Has anyone tried their hand at Dropshipping, more specifically using Shopify and Oberlo/Dropified?
Have you been successful? How much initial investment did you put into it? Is the dropshipping industry too saturated?
I'm wondering because I'm a slightly broke college student majoring in business that loves the idea of creating an ecommerce business.
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What about it user?
probably more informative than Yas Forums on ecommerce
Yeah, you're probably right. Might have to check out over there soon, although it's nice hearing about fellow user experiences regarding dropshipping.
Basically my plan is to dropship bracelets and watches, targeting men's fashion from aliexpress, while using Shopify and Dropified.
Ive been working on one the last month or so. I never had any experience with shopify before, but I've had sales jobs in the past, have a fair amount of experience selling stuff on ebay and ran a few service based businesses in the past. Ebay is dog shit though (just want to get that out of the way first).
It didn't really get going until the last week (I wasn't running ads because I wanted everything to make sure everything was working properly first), and I've done $700USD in sales, with a cost of $330. I've spent about $250 on ads though this week, so I either need to scale up or improve my ad conversion rate, since I'm barely profitable (but I havent seen the effects of abandoned cart recovery emails, so that may improve slightly).
tldr, I guess it still works? Im finding a larger learning curve with ads than I am with the dropshipping/store part of it. Setting the store/oberlo/etc up is easy and I wouldn't pay someone for it. just watch some youtube videos, there's literally thousands of quality ones (ignore the ones trying to sell you their course). It seems like this would be really hard to do without some money saved up though. And your customers wait like 4 extra days if you dont pay for their item with your CC before it transfers from shopify to your account
pic related, my sales this month (only running ads for 1 week)
Glad to hear that you seem to have a positive future with your store! Are you satisfied with how your website looks? Also, how did you design your ads without making them look suspicious or too generic, like what I've seen for many dropshipping stores?
Also, I plan on eventually using custom packaging to add legitimacy.
Thought I might add. Aliexpress is good because you can order single units to people easily, but my longterm goal is private labeling (ie, order 500 of something with your own logo and packaging). Stuff you see on Aliexpress for $10 is probably on Alibaba for $3 or even less if you order hundreds of them at once. The cost per unit for these is WAY less, and you get a more professional looking product, that you can insert your own promotional material into. Its not even limited to online either; once you start doing more research on it, you'll begin to notice that like half the shit you see in stores like walmart is just companies buying bulk from china and having their logo stamped on it. Its not that hard
You just need to handle storage and shipping yourself, which honestly isn't incredibly difficult and fulfillment centers are everywhere.
Thanks for the extra info!
The private labeling is something I've considered too, mentioned in my previous comment. Not only does it add legitimacy, but it also adds value to the product.
Ya Im satisfied with it. Its pretty basic, and I just used a free theme, but you have quite a bit of flexibility with it. I'd highly recommend taking your own product pictures and paying for quality stock photos.
Also I just made them honest and descriptive/non clickbaity. ie, "doodad on sale for $19.99 - While Supplies Last - Company Name". I have no brand recognition, so creating buzz or spreading the word really does nothing for me. In my experience with cold call sales (what ppc ad campaigns really are), qualifying customers quickly is the most important thing. Over the phone or door to door you just waste time (which equals money from potential lost commission), on the internet you just directly lose money lol. I dont want to trick customers into clicking my ads, I want them to know right away its an ad selling them a product, and be qualified buyers (or at least lukewarm) before clicking and wasting my ad spend.
Maybe my strategies arent the best, but I'd rather trade getting more windowshopper/looky-lue clicks for getting more quality clicks from people actually looking to buy shit. Also, my facebook ads account was shut down until I provide a business license (which obviously I dont have at this point), so I have to wait a few more days the get past the 7 day wait period for new pages to start fb ads again. All of my sales so far have been from google ads except maybe 2 or 3
Fair enough, I'll have to consider your advice. Quality over quantity when it comes to potentials.
One successful dropshipping store I found was ourogoods, which has over 40k followers on Instagram, and use private labeling for their products. It's insane.
so this is basically you playing the middle man, buying cheap junk from china and having it shipped directly to your "customers"?
im probably an idiot but i don't see how this is sustainable. how long does it take for everyone (your "customers") to realize what it really amounts to and just buys their own cheap junk directly from alibaba?
What the fuck is dropshitting?
this sounds like those Tupperware or Avon door to door sales from the 1970s just modernized for the internet salesperson
You are absolutely 100% correct, user. This is the main concern of Dropshipping. With aliexpress and Wish becoming more popular with consumers, dropshipping is at risk. However, the gist is that you plan on the consumers not knowing any better and chalking it up to "it's just how business works."
Here's a link to successful examples of Dropshipping stores. You can check our their performances in graphs.
exchangemarketplace.com
I will add that cheap junk is also a big concern, which is why ratings on aliexpress/alibaba should be considered, along with purchasing the product yourself and seeing what the quality is.
Ya, there's lots of really successful stores like that that aren't even that great. Like taking your example, ourogoods has 2 annoying popup windows when you first go to their store (no one wants to join a newsletter for an online store, and products can be upsold/cross-sold on add to cart or checkout rather than right away which looks a lot cleaner), they have really bad copywriting, no pictures of actual people wearing or using their products except the banner, and their refund/shipping/privacy/legal/etc policies flash for like a second on product pages then disappear (this made me lol). They're still (presumably) successful while stilling doing a bunch of shit poorly.
I honestly think a store like that wouldn't be hard to beat. Their front page is really clean though, I like it a lot (I think the first banner is a little large, but it works well on mobile which will probably be like 90% of their traffic).
see your comment above for a really generalized explanation. Middle man business model, buying cheap price-wise products and marking them up for the customer on your own platform.
