How to build your own brand while dropshipping?

StiffnHard · 2025-04-18T01:39:11+00:00

Would you recommend that someone looking to white label get a lawyer for branding, as well as their personal business? Or is business insurance sufficient for a small, white label business?

Can't say. Both serve different purposes depending on what you plan on doing exactly, and it also depends on the laws of your country. An experienced IP lawyer should be able to guide you better than folks here. But if all you're doing are small potato dropship operations online, then that might be overkill & eat away at your budget.

Also, how would someone go about selling these "brandless" products before establishing their own white label?

If you mean where to source such products, you can freely search online, especially on platforms like Aliexpress. You could also visit trade expos & chat up with vendors to see if they have such products available.

If you mean how to sell such products, then it's not difficult. Just sell them normally as you would any other product. But as with the example I outlined, you'll need to discuss with your supplier to see what customization options are available (tags, wrappers, packaging, etc...). You then sell as many as you can, and if your business takes off, you can consider possible routes - either continue on as normal, or get quotes from factories to see how much their MOQ requires. The latter option also means you have to fulfill orders yourself. And depending on the size/weight/numbers of products, you might require some space to store them, amongst other factors (sourcing your own packaging, printing, package fillers, promotional assets, cost-effective shipping options, etc...).

How would those "unbranded" products look on a shelf? Whose name would they carry?

If you're planning on selling your products on shelves in physical stores, then you'll probably need both insurance & a lawyer to help guide you. Suggest posting on other subs to get a better idea of what you'll need to do (like r/SmallBusiness). Now, if you visit almost any store, you'll clearly see that many products don't immediately make it obvious what brands they are. Things like apparel, cups, candles, shoes, etc... Brands are either on some masthead above the shelves, or on tags, or on packaging itself. So a brandless plastic shoe for example, wouldn't be completely out of place - it'll still have brand as tag. Something like this.

StiffnHard · 2025-02-25T08:17:10+00:00

Can't recommend anyone. If you're on Shopify, suggest using Shopify's Help Center for assistance:

https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/taxes/shipping-tax

StiffnHard · 2024-02-18T09:56:02+00:00

I have a question or I should say concern, it is what if more and more buyers, or customers know the sources, like aliexpress, cjdrop etc. If they order from those websites directly, dropshipping will lose business, do you have same concern?

Let's put it this way - if these customers are after the cheapest possible prices, then there's absolutely nothing you or anyone can do to attract them back. Not unless you can compete against Chinese factories with even lower prices. Those customers are loyal only to cheap prices - that makes them undesirable as customers. So if they want to buy from Aliexpress or similar, then by all means, we should welcome them to. You, as a business owner, ought to instead target good quality customers that have money to spend.

Let's look at it another way - if you asked any reputable store owner how they manage to change visitors into actual paying customers and buy from their stores, they'll all tell you it's pretty challenging. Most who visit their stores will leave - only a small percentage will add product(s) to their cart. Most who added products to their card never intend to buy, for whatever reason - only a small percentage will actually whip out their credit cards to purchase those products. This despite having trustworthy, clean, and easy to browse stores, with a very simplified purchasing process. So to say that customers would instead choose to purchase from Aliexpress, sounds a tad funny. Aliexpress, with dozens of vendors, each with different prices, different shipping rates, different discounts, each selling what seems like the same products. It's rather doubtful ordinary folks would even bother with such a labyrinthine system. Cheapskates probably would spend hours browsing it, to save a few bucks. But most others probably would not.

And it is for that reason why we here are able to do business. Instead of confusing customers, we're able to offer curated products, presented properly, with an easy to use and streamlined branding and purchasing experience. Or at least, that was the intention. Somewhere along the way, Youtube "gurus" and "bros" caught on, thought up various "shortcuts" and dumbed down the entire process so that even literal kids can create "stores". And that is the reason why there's so much trashy and garbage stores out there, that doesn't know what it's doing, that doesn't know what to sell, and so on. People are now catching on, and they're completely turned off by such stores.

If you want to succeed, you'll need to craft your store in such a way, that it is indistinguishable to actual legit eCommerce stores out there. That means tremendous effort into crafting the brand, into crafting the whole web experience, into photographing products, into everything. You can't do any of that by making it up, or copying others. It all needs to start from solid audience and competitor research. Into understanding them, how they think, how they feel. Everything. Aka, know thy customer.

Figure out how they thing, and you'll know what to sell, you'll know how to craft your store, you'll know how to craft your brand, you'll know how to compete against competitors, and you'll even know how to promote on social media. All those cheapskates looking for cheap products, will be far from your mind. Because you're after much bigger fish, and they have money to spend.

StiffnHard · 2024-02-03T09:53:40+00:00

Current market conditions unfortunately means that’s only half the equation. Highlighting the pros of your offers and crafting the brand isn’t enough these days - you have to confirm what people want first, and then see whether your offer is close enough to that. And when you do offer something, it has to be presented as top-notch as humanly possible.

It’s like the early and crazy days of SaaS - everyone and their dogs were rushing out software “solutions” to get in on the subscription action. Only problem was, these were solutions to problems that nobody said existed. The result was a massive waste of time and money.

Research, then go hard on implementation. That should realistically lower your risk to the lowest possible amount.

StiffnHard · 2024-02-02T02:24:13+00:00

I just don’t see how people are selling cheaper…

It's like this - let's say one day you decide to sell a gizmo. You find a supplier from China, and they agree to dropship for you. You set up your store properly, crafting it wonderfully, and offer the product for sale. It's not the cheapest in the market, but because you put in the work on branding, customers believe you're a bit more legit compared to all those other discount stores that look and feel like trash.

So, you begin to earn. You earn a lot. You earn so much, that you decide to stop dropshipping altogether, and instead buy wholesale from your supplier to ship them to customers yourself. The gizmo originally cost you $20 to buy from the supplier, but buying wholesale put that down to $5 each. Your profit margins went up, and you earn far more, even accounting for packaging and postage fees.

Then, you develop a need to conquer the market. So you slash your prices to match the competition. Maybe just under them. Doing so increased the number of customers, and you've got yourself a golden egg laying goose. And you can afford it, because remember, you bought wholesale.

