Ask me anything about Shopify Dropshipping (Store Development)

[Steven McStevenson]

Hello members,

I've been working with Shopify for last 4 years and I actually never keep track of how many stores I made, but I'm pretty sure it's around 70 different stores over that time period.

I guess I could say I covered almost every niche I can think of right now so nothing is strange (new) to me. I decided to make this thread cause I'm sick of all online gurus (I'm sick of this word) giving you false information, or information that worked just for them without giving you the whole backstory.

You can ask me anything regarding Shopify platform, Dropshipping, store development, how to do this, how to do that. You can also send me your store URL in the Inbox and I'll tell you what to change/remove/improve.

Note for the mods: If I'm in wrong section, I'm really sorry. Just move the thread where you think it belongs. Thank you in advance!

 

[LilithX]

Hi,

70 websites? Nice!

Thanks for doing this! So, I guess my first couple questions would be..

Did you create the sites for yourself or for other people?

If for yourself, is every store somewhat profitable?

What is the biggest mistake that most people make when creating a dropshipping store?

Is there any guide/tutorials that you would recommend if you want to create a store properly?

Thank you.

 

[wolfask]

Best payment getway??

 

[on1]

While 70 stores sounds like an impressive number what’s your total revenue from all stores? Best preforming store revenue/niche? Profit from your best preforming store? Why do you have so many stores?

 

[Dmaxxy]

Hiw did you manage 70 stores?

 

[trollini]

My country has really bad postal service, so china regular mail takes up to 45 days, my customers hate this, What can you sugest

 

[Steven McStevenson]

Hi,

70 websites? Nice!

Thanks for doing this! So, I guess my first couple questions would be..

Did you create the sites for yourself or for other people?

If for yourself, is every store somewhat profitable?

What is the biggest mistake that most people make when creating a dropshipping store?

Is there any guide/tutorials that you would recommend if you want to create a store properly?

Thank you.

Hi LilithX, first of all I want to thank you for writing these questions for me.

1.) I made 3 stores for myself and the rest were for my clients. All three of them were profitable and still are. I'm not making hundreds of thousands per year or millions, but I make a decent amount of money. Two of them are still active and the third one I sold on Shopify Market for $2000.

2.) I always say this and I'll do it again. The biggest mistake is getting into whole dropshipping thing with a completely wrong mindset. And that's all because you watch too many online videos from different gurus that are "trying to help you" but actually all the money they make, it's from you, the viewer. Some of them hit the perfect timing and made some money and decided to sell you their theory, which is wrong. The best tips they keep for themselves.

You should order your product, test it. See if it works fine, what about shipping time, did you wait 1 week or 1 month? And one of the most common mistakes is adding bunch of apps for boosting your conversion and then you get product page full of colors and popups, I would never buy of that page.

3.) I really don't recommend any youtuber or idk, because nobody knows everything. You can find all the info about how to create and how to run dropshipping store online and just combine all the information you gathered. But make sure you use your brain and follow your gut. It's all about differences, just be a little bit different than the others.

Feel free to send me a message and we can talk a little bit more about whole dropshipping thing.

Best payment getway??

Hi Wolfask, great question! It really depends on your location. I had a lot of troubles with payment gateways for my country, we had only PayPal. Look, PayPal is great as long as you're doing everything 100% legal and you have policies publicly visible on your store. Also, if you're using PayPal, make sure you withdraw money on weekly basis.

Now to answer your question, I tried few different gateways like Paymill, Quickpay, Adyen, 2checkout. If you don't have a registered company, you can get approved on 2checkout easily. Just choose sole proprietorship, take a pic of a bill and that's all. If I was able to use Skrill, I'd use it but it's not available in my country. I mean, there's no huge difference between providers. If you're having a lot of orders like thousands of orders every day, I'd recommend picking one with the lowest fee's because you don't want them to take half of your earnings. So pay attention to that.

 

[Steven McStevenson]

Hiw did you manage 70 stores?

Thanks for your questions! I'm not the owner of all those stores. I just made them but their owners are managing them. Three of those stores are actually mine, that I manage.
But I used to manage multiple stores at the same time and it's not that hard. If you know what you're doing you can easily finish all the task on time. Register to as Shopify Developer (Partner) and you'll be able to create/mange multiple stores. Start creating them, pick like 3 niches that you like and create store for each one of the niches. This way you're going to practice but also have three stores that you can later keep running or sell on marketplace.

My country has really bad postal service, so china regular mail takes up to 45 days, my customers hate this, What can you sugest

Hi trollini, thank you for the question! Yes, shipping times are sometimes problem when you're using products from AliExpress. Now, the thing is, you have to do a lot of research before you start selling anything. That's a huge problem that a lot of you guys do, you don't do enough research, you just jump into it and hope for the best. Try to follow this: First think of the niche/type of product that you'd like to sell, the one that you like or just one that you have a good feeling about. Then, order that product from your manufacturer and see it for yourself, see how long does it take for the package to arrive. I know, you're going to spend money and time but that's how it goes.

