[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello, I'm Jeremy Rivera, your unscripted podcast host. I'm here with Mark Pitts, who's going to give us a simple introduction to himself and his business so we can understand where he's coming from and why we should treat him as an expert.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: Right, thanks for having me first.
Yep. I'm Mark Pitts. I am the founder CEO of discountbapepen.com.
we got started very early in just the basic, the blog sphere, you know, posting small items on, on ebay, so a little bit of Internet hustling.
And from that we have learned a lot about E commerce. And I say we because I do have a partner in this business. I learned about, about a lot about E commerce, a a lot about SEO.
And we decided to make an official website from a ebay listing, you know, almost 13 years ago now.
So, you know, like I said, a bit of a bit of an Internet hustler. I had to learn everything more or less on my own, back from the HTML days, just trying to learn just as much as I can to get forward from not having enough capital to really have someone build me websites, things like that.
So that's a little bit about me. I'm also from Jersey, so.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: So you touched on one of my favorite words, which is SEO. I literally have, you know, a full on SEO podcast in and of itself.
And I agree with what you said that it's, you know, you have to learn it there. You can't go to school for it. There isn't like a University of Se.
That's correct.
In fact, my own story is I actually hired somebody when I was managing a marketing team, an SEO team who four years later I started the company, they went to school, I ended up hiring them after they completed their degree. Of course that was during the recession, so a little bit different maybe now, but I think.
Tell me, what's the biggest lesson that you had to learn when it came to SEO?
[00:02:27] Speaker B: Oof. Okay. There's a lot of lessons there.
The biggest one, and it may even sound a bit strange, but I guess in the realm of creating blog content or just written content for SEO, it's not written for people to actually read.
That's that. It's a strange one because I went years even, you know, after maybe seven, eight, nine years of doing this, our website, I learned to write more for the search engine rather than write for people to actually read.
And in doing that, it actually has changed our trajectory or I guess our growth like exponentially in a much shorter time.
Yeah, that's probably the Biggest one, I
[00:03:30] Speaker A: have been having a lot of conversations about, you know, write for your audience, write for the person. But also realize that you are not only writing for a bot because now you have out LLMs. And so you've got a human asking a bot to go ask another bot what it thought of the content that you wrote. So it's a human sandwich. There are two humans at both ends of it. And the irony is that both of those tools are such people pleasers that there are a lot of aspects of good writing that do transition, you know, that you should focus on, you know, surfacing your expertise, like communicating the value, understanding the intent. Those are good. But also, you know, if you never take the time to research and add specific headers, you're missing out.
[00:04:31] Speaker B: Right.
[00:04:32] Speaker A: If you don't take the time to look at what are the people. Also ask results for this query right now that I could win a featured snippet, you know, that I could either an LLM or classic featured snippet if I took the time to structure my content a little bit more. Yeah, it is writing for a bot who wants to give it to a human.
So it's, there are, it's kind of a game of like, you know, a game of telephone. You know, I want to communicate this thing to the end person and I want them to be shown my results.
Which means that I can't have the same one to one conversation of how humans actually speak because we don't speak with headers. I didn't pause there and say, oh, now the subject is the nature of SEO and using headers, the human to human sandwich. We don't talk like that. And there's a lot of things, there's a lot of rules about, you know, good copy on your website. We don't talk in second person.
[00:05:41] Speaker B: Right. Naturally it was very interesting.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: Like when you're looking at service pages and what you write and craft there like those, that's not how you write about it. You know, you're writing about, you know, the sanctuary and you know, dispensary in Nevada. Like if you're writing the web prosing copy for it is totally different than if you're talking to a friend about it. And so trying to treat your content like it's not being evaluated through a search engine algorithm.
It makes for a good tagline in a marketing post. Right? For humans, not for robots.
But it really does ignore our reality that it's robots to humans. To robots. And back for sure.
