The Dropship Unlocked Podcast

How We Made Our First £100K with High-Ticket Dropshipping (Episode 140)

• Lewis Smith & James Eardley • Season 1 • Episode 140

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 🗣 In this episode, Lewis Smith and James Eardley dive into their personal journeys of how they made their first £100K with high-ticket dropshipping. Learn about the key steps, mistakes, and breakthroughs that helped them turn their side hustle into a successful online business.

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Topics Discussed:

  • The Early Mistakes: Lewis shares how starting with low-ticket dropshipping taught him important lessons, including the challenges of low margins and long shipping times.
  • The Turning Point: Discover the shift from low-ticket to high-ticket dropshipping, and why investing in a program and taking it seriously made all the difference.
  • Tactical Steps to Success: From choosing the right niche, building a store, signing suppliers, and running ads, Lewis breaks down the steps they took to make their first £100K.
  • The Importance of Investing in Yourself: Why committing to the right training and mentorship is crucial for avoiding common pitfalls and speeding up your progress.
  • Key Lessons Learned: The importance of setting realistic goals, learning from failures, and building a business around high-margin products that offer value.

Links and Resources Mentioned:

Key Takeaways:

  • Learn from Mistakes: Early mistakes in low-ticket dropshipping were invaluable lessons, but switching to high-ticket dropshipping made all the difference.
  • Invest in Education: The right training, mentorship, and community support will save you time and money, helping you avoid common mistakes.
  • Start with a Solid Foundation: Proper niche selection, working with reliable suppliers, and having a well-built store are essential to success.
  • Growth Through Ads: Running the right ads to the right audience is crucial to getting those first sales and scaling your business.

