Dropshipping + Instagram, is this plan solid? Would appreciate advice

Hello everyone. I have been in IM game for long time now, I have made a lot of money through the years trying ton of different things, and after a break I am trying to get back. I have very solid capital to invest unlike in previous years, and I am looking for something that will be sort of "passive income" over time(get my return back after couple of months/year and have some good money from it every month after that). I know that things change quickly, but I think I am very capable of succeeding in anything if I put work into it.

I plan to open Shopify store(payment processor will be trouble, since I don't want to work mainly with paypal, and since I am not from US, shopify payments is unavailable for me, and the only option is US LLC for Stripe if it goes through or 2checkout which sucks).

I have flipped Instagram pages before, I know shoutouts are hit or miss since a lot of pages have fake followers, and I don't want to rely on Facebook ads in the beginning.

So my plan is: For example, I would like to dropship dog toys and accessories(I plan on doing something entirely different but I am taking this as example). I know it is saturated but there aren't many doing it properly and there are ton of pages with dogs and stuff. Margin on products is easily 100%+.

Since I have capital to invest, I'd reach out to legit pages and try to buy couple. Maybe spend 2,3 grand or so acquiring 100-200k network of couple dog pages with smaller audience and good engagement. I'd post and grow them over time, and every 5th-6th post I would post video of dog playing with product, which wouldn't be blatant ad, but actual funny video with link to product for sale(+link in bio). If I can convert during first 2 weeks at least 100 out of 100k people that follow me, 10$ profit per sale is 1k$ and I basically paid off my IG network. After that its bit of work but I can use money and invest it to grow the network further.

A main problem with dropshipping is long waiting times, but product like this people usually don't need urgently. I am okay if my dog toy comes after 2,3 weeks. If there is refund I can easily cover it since product isn't more than couple of dollars anyway. People have seen it probably before, so even with most saturated product, if you just capture sale at that moment(it is available on your page that they follow, and price is reasonable, they won't bother searching through 10 other sites to find cheaper price).

Is my plan solid? Am I missing anything? Of course, main thing would be to buy pages that have real engagement and followers. Would I be okay if I have 3,4 pages with same store link in bio? I don't see why not if I am not botting or doing anything that could get me ban or shadowban. Dropshipping I haven't tried yet but always wanted to get into it. I'd like to hear from someone who has been doing something similar to see how it went.

I own an influencer agency and there are a couple of things i would suggest.

Dont buy established ig pages, just pay for shoutouts. If you can establish they are legit to buy, you can establish if they are legit for shoutouts. The reason is you wont be able to spread your ad spend and people get bored. It is something called ad fatigue.

Get bio link, story and post.

I would also build a funnel of free+shipping for the hook product and then add in upsells. You will get a lot more engagement and sales that way.

GringoMonkey said:

I own an influencer agency and there are a couple of things i would suggest.

Dont buy established ig pages, just pay for shoutouts. If you can establish they are legit to buy, you can establish if they are legit for shoutouts. The reason is you wont be able to spread your ad spend and people get bored. It is something called ad fatigue.

Get bio link, story and post.

I would also build a funnel of free+shipping for the hook product and then add in upsells. You will get a lot more engagement and sales that way.

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Some pages overcharge for shoutouts, but even I find decent ones with real people and engagement, and use them for a month, I am going to spend money, make some sales, and be left with no page after that when I could have bought page instead of grew it further(unlimited shoutouts, with not a lot of spamming of course, and I could always sell page for more than I bought it for). Also, I know that people don't usually buy something when they see it first time. So having shoutout on some other page which will disappear after a day basically destroys a lot of potential sales that I could have if I posted a product on my page 4 times per month, and people always knew where to find it.

Also, any page offering shoutouts probably offered the same thing ton of times before and there is more ad fatigue on it than on my page in very long run. If I can actually pull it off to buy legit pages that weren't over advertising, I think its 10x more beneficial than going for shoutouts and hoping for the best. I can always experiment with buying shoutouts but have some stable income and growth on my accounts. I might be wrong but this is how I see the whole thing

As far as the drop shipping goes, do you have a wholesale supplier? Are you dropshipping bc thats the only way to acquire the product, or bc it is saving you the cash flow?
Is there a US supplier who will sell wholesale? Bc then you can try to get it on terms on have 30 or 60 days of sales before you need to pay the invoice.

James2774 said:

As far as the drop shipping goes, do you have a wholesale supplier? Are you dropshipping bc thats the only way to acquire the product, or bc it is saving you the cash flow?
Is there a US supplier who will sell wholesale? Bc then you can try to get it on terms on have 30 or 60 days of sales before you need to pay the invoice.

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I haven't found US supplier, and I would have problem with storing and shipping the product unless someone dropships for me every order. Price on aliexpress for item I want to sell is around 9-10$, on alibaba and wholesale sites in bulk its around 5$. So if I can get wholesale price that'd be great, but not sure how I would go about it. I could easily sell product for 20-30$ so going the most braindead route and just dropshipping from aliexpress doesn't seem that bad. Any US supplier will charge at least double IMO, and difference is quality is pretty much not important as you really can't make the product way better unless you spend ton of money to make it.

I did it. Let me ask you one question. Are you going to offer the same dog toys and videos everybody does? My feed is full of these.

keysikg said:

I haven't found US supplier, and I would have problem with storing and shipping the product unless someone dropships for me every order. Price on aliexpress for item I want to sell is around 9-10$, on alibaba and wholesale sites in bulk its around 5$. So if I can get wholesale price that'd be great, but not sure how I would go about it. I could easily sell product for 20-30$ so going the most braindead route and just dropshipping from aliexpress doesn't seem that bad. Any US supplier will charge at least double IMO, and difference is quality is pretty much not important as you really can't make the product way better unless you spend ton of money to make it.

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I know you dont want to disclose the product, but could we chat personally? If you had the product here you would need a fulfillment service then right? That shouldnt be to hard especially if youre saving $5 a piece itll pay for itself over. So now its a matter of finding a US supplier or getting that wholesale without investing too much cash?
Id be interested to try and convince someone to, or find someone else who already has wholesale with terms for you.
Or maybe someting else all together depending on the product. Are you a US resident?

N1ckG2 said:

I did it. Let me ask you one question. Are you going to offer the same dog toys and videos everybody does? My feed is full of these.

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I am not going to offer dog toys but I researched that niche as well, and to be honest I opened like 30 popular 50-200k pages I found on explore page with dogs and 2 of them had shop set up on their Instagram, 1 shop seemed okayish with a lot of room for improvement and 2nd one was awful. Again, like I said, you usually need very unique product that will play with human emotion(easily when its pet toys and people you target are those who like puppy pics all day long and follow couple plages). I don't think its problem if 10 other pages did the same, it's product that will catch your eye one day on the IG feed while you are scrolling and you will buy it because you want your pet to be happy and you want cool pic for Instagram or whatever. Don't see why it wouldnt work.

James2774 said:

I know you dont want to disclose the product, but could we chat personally? If you had the product here you would need a fulfillment service then right? That shouldnt be to hard especially if youre saving $5 a piece itll pay for itself over. So now its a matter of finding a US supplier or getting that wholesale without investing too much cash?
Id be interested to try and convince someone to, or find someone else who already has wholesale with terms for you.
Or maybe someting else all together depending on the product. Are you a US resident?

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I didn't start yet so I am not too concerned about wholesale now. If my shop is okay and this works I can always try to get bigger shipments in if that is necessary. I am not US resident and have never been there but I plan to target US market with my products