There are a lot of product on AliExpress that have "fast" shipping (when I say fast I mean up to 2 weeks.) There's also a lot of items you can find on Oberlo that have warehouse in USA or Europe and the shipping times on those items are low like 3,4 days. Of course, there's not that many items with warehouses in USA & Europe but you can find something for sure.

And one more thing, never lie to your customers. Don't write that you offer shipping in 1 week if you actually have to wait 3 weeks for the package to arrive .Just tell them that you're selling directly from your manufacturer in Middle East, Asia or even Europe and USA (depending where you live) and say the truth. If it's 3 weeks, say 3 weeks. This way, you will be transparent with your customers and they won't open any disputes or contact you regarding their orders. Trust me, a lot of emails and messages about missing packages is going to kill your business and your ambition.

Don't think because Amazon can ship next day, that your store is useless. Any product that people can relate to, product that solves their problem or product that someone they love is going to use, that is a good product. Your customers will wait a month if needed to receive something they really really want. So don't expect them to wait for a phone case for a month. They can buy it on any other store and it's not a necessary product.

Hope this helps you a little bit. Feel free to contact me directly in Inbox, I'd be glad to help you more.

 

[blackbeans]

Any high converting free traffic tips?

I know how to drive traffic from reviews and comments using email but are there other high converting FREE options?

 

[goku555]

Hey man, my shopify is needing a Page speed boost according to GTmetrix.com. Hopes this will help my SEO slightly in the long term. There are some simple coding that could be fixed with my videos like defering javascript which i'm not 100% confident in trying. I'd be willing to send some money PayPal if you Pm me and we talk about it. I can't send messages i think since my account is new Thanks.

 

[Steven McStevenson]

Any high converting free traffic tips?

I know how to drive traffic from reviews and comments using email but are there other high converting FREE options?

Hey Blackbeans, nice question!
I've been trying different ways of getting traffic that will convert besides advertising but it's never actually something amazingly successful. High converting and Free, it sounds wrong from the beginning. Because you can't expect something good to be free. But yea, here are some things you should try. Maybe you tried some, we'll see.

1.) Hosting giveaway on IG. This is a popular method of getting free traffic but I can't guarantee it will covert 100%. For this to work, you should have already something posted on instagram, like 20 or more posts with some followers already following you. Create a nice graphic or a video and post it. Ask for your followers to tag their friends on that post and make sure they follow your ig page too. After few comments there should be a bunch of new people on your IG but also visiting your store which will lead to some kind of valuable action. Make sure you offer something amazing in your giveaway and make sure you set end time of your giveaway like at least 14 days from that day so that you get enough time to get few sales and send the winners their products. Or you can be sneaky and participate in giveaways with few of your fake profiles or ask friends to do that and then make them a "winners".

2.) Reddit, to be specific /r/shutupandtakemymoney , there's 430k people on that subreddit, you can simply post a "review" for one of your cool products and publish it there. Make sure you have at least 50 karma, that's the requirement to post in that subreddit. Make sure that the post doesn't look like an ad for your product. Make it look like you're just a customer that found that product and wanted to share it with others. You can also use some other subreddits but you're probably going to get only traffic without any conversions.

3.) If you're into filming, you can order your product and create few simple but cool clips, using your product, showcase, review, funny sketch, whatever. Or you can just steal someone's video and upload it as yours. You can edit it a little bit. It's not some amazing idea but re-uploading the video won't take you much time and you can actually get some traffic the same day.

4.) If you have a bunch of websites, like blog pages, you can always feature your products on these and organically get some traffic. You're the one that creates the posts so make sure you use the right keywords and write something catchy.

I just woke up so I'm a little bit slow on thinking right now. If I come up with something I'll post it here or edit the post. Thanks for the question!

 

[mr.zet]

Hello, Steven
I apologize for my written English.
I have a question. I am in Ukraine and in our country many payment gateways do not work, including Paypal and Stripe. I heard a lot of bad reviews about 2Checkout, and if I'm not mistaken in this system, you need to have a ready business for registration. I'm just starting to work with Shopify.
What payment systems do you recommend? I want to sell products in the USA, Canada and Europe.
Thank you for your attention.

 

[Steven McStevenson]

Hello, Steven
I apologize for my written English.
I have a question. I am in Ukraine and in our country many payment gateways do not work, including Paypal and Stripe. I heard a lot of bad reviews about 2Checkout, and if I'm not mistaken in this system, you need to have a ready business for registration. I'm just starting to work with Shopify.
What payment systems do you recommend? I want to sell products in the USA, Canada and Europe.
Thank you for your attention.

