Over the next few weeks, Seth is going to detail a new idea he has to make money online. You can watch in what is effectively real time, as he, together with the 2oceansvibe team, puts it all together.

Hopefully this will inspire you to do something similar with minimal risk.

In this first step, we will review the idea and action the website setup. Once up and running, we will monitor the spend on Adwords, as well as income through sales.

THE IDEA

Some of you will remember a while ago I bought a pair of those solar-powered snake repellent devices from overseas, and wrote about the experience here. I’ve been using them at the cabin and we are yet to see a snake – touch wood.

Recently some friends asked about the devices and I directed them to the article on 2oceansvibe. Then it occurred to me that there must be quite a few people in South Africa searching for similar products – especially given the amount of snakes we have in this country.

Whether you’re in the rural reaches of the Kruger Park, or Primrose Avenue in Bishopscourt, this is Africa, honey…

THE PLAN

We decided to set up a website that will sell the product locally, but I didn’t want to risk importing stock that might not sell. We could make the website and then any time we receive an order, we could then order the same thing online from overseas and get Postbox Courier to deliver it directly to our customer.

They take a week to deliver anything from overseas, so my local customers wouldn’t even know their product arrived at their door straight from overseas. This cancels out a step for us, as we don’t have to handle the product.

If this all works out, then it would be worth investing in some geeks automating the process, so that an order on our website triggers a purchase on the Australian website without us getting involved. But no need to do that yet, as we want to see if this works first.

THE PRODUCT

The original product we featured on 2oceansvibe was available on Amazon. They didn’t sell directly to South Africa, so I used Postbox Courier to get it here (they give you overseas delivery addresses to use when buying international products). That particular product is no longer available, but we found something even better on this Australian website.

Conveniently, Postbox Courier happen to have an Australian address for me to use for deliveries – so they could pick it up from there and take it directly to my customer in a couple days. This is the product we’ll be selling!

WEBSITE NAME

So now we need a name for the website. I wanted to find out what people were typing in Google when searching for a product like this. I went to the Google Adwords keyword tool and found the following search phrases.

I also set these up to bid on and to send traffic to my website, once it’s up and running.

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So we decided to go for the name SNAKES AWAY! We bought the website domain snakesaway.co.za from RSAWEB, and they are busy setting up WordPress on that domain.

SELLING PRICE

The selling price on the Australian website is AU$49, which works out to R482. I’ve emailed Postbox Courier to get a shipping price, so we know what the final cost price is for us – delivered to our customer, before adding on some margin.

I also see they sell the same product, but battery powered – in a 4-pack for AU$69 (R679). That works out to R169 a unit, which is bringing down our per unit price a lot. You only have to change the batteries once a year.

There’s also a solar 10-pack here for AU$398 (R3 916), which works out to R392 a unit. This could be of interest for families or neighbours getting together to protect their families and save money doing it.

The website did advise getting more than one, as they have a 25 metre radius, which you might want to expand on.

UNTIL NEXT TIME

Stay tuned and next time we see you, we’ll be setting up the website with product images and credit card capability, as well as triggering Google Adwords to start bringing in some traffic.

That’s when we need to keep our eye on the ball, ensuring we don’t overspend, as we fine-tune our keyword strategy.

Until next time.

Seth & the 2oceansvibe team.