The Secret World Of Shopify Drop Shipping Explained for Beginners

A hundred dollars in today’s world, the possibilities are endless. You could turn it into some games, some shoes, or a concert ticket. But have you ever thought about turning it into a cash machine, that prints you money all year round?

Well, that’s what millions of people are apparently doing with Shopify Drop shipping, which is putting them on the path of becoming millionaires.

This new disruptive method of business allows them to send products straight from the manufacturer to the customer without ever touching the product. Everything’s done through the internet, but is it as easy as it seems. Today we’re going to find out the secret world of online millionaires.

In order to get to the truth, we need to talk to someone that’s actually started from scratch, and is now making thousands of dollars every week.

And I couldn’t think of anyone better than Sarah, who’s only 19 years old. She already owns her own house, and she’s well on track to become a millionaire. Couldn’t be better, right?

It’s almost like she chose it.

Hey Sarah.

Hey. How are you?

I’m great. Thanks.

So I’m on a bit of a mission to find out whether $100 is enough to start drop shipping. So you’re up for me to ask you a few questions to see whether we can come to a conclusion on that?

Yes. A hundred percent. I’m glad to answer.

I know when I first heard about drop shipping, I just thought it was like a side hustle like when I used to sell fish when I was younger, just to get a little bit of extra money on the side.

Do you see it like this for most people, or would you think they could turn it into a full-time thing?

So I also think this can be a full-time thing, but in the beginning for sure, you want to start off as a side hustle because you do need to have another income stream.

When I first started out, I wasn’t actually making any money at all. Now, currently it really depends. It ranges.

So there’s months where I could make anywhere from $30,000 in profits, anywhere from $40,000 in profits, but currently I’d say it’s around a little over 100,000 in revenue, but that is only about $30,000 a month in profit.

You know, it’s really great to hear you talking about profits and not just overall sales. So to hit these kind of numbers, did you have to buy any courses with these guys leaning over their old Lamborghinis and flashing the cash?

So in the beginning, I didn’t really do any courses. And then one time I did come upon someone that I thought I could trust. So I did take his course, and I’ll be honest with you, that was probably one of the worst courses I ever took.

It wasn’t really helpful, and I did learn a lot more from YouTube. I actually think people are drawn to these courses because they want a little bit support, and the failure rate of drop shipping is so high.

Why do you think that is?

So I think the problem with this is, a lot of people go into drop shipping, not fully understanding that it’s actually a real business that’s going to take a lot of time and effort.

So I would say you need to go into it with a mindset of, it’s a long-term thing. So I’m not trying to make money in the beginning.

I know this is going to be a lot of work, and so it’s going to take me some time. No one’s successful overnight, are they?

Generally, it takes two or three years of hard work to be an overnight success.

What sort of experience do you need?

Because with my products, I had to get a lot of experience to learn the products, and build my brands up.

Is it a similar thing, or is it a quicker thing, do you think?

So I think it can be done quickly because you can find most of the information online. So the main thing would be, you know, building your store on Shopify, and then learning how to actually advertise your products.

If you really put in the work, you can probably do it in less than a month. Because it seems so easy to get started, and there’s loads of people doing it.

Is it too late to actually start now?

So people are always going to say drop shipping is dead, and usually the people who say that are the ones who tried it and weren’t successful, but I’ll be honest.

E-commerce is a growing industry. It’s only going to get bigger, and so I see, I actually completely disagree with people saying that it doesn’t work now.

I think it works now more than it used to work before because everyone’s on the internet. So definitely, you can still make it work. You just have to be patient.

I always say, skills pay the bills.

So, what sort of skill set do you have that helps to make you as successful as you are?

So I would say the number one thing, honestly is to be tech savvy which a lot of people in our generation are. That’s the first thing. The second thing I’d say is obviously you need to know a little bit of marketing, but that’s actually something you can learn fairly quickly.

If you just want to basically learn how to run Facebook ads, I’d say that’s the most important aspect of the business. I think one of the biggest issues is reaching your customer base.

I know when I started, I used to have to advertise in the phone book. It was called the yellow pages.

I don’t know think if you have even heard of that now to be honest with you, but how do you reach your customer base nowadays?

So I would say honestly, so you can do Facebook ads for sure, right? But the problem with Facebook ads is, it’s a little bit pricey. So if you want to go the free route, I highly recommend TikTok.

So what I would do personally with TikTok, and what I actually do today is, of course have your products with you, but you want to kind of make it as if you own the product.

So you’re packaging them yourself. So kind of having those kinds of packaging supplies. I would just try to basically show videos of you packaging products, saying this product is for this customer.

Those types of videos do really well on TikTok. Well, I’m a big fan of TikTok, cause you probably know, and I’ll go on there, and I play all sorts of different characters.

So seeing as you’re so successful, what are your top tips of finding that ultimate product?

Honestly, when you find that product, usually it depends, right? Cause there’s days where I can actually just find a winning product while I’m just browsing and it just happens to me so luckily.

But there are times where I also take over a month to actually find that one product. My personal technique for finding a product honestly is, if I do see a little bit of competition, I know that, that product is in demand. But it’s really just kind of putting a twist on it, and kind of rebranding it.