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Building a high ticket drop shipping business isn't just about getting the products that you sell right. The real turning point for us came when we decided to a lot of. People don't realise this, but the wrong drop shipping model could often end up costing you a fortune because of the. When you're just starting out, it's easy to underestimate how much you need to prepare, but the truth is. Many beginners often wonder if they need to spend money on ads right away. Well, it depends on. We've made a lot of mistakes along the way, but one key lesson was that you can't just. Welcome to the drop Ship Unlocked podcast. I'm Lewis Smith, the founder of Drop Ship 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 drop shipping stores. So if you're ready to build your own 6 or even 7 figure online business, then head over to Drop shipunlocked.com/. Now sit back, relax, and let's unlock your potential with the Drop Ship Unlocked Podcast. Today we're going to be diving into our own stories and our own stories when it comes to building successful drop shipping businesses. And there's been lots of milestones on the way of that journey. But one that stands out is when we made our first 100K in drop shipping sales. And it wasn't an easy journey. I'm sure you'll agree to that, Lewis. It wasn't straight straightforward. And we've got lots of lessons that we can share from how, if you're just starting now, how you can go and where you are today. It's making your first 100K in drop shipping sales. So Lewis, what were your first steps in drop shipping and what mistakes did you make along the way? Sure, many of them. And they're still making mistakes to this day. I think we all do, right? It's how we react to those mistakes and how we learn from them is what counts. But I'm not going to pretend that I'm not making mistakes even today. I mean, I started from scratch when it came to e-commerce. I had no prior experience whatsoever in e-commerce other than I guess if you classed selling a few items on eBay casually, you know, like old football boots and stuff that I don't know, like video games, things like that, that I no longer needed when I was a kid. But I mean, other than that, very little concept of what e-commerce really was. And it kind of came to me probably a little bit like it's, it's found you if you're listening to this through the world of like podcasts and YouTube, you know, I, I watched one video and I thought, oh, that's an interesting model. And then I learned about Amazon FBA. And then I learned about drop shipping. And I kind of before I knew it, all my podcast recommendations on my drive to and from work were related to e-commerce in some way or another. And I just started to to learn and absorb like a sponge because I was excited about the concept of it and the outcome. The end goal. Yeah, I was interested in the vehicle of creating a business that where you can sell products. But really the exciting part for me wasn't so much that bit, it was the freedom that this business then gives you. Beyond that, the ability for me to then say I can go on a six week holiday with my family and have my business running on autopilot in the background. So that was really the exciting end results that I was wanted to aim for and strive for when I was working in a job and commuting in that to that job in the car everyday. But yeah, I started one of the big first mistakes I started with, as I believe you did as well, James, was the very prevalent but very flawed low ticket drop shipping from China model. So I didn't understand how detrimental that would be to the brand reputation. It's made out to be very simple and a very easy business model by a lot of people online, on YouTube, on podcasts. But the trouble with it obviously then comes once you start to make sales and you realise customers are not willing to wait those two 3-4 weeks for the delivery of their products. When the product arrives, it's very low quality, it's underwhelming and you end up getting stung with import taxes. There's problems, they can't return items, their margins are tiny so there's hardly any profit in it. So I made a lot of big mistakes through kind of going down the wrong path I guess, and I didn't really understand how any of that stuff worked until it started to until I saw the negative outcome from it. So I knew that in order to make that model work, selling really low ticket, I think it was men's ties, was my very first niche like neck ties. And I realised I would need to sell thousands and thousands of these ties if I was making like whatever it was, $5 profit per tie, $8 profit per tie, something like that. And not to mention the fact that people then realised they could just buy them themselves from China on sites like Timu and Aliexpress. So I was really just kind of playing this arbitrage and hoping people didn't find the original supplier to source them from. But even those that did, they were pretty disappointed. They took a long time to get there. And I would need to spend a fortune in ads to make enough sales to make enough profit. And it just started to fall apart. So that's when I kind of shifted and I realised, hey, this high ticket approach, these higher priced items sound like they could answer a lot of those questions and those concerns. And it was a model that was very prevalent in the United States and quite a lot more developed there. But I kind of thought to myself, I don't really want to enter a new business model and a new market and a new country that I don't understand like the laws or the tax implications of all. At the same time, if I can kind of reduce the variables that would be beneficial. And so that's really how my kind of route to this high ticket drop shipping approach came about. So that was the first start towards the 1st 100K in drop shipping, even though it feels quite disjointed at that time. But I came across something recently that was talking about mistakes and how when you look back at them in hindsight, which we're able to do now, it's easy to actually realise that they maybe they weren't mistakes or they were mistakes in the short term thinking, but in the long term view they were actually helpful guidelines on your way to finding the right thing. So we have that in mind now. Lewis, do you still view them as mistakes? Obviously they were mistakes at the time, but can you see how they were inevitable learning lessons now that you can look back with hindsight? Yeah, exactly. I was acting at the time with the best information that I had at the time. So it was a best guess in time approach, wasn't it? It wasn't like I knew that there would be those problems, but decided to kind of bury my head in the sand and just go with it anyway. I was, I was receptive to the information I had. I was just so overwhelmed and bombarded with all of this conflicting advice that I just had to pick a path. And actually, yeah, like you say, I'd much rather have picked that path, figured out that it was wrong, pivoted and then built the kind of businesses that we have now using the high ticket approach versus not having done anything through fear of making a mistake. Because I'd still just be in the job right now that I was in years ago because I'd have