Dropshipping For Beginners | What You Need To Know (Episode 120)

💻 Join My FREE Online-Event: The Best-Kept Secret To A Profitable Online Shop:
https://dropshipunlocked.com/online-event?el=podcast-120-dropshipping-for-beginners

🗣 In this episode, Lewis Smith and James Eardley break down the essentials of dropshipping for beginners. 

If you’ve been thinking about getting into the world of e-commerce and dropshipping, this episode is packed with everything you need to know to get started. From low start-up costs to choosing the right products, they cover all the basics and beyond to set you on the right path.

👉 Prefer to watch this on YouTube? Check it out here ➡️https://youtu.be/yLzDqRzRAgE

Topics Discussed:
★ What is Dropshipping: Lewis explains the fundamentals of dropshipping, how it works, and why it’s one of the most accessible ways to start an online business.
★ The Low Start-Up Costs: Learn how to get started with dropshipping for less than £100, making it one of the most cost-effective business models out there.
★ Choosing the Right Niche: Tips on finding the right products to sell, and why niche selection is critical to your dropshipping success.
★ Why Automation is Key: Learn how setting up automated systems can help streamline your business and free up your time for other important tasks.
★ Handling Customer Expectations: The importance of delivering great service and managing customer expectations in a competitive e-commerce space.
★ The Key to Success in Dropshipping: Practical advice from Lewis on the common pitfalls to avoid and the crucial steps to take when starting out.

Links and Resources Mentioned:
Start Your Ecommerce Journey Today – Visit dropshipunlocked.com/start
Shopify for £1 a Month for 3 Months – dropshipunlocked.com/shopify
Sign up with Tide for easy business account management: https://dropshipunlocked.com/tide

Key Takeaways:
★ Low Barrier to Entry: Dropshipping is one of the most affordable ways to start a business, with start-up costs under £100.
★ Niche is Everything: Picking the right niche can make or break your dropshipping success. Focus on a profitable, in-demand market.
★ Automate to Scale: Setting up automation systems early can help you save time and scale faster.
★ Customer Satisfaction: Great customer service and managing expectations are key to growing a successful dropshipping business.
★ Avoid Common Pitfalls: Learn from others’ mistakes by investing in mentorship and following a proven blueprint to avoid costly errors.

FOLLOW:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dropshipunlocked/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DropshipUnlockd
LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/company/dropship-unlocked
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/dropshipunlockedlewissmith
Website: https://www.dropshipunlocked.com/

Thank you for listening to the Dropship Unlocked Podcast!
Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review on your favourite podcast platform.

★★★Dropship Unlocked - Lewis Smith★★★
🌏 Want to create location, time, and financial freedom? Watch Our Free Training ➽ https://dropshipunlocked.com/free?el=podcast-120-dropshipping-for-beginners

Transcript

0:00

Starting with drop shipping can definitely feel overwhelming. We get that, but with the right mindset, you can get it right from the start. I mean, I personally found that the key to success quickly is the truth is that most beginners make the same mistakes over and over again when they first get started. And I'd say that the one mistake that catches most people out is a lot of people think drop shipping is this get rich quick scheme. But the reality is, if you don't have a plan, you're quickly going to hit the brick wall. So to avoid that, we just need to you'll often hear people saying, is drop shipping still worth it? Well, the answer might just surprise you. Especially, one thing that I see all the time is beginners diving into dropshipping with very little understanding of Welcome to the dropship unlocked Podcast. I'm Louis Smith, the founder of dropship unlocked, and with me is our Client Success Coach James Eardley. Now when we're not recording podcast episodes or running our own e commerce businesses, you'll find us helping aspiring entrepreneurs launch their own high ticket dropshipping stores. So if you're ready to build your own six or even seven figure online business. Then head over to dropship unlocked.com forward slash, start now, sit back, relax, and let's unlock your potential with the dropship unlocked podcast today, we're diving into a topic that's perfect for anyone just getting started with drop shipping, and we're going to talk about what you need to know as a first time drop shipper. So if you're wondering what this business model is all about, and whether you think you want to give it a good go and whether it will work for you, then this episode is for you. So Lewis, let's start with the basics. For anyone that's heard of the term drop shipping or E commerce, what exactly is drop shipping? What exactly is drop shipping? Yeah, the million dollar question, I think, at its simplest form, it's selling products without needing to actually hold the stock or have the products in your personal possession. And the way we do it is partnering with suppliers who can send out the products directly to your customers doorstep. And the benefit of that is that, as a entrepreneur running an online business, it's very low risk for you. You haven't got a part with huge amounts of capital upfront. You've not got to invest money in a warehouse or order shipping containers from China. It's very low risk, low investment, low barrier to entry to get started. But there are very much right and wrong ways to do it in our experience that can make your life either enjoyable with this business model or a bit of a nightmare. And unfortunately, YouTube is littered with people teaching it in the very kind of get rich, quick form of like, cheap products, Chinese suppliers, long delivery times, bad reviews, like, there's so much that can go wrong with it. So today, we really want to unpack all of that stuff and just focus on the right way to build a long term, sustainable, reputable brand. 