The Overlooked Business Model That’s Quietly Printing Income (Episode 164)

👉 Ready to start your own online store? Start here → https://dropshipunlocked.com/start?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=ep164-the-overlooked-business-model-thats-quietly-printing-income 

🗣 In this episode, ecommerce business owners Lewis Smith and James Eardley lift the lid on the “unsexy” business model that’s quietly generating consistent income for everyday people – without them needing a big social media following, massive capital, or advanced tech skills.

They unpack why most online businesses fail, what makes their high-ticket, supplier-partnered Shopify model different, and how it can create genuine lifestyle freedom whether you’re a parent with school runs or a remote worker travelling the world.

🎥 Prefer to watch instead? Watch on YouTube → https://youtu.be/o0yRpQL0XM0

🧭 Topics Discussed
★ Why Most Online Businesses Fail
 • The three big reasons people crash and burn online: treating it like a hobby, unrealistic expectations, and trying to figure everything out alone.
★ The Overlooked Business Model Explained
 • Why selling high-ticket physical products on Shopify stacks the odds in your favour from day one.
★ Asset Building vs Short-Term Hustling
 • The difference between a fragile side hustle and a sellable ecommerce asset.
★ Why This Model Is Still Largely Unknown
 • What happens when you mention “ecommerce” or “dropshipping” to people outside our niche.

🛠 Links & Resources Mentioned
Lewis’s Book → https://dropshipunlocked.com/book
Shopify £1-for-3-months Offer → https://dropshipunlocked.com/shopify
Free Trial of a Professional Phone Line → https://dropshipunlocked.com/circle

💡 Key Takeaways
★ Treat It Like a Real Business, Not a Hobby
Most people fail not because they’re incapable, but because they dabble, expect overnight results, and try to do everything alone.
★ You’re Building an Asset, Not Just a Paycheque
Done properly, this isn’t just side income – it’s a real asset you can grow, optimise, and potentially sell, or keep as a long-term “cash-printing” machine.
★ Recurring Revenue Is the Next Level – Not Step One
The core model is high-ticket sales. Once that’s working, adding subscriptions or recurring offers on top can create very healthy, stable month-on-month revenue.

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LinkedIn → https://uk.linkedin.com/company/dropship-unlocked
YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/c/dropshipunlockedlewissmith
Website → https://www.dropshipunlocked.com

