Hi folks
I’m excited to announce that I’m interviewing a true online marketing expert this week, Ezra Firestone, who’s created incredible wealth online and primarily through Ecommerce dropshipping.Ezra recently sold a store for $250,000 USD, not a bad effort at all!
Ezra has spoken at many big online marketing conferences in the USA and is sort after for his knowledge when it comes to marketing online.
So….with all that said, if you want to know about dropshipping through your own online store, then paste your questions below under this post as comments and during the interview I’ll flick over to this post and do my best to read them out with Ezra on the live interview we do together.
Keep your questions relatively brief and you’ll have a better chance of me reading it out for Ezra to address.
Dropshipping is an exciting business model and one that you can make great income with. You don’t have to buy in any stock or do any shipping and handling, its sort of like an affiliate ecommerce store.
Should be a lot of fun anyway, so I hope to hear from you below.
UPDATE: CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE RECORDING OF THIS EVENT
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Besides contacting a supplier and creating a website. What are other things that we may not directly think off when creating a drop shipping site etc creating our own invoice.
How do you set up the process from purchase occuring on your site and then invoice being automatically sent to supplier. Is this through paypal?
Tips for approaching a supplier.
Thanks
TiaoZhan Reply:
May 15th, 2013 at 5:42 pm
Yeah, all of the ecommerce courses out there never touch on the topic on the process of placing order to supplier when customer place an order on our site. Just what to do once customer order from us? What are the next steps? Hope Ezra can address this.
How do you deal with returns when running a drop shipping business? Do you have a way to keep returns down or a policy that makes it easier to deal with?
Can you explain how I can begin to do drop shipping from small internet marketing type websites> I installed a plugin on one called Woo Commerce but not really sure how to use it
Hi Matt,
I tried drop shipping some time ago without great success.
I would like to ask Ezra 2 things:
1. which are the best methods to find niches and products and are good for this approach?
2. when launching a new drop shipping website, what would be your best advices regarding traffic?
Thanks,
Joao
if you had to start over what would you do now to make money ?
and are these the only sites you do now or do you run normal ecomece sites or any other ?
whats the best way to find a reliable drop shiper you can trust ?
hey Matt,
I would like to ask Ezra following question
In terms of driving traffic to those Dropshipping Sites, what worked the best for you: SEO or Paid Traffic, and are there any particular niches that do better with one or the other type traffic?
Thanks,
I am from Malaysia and have only a Paypal Premier account, wanting to create an ecommerce site targetting only the US market. Can I setup my Paypal Premier account only in my website for the payment processes? My site is not even have the SSL certificate. Please kindly advice.
How much does it cost to get started?
Mark Reply:
May 14th, 2013 at 8:23 pm
Very similar question to Mike’s –
Is it possible to build a business up with time but very little capital?
Hi Matt,
This is a great timing. I just started a dropship site and have some question.
I use wordpress as a platform and make the pages for the products..
Is that okay our should I use posts for products?
Or is there maybe an other platform more suited for an ecommerce site?
Thanks,
Eddie
Reliable dropshipping compaies list is very important because you are dead with negative feedbaks if your dropship company is bad. Please let us know the good companies.
Dear Matt!
Hi, very interesting to know that some people succeed in drop shipping, anyway we don’t use this kind of business, but anyway we are a small e-commerce business, so my question is what is the best way to get new clients. Thank you.
I am interested in finding out Ezra’s favorite ecommerce website and shopping cart software.
Amazon changed its deal a couple years ago where you can’t collect the money upfront – which sure made it easier. Does his strategy involve Amazon at all, or is it completely independent?
step by step process? AND what type of products move the best?
I have an eCommerce store in the pet niche, my question is how do you get your pages to rank above the other big player like Amazon, Petsmart, Petco, and others.
Or do you play the game totally different some how, to get your traffic going.
1. If you purchase products from overseas, how can you be sure that they don’t contain lead or other unsafe materials.
2. Should we set up a formal business structure, i.e. a corporation or LLC?
3. Should we get liability and/or other insurance?
4. Do we create labels, inserts etc. to send to the manufacturer to be placed with the product before it is drop shipped?
5. Should you pay extra fees for inspection when buying from foreign suppliers?
Thanks!
My question is sort of covered above. I’d like to know about the best types of niches to launch as affiliate sites and then move into drop shipping once you have the sites established. Or of there is a “method” for transitioning/when do you make the call to start drop shipping (some magic formula of traffic x cost per sale x something else!) 🙂
I have a few Adsense/affiliate sites that could potentially be converted.
Are there any issues to be aware of if shipping to various countries?
Living in Australia are there any issues about using dropshippers in other countries?
Thanks heaps!
When marketing products that are being drop shipped by another company, there has hot to be a lot of trust in that other company that they are doing what they say. How do you maintain a high level of customer satisfaction and service? I would imagine that the amount of service that I would provide would need to be equal to the value of the product. Or is service level not an issue? What is the main thing that makes a lasting internet based company?
I understand that you can dropship any physical products online but how about the ones that require license (eg: apple products) or any medical products (white label medicines etc).
Do you need a special license to meet the regulations for the country you are selling it to?
1.How much start up capital is needed to sell drop shipped products?
