Did you know that about 90% of dropshippers quit after their first month? Since 2016, there’s been a new influx of dropshippers coming into the market. This means that dropshipping has become more competitive and saturated than ever before.

Based on Google Trends, you can see that over the last two years, interest in dropshipping has tripled in web search.

When it comes to dropshipping, gone are the days of selling a simple wolf mug and making 6 figures off of that. If you want to see the infamous wolf mug ad click here.

Here are a few reasons why:

Ad costs are rising due to an increase in dropshippers
Everybody is copying each other – selling the same products and using the same ads
Since ad costs are rising, margins are very thin.

Though, this might sound scary to those of you just joining the dropshipping space, there’s an opportunity now to stand above your competition by running your dropshipping store the right way.

Darwin once said,”

“It’s not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

This leads me to the Do’s and Don’ts when starting your first dropshipping store.

Don’t

Copy & paste

Don’t Just Copy From Cookie Cutter Product Research Tools. There are many videos online of “gurus” telling you what products to sell in 2020. Or they’ll also tell you about using product research tools out there.

The problem is most product research tools have subscribers pay a monthly subscription fee to gain access to the same library of “hot” products. Imagine that tool has 1,000 users. Even if only 500 of those users are active. That’s 500 dropshippers testing the same products.

It’s no wonder why you’re not seeing profits! Here’s what you need to do instead.

Test Bad Products

It’s true that you need to keep testing in order to succeed in dropshipping. To find winners, you need to be a scientist. Think of it like running experiments to see which products work.

However, most people make 1 of 2 mistakes.

They test products that are tacky or wack
They test oversaturated or old winners

Here are some examples.

Though this ads got 64k views, nobody is lining up to get a desktop punching bag.

The Anti-Theft Bag has been sold by thousands of dropshippers and by now it’s probably an Amazon best seller already.

By testing bad products, you are simply wasting money. Furthermore, you get into a spiral of negativity and believe dropshipping doesn’t work.

Do

Smarter Research

When it comes to product research, Trending Products is the only tool that gives you access to live trends with a dynamic feed that is unique to each user. That means other subscribers have a different feed than you.

You’re also seeing different products daily. With thousands of product trends detected daily, you’re seeing a new feed daily as well. That means everyday I’ll be seeing an abundance of new products on my feed.

Here’s a comparison charts of the features you get with Trending Products versus the most popular product research tools.

Product Research Tools	Trending Products	Ecom Hunt	Ali Shark	Product List Genie	Dropship Spy
Live Trends	x
Store Research	x		x		x
Unique Feed	x
Basic Features (supplier, video ad, product page)	x	x	x	x	x
Shuffle	x
Strength Metrics	x
Extension Tool	x
Pricing	$97 – 300 daily credits	$20	$20	$97	$20

** 300 Daily Credits – most products are between 2-6 credits. But some super hot products can be up to 70 credits.

This means you’ll be unlocking more than enough products that are trending live! Most tools only given you 2 new products per day.

Just to give you an idea, here is an example of a live trending product!

Long Sleeve Sweatshirt Travel Dress

This leads me to the next no-no.

Test Good Products

You want to make sure that you only test products that fit your criteria for winning products.

Product Criteria:

Product is selling recently or currently trending
Product has a good margin (usually above 60% at minimum or $15-$20 margins)
Product solves a big problem
Product has a unique feature or a “wow” factor
Product has less than 10,000 orders on Aliexpress

If the product satisfies these 5 conditions, you should test it. If not, don’t test it.

For example, this Orthopedic Pillow is a product worth testing. With our trending products software, we were able to detect 1053 within the last day!

ComfySleep Orthopedic Pillow

This pillow helps with body aches and lower back pain, especially if you have joint and muscle problems. This problem is so significant it literally keeps you up at night.

Given that we can source this product for $9.72 with epacket, we can definitely sell this product for $29. This gives you a 66% margin which is great!

The unique feature for the product is how it’s shaped and also placed in between your legs to fit your natural sleeping position.