100% I followed those YouTube tutorials when I first heard of the term drop shipping Lewis, and it led to failures because I just didn't know what was the right advice to follow. And I was just following different guidance from different YouTube channels, and I ended up wasting a lot of money in Facebook ads trying to run ads to the wrong products. But as it at its fundamentals, where this drop shipping is literally just it means getting the products to the customer, because it's just a fulfillment method that we use to send the products that we sell on our website to our customers. It means we don't have to buy any stock up front. It means we just ask your suppliers to send that product directly to the customer's door. And there are a lot of benefits that come with that. Lewis, so why did you get into drop shipping initially? What were the main benefits that made you start drop shipping? Yeah, so when I first found out about the model, I was still working in a nine to five job. I knew that. So I'd read The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, and I knew that I wanted to join the new rich, as he calls it, and escape the nine to five world and kind of leave that trading your time for money model behind. But I didn't want to kind of pour my entire life savings that I'd accumulated after eight years working my way up through the corporate world and being in a graduate scheme and like being sensible with money and putting aside savings for and at the time, it was just myself and my fiance and now wife, but now obviously for our whole family, so low overheads was really important to me, making sure that I didn't go into a business where it was immediately going to be like, 1000s of pounds in overheads per month. So yeah, we talked about this already, but no need for inventory with drop shipping. So it definitely kind of ticked that box for me, no need for warehousing, no need for shipping containers across oceans and all that kind of stuff like import duties customs, because the model that we use is UK suppliers to UK customers or domestic drop shipping. So wherever your customers are based, you find suppliers in that. Same country, and you just allows you to give next day delivery to your customers. The other thing was the scalability of it. You know, there's a lot of options when you think about, okay, how do I go from working in a job to earning money online? And one of the most prevalent ones is freelancing or trading your time for money, but just doing it as you know, doing it yourself, outside of the realms of a job, and the danger that I was forewarned about doing that, and I've got to say, I didn't actually go down that route. So I didn't experience this myself, but I could see it would happen if I said, Okay, I'm going to go in and just, I don't know, work directly, one on one with people, and help them do something. Well, I would hit a point of like, well, I have no more hours in the day. I can't take on any more clients. I and and I'm so burned out because I'm working more hours than I was at my old job. So arguably, it's like, well, is that even the answer, um, to all of this? Because for me, the goal was autonomy and freedom and control and digital nomadism, being able to escape the country and like, go and travel and work on my business from a laptop. So I wanted it to be very scalable online. I didn't want it to be tied to my own time. And also, I wanted it to be low risk. This kind of ties into the low overheads. But for me, the risk was that I'd pour loads of money, loads of time into something for 612, months, and it just wouldn't work. And that was, you know, I don't have enough time to be able to take that kind of risk. And I was already working before I started my nine to five job in the mornings, and then again at the evenings, and then at weekends, trying to squeeze in all of the hours that I could to build my first e commerce business, and I had to be pretty sure, although there's no guarantees in this world, and you know there, you can only ensure that you do your best and you try and mitigate that risk as much as possible, but I wanted to make sure that I was only paying suppliers for what I had already sold. And that's pretty rare in business like not meant there aren't other business models where they'll only allow you to pay once you've sold. The thing that that's quite rare. There are obviously some, but you know, this is very, very different to something like Amazon FBA, where you're having to front the capital to order the stock and then hope that it sells, and if it doesn't, you hear all these horror stories about people do that, and then it gets rejected by Amazon because there's like, a problem with the label or something on this, on the stock, or the boxes aren't compliant, or they get their Amazon account shut down, and they're just sitting on 1000s of pounds worth of stock they can't sell, and they have to liquidate it and try and sell it on eBay for break even price, like you just hear horror story. So for me it was, yeah, low overheads, very scalable, location independent system and very low risk. It ticks a lot of boxes, and it takes a lot for me as well. There's the reason I probably went for drop shipping. The main one was because of the low risk factor, and because it was my first time venturing and building a business, and I put money away savings from my nine to five job, and I only had so many hours in the day. I knew that whatever business I was going to go into, I needed to feel like I wasn't risking a lot to do it because of my first business, and I was well aware of the fact that, you know, I need to try this thing. I can't expect to be making million straight away, so I needed to keep my risk low and trying to protect the downside. So to do that drop should be made a lot of sense, because I wasn't gonna have to front 1000s of pounds before I even sold a single product. And you I could get started, start making sales, and then the costs that associated the business are really just tied to the sales that you make. You only order products and suppliers once you've made the sale, so you use the money from your customer to buy the product. You only spend money on ads when you are confident that you're going to make a profitable ads return, and you'll only increase that ads budget when you've got a profitable ads return as well. So it really allows you to be more in the driver's seat, wait until you've got sales coming in proof of concept before increasing the amount of money you spend. I think that's something that we hear a lot of people come to us with Lewis, isn't it? It's that idea of, it's a first time business, they don't want to make a big mistake, so that's probably why drop shipping is quite a big thing up there, high on their list to get started. Yeah, exactly when you look at the, you know, the dropship unlocked contact inbox, and the types of people that we have reaching out to us a lot of the time, they are in the position that we were in when we first started. And maybe they haven't run a business before. They haven't done this. Done this before, so risk is definitely one of the key things that they're looking to minimize in this first venture, because they don't want to kind of dive in at the deep end, go all out, get it wrong, and then that be it. They can't afford to try anything else. So it's making sure that you make those incremental steps, you follow a proven process, and like you say, you don't just blow all your money on ads on day one, you only scale up your ad spend as you're starting to see a profitable return. So very much in line with the home turf advantage model that we use. Exactly that's why I firmly believe that drop shipping is such a fantastic starter business for people to get into business and start understanding how to run a business, because the risk. Are much lower when it comes to upfront cost in terms of starting a business. Now, for people that are curious and don't really know where to start, because they have this idea of building a business, perhaps they look, you know, at the businesses that we've got, Lewis, and they're thinking like, 10 steps ahead, and they don't really know what's the first step on that journey. How would you give actionable advice for somebody that just wants to get started today? Well, the first thing is choosing a niche that you're