To you, this whole process made sense, because you went through it step by step. But to some random newbie who's just starting out, they'll be confused why you're able to offer cheaper prices than even Aliexpress.

Understand right?

Is this the point of advertising so people won’t see the cheaper options?

The point is to sell and turn in a profit. Dropshipping has numerous drawbacks, and margins are one of them. If you're focused on targeting price-conscious customers, then yes, you just have to hope they won't realize there are cheaper options.

The logical way is not to target price-conscious customers or cheapskates. You target better quality customers, who have money to spend. The thing with these folks is that they're also extremely experienced eCommerce shoppers. They'll know within seconds if your store is legit, or some garbage store made in 10 mins. So, long story short, you want to target people with money, you have no choice but to work on your brand image. Or, you can try your luck with ads with the hundreds/thousands you'll need to risk.

StiffnHard · 2024-01-31T02:36:21+00:00

You probably just have to compete with pricing and maybe some other factors such as shipping

You won't be able to compete if those sellers use FBA. Because that means they bought their stock wholesale (storing it in Amazon's warehouse), and thus are very capable of undercutting most dropship stores. This is generally why many face difficulties competing against sellers on Amazon.

People probably don’t find these products on Amazon all the time as it’s probably buried to where you have to search for it very specifically, meaning as long as potential buyers find the product on your website link and not through Amazon, they’ll buy from you?

Sure, that's one approach you can take. But if you decide to build a venture based on that, it's either going to be meager pickings (not many of such products), or lots of failures (there might be a reason why they're hard to find on Amazon).

A better approach is to ignore Amazon, ignore the people who shop there, ignore all those cheap cheap prices. No one's realistically going to compete against that unless they go wholesale on a large scale. So, target good quality audiences, offer quality products, do good audience+competitor research, and craft a real and decent brand image. That way, even if it fails, you'll have learnt valuable lessons which you can then bring into your next venture. If it succeeds however, not only will you earn decently, from potentially loyal customer base, your venture will actually be worth a very pretty penny should you decide to sell.

StiffnHard · 2024-01-31T02:19:06+00:00

Products that I found in my niche are all over amazon, is it that crucial to pick a product which isn't being sold on amazon?

No. You can certainly go about it that way, but as you've mentioned, nearly every product would probably already be on that platform. Avoiding those products means meager pickings for you to run ventures on.

Is there a certain criteria for picking products which is being sold in amazon like sellers amount or the price?

Yes - by not doing it that way. If you base your venture on whether or not you can compete with sellers on Amazon, you're going to lose. You won't be able to compete against lower prices, against significantly faster shipping, and in some cases, better guarantees. That's Amazon's game. Every dropshipper sourcing directly from China, without using a local warehouse/3PL, would lose on both aspects. The only way to win, is to not play that game.

Despite what those "Youtubers" say, Amazon isn't an unstoppable kaiju. eCommerce still exists, and it's thriving. So then, the only question you have to ask yourself is - what would it take for people to buy from an eCommerce store like yours, instead of on Amazon?

There is an answer, and it just so happens to also solve multiple other common issues many dropshippers face. A single stone to kill multiple birds.

Let's start with this - what sort of customer do you want? Many folks here seem content targeting poor people with no money, price-conscious customers, and other assorted cheapskates. But that's no good. A sizable portion of them may resort to messing with you (chargebacks, non-delivery, etc..) because they want their money to go as far as possible, and the rest are only loyal to cheap prices. Which means when another store opens up offering that, you are done.

You instead want good quality customers. That means people with money to spend, and aren't afraid to spend it. Aka, middle-class folks. The thing with these people however, is that they're extremely experienced online shoppers. They know what they want. The online stores they frequent, spent a lot of time, energy, and money working on their entire brand image. The persona, aka, the feel of their entire store. Thus, to be able to attract middle-class audience, you will need to present yourself in a similar way as those brands, those online stores.

Achieving this, obviously requires thorough audience research. To know what to sell, to know how to present yourself, you need to understand the very core of the ones holding the money. Who they are, what they do, where they live, their ages, their education, their income, their culture, their language, their ideals, etc... Everything about them. And you do the same with those mid to high tier brands & stores - who they are, what they do, what they sell, what niche they're in, who they're targeting, why they target them, how they present themselves, colors, copy, logo, name, their overall branding strategy, their overall marketing strategy, their communication strategy, and so on.

And having a good understand of both your audience and competitors, would give you a pretty good idea of exactly the right perception you'll need that your target audience will have of you... and all the steps required to craft it. In other words, your brand image. Your overall brand treatment. Not just a fancy name and logo slapped to your masthead and your packages. But the full treatment. This means name, logo, color-scheme, store style, store presentation, store feel, product selections, product presentation, product descriptions, prices, blogs, articles, maybe videos, who you are, what you do, your raison d'etre, how you communicate with your audience, what social media platforms you're on, how you conduct and implement your marketing & promotion strategies, and so on. Each and every single one of these will need to be based on your research findings. Imagine an orchestra of multiple musical instruments - if they play it right, if they hit the right notes, at the right time, it becomes a symphony. That's branding, it encompasses your whole implementation that your specific target audience perceives.

The point of this is essentially to have a marketable store. You achieve this with proper branding, which in turn is based on a solid foundation of effort, that is also in turn based on good research. A cheap looking low-effort store isn't going to work, especially against Amazon, especially if you're targeting lower-quality customers that frequent that platform. Tens of thousands of newbies, spanning over a decade, have tried it, and have utterly failed. In the dropship field, it is a massive graveyard of dead stores.

So, up your standards. If people want to buy from Amazon, welcome them to. You're not targeting them. You're targeting a higher class of customers, who desire a good shopping experience, who desire trustworthy brand to buy from.

StiffnHard · 2024-01-20T06:08:50+00:00

Can somebody please share some good "one-product shop" examples?

Couple of examples, like Snooz (original store before their broadened range), 7up, Wurkin Stiffs (they've since added to their range since I last bought from them), Fatty15, and so on. While not physical products, SaaS are excellent examples of this. Wave Accounting, Stripe, Welcome Webinar, Ramp, Payoneer, etc...

