80 Lower Website!

I want to share a little bit of a success story of my drop shipping business I had started about 9 months ago. This Drop Shipping store did not take the approach, getting the products from AliExpress, Oberlo or any other China based sources but from United States. I found a very good source: Inventory Source. I am sure you've heard of it. It's pretty solid, works with WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Shopify and other Ecommerce platforms as well.

Since their facilities are based in United States they are able to chop the shipping times down to 2 to 4 days the max. Nowadays, shipping times is a huge factor conducting a SOLID Ecommerce operation and AMAZON doesn't help having to condition people that 1 day shipping and delivery is a normal thing. This actually creates a HUGE problem with other small online businesses. If customer has been buying on the AMAZON and are used to 1 day deliveries. They buy from you and you deliver in 4 days. Even though it seems quick for them it's not 1 day so you lose business and they go back to AMAZON.

So here is the thing, we can't compete with AMAZON on the following things:

• Return Policy
• Refund Policy
• Shipping Times

Everything else is manageable. The reason AliExpress and Oberlo won't work either is:

• Shipping times are SLOW
• There is no infrastructure built for returns
• and on Refunds you pretty much can't afford to have this in-place because you will lose money and product + credit card companies always seem to favor the customer no matter how right you are as a business.

Anyhow,

After hundreds of ours of research and testing different sources, I came across Inventory source, which is U.S. based company. They got everything on point. You can pretty much find any product you fish to sell on there that you would find in the China. Only bad thing about it is that there is a monthly reoccurring fee associated.

In-my-case its something worth the investment as I am looking to provide, fast shipping and run my eComm like a legit business.

I narrowed down my niche and identified few trending products within the niche by doing a market research, using the data tools to track data and came across several products to choose from.

The Niche I choose to work with was outdoor sporting goods industry.

Here's how the niche goes:

Outdoor Sporting Goods (Broad) > Firearms (More specific) > AR15 Platform (Super Niche within firearms niche) > AR-15 parts (Which is even more niche narrowed down) > 80 Lower Receivers (Product within the AR-15 Parts).

Now to understand why I picked the 80 lower receiver as a product with in narrowed down niche of AR15 parts. You have to understand one of the few things as a drop shipper.

Idea of someone who is a expert dropshipper you have to build a legit website and make the user feel like they are buying from direct source not a 3rd party.

In order to do this correctly this is why the source of where you are getting your product is so important.

If you got the good product, good wholesale price and good shipping times, you can make the Drop Shipping model work.

So I can not sell complete firearms or parts that are considered as complete firearm parts because this would require FFL (Federal Firearms License). So I had to do my research and find which products I can sell that are important to those who are interested in building their own custom AR15 rifles.

This is where I came up with the 80 lower receivers. What makes this legal is it's not 100% lower receiver. It is 80% so the buyer has to complete the 80% to 100% before this product is even functional.

Here's the kicker.

In order to complete it to 100% you need special tools and something called JIG KIT. This is our at the end of the cart checkout UPSELL strategy. and you'll be surprised about 25 to 30% on a good month actually buy into the UpSell.

So far my website ranks for:

• 863 Keywords (Of course not all of them are on first page of Google but about 15% are).
• Average keyword difficulty ranges 29 to 63 in this industry so it's not so crazy
• My website has been around since June of 2021 (This is where I had everything done and submitted to search console and bing web masters).
• I've accumulated total of 3k+ backlinks over this period of time
• I've used the combination of white hat and grey hat methods to get my rankings performing
• The website generates about 7k to 9k visitors on a monthly basis as of February of 2022. Before it was averaging 2.5k to 5k but as more keywords moved up I am seeing steady traffic increase.
• Past 3 months the SALES have been very consistent, before it was all over the place.

Anyhow, I just wanted to share this with you guys, Drop Shipping models do work, you just have to work out the details as to how you can make yourself look legit. This goes to, having a supplier that can ship your products on time. Having a good supply source. and smooth shopping website that delivers high level experience to the online shoppers with great, fast and responsive customer service. That's basically what I can say from my experience!

If you guys have any questions, please let me know.

That’s a pretty wild niche to be in especially law makers discussing the implementation of new regulations for early this summer, it seems like there is a strong chance they might be able to succeed by passing the “ban” on 80 percent lowers. Although this might be a good thing for your website, as more news implements fear into the market, people start to panic buy these type of products.

there is something called “grandfathered” term, basically means. If something in the firearms industry gets banned.

And if this is something Civilians were allowed to own at one point in their lives, the government can’t take that item away from anyone, as its considered a grandfathered in the household.

So this itself creates a huge rush among consumers buying out as much available products they can as they think it might get banned.

this could be a great thing for you, as longest your rankings are well positioned. In-fact you don’t even need to be on the first page of Google exactly, 2nd page of SERPs and bottom of second page can also have huge impact on your sales as the first page result websites can easily be out of stock due to the lack of supplies.

definitely a interesting and WILD niche!

Good Share thanks I am in middle of starting and done a lot of research found alot of things you stated here to be factors I had not considered and recently looking into Ali Express -Owned service as they seem to have discovered as you did its bad for their business as well and they started like a month or so ago promoting SellVilla which is actually owned by Ali Express but warehouse is in Irvine CA. It has a monthly fee and I have not yet tested them was just about to give them a try.
Niching Down is a great idea and one I too am working on instead of just Clothing I am working on like Dry Fit clothing for fitness etc store ideas and a 2nd store I am planning to test something similar to what you did for Air Riffles.

Do you do handgun 80% lowers too, like the P80s? Do you just do AR15s or other rifle frames too? I see you upsell the Jig, but do you also offer complete kits with the Jig already? Have you considered upselling drill presses and vice grips?

BHSEONewb said:

Do you do handgun 80% lowers too, like the P80s? Do you just do AR15s or other rifle frames too? I see you upsell the Jig, but do you also offer complete kits with the Jig already? Have you considered upselling drill presses and vice grips?

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Great question pal.
I mainly deal with the AR platform.
Which includes: AR15, AR10, and AR9

I do not deal with Polymer80 build kits or individual handgun 80% lowers.

In regards to my products, people can buy individual components or kits as well as available options my supplier has.

I have thought about implementing the Drillpress and Vice Grips as a individual items which users can browse and add into their carts but I have not considered this as an upsell strategy. This is not a bad idea at all. Especially if drillpress can be found for decent price where I can get healthy profit out of it.

Good read! Thx for share.

Really good post, Thanks for sharing

What is your link building strategy?

junglekingx said:

Great question pal.
I mainly deal with the AR platform.
Which includes: AR15, AR10, and AR9

I do not deal with Polymer80 build kits or individual handgun 80% lowers.

In regards to my products, people can buy individual components or kits as well as available options my supplier has.

I have thought about implementing the Drillpress and Vice Grips as a individual items which users can browse and add into their carts but I have not considered this as an upsell strategy. This is not a bad idea at all. Especially if drillpress can be found for decent price where I can get healthy profit out of it.

Click to expand...

My pleasure!