been petrified of making a mistake, therefore never taken a step forward. So you, you're right, you have to go down those paths to figure out you might be on the wrong path, but at least you then got momentum. What's the saying that you can't steer a parked car? It needs to be moving. You need to. You need to have momentum to be able to turn the width. So good, so good. I mean, you listen to success stories of people that have gone on to build huge companies and they they learnt through mistakes, they learnt by doing. I don't think I've ever heard a success story where somebody learnt just through theory alone and never got into the field of play until they built their business that scaled to 200 billion or whatever. But there can't be many examples where where people have done that, if any, because you have to learn by doing. So this was your foray into drop shipping. It was a start. There were mistakes made, but you've learnt from those. And you mentioned that high ticket drop shipping was a real game changer for you where something shifted. So what happened then? We did you immediately get into setting up a high ticket drop ship drop shipping store? Did you close the other low ticket stores you had at the time? Yeah, I think it's difficult to remember the exact order because this was like back in 2017, I think I yeah, I think I probably shut down the first low ticket China store as soon as I got the first like customer complaints. And I was like, oh wow, this is hard work. Like this is not going to like, I'm OK with hard work if I can see the end result. But I couldn't even see the end result like in the distance. I was like, this is going to be a pill battle right throughout. So I kind of, yeah, I think I must have just like, shut that down. It wasn't much for business really, if you think about it, you know, a few sales. But then, yeah, as I say, I was listening to podcasts, I was watching YouTube, and I came across a programme in America that showed me the ropes, gave me the confidence to kind of take it seriously. I saw other people doing it in America and I just thought, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to follow up a programme. I'm going to absorb as much information as I can here and just see how it goes. And I did toy with the idea of saying, OK, I'll maybe I do need to start in the US. OK, so I'll incorporate an LOC and I'll, you know, set up in Wyoming or Delaware or whatever you do. And then I was like, and then I need to register for like state tax in all the different states. And this is going to get complex. And I started to realise, like, just like, hold on a second, like you've never run a business before, You're now trying to do it internationally in a different market. You don't understand. And with a business you don't understand. I'm sure this is possible in the UK. And so I kind of looked around and there wasn't really any training around it, but I just thought, well, I know that I can speak to people because my old job was in like medical device sales. So I used to go into hospitals and have to speak to some like fairly hostile people because no one wants to speak to a sales Rep today when you're, you know, when you're out there. So you kind of become quite good at, I guess like approaching people and diffusing that like bringing people's guard down a little bit. And I just thought, well, I back myself to be able to just pick up the phone, chat with supplier and, and be like, hey, we're running an e-commerce website, We'd love to sell your products. Would it would it be OK to supply us? And I thought, I'm sure there'll be challenges that I wouldn't face if I entered a more developed market where like lots of suppliers are happy to do it, But also the reward of entering maybe a less established market means that you get more market share because not as many people have done it. So that was kind of the the approach, it was the training that I applied from an international model to the UK and started piercing it together myself. And I thought, well actually, yeah, a lot of this stuff is very applicable here. A lot of it isn't as well, you know, like the VAT and the corporation tax and the terminology with suppliers and the way things work that postage and things like that is is like a different set up. But over time I kind of formed a model that works and I thought this is good. And that was the really the birth of like how I got into high ticket e-commerce here. Amazing. Yeah. Inspirational. So you got the first few sales. It was almost like proof of concept. Proof of concept that you could sell money online. You had the skills from your previous job knowing that you could speak with people & suppliers and then the programme allowed you to see others that were achieving great success in high ticket drop shipping and you had a clear path to follow. So lots of similarities in my story as well. Joining the drop ship on Lot Master class was the the moment everything changed for me after my multiple failures and failed Facebook ad campaigns trying to sell real low ticket items. But a lot of people are very hesitant to invest in programmes, especially online programmes. Not like uni courses, online programmes will get maybe a bit a bad Rep. Did that ever occur to you? Were you very Were you hesitant before you joined an online programme or, or were you just so ready to go? Yeah, it's funny because I've paid for like lots and lots of programmes since then and now I'm just like, yeah, I want to do it and I'll just pay like I don't need to speak to anyone now. I don't need to, You know, I spent a couple of 1000 the other day on a programme that I'd just wanted to do and was like, I'm going to just do it and dive into it. But I back then, yeah, I guess I'd probably like, because it was the first time I'd ever paid for education online. Like you said, I'd done a university degree and, you know, spent 10s of thousands of pounds there going into debt on a course that I never ended up pursuing, you know, into my career. But I guess, yeah, I probably was, I was sceptical and I was like, is this a scam? Like, am I going to, you know, sign up to something? And to be fair, I think I bought a few different things. I think I bought some like PDFs and like, you know, those kind of like low ticket things. But I guess that's kind of why we've done what we've done with the drop ship unlocked accelerator, right as like an entry point into that. Because I'm trying to put myself back in the mindset of someone who's just found out about this. And it's like, oh, OK, this sounds too good to be true. Is it a scam? Is that, well, what would have been the best way for me to overcome that potential doubt? A free trial, being able to jump in and have a look around for seven days and just see if it actually is or not. Like that's probably the the best way to learn, isn't it? Is I just open up the door, let them in. And so that's kind of what we've done with the drop ship unlocked accelerate a free trial. It's a way of you being able to come in, test it, go through, get some initial traction in the first week and then make a very informed decision on whether you want to pursue that business model. But at least you've now been able to prove to yourself that it's not a scam because