Dropshipping… the new business model that is going to throw money at you in your first month, with no effort whatsoever and can make you can easily make 10k a month from home.
Now, let`s come back to reality a bit. Dropshipping is no longer what it used to be, and for good reasons. Yeah, yeah, before it was all easy and unicorns, but much has changed since then and the content you are consuming all over YouTube are telling you the same things that were said 10 years ago.
Well, does that mean dropshipping is dead?
Yup, it is definitely, dead for most people. And if I had to estimate perhaps 1 in 100 actually succeed. Question comes next, why that 1 person and not the rest? Here, we are going to cover that, and how you can actually make money doing dropshipping.
First things first, let`s go back to the basics: What is dropshipping?
Dropshipping is a very easy to understand business model, where you as a mediator, are buying products from a supplier, most likely Aliexpress, and then sell them to clients via your Online Store to someone else.
This is actually not new, this business model has been used for thousands of years, and the fact that people are still saying “Dropshipping is dead” makes me laugh.
But going back on the topic, the easy “dropshipping model” that was used a decade ago is no longer easy because so many people have started doing it.
So now, the business model goes like this:
You as a mediator are buying products from a supplier, most likely aliexpress, and then try to outcompete all of your competitors in selling your product via your online store, and not theirs.
Now, that is pretty much what has changed since back then. Because of the increased competition, dropshipping is no longer as easy as it used to be.
So, no, you can no longer get away with a store that looks like this.
Well, how exactly do you outcompete this massive competition?
The good news is that it is very, very, very easy to outcompete everyone because 99 in 100 are doing the same exact mistakes. And the way to make you 1 in 100 is by doing everything right.
It`s that simple. In order to do that, we need to roll out for a second and go back to the basics I believe you have heard this about 27 million times, but here it comes again.
When starting dropshipping there are a few simple steps.
Step number 1, find a winning product.
Step number 2 set up your online store.
Step number 3 create or edit some ad creatives.
Step number 4 launch some facebook or tiktok ads.
Pretty simple right? Well, that is basically what it means to do dropshipping. And the business model itself hasn`t changed much since then, what changed is the way you are doing it.
So let`s take step number 1, and we will go all the way to step 4 on how you actually have to do things. Finding your winning product, this one is always the first step because you will have to build your business around it. The most common issue I see is that everyone is selling the exact same thing, and this is by far the biggest mistake ever, and I believe you can also agree to that. If you picked a high competition product, you have lost before you even started. And most people simply love going all at the first product they think it would sell. Scrolling 30 minutes on aliexpress, opening some tabs and then pick the one you think would sell the most, right? That one should do.
Instead of selling the same exact product as another 1 billion people on the planet, how about you switch to something less competitive? It is far better to sell a product that has no competition, don’t you think? Even if it`s not something you would buy. Like a hair dryer rack that you can mount on the wall in the bathroom. Now I`ve never seen anyone having it nor selling. Or something like a soap dispenser. I mean, who would want to sell that? It`s not a fun product to sell, but if you have one of these and have some good ad creatives, I am pretty sure you would make some money out of it.
Let`s move on to step number 2, which is setting up your store. But before we get into that, I would like to quickly tell you about our brand-new company. We have noticed that the biggest issue when it comes to dropshipping, is that nobody is expert at every single aspect of e-commerce, therefore we have decided to build MyEcomBox. A brand-new company that offers you every single service you need to succeed, all under one roof. Whether it is Shopify Themes, Ad Creatives, Product Images, Logo Design or SEO, we have everything you lack, at a professional grade. On top of that we have just launched our Forum page, where you can connect with other store owners, help each other, or even partner, so make sure you check that out.
Going back to setting up your store, here, the first critical issue is very obvious. Everyone is using the same 5 or 6 free themes that Shopify is giving away like candies. The problem is not with the theme themselves, but that you are not doing any significant changes to actually make your store unique. So, if you cannot afford to buy a theme, at least try and edit it yourself.
Shopify doesn’t give you much freedom in editing the themes inside their theme editor, so all you have to do is download the theme zip file, feed it to AI and do what you want. You can simply go on Grok, give him the line of code, tell him what you want changed and bang, you got a new custom-made section.
A dropshipping store is good when you do not know it is a dropshipping store. It is not simple, but if you cannot afford to buy a theme, at least do what you can with the free ones.
Moving on a little further, when you are going online and want to buy something, where do you spend most of the time looking at? That`s right Dora, the product images. Another critical mistake that everyone does, simply downloading their product images off the listings of the supplier, most of the times, aliexpress. Very easy thing to do, but that`s just not good enough.
First of all, if you check your competition, they probably use the same exact images as your other competition. Some get smarter and edit them slightly, which works well depending on the quality of the images themselves. Although most of the time you won`t find quality images on any of these listings. I would rather recommend to buy the product, and take the images yourselves, than using low quality images found on aliexpress. Even simple pictures can work better than those, and if you got any editing skills, you can easily get away with it.
But now comes the most critical part when it comes to dropshipping, which is your advertising strategy.
There are a few ways to go by it, there is an organic traffic strategy, a paid advertising strategy, or a mix of both. Doing organic traffic, is very time consuming, and it is not so easy to get your videos go viral, but if you are young and have a lot of time, this might actually be your best option. If I was to recommend one of these, would be guaranteed a mix of both, and if not, I highly recommend going for paid advertising especially if you are working a 9-to-5 job. But for now, we are going to focus on paid advertising, although if you are doing organic traffic, the following tips will be extremely helpful to you as well.
And when it comes to that you must understand that it`s not as easy as choosing a country, select a budget and click run ads. It is extremely important do to very extensive keyword research to know exactly what type of client you want to look for. Let`s say you are selling laptop bags… What is the first thing that comes to your mind when choosing your keywords for this product, let me guess, laptop bags?
Try and be a bit more selective when it comes to that, and find words that are less competitive but have a lot of volume. You can simply go ahead on google trends, type “laptop bag”, and here you can see how much is this query typed on google over a chosen period of time. For example, in our case, there is a visible interest bump in laptop bags increasing most of the times around the beginning of November. And with California, New York and New Jeersey being top on our list. So, selling something like a laptop bag could be a smart thing right now based on the chart. I would rather use these keywords listed here than competitive keywords like “laptop bag” which are more expensive given that everyone competes for the same queries.
Another critical thing when it comes to advertising is your ad creative.
I am not saying that editing some videos you find online of your product won`t do the job, but ad creatives are not that easy to do. You must ensure that you use the right words, the right music, the perfect call to action. And without experience your conversion rate will likely be very low. So, if you are just getting started, I highly recommend outsourcing your ad creatives, and the best place to do that is MyEcomBox. There is a full studio of professional editors who can give you outstanding high quality ad creatives that are guaranteed to convert. Especially if you have executed perfectly every single step talked about throughout this video.
These are all the critical tips I have seen in my experience while doing dropshipping. And I really hope that they will be useful to you. I do wish that you succeed, and going further, it will require a lot of effort, stress and be ready to not see results in your first month. Succeess comes with time and learning from mistakes. It is simply unavoidable.