Focus on Conversion

You don’t have to spend days or weeks trying to make the perfect store. But you do need to treat your store and product page like a sales funnel. Every piece of information and button should lead your customer to the sale.

In the picture diagram below, you’ll see what a difference increasing your conversion rate makes. In this example, let’s say you sell a 3D Yoga Lamp for $30 with a product cost of $10. You spend roughly $1000 on Facebook Ads to get 5,000 unique clicks. This means it costs you 20 cents to get 1 unique click. If your store converts at 3% rate, you’ll get 150 sales. This means you have a revenue of $4,500. However, if your store converts at a 5% rate, your revenue would jump to $7500! Thats literally a $3,000 increase without spending any more money on ads. You can see that conversion rate plays a key role in how profitable your campaigns are.

Below is a checklist to ensure you have everything you need for your store.

Product Checklist

✅ Shipping Info

✅ Guarantees

✅ Trust Badge

✅ Reviews or Testimonials

✅ Upsells/Product Recommendations

✅ Quantity Discounts

✅Detailed Product Description explaining

The problem
How it solves that problem
Features/What’s Included

✅ Scarcity – only use timers on products being advertised

Shipping – make sure that you are upfront with how long it takes for the customer to have their product. A good tip is to include how many days it’ll take based on the region.

Trust Badges – A popular badge to include is the SSL/Payment trust badge letting the customer know their payment info is secure.

Guarantees – Having a no questions asked, 30 day money back guarantee helps customers feel at ease about their purchase. Many sites such as Amazon, Walmart and eBay have buyer protection, so it helps customers feel like there is no risk involved.

Reviews or Testimonials – We recommend using an app such as Loox Reviews or Alireviews so you can seamlessly import reviews from Aliexpress. One of the benefits to this is being able to choose reviews based on 5 star ratings and photo reviews.

Testimonials can be powerful to establishing credibility to your store as well. Adding testimonials from your social media such as comments is an excellent bonus!

Product Description: The last thing you want to do with your product description is to copy the generic descriptions from Aliexpress. Your descriptions should talk about the customers. Call out the problem and then position your product as the solution for that problem.

Here’s an example of a great product page description. Notice they use easy to understand language and even bold their texts to highlight it’s benefits!

Upsell Bundles/Quantity Discounts and Scarcity – We recommend an app called Vitals40 because it offers 40 apps all in one such as upsells, badges, currency converters, sales pop-ups and more.

Include Upsell Bundes and Product Recommendations categories to your customers to maximize your opportunity for a customer’s impulse purchase decision. Have you ever went shopping only intending to only buy one item? But then you went home with bags full of things you bought. That’s because many stores are designed to get you to buy more whether it’s items carefully placed in the checkout process or lavish items in the front of the store.

Scarcity done tastefully will put pressure on the prospect to make a decision to purchase. Make sure to use scarcity for only products you are advertising and not every product in your store. Keeping scarcity to a minimum makes your visitors feel there is a real limit involved. Using a real reason such as “Deal of the Day” or “Inventory Running Low” can work extremely effective.

When it comes to a customer’s buying decision often times, a cold traffic visitor won’t simply just look at your product page and purchase. For higher priced items, customers will bounce to other pages of your website to ensure they can trust the validity of your store

Customers want to know things such as:

Is this store legit?
Will they ship by order and when will I receive it?
Can I return or refund my item if I don’t like it?

Here’s a diagram to show you how a customer’s journey on your store may look like before making a buying decision.

Follow the store checklist below to ensure that you have all of the pages needed to gain the trust of your prospects.

Store Checklist

✅FAQ Page

✅ About Us Page

✅ Track My Order

Use an app such as Aftership. Customers can enter their tracking number or order number to see where there order is currently.

✅ Contact Us

✅ Refund Policy

✅ Privacy Policy

Check for mobile optimization. Ensure that all the buttons, descriptions, pictures and videos display properly across iphone and android devices.