going to go into. So if you've decided that you like the Drop Shipping model, don't make the mistake of trying to become everything to everyone, and become the new Amazon or the new wayfare, and just say, I'm not going to niche down. I'm going to sell everything and be a generalist. The trouble with that is you're then competing with everyone, and it's so hard to keep track of what's going on, you don't really stand out to your customers. You lose your unique selling advantage in that sense. So the best thing you can do, really, is focus on a proven niche. Now the next question is, how do I pick a niche? Well, we have a niche validation system that we guide you through, where we choose based on data and not based on gut instinct or emotion. So it's not like, I think this niche will work, because I spoke to my auntie, and she said that she would buy one of these things. And I spoke to her, you know, friend, and they had one of these once. And it's like, you're not, you're not basing it on, like, a very small sample size of personal contacts that you you know, I walked down the street and I saw a shop selling these, and I think I might be able to do the same. It's like, again, shaky foundations. You're going to build a business based on, like a hunch. Expect there to be huge problems down the line. Instead, if you kind of zoom out of the emotion, remove yourself, and just look at the whole kind of puzzle, and then start to apply the criteria. We've got, like, nine different niche validation criteria that we guide you through, and then you can kind of figure out exactly what the steps are, for example, assessing the market demand, how many people are searching on Google per month in the country that you're in for the niche or the types of products that you're considering selling. So we can then figure out, okay, is that enough people? Is that not enough people, then we might look at things like, what's the supplier availability? How many suppliers in that industry are there? How many could I win? How many are already working with companies that like me want to do direct to consumer drop shipping? If there are none, good luck. You're going to be fighting an uphill battle. But a lot of this stuff, you wouldn't know until you're already in that business and you've, like, bought the domain name and registered the company and done all this stuff, and then you're like, Ah, now I've hit a brick ball. So I think making sure that you you follow a niche validation system before you go ahead and proceed. Don't just base it on what you think might work. Next thing would be setting up your store. I mean, we use and recommend Shopify. It's a great, easy e commerce platform, super simple, some huge million, 100 million pounds a year. Brands are built on Shopify. So I don't think that you need to look elsewhere necessarily, although you absolutely can. But the system we teach is about location, independence and time, freedom, and so if that's what you're looking for, ultimately, you probably don't want to over complicate it by going into lots of kind of technical systems that you then need to, like, piece together and patch up and make work. Shopify is an all in one. It does the job that you need very well. And then the third part of that ties into the first part. So you've validated your niche. And remember, one of the niche validation criteria was to find a niche or a group of products, like, for example, and barbecues or games, tables, whatever it is that you wanted to sell that have suppliers that are already willing to drop ship. Now, if you found the niche, you've already validated that there are suppliers, so then finding those reliable suppliers to contact, reaching out to them, getting in touch, we provide you the email scripts, the phone scripts, what to say to them, what not to say. More importantly, to get those signed up, so that they then become the value really, that your business is offering to customers. Of course, you can offer great customer support, but really it comes down to what's the item that the customer gets, and if those are trash and really poor quality, don't expect your business to be around for long. So finding good, reliable suppliers who offer a great service, high quality of product, and building your store on something like Shopify that's slick, simple, mobile, optimized, ultra fast, and having the whole foundation of it built on a solid niche that passes those nine niche validation criteria, so that there are no nasty surprises down the line exactly, and that those three steps taken in that order means that you'll have reliable suppliers, a Shopify store that's ready to go, and you'll have the niche chosen based on data, not just based on a hunch. I've got some horror stories in my past before I joined dropship unlocked, where I started to just choose products based on what had a good price on AliExpress and what I thought I could make a good video around to sell on Facebook, and how wrong was I going into elasticated shoe laces or going. Bluetooth game controllers or pet products, and I was making those decisions based on actually just the price that I could buy them on AliExpress, being a decent margin to what I think I could thought I could sell them for online, and not really going much further than that. And I soon found out that when you make these decisions of which products you're going to sell based on emotion or based on a hunch, the results just don't come very quickly at all, when I then made that switch and started to do a lot of research upfront before building a store, I then knew the products I was going to go into had the backing of data already, so that when I did start running ads, I the results I saw were huge in comparison, because I could actually start making sales, because I was selling products that were already in demand. That's a huge thing. I think people often overlooked and beyond that, then Lewis is all about Shopify and getting a website set up. Why do you think you mentioned a little bit about it already, but why do you think Shopify becomes the real home of our business online? Yeah, I guess the first part is like remembering who the people that are starting these businesses are, and by that I mean like, who the former you and I were when we first started these businesses. And the reason why I gravitated towards a platform like Shopify, and it was just because it didn't require loads of tech skills. You know, yes, I in the past, I think I'd like, tinkered with building websites where I had to have, like, was it like, FTP storage portals, and had to, like, link up the thing, and it was just a bit of a nightmare. And never looked good. It was a pain to maintain, always going wrong. And it's like when you kind of log into Shopify, if you've, if you've dabbled with, like, some website stuff in the past, but you haven't touched it for a few years, and you come into Shopify, and then you look and you realize, wow, they've really simplified the game, like they've listened to an early on, early stage entrepreneurs who haven't run websites before, and they've made it so simple. But the nice thing is, you're not really compromising a huge amount either, because often the trade off is like, you get something really simple, but then you in exchange for that simplicity, you're