A reader of this newsletter told me his goal is to reach a $4M net worth in seven years.
His current plan—“aggressive stock picking”—isn’t working.
He asked whether the lessons I share here could help him reach $1M in annual sales while generating $100K in annual income, with the potential to 5× that.
I can’t guarantee outcomes.
But here’s exactly how I’d build a $1M e-commerce business in 12 months if I were starting today.
Use this as a guide to reach your first $1M—or your next $1M—in your current brand.
If your goal is bigger, add a zero. The process doesn’t change.
What does $1M actually mean?
Assumptions
- Selling price: $25
- Average order value (AOV): $75
- Conversion rate: 3%
- Cost per visitor: $3
- Portion of traffic from ads: ⅔
Performance required
- Sales: $84,000/month
- Orders: 38/day
- Traffic: 1,300/day
- Ad spend: $2,600/day
This is what the math looks like.
What product to sell
Start with a product that can realistically support $1M in annual sales.
It’s far easier to sell one product at $1M per year than ten products at $100K each.
Fewer pages.
Fewer suppliers.
Fewer ads.
Here’s what to look for:
- A large, growing market
- Light and small
- Something you actually use*
- Clear room for meaningful improvement
- The best packaging in the category
- Strong margins (4–5× markup on cost)
*This matters more than most people think. Not selling a product you actually use is, as Charlie Munger put it, “like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.”
How to get sales (not what you think)
What does Amazon protect more than anything else?
Reviews.
Without authentic reviews, customers don’t trust the platform. Without trust, they don’t buy.
You can have a bad website, high prices, mediocre copy, and slow customer service—but if you have a mountain of genuine, enthusiastic reviews, you’ll still get sales.
The first and most important marketing job is to generate as many real, positive, over-the-top reviews as possible.
Reviews increase conversion rate.
Higher conversion increases sales.
More sales generate more reviews.
The flywheel spins.
For every 20 written reviews, aim for:
- 4 customer photos
- 1 customer video
Make it easy to become a customer
Target a day-one AOV of 3× your single-unit price.
For example, we sell $25 bags of coffee. Our day-one AOV is about $80.
Here’s how:
- Offer a clear new-customer special
- Incentivize buying 3–6 units upfront
- Provide a generous, low-friction guarantee (at least 30 days)
- Use real scarcity (limited supply is almost always true in e-commerce)
What’s not in this strategy
- Ads
- Funnels
- Apps
- Email & SMS
If you sell the right product, collect a large volume of real customer reviews, and make a strong offer, everything else becomes simple.
Is e-commerce dead in 2026?
Follow the money.
- Early 2025: Wild deodorant acquired for $270M
- May 2025: Poppi acquired for $1.95B
- May 2025: Rhode acquired for $1B
- November 2025: LesserEvil acquired for $750M
To understand this business clearly, replace the term “e-commerce” with “consumer brand”.
Consumer products have existed for centuries.
Today, we simply start them online—faster, cheaper, and with less friction.
Global retail is a $30T market.
E-commerce is growing by $600B per year.
There has never been a better time to build a consumer brand.
—Matt
P.S. If you run a $1M–$5M e-commerce business and feel stuck, the answer isn’t doing more of what got you here. Click here to break through.
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