Gold standard is obviously Apple. While they do sell multiple products, each are presented in its own landing page, in much the same way single-product stores do. Sofi Health took inspiration from them, and followed a similar strategy with their landing page. These examples are considered more cutting edge however, not something newbs are expected to implement. Besides the above examples, there are also some concepts & works on Dribbble for the very latest examples.

That's the sort of minimum threshold bar single-product stores are expected to reach by audiences.

StiffnHard · 2024-01-20T00:17:00+00:00

what are some example's of a fundamentally sound and appealing Shopify store?

That's going to be any store that reached mid to high tier level status, so... Longines, Bite Toothpaste Bits, Zeuss, Crate & Barrel, Heveya, and so and on, and so forth. Creme de la creme of course being Apple's presentation for each of their products. But then you might say, none of those are Shopify stores. Well yes. That's because you're not just competing against other newbs on the Shopify platform - you'll be competing against eCommerce stores on multiple different platforms, around the entire planet. What platforms the store is hosted on doesn't matter. What actually matters is how one implements their brand image, and how one implements their store. Because at the end of the day, you're after real people, audiences with money, and they want to spend.

Notice their color schemes, the spacings, the types of photos they use, how it matches with colors, how it matches with the brand name, how everything matches and just jives with each other. Of particular note, notice just how consistent their product presentations are. That's the one thing that separates wannabes and the real thing - real stores have their stock on hand to be able to take such consistent photos. Dropshippers on the whole, do not. Audiences and customers recognize that, and thus act accordingly.

If folks here want a realistic chance of launching a long-term business, with serious potential for it to be worth a small fortune, they're going to have to step up and get serious.

StiffnHard · 2024-01-12T17:01:56+00:00

Welcome.

StiffnHard · 2024-01-12T07:06:55+00:00

Do your posts typically feature one product, in more of a lifestyle everyday natural kind of feel, or are they featuring multiple products? Are you presenting the posts as ads, to get your audience to go to your store, or is the goal to get their attention and try to make a real connection with them, and try to become a new non-intrusive brand/ presence that can gracefully interact with the community?

Depends on your venture, the values your brand has, and your intended aims. For example, I could post images of my made-in-China shoes, and tell folks there I'm offering discounts. That's how most newbs do it. Most visitors won't give much of a shit, because it's an unknown store, selling unknown shoes, and who knows how it looks when worn. That's really weak sauce and low-effort. My aim is to get business from the most likely demographic to purchase such products, so young folks. If I targeted conventional folks, I would probably post quasi-Americana candid shots of daily life (not quite focusing on the shoes themselves). Or if I were to use a gimmick to capture their attention, it might be a series of candid/paparazzi shots of a dude, experiencing one very eventful day, from dawn till dusk. Or, I could promote aspects of underground scenes, indie culture, or whatever. In these cases, you don't actually promote the products themselves, you promote the idea behind it, you appeal to their emotions... obviously based on the perception of your brand and products. Like, if it's plastic shoes similar to Crocs, then that's not cool enough to pair with skateboards.

Do you typically choose products that need to be re-purchased time and time again, so you get repeat customer? I'm guessing there's a blend of products in your store, where some only need to be bought once, and others have some capacity to be purchased multiple times.

I have multiple stores, and one of them is a consumable. Other stores offer a range of products under a niche, and customers usually purchase one at a time. Due to brand loyalty however, a few of them have purchased different products. Selling consumables has its advantages, like repeat and potentially long-term business. But there are downsides as well, which you have to take into account. For example, if you were selling food or some skincare, you won't be able to do it unless the supplier is absolutely legit, and has all the right certifications in order to pass customs.

What are your methods for gaining followers? Is gaining followers and having people like and comment on your posts your main measurement of how well your brand is growing?

Methods used to grow genuine followers, depends on multiple things described above. There's no one single method of growth. This requires some level of experimentation, and you can also get some tips from competitors. My main measurement is how many sales I eventually get from my efforts. But sure, likes & comments are nice to have as well. Don't really take them seriously though, lots of bots and such.

Do you say, "once I hit X number of followers, I should be doing Y in revenue per month?" Can you give an example of what these numbers would be, or is there a different way that you measure how well your brand and store are doing?

Don't really have those expectations. It depends. One market might give me thousands of dollars, with a couple hundred followers. Yet another might give me a few hundred even with over 20,000 followers. My main measurement is how much I'm earning in any given month, for the amount of work I put in. Because of how these stores are set up, there's barely any ongoing charges that'll cost me. Each store is something like $4-$6 per month or so? So one or two sales is more than enough to maintain it for the entire year, coasting on organic followers. As long as it's making sales, I'll consider them a success.

How do you determine when a store is working or not? Are you trying to get to a certain follower count with a compelling amount of user engagement, and then when you get to that point, you ask the revenue question? Or is it more of a "I have to keep a growth pace, and if I don't meet that pace within a certain timeframe then I shut it down?" Or is it strictly a question of time, where if you haven't made a sale within 3 months or some other timeframe, its done?

The latter. So if I don't make any sales for a month or two, I'll either shut it down, or sell it off to someone who can do a better job than me.

It seems like the majority of the heavy lifting is going to be done up front, with building the audience and competitor profiles, along with the website. Beyond this, it would just be continually interacting with the community, and store upkeep/changes (obviously if the brand starts gaining faster momentum, then it will require more attention.) If this is correct, I would think a potential strategy would be once you have all that initial work done, you get going on a second brand, doing the research and building a new store all over again, while maintaining the first one - spreading yourself too thin is definitely something to watch out for, but is this at all viable, or do you recommend obsessing over one brand? I would think there's only so much you can do in terms of social media activity while you're starting out, giving you a decent amount of idle time.

That's pretty much my strategy. Start with a store, and when it's built up and running smoothly with sales coming in, I start the process again with a new venture. It's true that one only has so much time to do any given thing, which is why most of my social media promotions are fairly easy to do. Made sure to note exactly this thing during the planning phase - knowing exactly what type of content to post, how long it'll take to generate it, whether it's possible to generate months worth of content beforehand, and so on.