trading off loads of features. But Shopify has all of the great features as well. It has amazing app marketplace where you can, like, get these extension apps that do all of these things as well. So it's a real all in one platform, and it handles everything from accepting payments to tracking your shipping, notifying your customers of the delivery updates so they get, like, text messages and emails telling them when their orders are going to arrive that day. And you can plug your support system into it as well, so making sure that you know you've got your live chat your eventually, if you hire a virtual assistant to be on your live chat and talk to customers, you can do that. You can use AI tools for that now as well, and Shopify support as well are great. You know, some of these platforms, you might get them, and then you're kind of on your own. And if you ever want help, you need to, like, go and pay a specialist to speak to who can, like, speak the language of that platform. With Shopify, you just get a live chat or get on a call, and they just guide you through it step by step. And I remember, at the beginning, I was on live chat and support calls with Shopify for hours getting things sorted, and I couldn't believe. I was like, they're so patient with me. It's like, it's unbelievable. They're so refreshing. And that's what you need when you're starting out. You know, you've got this great support community, lots of apps, lots of tutorials, incredible support, all in one system. I just Yeah. When I hear people say, Do I have to use Shopify? I'm like, Well, no, but why would you look elsewhere? Like, what's the point until you're at hundreds of millions and maybe you want to then create some custom e commerce platform? Okay, fine, if you really want to, if it makes that incremental difference. But to start with, I just don't see why you'd need to look elsewhere. Just go straight to the top. Just go straight to the leader in any industry that you're going to choose, and definitely for E commerce platforms, Shopify is that leader, I think, a question we get quite a lot. Louis, something that you mentioned is, how much tech skills do you need to have if you're going to get started in drop shipping? Shopify definitely helps us to answer that question. What would you say to people when they ask you about tech skills required to get started? Very, very simple. I mean, we even have a dropship unlocked, optimized Shopify theme now that we've kind of created that our members get access to that allows you to basically have an out of the box, incredible looking store that's mobile, optimized, very fast load times from day one without even needing to do anything. Um, so in terms of tech skills, zero requirement if, if you go that route and but if you do this yourself, even so, like, the the free theme store that Shopify have where you can, just, like, try out different themes and plug them in. Like, that's the kind of thing that you used to have to pay developers and designers 10s of 1000s of pounds to put together, and even then, it would take loads of maintenance and stuff. Whereas you can have that from day one, you could probably even do it on your mobile device. That you could literally do it on your your iPhone, create the whole thing, I imagine, and do it from the Shopify app. Because once it's up and running, you can largely run the business from a phone like you don't need a huge amount. I mean, you probably. Still want to log in occasionally check everything's doing the right it's easier to manage emails and stuff on the on the computer, but, um Yeah, day to day, checking your sales and stuff, making sure things are running, you do it from your phone. So no, in terms of tech skills, those days are are long behind the industry. Like you really don't have to be a tech wizard to set one of these up. The more pressing thing is the actual ability to take action and like, do the steps required. That's what separates the 1% from the 99% that are out there that say I could never do that. It's the people who just step up and do it and have the guts to just say, like, I'm going to contact suppliers, I'm going to put myself out there, I'm going to choose a niche and just be, you know, committed to it, even if there's a slight risk that maybe I have to pivot down the line, versus the people that kind of are like a deer in the headlights, procrastinate, convince themselves that they're not a technical person, and then never do any any of it. You know that that's the kind of different categories that we see of between those who do nothing and dabble and those who succeed. Yeah, and it's a great study to do. When you look at the most successful members of dropship unlock, perhaps we featured them on the channel, on a podcast in the past, the single running thread that seems to go between them isn't the tech skills that they came into their drop shipping business with. It's their openness to learning and it's their ability to take action on what they are learning and really just going for it all in to build the business, which is a great thing to hear, because that's something that we can all put put together. We can all adopt that mindset to be action takers and to be open to learning. And I think if you haven't got tech skills, that's not a reason to not get started. You might just need to learn more quickly in terms of the Shopify store that you'll build. But as Lewis said, it's intuitive. Now you think drag and drop, if you can drag and drop, what color you'd like the website to be, what logo you'd like to add. That's essentially how we build websites these days. Because of platforms like Shopify, you don't need to have any coding experience. So I mean, that is the first steps. We've got a store, we've got products chosen, we've got suppliers signed. We're ready to get into business. Now, how do we actually get customers to buy those products? What tools do we recommend Lewis for people to get visitors to our website? Sure. Yeah. So getting visitors to your website, also known as getting traffic to your website. And unfortunately, it's not a case of build it and they shall come. You know, you'd think like you put together this great website, and then customers turn up by their droves, and there's they flock to your store, and it's just, you know, this, this queue of customers out the digital door waiting to buy products. And it'd be great if it was like that. Unfortunately, it's not. If you don't do anything about it, however, you can kind of stack the cards in your favor and make your customers see you effectively by running paid traffic. So that means by running ads. So you've heard of Google ads, probably heard of Facebook ads, Instagram ads. Probably seen many of them on your feeds, on your when you're doing Google searches, you'll see those products that appear right at the top with the photos and the prices, and it says sponsored in tiny font underneath it, those are Google ads, Google Shopping ads, and it's a really solid way to target customers who are actively searching for your products. So rather than trying to distract customers off of a social media platform and kind of put your product in front of them and hope they might click, you might need 300 of those clicks before one person buys because they