[Journey] Another Dropship journey. Learn from my mistakes.

Hey Guys,

This is going to be another dropship journey. I have learnt tremendously from BHW and want to share my journey with the board. I have posted in other threads but I realized the journey threads got the best feedback so here I am.

I started dropshipping a month or so ago and have been investing in FB ads. I have been testing and have not had any luck with any products thus far. 2 sales total with $950 FB ad spend and tested 10 products. In short I am still learning. Not worried about this as I know it will take time.

Resources used so far:
- Franklin Hatchet videos
- Lunaa BHW thread
- Shopify guides etc..
- Some free ecom guides found on BHW

Stats:
Store #1 (niche - now closed)
FB ads: $300
Rev: $10

Store #2 (General)
FB ads: $647
Rev: $10

Currently I am using Alidropship and not shopify. I do not consider these as failures but moreso the price of education at the University of Dropshipping lol.

Feel free to follow along. I will update irregularly as I work full time and have a family. My goal with this is more long term than doing a short-term hit and run.

Some questions I have so far:
- What is a good Bounce Rate for product page?
- What is a good visitor to ATC ratio?
- What sales conversion rate should I be aiming for with my store?
- Any feedback on Alidropship plugin? is it good/bad? did you switch to woocommerce theme?

Thanks in advance!

I also just started the dropshipping journey beginning this month.

But how did you got only 2 sales with $950 FB ad spend (and tested 10 products)?
You should start small (5$-10$ dollar per ad per day), and kill the product after 2-3 days.

You've spend on average 95$ per product?
My advice, test more products, and kill losing ads sooner

i hope you fail again.

Frozen Phoenix said:

I also just started the dropshipping journey beginning this month.

But how did you got only 2 sales with $950 FB ad spend (and tested 10 products)?
You should start small (5$-10$ dollar per ad per day), and kill the product after 2-3 days.

You've spend on average 95$ per product?
My advice, test more products, and kill losing ads sooner

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Thank you for the feedback. You are absolutely right. I had no idea what I was doing for the first part of it. I did the mistake of falling in love with the product and kept it going. Not only that, but I had multiple ad sets with only one interest targeting as that is what I thought is the best way to set up the ad sets.

Setting up ad sets is still my biggest challenge and not sure how to set things up. Do you set up ad sets for each category? I.e. magazine, pages, public figure etc.. or do you put all the interest in one ad set and move them around to get to a targeted number?

I would love to test out every audience but $$$'s are limited and not sure what is the best way of setting up ad sets when doing this.

Miketheguy said:

i hope you fail again.

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Thank you sir. Failing is the only way to success.

throwAway said:

Thank you sir. Failing is the only way to success.

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Thats my kid.
Always keep your head down and say im a failure. Repeat with yourself " I was born and i will die a failure".
Feel better now? Thnxxx me later.

Good luck on the journey. Keep Going.

Miketheguy said:

Thats my kid.
Always keep your head down and say im a failure. Repeat with yourself " I was born and i will die a failure".
Feel better now? Thnxxx me later.

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Please participate more on the forum. We need more peoples like you to encourage the newbies so they can be become successful. Most of them don't know the secret behind a massive victory is the repeated failures and a few naysayers.

I wish you all the very best to turn all your mistakes into a stepping stone and become successful this time!

All the best for your Journey buddy

Good luck OP, Cheers.

Appreciate all the love fam. This is the the other reason I wanted to start the thread because BHW has motivating members.

Here are the link to some of the resources I used:
- Franklin Hatchet Video - ECOM Course: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/get-ecom-dudes-academy-build-a-massive-ecom-empire.920608/
- Shopify course: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/shopify-drop-ship-mastery.957656/#post-10247671
- Ecom bootcamp: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/get-ben-malol-ecom-bootcamp-297.942111/

Hope this helps others. These courses are not a one stop solution as you can see by my experience so far lol. So take what works and keep moving forward.

All the motivation is paying off.

I just had my 3rd sale! Woohoo! $15! Feels good.

Going to let the the product ad set run for another 3 days before turning it off. Will have a thorough update later.

Keep the good working, i use Alidroship plugin in 3 stores ..

king master said:

Keep the good working, i use Alidroship plugin in 3 stores ..

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How do you like it? Did you ever compare it with Shopify? I still struggle with it sometimes. For example, my purchase pixel is not firing whereas everything fired with shopify. I'd imagine it must be good if you are using it with 3 stores.

throwAway said:

How do you like it? Did you ever compare it with Shopify? I still struggle with it sometimes. For example, my purchase pixel is not firing whereas everything fired with shopify. I'd imagine it must be good if you are using it with 3 stores.

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how much did you spend on your ads each time? can't believe you burned out 900 bucks into ads to just bring back 20$ revenue. What do you think is the cause of the failure? the products ,the ads or the site?

thetoothfairy said:

how much did you spend on your ads each time? can't believe you burned out 900 bucks into ads to just bring back 20$ revenue. What do you think is the cause of the failure? the products ,the ads or the site?

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Great question. But first $900 is not that bad. It just sounds like a lot relative to all the success stories you read about (rarely any failures as post replies and no threads). I am not one of the fortunate people who start getting tons of sales right away. All the Youtube videos also mention loosing tons before actually making money. The other part is that there are tons of interest testing and optimizations you have to consider. For example, I run at least 3 - 5 ad sets with different interest for each (i..e magazine, public figure etc...) a time for $5/day. I shut them down after 3 - 4 days which is about $100 in 4 days for 5 ad sets.

To your question, there is no one cause. Its a mix of everything. For example:

1) Product 1
Ad set type: WC VC
CPC: $0.25
CPM: $5
CTR: 9%
VC: 20 - 30/day

2) Product 2
Ad set type: WC VC
CPC: $1.1
CPM: $12
CTR: 2%
VC: 10/day

Both of these products had the exact same audience interest targeting. Which one would you say had the best sales? Based on FB data & performance, Product 1 should be killing it! However, it has 0 sales. Product 2 with lower FB ad performance had 1 sale. So that is why I cannot say it is product, ad, website, because I have contradicting results.

Although I haven't had much luck yet, one thing I am beginning to understand that audience selection is 80% of the battle. If you have the right audience and position your product accurately then sales will come. This is the "art" part that a lot of YT videos refer to.

I still have a long way to go but hope this provided some insight. As always, feedback is greatly appreciated.

Update

I find myself in the exact same position as before. I launched another product which has great FB ad performance and even GA behavior is better but its resulting in no sales.

Stats:
Ad type: WC - VC
CPC: $0.36
Clicks: 18 (today)
Sales: 0
CPM: $11.25
CTR: 6.79%

How long should I keep this ad set running? I am lost on how to tweak these high performing ad sets into sales. Anyone else ever run into this issue?

throwAway said:

Update

I find myself in the exact same position as before. I launched another product which has great FB ad performance and even GA behavior is better but its resulting in no sales.

Stats:
Ad type: WC - VC
CPC: $0.36
Clicks: 18 (today)
Sales: 0
CPM: $11.25
CTR: 6.79%

How long should I keep this ad set running? I am lost on how to tweak these high performing ad sets into sales. Anyone else ever run into this issue?

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Is there any add to cart ?

nice journey, if you don't quit you will succeed, the idea is to just keep testing and when you discover a good product and ads you market the sh*t out of it.

horizonone said:

Is there any add to cart ?

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No ATC. I am going to stop testing these "viral" kind of products. I am getting great FB engagement but no sales. I am probably doing something wrong but since I have not figured it out, I am gonna go back to basic products for now.