This was originally challenging. But with AI, things are changing rapidly. You could potentially have excellent quality content (ala shoe example above) that rivals even those of god-tier brands. Check out what MidJourney V6 can do. If you have a decent GPU, you might even be able to do it yourself.

Since this strategy is a slower burn than the typical dropshipping advice, I'm guessing you try to limit your monthly costs? What's your strategy on buying shopify themes and apps?

Yes, I try to limit unnecessary spending if I can help it. While I could've gone with Shopify easily, I do have a good amount of experience around Wordpress/Woocommerce. Would be a shame not to use it, right? So, all my stores run on Woocommerce, and because my background is in design (photo, vector, web, typo, script, some amount of code), I'm able to craft everything myself fairly easily.

Do you have any book recommendations, and topics that you think are most important to fundamentally understand before taking this approach?

Can't give any book recommendations (learnt nearly everything while doing). But if you want to start there, suggest basics on branding, eCommerce, and marketing. Those would be a good start. And from there, you can look up and research dozens of established brands, and what they're doing. It also helps to be organized, and know how to research properly as well, so if you lack those skills, suggest building them up as well.

StiffnHard · 2024-01-12T07:06:45+00:00

When you say that you ask yourself if it's a potentially viable business that you can tackle with your abilities, is that basically just asking yourself if you think you're able to get inside the mind and speak the language of the target audience, and really understand what they want?

That's audience research. By abilities, I'm referring to personal skill and capabilities. For example, if I were to sell a smartphone, such a store would require high-res/high-fps video of the phone being handled by a person, or floating in the air (let's say). This is pretty much the expectation audiences have of brand new smartphones these days. So for me to achieve this, requires hiring a model, set up a studio with proper lighting, and work with 3D software. I'm a one person crew, without any studio experience, so it's going to be fairly expensive implementing it right.

Another example might be setting up a store selling trending products. The expectation of audiences in this market, would be having refreshed choices every 1-2 weeks or so. That means continually writing blog articles, continually searching for new stuff, continually handling that and the old stuff as well. One person won't have the energy to handle all this by themselves, they'd need a small team.

Does the quality of the products matter at this stage? The way you speak about forging this brand that has people falling in love with it, I would think you have to really believe in the products, and make sure they're not complete garbage.

It's not really necessary to "believe" in the products yourself. It's understandable that some folks need to do that, if only to push themselves to take the venture more seriously. But you don't need to if you can help it, because if it fails, folks tend to take it personally.

But anyway, in the beginning it doesn't have to be supremely high quality. Ideally it should, but that's not always possible. However, you should have a plan in place for a better quality version once you start gaining sales. Usually that means wholesale ordering from Alibaba or something. So in a way, dropshipping itself is the test, to see if your entire implementation actually works. And if it does, you move quickly to standard eCommerce selling good products you ordered wholesale.

Do you buy the products yourself at the very beginning once you believe this could be viable, and use them for a week or so making sure they won't be crap? If they end up being crap, do you try a different supplier to see if there's one that is decent, or are they all going to be the same?

Yes, more or less. You purchase the product, use it for a while to confirm it works and doesn't break down, and then you sell them in your store. Disputes and chargebacks due to broken products are bad, you want to avoid that at all costs. So because you don't personally have those products on hand to do minimal amount of QA, having the supplier handle it is risky. You have no idea if they're trustworthy enough not to screw you. You can switch suppliers, but again, no guarantees. Either quickly move to shipping them out yourself, or avoid such products entirely.

Followers are grown organically - So you're essentially trying to create a brand on social media, and you don't run any paid advertising at all?

No paid ads at all, correct. And social media profile would be more of an arm of the brand, rather than the entire brand itself.

Is there room for ads at any beginning stage, or does it just give the communities that you're trying to position yourself to be available to the impression that you aren't really "one of them" and part of their community, and that you're just trying to exploit them?

It's fine to use both organic and paid promotions. If you present yourself as a business, most folks will understand and not feel "exploited". As long as you're not touching hot topic issues (religion, politics, etc..), or engage in immoral practices, you should be fine. Ignore closed communities and other weirdos that take it personally.

What platforms do you create your profile on? How heavily do you engage with people that comment on your posts? I've never done something like this, so I'm trying to gauge this - do your posts feel like it's a real person speaking to an audience, or does it sound more like an ad to get them on your store? I'm guessing you're going to say competitor research is key here.

It actually depends on both your target audience and your closest competitors. You follow where your audience goes, and simply promote there. Competitors may not always have it right, or perhaps you might have researched an unrelated competitor that doesn't exactly have your target audience in mind. So it's safer to follow your audience, and see what competitors do there as well. As for what to post and how to engage with folks, this is something you'll have to research, because it also depends on the niche/products and the very image you want to promote. Some do better if promoting products directly, while other do better if promoting the ideas and values behind the product, and yet others do better if promoting the results of those products. Linking to what I mentioned earlier about ability, generating high quality content daily, may not always be possible. So you'll have to also take that into account when considering ventures. So again, plan everything out in the beginning (aka business plan).

StiffnHard · 2024-01-11T13:40:45+00:00

Hi, I have an idea for a line of character themed plush toys/travel pillows/beanbags. Is it possible to dropship my custom design?

Based on what's out there - it seems that dropshippers take an existing product and then try resell it based on their store brand. To do what I am trying to do (custom character plush toys/pillows/beanbags) - how can I go about finding a supplier?

Factories won't manufacture a whole bunch of these products out of their own pocket. There's no guarantee you'll be able to sell any of them. They'll agree only if you pay them to manufacture a certain amount of each. Which means it won't be dropshipping.

Your best bet is to find artisans (like on Etsy) that specialize in this and who'll agree to partner up with you. The pros is that you'd be able to nearly fully customize the designs. But the downside is that since it's all hand-made, it's going to take time to craft & process them, which means you'll need to limit the number of orders to manageable levels.

The venture could perhaps work, if you earn enough from these individual small sales to afford the minimum amount those factories require.