weren't in buying mode. They were in scrolling mode. Whereas the model that we teach with Google ads as our primary traffic source goes straight to the searches. It's straight to where people look for products. So if you're thinking about buying a product, you search on Google you see those ads. It might not take 300 people to click one of those ads before you get a sale, it might only be 3040, 50, something like that, which means you have a nice high conversion rate, which then keeps your cost per sale, that your cost that you're spending on ads per sale that you make nice and low. And when we're selling higher priced products, or high ticket products, as we call it, you have a really nice, healthy margin, profit margin. So if you sell a product for 2000 pounds, 30% profit margin, you make 600 pounds in profit on that sale. You could spend 100 pounds to acquire that sale and still net 500 pounds in profit. So this might all sound like Alien at this stage, if you haven't run ads before and you don't understand any of that, but the basics of it are, you can either wait for like search engine optimization to take effect, and you can optimize your store to show up on Google over time. But that's not going to happen on day one. However, once you've signed suppliers, you've got your store live, and you you can switch on the the tap, the traffic tap, and floods of customers who are looking for the products that you're selling already. Because, remember, we validated that in the first step where we selected our niche, we made sure those customers were there searching already before we even went into the niche. By that point, you're just customers AR queuing up to click on your store and to come in the digital door and have a look around. Bond, and at that point, it's just a game of trying to convert as many of them as you can to paying customers. And for every one that you you get, you can make a nice, healthy profit margin, and as long as that offsets the cost of the ads, you're making money. That's it. That's the That's the formula that we're building. That's the money making machine that we build is that we put money into Google ads and we get more money back every time we do it, but that's down the line, and all the intricacies of building a Google ads campaign, we have talked about previously. The episode 23 is a good one to shout out, where we talked all about mastering Google ads for your e commerce Store. So check that one out if you want to go in more detail about how to run ads to get sales for your drop shipping business. I think the best way of just getting an overall picture of how Google Ads work is to think about the Google Ads search engine results page that comes up when you search anything on Google. And of course, we've all searched on Google, so you can picture this. At the very top, you've got the sponsored ads that come up for whatever you're searching for. So if you're searching for a barbecue, you'll see photos of barbecue in a white background image. And then beneath that, you've got a few text ads that are the first websites that appear, and they're sponsored as well. And then beneath that, you've got the organically ranking listings that come up as well. And these are listings that haven't been paid. People haven't paid to get them there, but they've got there due to their authority on on Google. Beneath the ads is the real authoritative websites that are really showing highly for that search term that you've shown. And we can do both of those things with our e commerce Store. We can have the ads showing at the very top of the page, and over time, we can build up the authority with Google so that our website shows up high from an organic point of view as well. And so we'll actually be receiving clicks on our store, and we'll get visitors without having to pay eventually, because we've shown Google the authority that we build. I think Lewis, that's a bit of a game changer in the long term, when you're able to start ranking organically for these search results. Yeah, absolutely. That's that. That really then becomes like the foundation, and ads are almost then the icing on the cake at that point, once you have a really nice, solid business, because you could at that point switch ads off and just dine out on the sales you're making organically for the rest of your your digital days with that store. But having ads work profitably, because people always say, Well, how long do I have to run ads for? Or like, why would I run ads when I can have SEO? And the answer is, if you can run ads profitably, why would you not run ads? If you have a machine where you put a pound in and four come out, why would you not put pound coins in that machine? You just keep doing it right until it stops giving you more than you put in, at which point you need to just tweak things and maybe reduce your ad spend or increase your sales conversion rate and optimize your store. But yeah, the dream scenario is eventually you're getting a nice, profitable return on your ad spend. So all of those ad clicks are leading to sales, but you're also making nice, organic sales. And when we say organic, we mean from people finding you through the search engines, naturally, without a paid or sponsored ad. Click, no pay. Click there. It's just a Google search result that they click on and they see your store ranking nice and highly for, maybe not for the term barbecue, because that's going to be a really competitive search term, but for like, the brand and model name and size and color that a really high search intent customer would look for. If they were had a high commercial intent they were looking to actually spend money that day. That's the kind of term that's actually quite they call it a long tail search term because, you know, on the if you imagine a graph, you've got the really, like, high part of the graph where loads of people search for the generic term barbecue. But then as the graph dips, you've then got this really long tail on the graph of lots of very, very niche, specific search terms. So if you can rank the sum of those, those can be your money keywords. You might only get 1520, 30 people looking for that per month. But if you're not result number one, you might convert a few of those. And each one of those could be a 2000 5000 7000 pound sale, depending on what you're selling. And the great thing about targeting those real specific search terms is that people that are searching for those things are normally very far down the buying funnel. If they know the type of color they're searching for, the exact model type, the product type that they're looking for, is a good chance that they're ready to buy, because they've obviously done some research already. So we can craft that we put our ads together, or do the work behind the scenes of the SEO to make sure our website is seen as an authority, so that when people are searching for the Outback Onyx x2 to five black barbecue, we're the one that appears, because we know those people are pretty much ready to buy. They've done the research. So we can be there to snatch up the clicks and the purchases that come through. So it's a great thing to know that we can set up these businesses and we can get on the world stage by being on the front page of Google. Think about the power