Post: #51

I have a question! What about customs in the US and Canada? How do these chinese items go thro and how does paying customs work?

Post: #52

(09-27-2017 02:38 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  Guys, if you're going to do this treat it like a real business and not a half ass hustle. I'm not saying dropshipping in itself is a terrible idea but IMHO it's critical you have a relationship with your supplier. You don't just want to be some clown ordering stuff from Walmart or Ali Express it will end badly, your not building a business your acting as a middle man, you have no brand, you have no control over pricing or inventory, etc.

You would be better off contacting a company who makes a product you like and asking if you can be a dropshipper or distribute it, work out a commission rate or discounted price you can buy for, you'll get much further doing this than doing Ali Express.

First off most Ali stuff people are going to buy on eBay or Amazon, not go to a specialty site for. Secondly the shipping times are long and not that I really care about this but technically speaking your violating importing laws because these items aren't for personal consumption or use your doing a commercial endevour but again not acting like moral police so do what you want but I'm saying this isn't really effective anymore.

Tail Lopez is now making videos about this stuff. Alex Becker who in the past was a software developer is now making videos about dropshipping wolf mugs and unicorn socks even though in the past he was a multimillion dollar software entrepreneur who was above this stuff. That tells me that this is completely saturated and dead.

The whole just pay shipping gimmicks are dead, fb ads to stupid products are dead. Again, not saying not to dropship but actually contact a real company making a non shit product, form a relationship and do it the right way.

Are you speaking from your own successful experience?

Post: #53

Ok fuck this! I’m starting tomorrow.

Post: #54

(07-24-2017 09:20 PM)asiaslayer Wrote:  since Shopify is a bit of a pain the ass to get started on and requires a lot of initial investment like dumping lots of money into advertising and constantly whoring out your products on social media, what's the deal with Amazon these days? i thought i read they won't let you sell anything unless you have a company or legit supplier invoice? what if you sell your own unique brands or unbranded items?

Here's the thing with Amazon vs Shopify. Amazon brings you organic traffic so your not having to whore yourself out on social media or pay a ton of money for ads, but at the same time your paying them 15% plus are building a business they can shut down at any moment. Also AMazon has been known to steal your product and undercut you on price adn they know what products to steal because they have access to your and everyone else's sales data.

While you do get organic traffic Amazon is getting very competitive meaning you have to dump money into PPC campaigns or giving away free products so either way your spending money, at least with Shopify your building something you control.

As far as needing to have a company or a brand that is not true. It does help you protect your listings from other people hopping on them but there's no requirement you have an LLC or be a brand or have patents or copyrigths, any individual can sell on Amazon

Post: #55

(10-03-2017 11:12 PM)Suits Wrote:  

(09-27-2017 02:38 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  Guys, if you're going to do this treat it like a real business and not a half ass hustle. I'm not saying dropshipping in itself is a terrible idea but IMHO it's critical you have a relationship with your supplier. You don't just want to be some clown ordering stuff from Walmart or Ali Express it will end badly, your not building a business your acting as a middle man, you have no brand, you have no control over pricing or inventory, etc.

You would be better off contacting a company who makes a product you like and asking if you can be a dropshipper or distribute it, work out a commission rate or discounted price you can buy for, you'll get much further doing this than doing Ali Express.

First off most Ali stuff people are going to buy on eBay or Amazon, not go to a specialty site for. Secondly the shipping times are long and not that I really care about this but technically speaking your violating importing laws because these items aren't for personal consumption or use your doing a commercial endevour but again not acting like moral police so do what you want but I'm saying this isn't really effective anymore.

Tail Lopez is now making videos about this stuff. Alex Becker who in the past was a software developer is now making videos about dropshipping wolf mugs and unicorn socks even though in the past he was a multimillion dollar software entrepreneur who was above this stuff. That tells me that this is completely saturated and dead.

The whole just pay shipping gimmicks are dead, fb ads to stupid products are dead. Again, not saying not to dropship but actually contact a real company making a non shit product, form a relationship and do it the right way.

Are you speaking from your own successful experience?

I typically buy my inventory though I have dropshipped a little more so to test an idea rather than it actually being a business plan though. In order for dropshipping to work IMHO you need to have a supplier who y ou have a relationship with and who ships quickly. Doing retail arbitrage dropshipping isn't a recipe for longterm success imho

Post: #56

Unfortunately the topic's author does not go to the contact in the messages. Guys, who are currently working with shopify dropshipping, with whom you can consult?