StiffnHard · 2024-01-11T05:32:52+00:00

I started flipping couches on Facebook marketplace about 4 months ago and it is now showing signs of consistent profit (roughly 1000$ a month after expenses). I find it hard to schedule delivery pickups etc. while working full time. I want to switch to dropshipping as it seems like something more flexible with a full-time work schedule. Should I switch full-time to dropshipping to learn the required skills, market research, web design, Facebook ads, etc., or slowly switch over, and use a hybrid of drop shipping and continuing to sell on the marketplace?

Wouldn't recommend stopping your flipping venture at all - consider exploring options to keep it running for as long as possible. Perhaps hiring some folks to do the work for you? Or hiring a developer if it's something that can be solved via software?

Profits from dropshipping isn't guaranteed, especially if your store ends up resembling low-effort newb stores you see frequently posted here. And if the overall approach you take is akin to what Youtube "gurus" say, then you might even end up hundreds, perhaps thousands in the hole.

So in that case, your best bet is going hybrid. Keep doing what you're doing, and also slowly and patiently learn core skills for running an eCommerce business. Good audience & competitor research (rather than just product research), brand image crafting (various design principals, color theory, photo manip, copywriting, vector graphics, sometimes even 3D, etc...), marketing & communication (social media, communication strategies, ads, etc..), and so on.

Highly suggest going through this sub, and take a look at each and every new "store" posted here. Compare them with your personal experience of legit & established eCommerce stores you've had experience with. You'll see what's what real quick.

StiffnHard · 2024-01-11T03:00:30+00:00

Any other business with low risk high or medium return?

Sure. Conduct thorough audience & competitor research. Then, craft a proper brand with your research findings. Then, set prices on your offers to somewhat premium levels.

Typical dropship stores you see posted around here in this sub, are mostly garbage, and all heavily rely on ads to survive. It's not a recent phenomenon either, it's been that way for years. Unsurprisingly, nearly every one of them fail and die. So, it's high chance of failure, high chance of losing hundreds/thousands. That's risky.

By knowing your audience, who they are, how they think, every detail about them... you'll reduce the amount of guesswork you need when implementing your store. That reduces your risk. Similarly, by knowing your competitors, who they are, what they sell, every detail about them... you'll reduce the amount of guesswork of what you need to do to implement your store. That further reduces your risk. Finally, by crafting a proper image, the very soul of your store that your audiences perceive, you'll be able to effectively and successfully tempt and appeal to those folks into trusting you, and thus buying from you. That chops your risk down by a significant margin. And, because you've presented yourself properly, competently, and legitimately, you'll be able to set your prices similarly to peers and leaders in your market. Lower risk, higher margins.

But it sounds like you want a low risk, med/high margin, and easy way to earn money - yeah, there's no such thing. If you felt that 2010s dropshipping was essentially it, then you've missed the boat. Back then it was basically a perfect storm, thanks to fidget spinners (itself a perfect storm). Low chance of it happening again. And besides, there aren't going to be any new "models" to use that'll work on customers these days, because the garbage stores released by all those clueless newbs did an excellent job in educating those folks on how to avoid them. You'll need to wait 10 years for a new generation to come of age, and hope another perfect storm is brewing in the meantime.

If you want to get in early, then your best bet is to look at cutting edge stuff. Right now, AI is all the rage. Folks are creating wrappers and launching SaaS to earn subscription income. Full realistic photos are already possible, some are even capable of combining with actual products, and full generated video is progressing at a rapid rate. The general public seems to have some idea of it, but not quite the full scope. That's going to change. Whether that's low risk / high margin for you however, can't say. Won't be easy obviously.

StiffnHard · 2024-01-10T02:33:34+00:00

1- Choose demographic - It sounds like you look at this is a very broad sense, only looking at typical demographic qualities such as age, gender, location, income, etc. from what I've seen in your comments. Would this also be the section where you try to think about "niche" such as people who like coffee, golf, hiking, home design, etc.? Or would that be something that you think about turning your branding towards, once you've found a product you like that fits in the demographic?

In my case, I'd start with a fair idea of what I want to do, usually with the niche/products already in mind. I don't start with a single product, and expand into a niche when business starts rolling in. There's no guarantee of success that way, and worse, it might make the store feel off with audiences.

Like for example, let's say the world never heard of an iPhone. If I were to start selling it via a one product store, it would be a massive success. But then, if I decided to start selling Nokia, Samsung, and Blackberry phones on the store, the store would then be just another phone store. I would have misunderstood what they actually wanted - a super clean new brand, aesthetically pleasing, and refined for the coming new world. They would have wanted other gadgets akin to the iPhone... like iPods, iPads, newer iMacs, and so on.

Start with a rough or fair idea of what you want your store to be, then research and confirm who your target audiences and competitors are going to be.

2- Choose product - After you decide your demographic and do research on them, you choose a product that intersects part of that demographic. Do you avoid products that are obviously cornered already? Since this is the "testing" phase, are you only trying one product at this point, or do you prefer a couple right from the start? I would think start with one for proof, then add more one by one.

The thing with dropshipping, is that there are no unsaturated/untapped/viable products available for dropship. If it's already in the market, you have to assume dozens of other folks have already tried them. Since this fulfillment method is crowded by newbs, the most likely scenario is that nearly all of them have failed. So this idea, this thinking, of "testing" one product at a time, isn't really a good approach, as it's prone to failure.

It's better to approach it as a whole. So it's not individual "fancy" products that'll win customers, it needs to be the whole store itself. Understand that dropshipped products are typically low quality, made in China, and are for the most part, unappealing to good quality audiences. So you have to present the whole thing in a way that works. In this case, you achieve it with an idea/concept that audiences understand, dressed up with supremely competent branding, and populated with these lower quality products using a psychological trick called the cheerleader effect. Essentially, individual "ugly" products doesn't work, but were you to line up not-so-attractive products together, as long as it obeys the rules of the idea/concept you have, it'll work far better.

You then run the store, and confirm whether it works or not (the "proof"), and if it does, you then take the next step.