of Google. I think it was a trivia that I got in a Christmas cracker this year, Lewis that there's four Google searches per person per day in the UK. On average, everyone searches four times a day. So think about the numbers of people that are searching for things on Google. That is a fantastic bit of christmas trivia, isn't it? Also. Just on that point of why? Like, you said something there, that we can be on the world stage. I think you said which, which is a really nice way of putting it, because people's initial reaction when you tell them this sometimes is like, Yeah, but why would someone buy from me instead of like, John Lewis or one of the big retail stores? And it's like, because they saw you first, because you were the one that appeared at the top. Just make sure when they click you and when they see your site, you don't give them a reason not to trust you. Kind of let that thought sink in for a second, because it's a reframe on how you can view this. You think, okay, people will see my site, and then they'll see John Lewis, and they'll just go straight to that. I'm saying John Lewis. You know what I mean, like a big retailer, a big box store, whoever the big brands that sell the products that you're thinking of selling are, but the reality is, if they see your site, and you look like you're extremely established, and you have lots of good reviews, and you have a really nice, functioning website, and your pricing is equivalent to The other store, because you have a trade agreement with the suppliers, and they offer it to you at trade price, and you market up to retail price, and every store is selling at roughly the same price. Just don't give them a reason not to buy from you if they land on your store. And the photos over here and the description loads up there, and it's all slow, and it doesn't really work, of course, you know, and you've got, like, loads of bad reviews that they're probably going to fight and and you're more expensive than anyone else, they'll find the reason not to buy from you, and that will become true. But the reality is, it's a it's it levels the playing field. It's a huge leveler. And so, yeah, it puts us up on the global stage. And once you're there, just be confident, hold your own, and make sure you put the right things in place to ensure that customers aren't having a reason not to buy from you. And it ties back into why drop shipping such a great model to get started in the first place? Because it's more democratic than the in person retail business model, where, if you haven't got a shop on every high street in the UK, you can't really compete with the brand awareness of other retail stores, but when you have an E commerce business, we can quickly use tools like Google ads to get in front of 1000s, millions of people, potentially within the first few months, so that you can really show your products to on the world stage, to people that are already searching for those products as well. So, I mean, I get, I remember getting very excited about the first time I saw my own ad on Google. It's very nice feeling about knowing that you are now appearing for people that are searching for the products that you're selling. Yeah, exactly. I remember asking friends to like Google the brands that we sold on their phone and see if our ads came up. And when they do, you're like, Okay, great. It's working exactly. And then you suddenly know that, okay, now I'm going to be in the in front of people that are searching for things. I'm going to get people on the site. We're going to get sales coming through. That nice notification sound that comes from Shopify when a sale comes through. I remember just being so excited to hear that for the first time with my high ticket store. High Ticket store. Because every time that noise goes off to signify a sale, you're not just celebrating a 10 or 20 pound sale with the high ticket drop shipping that we do, it's like upwards of 300 pounds as a minimum. Every time that that notification goes off, it's still something we hear, uh, members talk about, isn't it? Lewis, that sale notification noise? Yeah, exactly. And some of the members in our dropship unlocked programs have chosen niches where the average price point is much, much higher than what we're talking about. So you see people saying, I just made my first sale for 7000 pounds and netted two and a half 1000 pounds in profit on that one sale, and then I've just replaced my monthly income with one sale, one transaction. And that that's really cool to see, because I think it shatters the limiting belief that they may have had before, about like, Oh, can I make money online? It's like, with one sale, you just replaced your income. See what you can see where you can go from here. Now, watch it grow. And it's really exciting. It is. It's such an exciting feeling. I know my you know, just to go on that put we do hear it quite a lot about these high ticket sales, because that's the way we teach it. From the very start, my biggest sale wasn't 7000 pounds. It was about 5000 or 5500 I've screenshotted it and put on the community. I can't remember the exact amount, but what I do remember is the profit for the sale being my largest which is about 1900 pounds, net profit after the supplier cost to get that product to a customer. And I remember that was like my monthly salary when I was in a nine to five job before that. And that's just from one sale, exactly one passive sale that you did to the work for upfront. You front loaded that work because you had to speak to the supplier, get them signed up, upload the product. But you might have done that work 12 months ago, 18 months ago, two years ago, and the sale could still be coming in today, and then again tomorrow, and again the next day. Like that's the beauty of this. You front load that hard work. You put in the work initially, you set up the foundations, and then you watch you reap the rewards. You see the fruits of your labor start to really pay off. And a great example of of the way that this business is able to be run is the fact that we're able to record this podcast now on a weekday morning, and I'm not having to answer customer queries or fulfill orders that will be coming in today from my Shopify stores, because there's a process that we can set up. There's probably not something to talk about on this episode, which is just really understanding drop shipping for beginners, but. But just know that if you want to get into a drop shipping business, it is something that can be automated, or at least semi automated, to the point where you can do what you want with your time, and know that the business will be generating income while you're with family, while you're with friends, while you're recording podcast episodes. Whatever it is you choose to do with your time that's up to you, but you can rely on that business to bring an income at the same time. Now, something that I think we should touch on in this episode, Lewis is probably the mistakes that we see people make, especially when they first get started in drop shipping, because we can give people head starts. We can give people clues about what not to do when they get started. So what are some of the biggest mistakes that you see new dropshippers make? Yeah, they're probably just the inverse