1500 Baht (£30) to post the tiniest thing back to the UK, via UPS Air Mail, which will take 1 week.
Yesterday was the last day of the Drop Ship Lifestyle Retreat in Chiang Mai with more amazing presentations and fantastic entertainment.
Drop Ship Lifestyle 2014 Retreat Schedule
Friday, October 10th
8:00am – 9:00 – Open office with coffee (Optional)
9:00am – 9:45 – Content Marketing for eCommerce and Q&A with Brandon Nolte
10:00am – 10:30 – Facebook Ads Session and Q&A with Jill and Josh Stanton
10:30am – 11:15 – Outsourcing your Life and Q&A with Vince Wong
11:45pm – Meet out front of Ibis for transportation to the Elephant Nature Park
12:30pm – 5:00 – Elephant Nature Park
5:00pm – Meet at drop off point for return transportation to Ibis
5:45pm – 6:45 – Free time
6:45pm – Meet out front of Ibis for transportation to the Closing Party
7:00pm – 9:00 – Closing party / Buffet dinner and open bar included at 90’s Bar
The presentations in the morning were cut down and a little rushed to fit the afternoon and evening in. The Outsourcing You Life presentation should have probably been scrapped to allow the others some extra time.
Elephant Nature Park
The afternoon’s entertainment was the local Elephant Nature Park, which as beautiful. It was amazing being that close to them but some of them had really sad stories before they arrived at the park. After we had a tour of the enclosure we were allowed to help wash the elephants in the river and then actually feed them in the afternoon before we left. A vegetarian buffet was also supplied which was delicious.
Closing Party
Anton organised a closing party, with free food and beer at a local bar called the 90’s bar. That atmosphere was amazing, the food was incredible and the beer was ice cold and girls just kept refilling everyone’s glasses. I only had one glass of beer but it lasted 4-5 hours …
After the 90’s bar, there was some bar hopping and some of us ended up at a crazy Thai club. Culturally it was very different to anything I’d seen before. Free entry, with 13 bands or singers alternately singing songs on stage. The locals were all sat or standing around tables of food as they were partying and the age range seemed to be between 16-50. I’ve no idea who the people on stage were but some of the fans at the front would become quite theatrical if they got to touch one of the performers, so the performers were either super famous and/or attracted weird fans.
The retreat now is technically over, so I’ve 2 more days to explore Chiang Mai before I had back to Phuket for some more training.
We’ve just done day 3 of the Drop Ship Lifestyle Retreat in Chiang Mai! Justin and Joe from Empire Flippers gave a fantastic talk about creating SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) and the monetary potential of selling a profitable website! (Who knew you can sell a profitable website for 20 times it’s averagely monthly profit!)
Drop Ship Lifestyle 2014 Retreat Schedule
Thursday, October 9th
8:00am – 9:00 – Open office with coffee (Optional)
9:00am – 12:00 – Empire Workshop with Justin Cooke and Joe Magnotti
12:00pm – 1:00 – Buffet lunch at Ibis Styles
1:00pm – 2:00 – Empire Workshop conclusion
2:00pm – Meet out front of Ibis for transportation to the Sticky Waterfalls
2:45pm – 5:45 – Explore the Sticky Waterfalls
5:45pm – Meet at drop off point for return transportation to Ibis
Nothing was planned for the evening, which was fantastic as it gave me some time to make a payment to one of our suppliers that had been blocking progress for almost 2 weeks. It also gave us an opportunity to explore Chiang Mai a little bit on our own terms.
Sticky Waterfalls
After the talk Anton organised 2 buses to take us the 90 minutes to the Sticky Waterfalls just outside Chiang Mai centre. The driver was insane and almost killed us 3 times on the way there, forcing another driver off the road whilst making the most hilariously stupid over taking decision ever, but we made it there alive. Thai drivers are just rubbish. I’ve driven all over the world and whilst drivers in Georgia and Russia are daring, they are also good, but in Thailand the drivers are simply not good.
The sticky waterfalls are crazy. They are covered in white calcium deposits and there is very little algae, so you can walk up and down them, using a rope to hold on to during the most hairy sections.