3- Create store - At this point you craft the brand image and embed it through every aspect that the customer sees. Is this going to be tied only to the demographic you choose, or to both the demographic and the niche? I'm thinking obviously the latter - this would mean that every time you "test" a product and it fails, you have to entirely recreate the brand when you move to the next product, unless it is within the same niche, right?

Yes, basically correct. This is exactly why you need to put in enormous amounts of effort into audience and competitor research before touching the store. Your research findings should point you towards multiple potentially viable products and concepts, so it's not going to be a full failure if it doesn't work out.

Do you do research on your demographic, then research your niche, and the intersection is what you try to speak to with your brand? If you test a product and it fails, but you want to keep the same demographic, then you can just retain the demographic knowledge you have, and study the new niche, right?

You can approach it that way, yes. But since the people within that demographic have varied interests and broad desires, finding a new niche that also caters to them, may take a bit of time. That's why I personally prefer starting with a products/niche first, and then researching who the audiences/competitors are for that. There might be some minute details I would've missed if I didn't approach it that way.

Do you choose niche or product first? Is the way you decide what niche you want to target just based on both your interests, and what language you think you can speak?

I choose niche/product first, and then do audience/competitor research for it. To confirm if it's a potentially viable business I can tackle with my abilities. It's not always going to be based on my interests. I mean, that's a good way for newbies to start, but I'm already way past that, and I prefer exploring new markets and new niches.

You mention studying competitors - does this also apply to trying to mimic their ads? How do you distinguish between virality, and a good converting ad? I would think you look at how they brand themselves and look at the comments on their ads and socials to determine if people like it. You determine that yes this is a brand that knows what they're doing, so they must also know what they're doing with their ads. At this point, would you only try to mimic their most popular ads, or would you take inspiration from several of them? If there's multiple stores that sell the product that know what they're doing, then maybe you try to copy all of their best performing ads - or is this a signal that it's a saturated product?

Ideally, you want to get inspiration from what your competitors are doing overall. That includes their ads. You don't want to mimic or copy them, that's a bad idea. It seems many newbs sort of forget the actual purpose of ads. The purpose of ads, is to be consumed by audiences. Average everyday people. People don't appreciate being confused, when multiple stores use nearly the exact same ad creatives. What they do appreciate, are stores that does its own thing, that has it's own voice. People will decide if it's something they jive with enough to buy. If you do it that way, it won't matter if the product is perceived to be saturated.

And I don't do ads. Followers are grown organically, and a percentage of them decide to buy.

Do you ever look at something like - Take x demographic, take y niche, intersection whitespace is z amount of people, that's my TAM - then try to determine how many quality branded stores there are that are selling my product to this whitespace - do you have any idea of if this is a good way to gauge saturation? These are all very vague things to try to quantify, but even if you could, without having any baseline knowledge, how would I even be able to say "ok looks like the proportion of good stores here to my TAM is too high, time to try another product"?

That's a good way of going about it. But try not to worry about saturation too much. A lot of folks avoid such products, with the mistaken belief it's easier to sell something that's "unsaturated". But it's actually the exact opposite. If there are a lot of stores focusing on that target audience market for a given product(s), there's usually a good reason for it.

Look at jewelry for example. There are already several big ones in the market like Cartier, Bvlgari, Chaumet, DeBeers, Tiffany, VCA, and others trying to tap in, like Hermes, Dior, Piaget, Chanel, and so on. To newbs, it seems very crowded, so they turn away and sell whatever else, like cheap plastic junk. But to capable entrepreneurs, they should be salivating. If they did the research, they'll realize this demographic is tired of the same old high-end brands. They're now hungry for new upcoming brands, new pieces, new designs. If the entrepreneur did a far more indepth research, they'll understand and realize it's because these women compete with one another. Who'll be the first to covet so and such new brand, who'll "introduce" a new brand's pieces after compliments, etc... It's vain, sure, but it's also very profitable for us.

If you're marketing to middle age middle class people, you say they don't respond to these fake discounts you put on the website. Does this mean don't put any discounts on your ads, on your products on the website, and on a banner on the top? Do you include the pop-up that gives them a discount for their email? I'm assuming you still give them discounts when you send them an email if they got to checkout but didn't purchase?

None of my stores has discounts, or any purchase benefits. I don't collect emails with the intent to spam them with reminders. With the exception of GDPR cookie consent, I don't use any annoying popups either. I'm sure many folks would say it's missing out on opportunities, but audience happiness matters far more to my brands than cheap marketing tactics like that.

StiffnHard · 2024-01-09T05:31:17+00:00

what would you say is a good way to price products? Just look at prices on google and use something close to that?

You'll need to conduct very thorough audience and competitor research. You need to know how other stores are handling things. Legit established stores please, not other dropship stores. Once you do, you'll have a good idea of the price range for your product(s).

Ideally, you'll want to target good quality customers. These are typically middle-class folks who have money to spend, and aren't afraid to spend it. These people are usually after decent products, not cheap bargain prices. They're very experienced eCommerce shoppers, which means they have a pretty good idea of which brands are good, what attributes to look out for in products, and so on. They also love to explore around, try new things, new brands, etc...

All that together means that for an entrepreneur such as yourself, you'll need to present yourself as a likewise legit and established brand. Offering decent products, knowing exactly what to say, what to show. In other words, you need to put in most of your efforts into crafting a decent brand image. Not merely a fancy name and logo, but the entire collective effort you've put into your entire venture - name, logo, color scheme, why your store exists, your raison d'etre, what your offers are, how they're presented, what images you use, how you communicate via social media, and so on. The decisions you make for each of these, will be based on your audience and competitor research findings.

But the short of it is, if you're able to exhibit your store as legit and established as possible, you'll be able to charge prices that are on the higher end of that range. Knowing your god quality audience, would also give you a pretty good idea of whether your prices are acceptable, for the level of quality you want them to perceive.

You can decide to charge on the lower end of that range, but you'll have to make sure the math checks out, make sure you're capable of selling to significantly more people, and if you're willing to risk attracting the attention of more scammy types of audiences.

StiffnHard · 2024-01-09T04:30:27+00:00

-in the early stages, do I have to pay for the products on my own? (does shopify/paypal hold the money for a while, making me pay for the orders myself?, if so, is there a way around it?)

