Starting Dropshipping Store From Scratch With Only $150

ashesuhah

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Hello everyone.

First of all, I would like to say big thanks to this forum and all members. I learned so much from all of you.

As you can see I am completely new here, but I have a bit of experience in ecom. I had maybe 6 stores and a little success but never made big money from it. (max was 10k month in sales)

I actually don't really know if anyone will be interested, but here are the reasons why I am making this "journey" visible to everyone and writing everything down:


1. To motivate me and other newbies. I have been very lazy past years, spent all the money that I earned from online businesses, not taking action, not doing anything, just THINING that I can make income online, but not really doing anything. Now it feels if I will share everything here I will be committed to take steps and action to make it work. Or fail haha

2. To make a decent plan with steps. It will help me and maybe others if they would decide to start dropshipping too.


Okay, so more and more people are saying that dropshipping is not worth trying in 2019. I will try to prove that it is possible to make money from dropshipping (with aliexpress), investing as least money as possible. Or I will fail.

My goal is to make at least $5 in profit after all spends in first 15 days.


I will do simple dropshipping with aliexpress and oberlo app because I am familiar with it. For advertising, I will be using only IG shoutouts for now, but of course, will have FB pixel installed and if it will go well, will retarget all customers. Sounds like a plan.

There is Shopify trial for 21 days so it costs $0 for the first 21 days. I have 15 left

Domain will cost $14

IG influencers shoutouts will cost about $10-50 (will talk about it later)


So to start up I will spend only $14 for domain. So I will try to spend $100-$150 on shoutouts and make at least $5 in profit.

Plan:


1. Find a niche.
There is a lot of information about it if you are struggling to find one. I will go with rappers clothing/merch. It's a bit risky, but there are too many good products in that niche on aliexpress to not try.


2. Open a Shopify store and make it look like a brand. It's a very important thing - make your store look absolutely legit, with same size images, same background images and you know, professional. Add something that people in your niche would be familiar with - a quote, some sliders or something. Give value from it not only sell cheap products from aliexpress. Even if they are cheap, make it look good. FInd good quality images, make good descriptions. It's very big thing too. Try to tell people why they need this product and how it will make them feel better. I don't like to write too long descriptions, but couple of sentences sounds like enough for me.


3. Once you are done with your store, you can start contacting IG influencers. Some people say to contact only 100k+ plus pages. For me, it's not always true. I have had success with 10k-30k pages. Of course, bigger pages often work better, but trust me not every time. Once I will start contacting influencers I will write more about what to ask and how to tell which one are fakes and real ones.

I will spend about 3 hours every day on this and we will see if I will have that $5 in my pocket after 15 days or I will fail :) Anyway, I am tired of being lazy and ready to make it work.


What I already did:


Opened a store; created logo; added few products;
Store starts to feel like a brand, but there is a lot more work to put in.

What I am planning to do in the next 1-2 days:

Add at least 20 products more that store doesn't feel empty; create sliders and all that stuff that makes shop look more legit;

Any advices are much appreciated!


If text is too long:
1. Opening this thread to motivate me and others
2. I am opening a dropsipping store from scratch with only $150
3. Goal is to earn at least $5 in the first 15 days.
4. I will succeed or I will fail :)
5. WIll share all mistakes and advices here.

See you tomorrow!
 
Good luck! Keep us updated. How much did you profit from 10k sales/month?
 
It takes longer than expected, but hopefully, the website will be fully functional soon.
So my shop is pretty broad niche as I mentioned before so now it has 4 sub-niches. I will add more in the future, but for opening, it will be enough. It has only 18 products (working on that), but all of them have nice descriptions. Not much left - add few more products and since it's clothing add sizing tables. Hopefully in couple of days will be able to start contacting influencers and have some posts scheduled.
 
Good luck. Dropshipping always interested me, but sounded so scammy at the same time. Maybe because of the hype and all the fake gurus? I don't know but I'll definitely be following your journey.
 
What is your source of products?

PS. Good luck!

Aliexpress. Thanks!

Isn't 14$ for a domain a bit expensive?

Maybe, but since I use Shopify, I use their domain too, it's very easy and fast to set up.

Good luck. Dropshipping always interested me, but sounded so scammy at the same time. Maybe because of the hype and all the fake gurus? I don't know but I'll definitely be following your journey.

Yeah it's not true that in first few months of dropshipping you'll buy a lamborghini :D it's not scammy, but in my opinion, it shouldn't be considered as a long term business.
 
It took way longer than expected, but the website is complete and fully functional. It also looks very good and professional (in my opinion)

Spends so far: $14 domain

Only 1 day for trial left so there will be $30 charge for a Shopify plan. I could make everything much faster, but it is how it is. It's still a problem for me to focus on work, for some reasons I am doing 1-hour job for half a day. Maybe you have some advices how to focus and not waste time? :)

Okay so now is the interesting part.

