Post: #1

I've decided to take the plunge, jump on the bandwagon, and try my hand at Shopify dropshipping. And, I'm going to document the entire process in this thread (updating it a few times a week is the hope), so that members here can learn from my (likely at least a few) failures and hopefully some successes.

A few things to note:

This is not a polished thing I'm doing here. It's not like my niche site thread, which was a method I'd repeated to enormous success several times. But, I'm very hopeful the actual documentation on a consistent basis will give some good insights into what's working, what's not, and the work that's involved in the process.

Also of note:

I have ZERO experience with dropshipping or selling any sort of physical product. All my experiences comes from selling information products. I do have a bit of experience with paid traffic, but not a ton. With that being said, I've been blogging and building a brand for 5 years now. Internet business is certainly nothing new to me, even if this particular way of doing things is.

I also am in a no-lose position, so you should take this whole project with a grain of salt, because....

Having built my brand over the last 5 years, I have a big audience and a large email list. I'm going to be sending them the same stuff you see here. In those emails, they'll have affiliate links to hosting/domains/Shopify/plugins/etc. I'm removing them for the forum posts. But, it's very likely I will at a very minimum break even just from these sales.

In addition, I'll likely compile all these posts/emails into some sort of guide or eBook and charge for it down the road.

So again, it's almost a win-win for me, even if my store doesn't even make a cent.

Please note: These first few posts have already been written and kept in a journal for the last few weeks, but as of creating this first post (May 30th), I've launched the store and am making sales.

- My initial plan was to sell gourmet specialty foods. I even found a supplier in the US. But once I started building the store, I realized what a horrible pain in the ass it would be to actually have to do stuff manually.

- So instead, I went the High Quality Chinese Goods route and started with some products on AliExpress, integrating it with Oberlo.

- Certainly, I have my doubts about the long-term feasibility of something like this. I mean, we're talking about sourcing products from China. You're at the mercy of their shipping times, their inventory, and their business sense. Whereas, on the flip side, with the brand I've built over the last 5+ years on ​Trouble​, I can say with plenty of conviction that I will be around for a long time.

- Dropshipping on the other hand, sort of feels like it could be yanked out of my hands at any moment, especially as I source these products from Chinese suppliers on AliExpress.

DS is definitely feasible, of that I have no doubts.

But I can also see it being full of headaches.

And it's definitely something I'll be outsourcing to a VA.

Anyways, without further ado...

Post: #2

So, let me first and foremost elaborate on my original idea.

As mentioned above, I was going to do niche specialty foods from an actual supplier in the US.

I actually went the old school way and sourced a supplier, had to get approved for a wholesale account, and everything.

It was a niche I was genuinely interested and knowledgeable in, so it seemed like a good fit until I started actually doing the work...

Because they're old school...

It also means they are not integrated into all of the great features of 2018 dropshipping, namely automation systems like Oberlo which make it stupidly easy to process orders. Instead, I did it manually.

On the bright side, it meant my customers were going to have a better experience. They were going to get their product in a matter of days from a reputable company in the US, versus weeks from a questionable company in China.

But my god, it was monkey work.

I’m talking copy and pasting product descriptions, images, etc. The whole time, I haven’t been able to help but think that there has to be a better way of doing it.

Sure, I could have hired it out, but I also wanted a realistic beginner experience. But ultimately, yes — it felt like monkey work that I should be hiring some virtual assistant to do, not doing it myself.

I hemmed and hawed for almost a month about whether to go forward with it.

The final straw was when, for kicks, I fired up a new Shopify store/domain. And I actually went through with installing all of the sexy automation apps. My life was changed for the better.

I imported every product manually and it took hours.

I clicked 5 buttons in Shopify and Oberlo and guess what, I had a full store of products.

Lesson to take from this:

It's not necessary to re-invent the wheel. I thought I was gonna be all clever and do Shopify dropshipping differently from everyone else by sourcing from a US supplier. But certainly that was going to come at a cost (my sanity).