you're in there, you see other people succeedingly see the results, etcetera. So, you know, where real people you speak to us on the calls, you know, you're, you can be confident at that point that like, OK, at least this is something that I'm that is now worth pursuing. Then it's just a question of whether you want to pursue it. Exactly, Yeah, that's the best way to get started, isn't it, To test something out before starting. I mean, so many softwares that we use nowadays, we, we, we almost expect free trials sometimes to, to dip our toes in before we decide whether we're not to invest. But it's the same now with the training programme that we provide inside the accelerator. So all come from your story. It's great to always dive into your story, to hear about how these things were were born. And yeah, getting into programmes, I had the same scepticism, but I knew I had to do something I'd never done before in order to achieve something I'd never achieved before. And that was what was going around my mind over and over again before I invested into a programme for the first time, which happened to be with you, Lewis, with the master class. And then I haven't looked back since. So let's carry on through your story then. So you've decided to get into high ticket drop shipping, you've joined a programme, you've learnt from your previous mistakes, now you're going to go ahead and actually build the business. So for people that want to be a little bit less mystified about what is it actually take to go from having no experience to having a fully functioning high ticket drop shipping store, what are some of the steps involved in building that business? Yeah. So you could probably break it down into a few key buckets, like a few key areas that like there's lots of mini tasks that are required, but a lot of them can be grouped up into like for example picking the right products to sell. Now that is a a task that requires lots of mini research tasks along the way. Now we call it choosing your niche or validating your niche. So you need a group of products or a niche that is built on demand, but also has room for high margin products. And so that there are products that are high ticket and high value that are being sold in that market. And, and the key being, like I said, they're demand and price. We're going to make sure that these products are being searched for, that people are looking for them, that they're stable all year round, that people are will like suppliers are willing to drop ship the products to your customers. You know, there's, so there's a few different niche validation criteria which we we run through inside the free trial of the accelerator. But kind of step by step, I had to go through that process, do the research, fill in the, you know, the spreadsheets and just make sure I was happy with the the niche or niches that were on my shortlist of, of going ahead with. Then from there, once you kind of happy with your niche, not just because you think, yeah, I've got a feeling this will work, but because you've done the research and you know that it will work because you can see other people succeeding in that niche. You can see other suppliers already drop shipping in that niche. So you kind of are fairly confident that this that there's no reason why this shouldn't work. I've ruled out all of the possible failure options. Now it's like, OK, well this is the best option to go with. From there, then just building a store. I think a lot of people make the potential mistake of thinking that this is the most important bit and thinking that like, Oh no, I can build a Shopify store, so I'm like 99% of the way there. I'd argue that the Shopify store is maybe like 20%. Maybe another 20% is like what niche you're in. And then another 20% is like how you run the ads and the type of traffic you get, you know, so there's all these factors that kind of dictate a percentage of your chance of success with this. So a drop ship unlocked, what we do is like strengthen each of these factors so that you have a solid niche that's built on data, is backed by evidence. Then you build a store that is simple, high converting, easy to use. So you want to make sure that the website's professional, it's user friendly, it's fast, you know, even give you our drop ship unlocked theme inside our programme that you can just plug and play straight into a Shopify account. And you have a fully functioning website up and running ready to go. And you just plug in your own text and photos and things like that. And then from there, once I had my Shopify store up and running, the next step was to get suppliers on board. So that's when I focused on signing reputable suppliers and suppliers with strong products, good delivery times, fast next day delivery, good profit margins, 2, three, £400 profit per sale and just making sure that I have the right processes in place to make that happen. So for example, I said the right things to suppliers when I called them or emailed them. I dealt with orders quickly and efficiently when they came through to me, pass them on to suppliers, made sure they sent them out, and then I would pay the supplier. So just making sure that everything kind of worked in that system gives you a really strong foundation to then be able to pour fuel on the fire. So once you've got the system and you know that it won't break when you start making sales, now you can start getting traffic to the store. So that's when I started running ads and back end ads are a lot more complex than they are now. Thanks to machine learning and AI, it's become a lot simpler to just like hand over the keys to the ad system and let it do its thing. But back then it was very kind of complex and convoluted in terms of like different negative keyword lists and reverse priority orders. And like it was, it was complex, but got it working using Google Shopping primarily to get traffic to your store from people who are searching for the products that you sell. And that's why it's important to pick a niche where there's already high demand. Because if you do all of this stuff and you've picked some Unicorn products that no one really knows about when it comes to running ads, you're going to be like, well, where's the demand? How do I tap into this market? And because there's no demand there, it's going to be very difficult to do because you've got to then create demand for it. So it's much easier to just tap into an already flowing tap of traffic where people are searching for items and just slot your store into one of the search results. And then you don't need 100% of the sales in that market, you just need the occasional one, maybe 1-2 a day. And if you're making 2 or 300 LB profit on an order that's for £600 profit per day minus any ad spend, that's a full time income for most people. Then you're set up then ready to go to start getting towards that 1st 100K. But that, that was great, Lewis, to break down those steps. There's those four key buckets that so finding your niche group of products that you're going to sell. Then it was build the store, then sign suppliers and then run ads. And I remember going through that process in the master class in, in about four or five weeks. And I was doing that alongside a nine to five job.