[00:06:28] Speaker B: The beginning, like in the very beginning, like our first couple Years of business I would write like, like, you know, almost like an editorial style. Like I would write as if I'm having that conversation, you know, and I'm, I'm using, you know, a little slang or any kind of dialect that I might speak to a person with. And it was okay. But uh, it was, you know, I, I wasn't given.
It didn't show me what was really to come down the line. It was fine.
You know, now looking back because I'm in a niche that had just really started. So you know, we discount vape pin started in 2014. So this is still early on in the boom of vaping to where pretty much anything that we put out was brand new information. You could really easily get to the, the top or at least the first page on a lot of things. And we did, we started making, you know, some videos too. But that's that jaded me thinking that I could just continue to write this way until the industry moved a little forward. And you know, my partner and I, our partners very, went very deep into the research and shared a lot with me when we were learning this SEO thing.
And you know, in that time he, he learned how to structure us. So now it looks completely different. It doesn't look like a conversation between two, two dudes or me or, or like as if you walked into a smoke shop. It looks like the header, header, header sub two. We got pro tip in there.
It's, it has changed for sure. For sure.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: I'm curious, what's it like playing around with an area of marketing where there are both societal rules and more restrictions from the legal side of the product that you're bringing to market. And I know that Google also has some hard fire lines for certain industries.
Have you touched the third wire on any of your efforts? And what is the process of making sure you don't fall afoul of some law or regulation that otherwise you wouldn't be aware of?
[00:08:57] Speaker B: It's very easy just staying on top of what these regulations are on a day to day after I want to say 2015, 2016, you couldn't do paid advertising almost anywhere. Sure you could go about maybe finding one of these, you know, savvy guys who can make some Facebook ads that allude to what you do before Facebook actually catches it. But that's very short lived. That's not good for a long term plan.
So in my case or in our case has discount vape pin, we, you know, stuck to the hard facts. We're not going to be able to get through on paid advertising. Any of these efforts could, you know, just be a wash in a day or even cause a much bigger issue for us, even ranking. So we were forced to really learn everything we can.
I'm sure we don't know everything about SEO, but that is more or less the driving force of our success is being able to stay on top of what is new in the SEO and still having that knowledge from the earlier 2000s of when everything's were just blogs everywhere and MySpace and all these things, knowing those foundational pieces, making sure everybody likes to go and talk about the eat.
But all these things are in play because that's really our only push forward when it comes to advertising. And then when it comes to the laws, we stay on top of them. There's so many states, we have so many different restrictions based off of zip codes, states we have to.
Because there is, you know, fire, you know, things blow up if, if you do touch that third wire and you, you will find out you don't want to. But they usually first come as a, as a warning and you know, as soon as that happens, you need to know where you're supposed to shift gears. Which is I think a problem with a lot of not just sites in my industry, but all industries where you might have an un.
Not to say unpopular because vapes are popular, but something that is unpopular, I guess amongst the, I don't know, the, the, the everyone. I don't know what to call this group.
It's. It's not savory, I would say. Yes, that's, it's, that's not really accepted mainstream.
So any of these guys have to, you know, tread lightly, don't get too happy.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: Do you think of your business primarily then in terms of like your website or do you think of your business like as like offline at all? Or is it mostly because I interview like small business owners all the time in every niche. It's kind of interesting because, you know, if you're like a contractor, I work here in Cookeville. Like they literally only had a Facebook page and didn't have a website, didn't have Google my business, but had tons of referral, did great work and they thought of their business pretty much like disconnected entirely from marketing and disconnected from a website. But then I also talk and consult with businesses who, you know, almost all their revenue comes from online purchases and you know, people find them online.
So when it comes to mentality, is that a good description? Like you think of your business as inextricably connected to your Website
[00:13:09] Speaker B: today? Yes, but I do have experience with both. So when discount vape pen started, we also started brick and mortar as a vape shop. And then, you know, as time progressed, made sense to become almost like a smoke shop. At that time, 2014, a smoke shop and a vape shop were two very distinct different things.
