and now that we are looking at the
numbers a little bit more closely we
just realized that
our shopify seems to be on an upward
trajectory
which is good
hi everyone we are back with another
video and in today's video we are doing
something that we have not done
in a while and let's talk about how much
money our business made on our two
e-commerce platforms that being shopify
and
etsy so if that is something that you
are interested in
keep watching before we begin check out
our amazing
shirts these shirts were made
for us and were a surprise from our dear
dear friends
sola and paul if you're watching thank
you so much we love them so
much and we feel good in them i won't be
soaping in these though because they are
white and i do not want to get them
dirty but
for sit down videos like this this is
perfect and i cannot wait to wear these
to our outdoor markets
when it's nice and warm and hot this is
gonna be a great uh
great garb to wear outside yes and
speaking of markets we're actually gonna
go
back to a market this weekend so that's
something that i'm going to
i think film vending at farmer's markets
and what we do we have a few videos on
that but
it'd be good to show you an actual
outdoor market and what it's like we
have not done that yet so
stay tuned i'm jerica i'm kale and we
are the owners and creators of quench
and that is a soap and bath mom company
and on this channel we talk all about
our business
how we sell our products how we make our
products and all the behind the scenes
stuff like today's video where we
actually talk about
the numbers when it comes to business
behind the curtain
yes and now without further ado let's
dive right into it let's go
so for this particular video we are
going to focus specifically on our
e-commerce
platforms and what do i mean when i say
e-commerce i'm talking about selling our
products online
and we have two ways we do this one way
is through etsy and the other way is
through
our own website that's hosted on shopify
the reason why we have both is because
on etsy there is already
customers ready and willing to buy
products just
like ours because etsy is all about the
handmade
small business so it's really excellent
for starting out because there are
people already browsing on
etsy that could stumble upon your
product accidentally
and the second e-commerce platform that
we use is shopify
shopify allows us to have our own
website that is specifically focused on
our business and our products and it
really gives
our company the chance to shine all on
its own
and having a site on shopify is a little
bit more difficult
because it is up to us and our company
to drive all of the traffic
to that website in order to get sales
and
in the beginning it is tough you hardly
get any sales we've been there
but we have found the longer we have
been in business the more traffic we've
been getting and we are now seeing some
great
numbers on there and we will also get
into the strategies that we have used in
order to increase
our sales on our shopify website so stay
tuned for that
so let's get into what everyone clicked
on this video for and that is the
numbers
on our etsy in the month of february we
made two thousand
four hundred and sixty three dollars and
nine
cents we had a total of 52 orders and
over 7 000 visits and in march on our
etsy we made
1975.59
we had a total of 47 orders and around 7
378 visitors and for february for our
website we made
3771.25
and we had 12 158 visits
and we had 65 orders all in february on
our website
and for march on our website we sold
3381.98 that was spread out over 49
orders
and we had 13 250
visits to our site so as you can see
from those numbers and even visualized
here in the charts that our dashboards
allow us to see
our sales are pretty consistent which is
a good thing and the reason i think that
we've been able to do so well on these
two platforms
is because of the strategies that we
have been using if you guys don't follow
us on instagram
you can do so right over here we are
quench soap on instagram
and on there i believe that is the
secret sauce to why
our online platforms are doing so so
well
in the past few months i've really
focused on
instagram and posting on there
consistently
and i think by doing that instagram's
algorithm has picked up my
profile and has started to push it to
more and more people
and there are specific types of posts
that i think
are doing better than others and are
getting
way more attention than others and i'll
go into those right now so there are a
lot of different posts that you can do
on instagram and the ones that i've been
really focusing on are anything
video focused so that includes stories
lives and reels for some reason
and i think it's because everything is
moving towards video these days
instagram seems to really push any type
of
video post for example if you publish a
story they will actually push
your icon to the very top of your
followers home pages so that is a really
cool thing that they do and also with
reels it's very very similar to tick
tock
where they just push it to as many
people as possible and because it's such