And I think I took off one week from my 9:00 to 5:

00 job so I could go hard on signing suppliers and uploading their products. So I went through that process double fast speed because I was so excited to get live and start selling high ticket products. And then at the end of that process, we're live, we we can see visitors coming onto our Shopify store and we realise that we've actually got a real business with customers being served by us. So beyond that point, the sales start coming in. Lewis, we're going to build a way up to 100K now. So do you remember getting those first few sales coming in? I'm sure there were some lessons to to be learnt as well as real highs when you were getting the twitchings from that first 100K. Yeah, the very, I think one of the very first sales I had, I don't know if I mentioned this before, I'm sure we probably talked about it and the customer called me while I was, I think I was at work and I popped out into the car park at work and I was like, right, I'll take the call. So I answered the call from the customer, they wanted to order a product to a thing is like 1000 lbs or something like one. It was one of the first five sales, I think. And they said, can I just pay over the phone with it? And so me not really knowing about like credit card and debit card fraud screening and things like that, I was like, yeah, I think that's fine. So I just opened up our website as a customer would on my phone and I was like, just read out the details and I'll put them in. So I just put in their details, their card details and their address and everything on my phone and ordered the item as if I was them, obviously. So the order went through. But then Shopify messaged me and said, you like this order looks very suspicious. This customer's card has never been used on this mobile device, has never been used in this part of the country before. We highly suspect this is fraud. And therefore we're going to, I think it was like, hold on to the money for 90 days. And I was like, Oh no, like I'm now not going to get paid out for 90 days because I put their details in on my website like as if I was them. After that, I learned if a customer is going to do that, you put the details in on the back end of Shopify. And actually now I don't think we even accept customer card details over the phone. We just send them a draught order and then they put the details in their side, which keeps it very compliant from a data privacy standpoint. And it also ensures that like Shopify and and Stripes see that the payment has come from the same IP address, from the same phone, from the same post code than it usually would with that card. But yeah, that was one example of a very early mistake that was very costly where I had had like 1000 LB locked up for 90 days or something until Shopify verified that it wasn't fraud and it was just me being a bit stupid. But that was kind of the like one of the first early lessons. And yeah, I think from there, I can remember those first few sales coming in. I remember the feeling of like, I think this is real. I think this is happening. Oh, there's another one. It's like, OK, that's the third order of today. And then feeling a little bit guilty that like I was missing phone calls while I was working my job and thinking, well, each one of these phone calls, the profit from these orders is probably more than I'm going to earn in my salary today by staying in this job. So then you start to feel conflicted as to like, what am I doing spending my time doing that when I could be earning double or triple the amount by being elsewhere. So it was, yeah, you kind of come to a point where you think, well, I've now got to take it seriously, to get paid seriously. I can't just have this being a, a side hustle that I kind of do, you know, after work, when it suits me. If I've got an influx of customers ready and willing to pay me money, I need to be there, or at least I need to have someone there to deal with it. So I actually hired a virtual assistant, I think, before I quit my job. I'm pretty sure they were managing the phones before I left.