🚀 Free Training
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Transcript

0:00

There is an overlooked business model that's just quietly printing income for everyday people with no business background. And it involves a lot of people. Write off making money online due to a lack of time or a lack of money. So the answer to that is to. And that is how the business provides predictable high profit sales. But it only works when you have that simple plan in place. And without it, you'll always be stuck. If you've tried starting a business before and it didn't work, it's not because you're not capable, it's because you never had. Welcome to the Dropship Unlocked podcast. I'm Lewis 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 dropshipunlocked.com start now, sit back, relax, and let's unlock your potential with the Dropship Unlocked podcast. Today we need to talk about why most online businesses fail and more importantly, why we have an often overlooked business model that is just quietly working in the background behind the scenes while most people give up. So Louis, most of the noise online promises overnight success, passive income in 30 days and all that stuff, but let's be honest, most of it doesn't work. So today let's focus on our model and we should break down why our approach gives you a real shot at success and why others fail. So firstly, why do you think most people fail then, Louis, when they try and start an online business? So I think it usually comes down to one of three things. The first is that people don't take it seriously. They just treat it like a side hustle and a hobby and not like a real business. So surprise, surprise, it only then ends up paying them, like a side hustle or a hobby, a bit of income on the side. But the second reason is that sometimes people come into online business with false expectations that are unrealistically high and fast, that they think it's going to happen very, very quickly and that the results are going to be phenomenal out the gate. They think it'll be easy, it'll be cheap, it'll be instant. Again, a mismatch between reality and expectation, no thanks to social media. And then the third reason that I often see this is that they try to figure the whole thing out alone. So they've Got no support, they got no guidance, no one to turn to. And all they're doing is just bingeing YouTube videos and then hoping every time they get stuck, if they just ask ChatGPT that it will give them the contextual answer that they need to make it through the rest of their business journey unscathed. Unrealistic, not going to happen. We've seen it many, many times before. So I think those are probably the three main reasons at the moment. While we're seeing people try to get an online business off the ground and then see it kind of crash and burn spectacularly and then them end up giving up and writing off the whole of online business altogether. And that's a tragedy. Yeah, if you're writing off half of the businesses in the world, because it's probably half it, maybe even more than half that. Most businesses nowadays have an online aspect and so if you were to write off all online business because of a bad experience, then you're saying no to a real huge amount of opportunities that are out there. And I think the irony of that is that most people are willing to work very hard to start a business, but they'll channel it into the wrong areas because there's no clear roadmap of where to focus your energy and effort. So let's move on to what we're doing now and what's worked for us to get an online income stream coming in consistently. What do you think actually makes this business model different from the ones that fail? Well, over time we've seen so many people fail and then succeed at business that we've started to realise like what are the things people get wrong and how can we just strip it right back to remove the guesswork, remove all the hype, remove all the false promises and just build it around fundamentals that we know work. So the first thing is stacking the numbers in your favour to make sure that the chances of you succeeding and certainly being profitable out the gate are very high. The easiest way to do that is just sell higher priced things. It's as simple as that. If you're trying to make it work by making pennies of profit selling really cheap widgets, it becomes very, very difficult at scale when you're paying to advertise those products as well. It takes the same amount of effort if you're trying to sell a product online, to just sell something that's more valuable and therefore higher price than it does to sell something that's cheaper. In fact, sometimes it's even easier because there's less Competition at the top. Because there seems to be this like perception from people that they couldn't possibly sell expensive items, who would buy it from them? Well, the answer is consumers who are looking to buy those items anyway, anyway, so why not just be one of the sellers that they can sell them those items on the Internet. The next thing is something that separates people that succeed with this is using things like search demand. So we use tools like Google Shopping and Google search ads, where if you imagine going to Google right now and searching two burner gas barbecue, where to buy something like that, like a commercial keyword that you would search if you were actually looking to spend money and buy something like a high end barbecue. Those are the types of marketing channels that we use and the type of research that we look to see or how many people are searching for that particular product, how high price are the products? How competitive would it be for us to slot our ad at the top of those search results rather than, you know, going through TikTok and being like, what's viral at the moment this week and what could we try and source from China? And like, it's, that's very fleeting. You might make some money with that. But if you want something that's predictable and scalable and easy for you to track and measure and scale up and make good profit along the way, then we want a more reliable, defensible, sometimes even just