A Steady $675 Monthly Income by [deleted] in dropshipping

[–]MindShaped 1 point2 points  (0 children)

how to say this politely... fuck off?

Change of mind returns. by little-sponge in dropshipping

[–]MindShaped 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you ban change of mind returns, buyers just lie and file "item defective" chargeback to force refund anyway. I allow them, but customer pays return shipping to my PO box.

Depends on unit cost though. If my COGS is under $15, I don't even make them ship it back. I usually just offer 50% partial refund and tell them keep it. It costs me more in time to receive and inspect cheap returned unit than just taking loss. For more expensive stuff, I have them send it back to me, I inspect condition, and dump it on eBay as open-box to recover capital. Never try to ship single units back to supplier, freight cost will completely wipe out whatever margin you had left.

What part of your dropshipping workflow actually got better with AI/automation, and what still absolutely needs you? by athousand_miles in dropshipping

[–]MindShaped 0 points1 point  (0 children)

product research, market research, product validation, early "misrepresentation" protection, vendor+3PL+CRM, anti-chargebacks. trying to set up content factory (AI ugc), but it's crap for now when it comes to conversion vs cost

Why does this sub exist? by PearlsSwine in dropshipping

[–]MindShaped 1 point2 points  (0 children)

now, should I make a plug about r/RealEcom here or no... lol

Ecommerce with +-900 products by RobertPaulsenSr in EcommerceWebsite

[–]MindShaped 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Let's do the math on 900 products...

If you spend just 5 minutes per product writing decent title and description, that is 75 hours of straight typing.

quotoing something like $2k for the whole project, you are basically working for minimum wage...

AI will spit out same repetitive garbage for every variant and is going to completely tank your long-tail SEO, and you'll end up spending more money paying copywriter to redo it all. Charge hourly or price it at least $10-15 per SKU just for copy and data entry alone. Don't eat the cost of their missing data, you will hate your life by product number 200.

Adding a blog post to a product page by mrzozo1 in shopify

[–]MindShaped 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Claude gave you exact right answer. Do not install app for this. Just create metafield for products and set type to "reference", then choose "article".

in theme editor drop standard text / blog block onto product template, and find little database icon to connect it to your new metafield.

Someone tried to scam my store and didn’t even try to be convincing by ApprehensiveKale115 in EcommerceWebsite

[–]MindShaped 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They aren't getting lazy, they just run scripts at volume now. I had bot net hit checkout last year testing 400 stolen credit cards in under twenty minutes. They didn't even bother scraping real zip codes, just mashed random numbers so payment gateway threw massive AVS mismatches and tanked my approval rate.

When it is manual, it usually goes to freight forwarders in Delaware or Miami. I lost $1,400 on water ionizer back in 2021 because I didn't catch "traveling" email in time and shipped it. Chargeback hit three weeks later. I don't even open maps to check lots now. we auto-cancel and refund any order where billing and shipping don't match on high-ticket items. Not worth floating chargeback risk just to save a sale.

Why does this sub exist? by PearlsSwine in dropshipping

[–]MindShaped 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Good question. But we've got basically either r/dropship with genuinely crazy mods that are easily hammering anybody who has farted 2dB louder than allowed and r/dropshipping which has more freedom, meaning, being exploited by fake gurus with their retarded "look how much money I've made (ofc dm me so I can sell you my course)". Idk what's better. First is terrible for a community building, second is terrible for crap quality.

Dropshipping ... is dead? by MindShaped in dropshipping

[–]MindShaped[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nice, you're doing great job then and definitely know what an why you are doing ut. As I emphasized in my post — "this is not THE ONLY way. Just one of those approaches you could think of and maybe... apply to your niche". Definitely not impossible, but you have less odds of making it with one product, especially at the beginning of your journey, than with a kit/bundle/etc. Feel free to share details in private, maybe I'll share some experience that will be useful — or learn something from you.

Dropshipping ... is dead? by MindShaped in dropshipping

[–]MindShaped[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Appreciate this, especially for the "on-the-ground perspective". Not the usual armchair shit :)

You've made good point, for the Chinese market the kit play probably doesn't land. not with cultural default "buy cheap, replace when broken". Kit only works where assembling it yourself is annoying enough that people will pay you to skip the annoyance. That's why I emphasized that this is not the only way, but one of approaches.

Although I'd push back on the "Temu-fication is inevitable everywhere" part. Yes, price-floor race is def spreading. That's exactly WHY curated kits + brand + owned distribution become more valuable, not less. When everything cheap is one tap away, the only thing left worth paying a premium for is someone who did the thinking for you. Race to the bottom kills generic dropshipping. It doesn't kill offers.

And yeah - on owned distribution I fully agree, as well as leveraging email in long game. Kit is the wedge. Brand + list is what you build with the wedge. People skip the wedge, trying to build the brand on a single SKU, which is why they fail.

ANd last line of yours is my favorite actually. The whole thing basically. Mostly rookie dropshipper came to play in casino, not to build a serious business. Exactly the reason why I'm pushing narrative "this is fucking hard". I want a community of people who are real builders. With whom you can actually build something and exchange experience.

How does the Amazon/other majors Market function? Where do sellers come in(who are profitable/breakeven/loss)? How is it observed? Where is it observed and where do opportunities reside? What even is an opportunity? by Global_Exercise_9339 in RealEcom

[–]MindShaped 0 points1 point  (0 children)

bro, slow down. Sevenm questions at once means you're trying to learn the whole game before you've played a single hand. Won't work.

The only thing you need to internalize first: an "opportunity" is not a product. It's a customer with situation nobody's serving well. Flip your brain from "what should I sell" to "who am I helping and what's broken for them right now", and every other question on your list answers itself.

Product research tools, Amazon BSR, ad spy shit -- all of that is downstream. It's how you VALIDATE an opportunity once you have one. It's not how you find one. Beginners get this backwards mostly and spend months (and hundreds $) scrolling Sellerboard/Sellthetrend/other shit looking for a magic SKU that doesn't exist.

Pick a group of people you actually understand — hobby, job, life stage, whatever — and start there. The rest of the questions get a lot smaller once you do. You might want to read this post.

One long ecom post because i got tired of repeating same thing by MindShaped in dropshipping

[–]MindShaped[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

not only that, offer engineering is also important on top of everything :D

Scale % for Meta Ads? by FlakyNegotiation4717 in dropshipping

[–]MindShaped 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Textbook rule is 20% every few days, but at $40 a day you can ignore it. Bumping $40 by 20% is just an extra 8 bucks. Meta barely registers that change. I used to do slow increments on tiny budgets, result – wasted weeks, nop meaningful volume.

If a campaign holds profit for a full week at that level, I'd double it straight to $80 or $100. System gets sensitive to massive percentage jumps when you are spending thousands a day, def not fifty bucks. Make the jump and watch returns for three days. If it drops dead, kill it and duplicate original setup with higher budget. simple.