My First Dropshipping Journey [$100/day Short Term Objective]

Hello guys!

So, I've been making money online with content websites but it's getting hard. I kill my time on that, searching for new and *good* copywriters is incredible boring, a lot of competition, no payoff, etc. I hope not to be late but now I will join the world of dropshippers

Here is what I've done so far:

1. I have a niche.
   80% of my content blogs and websites are about design (I'm a graphic designer and I love art) so I think I know some little things about it.
2. Website is almost done.
   I'm using WooCommerce (yes, I made some research and I know Shopify would be great with Oberlo, but I'm a wp addicted and I give it another chance). I'm using a great premium theme, very light and fast, and very clean and minimalistic (maybe this will be a good point in this niche). One thing that drew my attention in this template was that when adding a product to the cart, opens a full height tab on the right side with the cart and the checkout buttons. It's impulsive shopping so I need to help people spend money.
3. Social media profiles set up.
   I will only use Facebook and Instagram. In the beggining, IG is only to give some credibility to my business (running Mass Planner already, I will post some more pictures in the next few days). Facebook is where all the action will be - I will use Facebook ads to drive people to my store.
   
4. I've picked +20 products.
   I will use Aliexpress. What I'm doing is trying to search for popular products with good look and apparently good quality. I filter products by Orders, Free Shipping and >4 Stars.
5. Bot on Facebook.
   My idea is to have a lot of engagement with my posts so I will frequently ask questions and make offers, so I've already configured a bot for automattic replies on comments and via Messenger. On Messenger, I'm looking to offer great discounts or even free products (is this working yet? People buy if they only need to pay shipping?)
6. I've already prayed.
   Ok. I'm atheist. But I crossed my fingers. I will make a great thing happen and I will not give up. I'm 27, I want to be millionaire at 30.

My expenses so far:

• WordPress Theme: $59
• Facebook Bot: $39
• Domain: $10
• SSL: $10
• Total: $118

Next steps:

• I will promote one or two products after I set up Facebook tracking pixel. There is some other little things to do but I'll promote just to get some insights and see how it goes.
• I will fake review a lot of my products.
• Also, my strategy on Facebook will be to grow the page, not focusing only in sell the products. I will share and promote some very engaging gif's and memes related with my niche, trying to get some buzz and maybe it will work as "brand awareness". I think I can reach thousands of people with this method, then, when they see my products ads, they will be more likely to buy. I hope!
• Search for more products, every week, trying to follow some tendencies.

I have dedicated a short budget to this project, hope $500 would be a nice amount to start receiving some orders with consistency. My objective is to reinvest almost all the money, so I can escalate quick. Is it realistic to expect ROI >250%? I mean, I have a nice range of prices and my markups vary between $8 profit and +30$. I don't know how much I can do with $50 on Facebook.


I will bookmark this thread and I will try to update it frequently if you get some interest.

I'm introducing myself to dropshipping, any advice from you would be great.
Thanks for reading, have a great weekend!

Guys, help me on this. Is it better:

1. Promote links on Facebook directly to my webpage.
2. Promote a vídeo (with my product) and put the link on the description.
3. Promote some good gif, video or picture and put the link on comments.
4. None of this.

I know it's all about testing. But since I'm short, I'm afraid and can't do a lot of tests on the beggining.
Also, if you know what's working better, I will appreciate if you share with me.

dothedance said:

Guys, help me on this. Is it better:

1. Promote links on Facebook directly to my webpage.
2. Promote a vídeo (with my product) and put the link on the description.
3. Promote some good gif, video or picture and put the link on comments.
4. None of this.

I know it's all about testing. But since I'm short, I'm afraid and can't do a lot of tests on the beggining.
Also, if you know what's working better, I will appreciate if you share with me.

Click to expand...

I believe 3. is the way to go, I've done the same thing with Picture while ago and I was in positive profit like $40 =)

Good luck op !

Classic Men said:

I believe 3. is the way to go, I've done the same thing with Picture while ago and I was in positive profit like $40 =)

Click to expand...

Yes, I will test this with a very specific product and with a video using that product. Promoting videos normally is very cheap, does it get more expensive if I add link on comments? The idea is to add a CTA at the end of the video too, so if it's more expensive with comment, I think I will test everything.