Post: #57

(10-03-2017 10:40 PM)NKD Wrote:  I have a question! What about customs in the US and Canada? How do these chinese items go thro and how does paying customs work?

Basically I have the same question. This seems a very interesting venture, but how do you handle customs?

Post: #58

Not affiliated with FB Groups and all but I recommend joining those groups to check out questions that have been ask by beginners. There has been a surge of Dropshipping/Amazon FBA Gurus on Youtube trying to sell courses to their audience via fb groups. Worth checking out for some free information that are asked by people.

Post: #59

(12-18-2017 01:49 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(10-03-2017 10:40 PM)NKD Wrote:  I have a question! What about customs in the US and Canada? How do these chinese items go thro and how does paying customs work?

Basically I have the same question. This seems a very interesting venture, but how do you handle customs?

The USA doesn't seem to charge customs duties on one off items you buy for individual use so if you buy a bluetooth speaker or something like that it just comes right to your house. I can't speak for Canada but I know many countries do charge so have some knoweldge about this to let your customers know.

Many people say that dropshippers are essentially breaking the law or gaming the sytem by dropshipping one off things and not paying duties where as if they imported 100 units to hold inventory and resell they would be paying duties. Not making any moral judgemnets about this just putting it out there. I should also meniton I dont know any dropshipper who's ever gotten in trouble for this.

Downside to this method is customers are often waiting a long time for their items, the tracking you provide them typically doesn't show anything for about a week if at all, people aren't used to having to go to Chinese sites to track tracking. Lastly if your trying to have kind of a value proposition ie making your item seem high quality and worth your markup it's one thing if it comes in a branded box and nice packaging, stuff from China typically comes in a black bag almost like a garbage bag, it's pretty worn and dirty so if your selling a belt or something that your trying to convey a certain brand image for and it shows up in a garbage bag that's kind of out the window.

One other thing, the customs doc on the package will show hte item, quantity, weight and price. They typically lie about the price but typically under so if I order a belt for $15 it will normally say 1 belt $3 or something like that. Your buyer probably won't pay attention to that but some will.

Post: #60

Can I find out if the guide will be updated?

Part III.
Facebook Targeting (the ins & outs)
Instagram
Launching your first ad
Monitoring ads + which metrics to look out for

Post: #61

I have a question. When it comes to niche, do you search for something never done before or just something with low competetion?
Before Christmas, I started to work on first eshop. It´s basically themed Ali shipping and targeted within my country (10 million citizens). I decided to focus on product A and B and out there are two competitor separate eshops, one with product A and the other with B. They both seem to have good base of customers and offer them even some local hand made stuff (such as themed hipster bags). Which is surely better, than Ali cheaps with long shipping-time.

I know that it´s best way to have some local supplier, but at this moment, I would like to get some traffic with this.
I know there are good dropshipers here, so I would like to know if this is possible way to go. This is not any kind of niche, that could generate big revenue (sentimental stuff for kids or young girls). Average profit per item is few $ maximally.

My plan is to start with 30-50 products and advertise on facebook on target group. Worth doing this?

Post: #62

Does anyone on here have experience using Twitter to promote their products? I've been building up my twitter over this last month or so targeting my follower searching hashtags, I have close to 10K followers and I've been able to get a couple hundred more per day.

Another question, has anyone paid to promote their tweets or promoted their twitter ($99 a month) ? Most of the info I've found on this is through the twitter website which is obviously biased a lot of the other information is a few years old so it might not be relevant anymore.

Post: #63

(01-04-2018 03:46 AM)tomzestatlu Wrote:  I have a question. When it comes to niche, do you search for something never done before or just something with low competetion?

I'm just getting into this myself, no real success yet. But I'm checking out the "New Arrivals" section of AliExpress. Seems realistic to be the first to jump on a totally new product, but from an established supplier.

A separate question I have is, how to run multiple shops from the same Shopify account- particularly the contact email? They automatically provide your Shopify account email to customers to contact you- which I'd think should match the name of the shop- so I would want to disable that feature somehow and provide a unique contact email through each shop.

Post: #64

Have some basic questions for this - if you are literally buying items from another store and shipping them to your customers for a markup, won't the items you ship them just have then original distributor's branding all over it? As well as a packing slip with where the item actually came from and how much it actually cost less your markup? Unless I'm not understanding how this works...

Post: #65

(03-05-2018 12:55 PM)General Stalin Wrote:  Have some basic questions for this - if you are literally buying items from another store and shipping them to your customers for a markup, won't the items you ship them just have then original distributor's branding all over it? As well as a packing slip with where the item actually came from and how much it actually cost less your markup? Unless I'm not understanding how this works...

