Just another dropshipping journey

Not just another for me, my first one. Started all this yesterday. I've had success with profitable websites, but never with an e-commerce store. Wanted to create a thread so I could track my progress and hopefully reading the comments might give me a clue if I'm on the right track with all this.

So I will be trying to sell physical products that I'm passionate about, hopefully motivates me more. Not electronics or items that can be easily damaged. When someone makes an order, I will go to eBay, buy that product, enter the client's info, profit. 0 sales so far, because there is no traffic. Will get about 10$ profit from each sale. Quite narrow audience, but less competition. Will offer free shipping in USA, site will only sell to USA actually. I pick items that are located in USA so the shipping time would be fast (hopefully clients will not complain then).

What's done so far
Site is set up - domain, hosting, wordpress, woocommerce, decent theme.
Configured the site to make it look professional.
8 products from eBay inserted - doubled the price.
Twitter - 20 followers already with follow back method (followed 600 people on first day). Made few tweets about products.
Made a logo, used IconFinder (I'm not part of it) to get a free icon and added website name + alternative text.

Spent
Hosting - 0$ (1 month free for purchasing a domain)
Domain - 12$ (6 letter .com domain)
3 cans of 0,5L red bull - 2,25$ (it was on sale)
15 hours of work - 0$ (all myself and my friend "google")
___________
Total: 14,25$

Future plans
1) Create some texts and will create a blog corner - research some keywords and target them with my articles. Will use google auto complete method and some free online tools. Will do at least 1 post per day. basically optimize for SEO.
2) Create a facebook page as well and try to use ads with conversion trackers. Maybe set up 5 x 10$ ads and pick the best performing one if the ROI is even worth it.
3) Each article I create should go into Twitter and Facebook, hopefully get traffic this way as well.
4) Should enter more products, a lot more.

What I'm worried about
1) If the client gets the shipment, will the client see the actual price or any other info that could freak that client out.
2) It will be a pain in the ass to check each day if these products are still available on eBay.
3) That energy drinks will create insomnia so will switch to tea (Probably Lipton).

Good luck OP, the only thing I can see that might be a problem with dropshipping from ebay is the fees and the off chance nobody is selling any inventory. Is your product/niche popular enough to always be selling on ebay and still at a comfortable price that won't cut into your profit margins?

Other than that, it looks pretty good to me. Ebay is still risky to dropship with, because you never know who is packaging and sending the products, but even if one sale out of a dozen falls through you're still making $$$$.

Sythix said:

Good luck OP, the only thing I can see that might be a problem with dropshipping from ebay is the fees and the off chance nobody is selling any inventory. Is your product/niche popular enough to always be selling on ebay and still at a comfortable price that won't cut into your profit margins?

Other than that, it looks pretty good to me. Ebay is still risky to dropship with, because you never know who is packaging and sending the products, but even if one sale out of a dozen falls through you're still making $$$$.

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The fees are $12.99 USPS shipping (marked on the eBay product page). I don't think there will be more fees other than that. Products are about 25$ so I ask 50$. And 50$ - 25$ - 12.99 = 12.01$ profit. The prices may seem a bit high for customers, but I'm just hoping for one or two sales on a good day. I pick only products that already have a lot of sales and are listed by trusted sellers.

Goosy said:

The fees are $12.99 USPS shipping (marked on the eBay product page). I don't think there will be more fees other than that. Products are about 25$ so I ask 50$. And 50$ - 25$ - 12.99 = 12.01$ profit. The prices may seem a bit high for customers, but I'm just hoping for one or two sales on a good day. I pick only products that already have a lot of sales and are listed by trusted sellers.

Click to expand...

Sounds like you got it all figured out, good luck. How do you plan on getting traffic? Are you just going to use Twitter?

Sythix said:

Sounds like you got it all figured out, good luck. How do you plan on getting traffic? Are you just going to use Twitter?

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Twitter - I will follow competitors followers so I get in touch with people that are interested in my products.
Blog corner for SEO - Research some keywords and steadily create articles.
Facebook ads - Hopefully even get a 100% ROI ad one day.

Good luck, you plan on getting traffic solely from twitter? Or just using that as extra traffic source?

Thenub said:

Good luck, you plan on getting traffic solely from twitter? Or just using that as extra traffic source?

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As mentioned earlier, twitter + facebook ads + SEO.

Good Luck OP, I suggest spread your reach to other networks too such as Instagram.

have you looked into dropshipping form aliexpress?

Best wishes to your journey

FIRST UPDATE

Doubled the Twitter followers amount - currently 42 followers, not much but it's good to see that the method is working. Even got some tweet likes and re-tweets from actual real people (not from automated bots). I've followed in total of 880 people. So the follow back ratio is ~5%.

Made a Facebook page and configured it and added some products as posts. 1 page like so far (me).

I have written 2-10 fake reviews on each of my products and used 4/5 star rating on each review so the site would look more professional and trustworthy. I know that this is not a nice thing to do, but hopefully will help in getting some sales.

I have set up google Analytics and google Webmaster Tools to track traffic progress.

So far still 0 sales, but it's been 2 days only.


Questions:

onelettershor said:

have you looked into dropshipping form aliexpress?

Click to expand...

I have not, I don't think they allow PayPal checkout. But eBay allows PayPal checkout and since customers pay with PayPal as well, then everything goes through one place.

sakif said:

Good Luck OP, I suggest spread your reach to other networks too such as Instagram.

Click to expand...

Thanks for suggesting that. I've never used Instagram before but will look into this once other plans are taken care of.

SECOND UPDATE

Things are going really great, I have over 100 twitter followers already! Still 0 sales, so not doing that great.. but this is only the fourth day so can't expect much.

Got the twitter following limit warning for the first time in my life. I think followed hundreds of people at once, I don't know what's the limit per day, but I will try not to reach that limit again. Account is still alive of course.

I have added 4 more products so the site would provide a larger variety of items to choose from. Still checking every day if these items are actually still available at eBay, manually.

All new products added to Twitter and Facebook as posts/tweets.

Made a test product and let 2 of my friends order it using their PayPal (0,10$ product) and they gave some useful tips on how to make the whole checkout process more user-friendly, which I have already implemented. Nothing was needed to code, everything was configurable from woocommerce and theme settings.

Google Analytics is showing results, 69 unique users for 28 Dec! But on a closer look, most of the traffic was from weird domains with a 100% bounce rate so probably bots.

Tweaked the design to be more mobile and tablet friendly. Some basic media query CSS with the help of Google.

Created a blog corner and started writing some articles while keeping in mind that I target keywords that people actually search, so I have used Google AdSense keyword research tool and Google search auto-complete.

That's it for today, tomorrow I will start testing various facebook ads to find an ad with the best ROI and push it further. Will probably just do 10x 5$ ads of different products and see what works the best.

I may not post in few days so Happy New Year to BHW members!

Update on your journey?

Good luck OP! Wish your good day.
Actually drop shipping journey is simply risky but if you can handle it technically then you'll able to make more profit. Believe you'll able to do that. I can see your cost is only $12.25 but what about your targeted profit? Please keep update in a continuous way. Must I'll comeback. Bye...