On March 15th when I knew I would be shutting down to quarantine and I would be losing my primary source of income, I created a post on LinkedIn where I shared my plan of action. Before the crisis I had begun work on a white paper for a company reemerging from bankruptcy. I was supposed to fly to Miami for a conference and present the short paper. That was obviously cancelled so I decided to continue building the paper and it turned into a book. I just finished the first draft and I’m making a sample to edit. I also made a conscious decision to keep myself accountable during this time by posting my COVID-19 forced adjustments:
First Post Update:
- Primary income: Sneaker Sales (Non-existent due to COVID-19, 30-45K/month – nothing can replace that)
- Secondary income: Music Royalties (Quarterly varies)
- Third and Fourth sources of income: Ad and affiliate revenue from https://arch-usa.com and YouTube (Varies)
- Fifth: Adjunct Professor/Book Sales (Not currently teaching)
Without the primary income I have to shift the site into more sneaker culture content. I get a big spike in traffic when migrating my YouTube videos to the site. I have 400 videos that need to be added to the site in individual posts (over 798 total sneaker videos that can all link to product pages for other companies). I used to utilize eBay and Amazon affiliate programs on those links. Those links are now available for retail outlets both digital and brick and mortar (DM if you run marketing for Stadium Goods, Jimmy Jazz, StockX, or DTLR, Inc.)
Site is currently garnering-
- 90 days 292,000 Page Views (Google Analytics)
- YouTube 99,600 Views Quarterly (not huge but all organic) no hyped up product videos.
- Top videos: Air Jordan 1 Mid, Air Max 270 – No outgoing product links in descriptions
Goal over the next month to increase website traffic by 5% since I have the time now to focus on the site full time. #goals
Second Post Update:
This is going to take longer than I thought, lol. First 7 videos transferred 393 left to go. I’m using eBay affiliates since they have a nice RSS Feed to deliver product listings under each video. FYI the great thing about the RSS Feed and links, it could be next year and the links will still work and no one DM’d me. I expected that. People love influencers and don’t understand that a targeted market with a consistent 300K in page views is smarter especially as it grows…
(With affiliate codes) Even if people don’t buy a pair of shoes, when they click whatever they purchase is eligible for affiliate revenue. When I focused even a little bit on this (when shoe sales are rolling I don’t at all) it generated a nice monthly income. StockX has taken a lot of traffic from eBay, but their affiliate program is 1%. eBay is 3-5%. I’ll update this as I go. Hit me with any questions. Use the link below to see the shoes listed and how the affiliate Dynamic Feed looks.
https://arch-usa.com/category/verifying-authenticity-videos/
Third Post Update:
Updated 3/29/2020
Today I’m monitoring everything using StatCounter built into the dashboard of my WP dashboard. Saturday’s are always slow on the site, but I added another 6 videos to the site today.
21 March Saturday stats:
Page Views: 113
Unique Visits: 90
First Time Visits: 83
28 March Saturday stats at 5:28 CST:
Page Views: 200
Unique Visits: 164
First Time Visits: 156
Traffic breakdown:
71% Search
16% Direct
13% Social
Not bad for a Saturday and adding more sneaker culture content to the site vs sneaker business discussions. On Page Views alone that’s a 76.99% increase. This was a good second day for the site and the shift from in-depth content to more mainstream content, but I have to work on the balance. The goal is to get the site to 1000 visits per day. That’s about a 3 month process of writing posts purely on sneakers as opposed to more challenging articles. The problem is the site becomes a driver of branding for Nike as most of my videos are Nike. In this environment without my primary income available, this has to be the case. The question is do I become like every other site or do I maintain a more challenging brand of content?
Fourth Post Update:
I’ve added another 14 videos for 21 today. The CTR for the affiliate feeds are up 240%. Bounce rate is down to 63%. Not bad for a Friday which is traditionally a slow day on the site. I see now why sneaker websites only post kicks instead of doing in-depth discussions. If you want to generate income, post sneakers. My site was about the business side which didn’t drive the growth in the same way. Post quality is important for longevity and direct traffic, amount of posts on sneakers is important to drive search.
Fifth Post Update:
Okay. The traffic improved considerably for a Sunday. I don’t typically post on Sunday, but last night I was updated by Andy Polk of FDRA on an important issue in the industry. I wrote a post late last night and then followed it up with a post today. The result is that a topic that is business based improved traffic to the site more than any other day during this week. What does this mean? In-depth discussions drive engagement and traffic, but doesn’t typically equate to return visits as the majority of the traffic arrived from Social. An increase from 16% on the 28th to 22% on today 3/29. I don’t expect that traffic to return so it’s a temporary bump… a considerable temporary bump. Sneaker posts however generate consistent search. More people look for info on kicks than people who look for information on the business side of things.
Sixth Post Update:
Checked the eBay affiliate clicks because I forgot that this was the important aspect of transferring the videos to the site. On March 23rd I wasn’t really placing more sneaker videos on the site. My Clicks: 3. On March 29th Clicks: 17. Nothing registered as sold, but it takes days on eBay for product to show up as sold because the product sold isn’t counted until the product is shipped. At this time I don’t expect product to ship so affiliate sales are down. I will add another 10-20 sneaker videos to the site from YouTube. The good thing is Adsense saw a +500% increase and YouTube continues to be the driver of ad revenue although I’m not affiliated with or posting sponsored posts.
Seventh Post Update:
4-1-2020:
I’m logging in to my hosting service (Startlogic) to utilize the stats from the hosting service. These numbers are always higher than Google Analytics and my Statcounter plug-in on the site because every visit is counted, not just unique visits.