2.Who are the most reliable drop shippers in the e-commerce business(In the best niches recommended).
3.Can I start selling drop shipped products without paying money upfront?
The problem I have with drop-shipping is the price of the items.
You’re not buying the item at wholesale price because you’re only buying one item at a time.
To buy an item at a competitive price, you need to buy large quantities, which kinda defeats the whole philosophy of drop-shipping.
I’d be interested in what Ezra’s opinion is in regards to that statement.
I would like to know more about the initial cost to start drop shipping business?
What are your liabilities if the product is faulty and causes some harm or injury to the customer – for example electronics, food supplements, etc.?
Thanks.
Some great questions here that have covered most of what I need to know.
1. With so many companies now selling direct to customers its’s really hard to find companies/products where you can make a good profit i.e. above 15%.
2. The other thing is the trust factor, Amazon has a huge trust factor with fantastic customer service and reviews how do you compete with them?
3. How do find products that are not being sold on Amazon?
4,And the biggest question of all, it doesn’t matter what you do online if you want people to click on your website you have to get to the top of Google how do you do that?
all of the above, great questions.
Why can’t I find anything I like in dropshipping company catalogues?
How do you chose products with a good chance of success?
Ethical, cool, beneficial, unusual is more what I would like to put my energy behind but I could only find junk.
I am in the UK and want to dropship from China. There is duty to be paid on importing which the courier will ask the end customer to pay on delivery. This is obviously not acceptable so how can this be got round?
How do you find a reliable drop shipper that does not charge you a monthly fee?
Can drop shipping be done from any country, or are there any restrictions (I live in Thailand)?
I am looking forward to the interview since I have been interested in this subject matter for a while.
1) Which are the best, reliable dropping shipping companies and directories to use?
2) Which WordPress plugin is good for creating a drop ship site? Or website platform?
Can you sell on Amazon using a dropshipping company?
What are some of the best drop shipping companies?
Hi Matt and Ezra,
My question is with my website that i have recently launched can you tell me please how can i get it to convert as is isn’t at the moment.
Many Thanks Simon
1. What are your margin requirements when selecting products to dropship?
2. How do you deal with price competition compared to much larger stores that can undercut you?
I currently use a “host website” that integrates with a drop-shipping wholesaler that contracts with other suppliers and manufacturers. I like this to the extent that I can offer a wide variety of products. However, over the past 5 years that I have used them some problems have been;
1. Consistency… Often products that I spend a lot of time, effort and money optimizing only to have the products discontinued.
2. Tracking Code…I am unable to get an instant “tracking code” from the shipper for the customers use.
3. Price… Sometimes other stores are selling my same product for 45% less than me, and also offer “free shipping”!
Is there a “best industry practices” Drop-Shipper wholesaler [offering a low cost, wide variety and consistent product line] that you would care to recommend?
Thank you in advance for considering my question.
What sort of minimuim investment is required to start this business?
Having one’s own eCommerce store, surely we will be competing against the big online retailers such as Amazon, eBay, Tesco, Walmart etc in the UK. How do you address that?
Or is this a FBA (Fullfillement by Amazon?)
Do you recommend having an eStore selling highly niche upmarket products in a category such as ‘Anti-Aging’ creams for example?
I can’t think of a product that is not offered by Amazon etc!
Having problems communicating with companies in China is there go through person or company that could sort this out.
Hope you can answer all the above questions.
What is a reasonable start-up cost for a drop-shipping business?
Hi matt
I need to know the process of drop shipping from the first step to the last one
Is the drop shipper liable for the warranty?
Hey Matt
What resource do you use to locate “legitimate” companies that give you “competitive” pricing. I want to offer my customers the best possible value if they do business with me.
Also how do you evaluate a drop-shippers performance in the all important area of customer service?
Thanks for your help
Is there a preferred course YOU can recommend, that teaches how to commence a drop shipping business model.
Hi Matt
I’ve thought about drop shipping for a long time now – I like the convenience of having no stock etc. However the biggest problem for me is who to trust? I would hate for customers to order from me and not receive goods and thats why I have never pursued it
Hi Matt, My question is: how to contact the suppliers directly without having to deal with the middleman?
Hi Matt,
I have stock place next to a Chinese Airport and want to dropship for sellers outside China. Now I have a problem, using China Post Air Mail is super cheap but take 15 days to arrive major countries. Will this be acceptable to oversea sellers?
Thanks!
Looking forward to learning how drop shipping business is done
Thanks Matt for the information and great service
Hi Matt
Just listened to the webinar which was great. There was a lot of high value help and information on drop shipping. What really surprised me was that there was no product to buy.
Thanks for putting this together.
Regards
Owen
Hi Matt,
Idea for your podcasts:
it would be great if you could download the guest speakers powerpoint presentation after the presentation so you don’t have to take so many notes.
Thanks,
Sara
Thank you all so much for taking the time to watch this webinar. Thank you Matt for having me on. I hope we’ve covered all of your questions – if you have more, please just ask them here and I will check back from time to time to answer.
E
Hey Matt
Great webinar. As always, some really useful information that gives me ideas and drop shipping is another possibility!!
Thanks
Jon