And, and so yeah, that was a good way of doing it because for, you know, a reasonable monthly fee, I could pay their salary, but then they could be there 9:00 to 5:

00 everyday answering phone calls. So yeah, those were kind of some of the first initial early lessons and those feelings of like, I'm conflicted, like should I quit? Should I not? And I, I kind of decided, I put a plan in place. My wife and I obviously then we got married and we went to live in Thailand and Bali and Vietnam and travel around the world. And we did that after I think maybe six months or so of kind of running the business on the site to make sure that things were working and that it was consistent. And it wasn't until we were travelling the world that Dropship Unlocked was then born. Because I kind of met other people on the road and thought, oh, this would be interesting. Like there's a lot of people out here who are, you know, teaching English online or they're running, I don't know, affiliate marketing blogs and earning a little bit of income, but they'd love to have an e-commerce business. I wonder if I could build something that shows people how to do this in the UK market. And that's kind of where drop ship unlocks then came from. Where it was all born. So one lesson lead to the next and and on to the next. So it's a, it's a great story and inspirational for everyone because it, you didn't have a background in e-commerce, which is always nice to hear in a way, because it, it just shows that we're all starting from different positions. But you don't have to have loads of experience to, to get to the position that you're at now. Lewis with over £5,000,000 in drop shipping sales. And yeah, so it's a it's a great story. I've been through a similar path. I can't remember hitting my first 100K because when you're in the day-to-day of running the business, you rarely sort of look and do what's my all time sales. Maybe some people do, but I didn't because I was just so keen on scaling and growing and I knew I could get to the next 100K.

So I went until I'd done about £250,000 in sales before I actually left my 9:00 to 5:

