Many entrepreneurs do not have the rich blog content that attract customers to their website when opening a store Essence
This is why we like Tiny Wood Stove this inspiring story. We sat down with the 38 -year -old Kansas founder Nick Peterson to understand how a blog article about a small space -burning furnace became a vigorous online business.
Q: How did you decide to live in a small space?
My wife Xuey is a teacher, and I am an outdoor education teacher. With our daughter Pesley, let us understand what we are doing and how we spend time. Obviously, we focus on serving children’s children, even if we have just brought our little life into the world.
We conducted a lifestyle review and asked ourselves: \”What do we want our lives to look like?\” We listed the obstacles to spending time with our family: debt, health insurance, housing, etc.
I have always paid attention to a group of blog written by a group of nomadic people, and I am very interested in small space. I know that any vehicle can become a bedroom.
So we said, \”Let’s buy some mobile devices, travel, spend more time to accompany your family, save our housing expenses.\”
Q: What is the first step?
We bought a 1966 AirStream trailer, but knew nothing about it. We just dug in and started transformation. We also cleared the debt, my wife quit her job, and we went on the road.
The air flow was stopped next to his friend’s house.We don’t want to rely on camping. When you add up the cost of each night, it may be as expensive as the mortgage loan, so we want to leave the power grid. We installed solar energy and got a wooden furnace to warm up.
Q. What was the firewood market at that time?
At that time, there were only a few options. In the United States, most stoves are made for old wooden boats.
We have a blog called livinlightly.com, which records our journey. An article introduces the reason why we choose a wooden stove instead of propane. When looking at our blog analysis and trying to figure out how to monetize it, we noticed that 70% to 80% of all traffic comes from the single post. Visitors found us through search through \”wooden furnace small space\” or \”wooden furnace small house\”. From that found, I bought tinywoodstove.com
Q: At this time, you have another business, right?
Yes, a Drupal website provides vegetarian and vegan dietary plan services. This will be our meals. But I spent five years, and I made more money than me. This is a difficult lesson.
Q: It sounds the opposite of tinywoodstove.com?
I read
The lean startup
, it talked about testing your assumptions as soon as possible and flexibly adapting. Initially, I was considering the auxiliary arrangement of the wooden furnace. We cannot have a warehouse full of stoves because we are nomadic peoples. We think we will become an information resource and obtain passive income by selling other things.
After a long day of sleep.
Q: What is the result?
We are busy making content, content and more content from 2013 to 2015. I contacted different furnace manufacturers in the United States and Britain. But when I talked about the alliance arrangements, they did not really understand.
Q: So you tried another strategy?
We see that people are looking for a stove, the PIPSQUEAK made by Britain. We want to sell it on our website, but in order to make it play, we must buy the entire tray. So we started a crowdfunding activity and used Woocommerce to make a login page. If people book, we provide a $ 95 furnace discount and promise that if we do not get enough orders to buy the tray, we will refund their money. Within 7 days, our sales volume is more than enough and started business.
Q: What is the next step?
We continue to sell the stove, but began to realize that it is difficult to find the correct pipeline to connect to the stove. The only tube you can buy in the United States is six inches, which is too big. So we started selling three -inch and four -inch pipelines.
Q: Do you notice what other gaps in the market?
pipsqueak is a stove toy. It is cute, but not very practical. We need a stronger stove, so we continue to make our own product line. At the beginning, we didn’t know much; we just jumped in and learned all the way.
Q: What is the learning curve?
We were very lucky to find a manufacturer for our DWARF series, but this is definitely a hard education in international trade. The first freight company went bankrupt, and our order stayed in the ocean for three months. We can deliver our pre -sale orders. People really understand that we only need to refund a few times. I think this is a proof of lack of market services.
Q: It sounds like you are really connected with your followers and customers.
We are not just selling products; we are full of enthusiasm for the small life and the freedom it provided. Every day, we will communicate with those who resign, start a business and seek layoffs. The wooden furnace is just a small part of it. We are helping them take this step. If we are just selling products, it will be meaningless.
Q: Your team is also nomadic people?
Our support team has five members, they are all working remotely, and they live very small and leave the net. Everyone who supports the role of supporting characters is actively living this lifestyle, so they can truly establish contact with customers and keep them consistent with them. We publish position lists on Instagram and the local types we can enter the community.
In 2018, we sold AirStream and built a 560 -square -foot small -sized house.
Q: So why do you choose a firewood furnace in a small space?