Monday 3-23-26 = 3826 visits
Monday 3-30-2020 = 4113 visits
What the majority of visitors are looking for gives incredible insight into why StockX and GOAT have grown so quickly. Here is a list of the keyphrases that carry people to the site:
- https //arch-usa.com/this-is-what-a-fake-nike-air-max-270-looks-like-the-reason-i-started-the-authentic-verification-videos/
- reebok question mid cool grey
- fake vapormax triple black
- original jordan vs fake Jordan
- champion shoes
- using uv light to legit check cloud whites
Top product categories are a surprise even to me because I don’t even have that many products from either company on the site. For my small sample size it also flies in the face of what I would have picked as my most visited two categories. I also need to add more affiliate products under these categories:
/product-category/converse 462 visits
/product-category/ua-basketball 456 visits
Today I used eBay Affiliates for the sneaker posts and I’m also using Amazon Associates to see if there is an uptick via either channel for revenue. I’ll keep this updated as well.
Eighth Post Update:
Monthly Google Report e-mail
https://arch-usa.com/
3.4K Clicks (web)
248K Impressions (web)
575 Pages with first impressions (estimated)
I’m still adding videos. The previous months on the site saw a considerable drop as most of the posts I wrote were business related, which didn’t kill it in search. These numbers were low, but not bad at all; in particular the 575 pages with first impressions. By the time I finish adding all of the sneaker videos to the site it should be about 1000 pages with first impressions. I really can’t believe that brands spend more time on influencers vs actual traffic generators of customers looking for their products. It’s amazing.
Ninth Post Update:
4-22-2020
I’m almost done moving the videos from the YouTube channel to the site and the results are as I predicted. If I stop focusing on content that is more in depth and I begin to simply do posts on sneakers the traffic to the site will improve immediately, but the site becomes the same as all other sites. The site also improves on affiliate revenue. My conversion rate on eBay affiliate ads is 6.15% now and the dollars are adding up.
The people don’t really want to learn about the sneaker industry… they want to know where the kicks are and have quick links to where they can buy the product. This doesn’t mean I’m changing the format of the site, but it does mean I will be creating more product posts. More in-depth content I will share to LinkedIn, but it’s obvious where the money is. If you’ve ever wondered why all sneaker sites have the same posts of the same shoes, now you know.
Tenth Post Update:
4/23/2020 Just finished moving 400 sneaker videos from YouTube to the site. There are now 925 posts under the category for videos on the site and the YouTube has 802 sneaker videos. total Now it’s time to go into Webmaster Tools and reindex the site. Search should improve dramatically and now I’ll be able to edit the 40 new videos I have and update one a day in a seamless manner where I shouldn’t fall behind again. This has been an amazing COVID-19 project.
Eleventh Post Update: 4-27-2020
When I began moving the videos to the site you can see how flat my graph is. As the pages were indexed, you can see the growth in users. This is very exciting especially since I’m still writing more developed posts and not simply relying on ‘sneaker’ posts solely.
Tentative Title and book description for the new book:
I’m in the process of getting samples created to edit, but the book, like the previous one, is hitting on a lot of topics. I utilized Payless in conjunction with The Sports Authority and Modell’s (and also Shiekh who exited bankruptcy) to explain that retail built on inexpensive footwear is a broken model and can no longer sustain long term in a DTC world. The book is geared towards entrepreneurs, startups and reemerging businesses in a post COVID-19 society.
I once again present information on how StockX has become one of the most important e-commerce sites in sneakers and why it is no longer a fragile unicorn. Originally I was writing two different books. One on how to make a million dollars on StockX, but when COVID-19 hit, it didn’t make sense to write something like that with people furloughed. I expanded the discussion on StockX towards explaining why all retailers who aren’t deeply invested in private label or aren’t finding a way to connect with the customers on a more meaningful level will find it difficult to grow.
These are the chapters. All of this is a work in progress for publishing and the title may change, but the book is complete.
Foreward . . . . . . pg. 10
Ch. 1 Should StockX Be Regulated? . . pg. 14
Ch. 2 Why Retailers Needed the adidas MakerLab Limited-Edition Campus 80s x StockX IPO to be Flawed . . pg. 26
Ch. 3 10 Reasons the ‘adidas Campus 80s x StockX IPO’ Was the Most Important Drop of the Year . . . pg. 34
Ch. 4 Why the Hack of StockX Didn’t Hurt? . pg. 44
Ch. 5 10 Reasons the RealReal IPO and StockX’s Unicorn Status Happened . . . . . . pg. 50
Ch. 6 StockX Buying Ad Time During the WNBA Season is More Important Than it Looks . . . . pg. 58
Ch. 7 Nike’s Supply Chain as Disruptor . . pg. 64
Ch. 8 The Democratization of Sneaker Resale . pg. 70
Ch. 9 Reintroduction . . . . . pg. 82
Ch. 10 Remember, Sneaker Culture is Mainstream . pg. 90
Ch. 11 The Time is Now for Private Label and Startups pg. 102
Ch. 12 Parents and Professionals = Forrest and Bubba pg. 112
Ch. 13 The Cash Customer is Finally Digital . pg. 122
Ch. 14 Opportunities and a Clean Slate . pg. 132
Ch. 15 Sustainability as an Opportunity . . pg. 140
Ch. 16 Limited Opportunities Isn’t a Bad Thing . pg. 148
You can buy the first book if you found this post engaging: