Long-term Dropshipping with FB Ads: a dead business?

I believe that the main source of traffic for those working with dropshipping is FB Ads.

However, it is getting more and more difficult to create a serious and long term work using FB Ads. All the time there are business manager suspensions/limitations, ad bans, slow support, low limit accounts. Despite all these problems, until recently I could handle it using several different ad accounts/profiles...no, I don't work with black hat business, but Facebook is unbearable, they already confused a hair straightener with a sex product and used this as an argument to stop my campaigns.

Meanwhile, the latest news is the lid on the coffin of many dropshipping businesses. There is now a 'link' between the domain and the business manager. If your profile or your BM is affected, then your domain is ''stuck'' and you will not be able to use that domain in ads from other BM's.

This is terrible for anyone who works honestly because your single website (which often takes months to make and earn good profits) is 100% dependent on 1 BM and 1 facebook profile...if something happens, being fair or not, your business is broke if you don't have other traffic alternatives. The only option would be to clone the content of the site and sell using another domain...this is perfectly fine for scammers. For those who want to work with a serious brand for years, restarting under another name is out of the question.

It seems that we will need other traffic alternatives.
Or make short term sites and sell them on Flippa.
It's impossible to work using FB Ads and the trend is getting worse and worse.

You are not the only one who wrote about this, i agree with you in like facebook is getting strict and the ban is just a matter of time, ive seen many got their BM shut down doing ecommerce and dropshipping especially,

what i am sure about is still customers trust facebook and instagram, and many of them purchase services and product based on ads they ive seen on those both platform,


.

I have 3 ad account, after Verified BM... i get bans

Is it because FB don’t like dropshipping? They want you to have products in inventory and ready to ship? Or is it because you are not the brand owner?

amoon said:

You are not the only one who wrote about this, i agree with you in like facebook is getting strict and the ban is just a matter of time, ive seen many got their BM shut down doing ecommerce and dropshipping especially,

what i am sure about is still customers trust facebook and instagram, and many of them purchase services and product based on ads they ive seen on those both platform,


.

Click to expand...

Yes
But there are alternatives on FB/IG like influencers

AAW said:

Is it because FB don’t like dropshipping? They want you to have products in inventory and ready to ship? Or is it because you are not the brand owner?

Click to expand...

Actually there are many people with local business, fast delivery and still get facebook bans, it's hard to understand what happens...

Monzani said:

they already confused a hair straightener with a sex product and used this as an argument to stop my campaigns.

Click to expand...

This happened to a friend of mine and he complained for months that he couldn't run his ads.

After about 30 minutes of chat, I got his account back. I've had my accounts banned multiple times, but they get reinstated.

If you're running white hat, and have nothing to hide, just contact support, they will get you back running. It sucks and it's annoying, but if you want to keep running, then just contact them.

Monzani said:

Yes
But there are alternatives on FB/IG like influencers

Click to expand...

give a try to G ads, I see many gurus talking about G ads and dropshipping and having good results...

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Monzani said:

I believe that the main source of traffic for those working with dropshipping is FB Ads.

However, it is getting more and more difficult to create a serious and long term work using FB Ads. All the time there are business manager suspensions/limitations, ad bans, slow support, low limit accounts. Despite all these problems, until recently I could handle it using several different ad accounts/profiles...no, I don't work with black hat business, but Facebook is unbearable, they already confused a hair straightener with a sex product and used this as an argument to stop my campaigns.

Meanwhile, the latest news is the lid on the coffin of many dropshipping businesses. There is now a 'link' between the domain and the business manager. If your profile or your BM is affected, then your domain is ''stuck'' and you will not be able to use that domain in ads from other BM's.

This is terrible for anyone who works honestly because your single website (which often takes months to make and earn good profits) is 100% dependent on 1 BM and 1 facebook profile...if something happens, being fair or not, your business is broke if you don't have other traffic alternatives. The only option would be to clone the content of the site and sell using another domain...this is perfectly fine for scammers. For those who want to work with a serious brand for years, restarting under another name is out of the question.