And then, you know, they're really not. So then they became one. While we also had the website primarily, you know, it was, honestly, it was, it was very much 5050 because there weren't so many vape shops or smoke shops as there are now.
The, the. You kind of soaked up whatever audience you had in the area as a, as a prominent local business.
So we learned a lot. You know, we learned about a lot about logistics because, you know, we're not like a, a drop shipping place. We, we buy all our own products. It's here, it's know I'm here, you know, collecting products for people's packages. We're doing everything.
So at that time, you know, let's talk a couple, at least a couple years back, a few years back, and before it was split, it was we are a website and brick and mortar store. We actually had multiple stores as of the recent years.
With the new regulations, the across the board, whether it be, you know, something with the Delta products or nicotine, as those started to get more strict simultaneously while more people were getting into vaping or the vape business industry, we then started to shift out of the store and be where we are today, which is website.
It was, there was a huge flood of just, you know, every couple blocks you're finding a new smoke shop, a new vape shop, and sometimes we look at these new shops and like, you have no idea what you might be getting yourselves into. The, the, the, the, what do you call it? The, the barrier for entry has grown like astronomically since 2014. In 2014, you could start a vape shop with, you know, five grand.
Now you wouldn't, you wouldn't last a minute.
[00:15:58] Speaker A: I'm curious, what's been your experience with like your competition or other people that are in the industry, you know, I've done.
Or people that do the same thing. It's always fascinating to see whether the industry like unites or whether everybody sees themselves as individual islands fighting against each other. So in SEO, we're very much like everybody can do everybody else's job and we kind of recognize that, but it's much more of a community and figuring out like, hey, what's happening with the algorithm? Let me share my insights yeah, yeah, sure. You could get the same client as I could, and we'll have to figure that out. But I've also worked in other industries and consulted with locksmiths.
And surprisingly, steel door manufacturers are the most bloody, cutthroat, backstabbing, conniving black cat sobs that you have ever met. And I think it might have to do with margins. Like, the profit margin for steel doors is pretty freaking solid. And so there's a good amount of money. Money going into it. And they're, you know, they don't have traditional marketing, so, like, yeah, go buy a billion, you know, comment spam links and send them at my competitor. Go ahead. Like, the most insane spam tactics that you've ever seen. So I'm curious, in the. In your world, what's the competition level look like? Are you. Is there a conference you guys go to, or is it all alone there?
[00:17:38] Speaker B: It started out very much as a community, and I'll start there. Started out very.
Each one teach one. You know, you had a convention here. They still do have conventions, but not so much.
Not. Not so drilled down to the niche of vaping as it once started.
You know, back in, you know, 10 years ago, you could go to the world vape convention. I mean, I don't know if the world was there, but it was in Miami. It's nice.
There's retailers, wholesalers all coming together, see, you know, cool concert. They've got things, you know, to. For you, everybody to kind of just network with each other around the city.
It was great. It was great. And then I would say about 2018, once the regulations started to roll in, it became, you know, more competitive.
There wasn't brick and mortar shops popping up everywhere yet. There were a lot at this point, but not the way it is now. So the competition wasn't. Wasn't cutthroat yet until the regulations came. Once the regulations came now it triggered more or less a race to the bottom. And then there are other organizations, you know, the. Just. Just with any industry, there's organizations that are kind of like cowboys, as we call them, right? So if everybody is trying to, you know, push back so that we can save our industry, you'll have groupings of organizations who just don't care. And we'll do, you know, sell in places where they're restricted. And then once something happens for. To them, it's.
All of you guys are just like that.
That's. That's the kind of, you know, that's the. That's the narrative. At least it's painted in, in any negative article about vaping is that all the vape guys are responsible for doing these negative things.
So then it created, it created a moment where everybody's like, you know what? I don't want to get entangled in whatever you got going on.