There's a reason the whole Shopify/AliExpress thing is so popular right now. You could literally start a store and be selling within a day with the way that Shopify/Oberlo/AliExpress all integrate together.

Post: #3

On another note...there's a lot of absolutely horrible Dropshipping advice out there.

A thread like this one has great info in it, for example: /thread-65952.html

This: /thread-57327.html

And this: /thread-66913.html

All have better info than most DS courses.

But a lot of the DS stuff is very vague.

Something I noticed was that a lot of the courses for this kind of stuff were absurdly, absurdly expensive. Think $1,000+ for basic courses. And then, there was the pyramid schemes after that. Someone pays the $1k, gets in a course, and then is also given rights to sell the course as an affiliate.

I even looked through a few of them with some of my reader's logins, and somehow these $1k courses are completely lacking in the areas of actually selecting a niche, how to write product descriptions (basic selling), and provide very few if any examples of actual successes. It's all just fluff and theory.

The fact of the matter is that you're likely gonna lose some money, have to learn some basic sales/copywriting skills, and be willing to fall flat on your face before having any success.

Post: #4

The food thing is a much better idea. Your actually building a real business, your providing a unique product and service and your not another fucking dumbshit selling chinese multitools and tree hammocks, you'll likely have faster shipping times and better customer service. If it takes off you can always build out a system to automate this process, it's not as if the first day you open the store your gonna have hundreds of orders comming in. It will likely start slow, you can easily handle that workload and as things grow and you prove the concept invest a little money into having someone build out some automation for you to pass orders to your suppliers.

IMHO the Ali Express thing is a shit idea that's doomed to fail, the food idea is a good one which can actually take off.

Post: #5

(05-30-2018 05:45 AM)This Is Trouble Wrote:  On another note...there's a lot of absolutely horrible Dropshipping advice out there.

A thread like this one has great info in it, for example: /thread-65952.html

This: /thread-57327.html

And this: /thread-66913.html

All have better info than most DS courses.

But a lot of the DS stuff is very vague.

Something I noticed was that a lot of the courses for this kind of stuff were absurdly, absurdly expensive. Think $1,000+ for basic courses. And then, there was the pyramid schemes after that. Someone pays the $1k, gets in a course, and then is also given rights to sell the course as an affiliate.

I even looked through a few of them with some of my reader's logins, and somehow these $1k courses are completely lacking in the areas of actually selecting a niche, how to write product descriptions (basic selling), and provide very few if any examples of actual successes. It's all just fluff and theory.

The fact of the matter is that you're likely gonna lose some money, have to learn some basic sales/copywriting skills, and be willing to fall flat on your face before having any success.

Dont buy a course. Dan Dasilva and Tanner J Fox made over 200K selling a course on dropshipping, neither of these numnuts have ever made more than $100 dropshipping.

Post: #6

(05-30-2018 11:39 AM)jamaicabound Wrote:  The food thing is a much better idea. Your actually building a real business, your providing a unique product and service and your not another fucking dumbshit selling chinese multitools and tree hammocks, you'll likely have faster shipping times and better customer service. If it takes off you can always build out a system to automate this process, it's not as if the first day you open the store your gonna have hundreds of orders comming in. It will likely start slow, you can easily handle that workload and as things grow and you prove the concept invest a little money into having someone build out some automation for you to pass orders to your suppliers.

IMHO the Ali Express thing is a shit idea that's doomed to fail, the food idea is a good one which can actually take off.

I don’t disagree, but it’s just not on the cards for now. We’re talking having issues as basic as being unable to get product images without watermarks. It wasn’t going to be viable.

Post: #7

I pissed $25 down the tube (not that that's anything for this project) on my first ad.

Not even an Add to Cart.

So I expanded my audience a bit (instead of targeting super, super specifically), picked a new product, wrote a nice new carousel-style ad, and it seems I'm now getting somewhere.

Woke up this morning to a couple add to carts, but no sales.

I don't have any abandonment protector set up as of now, so I'm going to pause that ad and make sure I have the rest of the backbones in place. But so far, it's looking reasonably promising.