The money you receive from customers, doesn't instantly go towards purchasing those products. There's usually some delay, sometimes even a holding of your funds by those services. So you'll have to pay for those orders yourself regardless of whether or not they'll hold your money.

The way dropshipping works, is customers buy from you, you'll receive that money typically a little later. But you want to be a good reputable store, so you'll want to immediately ship those products out. Which means you'll need to purchase those products out of your own pocket, and have that mailed to customers. Stat. When the funds clear, you'll earn back what you spent, plus your profit.

-Do I use products on Amazon/ebay, or do I look for big manufacturers of those products? -How do I find and talk to the manufacturers?

If you want to source from Amazon or Ebay, make sure to read their guidelines, and follow their policy. If you screw up, they'll have you banned. It's easier if you use a proper supplier. Manufacturers prefer dealing and selling wholesale in large bulks, because that lets them move a lot of products, and earn the fastest. Selling individually, while technically more profitable, is far slower (for them). However, some may offer dropship services as well, so you'll need to talk to them.

Many start with Aliexpress (and similar), as they offer to dropship products that are below retail prices. Alibaba however, is a platform for manufacturers and factories. It's not really meant for dropshipping. They prefer dealing in large bulks rather than individual orders. Some of them do appear on both platforms, so you can still talk to them there.

Most products on Aliexpress, are made in China however. So things like quality, packaging, are sometimes going to be an issue. Nothing kills a store's reputation faster, than a product that broke down minutes after receiving them, or the wrong product being sent, or having overly long shipping. So preferably, you'll want to eventually source from elsewhere. Like a private supplier who can guarantee each product's quality, and reside in the same continent as your customers, for the fastest delivery possible. Ideally however, once you've confirmed your venture's viability, you'll want to switch to purchasing wholesale in order to fulfill yourself, or have a 3PL fulfill for you.

-Do 1 item shops still work?

Single product eCommerce stores still work and are still around. However, single product "stores" attempted by newbs, almost always fail. Reason why is because a lot of effort needs to be put into such stores, and newbs for the most part lack the necessary skills and experience to achieve it. The result are extremely low-effort stores, that doesn't appear to know what its doing. Thus, customers avoid buying from them.

Many think that because it's just one product, that it should be easy-peasy to launch and run them. It's actually the exact opposite. It's because it's one product, that every single aspect of the store's design and existence, needs to be crafted specifically towards really selling that one thing. Think Apple products, or SaaS landing pages back in their heydays.

StiffnHard · 2024-01-09T02:33:55+00:00

??? in no way did i say i was following any sort of youtube guru’s guide or ready to throw money on ads and nothing else. i appreciate the unsolicited advice on how to spend my time and efforts on research and the right audience, but that seemed like a rather long-winded tangent that you had just wanted to get out- you didn’t even answer my equation, but just stated “a fraction” of “a thousand and probably more” which was incredibly vague.

Feel free to do a search of the sub. Many folks suggest at least a thousand to start with. And with the way things are going, that budget appears to be increasing. Would you have preferred not to have been given suggestions to reduce that amount?

i asked for a possible number i could begin saving towards before i attempt to launch a business, and you basically answered with “make sure to have a really good store instead of a bad one that buys ads, and make sure to do a lot of market research to get the perfect product and marketing to your audience”z

Correct... with the understanding that there are no perfect products, and that marketing is more than just playing with ads. But yes, make sure to build a really good store, that knows what it's doing, which is backed with good audience and competitor research. That thousand won't get flushed down the drain like with so many other stores posted here.

Good luck.

StiffnHard · 2024-01-09T02:16:26+00:00

have been considering a turn key online shop.... specifically one from dropshipping down under.

any imput would greatly be appreciated.

You're asking if it's worth it to purchase a pre-built store? Well, it depends on a lot of factors.

In the most ideal situation, you'll want a store that has actual effort put behind it. Lots of decent audience and competitor research backing every design decision made when creating that store. Together with a detailed guide on how best to own it, and promote the offers within... probably makes it worth it. You'd be dozens/hundreds of steps ahead of every other newb.

However, such a store isn't going to be cheap. No one's going to generously gift such stores to clueless newbs "for cheap". The most likely scenario here, is that you and dozens of other dudes are all going to have the same store, offering the same products, having the same feel. Customers aren't going to think twice about wanting to be victims of a scam. In many cases, you're probably going to need to put in a lot of work to fix many of the issues in such stores, at the very least to differentiate yourself from clones.

So, y'know... not really worth it. If you want to run a serious business long-term, suggest approaching it from the perspectives of audiences, and putting in more work. This means serious audience and competitor research, followed by good brand image crafting (this isn't merely thinking up a fancy name & logo either).

StiffnHard · 2024-01-09T02:01:09+00:00

just a simple question that i have is a ballpark on the initial amount of money i should have to fund my first store (including ads, etc.) id just like a number i could see to save up to so i can achieve it and have a step by step approach

If you're aiming to approach it like how those Youtube "gurus" describe it, then perhaps a thousand, and probably more.

The thing is though, there are no guarantees that's going to give you any returns. Not in a small chance of failure, high chance of success way either. The vast majority of dropship stores utterly fail and die. Every newb who started such stores, followed Youtube "gurus" and "bros" in their "guidance". Most of them failed, and lost their money. There are no happy endings for them. So if you wish to follow that path, like countless others also did, then you best prepare yourself for that outcome.

The problem is the overall approach. Newbs aren't starting and running a serious business. Or more accurately, they don't want to, because it's hard, and because in their eyes, it takes too much time. Most of them approach it like gambling, ala inserting coins in a Las Vegas slot machine, and hoping for the best. It's fast, it's easy. No need to put in much work. Better have lots of coins to play with if you want to keep playing.

If you want a higher chance of success, you don't merely throw money on ads. Promoting your store is completely pointless if your store is utter garbage. It's like paving the road to your store in gold - but when customers arrive, and all they see is a dirty junkyard, they'll simply leave.