@ckz114 Thanks mate!

Good luck OP! I've done this dropshipping method before with smaller scale during my earlier day of college. $118 is a nice number, it's not too big and sounds good.
I think having an offline store will increase your credibility as well. That's what I did back there.
Best of luck!

Nice, good luck! Keep us updated on your journey

Good luck OP...

Good luck OP! For Facebook I think you may want to try finding unique items, people like that.

Good luck

Hello!

So, I set up 2 ads 5 minutes ago just to make some small tests while I'm trying to figure out if everything is working fine.
Also, I've added some more products.

I've invested $10 on Facebook Messenger plugin for WordPress. I want to give some credibility to this page and I think a fast support chat would be nice.

I will scale ads or create new ones, depending on my results.
Let's see what happen!

Hi there!

So, at the moment, bad news on this new journey.

I tried three types of posts to boost:

1. Free product + Pay shipping only
I saw a lot of dropshipping stores doing this so I give it a try. I got a lot of likes and comments on my post but only one conversion.

2. Facebook Bot + Special Offer
I created a nice looking post with two watches and asked people which one they love most. After they answer in the comments, the bot send a custom offer via inbox. I tried two methods: The one which I offer the product and ask only for shipping, the other one I just offer the second watch (just pay the first) + Free shipping.

3. Post with big discounts
The last method I used is just products with >60% OFF.

At the moment, I spent $200 on ads and got just 1 conversion. More than 50k people reached. Is this good, bad?

I do not want to give up, I think there is space for one more store. However, it's really sad to not see good results.

Maybe the reason is bad targetting on Facebook, but I tested some campaigns and the results are all the same.

One thing that happened is to have 15/20 pending payments. I think this is because people tried to use cards that are not accepted.

Any tips? Feel free to PM if you are available to give me a little help. I really appreciate.

Have a nice week guys!

Good luck and don't give up. Keep trying.

Any updates OP?

Hi there!

Almost 3 months since the last update but I'm still here.

After get a huge number of pending payments with unusual ratio (I got 7 sales and 32 pending payments) I paused my ads to understand what was going on.
The main reason is simple: bad segmentation. I target some countries with poor financial system and a lot of credit cards (are they real credit cards?) got rejected.
I know they were real people because some asked me by email or Facebook for support and I was unable to help them. They have no PayPal and no other method to order the items. Of course, I did not accept bank transfer or other similar payment method.

I targeted mainly W (25-40). On my first test I simple add "Watches" too interests to see how it works. On a second test, I removed all the Women who have in their interests websites like AliExpress, Alibaba, etc. I did this to not waste money on people who already know there is a place to get products for a lower price. Also, I added one interest: PayPal. It was strange but after I made this change a got one conversion in 10 minutes.

My last test was good (1 conversion really fast) but I had some troubles with my template as well. Product page was not working fine on mobiles and I tested some checkout templates (I tested checkout by steps, for example). At the time of my last post (June) I had 3 jobs and I needed to rest. I quit one and put my journey in stand by.

Now I'm back. In the last few days I've been testing Shopify because I really like the Checkout page (so simple and easy to fill) and Oberlo is a great tool.
I did not promote my page yet but I will start doing it in the next weeks. I want to prepare everything right, no rush.

Let's see how it goes. I will let you know.

Really appreciate your messages and support
Thanks!

Hey Dude,

First of all good luck with your journey. Second, here are some tips:

Install your pixel and GA on your website.

Test PPE and Video Views FB ads with 5$ 5-10 days. Get 1000 75% view rate views on your video. Retarget those 1000 people with website conversion ads and earn some money .

Seriously it's all about testing and yea 200$ is actually a low amount of money for testing on FB and for dropshipping.

Also, target only mobile phones that use WI FI on, they convert better, and separate FB and IG ad sets to see which one converts better, I think FB is better but IG is cheaper.

Target these countries: Brazil, Spain, Portugal, Romaina, Bulgaria, Greece and Cyprus. Don't ask why, just listen to me

Andddd, try to get your audience from 50k-500k MAX, that little arrow needs to be in the middle

Good LUCK!

Keep up the good work man and never give up. These threads are huge insight for us newbies, thanks and good luck!

Good luck mate

good luck bro