Depends on what you sell. Most Ali sellers don't include packing slips, however if your thinking about creating the perception of a high end brand, realize the packaging items come in looks like shit. I'ts going to come wrapped up in a dirty dusty black garbage bag, there will be a customs slip on it showing either the true price or potentially an even lower price. Tracking doesn't really show up well, sometimes its 10 days to 2 weeks in arrears and most US customers at least are confused as hell by Chinese tracking.

I recently heard over 52% of US households have Amazon Prime, thats more than have a landline. People are not willing to wait best case scenario 2 weeks, potentially 30-60 days for an item to arrive.

Dropshipping from Ali IMHO is a shitshow and a joke. My ecommerce business has 55% returning customers which is why were successful, we are not constantly paying for ads to bring in new customers. It's cheaper to keep an existing customer than find new ones all the time and with Ali dropshiping nobody is going to come back and order a second time. Also people are getting hip to Ali Express, most people know about it these days in my experience.

Dropshipping can work but you need to reach out to companies who don't offer dropshipping, be the only one or one of the few selling their products, by having a relationship with them you'll have more control over your own business ie faster shipping times, better communication with your supplier, etc, etc, etc. This can work, Ali Express stuff some people get lucky but its a stupid business IMHO, it's completely outside of your control everything from quality to shipping times to price. If your supplier runs out of stock your business is done, if they stop selling a product your business is done.

Post: #66

(07-22-2017 02:25 AM)asiaslayer Wrote:  update: i've got my new store all ready to go and i'm at the phase where i'm going to start running ad campaigns, but i've been getting my ad campaigns rejected by fagbook and locked out of my Advert Manager account, usually at the payment phase after i've put in my payment info. this is the second time this has happened. i've tried to contest it, but it takes ages for FB to reply. if they actually do reply it's just an automated response.

anyone else ever have the same problem?

there's no adult content in my ads or anything like that, and my products are normal.

I had the same problem. FB shut down my ad account and they wouldn't even tell me why. It was ridiculous. I boosted a few ads with pictures of neon signs with wording, like 'YES!', which I guess flaunted their copy size limit, and one with a picture of an asian girl in the reflection of girly bar window ('girls! girls! girls!) which I guess offended somebody somewhere for some reason (or more likely could have possibly done so?).

I wrote to FB stating that I ran an SMM agency and shutting my account down for no reason amounted to restraint of trade, and that I was going to start a class action. Ad account popped back up shortly after))

Post: #67

Interesting recent article from national British newspaper that mirrors some of the comments above. Just sharing.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/fashi...-v38rs9r2j

Post: #68

Quote:Cheap Chinese clothes and accessories are being sold on Instagram at large mark-ups by bedroom entrepreneurs — often teenagers — who dress them up to resemble boutique products.

Thousands of “drop-shippers” advertise items that they don’t own, hold or dispatch. The middlemen find goods on Chinese websites and pay small sums to market them on the picture-sharing app with photos and captions that lend a high-quality appearance.

As orders come in, they pass them directly to the Chinese suppliers, who ship them. The marketers, who are often teenagers who learnt their trade via YouTube tutorials, take a hefty percentage and have low overheads, requiring only the social media skills to show their wares to good advantage...

Costs £1 to read the rest of the article

Post: #69

Delete

Post: #70

I would like to hear some advice about dropshipping.
I recently started to think about one niche. It´s a product, that can be bought in my country (Europe), but it´s not being "seen". Actually I learned about his product on this forum. There are like two eshops that offer this (one is big eshop, that offers everything and the second one is small eshop specialized on this stuff).
I want to focus on local market (country in Europe with 10 millions citizens) in local language from local product providers (shipping from abroad etc takes too long and it discourages average customer).
Period when people could be interested about this product is just starting (bad weather, long nights). My idea is to resell the product from mentioned eshops.
These are the basics, that I should do:
- Set up eshop
- Contact product seller and make a deal
- Run marketing - I would focus on facebook advertising and probably set a blog on eshop, that would explain customers, what is the product good for.

I have basics of coding (html, css), can make some graphics and I am able to make some eshop system work. My biggest unknows are:
a) How to actually make a deal with product provider. There is some dropshipping program ran by the big eshop, but the best products are offered by the small one. Am I supposed to contact him through email and tell him about my intention any that I would like to dropship hir products? I don´t know anything about this area.
b) What´s the ideal order of the tasks? Should I first solve the technical stuff (setting up eshop, eventually running some marketing) or secure the supply of products?