boring business. Boring businesses are the best because they just work and they continue to work. So those are a few of the things that make this or stack the odds in your favour for you to succeed. Then the other thing that often makes things just much easier from a fulfilment perspective. So like, how do you actually fulfil on the promise that your business is making is if you partner with suppliers who are in the country that your customers are based. So if you think, well I'm in the uk, I'm going to sell into the uk, I'll partner with UK suppliers. That means you can offer fast, usually next day delivery or maybe one or two working day delivery rather than like four to six week delivery times from China like a lot of your competitor, competitors in the market might be offering. So that then means you build up that trust because customers are delighted they got their item, the next day, they leave you a nice review. Other customers then see that review, they buy from you as well. And then you can offer that better support to customers. It's easy returns. If ever a customer wanted to return an item, it just goes back to your supplier. The nice Thing is as well with this is like you're offering this great level of service that's better than the competitors in the market, but you still never have to touch any of the items. You can just let the whole thing run from your computer once you've set it up and eventually just from your phone, you could be travelling the world, check in orders and emails on your phone and not have to actually touch anything for years. You could run a business like this for years and years and never lay a finger on any of the actual products that you sell. And I think that to me is the key for an online business. I don't want an online business where I then need to go and lease a warehouse and then I need a third party fulfilment centre and then I need to organise shipping containers of stock that I'm liable for. Like to me, that's the liability stress, overhead and costs that I just don't want. It's like with an online business, if I want to create the lifestyle that I want from it, time freedom, location freedom, financial freedom, I don't want any of that stress. I just want to make sure that it's super simple, lean and easy for me to set up and get working. Yeah, And I can tell that when you built this model, Louis, for the UK market, you had those fundamentals in mind and you didn't get caught up in all these different flashy business models that pop up, come and go on social media. You just brought it right down to the fundamentals of what type of lifestyle do I want to live and how can I create a business that allows for that lifestyle. So rather than getting tied up at all the different jargon that's used in online business, it's just we want to have a income stream that comes in, money coming in while we go and spend our time, how we want to spend it. And so when you brought it right down to that, then that's why all of those secondary layers of the business model makes sense. Because that's why we have high ticket products, that's why we have local suppliers, etc. Etc. Because at its core, the fundamentals of this business model, it's, it's so simple that people overlook it. It's just about how can we get an income stream that comes in and the service delivery to deliver for the, the value that we provide for that money can be automated or outsourced. And, and so it is genuinely a sort of semi passive income stream that you can build with this business model. But it's, it's overlooked, it's quietly running in the background. And, and so when, when we see the people, we feature them on the podcast that have got these businesses up and running. These people aren't flashy people. They're not sat on a Lamborghini in front of a building in Dubai. These people have got real genuine businesses that they're running and they can take care of their family better because of it. And they do that from anywhere they. Want to in the world. But they're not the type of flashy people that, that, as I say, are in Dubai. So that's why it goes under the radar sometimes. So if somebody is listening today, Louis, and they have a budget and they want to invest it properly and they want to build a long term income, why would you say that this model is the one that they should start today? Yes, it's interesting because I think that this model is very much unknown still by the general wider population who are outside of these kind of niche e commerce specific YouTube videos. And I, I know that because I was, for example, I was out to dinner yesterday with a relatively new group of friends who are just outside of this industry completely. These are all people that work in, in London in like financial services and things like that. So you know, they're, they're smart people but they're just not aware of E commerce. And when one of them asked what I did and I explained about E commerce and I could, I was kind of trying to gauge the level of awareness and when I said the word E commerce the reactions from various people was really interesting. Like one guy said oh, is that ebay? And I was like, okay, interesting. So that's like someone's take on it that that kind of E commerce just means ebay. And another person said, oh does, like what do you mean by that? Like what do you mean by E commerce? And it just made me realise that sometimes we think that oh, you know, the, the term E commerce store and shopify and building a drop shipping business is like a saturated market. It's so like unknown by the general population and the wider community of people out there. If you drive down the street or you, you know, you're sitting on a train and you're looking at all the people on there. What percentage of people in those scenarios do you really think even understand this business model, let alone, you know, are trying it? So I think that people in that situation who would love to be able to do this but are maybe just on that awareness scale, they're here right now, they're Just like at the very, very early stage beginning, they're looking for a few fundamental things. And I think that this checks