Korean BBQ
In the evening we headed off to the local Korean BBQ. The premise was simple, 150 Baht (£3) for an all you can eat buffet featuring meat, fish, prawns and vegetables that you cook yourself on a communal hotplate on your table! It was a really cool, social place, full of students and very different culturally to anything I’ve seen before in England!
I mostly stuck to the beef as I was a little concerned about not cooking my food properly but I woke up the next day feeling amazing.
Yesterday was day 2 of the Drop Ship Lifestyle Retreat in Chiang Mai, with some amazing and inspiring talks. The most interesting one for me was a surprise talk by Ben Brandes about the potential of Amazon FBA, one of the methods I’m using to make money online currently.
Drop Ship Lifestyle 2014 Retreat Schedule
Wednesday, October 8th
8:00am – 9:00 – Open office with coffee (Optional)
9:00am – 9:45 – Email Marketing for eCommerce talk and Q&A with John McIntyre
10:00am – 10:45 – Easy eCommerce Wins and Q&A with Brendan Tully
10:45am – 11:00 – Coffee and snack break
11:00am – 11:45 – Pinterest for eCommerce and Q&A with Nate Ginsburg
12:00pm – 1:00 – Buffet lunch at Ibis Styles
1:00pm – 2:00 – Open office
2:00pm – Meet out front of Ibis for transportation to Tiger Kingdom
2:30pm – 6:00 – Tiger Kingdom
6:00pm – Meet at drop off point for return transportation to Ibis
7:30pm – Buffet dinner at Kantary Hills (Optional)
Tiger Kingdom
After a morning of talks and then lunch in the Ibis, it was off to Tiger Kingdom to spank some tigers. Despite their peaceful nature and the fact there were no incidents, these tigers were huge and very intimidating. They were also ripped. Knowing that they could disembowel me in under a second was kind of freaky.
Kantary Hills
Dinner was at the luxurious Kantary Hills restaurant. An all you can eat buffet of real food, very contrasting to the Ibis buffets. The cuts of beef were medium rare, thick, came with an assortment of 6 different mustards, and absolutely delicious.
Yesterday was the first day of the Drop Ship Lifestyle Retreat in Chiang Mai, primarily featuring Johnny talking about optimisation and a trip to the Doi Suthep temple.
Drop Ship Lifestyle 2014 Retreat Schedule
Tuesday, October 7th
9:00am – 9:45 – Registration on the 8th floor of Ibis Styles
9:45am – 10:15 – Retreat introduction from Anton
10:15am – 10:30 – Member introductions
10:30am – 11:00 – eCommerce conversion tips from Johnny FD
11:00am – 1:00 – Open office sessions focusing on design, traffic, and conversions
1:00pm – 2:00 – Buffet lunch at Ibis Styles
2:00pm – Meet out front of Ibis for transportation to Doi Suthep
2:30pm – 4:30 – Explore Doi Suthep Temple
4:30pm – Meet at drop off point for return transportation to Ibis
5:00pm – 6:30 – Free time
6:30pm – Meet out front of Ibis for transportation to the Coffee Monster Party
7:00pm – 10:00 – Coffee Monster Party
10:30pm – Transportation to Ibis Styles from Coffee Monster ends
Anton has sorted out a complete day of events, with work in the morning and fun in the afternoon and evening. That’s a lifestyle I can certainly get with!
Doi Suthep Temple
The Doi Suthep Temple was crazy. We took the ubiquitous Red Vans up a very long winding road, which made the majority of us car sick to the base of the temple. You can hire trousers for 20 Baht to walk around the temple and they have a no shoe policy.
Doi Suthep is an active temple being used, which I’ll admit was kind of strange. I can’t imagine it would go down well in England for a bunch of tourists to barge in to a church during a Sunday service and then start taking photos whilst people were praying.
Coffee Monster Party
In the evening there was a party at Coffee Monster, which is a local coffee shop that a lot of the entrepreneurs out here work from. The location was really nice, the food was awesome and it was another chance to network and meet other people that have come here.