Putting anything burning in the structure may be dangerous. Wood furnaces are not more dangerous than propane. Propane will leak; it is unstable and you must continue to buy it. This is a limited resource. In addition, water will enter your space every time a pound of propine is burned. In a small space, moisture and mold may be a big problem. The wooden furnace is dry. In addition, using my wooden furnace, I can roll up somewhere, break some sticks on my knees, and then throw them into the stove and heat the space. But this must be more jobs.
Q: We want to know how you set up a website.
I am not a technician, I have built what I have here. I know the basic knowledge of creating the WordPress website and using a plug -in in the rest, which makes it very easy. The beauty of WOOCOMMERCE and WordPress is that they are very suitable for guidance and DIY. You start to figure out.
I want to say that the website is now \”B-\”. However, when you first start, you don’t have to have the best website. It only needs to work. We are now improving the website. Now we have income, we can hire professionals to raise it to a new level, but it always works. Q: Which plug -in do you use in WordPress and Woocommerce? At the beginning, we set up Woocommerce for our first pre -sale. this is very simple.
Initially, the theme we used was not very good in terms of speed, so we transitioned to
Astra
. Astra Rock. This theme is built for optimization. We installed it, and the speed has been significantly improved. Everything is related to performance.
We use Beaver Builder to create content, which is easy for people like me. We use Gravity Forms to create a custom form on our appeal term page. People fill in their details and send us email. This is how we start to discuss what they need.
Q: What functions do you like best for e -commerce functions? WeIt is effective to use variable products to provide options because we have a installation kit containing 20 components. There are many ways to configure your kit, so it will be a nightmare to provide each method separately. Customers can choose their own options more easily -four -inch pipes, this type of ventilation, and other types of clips. It also makes it easier for us to track inventory. When the customer makes a choice -like a four -inch tube -it takes out a four -inch tube from our inventory.
We really like the notification of shopping carts. It is very suitable to provide customers with other products directly on the shopping cart page.
We also use Woocommerce Backorder Manager PRO to manage extended delivery and check inventory levels.
Q: Is there any custom code on your website?
We have some customized solutions. One is the stove size calculator. People add their measurement details that tell them the stoves of the size and the parts they need.
This is the greatness of WordPress: its deep community. If you don’t customize the plug -in according to your needs, you can build something cheaply. At any time we want to solve a problem, we don’t have to re -create wheels. We can sneak into the library to see what others do. Even if it is not perfect, it can be customized for perfect work. Q: What payment do you use?
Bibao and stripes. We are now discussing the transition to WooCommerce to PayPal Braintree, which has a lower rate and a more simplified checkout experience because you can receive credit cards directly on your website.
A hidden benefit of using PayPal and Stripe is that we can get credit quotas. As a new company, we do not have a credit score, so our local banks will not lend it to us. However, our payment providers have a direct proof of our sales and can provide us loans based on this. This is very helpful for our growth.
Q: How is your marketing and customer acquisition process?
There are more players now, which makes things more challengingEssence But our ranking is still good. Like Instagram and Facebook, SEO is an important feeder. This is how we connect with the community. We also do some Google Adwords. We use Stream CRM integrated with Gmail for email marketing and use Gravity Forms on our contact page. Q: Why is CRM important?
Smaller is a major decision. It is a long process to figure out how you want to heat your space. You need to decide whether to put a stove on the roof and whether to hit a hole on the roof is a good idea. The sales process may take several weeks or three months.
Q. Do you still make a lot of content?
Our website has a lot of content. We use woocommerce instead of Shopify because it is very important. We have many articles, guidelines, videos and case studies. We are really trying to use these, which is really bulky on Shopify. WordPress and WOO allows us to have more capabilities to customize our website to adapt to what we are doing. They are widely used.
Q: What is the next step of business?
We are diversified the company to other fields, such as composting toilets. The long -term goal is to be Tiny Supply Co.
Tiny Wood Stove is a good example of business promoted by the community. Nick and Shae have a group of familiar and enthusiastic audiences -those who want to live small.
Then they heard the audience’s opinions. They found a problem that could be solved and confirmed that customers were willing to pay for their products.
If you are considering carrying out online business, or even if you are involved, please read our series of articles entitled \”From Creative to First Customer\”. It will guide you to complete all steps from determining the audience to the first sales.
The air flow was stopped next to his friend’s house.
A hidden benefit of using PayPal and Stripe is that we can get credit quotas. As a new company, we do not have a credit score, so our local banks will not lend it to us. However, our payment providers have a direct proof of our sales and can provide us loans based on this. This is very helpful for our growth. 
Then they heard the audience’s opinions. They found a problem that could be solved and confirmed that customers were willing to pay for their products. 