E-commerce consulting from a team that runs its own stores in Taiwan
Updated
TL;DR: RedClaw runs three online stores in Taiwan. One went from idea to live site in a day and took 38 paid orders in its first two months. Another grew from 79 to 1,281 Google clicks a month in three months. Both are still losing money on Meta ads, and we publish those numbers too. If you sell in Taiwan or elsewhere in Asia and you're stuck on payments, tracking, ads or SEO, we'll work through it with you the same way we work on our own stores.
Where stores get stuck
You can't take payments the usual way
Stripe doesn't list Taiwan as a supported country (stripe.com/global), and Shopify Payments isn't available here either (Shopify's supported-countries list). Local gateways like ECPay ask for a Taiwan ID or company registration, and we haven't found an official page that says whether a foreigner can open a personal account. You need a plan for who collects the money before you build anything.
Your payment application keeps getting rejected
In August 2026 one of our stores had four payment applications stuck in review at the same time, and none of them could take a card. Another store got 5 items sent back by ECPay and 3 by NewebPay. The reasons were almost always the same: the site didn't show the owner's name, phone number and address, or the contact details on the site didn't match what we'd registered with the gateway. We now check every store against that list before it's submitted.
Your ads spend but the orders don't add up
Meta reported 65 purchases for our dried-peach store. When we matched them against real paid orders, 34 came from Meta. The platform was counting roughly twice what actually happened. So the first thing we do on any account is reconcile platform numbers with your order backend and fix tracking. Budget talk comes after that.
You have a site but no traffic
Our dried-peach store got zero search impressions for its main product keyword ("dried peach" in Chinese) from launch until late September. Our pet-portrait store got 1,281 Google clicks in September, but most landed on a pet-name generator and pet-loss guides, and it hasn't had a new paid order since late July. Traffic that sits far from a purchase doesn't pay the bills. We start by looking at how close your content is to someone ready to buy.
Our own stores, in numbers
All three stores belong to RedClaw. Figures were pulled on 2026-10-07, wins and losses alike. Amounts are in New Taiwan dollars; we use NT$31 to US$1 in our reporting.
| Item | Taolilife | Maomuse | ONAÏ |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it sells | Dried peaches from Lalashan (one product) | Custom pet portraits (now digital files only) | Pre-order fashion from Seoul's Dongdaemun, plus kidswear |
| Idea to live site | 1 day (2026-08-04) | 3 days (Jul 9 → Jul 12) | 4 days to a review-ready build (Oct 1 → Oct 4) |
| Paid orders | 38, NT$35,279 | 2, NT$663 | 0 (checkout is closed on purpose while the payment application is prepared) |
| Google organic clicks | 92 in Aug → 157 in Sep | 79 in Jul → 296 in Aug → 1,281 in Sep | Not open to indexing yet |
| Meta ads | US$1,309.76 spent, ROAS about 0.78 (estimate) | US$369.04 spent, ROAS about 0.06 (estimate), paused in week 2 | None yet |
The ROAS figures are our own estimates. Taolilife: NT$31,550 in paid revenue attributed to Meta ÷ roughly NT$40,603 in Meta spend ≈ 0.78. Maomuse: NT$663 in confirmed payments ÷ roughly NT$11,440 in spend ≈ 0.06.
Each Meta-driven order at Taolilife costs us about NT$1,194, against an average order of NT$928. We lose money on every one of them right now. It isn't a success story, and we don't present it as one. Where the money leaks, what we changed and what happened next go into a monthly lessons series. Full write-ups: Taolilife, Maomuse, ONAÏ.
Taking card payments without a Taiwan entity
We run Stripe through a single-member Wyoming LLC, set up with a registered agent rather than Stripe Atlas. The EIN arrived about 24 days after the LLC was formed. Before applying, we found the site's pricing, refund, terms, privacy, contact and FAQ pages all returned 404, so we built them first. We submitted on 2026-09-15 and had live keys the same day. We've since created live checkout pages in TWD, USD, HKD, SGD, MYR and CNY.
Mistakes we made so you don't have to:
- Stripe's API takes TWD in the smallest unit, so NT$599 has to be sent as 59900.
- Adaptive Pricing is on by default and overrides the per-currency prices you set.
- Customer emails have no Chinese option in the dashboard; you set
preferred_localesthrough the API. - Stripe alone gives Taiwanese shoppers no convenience-store or ATM payment, which a lot of them expect.
What it costs, per Stripe's US pricing page: 2.9% + 30¢ for domestic cards, +1.5% for international cards, +1% when currency conversion is needed. Charging a Taiwan-issued card in TWD from a US account and paying out in USD can therefore run 5.4% + 30¢. For comparison, Atlas is a one-time US$500 (stripe.com/atlas).
What we do
Every engagement is quoted on your store's situation. Tell us on Telegram what you sell, which platform you use and where you're stuck, and we'll come back with scope and a price.
Launch sprint
For stores with no site yet, or a site that can't collect money. Our own builds went live in 1 to 4 days; the slow part is payment review. Taolilife needed a little over three weeks from its first gateway to steady card payments on ECPay. We cover:
- A custom-built store, or a cleanup of the one you have
- Payment-application prep: owner details, contact info that matches your gateway registration, refund policy, product category. If it gets rejected, we fix each listed reason and resubmit.