Post: #71

(10-19-2018 02:04 PM)tomzestatlu Wrote:  a) How to actually make a deal with product provider. There is some dropshipping program ran by the big eshop, but the best products are offered by the small one. Am I supposed to contact him through email and tell him about my intention any that I would like to dropship hir products? I don´t know anything about this area.
b) What´s the ideal order of the tasks? Should I first solve the technical stuff (setting up eshop, eventually running some marketing) or secure the supply of products?

a. You just ask. Like you said, send him an email. Make it personal. Don't make it sound like a bot.

b. No point in setting everything up until you know you have product. That said, once you have a gentlemen's agreement in place, you can BEGIN working on the website. Stay away from coding yourself, just use something like Shopify and make your life easier.

Post: #72

(03-06-2018 02:27 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  

(03-05-2018 12:55 PM)General Stalin Wrote:  Have some basic questions for this - if you are literally buying items from another store and shipping them to your customers for a markup, won't the items you ship them just have then original distributor's branding all over it? As well as a packing slip with where the item actually came from and how much it actually cost less your markup? Unless I'm not understanding how this works...

Depends on what you sell. Most Ali sellers don't include packing slips, however if your thinking about creating the perception of a high end brand, realize the packaging items come in looks like shit. I'ts going to come wrapped up in a dirty dusty black garbage bag, there will be a customs slip on it showing either the true price or potentially an even lower price. Tracking doesn't really show up well, sometimes its 10 days to 2 weeks in arrears and most US customers at least are confused as hell by Chinese tracking.

I recently heard over 52% of US households have Amazon Prime, thats more than have a landline. People are not willing to wait best case scenario 2 weeks, potentially 30-60 days for an item to arrive.

Dropshipping from Ali IMHO is a shitshow and a joke. My ecommerce business has 55% returning customers which is why were successful, we are not constantly paying for ads to bring in new customers. It's cheaper to keep an existing customer than find new ones all the time and with Ali dropshiping nobody is going to come back and order a second time. Also people are getting hip to Ali Express, most people know about it these days in my experience.

Dropshipping can work but you need to reach out to companies who don't offer dropshipping, be the only one or one of the few selling their products, by having a relationship with them you'll have more control over your own business ie faster shipping times, better communication with your supplier, etc, etc, etc. This can work, Ali Express stuff some people get lucky but its a stupid business IMHO, it's completely outside of your control everything from quality to shipping times to price. If your supplier runs out of stock your business is done, if they stop selling a product your business is done.

Have built a small side hustle in dropshipping since learning about it in March/April.

Dropshipping will always be around. People are impulse buyers, but the days of running Instagram shoutouts on a white background are long over.

You need to be able to market, you need to be able to develop a brand, you need to make it look like you're NOT dropshipping.

I have a modest store as a side hustle but a friend I met in an entrepreneur group had no marketing experience, did some research, and within 6 weeks has hit 10k USD in sales on his first store.

Dropshipping isn't dead, but it's not for everyone. You need about 1k USD in start up for ad costs and product costs. If you have no copywriting/marketing experience, you may need more.

Use dropshipping as a stepping stone, build up a store to 3k a month and anyone can do it. It will teach you marketing, copywriting and FB ads. You will then leverage those skills you learn dropshipping to go into bigger and better things.

The game has changed though. It's always getting tougher.

Post: #73

i am currently in jamaica, looking to get started with this method. i have no previous experience on ecommerce. regarding the payment gateway, will that affect me ?

Post: #74

Facebook always disapproves my facebook adds, it happens for 3 days in a row now already. If I enter my URL from my product page, there always appears: " This content is not in accordance with our policy" ( I tried several marketing goals and adds already; conversion, engagement , all kind of pictures). I don't sell anything special from products, a friend of mine is selling similar products and he never gets disapproved.

I hired 2 guys from upwork to help me with this issue but they can't solve it either. I edited my payment settings, after that one add was approved but after 2 hours all my adds were disapproved again. Any advice how to deal with fb adds issues or any FB adds experts you can recommend?

Post: #75

Can anyone recommend a good personal teacher for Facebook adds ( via upwork/fiverr or someone on here who is an expert in Facebook adds who is willing to teach me, price is negotiable) ? I'm struggling with how to analyze my current facebook adds and know when to scale up. I'm losing a lot of money with it at the moment, so any help is welcome.