Late to the Party: Reverse Engineering a Dropshipping Store

[SEOMadHatter]

I'm not new to dropshipping or retail arbitrage but this is the first time I think I've seriously looked at running a dropshipping store.

I have a basic theory in business. If someone's doing something consistently they're either an idiot or they're making money. And the idiots tend to go broke and stop eventually.

A friend pointed me toward a 6 figure business and I got a look at the dashboard. I did some digging into their ad campaigns and... yeah. Holy shit. It's got a bit of a twist compared to the usual dropshipping advice you hear but it still looks way too simple for this kind of profit.

I've been doing some digging and found competition in the niche and related niches I can expand on. Found an edge or two I can take advantage of so I'm not just tagging along for the market share and... yeah. Here we are.

I've seen a lot of 'oh holy crap this looks too easy' things before so I'm not getting ahead of myself. This might work - it might not. I'll throw a couple of hundred bucks into ad campaigns and see what happens.

If it works I'll swap from dropshipping to product creation. Partly because it'll give me an edge with unique products but mostly because it'll cut down on some customer service issues.

If not then it's only going to cost me a day or two to set up an MVP and a couple of hundred bucks in ads.

I'm waiting for some verification to see if I'll be able to run the ad campaigns. Hoping to find out today then I can start running some traffic and maybe have some numbers by Monday. Let's see how it goes.

 

[bankyam jin]

Good luck whatever you are upto with.

By targetting the correct audience you can sell a cheap saturated product for multiples of the purchasing price.

 

[Psh]

Dropshipping is always interesting, following - And good luck!

 

[SEOMadHatter]

Cheers folks.

Did a little digging and found more competition in some of these niches. It's a good sign. Especially since I can see what the six figure guy is doing differently and I potentially still have an edge.

I had some sites sitting around unused which could actually be perfect for these niches so I skinned them for the niche and setup the basics. I'll get a designer from another project to improve my simplistic art work a bit and give it a more branded look.

Awaiting some slow ass verification process for the ads now. I was hoping to get started with this tonight but it's not looking likely. I ran some free traffic at it to start building up a Facebook audience. Never really worked with that before but if I understand it correctly it means I can target them again cheaper than I could otherwise so I might as well let that build up from the start.

The product sourcing has a bit of a twist on it. I'm not going to the full extent my main competitor does (not to begin with anyway) but I think I can do something similar. Maybe a days work to put some automation together and I can start scaling - but I'll wait for these ads to go live first.

So that's it. For now just sitting on my hands for a bit.

 

[SEOMadHatter]

So... we made a sale.

I mentioned I ran a bit of free traffic to start building up the Facebook cookie? A couple of them found their way to the store and one made a purchase. We're up about $20 in profit.

On a low volume, it doesn't mean anything but it's a good sign.

Waiting for ads verification still. Back to sitting on my hands for now.

 

[rachid2012]

How do you reverse engineering a store ? Which tools do you use ?
How do you spy on their ad campaigns?

 

[Email Marketers]

Following! Can't wait to see your success with FB ads. Keep us updated and Good Luck!

 

[SEOMadHatter]

Looks like there was a snag in the process of setting up the ads. Even the account rep couldn't figure out what was going on so it looks like we're waiting until after the weekend for sure.

Started two of the designers on product creation. The current plan is to dropship from one site and start with some POD on the other to see how it compares. POD is going to be a lot less hassle on the customer service front - and it's better margins. Dropshipping is a lot faster to scale and testing more products.

Running a few tests on building up a Facebook pixel. I've literally no idea how many people you need on something like this for it t be useful or what it actually costs to retarget them but I keep getting told to do it - so let's see.

Had a further dig into my competition in other niches and saw them doing a similar strategy. I can certainly see why it's working for them and competition is a good sign. I've spotted a few spots for future expansion if we make it past the first hurdles.

It's looking promising. Hopefully, we'll start getting some numbers up next week.

How do you reverse engineering a store ? Which tools do you use ?
How do you spy on their ad campaigns?

There are tools which spider paid ads (Facebook for example just hands you them) but in this case, it was just some manual digging. The fact I got the first guys dashboard stats was just down to knowing a guy.

 

[SEOMadHatter]

Looks like I finally got a step in the right direction getting the ads running. Not huge on the delay but what are you going to do?

The first half dozen POD designs came through last night and they are awesome looking. I had my best designer on them and she happens to have intimate knowledge of the niche. I fleshed out the site a bit and got the new products setup. Now all we need is traffic.

This is always the part with new projects where you get the initial results in. You expect them to suck but secretly allow yourself to hope that you'll hit a home run right away.

Unless we have any major problems we'll have traffic starting this week. Hopefully today.

 

[SEOMadHatter]

I got a peek into another back end of a similar setup. $1 in on ad spend. $16 out. Absolutely crazy.

That (and the four cups of coffee) got me motivated to get my head down today. The first set of products are up, site design is finished (for the moment) and now we're just waiting for ad verification. I expect to get the first set of ads live tonight and more added later in the week.

Looking at it - I've picked a tricky niche to start with. Honestly, I don't expect it to be a profitable campaign right from the start here but when is it ever. So while I'm waiting for the results of this campaign I'm starting to prep the next niche.

 

[SEOMadHatter]

Alrighty. Bit of an update today.

Firstly we have our first ad campaign live. Currently a $0.13 CPC which is waaay lower than I thought I'd be getting. If we can hit 2% conversion rates with that we're looking good. The volume is pretty low we'll get a few hundred visits a week from the campaign at this rate so I'll leave it running for now and see how that goes.

Seeing a strange gap between the link clicks and the 'per view content' cookie firing. Not sure if that's down to ad blocking or the hosting being too slow. Will have to look into that one.

