Journey: Good ol' dropshipping

PotatoWatts

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Decided to pickup dropshipping again after years, good ol' shopify shop just because I dont have much to put in so the couple dozen bucks monthly cost is good enough

Plan

1- Pick a good simple niche (Make sure Aliexpress products are present)
2- Make Shopify Shop - Good Brand, Good Logo, Good watermarking, Good font, Good colors
3- Add products from Aliexpress to the shop, good branding, good description
4- Find videos related to the product, edit and upload them with branding
5- Open the shop (Added template policies, using Stripe to accept payments only for now)
6- Promote the two products via free channels [social media for now] (To see if it was worth all the trouble or not)

Results so far

Making everything took me about 3 weeks, released the shop 2 days ago, selling products for $100, they sell on aliexpress for $50 so im making $50 for each product (only have two products for sale at the moment), got 4k visits and sold 5 products which is not bad I believe.

My only fear is payments. Stripe only accepts like 3 credit cards (And currently all I have setup is Stripe), I think im losing potential buys from this. Tried applying to 2checkout but got instantly denied for using the word "aliexpress" (I did not know better, tried emailing them to see if I can salvage this but I doubt it), and I did not add a PayPal business account yet because well.. I just dont feel like messing with PayPal to be honest but tomorow I might just do that.

Stripe is paying me on the 18th, going to wait until then before moving to paid advertising (to make this a 0investment project of sorts).

Skrill and another one I tried setting up ask for valid business papers, so thats a nope.

I got 4k visits from a social media post that got very popular but a lot of people recently commented that "yo you can get this for cheaper on aliexpress or X site" and it just made me lose all credibility most likely since my sales came from before these comments. (Main reason dropshipping is going down the hole, but it still works if you know how to market it)

Tried installing live-chat to see if that helped them visitors open their wallets but didn't do much so far. Lets see where this gets me.

Any tips? My issue right now I believe is receiving payments and that I dont have a solid strategy to get sales but what im doing seems to work to an extent and the product gets attention thats for sure.

So total investment so far:

$10 for the .com (Just in case the shop blows up and then I'll move to woocommerce most likely)
$30 (rounded up) for the Shopify monthly for July
3 weeks worth of my time

Goals:

Sell $20k (20k profit, not 20k sales) so I can start doing some real investments and get out the shit hole
 
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Well, paypal asks for valid business papers, but you better put paypal on your store, as it will bring more sales
 
Stripe is great, for I have been using it for three years and don't meet any issue. As to

dropshipping, the price is quite sensitive. Some products from aliexpress are more expensive than amazon. You should try to find other providers at lower price.​

 
Well, paypal asks for valid business papers, but you better put paypal on your store, as it will bring more sales
It does? From what I searched it didn't say nothing about that, it asks to verify your identity only, if you mention yourself as a individual business its fine. Skrill on the other hand wants a business license. The difference is there I believe. Gonna give paypal a call tomorow and ask all of this straight up

Stripe is great, for I have been using it for three years and don't meet any issue. As to

dropshipping, the price is quite sensitive. Some products from aliexpress are more expensive than amazon. You should try to find other providers at lower price.​

Yeah, I'll take a look elsewhere but I doubt I can find this at a cheaper price
 
I got 4k visits from a social media post that got very popular but a lot of people recently commented that "yo you can get this for cheaper on aliexpress or X site" and it just made me lose all credibility most likely since my sales came from before these comments. (Main reason dropshipping is going down the hole, but it still works if you know how to market it)

Tried installing live-chat to see if that helped them visitors open their wallets but didn't do much so far. Lets see where this gets me.

Any tips? My issue right now I believe is receiving payments and that I dont have a solid strategy to get sales but what im doing seems to work to an extent and the product gets attention thats for sure.
IMO, the main reason why dropshipping is so much harder now is that people can usually buy the same item on Amazon without having to wait a weeks for the product to arrive. Not to mention the higher customer acquisition costs.

Tips?

"Failing to plan is planning to fail."

Create a plan.
 
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It does? From what I searched it didn't say nothing about that, it asks to verify your identity only, if you mention yourself as a individual business its fine. Skrill on the other hand wants a business license. The difference is there I believe. Gonna give paypal a call tomorow and ask all of this straight up
It's been a while since it added PayPal to a store but I was never asked for any business verification.
 
Good luck on your journey, but what is your plan to generate your main traffic from?
 
IMO, the main reason why dropshipping is so much harder now is that people can usually buy the same item on Amazon without having to wait a weeks for the product to arrive. Not to mention the higher customer acquisition costs.

Tips?

"Failing to plan is planning to fail."

Create a plan.
To which extent can an idea be considered a plan?
I have a advertising plan for one of the social medias, thats it. I know how to advertise there and have made my shop to fit those guidelines, just waiting on the initial cash inflow to then use the profit for advertising

It's been a while since it added PayPal to a store but I was never asked for any business verification.

Yeah Im giving them a call in a few minutes to check if its fine or not

Good luck on your journey, but what is your plan to generate your main traffic from?

Thanks, for this my main traffic source will be advertising in social media most likely, but until I test it out im not quite sure
 
Dropshipping is sadly not what it once was but I have a few friends that are earning steadily with it, so definitely still possible if you think outside the box and manage to get targeted traffic for a good price. Good luck with your journey!
 
Dropshipping is sadly not what it once was but I have a few friends that are earning steadily with it, so definitely still possible if you think outside the box and manage to get targeted traffic for a good price. Good luck with your journey!

That is what im looking for to do, lets see how far I can take this. Thanks!



On a small update, I've added PayPal to the shop, created a business account smoothly and its already up and running. Lets see if this helps me convert
 
How did you get social traffic? You have some Instagram pages, FB pages, what are sources of this traffic?
 
Good luck! That's something I'm interested in as well. I might try and use my 20k IG page which is dead for years but its in the fashion niche, so why not.
 
Good luck! That's something I'm interested in as well. I might try and use my 20k IG page which is dead for years but its in the fashion niche, so why not.
Do it, you have nothing to lose!
A 20k ig page is not bad, depends on how you got them followers
 
Do it, you have nothing to lose!
A 20k ig page is not bad, depends on how you got them followers
I got them back then when IG was easy to bot and the limits were very high. All I used was follow/unfollow.

You're right, I have nothing the lose. I kinda wish I created more pages back then..
 
I got them back then when IG was easy to bot and the limits were very high. All I used was follow/unfollow.

You're right, I have nothing the lose. I kinda wish I created more pages back then..
Do a test first to see if you get engagement in my opinion before going all in
 
Little update: One or two sales a day, generating around $40 daily, had one or two days without sales. Most sales come in from manual marketing on social media for now.

Want to wait until I get my cash from Stripe (takes one week or so) before diving any further
 
Little update: One or two sales a day, generating around $40 daily, had one or two days without sales. Most sales come in from manual marketing on social media for now.

Want to wait until I get my cash from Stripe (takes one week or so) before diving any further
whats your main social media platfoorm for marketing
 
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