So advertising it in a different way, if that makes sense. You know, obviously the products you’ll buy, you’re buying them in. You’re not necessarily manufacturing them.

So those same products might be available on Amazon. Why would they buy them from a drop-shipper over and above say Amazon, for example, which are going to go, well, we’re going to deliver it nice and fast to you on prime?

Definitely with drop shipping, what you need to do with the product specifically is, you want to sell product that looks very unique. A product that, maybe that person just came on, and they’ve never seen it before.

And so when they first see it, their instinct is just to buy it from your store because they don’t think that they’re going to go, be able to get it off Amazon.

So that would be the main thing. And also, very much having that branded look on your store because that makes you look more legit.

I once interviewed a young guy called Jack, and he runs an Amazon FBA business. Now he actually has to buy his stock, ship it to Amazon, who then sell it for him.

So he thinks that’s the best business model out there. Do you want to challenge him?

In my personal opinion, I might be biased, but I do think Shopify is a lot better. Shopify drop shipping for sure, and the reason for this is because with Amazon, you have a lot less control and it’s a little bit more of, you’re not really able to market your products, right?

So it is a business of course, but it doesn’t have a lot of the business aspects.

So if you’re actually trying to create a real long-term brand which is obviously everyone’s goal at the end of the day, then I feel like starting a Shopify drop shipping business from the start, definitely is a lot better and you’re going to learn more.

Yeah, because I’ve always felt in retail, once you get that first sale to the customer, you’ve probably not made any money really, because you spent all that money trying to attract them.

Once you’ve got that customer, of course, you’ve got all their details and you can target them again. I say target, it sounds terrible, doesn’t it?

But you can obviously put lots of special offers in front of them, and I know with Amazon FBA, you’re just giving them all that data, and let’s face it.

Amazon, that’s all they’re after, isn’t it? Just give us the data. That’s what we want. Exactly. Yeah. Like with drop shipping, right? You can basically do email marketing, so you can basically target your customers again.

You can also target them on Facebook, and so that you have that connection, but with Amazon, you don’t have that.

And what is your average shipping time? Because I know I bought some presents for Christmas for my family and two of them didn’t turn up. I was unaware where they were coming from.

So there’s me, Christmas day, egg on my face, because I haven’t got them a present. They’re thinking he hasn’t got anything for us. Fortunately it did arrive, but how many days would be your average shipping time from your supplier to your customer?

For me, it takes about 10 to 15 days maximum. I know before it used to be 30 days, but with 30 days, you are going to run into a lot of issues, and so I would say the maximum you want to keep it at is 15 days.

What happens when it all goes wrong?

I mean, you can have a product that doesn’t live up to expectations, shall we say? Or you can have someone saying, I didn’t get it.

How’d you handle those situations?

So there is going to be a lot of issues with drop shipping. It basically is just problem solving the whole time. And so when you have things go wrong, usually you just feel like, okay, like, I think I’m just going to quit.

I’m not going to do this anymore, but the best way to handle these types of situation, you have to make sure you have good customer service, and having a virtual assistant is really, really beneficial.

I remember when I had my first product, it was really, really difficult to gauge the market.

So when you got your first product, were you successful with that straight away?

My first product, I actually sold bracelets. And I’ll be honest with you, selling bracelets probably was a big mistake because that’s a product that you can find everywhere, right?

And so, as a beginner, that’s kind of like your first instinct, to sell something you’re comfortable with, but that definitely did not work out for me.

So I would say a product that really sells well is something that’s actually going to solve some kind of problem, because there’s going to be people already searching for that product.

And so if you can just get it in front of their face, that’s basically a product that will end up doing really well for you.

I mean, I’m in retail. A nice walk in shop. I’m always surprised by what can be the biggest seller.

So, what’s the product that surprised you the most, that you’ve been selling, or have sold in the past.

At one point, actually one of my first successful stores, I started to sell, basically like pet products. So I started off by selling like dog water bottles, and also this little, like bag that carries the dog on your shoulder.

And, so I was really surprised to see that the dog water bottle is actually what sold the most, because basically it’s a product where you can actually take it with you anywhere.

So if you’re going to walk with your dog, basically just kind of put it out, and your dog can just take a sip of the water really conveniently. And I was actually really surprised that, that product sold so well even though it was very saturated.

So it was definitely surprising for me. Sometimes you just never really know. It really depends on the customers.

Here’s what everything’s been building to. If you had everything, everything, that is taken away from you, would you better start again with, let’s say $100.

I definitely think I could make it work. And, so I would say what you can do to make it work, take advantage of free marketing. So for example, TikTok. So you could just use that free traffic to get sales. Usually I’d say the biggest expense is marketing.

So as long as you can kind of replace that with TikTok, then you can definitely make it work with $100, but as a beginner, I know it would be a little bit harder.

I think we’re going to see a complete revolution in the business world, when these young drop-shippers decide to start their own brands and apply their online skills to building huge multimillion dollar businesses. I don’t think the world’s going to know what’s hit it.

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