Dropshipping Journey to a Consistent $100 per day

[naz10101]

Update:

Compiled all images for my niche products. I was particularly looking for pictures where it showed my product being used.

One of things that is bothering me right now is the shipping times/ cost. I am thinking whether I have to go back into product research to mitigate this risk, and products with fulfilment centres that have good shipping time as a basic characteristic for my products. I think I will. I won't reset, but I will be checking to see if fulfilment centres exist outside China with non-scammy shipping times/ cost. If not, remove product and search for another one.

I've got few sample copy descriptions from other high quality stores, see Hygo. And I am going to use theirs as a guide to how I should write mine. I am hoping it doesn't take too long, otherwise I might just outsource this part.

 

[xPukwe]

Any update ?

 

[SuperSonicProxy]

Goodluck with your your journey as a whole. Looking forward to your updates!

 

[Amozenly]

Good luck on your journey.

 

[cindyrose888]

Any update ?

Its been 1 month since OP posted in this thread

 

[Robert J. Dewey]

Good luck with your great journey

 

[wpsokw]

Awesome progress so far op, I'm following along your journey. Does anyone have any suggestions for getting to the general store route? I have access to a few sites similar to niche hunter and those types that provide analysis and links/social media ads examples, etc for random products that are doing well. I'd really like to be versatile, but don't want to spread my ad spend nor campaign/seo thin. Any input would be helpful! Thanks and good luck, again op!

 

[liamb]

Make sure to put price of your product 3x the price you buy it for. Also sometimes Chinesse suppliers have super fast shipping called ePacket. I used to ask suppliers if they offer it, you'll get a lot less chargebacks.

 

[naz10101]

Its been 1 month since OP posted in this thread

Haha, sorry. Still around and still working. Update below

 

[TNgyuen]

Be aware. Facebook doesnt like dropshipping. And your ad account most likely will be banned at some point.

 

[naz10101]

Hi all,

It appears to have been over a month since I last posted. It was a bit of slow progress because of life (i.e. work). So what has happened since?

I have all the copy for my products ready to go. I am probably going to do a second iteration to see what are the negative comments about my products in general and make sure I am addressing this in my copy.

I have many lifestyle photos ready to go and saved.

I have built a few icons ie Badges, etc. to input into my website.

I've set up Excel Cost and Revenue Spreadsheet.

I have consulted with a few fiverr contractors about shopify website development because a) I don't want to invest time into building a website. b) The website I built is crap. I have had a look at a few people's portfolio and with the very good websites, most contractors have suggested buying a premium theme and then they could develop it.

So, I bought a premium theme, with the intention to pay a contractor to develop it. But I played around for it a bit, then I realised I could actually make a decent website. And very quickly. This is because I already have product description ready, product photos ready and lifestyle photos ready. The benefit of the premium themes is that there are some inbuilt functions that allow you to play around with banners and text, which you don't have with Debut theme. And I know enough CSS to be able to make minor changes that you can't do in the frontend of Shopify. So, here contractor was not needed. For now, anyways. But I think compared to the competitors, it's better. But, we'll see what happens

So all that is needed to do now is finalise logo, iterate product copy and maybe final touches to the website. Additionally, I am also looking at ad strategy & policies, and I think I'll be testing 3 different types of products at the same time with the same ad strategy. The variable for products will be based on demand. High, Medium & Low.

Anyways, that's that.

 

[naz10101]

Make sure to put price of your product 3x the price you buy it for. Also sometimes Chinesse suppliers have super fast shipping called ePacket. I used to ask suppliers if they offer it, you'll get a lot less chargebacks.

I am aware of that, but I thought it was cancelled? ie Trade issues etc. I'll have to keep an eye out for it. Cheers

 

[naz10101]

Be aware. Facebook doesnt like dropshipping. And your ad account most likely will be banned at some point.

Do you know why? Is this in relation to FB policy breaches? I know accounts are getting banned and I've also seen some going strong.

 

[naz10101]

Awesome progress so far op, I'm following along your journey. Does anyone have any suggestions for getting to the general store route? I have access to a few sites similar to niche hunter and those types that provide analysis and links/social media ads examples, etc for random products that are doing well. I'd really like to be versatile, but don't want to spread my ad spend nor campaign/seo thin. Any input would be helpful! Thanks and good luck, again op!

Versatile in what way?

Maybe look into define clear metrics that needs to be met for your product selection to minimise your risk?

 

[Crazycam727]

You’re going to need one of two things:

Either a different product to everyone else,

Or you’ll need to market the same product on a different marketing platform.

 

[sconda]

Update:

Compiled all images for my niche products. I was particularly looking for pictures where it showed my product being used.

One of things that is bothering me right now is the shipping times/ cost. I am thinking whether I have to go back into product research to mitigate this risk, and products with fulfilment centres that have good shipping time as a basic characteristic for my products. I think I will. I won't reset, but I will be checking to see if fulfilment centres exist outside China with non-scammy shipping times/ cost. If not, remove product and search for another one.

I've got few sample copy descriptions from other high quality stores, see Hygo. And I am going to use theirs as a guide to how I should write mine. I am hoping it doesn't take too long, otherwise I might just outsource this part.

Use Google docs voice writing feature to make your writing descriptions fast

 

[TNgyuen]

Versatile in what way?

Maybe look into define clear metrics that needs to be met for your product selection to minimise your risk?

Because of bad user experience. You can have a good run, but its just a matter of time when they ban you. Sad reality.

 

[Ice Geek]

Good luck journey.

 

[naz10101]

Latest Update: Launched the ads. Spent a fair amount of time researching and understanding ads, playing with product seo titles.

Will update with results soon. I feel pessimistic

 

[naz10101]

Update: I have discontinued the website sometime late last year. The niche was fitness fyi and I was using Google Shopping as the main platform to advertise.

Results: 1 sale. I am not too disappointed because I never got a sale before so this was really promising and made me realise that it is possible (imagine dropshipping for so long and never making a sale, that's so disheartening). But I discontinued not long after.

The reason for the failure was a combination of things:
1) My competition was better than me. They had better website and product photos. Mine was ripped right out of aliexpress. The product they were advertising was actually their own brand and I think manufactured by them.
2) Other competition would be underpricing and therefore profit margins are really really low. The best way to overcome this would've been to brand it yourself and have your own photos. I just didn't have the motivation to go that far.
3) Some of the nicher fitness products just didn't have enough people searching for it

I don't think dropshipping is dead. I just wasn't good enough to do it well.