Because no one wants to deal with chinese stores like alibaba or aliexpress, their products are poorly indexed and poorly marketed by manufacturers, so its hard to find quality stuff (or know which stuff is quality amongst a sea of the same product). The concept of retail is one of the oldest business models in history, going back as far as fur, silk, spice, etc trade.
The product being available means nothing really, its sales and marketing that actually gets it in the hands of consumers, and most suppliers/manufacturers dont have the time or resources to effectively market their products.
well i can def see how it would have potential for a tech savvy person who can make a good website merch store portal or whatever.
if you advertised or presented stuff well, make it appear somewhat unique and appealing.
and if you can market your website effectively so it get all the hits
i have heard there are som ways to inure your website gets hits from search engines based on how you register it or link it to those search engines with keywords or whatever. (i.e., if your site doesn't pop up in the top 5 or 10 results of somebody's web search for a certain related product, ya aint gonna make it, sort of thing)
prob simple for a tech smart person, its beyond me at this point though
ok this makes sense and i would agree. ive been to alibaba and aliexpress and i refuse to buy anything from there specifically because of this.
good points, well taken
It's all about marketing and advertising. The question is, at what cost? How much do you have to spend on advertising to beat out the many, many other competitors you have?
>How much do you have to spend on advertising to beat out the many, many other competitors you have?
i dont think its as much in ad dollars as much as registering with search engines properly and effectively. that right there is an art and a science form what i heard
dropshipping was dying and rona killed what was left. you would be better off with a DTG service. the trick with all these 'wantrepeneur businesses' is they're only successful with 1)real influencers with proven track records to shill your shit on IG and twitter and 2)being niche enough that your FB ads can be so specific that you dont have much competition.
i recommend DTG because with the second part you will find that you can't just target nurses as your demo but nurses that
-love jesus
-need coffee/wine
-drive a lifted truck or some shit
then you just pay some pajeet on fiver to make one of those gaudy retard ass word vomit graphics that says some retard shit like
'THIS RN PROVIDES THE TRUCK AND JESUS PROVIDES THE WINE' so you can slap that on some shirt or journal or some shit. then once that market is tapped you just research another demo and have anesh spin up another 'THIS GYM TEACHER HAS ONE SPECIAL DAUGHTER AND HONDA CRX' t shirt design.
if you can do that and constantly get designs then youll be good. ezpz passive income.
The future is not bright for this sort of thing. You should look at it as a quick buck not anything that is sustainable.
Chinese are marketing more towwards the end user now squeezing middle men out. This is becoming even worse by chinese buying up businesses (and residential houses and using them as storage) in your country and then using them as fulfillment warehouses so the products arrive even faster (thus also cucking you - as they can deliver same good cheaper and faster)
for the last 15 years middlemen/dropshippers have been priming the public for cheap(ish) chinese goods. The chinese are now in a position to pull the rug out from under you and take an entire cut of the profit back out of the country and back to the homeland.
Classic SEO. I still have a lot to learn about it.
Very interesting, I might have to look into that. What would the logistics of a DTG service look like? Similar to a dropshipping business model but instead of products, it's the clothing and you're using a person that has DTG printing capabilties?
If not sustainable, then I can look at it as a quick buck. Anything for extra income and experience I suppose.
Then why do most of the big suppliers literally bend over backwards to help dropshippers? They don't give a fuck how their products get sold, because you're essentially marketing for their products for free on 100% commission. They dont even care about people knowing they made the product, lol. Marketing for large companies is incredibly expensive, risky and time consuming. Aliexpress wouldn't have an entire dropshipping center built into their site complete with analytics metrics if they didn't want you doing it. I do think private labeling like you describe has way more scalability, but thats basically just dropshipping with extra steps
Companies will always try to improve their bottom line, but honestly how often do you see actual good advertisements from chinese companies? Even massive companies like Huewai and Xaomi have a bad public perception for being chinese (and bad/confusing copywriting compared to american-based companies). But people are totally willing to buy made in china products if they see a white person using it in an advertisement. This isn't just a coincidence
>thats basically just dropshipping with extra steps
extra steps and way more profitability. But also more risk
yes. im not going to spell it out for you but i can tell you, if youre already going to open up a shopify account then they are already linked with a couple DTG companies.
essentially you just select which products you want to sell, upload your graphic, and sync them from the dtg company to your store. the order comes through your site, is sent to the dtg company, they print whatever the order calls for and ship direct from the factory. its such a great fucking business model if you can get it down. you literally dont have to handle ANY merchandise or shipping, you can even delegate CSR and not have to worry about jack shit. the hardest part is just generating web traffic which is where i run into issues/dont put effort into. SEO is very important but its an area that people figure out and manipulate as soon as new techniques and standards are made. (ie, used to be you can just name your product 'Blue Hat' and a search query of 'blue hat' would cause your page and product to pop up) but now its just... so convoluted it feels. if youve ever seen products on amazon that have fuck long name like 'Hair Dryer Best Result Complete Styling Drying Hair Celebrity Curly Hair Straight Hair Blue Hair Dryer' or some shit like that, it's because the god damn bugmen figured out that that will trigger all of those fucking searches. its just dumb, and my site is part of my brand/image so i can't just buttfuck a bunch of descriptive terms into items while maintaining brand integrity. its annoying and so ive let it alone for a bit.
i did many 5 shop and failed each time despit learning a new part of the job each time.
fdirst youy'll need to set uyp a great and profesional looking site, thats harder than just a "good looking site".
think about color codes, branding, stuff like that.
then there is the product (s) choices, the prices, how you're gonna advertise it, how will you make the clients want to buy it at such price?
oh yeah, and if you're facebook ads strategy is shit you'll jsut wate tons of money.
also the free 50 first sales on partner doesnt work anymore so you'll be spending monthly just to keep your site live.