And at the same time prices are just fighting for cents down and down. So now it's a very much individual type thing. And, and it also kind of depends on which hat you have on. So if I have the retailer hat on, it's very competitive. But as a whole, like if we do any wholesale business, it's not so much you still got good relations there where they'll let you know when, hey, you know, we know this lobbyist, something was coming down, you know, prepare yourself for this or we got a great deal here.
We don't mind reaching out to you and kind of sharing in that deal because you know, we all do good business. Wholesale is much more friendly than retail.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: So that makes sense. I'm curious, as an entrepreneur, what is your take on the openness of the field that comes with digital marketing with all of these social media channels where you can blow up quickly or SEO where you can, you know, invest long term and create content strategies versus, you know, opening your doors and hoping somebody comes in at, at a brick and mortar.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: Honestly, brick and mortar was a lot easier to, to market because you look every, you, you live in this area or you pass through here for work, it's much easier. It's, it still has the same, I guess, principles, you know, location, location, location. So that is your main driver. If you're in a spot where everybody can see you because you're on a main road or you know, a very popular local area, you're, you'll do pretty good.
But when it comes to the Internet, I, I don't like the, I don't like the social media. I'm not, I'm not a big social media person.
But in terms of marketing, it's very, it's, it's almost as if they, these platforms are picking and choosing what can stay and what can't.
So we, we're always baffled. We'll see an account on Instagram and it's doing everything that we're not anybody is supposed to be doing and it's putting it on blast.
Yet, you know, we could go and just try to put cartridge batteries which are, they have nothing, it's just a battery and, but no, we violate the terms of service. It's like, what's going on? We've had we started with a YouTube channel.
That YouTube channel, you know, we've had to make other iterations since then, but our first YouTube channel was our major traffic driver we've had. And we would put basics, basic things, instructional videos, it's how to make your battery work, you know, what does this mean? Blinking lights? This, that our instructional videos had millions of views and then we suddenly violated the terms of service of YouTube after having these videos running for five, six years.
And now you just cut off our main traffic driver. So now back to SEO. Let's figure out what we got to do here.
Let's go on the front end, let's fix our ux.
I don't like how it is, but that's the game.
That's what it is now.
[00:23:49] Speaker A: It is interesting because it's, you're playing in other people's gardens. And so even with SEO, you know, my job is to meddle with their results. And so, you know, like, I can be conscientious about it and watch other people just bulldoze and get away with insane levels of black hat and be like, okay, yes, I could do that too. I know the processes. Like, I've had enough conversations with black cats of like, you know, hey, grab a domain and point a bunch of canon, you know, point a bunch of crap at it and then canonical it. It's working for now. But that also has its, you know, like you said, risks. But even just doing the normal stuff has its risk. I know personally, you know, 10 to 12, you know, chefs, restaurateurs, travel, people who went helpful. Content update rolled into town and it's totally wiped out a whole an economic class of content creators who were relying on traffic from Google to support their business. And overnight it's gone for, you know, and it was the, the main thing I think was setting up conference for the next two years explaining, hey, you know, where's the Google conference? And it's going to be okay. Content creators, uh, really, it never comes, it's not going to come back. It's not going to be the same.
[00:25:26] Speaker B: No, no. And lately you, you, you've seen, you know, these core updates are rolling out a lot more frequent, which every time it's just like chopping the, your legs out from under.
It's intense.
But you know, when it comes to the, the black hat guys, the, you know, you can do these things, sure, we could go out there and be cowboys, but we, we never got into the business for the purposes of, you know, trying to make a get rich quick scheme, right? We all are, we're adults now. We all have families, we all have responsibilities. We want sustainability and those things just aren't sustainable. You're, you're, it's like, you know, standing on your toes for everywhere that you walk and just like don't, don't lean down because once you get jammed up, that could be it, that could be over.
So, you know, we lean that way, we watch it happen.