a lot of those boxes for aspiring business owners and founders. So the first is that you can launch this business without being the face of it. So you don't need to have a YouTube channel, you don't need to be an influencer, you don't need to be posting like content and reels and stories every day and like sharing everything in your life. You just quietly build something in the background that you can then put systems in place. So that's really important because a lot of the time people don't want to be the face of their brand. That's like their worst nightmare. And that's understandable. The second thing is that you can systematise this, you can outsource a lot of the running of this once it's up and running. So you're not stuck packing orders, you're not like filling your spare room with boxes and then having to package them all and go to the post office every day. You're not there answering emails and answering customer phone calls in the middle of the night. You can just pass that off to a virtual assistant. You can have your supplier take care of all of the fulfilment, you're not touching any of the goods or any of the items. So it's a really interesting business model in that sense that you don't have to be the face of it, you can systematise the whole thing and take yourself out of it. But also because there are many businesses that you can do those two things with, you're building something valuable with this, you're building a, an asset, you're building something that has like brand power. That, for example, you could sell that business, you could sell that online store down the line. So it's not just like a hustle that relies on you being there and the moment that you stop being involved in it, the whole thing breaks. You've actually created something that is a functioning, profit generating online machine, albeit virtual, that is delivering physical goods to people's houses around or businesses around the uk and you're not touching any of it. And it's just fantastic to see like how much that this could fit into someone's world in their life, even if they don't know what the business model is. So if I said to you drop shipping and your first reaction was like, oh, isn't that that scammy thing? Or like, isn't that a pyramid scheme? Or isn't that like the thing that you hear about on TikTok and like everyone sells stuff from China. It just shows like the general population's level of awareness of this. It's like if I said to you now, actually dropshipping is the fulfilment model that companies like Argos used before the Internet was even around when they were selling higher value items, they often didn't have those items in stock. They would take the order at retail price and then they would find a supplier to send that straight out to the customer at trade price. They would keep the difference. They never touched the stock. It just got delivered to you by the supplier. It was called drop shipping. Did they ever tell you that? No, you didn't need to know that because you got the item that you ordered. And so that I think puts it into perspective and people are like, oh, okay. So it's like a long term business model that's been around for a long time and will be here to stay as well. Is a lot more interesting, I think, when framed like that. Absolutely. But I agree, it's so overlooked when I speak to my friends about the business that I run and they almost have this kind of mysterious kind of idea of how it works, selling products online. They don't really have an idea of how it actually runs. And they just see me living in different countries around the world. And when, you know, when they ask what do I actually do, they kind of just think, oh, don't you do that thing where you sell some products online? And I mean, boil down to its basics? Yeah, pretty much it is just selling products online through a website and I generate profit from the sales that I generate. It is as simple as that. We don't need to over complicate it. It's all of the systems that you put in place to make sure it can run without you. But that can all be explained down the line once you've got your system up and running and you've got income coming in. So what I love about it is that it's so high leverage as a business because we're building an asset. So the work we're putting in is directly for our own benefits as a business owner. And we could do things to the business that really increases the asset value. So if you wanted to exit one day, you can exit. Or if you just want to have it as a cash cow, creating income every month, then you can absolutely do that as well. And the key is that you've got freedom to travel. So people will probably be interested. Louis, They've got An idea of the model that we do, it's like selling products online, physical products but they'd probably be more keen to know what does it look like now that you've got it set up so they can future pace to if they were to go into this business model what does it look like on the other end of building the business so your day to day life as a business owner of one of our E commerce businesses. So perhaps just paint a picture of what it looks like now, now that you've got the E commerce businesses up and running. Yeah, well you know, you or I, you and I are both business owners of this kind but we're at kind of slightly different phases of our lives. Right. And I, I have experienced I guess the, the part of that phase that you're experiencing right now that kind of location freedom and not having children and being able to travel and that like really freeing, amazing, liberating time which is very, very rewarding. But I'm now kind of equally experiencing a separate part of that. So I'd be keen to reflect the question back to you as well and hear your kind of typical day at the moment as well around like what it's like for someone in your position. But if you're maybe a bit more in my position and perhaps you are and like at the point where you've got a family and you've got children and my children have just started school, the other thing is being able to, to just take the children out, you know, if they finish school early or they