$100K Dropshipping Story (Long Read)

[GringoMonkey]

That is for print on demand , no?

I’ve got products I can get a 10X margin on right now in the works

Yes and the margin on them is 30x, but i sell multiple products to my customers

 

[GringoMonkey]

what do you suggest to look for when selecting a product? without spoiling the entire course i will say that charlie harps on finding a product with good margins as the #1 priority.. meaning, if you see most of the google shopping ads for the product are dead cheap, there really is no wiggle room. personally my product has listings anywhere from $30 up to $70 and one $120 listing...

also, charlie mentions finding the "price ceiling" for the product. meaning what is the max someone will realistically pay for the product? i've noticed for my product, there are branded products being sold for up to $120. they are private labeled though and basically accomplish the same thing. so yeah, it seems people are willing to pay $100 or more for the product as long as its presented as a premium brand that will actually solve their problems. there are obviously the cheap no name brands going at $30 but these products have low star reviews on their pages so.. it really all depends i guess

The problem with courses is to sell they have to show you an easy solution. Aliexpress integrated with shopify is very appealing but it hammers your margin. Suppliers got wise and make you pay through the nose for the convenience or your going through middlemen.

When i started out, many years back, google skag clicks were like $0.01 - $0.02, now they can be closer to $1 - $2! So now the average store is looking at circa $10-$20 per conversion. That means following course teachings you have to start selling higher priced products, as you are. But anything above about $30 is a considered purchase. Which is why you find it more difficult to scale, coupled with a lack of product quality / uniqueness when you go through aliexpress.

So you have to figure out a way around that.

Thats the background to your question and why you are having issues.

Here is what i do to address them...

I target a niche i can upsell multiple products to not just 1 product. Due to the increased cpc now, more than ever, you need a lifetime value from customers to get a huge roi as it does not always come on the first product you sell them. I treat the first sale as a hook to self fund and to build trust.

I mostly do print on demand as my front end offers. The reason is it means all my products are unique. Now i have a differential as well.

Finally i deal direct with a supplier to drive costs down. That means i can price below $30, get impulse buyers and make a profit on the front end.

But the big money comes on the backend upsells. Following the above front end system i can easily get 80%+ open rates and 20%+ purchase rates when i send a back end upsell email!

It is the balance of those 3 things on the front end, plus the backend upsells, that make the profit and great long term roi and i have never seen a course that tells you that, because it is a little messy to set up.

 

[PBNSurprise]

The problem with courses is to sell they have to show you an easy solution. Aliexpress integrated with shopify is very appealing but it hammers your margin. Suppliers got wise and make you pay through the nose for the convenience or your going through middlemen.

When i started out, many years back, google skag clicks were like $0.01 - $0.02, now they can be closer to $1 - $2! So now the average store is looking at circa $10-$20 per conversion. That means following course teachings you have to start selling higher priced products, as you are. But anything above about $30 is a considered purchase. Which is why you find it more difficult to scale, coupled with a lack of product quality / uniqueness when you go through aliexpress.

So you have to figure out a way around that.

Thats the background to your question and why you are having issues.

Here is what i do to address them...

I target a niche i can upsell multiple products to not just 1 product. Due to the increased cpc now, more than ever, you need a lifetime value from customers to get a huge roi as it does not always come on the first product you sell them. I treat the first sale as a hook to self fund and to build trust.

I mostly do print on demand as my front end offers. The reason is it means all my products are unique. Now i have a differential as well.

Finally i deal direct with a supplier to drive costs down. That means i can price below $30, get impulse buyers and make a profit on the front end.

But the big money comes on the backend upsells. Following the above front end system i can easily get 80%+ open rates and 20%+ purchase rates when i send a back end upsell email!

It is the balance of those 3 things on the front end, plus the backend upsells, that make the profit and great long term roi and i have never seen a course that tells you that, because it is a little messy to set up.

yes i agree, it's bread and butter from the looks of it. make a branded store, sell impulse products, collect e-mails, then send weekly or bi-weekly e-mail blasts linking to related products

yeah the agents will charge you more, the upside is the 1 click ordering and convenience

marketing anything can be hard, whether low cost or high cost.. if you are perceived as valuable and solve a problem, people will just buy. building lifetime value is important too. churning out multiple one product stores is also a viable way to scale as well. there are many ways you can do it... back to work for me

 

[GringoMonkey]

yes i agree, it's bread and butter from the looks of it. make a branded store, sell impulse products, collect e-mails, then send weekly or bi-weekly e-mail blasts linking to related products

Yes you are correct that is the basics of the model. But there are some nuances that need to be taken into account, that when applied make the product / technology selection element of courses such as charles brandts redundant. Which is why they never tell you, because they are trying to sell you a bundled easy to implement solution. When in reality to be successful it isnt straightforward.