00 job. So that, that's crazy to think that I did like quarter of a million while in a nine to five job. And then I only have only hired the VA about a month after leaving my job as well. So I was doing it all myself, got to that level of revenue, left my job and then brought Ava on board and then scaled from that position. So it's, yeah, it's a, it's a great journey. The biggest lessons I learnt from it is not just building the business and how to run a business, it's what you learn about yourself, the person that you need to become if you're going to grow a business and how many lessons you have to go through yourself to be able to deal with uncertainty and difficult times. They're lessons that really last for for everything that you going to do beyond as well. So some final takeaways then Lewis for people who would like to get to their first 100K. Now that you've been through that journey and you've laid out the steps that it takes to get there, what final pieces of Nuggets would you leave people with to to take into their journey? Invest in yourself, whether that's through courses or mentors or programmes. You can't afford to waste time learning from mistakes that you don't need to make. So take it from us in that instance that like even myself, even early on in my journey, yes, I made mistakes, but I still invested in myself early on. So find the right programme, the right mentors, that's that's tailored to your situation and you know the community as well. Make sure you join the right community for what you're looking for. Surround yourself with other people who are where you want to be, but have also trodden the path that you are on right now. Because you want to make sure that they've learned the lessons that you're going to face and that they're not just talking the talk, but they walk the walk as well. They have these businesses, they've been through the ups and downs to get them to where they've replaced their income and then you can just surround yourself with those people and it it makes all the difference when you get stuck along the way. It's very powerful seeing somebody achieve what it is you want to achieve. Always reminds me of the Roger Bannister story. The four minute mile that nobody could break until they saw Roger Bannister run a mile in under 4 minutes and then suddenly like two or three others could do it within the next month or two when they were trying for years beforehand. So there's something about getting around people who have achieved something that breaks your limiting beliefs about what's possible. So if you want to do that, I recommend a podcast that we've recorded with Suraj. And Suraj has made 100K with his high ticket drop shipping stores. And so if you want your limiting beliefs shattered, listen to Suraj's story about how he got there. So that's episode number 99, which I recommend to queue up after listening to this one today. So wrapping things up then Lewis, what's the first step that people need to take or any further advice when they want to get started on their journey just. To take the first step and commit, really the hardest part's always going to be the beginning. You never reach your goals if you don't just take action. So that's probably the first thing. Just take action in whatever direction like we talked about at the beginning, like we're glad we made those early mistakes because at least we took action and at least we then had momentum on which to steer and change path. Build a strong foundation as well in terms of your niche selection, the suppliers that you signed, the store that you build. Because without those things, you're, you're just guessing really without validating your niche properly and without the right suppliers, you're going to struggle. Without the store built in the right way, you're not going to convert sales. And so it's worth getting those things right. There's a reason why I kind of divided the the process up into those core buckets, those big activities. And finally, remember, it's not just about the products. You've got to have the right mindset. You've got to have the right support around you. So don't go it alone because it can become difficult as things, as the questions start to build and you can start to second guess and doubt yourself. So for anyone who's just starting out, or if you're already started, maybe you're looking to level up, head over to drop shipunlocked.com/start. We've got everything you need right there to get you moving. 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 dropshipunlock.com/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 favourite 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 part of the podcast where we're going to answer a question that's come in from a listener. So if you've been listening today and any questions have arisen in your mind, go ahead and comment that beneath the YouTube video version of this episode. And we won't just answer in the comments. We may also feature it in an upcoming episode. So this week, the question has come in from Benny, Benny Rogers. And Benny's question is, how long will it take me to make my first sale? Thank you for your question, Benny. And how long is a piece of strength? It kind of depends on how much time you can dedicate and to where you're starting from as well. I mean once you set up your ads. I'd say most people. On the base, on the assumption that they've signed enough suppliers, they've uploaded enough products, they've got their site working, and they start running ads to a niche that is in demand and meets all the validation criteria. So there's a lot of kind of foundational steps before we can answer this question. But most people who do all of that tend to get their sale within a week or two. Now then your ads will start to optimise because it will learn from the first sale and then the second sale and the third sale.

And it will say, OK, so people who buy your products from this store are, you know, in whatever age category and live in this part of the country and are more likely to buy on a Saturday between 7:00 and 8:

00 PM or whatever the different factors are. So your ads can then start to hone in on those types of individuals and kind of bid more for those ad auctions. So it, it's, yeah. It it's something that the ad algorithm will optimise for over time. It does depend on your ad budget and the quality of the suppliers, how in demand the products are. Obviously the more you invest in ADS, the faster your ads will be able to optimise, assuming everything else has been done correctly on along the way. So it's a very kind of step by step foundational approach, but with the right model, the right ad targeting the right assets, the right products, the right websites. But it should be a smooth process to make in your first sale. So with high ticket drop shipping as well, remember each sale could be 100 lbs a 1000 lbs, meaning that you might get 25 to 35% profit margins on that. So £350 profit from a single sale, if you've started your ads at 10, twenty, £30 per day, you're going to pay for ads for quite a long time as soon as that first sale comes in. So even with just a few sales, you can start to generate good revenue, good profit. And that's why it's an amazing business model, because it becomes self-sufficient very quickly if done right. Absolutely. Yeah. Brilliant, Brilliant question. Good answers all this. OK, on to the review that we'd like to highlight for every single podcast episode because we love to highlight the reviews. Means a lot to us to hear these reviews. So big thank you to Diana. So Diana 811, she shared her thoughts with a nice review. She said. Brilliant. Love the overall positive message put forth in this episode. Amazing. Thank you very much for your review, Diana. We really appreciate it and glad to hear that you've been enjoying the podcast. Now, if this episode resonated with you today, would you consider sharing it with someone who might benefit from it? Your recommendations help us grow our community and continue delivering valuable content to you, so a quick share with someone you know could make a big difference in their life. Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Drop Ship 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 drop shipunlocked.com/start. It's the perfect place to start and get access to resources that will help you build your business from the ground up. 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 Drop Ship Unlocked podcast.