finish nursery. Like I'm not waiting to get back at 8pm on a train after like being out with clients or something. I'm just there, I'm. I can work from a co working space, I can work from the home office. It's the ability to, to control where I am, what I do, what I spend my time doing, who I'm with and that for me at the moment is like the most valuable currency. Of course I, the benefit of being able to just say right we're going on holiday and tomorrow take the children away, take my wife away and not have to ask a boss for like annual leave for that time is really important and freeing and liberating as well. But yeah, I think it means different things depending on the stage that you're at in your life. So I'd be keen to hear from your side, what are the benefits of someone in your position at the stage of life you're at right now to having a business like this? Yes, it's good to Reflect it back. Because I think what everyone's got as a universal goal is the freedom to choose what you do, when you do it, where you're doing it and who you're with and why you're doing it is everyone's goal. And we've both got that same desire, drive for freedom, but we're just expressing it in different ways of different parts of our life. Because as you say, I haven't got children yet, no responsibilities, so I'm able to travel. And so I'm using my freedom to travel around different countries, around the world. I've been doing that for over a year now currently in Cape Town in South Africa. And so a typical week in the life at the moment. So when it comes to the work side of things, I'm. I'm working on things that I genuinely love to do and enjoy doing. So when it comes to the E commerce business that's checking in with my team of virtual assistants, making sure that the standards are kept high and the business is printing income and making sure things that are under control with that side of things. And then I can spend the other part of my working time coaching people inside dropship unlocks and helping other E commerce business owners, which is another passion of mine. And then outside of the work, when I've got, you know, when I'm taking time away from work and I'm exploring the country that we're in in Cape Town, the things you do around here is maybe go to wine tasting and vineyards around Consenture and Franschuk and beautiful parts of the world around here. Going up Table Mountain, which I managed to get behind me in the, the background of this video or taking kayaks out from a bay around the corner. So many options and living life and getting all these amazing experiences because I've got an income that comes in online so I'm not tied to a physical location. And so, you know, coming across dropship and Lock Lewis, obviously, as you know, it's changed my life completely and I went for it and it made so much sense for me because I knew that I wanted to make money online and I just needed to follow a system that worked and not overthink flashy models. Just go into something that's been proven time and time again and that's what's paid dividends for me. So, yeah, it gives you that freedom and income I think that we're all looking for. Yeah, that's, that's amazing to hear and so such a great place to be able to run the business and so like between us, that we've explored so many countries to be able to operate a business like this from. And there's really no limitation, you know, in terms of if you can get an Internet connection and you can have your MacBook or your laptop there or even just your phone, you can run a business like this. You can start a business like this from there. You don't even need to be living. And in the uk, in fact, that's what I did at the very beginning. I started the business in the UK and very quickly moved to Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand, which was like a digital nomad epicentre of Asia, and was a great place to kind of initially figure out and extend the Runway that I had of savings to be able to get the business really working without having to worry too much about, you know, paying the expensive rent of living in the UK at the time or the mortgage away, whatever. So, yeah, I think it's really important and it's. It's allowed other things to emerge as well. Like, for example, I. We're talking about this before we started recording, but, like, at the beginning of this year, I started playing paddle. And I've quickly got the bug and have become hopelessly addicted to playing Paddle now and absolutely love it. But when I'm there, it's funny, like, a lot of the people I play with are retirees because who else is playing, you know, during the week? And it's interesting to know, like, that some of the people that would finish their jobs will then not be able to come and play until, like, 7, 8, 9pm and they're then having to choose between, like, spending time with their partner and their. Their children or play Paddle. It's like one or the other. And I guess it's the ability to be able to do both. And I kind of see that as, like, not just something that's landed in my lap and is like, oh, it's lucky. It's all right for some to be able to do that. It's like, no, this was an intentional decision and a risk I took years ago that I'm seeing the benefit of today. So I guess just at this stage, if you're at that fork in the road where you think, I'd love to start a business, like, I was speaking to someone the other day and they were like, I really want to start a business. We're going to put about 150 grand into it, and we've got a few different ideas. I was like, thinking to myself, don't put 150 grand of your savings into something that you don't know whether it will succeed or not. You know, put something like five in, I mean for under 10,000 you could join our programme and have us build your custom website from scratch and you'd still have money left aside and you'd be pretty much like off to the races with a really solid purpose built e commerce store that's ready to go with a verified niche with suppliers on board, signed, ready to go. You you'd have some ad spend to make your first few sales. You know, we're not talking anything like those kinds of numbers. So I think it's really important if you're sitting on an idea now or if you've tried maybe other business models in the past or you've been considering doing something, but either they haven't worked for whatever reason or you're just worried that they might not work and that you might get it wrong. This could very well be a path that you and a lot of people have overlooked because they've simply never heard about it. So if you want to learn how all of this works step by step, head over to dropshipunlocked.com start there. You'll see exactly how to get everything going yourself. 