Run the Numbers

When it comes to dropshipping, you’ll be surprised how few people really know their numbers. Have you ever seen Shark Tank? I can already imagine Mark Cuban or Kevin O’Leary asking you about your profit margins.

Here are a few things you should have set up when it comes to knowing your numbers.

Facebook Ad Customized Columns

Most beginner advertisers forget to organize their Facebook Columns. This is a critical mistake because you can’t effectively analyze and comprehend how your ads are performing.

For reference, here is how your Facebook Ad Column might look like in it’s default settings.

You’ll want to edit the columns to include the following columns in this order:

Ad Name

Budget

Amount Spent

Link Clicks

Cost Per Unique Link Click

CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions)

Cost Per Add to Cart

Add to Carts

Cost Per Initiate Checkout

Initiate Checkouts

Cost Per Purchase

Purchase ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)

Purchases

Purchase Conversion Value

If you want to learn how to customize the columns in your business manager, simply click here.

In dropshipping you need to know your numbers, in order to decide whether to kill or scale ads. If you’re noticing a cost per purchase of $15 on a product you’re selling for $20. And cost of goods is $7. Then you know you’re suffering a loss of $2 on each product sold. Typically you need an ROA of at minimum 1.5x, but usually 2x to be safe in order to keep running your campaign.

Order Metrics App

Order metrics is an app that tracks all of your profits in one place. For example, let’s say you advertise on multiple platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Google Ads. You can connect the platforms to track your ad spend and import product costs down to the product variance. You can even include operational costs such as shopify apps and more.

The capabilities are fantastic because you can filter your net profit by products as well. By using order metrics, you’ll know which sales channels perform the best, which products are producing the most profit and if any supplier cost of goods are hurting your profit.

If you sync up your supplier from Aliexpress to Order Metrics, or have a dropified/oberlo account, you’ll get notified anytime your suppliers change prices in product cost or run low in inventory!

Customer Service

When it comes to customer service, dropshippers are notorious for not replying to emails or shipping out products. The truth is this can completely destroy your dropshipping business.

Customers can greatly influence your business because they’ll likely:

Complain to their banks
Leave bad reviews on your Facebook and Google
Leave a bad review on the BBB (Better Business Bureau)
Leave a negative score on your facebook ad

When all of the above happens, this is when your business goes downhill. When customers issue chargebacks to your bank, not only are you forced to submit evidence, but banks will begin withholding your money and shutting payment provider accounts.

When customers leave bad reviews on social media and BBB, many of your new prospects will search you up and see these complaints. Cold traffic visitors can be skeptical and this will only reaffirm their suspicions.

If customers leave negative feedback on your Facebook Ad, facebook will begin negatively shutting down campaigns and possibly your entire Ad account or even business manager. Sometimes, Facebook can impact your cost or your visibility, so less people see your ad.

The lesson is simple.

Don’t Mistreat Your Customers!

What to do instead:

You want your customer service team to actively and swiftly respond to everything from your customers and prospects.

Doing this shows the other prospects that there is a live person actively responding to concerns. A customer’s happiness is worth more than the few extra dollars you keep.

If a customer is unhappy, issue them a refund. If they haven’t received their order, provide them with a tracking number and detailed explanation.

Consider sourcing from the United States

Many dropshippers don’t know that you can now ship products from the United States using Aliexpress. Typically these orders arrive within 5-7 business days or 4-10 total days.

Simply search for the product you’re looking to source and filter by United States and Fast Shipping.

If you increase the speed of your shipping times, you’ll massively increase your sales and drastically reduce the customer complaints you receive.

Conclusion

If you’re making the same mistakes that everyone else is you’re wasting a lot of time and money. The secret is to cut your learning curve by following people who have succeeded in dropshipping.

We definitely think these are the biggest do’s and don’ts when it comes to new dropshippers starting their first store. Now you can celebrate knowing you have just received valuable golden nuggets to succeeding.

Put your new knowledge to use and tap 'Add to Chrome' on the Web Store.

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