Post: #8

(05-31-2018 02:11 PM)This Is Trouble Wrote:  I pissed $25 down the tube (not that that's anything for this project) on my first ad.

Not even an Add to Cart.

So I expanded my audience a bit (instead of targeting super, super specifically), picked a new product, wrote a nice new carousel-style ad, and it seems I'm now getting somewhere.

Woke up this morning to a couple add to carts, but no sales.

I don't have any abandonment protector set up as of now, so I'm going to pause that ad and make sure I have the rest of the backbones in place. But so far, it's looking reasonably promising.

Shopify automatically sends out these return to cart e-mails where basically you e-mail someone and say hey we noticed you didn't complete your order, this link will take you back. With one click it will bring them back to where everything is in the cart with their info already plugged in so makes the order process a quick no brainer. You can also set this up to include a coupon code or free shipping as well

Post: #9

(05-30-2018 05:31 AM)This Is Trouble Wrote:  [….]
- My initial plan was to sell gourmet specialty foods. I even found a supplier in the US. But once I started building the store, I realized what a horrible pain in the ass it would be to actually have to do stuff manually.

- So instead, I went the High Quality Chinese Goods route and started with some products on AliExpress, integrating it with Oberlo.

- Certainly, I have my doubts about the long-term feasibility of something like this. I mean, we're talking about sourcing products from China. You're at the mercy of their shipping times, their inventory, and their business sense. Whereas, on the flip side, with the brand I've built over the last 5+ years on ​Trouble​, I can say with plenty of conviction that I will be around for a long time.

- Dropshipping on the other hand, sort of feels like it could be yanked out of my hands at any moment, especially as I source these products from Chinese suppliers on AliExpress.

DS is definitely feasible, of that I have no doubts.

But I can also see it being full of headaches.

And it's definitely something I'll be outsourcing to a VA.

Anyways, without further ado...

I have a newbie question, which I will frame in terms of the American gourmet product you thought about first. If I understood correctly, you wanted the supplier to ship for you, without having any inventory of your own. Is that correct? Now, assuming the product has a decent shelf life, would you be able to buy some inventory and store it with some public warehousing service that could then fulfil orders for you? If so, then clearly it adds costs and risks up front, but would the complexity of the shop be comparable to the Chinese option? Or did I miss the point completely? I am asking because I am looking at the possibility of selling such a product and I don't think that the supplier will drop ship for me.

Post: #10

*patiently waits for a progress update, hopefully with month by month revenue, costs and so forth*

Post: #11

(06-04-2018 07:58 AM)Gray Beard Wrote:  

(05-30-2018 05:31 AM)This Is Trouble Wrote:  [….]
- My initial plan was to sell gourmet specialty foods. I even found a supplier in the US. But once I started building the store, I realized what a horrible pain in the ass it would be to actually have to do stuff manually.

- So instead, I went the High Quality Chinese Goods route and started with some products on AliExpress, integrating it with Oberlo.

- Certainly, I have my doubts about the long-term feasibility of something like this. I mean, we're talking about sourcing products from China. You're at the mercy of their shipping times, their inventory, and their business sense. Whereas, on the flip side, with the brand I've built over the last 5+ years on ​Trouble​, I can say with plenty of conviction that I will be around for a long time.

- Dropshipping on the other hand, sort of feels like it could be yanked out of my hands at any moment, especially as I source these products from Chinese suppliers on AliExpress.

DS is definitely feasible, of that I have no doubts.

But I can also see it being full of headaches.

And it's definitely something I'll be outsourcing to a VA.

Anyways, without further ado...

I have a newbie question, which I will frame in terms of the American gourmet product you thought about first. If I understood correctly, you wanted the supplier to ship for you, without having any inventory of your own. Is that correct? Now, assuming the product has a decent shelf life, would you be able to buy some inventory and store it with some public warehousing service that could then fulfil orders for you? If so, then clearly it adds costs and risks up front, but would the complexity of the shop be comparable to the Chinese option? Or did I miss the point completely? I am asking because I am looking at the possibility of selling such a product and I don't think that the supplier will drop ship for me.