short videos and such consumable content
so many more people are watching it and
it is
enticing instagram's algorithm to boost
it
like crazy for example a reel that i
posted about
making hemp body bombs was played over
10
000 times which is pretty crazy and if
you guys want to know about how
i specifically make video content for
instagram let me know in the comments
and i will
definitely make a video on that because
i think that is a really great way to
start building your following
and also driving people to an online
store like a shopify if you have one
kayla's been joining me more and more
when it comes to my instagram posts and
you've been really enjoying that
we did a few lives yeah we've done like
three lives
yeah that's really fun to engage with
people coming on there and making
comments so
yeah i think people have really
responded to the spontaneity of
everything
and really like how unscripted we are
and can really see the true people
behind the brand and the products so
it's a great way for your audience to
get to know you
we need to do another live i guess yeah
it's been a like a week and a half or
two
like it's due for one exactly and
i feel like the lives are nerve-wracking
because as soon as you
turn live you start seeing the people
joining the room and it's like oh my god
and there's no editing
there's no editing there's no way pure
it's
pure kale and jericho right there
they're right there
so the first time we did that we were
like panicking and even at the very end
of the live we were panicked
trying to stop the lie i couldn't i
didn't know where the stop button was
what's happening i feel like someone
using facetime for the first time how do
i turn this off
so but the more and more we do it the
more comfortable we're getting i think
and another thing that i think just
helps in general is
us showing our faces more people people
like our products yes but they
uh there is a demand to want to see
who's behind the products and who these
people are
which not all companies do so
that's where i think some success is
coming with our marketing as well
yeah and the fact that we have started
to gain a really great following here on
our youtube
has driven a lot of traffic to our
shopify and also to our etsy
both platforms seem to be getting some
really healthy traffic from youtube
so that's another strategy i think is
really helping with our online sales and
the last thing that i think is really
helping
with our current sales is us launching
different products every couple of weeks
i recently launched a cloud bath bomb
and i
pushed it and promoted it on my
instagram and that was
a pretty big success people really liked
that uh bath bomb so
we gotta make more of those yes down to
one
yeah so it might sound exhausting trying
to think of new products all the time
but i really think that's a great way to
keep your audience engaged and wanting
more
and keeping track with you because if
you stay with the same stuff
all the time then it'll probably get
stagnant and people have very
short attention spans when it comes to
businesses
in general and i'm not saying launch
something every week
but if you can launch something one new
thing monthly and make it a
limited edition thing so that you're not
always having to make it i think that's
enough to keep your audience's interests
peaked
of course a huge part of selling things
online
are the costs associated with that it's
not just
all that money goes into our pockets in
fact a portion of those numbers that we
just gave you
is shipping taxes that we are now
charging
when it comes to shipping we are getting
better and better at trying to figure
out the correct
balance between what to charge the
customer in a way that we're not
charging
too much and we're not paying too much
out of our own pocket
and unfortunately that's something that
is something that you're going to have
to figure out over time
as you get more and more packages and
seeing where
you are shipping them to especially in a
big huge country like canada
where shipping a package to or within
ontario
is gonna cost completely different
shipping that same package all the way
westward to bc or eastward to new
brunswick
so one thing i would recommend is maybe
start off with
a set shipping cost and as you get more
and more orders and seeing
where your traffic is coming from and
also seeing how much
it's costing you to ship those packages
out then you can come closer and closer
to a number that is that makes sense for
both your customer and for yourself and
your business
another thing that we are now doing in
2021 is charging
taxes and this is not something that we
were doing back in 2020
and it actually cost us
because we were not keeping track of
that hst number when it comes to
charging tax in canada
the amount of tax a customer pays
depends on
where they are in the country
and a lot of that is very complicated
and we're not going to go into that
specifically in this video
but because we waited really late to
start doing that
it's a lot to figure out now that we are
having sales more consistently so i