As i explained the landing page structure / google ads part of the course are good. The product selection bit is not, so your fucked before you begin because it is the most important part!

Charles and everyone elses course:
Market research = Choose a product from ali express that sells well.
Accept competition
Plug it into shopify.

Several years back when very few people were doing dropshipping you could get away with it, because there was no competition. But now every man and his dog does that and as i explained suppliers have wised up and fleece you. Now all the best products and all the best deals are simply unavailable through aliexpress and incompatible with the shopify api. Which means using them is pointless.

So you have to copy successful businesses like Apple:
Conduct market research and create your own hq product
Make sure it can only be purchased through you.
Build your own supply chain.

But you cannot write a course about that. It is different for every store. So people like charles keep flogging their old product selection method as it fits nicely into a course. But 2020 reality is very different, else people like him would just be banging out thousands of stores and making $millions per day instead of writing courses. Unfortunately he seems to have convinced you that is possible. But it isnt. Else why isnt he doing it?

 

[PBNSurprise]

Yes you are correct that is the basics of the model. But there are some nuances that need to be taken into account, that when applied make the product / technology selection element of courses such as charles brandts redundant. Which is why they never tell you, because they are trying to sell you a bundled easy to implement solution. When in reality to be successful it isnt straightforward.

As i explained the landing page structure / google ads part of the course are good. The product selection bit is not, so your fucked before you begin because it is the most important part!

Charles and everyone elses course:
Market research = Choose a product from ali express that sells well.
Accept competition
Plug it into shopify.

Several years back when very few people were doing dropshipping you could get away with it, because there was no competition. But now every man and his dog does that and as i explained suppliers have wised up and fleece you. Now all the best products and all the best deals are simply unavailable through aliexpress and incompatible with the shopify api. Which means using them is pointless.

So you have to copy successful businesses like Apple:
Conduct market research and create your own hq product
Make sure it can only be purchased through you.
Build your own supply chain.

But you cannot write a course about that. It is different for every store. So people like charles keep flogging their old product selection method as it fits nicely into a course. But 2020 reality is very different, else people like him would just be banging out thousands of stores and making $millions per day instead of writing courses. Unfortunately he seems to have convinced you that is possible. But it isnt. Else why isnt he doing it?

yeah it's hard, we all can't be the next apple, making an hq product is difficult

i just want to point out that there are people out there making a killing from dropshipping using china agents.. perhaps it isn't so long term, but definitely you can make a couple $100k in profits or even 1 million in profits doing something like this, it has been done before

i sent you a message btw, i'm curious how you are doing backend and e-mail marketing

the bad thing about ads is that it can be random at times. kind of like a gamble. it's always the case with paid ads, when you're doing good and getting the sales, then you're fine. but when sales slow down, it's like "oh shit, i need to do something to fix this, fuck i need to make sales"

kind of like a roller coaster. from my limited experience i feel this is always the case with paid ads, or even just business in general. i guess the important thing is to look at the overall and as long as you're still profiting then your strategy "works" and you shouldn't be bothered by low profit or negative days

i started running ads beginning of this week, sold 9 units and made $529 but spent $563 on ads and cost of goods. so i'm negative, but yeah it's hard to tell if i can bring this back up. this is my first time doing SKAGS and dropshipping. i'll probably launch another store soon while at the same time working on this one to see if i can bring it back up

 

[GringoMonkey]

yeah it's hard, we all can't be the next apple, making an hq product is difficult

i just want to point out that there are people out there making a killing from dropshipping using china agents.. perhaps it isn't so long term, but definitely you can make a couple $100k in profits or even 1 million in profits doing something like this, it has been done before

i sent you a message btw, i'm curious how you are doing backend and e-mail marketing

the bad thing about ads is that it can be random at times. kind of like a gamble. it's always the case with paid ads, when you're doing good and getting the sales, then you're fine. but when sales slow down, it's like "oh shit, i need to do something to fix this, fuck i need to make sales"

kind of like a roller coaster. from my limited experience i feel this is always the case with paid ads, or even just business in general. i guess the important thing is to look at the overall and as long as you're still profiting then your strategy "works" and you shouldn't be bothered by low profit or negative days

i started running ads beginning of this week, sold 9 units and made $529 but spent $563 on ads and cost of goods. so i'm negative, but yeah it's hard to tell if i can bring this back up. this is my first time doing SKAGS and dropshipping. i'll probably launch another store soon while at the same time working on this one to see if i can bring it back up

There are always people that make money doing everything. But typically the successful ones had first mover / almost first mover advantage.

My key point is you need to figure out how you can get that kind of advantage before you start, else it will be very difficult.

Replied to your pm as well

 

[afgan84]

Great thread and it gives me same motivation to think to start dropshipping by creating my store on Shopify soon.