It seems that we will need other traffic alternatives.
Or make short term sites and sell them on Flippa.
It's impossible to work using FB Ads and the trend is getting worse and worse.

Click to expand...

Definitely not but however it requires a lot of testing. I tried dropshipping a few times and it was real tough to get profitable ads running consistently.

Spartan Accounts said:

Definitely not but however it requires a lot of testing. I tried dropshipping a few times and it was real tough to get profitable ads running consistently.

Click to expand...

I have no doubt that the business itself is profitable

The problem is Facebook and its obstacles to work

Monzani said:

I have no doubt that the business itself is profitable

The problem is Facebook and its obstacles to work

Click to expand...

I don't think so, I even got myself a direct supplier from china to improve ROI. Just slowly test and you will be able to overcome it.

I have a relaunched POD store that has US fulfillment & finishing up new dropshipping store with China supplier fulfilment in the oven right now. For both instead of FB ads I am allocating budget to do other things. FB CPC keeps going up every year and conversion rate drops with some people having to spend up to $10 to make a sale. Hypothetically speaking spending $10/day = $300/month and getting 30 sales/month and instead of that I can put trained VA to work full time for 1 month trying different things to land sales. FB ads can reach a lot of people fast but for $10/day can mean VA using different methods 8 hours per day which can surely convert at much higher rate. Think outside the box. You can still have same budget used but have it used differently.

Monzani said:

I believe that the main source of traffic for those working with dropshipping is FB Ads.

However, it is getting more and more difficult to create a serious and long term work using FB Ads. All the time there are business manager suspensions/limitations, ad bans, slow support, low limit accounts. Despite all these problems, until recently I could handle it using several different ad accounts/profiles...no, I don't work with black hat business, but Facebook is unbearable, they already confused a hair straightener with a sex product and used this as an argument to stop my campaigns.

Meanwhile, the latest news is the lid on the coffin of many dropshipping businesses. There is now a 'link' between the domain and the business manager. If your profile or your BM is affected, then your domain is ''stuck'' and you will not be able to use that domain in ads from other BM's.

This is terrible for anyone who works honestly because your single website (which often takes months to make and earn good profits) is 100% dependent on 1 BM and 1 facebook profile...if something happens, being fair or not, your business is broke if you don't have other traffic alternatives. The only option would be to clone the content of the site and sell using another domain...this is perfectly fine for scammers. For those who want to work with a serious brand for years, restarting under another name is out of the question.

It seems that we will need other traffic alternatives.
Or make short term sites and sell them on Flippa.
It's impossible to work using FB Ads and the trend is getting worse and worse.

Click to expand...

I do a lot of dropship ecom. Not traditional dropship where you find a "winning product" but rather building a brand around a product and then using fulfillment from China. We basically just churn out brands that consist of 1 primary product and then 1-2 upsells. This method has scaled well over the past couple years.

We don't pay attention to the prices on Amazon or even try to compete on price against competitors. If you have a slick looking brand, price becomes less relevant. Also, we don't work with any products that will sell for less than $60-$100. The sweet spot has been finding a product that has an all in, delivered cost of <$30, resold for over $100 with a persistent 20% off coupon.

You do need other traffic alternatives aside from FB. We use Google, FB, and we're just getting into Native. I believe Native has the potential to scale as hard as FB, without a lot of the headache. However, according to our rep from Outbrain, we need to have a good upsell funnel and a way to leverage purchase data to maximize revenue per customer. He said the CAC will be higher than we're used to, so we have to milk the customers and data. This ties into the above, when I mentioned we don't mess with cheap products, as we can chonk money at ads and get back in the black pretty fast. (You can't do that on an $8 item that you're trying to sell for $20 or $25, since the CPA on almost any paid channel will be too high to be workable.)

The bottom line is that it's harder for people to break into the ecom space using the traditional dropship style biz model. You really have to up your game and be ready to spend some money. Dealing with FB bans sucks, but I've found that we can get back in the game as long as we aren't caught circumventing or it's a quality score issue. I would say learn the triggers for bans, don't leave footprints (using same domain/pixel/GA/), and invest in the infrastructure that will allow you to pivot quickly should you encounter an issue with an ad network like FB.