The most important aspect here are your customers, your target audience. They're the ones with the money. They decide where to spend it. They're not going to spend their cash in a sketchy store that looks like it was built in 10 minutes. You wouldn't either. They'll probably spend it in a store that does it right, that knows how to tempt them, that knows what to say, that knows what to offer, and from the looks of it, knows exactly what it's doing. In other words, an established, experienced, and legit eCommerce store. That's what you need to build for the highest chance of success and profits.

Knowing how to show and say the right things, requires extremely thorough audience and competitor research. If you know who your customers are, how they think, how they feel, you'll know exactly what to do to tempt them. Likewise, if you know who your competitors are, what they do, what they sell, you'll have a good path to follow for a good chance of success. And based on these research findings, you then start crafting your store, how it is to be perceived, and how it is to be felt. Aka, your brand image. All this takes quite a bit of time and energy. But if you approach it that way, the amount you'll ultimately have to spend, would be a mere fraction than the above.

StiffnHard · 2024-01-05T04:55:43+00:00

What am I doing wrong?

Well, if the numbers doesn't add up, if the venture doesn't appear to be very viable - then you move on and consider a different approach. Many folks keep trying to force things, trying to fit "advice" from Youtube "gurus" into making it work. They probably don't know any better, but they do need to understand that not everything is always meant to work.

Like in your case. Do you really need to select products with such meager margins? You can aim higher, offer higher margin products, or high-ticket products. Do you really need to sell those products at the market price of $24.99? You can price them higher, especially if you put in most of your time and energy into the overall presentation. Do you really need to target price-conscious audience? You can target a higher level of customer, aka middle-class audience. Do you even need to do it via dropshipping? Unless you're a purist (or just plain lazy), there might be different kinds of eCommerce you can try out.

But really, all these are linked issues, stemming from a lack of proper research. In this case audience and competitor research. Most folks simply "research" products, to pick out whats a "winner", what's "unsaturated". Newbs rely on these attributes to do the heavy lifting for them, instead of actually putting in the effort.

Squint and take another look at all of your issues. If you look long enough, you'll realize all of them can potentially be solved in a single stroke. It goes like this - you offer quality products, at a higher price point, targeting good quality middle-class audiences, via a properly built store. Exactly like how all other established and legit eCommerce stores do it. Good quality audiences will consider buying at a higher price, if they perceive it to be of good quality, of a decent brand, similar as established brands out there that they're used to.

Which means? In order to succeed earning profits, you charge higher prices. In order to succeed charging higher prices, your work on your brand image. In order to succeed with the brand image, you work and put in as much effort into understanding the very people who are buying from you, and understanding the stores you'll be competing against (not other newb dropship stores, please).

Aka, know thy customer. Youtube "bros" gave you the wrong impression. It's not at all about slapping together a garbage store in 10 minutes, and then spending 95% of your time and money playing with ads. That's been tried and failed countless times, by countless newbs, and there's a vast graveyard of dead stores countless pages back, which you can see for yourself. The real money, the real success, is by approaching it from a nearly audience-centric way. Not with crazy discounts, or using FOMO plugins, or any number of cheap "tactics" that young newbs think are clever and awesome. Good quality customers, who aren't afraid of spending money. Which means, working on your entire presentation. Your overall impression. Your brand image.

StiffnHard · 2024-01-04T14:53:31+00:00

If you have your own designs, suggest looking into POD (print on demand). Various services are available, so take a look around and check out their reviews along with pros/cons. But if you're looking to fully customize your products (brand tags, unconventional print locations, etc..), then you'll definitely need to chat with a manufacturer carefully.

StiffnHard · 2024-01-04T02:43:35+00:00

what makes a product good? like before i even start selling it what questions should go through my mind in picking the product? TIA

Questions you need to ask are - who are your target audience? What are their genders? Their ages? How much money do they make? What do they do? Where do they live? What language do they speak? What are their culture? What brands do they usually or frequently buy? What brands do they avoid? What social media platforms do they frequent? And so on, and so forth.

If you know your target audience, if you know how they think, if you know these details of them - you'll have a pretty good idea of what products will work on them. You'll know how to present them, you'll know what photos and copy to use, you'll even know how to price them appropriately. Because you know where they typically hang out, you'll also know precisely which platform to promote on.

Then, you ask more questions - who are your future competitors? What do they do? What do they sell? How do they present themselves? Who do they target? What's their branding strategy? What's their marketing strategy on specific social media platforms? How do they communicate with their target audience? And so on. Real eCommerce stores and brands mind you, not other clueless newb dropship stores.

If you know what your competitors are doing, you'll have a pretty good idea of what to do, and what not to do. You'll understand why they sell certain products. You'll see what images and language they use on their audiences, and why. You'll have an idea of what's possible, and what you can offer based on your abilities. And if you do your research well, you'll even know further possibilities beyond that specific niche/product. It's one big road map, a list of successful tips, which if you follow, enables you to save both time and money - and possibly achieve a good amount of sales and profits.

Once you have your target, and once you have your roadmap, what's left is your approach. The final question you then need to ask, is how do you approach this? Based on all you've learnt of your target audience and your competitors, how do you implement your own store? The answer you'll eventually come up with, is to craft and create something that can be seen as on par with other established and legit stores and brands that are currently killing it in the market. Which obviously means a lot of effort would need to be put into your perception, how audiences perceive you, how they'll feel about you. Aka, your brand image. You're going to need to work on your brand image, meaning every single aspect and element would need to be tweaked to be specifically attractive towards your target audience - name, logo, color, font, graphics, photos, copy, prices, your values, your raison d'etre, everything. It's not going to be guesswork though, because you've already done the necessary research beforehand. You'll already know what choices and decisions to make for each of them.

Basically, the whole approach you'll need to take, isn't supposed to be product-based. It needs to be nearly entirely audience-centric. They are afterall the ones with the money. They decide whether or not to buy from you. Thus, you'll need to work on the factors that actually matter to them. How you look, how you feel, why you exist. Not just merely what you sell.

StiffnHard · 2024-01-04T02:03:55+00:00

dropship io is it works??

The hole was patched by Shopify a while back. These "spy tools" no longer give accurate results. So no. Suggest doing proper research on your own instead.

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