of what we talked about in terms of, like, the ways to get started, they would be like, choosing, uh, no, so I guess not validating the niche first. So like we talked about ensuring that they're that you're the niche you're going to go into meets the nine validation criteria that we talk about. So if it doesn't, that would be a huge mistake, because then you're going to hit one of those nine brick walls that we've seen and personally hit, and we've seen many of our members hit along the way. And that is the reason why those validation criteria exist, is to avoid you hitting those obstacles down the line. The second would be kind of ignoring customer service. That would be a big one. Like we see people just completely, like, drop customer service and not really focus on on that, and then that obviously has negative effects on, like, brand reputation, and you're not going to get as much repeat business or referrals and things like that. So that would be a big one, unreliable suppliers, if you were to work with like rubbish suppliers, as we talked about, always make sure that you're speaking to your suppliers, clarifying things like their quality, control, their returns policy, like make sure that before you commit to having a brand, represent your brand, you know, because that's What's happening. You're sending out those products as a representation of them shopping with you as a retailer. Just make sure that they themselves have good reviews and that you're not dealing with a terrible brand. And then I think, yeah, other things are like overspending on ads without seeing the profitable return. You know, there's a reason why we don't advise running ads until you're at the point of having signed your suppliers, gone through our pre store launch checklist, set up everything in the back end. You've got five or six suppliers ready. Is because when you run ads, we don't know which brands are going to be the most popular. The market will tell us which are. So let's let the market do its work and tell us which the most popular brands are, and then we can tweak and adjust rather than I see some people like, sign one supplier, start pouring money into ADS. It's not working. And they're like, what's going on? And Google will just continue to happily take your money if you pay them those ads. So you've got to be conscious of making sure you're seeing that profitable return before you start to scale up your ad spend. It's all about understanding the profitability of your ads before increasing the ad spend. So, you know, I did this in the past, and I was too fast to start running ads for products that I hadn't validated. I was too keen to start seeing those sales notifications. I think there's some patience involved about making sure that your business is set up on solid foundations first, before we we rush to start running ads. Ultimately, we're building businesses that are going to last for years. So when it comes to the first month or two of building the business and setting up the foundations, is nothing in comparison to the long term effects that that work will have. So it's, yeah, well worth the the upfront investment. Something I will add. Lewis, they're all fantastic tactical advice and mistakes that we see people make from a tactical point of view, the main mistake, we probably both agree, is actually from a mindset point of view, in terms of the way that people approach building a business is actually vastly more important than all of the different intricacies or different details that you that you do after you've got the mindset set up. A big one for me is if you don't take it seriously enough, if you don't really go all in after building one of these businesses and really go for it, then that's a surefire way of not making it success. Of it, if you just dabble, if you just try a little bit here and there, and expect to get big results, it's not, doesn't work like that. So for somebody that wants to get started, what kind of mindset considerations do you think people should have before they go and start a drop shipping business? Yeah, managing expectations from the get go, and ensuring you have that that delayed gratification is going to really help. So just patience. You know, it takes time to build momentum. Don't expect it all to happen on day one, and you to be able to quit your job tomorrow and be sail off into the sunset like you've got to build up to this. It's going to happen over time, but only if you navigate those inevitable hurdles and obstacles that come your way during the journey you're you know you're on the path of entrepreneurship. It's not just a smooth tarmac, straight road that you can speed down. It's a windy, muddy road with potholes everywhere, and you have to accept that, and but there are ways of making sure that it's, it's as smooth as it can be, and that's following. Guidance and making sure that you're surrounding yourself with the right people to ask, and people who are further ahead than where you're at on that path, and say, Where are the potholes? What should I look out for? Oh, I've just hit this pothole. What do I do? And they go, Oh, go left or go right. I did tell you what to do. And the other thing is, I think sometimes you see people kind of show up and be like, I've tried so many things, and everything I've tried has failed or I've been scammed so many times, and this is my last hope. I hope this is the last one I'm putting all my faith in you. And it's like, I think that's the wrong approach. I think kind of expecting that the model is suddenly going to be like the magical solution, and that there'll be no obstacles. Again, you've got to manage expectations. And no, it's a proven business model. There's hundreds and hundreds of people that we're seeing doing this, but you are going to face obstacles on the way, and it's not on the model to make sure that that doesn't happen. It's on you as the entrepreneur. So it's accountability, I guess, is really like the word here. It's ownership. It's radical ownership, as they say, like, taking responsibility and accountability and ownership, that this is your business. You're building this for yourself, for your own future. So don't say, like, I throw my hands up and like, I'm just this is this? Is it? I hope it, I hope it works. It's like, well, then just hope do the actions that are required. And when you hit those obstacles, don't just throw in the towel and write it off on day one, navigate around, figuring out, be adaptable, be ready to adjust your strategies. And I think that's the mindset, by the way, that's universal to any business model. So that can be taken absolutely universally, because I've run lots of different types of businesses now and seen how they work, and this is very much true of all of them. And but I think in terms of actually getting started, and the steps for anyone that's looking to start their drop shipping business, the best place to start is head over to dropship, unlocked.com, forward slash, start to get all the resources that you need to get going. We'll put the link below in the show notes. Are you enjoying the podcast? We'd love to hear from you leave a comment or a review, and we might feature it in an upcoming episode. And for detailed show notes and resources, visit dropship, unlock.com forward