One of the things I didn’t account for in Thailand is how complicated it is to buy things online. I’m guessing this isn’t just an issue in Thailand but more a global problem when making online purchases abroad.
It is the rainy season in Thailand which means some times, like the last couple of days, if you go outside you drown. I like to play computer games every now and again and I use an Apple MacBook Pro which has no CD Rom drive so anything I buy has to be a digital download. There are 3 main digital game providers I’m interested in, Blizzard, Steam and Guildwars 2. I contacted my banks before I left, telling them I would be away for 12 months travelling and I will be visiting Thailand as the first port of call to make sure that there would be no issues. But oh boy are there issues.
Trying To Buy Diablo 3
Trying to buy Diablo 3 started off as an easy experience. I could select the game, correctly enter my address (despite being in Thailand), enter my card details, make the purchase then start downloading the game. Easy.
2 hours later however I received an email saying
This notice is being sent to inform you that we were unable to successfully complete your recent purchase on the Blizzard Store. The charge for that item on your order was not finalized.
I phoned my bank asking if everything was ok and they confirmed that they had authorised the payment but Blizzard hadn’t confirmed or rejected the transaction. The money was flagged as ear marked and they were waiting for Blizzard to handle it. This means they money is currently in a limbo and I am unable to access it.
I then got on to Blizzard support, explained the situation and sent them a copy of my passport. The support guy said that their system had rejected the transaction because
I was making the purchase from a non UK country.
I was making the purchase from a known “VPN” used by scammers.
I wasn’t using a VPN at the time, just the hotel WiFi, so I’m not sure what that was about! The support guy then said my account had been marked so if I purchased Diablo 3 again it would go through this time and that the current funds that were ear marked would be freed up in 5 days. This would be problematic if I were a student with no money but as it is having those funds held isn’t a problem for me.
I then went ahead and bought the game and played it for a few hours on Saturday before I went to bed, it’s pretty cool. When I woke up on Sunday however there was another email …
This notice is being sent to inform you that we were unable to successfully complete your recent purchase on the Blizzard Store. The charge for that item on your order was not finalized.
Rubbish. I contacted support again, describing the problem and got this reply
The order is most likely being rejected becuase the card is registered as a UK card and you are in another country. Our billing system usually blocks those as a fraud prevention measure.
Live web chat is currently offline, presumably because the guys on the other end are asleep as it’s now midnight in the US so I turned to plan B. I have a VPN account with VyperVPN to protect myself when I’m on shared, untrusted WiFi, which lets me pretend I’m from any country I like. So I enabled that, set my VPN server to United Kingdom and once again made the purchase. So far so good, but it’s early days. Blizzard have reserved 72 hours to accept or decline the purchase so I could receive an email any time in the next 3 days….
Trying To Buy Guildwars 2
When trying to buy Guildwars 2 the first problem I’ve encountered is the Country drop down, when entering your address, doesn’t mention Great Britain. It just features Pacific/Asia countries.
Guildwars 2 won’t let me pick Great Britain as a country..
This means I can’t enter valid address details for either my credit/debit card or Paypal. Once again I cracked out VyperVPN and setting my country as the United Kingdom gives me the correct drop down box mentioning Great Britain.
Following the checkout process, with Great Britain as my country, goes great, until the very end, where I am greeted by “Unable to Process Order” and “Payment Authorisation Failed”. I will ring up my bank later but due to my experience with Blizzard, I’m pretty sure NCSoft, the Guildwars 2 developers, are rejecting the transaction because I’m using the VyperVPN.
Trying To Buy Games On Steam
Steam often has loads of cheap games for £1.99, or even free, which can be great fun to play so I decided to give them a try. Steam just worked, non funny business, no mucking around with my address, no declining my card because of their system. Steam just worked. So I bought Prison Architect 😀
Update
I received 2 emails in the last couple of days. One from Blizzard confirming my Diablo 3 purchase, so pretending I’m in the UK using the VPN worked! The other was from NCSoft basically saying I was out of luck and will be unable to purchase Guildwars 2. Terrible customer service there.
Playing Diablo 3 at the Drop Ship Lifestyle retreat in Chiang Mai 😀