That's sounds like a typical foods distribution business. You own a food product/brand that is produced by a third party supplier on your demand, of which you have to manage stock, have a tight control of customer payments and Invoicing, deal with supply chain issues, logististics costs, have some considerable initial investment, possibly hiring employees, etc.

Well, can depend on the margins you will have, but if its a niche product (or even worse, a niche mono-product business) that can not sell or enter in big supermarket chains, I think it will be hard to reach even the break even, unless you work your ass off doing fairs and events with quite some regularity. Which is not quite the ideal of a location independent business.

Post: #12

(06-04-2018 06:10 PM)Dafffy Wrote:  *patiently waits for a progress update, hopefully with month by month revenue, costs and so forth*

Ha, I wanted at least a few responses before I dedicated the time to keeping this updated.

First sales …

$19.

So, here's what I'm doing at this point. I'm building out my Facebook pixel. Taking the losses, but if I can make a few sales it'll give me the confidence to keep on going.

With this product, my cost was $4, shipping $1.50, and I sold it for $19.

I'm only running $5/day budgets so at this point I don't have a real idea of what it's gonna cost me to acquire a customer.

All I know is that the first one is the hard one.

Every time I start a new niche site, I'm always wondering how long it's gonna take before I start making some money. Once the first sale is made, it's a huge relief. Proof that I'm not crazy. The motor to keep going.

Here's to hopin' that this is the same thing.

Post: #13

(06-04-2018 08:31 PM)Rocha Wrote:  

(06-04-2018 07:58 AM)Gray Beard Wrote:  

(05-30-2018 05:31 AM)This Is Trouble Wrote:  [….]
- My initial plan was to sell gourmet specialty foods. I even found a supplier in the US. But once I started building the store, I realized what a horrible pain in the ass it would be to actually have to do stuff manually.

- So instead, I went the High Quality Chinese Goods route and started with some products on AliExpress, integrating it with Oberlo.

- Certainly, I have my doubts about the long-term feasibility of something like this. I mean, we're talking about sourcing products from China. You're at the mercy of their shipping times, their inventory, and their business sense. Whereas, on the flip side, with the brand I've built over the last 5+ years on ​Trouble​, I can say with plenty of conviction that I will be around for a long time.

- Dropshipping on the other hand, sort of feels like it could be yanked out of my hands at any moment, especially as I source these products from Chinese suppliers on AliExpress.

DS is definitely feasible, of that I have no doubts.

But I can also see it being full of headaches.

And it's definitely something I'll be outsourcing to a VA.

Anyways, without further ado...

I have a newbie question, which I will frame in terms of the American gourmet product you thought about first. If I understood correctly, you wanted the supplier to ship for you, without having any inventory of your own. Is that correct? Now, assuming the product has a decent shelf life, would you be able to buy some inventory and store it with some public warehousing service that could then fulfil orders for you? If so, then clearly it adds costs and risks up front, but would the complexity of the shop be comparable to the Chinese option? Or did I miss the point completely? I am asking because I am looking at the possibility of selling such a product and I don't think that the supplier will drop ship for me.

That's sounds like a typical foods distribution business. You own a food product/brand that is produced by a third party supplier on your demand, of which you have to manage stock, have a tight control of customer payments and Invoicing, deal with supply chain issues, logististics costs, have some considerable initial investment, possibly hiring employees, etc.

Well, can depend on the margins you will have, but if its a niche product (or even worse, a niche mono-product business) that can not sell or enter in big supermarket chains, I think it will be hard to reach even the break even, unless you work your ass off doing fairs and events with quite some regularity. Which is not quite the ideal of a location independent business.

Naw, nothing like that. They were going to ship the product with the brands label already on it. I was going to be the "marketing distributor" you could say, and then place the order to the actual physical distributor who would manage the supply and everything.

But as you said, it's all a pain. They were already running out of shit before I even ordered.