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 dropshipunlocked.com forward/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 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 episode where we're going to answer a question that's come in from a listener. So if you've had any questions come up in your mind while listening to today's episode, then all you need to do is type in your question as a YouTube comment on the YouTube video version of this episode and we'll answer it in the comments and it may get featured in an upcoming episode. So this week we've got a fantastic question in from Oral and he has asked how could I set up a recurring subscription alongside a one time purchase like a pizza oven? That's a great question, Oral. I like the approach and yeah, definitely something that I would consider. So I guess the first thing is thinking, well the main way that you're going to make income with the business initially and the profit on the sale will come from the purchase of the higher priced, higher ticket item because then the profit from that can offset the marketing cost that it cost you to acquire that customer in the first place. But then beyond there. Yeah, is there something that you could tack onto that or offer to your email subscribers as a, either a post purchase subscription or even just a, you know, a non post purchase related subscription. Just something that is an ongoing subscription based revenue. So the example of if you were selling pizza ovens on your store, perhaps there's a company out there who do delivery pizza recipe boxes for people with pizza ovens. So you know, every week or every month you get a box of and it's like some pizza doughs and different cheeses, some ingredients, they take care of the whole thing. If you were to approach them and say to them, we have an email list of thousands of people who are interested in pizza ovens. We've also got thousands of customers who will have bought or will be buying pizza ovens from us. If we were to partner together, could we do some kind of revenue split where if we promote your service we can kind of offer it almost like as our own service. So like as a white labelled service you could put your brand name on it and then you could create that ongoing recurring subscription revenue by offering consistent ongoing value to your customers where they get the thing that you know they probably need because they purchased the pizza oven in the first place from your store and it allows you to position it as a really convenient cost saving option. So it's like never run out of pizza recipe ideas again. Get the most from your pizza oven. Make sure that you know you've got new ideas to impress your friends and family delivered to your doorstep every month. That could be a really good way of doing it that doesn't require you to build a subscription business. It's just you kind of tacking on what is a high value, helpful subscription service and then maybe doing some kind of, you know, revenue split or profit split with that company to allow them access to your, your email list. So yeah, there are differently apps that you can use to do it directly as well because there's lots of like Shopify apps that help with subscription payments if it's something you want to manage yourself. But if I was thinking about this, I would do it by partnering with a provider that already have all of that stuff in place so that you don't have to worry too much about it and you could even bundle it together with the order so you could be like order the pizza oven and get your first month's subscription box free and a, you know, a complimentary free trial to X subscription delivery service when you purchase from us today. So it's not only a value add, but it then increases your lifetime value of that customer so how much they spend with you and therefore it allows you to add value and build recurring revenue on the back of the order. So it's a great idea oral and best of luck with setting it all up. Yeah, love it. It's a very healthy business that has that recurring revenue as well as the one ticket, the one time high ticket offer products as well. So very exciting to hear about lots of room for entrepreneurial creativity even though you'll be following a set path to set up this business model that we use as well. Okay, now we want to highlight a recent review that we've had for the podcast as well. So a big thank you to Elena Papadopoulos 3553. They left a great YouTube comment and she said great episode and she was referring to episode 154 which is how we explained how we find UK dropshipping suppliers who actually want to work with you. Amazing. Thank you very much for your review, Eleanor. We really appreciate it. And as we wrap up today's episode, one question that we have for you listening to us today is who do you know that could benefit from hearing this episode about this business model? Open up your phone, click Share on this episode and send them a link to this episode on WhatsApp and just say something like I thought you might enjoy this. Following on from our conversation about starting a business, this could be helpful for you. That tiny gesture of you sending and sharing this idea of a business could be the thing then changes the direction for their life for the better and they'd have you to thank for it. 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 kickstart your E commerce business. Head over to dropshipunlocked.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. I 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.