Hi mr.zet,

Sorry for the delay, I've been busy. Let me try to help you with your questions.

Didn't know that PayPal is not available in Ukraine, too bad. I used and I still use 2checkout.
I also saw a lot of people talking sh*t about 2checkout but also for all other payment gateways. As long as you have registered business and use everything properly(legally), you're safe.
I never had any problems with 2checkout nor PayPal even tho thousands of members on forum say bad things about PayPal.

You need to have all policies, visible on your store and don't lie about shipping time. If you're saying the truth and you're following guidelines of different services, you won't lose money or get banned.

I'm not sure about other providers for Ukraine cause I don't live there. But go to Shopify payment settings and check what providers are available for your location. Then you can reply here with some of them and I'll try to help you with choosing the best one.

 

[mr.zet]

Hi mr.zet,

Sorry for the delay, I've been busy. Let me try to help you with your questions.

Didn't know that PayPal is not available in Ukraine, too bad. I used and I still use 2checkout.
I also saw a lot of people talking sh*t about 2checkout but also for all other payment gateways. As long as you have registered business and use everything properly(legally), you're safe.
I never had any problems with 2checkout nor PayPal even tho thousands of members on forum say bad things about PayPal.

You need to have all policies, visible on your store and don't lie about shipping time. If you're saying the truth and you're following guidelines of different services, you won't lose money or get banned.

I'm not sure about other providers for Ukraine cause I don't live there. But go to Shopify payment settings and check what providers are available for your location. Then you can reply here with some of them and I'll try to help you with choosing the best one.

Thank you very much for your reply!
I apologize for taking up your time, but I have one more question)
What is the optimal delivery time so as not to lose customers? If the goods are delivered within 21-25 days it will greatly reduce sales? Or is it better to look for goods that will be delivered within 5-7 days? Thank you for your attention!

 

[Steven McStevenson]

Thank you very much for your reply!
I apologize for taking up your time, but I have one more question)
What is the optimal delivery time so as not to lose customers? If the goods are delivered within 21-25 days it will greatly reduce sales? Or is it better to look for goods that will be delivered within 5-7 days? Thank you for your attention!

It's hard to achieve optimal time delivery because people (especially in USA) expect it to arrive in 2-5 days (Amazon spoiled everyone).
There are some products on Oberlo that have warehouses in USA so the shipping time won't be longer than 5 days. But you're limited then, because there's not many different items with warehouse in USA.
Always use ePacket and do a lot of research. You can find products on AliExpress that can arrive in 5-10 days with ePacket, you just have to do some research.

If you can't find an item that can arrive in 2-5 days, then make sure you sell items that people can relate to, that they can't buy on Amazon or store in their neighborhood.

 

[jackmorgan]

I never had any problems with 2checkout nor PayPal even tho thousands of members on forum say bad things about PayPal.

Hi there mate! So do you have a registered business? Because you mentioned earlier that you can use 2checkout and not having a registered business, meaning you send them only the utility bill.

Thanks!

 

[mr.zet]

It's hard to achieve optimal time delivery because people (especially in USA) expect it to arrive in 2-5 days (Amazon spoiled everyone).
There are some products on Oberlo that have warehouses in USA so the shipping time won't be longer than 5 days. But you're limited then, because there's not many different items with warehouse in USA.
Always use ePacket and do a lot of research. You can find products on AliExpress that can arrive in 5-10 days with ePacket, you just have to do some research.

If you can't find an item that can arrive in 2-5 days, then make sure you sell items that people can relate to, that they can't buy on Amazon or store in their neighborhood.

I am very grateful to you for your answer!
Wish you luck! And thanks again)

 

[Steven McStevenson]

Hi there mate! So do you have a registered business? Because you mentioned earlier that you can use 2checkout and not having a registered business, meaning you send them only the utility bill.

Thanks!

For 2checkout you don't need to have a registered company, eve tho they did some redesign so I don't know if they changed that but I guess they haven't.
You can register as Sole Proprietorship and yes, send them utility bill. If bills are not on your name you can still make it just let them know that the name on the bill is your mothers or fathers or whoever is the owner. I tried it and it worked.

 

[jackmorgan]

For 2checkout you don't need to have a registered company, eve tho they did some redesign so I don't know if they changed that but I guess they haven't.
You can register as Sole Proprietorship and yes, send them utility bill. If bills are not on your name you can still make it just let them know that the name on the bill is your mothers or fathers or whoever is the owner. I tried it and it worked.

Awesome, thank you! How often do they pay and how is the overall experience? Is their support team good?

 

[loukeyzee]

Hey,
Have you seen success in one product store? A luxury item?