- GA4, Google Tag Manager, Meta Pixel and the server-side Conversions API (CAPI), installed together
Monthly coaching
For stores already selling that aren't sure the money is going to the right places. A regular review of Search Console, GA4, your order backend and ad-platform numbers side by side, a priority list for the next stretch, and a Telegram group for questions in between.
Marketing and SEO on hosted platforms
If you're on Shopify, WooCommerce, SHOPLINE, CYBERBIZ or EasyStore, we don't rebuild your site. We handle tracking (and the reconciliation above), Meta and Google ads including shopping feeds, on-platform SEO, and GEO (getting cited by AI search tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity). Store operations such as listings, customer service and promotions stay with you.
Paid ads
Meta and Google, tracking first. Every server-side conversion we send is logged in full, so if you change pixels or ad accounts later, the history can be replayed instead of lost.
SEO and GEO
Technical SEO plus content that sits close to a purchase. On Taolilife we cut mobile LCP from 13.1s to 2.2s; Chinese web fonts made up 76% of the homepage's transfer size, and switching to system fonts fixed it.
Platforms we work with
Apart from custom builds, this table comes from each platform's official documentation as of 2026-10-07. It isn't a record of our own hands-on work. We look inside your admin before we quote.
| Platform | What we can do | What to know first |
|---|---|---|
| Custom build (our stores use Next.js) | Everything: site, payment integration, tracking, SEO, ads | Someone has to own hosting and maintenance |
| Shopify | High SEO control: robots.txt, themes and 301s are editable; the official app includes CAPI | No Shopify Payments in Taiwan, so a 0.2–2% third-party fee applies; GTM only runs in the Custom Pixel sandbox |
| WordPress + WooCommerce | Everything | Hosting, plugin updates and security need an owner |
| CYBERBIZ (Taiwan) | theme.liquid is editable, so we can add schema and canonicals; CAPI via Meta's business extension | "+" plans take 1% of sales and Enterprise 5%, per the official comparison table (confirm on your quote) |
| EasyStore | Theme code is editable; CAPI turns on when you connect Facebook; no sales commission | robots.txt is locked; custom code has to be reinstalled if you switch themes |
| SHOPLINE (Taiwan) | Titles, descriptions and URLs per page; built-in product schema; GA4, GTM and CAPI built in, so we verify and reconcile | No code access, robots.txt is read-only, and 2% of sales goes to the platform (1.5% on the top plan) |
| 91APP (Taiwan) | Off-site work only: ad creative, audiences, reporting | Pricing and docs aren't public, and the platform sells its own SEO and ad services |
What we won't promise
- No guaranteed ROAS or revenue. Our own stores haven't all broken even. The table above shows it.
- No tax or legal advice. That includes US filings for your LLC and Taiwan tax questions. We'll point you to the official sources; your accountant or lawyer makes the call.
- No back-office management on marketplaces like Shopee or momo. We haven't done it ourselves.
- No store operations on hosted platforms. Listings, customer service and promotions stay with you.
FAQ
- Do you work with stores outside Taiwan?
Yes. Our own stores are in Taiwan, and Taiwan is where our payment and logistics experience comes from. Tracking, Meta and Google ads, and SEO work the same way for stores selling elsewhere in Asia or further afield.
- Can I use Stripe to sell to customers in Taiwan?
Taiwan isn't on Stripe's supported-country list, so you need an entity in a supported country. We use a US LLC. Customers in Taiwan can pay by card, but they won't get the convenience-store or ATM options many of them expect; those need a local gateway.
- How much does Stripe cost when a US account sells to customers in Asia?
Stripe's US pricing page lists 2.9% + 30¢ per domestic card charge, +1.5% for international cards and +1% for currency conversion. A card from Taiwan charged in TWD can come to 5.4% + 30¢.
- Did your own stores make money?
Not all of them, and not yet. Taolilife took 38 paid orders worth NT$35,279, but its Meta ROAS is about 0.78 by our estimate. Maomuse came in around 0.06 and we paused its ads in week two. We publish what went wrong and what we changed.
- I'm on Shopify. Can you still help?
Yes. Shopify gives more SEO control than most hosted platforms. The catch is Google Tag Manager: Shopify only allows it inside its Custom Pixel sandbox, so the usual GTM web-container setup won't work and we build tracking around that.
- Will you file US taxes for my LLC?
No. As an example of why it matters, the IRS lists a US$25,000 penalty for a foreign-owned single-member LLC that doesn't file Form 5472 on time (IRS instructions). Talk to a US tax professional.
- How is pricing set?
Each engagement is quoted on your store. Launch work, coaching, ads and SEO are priced separately, so you can buy just one.
- How do we start?
Send us a Telegram message with what you sell, the platform you're on and where you're stuck.
Tell us where your store is stuck
Rejected payment applications, ad numbers that don't reconcile, a site with no visitors: we've hit all three on our own stores. Send us your situation and we'll tell you straight what we can and can't help with.
Stack them: SEO + Paid + Tracking
Our clients rarely buy just one — SEO drives organic, paid amplifies, tracking calibrates. See what else fits your stack.