We're just, you know, it's, you just, you just get upset seeing people just getting away with it and you know, seemingly making pretty good money and you want to do it, but you know that it's, it's, it's much harder than it looks. You know, you got to be on top of it. You gotta, you're dodging, you're looking over your shoulder, so to speak, online, which is, it's not a good feeling. Nobody needs, it's stressful enough.
We stay away from it.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: I'm curious, from an entrepreneur, small business perspective, what's your feeling for the next generation coming in, in the next five years, coming of age and looking at the market, would you give, you know, an 18 year old the advice of hey, start your business now, see what you can grow, get what education you want versus hey, you need to go to a university, get a degree and then find a job somewhere or somewhere between those two. I mean, because one's obvious, that's I grew up with the other one. And no, my parents were a little disappointed. I didn't go to four year, I only did one year of community college. But I got into digital marketing early and like I said, I ended up hiring a guy who went to a four year university and he was much more in debt than I was.
But that's also, you know, doing this for as long as you have.
For those newbies, 18 year olds coming into it, what's your advice?
[00:28:13] Speaker B: I, I lean more on the same side as you. I went to university and left out of it early to get started.
When I went, it was still, it was also the beginning of much of, not to say that Internet marketing was, was new, apps were new. I'm, you know, I'm, I'm starting college in the generation one iPhone, the beginning of apps, Farmville. I'm starting in that time.
So I went for marketing.
But everything that I'm being told was still billboards and slice of life commercials. So I'm like, no, where's the good stuff?
They didn't have it. Textbooks didn't have it.
Spoke to the dean, he didn't even know what it was.
And I was like, I think I'm in the wrong spot and I need to get started before I get left behind. That's, that's always my feeling. You know, I have a supreme, like it's really big fomo when something new technologically happens and I'm not on it. Yeah, I got, I gotta do it. So I would definitely tell someone 18 to just get started, just get started. I know a lot more people who are still trying to start. And it's decades after graduating from university, you get stuck. You realize very quickly that you can't learn everything from text. You have to do it. You have to do it. So get started while you can.
We got a new wave coming through the new digital age, which is AI.
And if you spend some years, as you see just in a month, everything could change there. You spend years trying to go the college route.
Unless you're trying to cut people open, like be a doctor or anything, I think you should just go and do the thing. Don't waste the money, don't waste the time.
[00:30:25] Speaker A: My next question comes from a previous guest and they, you know, I'm going to give you this opportunity to, to pass along a question for other SEOs, other entrepreneurs, other SMBs and guests. So I'll circle back and let you know what their answer is. So be thinking in the back of your mind, that's going to be the next question I ask you. So his question is kind of simple. What, what's your approach to cash flow within your business?
And you know, he said that he had tried and used profit first model for himself, but were there any lessons that you've come to learn the hard way about cash flow within your business?
And let's throw a spin on it, you know, does, does that change because of the, the transition from having a brick and mortar to being e commerce? And does that change the nature of how you look at your cash flow?
[00:31:29] Speaker B: A bit, yeah.
So for us, we started just all, almost every dollar was our own. Every time we made a dollar or made $2, we put those $2 back in whatever we had, you know, nine to fives, more or less when we started the business.
And it was all personal investment.
It's good, it's a good feeling to not have to owe anyone. But your growth is going to be slow. You're bootstrapping. So the things that you would like to do to get your name out there to reach people, you do need some money.
So throughout the decade, plus that we've done this There have been small things that we, we done, for example, like Clover Capital, you know, they give you a small loan, but at that time, you know, that helped immensely. And sure, they take a percentage of all your sales day to day, but it definitely propelled us forward, you know, some, you know, months, even at some points, you know, years ahead than if we just reinvested.
So I, I think, I think it's great to start in like bootstrap mode, you know, with your own capital, because everything new, you don't know, you don't know how you're going to sustain as a business. Being sure, someone looking at two vape sites, vape websites would say there's a two vape websites. But what we've always heard is what works for someone else might not work for you. So learn what works for you before you start taking in any like, loans or anything like that.
