As my background in Marketing, the idea of drop-shipping that “you do nothing, just marketing” simulated me a lot of.
Actually, you do need to care about product (everything is on AliExpress), payment (Stripe and Paypal do the best) and even logistic (thanks to ePacket). You just need to handle performance advertising to attract visitors and convert them into customers. Once they buy, you receive money immediately, the others will do the rest for you.
I started my drop-shipping business with $2,000. All most spending on A/B testing with Facebook Ads. It was my lucky that the store has been generated profit right after the first try. One of the reason was that the right niche has been chosen.
For months, I were in love of researching new products, improving store’s shopping experience, stalking Google Analytics realtime, seeing who was in and out my store, curating useful content for customers. Every time the “tin-tin” tone ring from Shopify apps, you know, the feeling of utmost happiness could not be described by words.
Until 3-4 months later, some of the customer began to complain about the product!
The supplier of my 2 winners had produced new line of products, and it was not 100% the same as the last one. He told me because the old materials was out of stock.
Ok!
I immediately refunded to all of complained customer while trying to find another supplier. Not surprisingly, the quality of these suppliers varied widely but much surprisingly, no one had the same product quality as my expectation.
Weeks after, I constantly reminded myself to be afraid, to wake up every morning terrified. Not of my profit, but of my customers. Those customers have made my business what it is, they are the ones with whom I have a relationship. The feeling that the business I dedicated in do not provide long-term value to the customer made me discouraged. That’s all. I decided to stop here.
Here are 3 top things I had learn:
- Build an online store: Shopify platform is really useful for person who don’t know about coding like me.
- Performance Advertising: Facebook Ads is all about understanding tools and digging into audience insights, plus the patience!
- Customer first: try as best as you can to improve customer experience, everyday. One thing I love about customers is that they have a voracious appetite for a better way, and yesterday’s ‘wow’ quickly becomes today’s ‘ordinary’.
For those who would like to build a long-term drop-shipping business, here is some points you should take into consideration:
- You should go to China to meet directly with your supplier.
- Let’s experience the product first, later sell it for customer.
- Customer care is extremely important part of drop-shipping. Do not do the wrong thing with them, or the wrong thing will happen with your bank account, especially Paypal.
Happy drop-shipping!