I've other ads in review which will hopefully be up and running soon. Still to make a second sale but it's early days yet.

Making some big changes as well. Decided to drop one of the niches in favour of two others. The niche I originally found has a number of dropshipping competitors and while that means there's money in the market they're probably more experienced than I am and I'd be wading into a competitive market.

Picked out two other niches instead. There's competition in both which means there's money to be made but I'm less likely to have to deal with the same shit in a competitive market. Maybe I'm a cynic but I can see them hitting me with bogus clicks and charge backs.

I've a designer making a bunch of new POD products for one niche and tomorrow I'll be working on scaling the products offered which means I can test a lot more niches easily. Still dealing with some verification stuff for some ads which is the biggest slowdown at the moment.

 

[Mr.PROCRASTINATOR]

you are working on politics niche arent you
if yes . prepare some other ad accounts since they will get you banned soon even you waited too long to get able to run political ads ( you know what i mean lol )
good luck mate

 

[FalkusKibre]

Following, keep up the good work mate! Sounds good! Trying to get my own store going after my Bachelor Thesis!

 

[SEOMadHatter]

Alright. I have a busy weekend working on other stuff so I won't get too much done for this but a couple of quick updates.

The ad CPC is down to $0.11 which is good. We've broken the 100 hits mark with 0 conversions but that's still too low volume to judge anything and (like I said originally) I think I made a mistake starting with this niche so I was expecting lower conversions. Going to drop it soon and go a little broader there.

Still an ongoing issue getting some of the ads up properly. I'm meeting with a guy who knows this stuff better and can hopefully help me figure out the problem so hopefully, that gets solved in the next couple of days.

On a brighter note (it can't all be doom and gloom) I think I've figured out how I'm going to scale this properly and IF my theory holds out we'll be able to start seeing some real traffic coming in by the end of the week. Maaaaaybe early in the week if I manage to make enough time to set things up. I've been digging into what my new competitors are doing and I think I see an opening.

you are working on politics niche arent you
if yes . prepare some other ad accounts since they will get you banned soon even you waited too long to get able to run political ads ( you know what i mean lol )
good luck mate

I'm not - but I have seen that niche and I can see why you'd think that. Facebook literally spills out your targetting and ad spend to everybody in politics so the barrier to entry seems crazy low. But yeah, I'm not surprised you run into shit there.

My delays getting the ads up have been a bit of a mix. Partly tech-related (still dealing with some shit at the moment but I've a new custom funnel and checkout in the works) and partly paperwork related. Living in a backpack is great - up until someone asks you to really prove they can trust you not to vanish somewhere.

 

[share4win]

Good luck on your journey...so you're paying per design to designers or they're your staff under payroll?

 

[SEOMadHatter]

The Facebook ads were not an instant success. No surprise there. If it was that easy we'd all be on a beach already. The CPC stayed low but after a few hundred hits I got a couple of carts at best. I'll be setting up a retargetting campaign this week but for now I'm leaving it be.

The last 6 hours have been busy though. I built a system to help me scale properly and it's about ready to go live. Though there's so many moving parts I'm absolutely expecting bugs to crop up this week.

While I wait for that to explode it should mean I have a lot more ads going live this week starting over the next 24 hours.

... After I get some sleep.

Good luck on your journey...so you're paying per design to designers or they're your staff under payroll?

They're paid from another project I'm just borrowing them here and there for this one to do some POD items.

 

[Smtppop3]

Looks interesting, I will tag along. Last time I did dropshipping i put $800 in got $400 out then quit, maybe I should have stuck around.

 

[Naijalife]

Currently starting dropshipping following your journey good luck on your journey

 

[Deleted member 15724]

The Facebook ads were not an instant success. No surprise there. If it was that easy we'd all be on a beach already. The CPC stayed low but after a few hundred hits I got a couple of carts at best. I'll be setting up a retargetting campaign this week but for now I'm leaving it be.

With cpc that low and no sales, I'm assuming you're using link clicks as your campaign objective? If so, switch over to conversions, it makes a huge difference. Don't be afraid to overbid either.

 

[SEOMadHatter]

I've only had three hours sleep but apparently that's all I'm getting so I'm getting a coffee and getting back to this.

One of my designers finished with a bunch of POD products so they'll be going up with a new ad campaign.

I'm meeting with a guy who knows paid ads a lot bettter than I do so I'm hoping to get another set of ads live today and my code didn't go haywire overnight and list everything at $0 again so I'll be scaling that up as well to see how it goes.

Strangely out of all the projects I'm working on at the moment this one actually has a proven track record. I can see my competitors consistently running ads doing similar things and that's usually my green light. Yet I don't have a whole lot of excitement or motivation for this one. Maybe it just seems a little too simple or maybe I'm just tired. I don't know. Let's get some more ads up and see what happens.

With cpc that low and no sales, I'm assuming you're using link clicks as your campaign objective? If so, switch over to conversions, it makes a huge difference. Don't be afraid to overbid either.

Cheers for the advice. I'll have to read into that a bit more I know you can target based on conversions but I assume it needs a lot of traffic before it's able to actually able to do that and be ROI+

No idea where I'd even start bidding with that. If I'm making $20 a sale I could pay $15 a conversion but I dread to imagine the CPC I'd end up paying testing that.

Looks interesting, I will tag along. Last time I did dropshipping i put $800 in got $400 out then quit, maybe I should have stuck around.

I'm probably not a shining example of getting into dropshipping. I've no clue what I'm doing. Though I'd imagine a 50% return is better than most get on their first attempt. I've met a lot of people who didn't make a sale.