Post: #14

So, here's a comprehensive update:

Week 1: Spent $110 on ads, made about the same in sales. Subtract my cost of goods + shipping = $20 loss

For all intensive purposes I'd consider that a solid start to come close to breaking even. I didn't make any sales towards the end of the week, I was running in the green for a little while there

Post: #15

I just finished watching "The Founder", the movie about McDonald's founder/thief Ray Kroc taking over the company and then building out McDonald's to the capitalist's-wet-dream that it is today.

And, something interesting caught my eye about it.

How quickly he wanted to scale that sucker up.

Now, the original McDonald brothers were slow about the process. They opened their main restaurant, started franchising, shut down that program, and then were content to ride their one main store out, seemingly until the day they died.

Then Ray showed up and wanted in.

He got in.

Then he started expanding at three new franchises a month.

And even more after that.

Eventually, it got to the point that he basically bullied them out. He scooped out all the land, leased it to the franchisees, and had the McDonald's brother's balls in his hand. Then, he cut them a check for a cool $2.7 million and he had his name and all his rights.

He wanted to scale and never had a reason to stop.

And at that point in time, he had zero competition.

So once he knew the formula worked, there was zero reason not to keep on keepin' on, scaling that sucker as quick as he could.

Which brings me to dropshipping:

My first week was a breakeven.

Week 2, profitable.

3x ad spend, to be precise.

And then, my supplier, AliExpress, put a hold on my orders. That was last Saturday. I just managed to finally put the fire completely out today, and now I'm left in the same position Ray Kroc was all those years ago…

Just how fast do you want to move when you're working with overseas suppliers?

Post: #16

So your formula at the moment is more ad spending = profit. Think it gets to a point where the effectiveness of Ad spending decreases after a certain point. I'm going to check out that movie, sounds like it could have some usable ideas in it. "Just how fast do you want to move when you're working with overseas suppliers?". i don't have that much experience with overseas suppliers but i would ensure that they can meet the demands of your business and also ensure that you have another quality supplier who can provide you with the same quality resources if something occurs with the first supplier (risk management really).

Post: #17

(06-07-2018 01:29 AM)This Is Trouble Wrote:  Just how fast do you want to move when you're working with overseas suppliers?

(06-07-2018 10:03 AM)Dafffy Wrote:  So your formula at the moment is more ad spending = profit. Think it gets to a point where the effectiveness of Ad spending decreases after a certain point.

I heard 3:1 profit to ad spend is the sweet spot.

I'd aggressively scale up till the ratio starts to drop. No point leaving money on the table.

Post: #18

@the Thing. First, a disclaimer: I never distributed any physical product for profit. Having said that, I do know a bit about mathematics of business (aka analytics). The 3:1 ratio may or may not work very well as a rule of thumb--I don't know--but it does not speak directly to the question OP raised. If everything was certain, then an economist might say: increase advertising as long as the marginal profit from a dollar of advertising exceeds a dollar; that is, the marginal ratio should be 1:1. It is easy to build hypothetical examples where that rule will lead to a profit to spend total ratio of just slightly over 1:1 (so the 3:1 rule is certainly just a rule of thumb). But OP's question was about the risk of advertising correctly but then facing supply shortage turning the advertising expense to a pure loss. The answer depends on the probability you believe that will happen. For instance, if you estimate that can happen this period with a probability of 0.25, then you are facing an expected profit of only 75% of the "certain" profit. Therefore, only a smaller expense is justified, leading to a marginal ratio of 1.33:1 at least (or 1:0.75). Note, I am talking about the marginal ratio, not the total ratio, which will be larger. So the answer to OP's question is the higher you perceive the risk, the less you should invest in advertising, but only you can assess the risks involved and the correct response to them.

Post: #19

(06-07-2018 01:29 AM)This Is Trouble Wrote:  I just finished watching "The Founder", the movie about McDonald's founder/thief Ray Kroc taking over the company and then building out McDonald's to the capitalist's-wet-dream that it is today.

And, something interesting caught my eye about it.

How quickly he wanted to scale that sucker up.

