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First Dropshipping Venture (Progress Thread)

A detailed account of a Fastlane process...

dskouris

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Jul 26, 2016
6
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Paphos, Cyprus
Hi All,

I've decided to embark on my first real venture. I've dabbled in the past with various freelancing jobs but I've decided to look into something else for my first real taste of hustling. I was deciding between dropshipping and affiliate marketing and have opted to go ahead with the former.

I will be posting in here my various bits of daily progress. It's mainly to keep a journal for myself, but if it's of any interest to you then that's even better.

I've found a niche in the fitness sector and have already made a shortlist of products on Shopify, which were all sourced through AliExpress. I have what I think is a great domain name too. I've set up various channels, email accounts, Facebook and other social media.

My plan is to direct traffic to my site by use of Facebook Ads and also targeted Instagram influencers.

I will be drawing up a more detailed plan of action, but the main thing for me was to get the ball rolling and get started. More detailed instalments are to come.

Thanks for reading!
 
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Saf H

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Jun 28, 2018
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Preston, United Kingdom
Good luck pal. Just a heads up - Facebooks really cracking down on dropshippers (aka.. sellers with low customer satisfaction ratings), so make sure your shipping times and service is on point. POD might be an option to consider as well.

We've helped countless dropshipping clients achieve mega success by running their FB and IG marketing for them. Lot of the big players are moving out of the game and building their own brands on the back of their DS successes.
Try and set things up with a long term brand building mindset.

Anyways, hit us up if you need help with anything and best of luck.
 

dskouris

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Jul 26, 2016
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Paphos, Cyprus
@Mio I've not seen any results as of yet to be honest. Today is actually the first day I've launched my FB ads campaign. It took me a little bit longer than expected to set the site up (been doing some tweaking and weighing up options for logos, that kind of thing). I'll be looking to keep more updates coming on here in the coming weeks.

@Saf H Thanks a lot mate. I am actually looking at building this into a long term project with solid branding, so I'm being careful to try and maintain a good reputation. Will be doing this with active social media, blog posts and great service. I think there's a lot of potential in this niche so I want to make the most of it. I'll give you a shout if anything comes to mind, cheers.
 
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Xolorr

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Jun 4, 2018
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Hey man,

Glad to see you taking some action! I had a bit of success dropshipping at the end of last year, and have now taken that money and used it to fund building a brand out of my dropship company. I am by no means a dropship master, but here's some of my advice from my experiences:

View it as funding for a future long term business: You WILL NOT make a viable long term business out of conventional dropshipping, or atleast not a Fastlane one. Why? There is absolutely no productocracy. You cannot control shipping, packaging, quality, etc. So while you may get customers/sales, they will not enjoy the experience, and it is highly unlikely that they will return. This is why AD spend is HUGE in the dropshipping world, and the CPC is getting more and more expensive, cutting your margins loads. You're paying to get customers, and thats always a bad thing.

I seem to remember MJ saying: How long would your business last if you stopped all marketing? In a dropshipping business, that would be a matter of days. I've experienced this.

Niche, Niche, Niche: This is the only way to viably dropship in my opinion, especially in the current market-space. Want to do clothing, jewellery, or travel bracelets? Guess what, there are a hundred thousand other "powered by shopify" stores doing exactly the same thing, with the same adverts, and same or cheaper price. (Oh, and on that note, I'd remove the "powered by shopify" from your theme (just search how on google), as well as using as different of a theme as possible. Everyone and their grandma seems to use the brooklyn theme. Differentiate your store as much as possible. Spend time on this, the copy, the images, everything. There isn't much you can do to differentiate yourself in the dropshipping space, so you have to maximize in the areas which you can.

GET HIGH QUALITY PHOTOS:

I can't stress this enough. I don't know why, but most of my success came from having a solid Instagram more-so than Facebook ads. I would recommend shipping out a couple products to US based (quickest shipping via epacket) Instagram photographers in return for a bunch of high-quality photos. This is something that NO dropshippers do, and it makes a huge difference in making your store and socials seem more legit. How do you do this?

Easy.

You go to where all the Instagram photographers hang out. If you understand this space, they ALL want to be reposted by bigger accounts to gain exposure. Now there are a lot of pages which solely repost content, and they're big. All of these have their own hashtags as a form of "entry". Go to one of these ( I would recommend starting with @artofvisuals and using it to find smaller versions with the same vibe ), and then scroll through the hashtag looking for small accounts who would be biting at the chance to do some form of commercial work. Often you'll get by with just sending them a product in return for a bunch of photos. This makes it ridiculously cheapo because your item cost is usually <$10, and you will get HUGE ROI from this.

I also seemed to get way more traffic and a lower CPC using well placed Instagram influencer shoutouts than I ever could with FB Ads. I also wasted a lot of money on this though. Make sure you research the account and their audience. You don't want bots/spammy audiences for your shout outs.

Good luck! Keep us posted.
 

Ankerstein17

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Mar 22, 2015
88
64
29
Edmonton, Alberta
Hi All,

I've decided to embark on my first real venture. I've dabbled in the past with various freelancing jobs but I've decided to look into something else for my first real taste of hustling. I was deciding between dropshipping and affiliate marketing and have opted to go ahead with the former.

I will be posting in here my various bits of daily progress. It's mainly to keep a journal for myself, but if it's of any interest to you then that's even better.

I've found a niche in the fitness sector and have already made a shortlist of products on Shopify, which were all sourced through AliExpress. I have what I think is a great domain name too. I've set up various channels, email accounts, Facebook and other social media.

My plan is to direct traffic to my site by use of Facebook Ads and also targeted Instagram influencers.

I will be drawing up a more detailed plan of action, but the main thing for me was to get the ball rolling and get started. More detailed instalments are to come.

Thanks for reading!


Hey Man -- well congratulations on starting. It's always great seeing people take the first step. I hope everything goes well for you! Keep us in the loop where the progress is at!
 

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