would definitely recommend you speak
with an accountant
early on if you really decide to make
this a true business
so that you're on top of it and you're
not shuffling through a huge mound of
numbers like hill and i are currently
doing yeah
we are now feeling like we are being
guided in the right position and we
trust our accountant and the information
that
uh she's giving us is is correct and so
we're now
able to to remit taxes on a monthly
basis versus
having to wait till the end of the
fiscal year
yeah and because we did that for 2020 we
had to
pay a big chunk of money to the canadian
revenue
agency and we knew it was going to be
yeah we knew it was coming we knew it
wasn't gonna be pretty but
just still when it's sitting there right
in front of you it's like
boom um it would just be so much easier
so much nicer so much
friendlier on the eyes to see um a
smaller number
more frequently so that's the benefit to
remitting on a monthly or quarterly
basis
exactly a new cost that we are now
paying in both february
and march is ourselves
we are now an expense because we are
salaried
uh what do you call it employees are we
employees
yeah yeah because we are salaried and
you're employee one
employee employee too we are now
officially
employees of our company which we
incorporated
and we won't go into what we're actually
paying ourselves but we are paying
ourselves a portion of the sales that
come in through our business
each month and it's a set number that's
another thing that we have learned
through consulting with
an accountant so if you would like to
learn more about doing that for yourself
i highly recommend
again speak to a local accountant and
now that we are looking at the numbers a
little bit more closely we just realized
that
our shopify seems to be on an upward
trajectory
which is good yeah when we take the last
two months that we talked about here and
compare those with the
previous two months compared to december
2020 and january 2021
our total sales are up 45 our
um our visits are also up the same 45
and the average cost per order is up 12
percent
and total orders is up 33 so
there wasn't much change from february
to march but if you combine those two
with the previous
two december or january it's definitely
on an upward trajectory
and we have to also consider that one of
those months was christmas which was a
busy time so we're even outpacing
ourselves from
uh the christmas busy holiday time
exactly so you can see
how marketing yourselves through
instagram and
creating a youtube channel and trying to
show your products to as many people as
possible which is really only something
you can do through social media
how much of an impact that has on your
business because i think it's
really really causing our personal
company and brand to
grow and when we look at our etsy it
seems to be
actually on a decline so as time goes on
it might make us look at the etsy and
try to decide whether or not we want to
keep it because if we are focusing on
our brand awareness
and our company it might be a good idea
to focus on just
one e-commerce platform that being
shopify and really that should be the
goal
of most businesses out there is to have
a platform that's all your own and
really simplify your process right now
we like etsy we are getting consistent
sales from it
but who's to say we will still have an
etsy this time next year
we don't know yeah yeah i guess that's
the exciting part of business is you
just never know when you look at
uh yeah it's there's just an ever slight
decline
um yeah between the last few months
compared with the previous two so
yeah but and it'll be exciting to be out
in the markets again
uh it does take up some time to load
product
into the car and physically be there
selling for eight hours
and then unloading the car afterwards
but we really think also that as
as nice it is getting this income on our
e-commerce platforms we don't want to
forget about our local customer base
and a lot of us buy from us at these
markets and we really want to keep a
presence
there because right now we don't have a
retail storefront and that is really
our way of letting the community know
that quench is here we have soap and
bath bomb products
buy from us so it's it's a connection
that we don't want to break just yet
uh we really enjoy it kale loves it i
love being out there in person
oh yeah yeah and i'm even managing one
of the local
farmers markets now so yeah we're just
really entrenched in that community
yeah so that is it we really hope that
you like this type of video i know that
a lot of you
are either thinking about starting a
business or are already
have a soap business and videos like
this are really informative to let you
know how other businesses are doing so
if you did enjoy this content or learn
something from it please give it a big
thumbs up
and if you want to see more please
subscribe and until the next video keep
smiling
keep being awesome and keep making
beautiful things
and we will see you in the next one bye
guys soap tuber
i love this shirt should the thumbnail
be like this
no thumbnail
but okay
you