Now, the original McDonald brothers were slow about the process. They opened their main restaurant, started franchising, shut down that program, and then were content to ride their one main store out, seemingly until the day they died.

Then Ray showed up and wanted in.

He got in.

Then he started expanding at three new franchises a month.

And even more after that.

Eventually, it got to the point that he basically bullied them out. He scooped out all the land, leased it to the franchisees, and had the McDonald's brother's balls in his hand. Then, he cut them a check for a cool $2.7 million and he had his name and all his rights.

He wanted to scale and never had a reason to stop.

And at that point in time, he had zero competition.

So once he knew the formula worked, there was zero reason not to keep on keepin' on, scaling that sucker as quick as he could.

Which brings me to dropshipping:

My first week was a breakeven.

Week 2, profitable.

3x ad spend, to be precise.

And then, my supplier, AliExpress, put a hold on my orders. That was last Saturday. I just managed to finally put the fire completely out today, and now I'm left in the same position Ray Kroc was all those years ago…

Just how fast do you want to move when you're working with overseas suppliers?

Founder was a great movie. That said her'es a big difference between dropshipping and McDonalds, McDonalds controlled everything about their business, even to the point of some of the equipment they were using, processes in terms of how they dressed the burgers and ran kind of an assembly line, etc.

You as an Ali Express dropshipper have 0 control over your business. You don't control the products quality, you dont control the shiping time, you don't control what shows up in the mail ie how its packed, whats in the package ie packing slips, etc.

McDonalds was very much in control of the customer experience, a dropshipper cannot be

Post: #20

Just an update, profitable through third week.

Will try to post some more specific numbers soon, my Facebook Ads Manager is a disaster atm.

Post: #21

Something else to note, all of the scarcity apps like Hurrify - I wonder if they will be “legal” in the future. There were rumors about a ban, and with all the recent GDPR stuff, I can’t help but think they may not be allowed forever.

Post: #22

What category of products are you selling?

Its amazing you’re profitable, it’s always good to know from people here that dropshipping works.

I would love to add some items from aliexpress to my POD store, but worried it might fuck everything up for me with the customers

Post: #23

Very interested in following your progress here.

I have experience in various online business fields, but not dropshipping. I've been looking into trying my hand at it lately.

One question for you This Is Trouble:

How many initial hours of self learning / failing / figuring things out / rinse and repeat did it take you before you had something basic up and running?

Lack of time is currently my biggest constraint, but I do recognize the fact that I'm gonna need to put some initial effort in to figure out the basics. When I have more time on my hands, I might give it a shot.

Would be good to have a rough estimation of how long that took you. I'm usually pretty good at figuring out new stuff and technologies, if that helps. I prefer to just dive into it instead of learning from a course, and if I run into a specific problem I'll then Google a solution.

Post: #24

Really looking forward to people's eCommerce progress out there.

Going to a specific eCommerce meet opens a few perspectives in person.

Most of the discussion is available online if you do your research well such as the need for VA's when expanding, many refusing to disclose their niches and profitability did not come quickly.
Many have just hit mid five figures AUD per month revenue after a few years.

What you may or may not find online are extremely dependent on the individual's niche or circumstances like how Pinterest is ideal for generating traffic bespoke hand-made products and it's worth subscribing to paid traffic there.

Then I constantly hear whinging about running an eCommerce in your 30's with 3 kids in an expensive country like Australia:

Post: #25

(06-16-2018 03:12 PM)Aviel Wrote:  What category of products are you selling?

Its amazing you’re profitable, it’s always good to know from people here that dropshipping works.

I would love to add some items from aliexpress to my POD store, but worried it might fuck everything up for me with the customers

Not saying it can't be done but when somoene orders 2 products from your store a shirt and an Ali item potentially the shirt shows up in 6 days, their Ali Product is trailing 30 days behind it. Your probably going to be fielding a lot of questions about I only got one item, and your gonna have to be like oh man here check this China post tracking that doesn't show anything,you can be confident your mini sewing machine will be arriving in 30-45 days, just be patient