I believe credit cards are definitely useful because you can have a little bit more control over how you spend and you do it right. Get one rewards and some cash back. Anyway. Pay yourself.
[00:33:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I interviewed Jacob Egbert and he's like traveling the world basically funded with his rewards points. And he's turned it into. He's doing his Travel channel thing and I'm watching his TikToks. I'm like, I just interviewed that guy and now he's in Kyoto and he was just in Berlin and all on, on rewards points. I think it's one of those things that small business owners kind of forget that that's a bit of a cheat code, you know, like, and, you know, it's a little bit gated because if you don't have a good credit score, then it's harder to get the cards that give you the good rewards. But I mean, thankfully, not all of your credit. You know, you can have your personal credit and then your business credit and kind of get seen a little bit differently. So, yeah, financing for small business is, it's tough. It's tough.
[00:34:41] Speaker B: It is, it is. You definitely build that credit, even if it's not that, that great. If you got a good business model, you know, or even the, the resemblance of a good business model, you can, you know, move, move forward pretty quickly and rack up those, those, those miles. And every time you buy inventory, you might have just enough to get to Cali, California, or, you know, to the Caribbean if you want.
[00:35:10] Speaker A: All right, now it's time to ask what question keeps coming up in your business? Could be marketing, could be small business ownership.
What are you wondering? What haven't you Been able to solve. And I'll take it to other experts that I interview.
[00:35:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay.
Now, we tend to do this thing. Let me see if I could frame it as a question.
How do you pivot in an industry under fire?
Because, you know, for, for us, we've done this for over a decade.
You know, we. We make sure we take care of our family based off of this. This is, this is our livelihood. And then once it's under fire, how do you pivot into something else? Or do you. Or do you not pivot into something else? Do you strap down?
What do you do?
[00:36:26] Speaker A: Write it out. Yeah. The question is to diversify, try to duplicate your success, gain the benefits from your existing marketing website.
Obviously, if you're.
That's the kind of the catch 22 of a domain name, isn't it? You know, you, like, you can't exactly not sell vape pens. It's like, you know, we're selling education courses, selling MIT education
[email protected].
now, from a technical SEO standpoint, I can tell you that I did get, and this was an experiment I did. I got cheeseburger space to rank for. I think it was Nashville real estate on page one.
Because I wanted to prove that the domain name didn't matter. Matter.
But it did matter to a certain degree mostly, you know, to a certain degree in that case, because it was not only like a weird domain name, it was also a weird domain extension. You know, so it plays doubly with fire.
But I did end up, you know, with enough good links and enough good content. Cheeseburger space showed up for some real estate queries in Google.
So from a technical SEO perspective, sure, your domain name doesn't matter that much.
And I think it doesn't matter as much as some of the CEOs who are paying a million dollars for a domain.
I can never, ever believe that that's ever a good decision to waste that much capital just for a domain name. Had one company I knew, they spent $10,000 because they had the dot net and they wanted the dot, or they had the dot com and they wanted the dot net org.
It was opposite. Like, they're. They're like, oh, we want this more.
[00:38:26] Speaker B: I'm like, ah, that three and four letter domains. Oh, they try to get an acronym.
Yeah, big, big money talk.
[00:38:38] Speaker A: But yeah, you, you raise a good question. How do you double down or do you expand out? I will ask that of my next guest. I'm looking forward to the answers that they give.
I'm going to give you a chance to stand on a soapbox and give us your hottest take.
Based off of your experience as a small business owner, could be in the SEO niche. Could be customers that come in and fiddle with your merchandise and don't buy anything, or you ran into an impolite person the other day. What is your hottest take right now?
[00:39:16] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Okay.
The customer is always right was one of the biggest lies of our lifetime.
People will tell you that your, your shirt is blue when it's, when it's yellow.