slash podcast. If you found value in any episode of this podcast, please. Could you take just 10 seconds to leave us a quick five star review on your favorite podcast app? It helps us more than you can imagine. And who knows, you might just hear your comments read out on the show. Thanks for being a part of our community. Your support helps us keep delivering new episodes to you every week. Now it's that time in a podcast episode where we will answer a question that's been asked of us from a listener of the podcast. So remember, if you have a question that's come up in this episode today, then all you need to do is simply leave a comment beneath the YouTube video version of this episode, and it won't just get answered in the comments. It may potentially be answered on an upcoming podcast episode. So this week, the question has come in from Tommy pointon, and Tommy has asked, hi Lewis, what I would really like to know about is what is all this going to cost me overall? Please. I wish it was as simple as that. Tommy, I wish I could say 237, pounds. That's what it will cost. But it's not as simple as that, because I think you have to separate and investments and returns, right? You have to, you have to be able to see, if you're just looking at the cost column, then you then you will be paying money to run this business for many years, right? But if you look at the return on that investment and how, like, you're putting money into ADS and you're getting more out in sales, what you're getting back from the business should far outweigh what it costs you. So actually, cost is probably the wrong word. It's like, what capital maybe do I need to get started to be able to get a return from it. And so as we talked about in today's episode, drop shipping is one of the lowest investment business models to start. You know, less than 100 pounds can get you going. If you're very resourceful and you're very kind of frugal with everything, and you don't add on all the bells and whistles very, very basic, you can absolutely get started for under 100 pounds a month in overheads. Realistically, it's probably closer to, like 50 pounds a month for things like Shopify and some of the basic apps that you'd want and the basic tools like a business phone line and things like that. But most costs, like your actual product purchases, will come in only when you've made a sale. So you could, I could say to you, okay, Tommy, it's going to cost you 5000 pounds for your first month, but that cost will only come when you've made 15,000 pounds in sales, because when those products came in, that's when, like, those orders came in, sorry, you got the 15,000 pounds in. That's when your supplier would then turn to you and say, Okay, we need the trade price for that order before we could send out. So if it was a 7000 pound order, the trade price for that might be 4000 pounds. So you pay the supply of the four out of the seven that's come in, and you send it off. But you might only be selling products that are 500 pounds. And therefore when that 500 pound order comes in, maybe the. Paid price for that item is only 250 pounds, you know, maybe 300 pounds. So you've made 200 pounds profit. But if you're asking me, what it costs, it costs you 250 or 300 pounds, but you made more money back. Do you see what it means? That's why I think cost is probably the wrong word. It's like, what do I need available to get the ball rolling, to start the snowball? And I'd probably suggest having at least 500 pounds saved up for your first month of ad spend when you get to that point, remember, that doesn't have to be this month. If you're starting today. You don't need that today, but you you will need that eventually when you want to start running ads, because what you don't want to do is start running ads, turn them on for two days, get freaked out when no one buys a 7000 pound product, and then turn them off, because then you're not going to know it might have taken four or five days for you to get that first sale, but you wouldn't know that if you had to switch them off before. And I think one of the ways that one of the best allocation of capital mechanisms when you first start like one of the best ways to actually invest your capital is in mentorship and joining a program that will help you avoid a lot of the more costly mistakes, but also guide you through keeping your expenses low and focused on just the essentials, otherwise you end up getting shiny object syndrome and seeing all these ads for different software and tools and buying all this stuff, and then eventually your overheads are really high, you're not making sales, and you've got to shut the whole thing down. So we've made it really simple. We've heard from a lot of members that say, I don't have a huge amount of capital to get started. I'd love to dive in and, like, kind of test things out. So we've, we've literally created that. We created a trial to what we call our accelerator community, where we guide you through how to do this. We actually have a 21 day challenge as well that you can work your way through and get your business pretty much to the point where you're you're ready to go. And that's just seven pounds to get started. We do a seven pound trial for 14 days. You can jump in, test it out, see what you think, and if you want to stay, hang around, if not, no hard feelings. Perfect. Thanks, Louisa, it's great to have a way to actually dip your toes in the water to find out what it's all about. Learn straight away, and then you can go, go go for it once you understand. And hopefully this podcast has gone some way in helping you to understand how to get started and how much it will cost you, or how much money to have set aside ready to go. Okay, now we're going to highlight a recent review that we've had for the podcast as well. So a big thank you to bird dog 51 for sharing your thoughts, and it's a great YouTube handle. So bird dog 51 has said, Well done team, drop ship, unlocked. Is it a bird? Is it a dog? Is it bird dog 51 thank you very much for your review. We really appreciate it very, very glad to hear that you've been enjoying the podcast. And yeah, thank you so much for your review. It means a lot if you listening to us today have found value in today's episode. We'd really appreciate it if you could leave us a review too, like bird dog 51 has done, should only take you a few seconds, but it means the world to us, and like you heard today, we might be able to read your review out on the next steps. Thank you for joining us on this episode of the dropship unlocked podcast. We hope you are leaving with new insights and inspiration to fuel your entrepreneurial journey. To kick start your E commerce business. Head over to dropship, unlocked.com forward slash start. It's the perfect place to start and get access to resources that will help you build your business from the ground up. And don't forget to hit that subscribe button for more episodes packed with strategies, tips and success stories, plus, if you enjoyed this episode today, a five star review would mean the world to us, and you might even get a shout out on the next episode. Thank you for choosing to spend your time with us today. We can't wait to bring you more insights on the next episode of the dropship unlocked podcast. You