The Young Money Club

Dropshipping is an extremely hyped up way to earn money. If you’ve heard the term before then you’ve also likely come across some internet guru’s ad promising to make you a millionaire if you just buy their $500 course on the subject.

Some say dropshipping is just a scam and that it’s almost impossible to make any real money using the method, while others claim to make 6 or even 7-figures annually from multiple dropshipping websites.

The whole dropshipping world is clouded by expensive online courses and misleading results that report revenue rather than income. It can be very difficult to decipher what’s true and what’s not. So after spending days watching guru after guru, unsure of what might be a realistic result, I decided I’d try it myself. I mean, worst case scenario I could make a course on it and try to make money the way those gurus do.

My Journey So Far

About a month ago I decided I wanted to jump into dropshipping, a method of e-commerce in which you act as a broker between buyers and manufacturers. You never actually touch the products and it doesn’t require you to hold any inventory. (see the graphic below for steps)

I had heard mostly negative results from friends saying that the effort to keep it running and profitable was not worth the reward. Not a good sign to begin with but my monkey brain kept bringing me back to those YouTubers promising me the life of my dreams.

I soldiered on, undeterred by those naysayers and haters. They wouldn’t be hating in the end when I pull up in my G-wagon I bought with my dropshipping money.

I hopped on Shopify to start designing my store. I figured I could get my store up and running in two weeks while I still had my free trial to minimize my costs. School picked up a little and I ended up finishing my site right near the end of the two week trial without enough time to actually market it. Still wanting to test out the method, I bit the bullet and paid the $30-$40 to start up my membership.

My next step was to start searching Instagram to find influencers or theme pages to promote my products. I looked for pages with high engagement rates in the same niche my product was in. I finally settled on a page with about 28k followers and a 12% engagement rate (great engagement for those who don’t know, average is something like 3-5%). I shot them a DM asking for prices and we settled on $10 for a permanent post, a single story post, and a link in their bio.

This was my first time promoting anything on instagram so I didn’t know if I was getting ripped off or getting a great deal, so I paid the page and waited for them to post my photos and videos. They were very helpful and told me that they would post my ad on Friday or Saturday because that’s when their followers were most active. Going with the option of blind trust, I went along with what they were saying and waited the extra day or two.

Come Friday night I’m sitting at dinner with some friends when I feel my phone buzz. I look down and see the most beautiful thing I’ve ever laid my eyes on (….sorry babe), “Your Store has a new order for 1 item totalling $25.95”. Dopamine flooded my brain and I didn’t just want more sales, I NEEDED THEM. For the next 48 hours I could hardly keep my eyes off my shop. I wanted to make sure everything was perfect. I reorganized some menus and added a FAQ page.

After that first sale, 3 more orders came in, each just as exciting as the last. 1 of those orders was refunded due to an error in pricing but the rest went quite smoothly. In total those 3 order’s resulted in about $75 in revenue or as the gurus like to call it, “sales”. But after I paid for all the products and shipping that was about $36 in profit. But let’s not forget my other expenses, a $10 promotion and a $40 Shopify membership.

All in all that leaves me at about -$14 thus far, which leads me into my next section.

Mistakes

Mistake #1 was waiting too long to start selling. If things would’ve gone to plan and I could’ve gotten my shop going before the end of my 14-day trial and avoided the subscription cost. My profit would’ve been about $26. Not great but still profitable.

Mistake #2 was not taking full advantage of the holiday season. Most businesses make a large portion of their annual sales from September to December. I showed up to the party a little late and was unable to fully capitalize on the buying frenzy that occured just a few weeks before I got up and running. Now I have to deal with dwindling sales after the holiday rush and hopefully can ride it out long enough til sales pick back up.

Mistake #3 was not promoting my products enough. Now this is partially in part due to my limited budget. I didn’t necessarily want to spend $500 trying out what might be a scam. But with a little bit bigger budget I could’ve done promotions back to back all the way up til Christmas. Instead, I just did the one and expected more results to come but they never did. I hope to correct this moving forward.

Moving Forward

My plan moving forward is to give it another month of dedication and work to see how things pan out. Just today I paid for another promotion on a popular theme page with about 215k followers, almost 10x the previous number. This will only be a 24 hour post, story post, and link. I’m hoping the greater exposure will have a similar conversion rate to the last promo, but I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

I also added some upsales on my website to incentivise larger orders. Items such as water bottles, accessories, and apparel will help customers reach the goal of $40 that unlocks free shipping. Originally I was offering free shipping on everything but now I’ve lowered the price of my primary product, added shipping costs, and added the $40 goal. I hope to increase my average order size as well as expand the product base on my site.

Be on the lookout for a dropshipping course as well 😉 daddy’s gotta eat.

If you’d like to see more ways to earn money you can check out my post 15 BEST SIDE HUSTLE IDEAS YOU CAN START RIGHT NOW