People have such, there's, there's, I come from a customer service background before this and you know, there's, there's, everyone is, you know, 75 years old and disabled and they need this for 50% off.
But that's probably the oddest one. That's the only one that kind of, that gets us when we get the strangest emails.
[00:40:08] Speaker A: I think it's, it's this weird cross of, you know, like entitlement.
You know, like if I just say something, I can try to make you feel bad enough to get a discount. You know, my, my sensei at the karate dojo, we were doing our exercises. Like, you know, this lady came in and you know, she gave me her sob story about her son has cancer and you know, wanted, you know, was kind of nudge, nudge, wink, winking of like better pricing. I'm like, ah. I mean, I want to be compassionate but also like, there's just, I don't know, there's a lot of people who feel really entitled to your stuff.
[00:40:51] Speaker B: Yeah.
And, and you know, it doesn't help that there's a, just a massive amount of like friendly fraud that goes on with, with E Commerce. It.
You, as much as you want to feel for someone, you just, it's become very hard to believe anybody.
I don't know, I don't know if that arrived broken. I don't know if you didn't get your package, but we do have shipping protection.
We can figure it out.
Me just sending you something like, I'm Amazon. Unfortunately, I'm, I'm just a, you know, I'm not, I'm not a billionaire.
[00:41:34] Speaker A: Yeah, that, that is one of the secondary social impacts of, I mean, on the one hand we can thank Amazon for making E Commerce purchases way, way, way less scary for boomers. Because I remember when, like holding, literally holding my mom's hand when she made her first E Commerce purchase.
And I remember my wife, now wife, then girlfriend, her dad was ordering something and it was like a three hour long Conversation about the last Dateline episode. They're stealing people's information from their credit cards. And like is this safe? I don't know Michelle, should I really make this purchase? And you know, we were over there with our kids like a couple weeks ago and he placed his order for online without even thinking about it. So, so I appreciate that change in culture of like that's acceptable. But it, yeah, you're right. It does come with a downside for the cost aspect for small businesses. 3 PL Logistics.
The shipping costs are real.
And not to get political but certain events in the world making shipping much more expensive for everybody is a extra business cost that you then you have to factor into every other aspect.
You know, everything gets more expensive when it costs more to ship it. And Amazon can eat that because they, you know, that's their business model, the prime business model. And they're subsidizing their shipping and getting, you know, there's kind of not great Amazon business practices that are subsidizing their efforts. But there is an expectation.
You go to an E commerce site, oh, can I get free shipping?
[00:43:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:32] Speaker A: So should every E commerce vendor have free shipping and you eat it out of the margins and raise cost elsewhere or do you front with hey, we have shipping until you reach X spending level.
Like which is your, your preferred method.
[00:43:51] Speaker B: I think the reach a spending level and then free shipping is healthy. You know you kind of get rid of that a little bit of that entitlement that a lot of online shoppers have because of places like Amazon.
You know, even that's not free. But you do you get what I mean? Like you can still get things very quickly and for very cheap with free shipping.
But as an, as a anyone else that's not a giant corporation that it hurts, it hurts to deal with because the logistics can creep upon you very quickly if you're not paying attention. And all it takes is, you know, enough low, low cost orders, low priced orders and a few returns before you're paying double shipping every time. And that'll hurt. Definitely hurt.
[00:44:57] Speaker A: Well, I really appreciate your time. Tell the people where they can find your business.
If you are on any particular social media channel personally building a personal brand or anything else, give a shout out, help people connect with you as we kind of wrap up here.
[00:45:15] Speaker B: Yeah, you can, you can just reach out to us directly on discountvapepen.com you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. Mark Pitts M A R C P I T T S.
You know, I'll definitely respond to you. You can also reach us on Facebook.
You know, we have discount vape pin on Facebook. So if you purchase something from us or you just have a question about any of our products, we are also there to respond.
[00:45:43] Speaker A: Absolutely. Thank you so much for your time.
[00:45:46] Speaker B: Thank you.