I created an IG page for the website and bought 5k followers to make it look legit brand. Will buy more soon and upload some quality content so people can trust. Also, I started contacting influencers. As I mentioned before it is a niche site with sub-niches. What I will do - I will post promos on niche pages with a broader audience (example dog pages) and sub-niche pages (example french bulldog pages). I personally think there will be sales from both broad audiences and narrow audiences.

There is my experience on how to talk to IG pages and get the best price.

First, ask if they sell shoutouts and if they do ask them to provide how many people saw their last stories. It's a good thing to decide whether influencer has real followers or fake. If their stories have only 2-3k views and page has 100k followers you know it's most likely not legit. Sometimes you still can try if price is good. Also, once they send you their insights you can tell that price for that reach is too high, but we can agree on a lower price.

One of the best tactics is to ask for a 7-12h shout out only. Almost all pages agree to post for shorter amount of time and can give you a way better price, and it will be enough for you to see if this page works for you or not. Always ask to include link in bio.

Already found few pages to post, hopefully, tomorrow will be able to post and see what happens. Will keep you updated.

That's it, for now, I am going to create promos for the pages to match their feed haha.

If it will work, will write more detailed paragraph about everything. Thanks for support.
 
Good luck...watching your progress and I'm also going to start my dropshipping journey here very soon...hope will learn some tactics from you.
 
I posted on a few small pages.

Spent so far:
Domain $14
Shopify subscription $26
Apps $7
Shoutout #1 $5
Shoutout #2 $5
Shoutout #3 $5

$62

First one was story with swipe up. Received few visitors, no sales, but I wasn't expecting sales from page like this one.

Yesterday paid for 2 more small pages and posted 2 different posts. Store received first sale!

Someone bought an item for $25. I am kinda happy because it's first sale and it took only 2 days, and I actually wasn't expecting much from small influencers. Wanted just to check if someone will be interested in this stuff.

The bad thing is that those small pages bring not bad traffic in 12 hours about 65 people visited website BUT my conversion rate is only 1.64%. It's not the worst %, but I don't like it at all. Of course, it's too early to tell from only 2 small posts, but still.

I would like to hear what's in your opinion can make conversion rate better.

I also paid $43 for a post on a big, almost 200k page. Promo should be posted this night. WIll update on that.
I am doing other jobs that take a lot of time, but also always on my phone trying to find good influencers and make my website better every day. I also need to post on IG page every day to build more trust, but for some reasons always forgot to do that.

Goal till Monday: post on this page that I paid and find at least 2 more good pages and post on them. Would be great to make conversion rate at least 3%.

Spend: $65 (with monthly subscription and domain)
Sales: $25
 
any update on your $43 for a post on a big? bring alot of sale for you?
 
Following - Was looking into this myself but as was stated above, all the fake gurus really made me skeptical. Interested in your journey.
 
Best of luck. I have had some success with Shopify dropshipping in the past, getting around 10k revenue, keen to get back on the train and start a store.

Conversions were always a tricky one for me.After testing, the best way I found in increasing conversions is through offering proof on the values and benefits of products. This can be done through customer testimonials, case studies etc. Now people often overlook the product description, but chances are if a potential customer is interested in your product, then they will read your description. People are skeptical in nature, you just have to provide enough value in your description to get them to buy. Putting a short video can help.

Can I PM you? What's your thoughts on one product stores with a killer landing page?
Be keen to share insights.
 
Best of luck. I have had some success with Shopify dropshipping in the past, getting around 10k revenue, keen to get back on the train and start a store.

Conversions were always a tricky one for me.After testing, the best way I found in increasing conversions is through offering proof on the values and benefits of products. This can be done through customer testimonials, case studies etc. Now people often overlook the product description, but chances are if a potential customer is interested in your product, then they will read your description. People are skeptical in nature, you just have to provide enough value in your description to get them to buy. Putting a short video can help.

Can I PM you? What's your thoughts on one product stores with a killer landing page?
Be keen to share insights.

Really great advices! I will add a bit from my side. People will most likely buy more if there will be reviews especially photo reviews. There are apps and you can import them directly from Ali. I think it helps a lot. About the description you are 100% right, just think, if you want to buy something online, you'll always read a description. I think almost every person will buy from a shop with a brief description rather than a scammy look one. I also added trust badges on my website, made it even cleaner and today my conversion rate is 8% (will write a full update about it later on today)

Yes, of course, you can.
I think one product pages are even better than a multiple products shop. I had one in the past, but it was Christmas product and I opened it too late, but still made few bucks.
 
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