 

[CFT]

@GringoMonkey With Charlie's course I've watched. I've actually set up google shopping ads using that app which allows you to alter the keywords for GSA Feed for google shopping. I don't know if you've used it?

The only thing is it pulls the generic image that you get from Oberlo or if doing POD printful etc. Is there a way to select which image shows on shopping ads? As the only way i can do it is to delete the generic image and upload my own which was a nicer image for shopping ads. but with POD I'm not sure how to do that if you have different color t-shirts etc i'd need to keep the generic images.

I'm venturing into POD with some customization if that's the kind of POD you do

 

[Crazycam727]

@GringoMonkey With Charlie's course I've watched. I've actually set up google shopping ads using that app which allows you to alter the keywords for GSA Feed for google shopping. I don't know if you've used it?

The only thing is it pulls the generic image that you get from Oberlo or if doing POD printful etc. Is there a way to select which image shows on shopping ads? As the only way i can do it is to delete the generic image and upload my own which was a nicer image for shopping ads. but with POD I'm not sure how to do that if you have different color t-shirts etc i'd need to keep the generic images.

I'm venturing into POD with some customization if that's the kind of POD you do

Using gem pages or a similair page builder can solve your google shopping issue. In gem pages for instance, instead of issuing a "Product Image" block, just place an "image block" and upload the desired landing page image for the product. (This will not be the google shopping image)

The google shopping image will be the image you upload to the Products tab natively through the shopify dashboard.

 

[Northstarr]

I could share my fail story but reading this gives me fomo and motivation

 

[GringoMonkey]

@GringoMonkey With Charlie's course I've watched. I've actually set up google shopping ads using that app which allows you to alter the keywords for GSA Feed for google shopping. I don't know if you've used it?

The only thing is it pulls the generic image that you get from Oberlo or if doing POD printful etc. Is there a way to select which image shows on shopping ads? As the only way i can do it is to delete the generic image and upload my own which was a nicer image for shopping ads. but with POD I'm not sure how to do that if you have different color t-shirts etc i'd need to keep the generic images.

I'm venturing into POD with some customization if that's the kind of POD you do

Yes I do custom POD. But I do not use shopify, as I explained in an earlier post using api plugins means you pay through the nose for product for the convenience. Profit wise it is better to sort suppliers direct yourself.

 

[<StackyDev/>]

Thanks dude, I really appreciate the share! Anyway, I think I’ll start off with eBay as you did as I need some quick money to start with real Shopify Dropshipping. Wish me luck!

 

[Crazycam727]

Thanks dude, I really appreciate the share! Anyway, I think I’ll start off with eBay as you did as I need some quick money to start with real Shopify Dropshipping. Wish me luck!

Good Luck!

 

[Capo Chino]

Interesting. I've decided to do my own research and dive in.

 

[radi89]

Great post, I also followed Charlie’s course and did exactly what he said. Did you ever ran into policy violations with google? I’m stuck now as my account got suspended for misrepresentation and untrustworthy promotions tried getting answers from google but they won’t provide further information.

 

[Crazycam727]

Great post, I also followed Charlie’s course and did exactly what he said. Did you ever ran into policy violations with google? I’m stuck now as my account got suspended for misrepresentation and untrustworthy promotions tried getting answers from google but they won’t provide further information.

Yep i’ve had that many times - actually just got it today again. Google are fuckers. For me the live chat reps told me there are no issues with anything , but they still can’t unsuspend me.

Need to go around the problem . Lost about 100k due to this this month

 

[radi89]

Yep i’ve had that many times - actually just got it today again. Google are fuckers. For me the live chat reps told me there are no issues with anything , but they still can’t unsuspend me.

Need to go around the problem . Lost about 100k due to this this month

Yes it’s so annoying! They told me I just have to fix my page and contact information then I resubmitted. They even said it looks good, then got hit with the account suspended thing without any reason. Been trying to get this fixed for the past week but no luck

What solutions did you try that worked? Am thinking of giving up this account and just creating another one to try the review again..

 

[Crazycam727]

Yes it’s so annoying! They told me I just have to fix my page and contact information then I resubmitted. They even said it looks good, then got hit with the account suspended thing without any reason. Been trying to get this fixed for the past week but no luck

What solutions did you try that worked? Am thinking of giving up this account and just creating another one to try the review again..

It’s hit and miss really, I’ve contacted live support over 50 times in the past two days. Keep pressuring them until they give a specific policy

 

[radi89]

It’s hit and miss really, I’ve contacted live support over 50 times in the past two days. Keep pressuring them until they give a specific policy

So do you move on to another account if the account suspension doesn’t get lifted? Or do you eventually get them to lift it for you? For me there’s only the email option, does this have to do with the location I’m at?

 

[moneyguru2013]

Wow! Very comprehensive story here, this should inspire those who are skeptic or on the fence about Dropshipping.