A while back I posted about making money through drop shipping, and in this post I decided to add my personal experience/success with this method of affiliate marketing to encourage you guys and stimulate more ideas for you all!
I won’t be revealing the niche that I’m doing this in, for obvious reasons, however I’m happy to share the strategy with guys. Also I will be explaining some of the drawbacks to be aware of also.
OK so I found a niche I liked and that ticked all the boxes of a good niche, and then proceeded to contact suppliers in the niche directly, using the phone, which is somewhat foreign to many online marketers but the best way to get results if you’re looking for a company to drop ship for you. I explained what I wanted to do, what my experience is, and how we could both benefit from this, and they straight away said yes!
It’s really not a hard sell you know, put yourself in the shoes of the supplier, they get more sales for no extra work on their behalf. All they have to do is send out more orders, which they do every day anyway.
Once I had the deal in place, I went out and got my eCommerce store built on Magento, which is free, but I don’t think I would use this again as it uses a lot of resource to function and as a result is slow. I need to research better alternatives soon, as I’m not happy with Magento. If anyone knows of a good alternative please comment below, but only if you have experience, as all the reviews on stores are often not from actual real users.
While the store was being built, I did my keyword research. The way I did this was by getting the entire product list from the supplier who is drop shipping for me, and going through each product using SECockpit, and compiling my results in an excel document.
In addition to targeting the product keywords, I also added a blog on the store, so I can target information keywords for the same niche, and broaden my keywords. A well done blog is key, as it acts like a funnel to where you make money on the site. Just make sure you have obvious links and banners to your store, so the traffic that arrives here can easily get to your store too, as that’s where you make money!
Google AdWords
In order to drive traffic to the store, I signed up for Google AdWords, and also planned out my SEO campaign for organic keywords. Google gives you a free $75 voucher to use if you are a new account, and they also provide a month worth of support with their account managers.
I can’t help but have a dig at Google here though before I proceed. Their Google AdWords so called “Experts” are pretty much useless, as they know very little about AdWords past setting up Ad groups and match types, which is beginners stuff.
It really is laughable, I chatted to the rep who called me, and asked about tracking and conversions and they went silent and fumbled for some answer to save face!!
The issue with Google AdWords though, is that the cost per click is high, and in order to be profitable you really need to get these costs down. Without going into a huge rant about AdWords, one thing I did was big high initially to get my ads in a high position, so they would get a good Click Through Rate (CTR). I left the ads to run for a week and then checked the data.
You really need a decent amount of clicks on your ads to make any decisions about how to adjust things. A minimum amount of clicks really should be 50-100 per ad group I think.
Some things to consider are; if you are getting a lot of impressions and not many clicks, rework your ad copy. If you’re not getting many impressions, check the keywords you’re targeting for that ad group. If you get lots of clicks and not many sales, check the page you’re sending to, as your conversions most likely need work. However, it may well be the price, so drop the price for a test and see if that makes a difference.
AdWords is only one method of paid traffic, and I intend on using media buys and other paid methods also, however AdWords is an easy place to start, it’s just expensive so you have to track things. Make sure you have conversion tracking installed from inside your account.
A friend of mine who’s more experienced with AdWords, as manages large companies campaigns told me, that on average you need to be under $20 per sale with AdWords to be profitable. This means you don’t want to spend more than $20 on clicks to get your sale. This varies depending on your profit margins, but that’s the average anyway.
Organic Traffic
In light of all the changes this year with Google Penguin and the ongoing Google Panda updates, I approach SEO differently these days. I still get backlinks, but I focus most importantly on the user experience on my site.The first thing I did was follow all the instructions that Eric Lancheres teaches in his Panda Breakthrough, which enabled the site to be set up to win from the start (just to add, the rankings have been doing awesome already).
To do this I make sure all the content is very easy to find, and as mentioned earlier have a blog on the domain for information articles for those who might not want to buy just yet.
I don’t want to go into a huge post here about SEO, but one thing I will say is that I do focus more on getting links from related to sites in the niche or a similar niche, and guest blogging has helped this. I also make sure the backlinks I get look natural if not all of them are, and one way to do this is varying up your anchor text.
Gone are the days of having all your links have the exact same anchor text. I hardly ever use the exact anchor anymore, but mix it up with loads of similar variations. Also remember to keep adding quality things to your site, that will attract natural links. At the moment my store has a good blog and a cool free download.
Building Your Customer Base
My E commerce store has the major advantage of repeat customers! This is brilliant as it means the same people come back and order again. I have already started to see this happening on the store. Essentially what this means is the average sale price increases, which means you can afford to spend more on marketing to get each sale.
I mentioned using Google Adwords above, however the main issue is the cost. Yes you can do things to get this cost down, however another thing to calculate is repeat sales, as this will bring the cost per sale down. So even if you break even on Google Adwords, you have to keep in mind you are building your customer list which is important.
Things to Note
The is a higher level of responsibility with online stores, so keep in mind you have to have a phone number listed for customers to content you, so be prepared for the phone to ring the more successful your sites becomes. You’re also dealing with peoples money so you have to make sure you are on the ball and check the sales everyday.
Another quick thing to note is about Hosting. I won’t bore you with the nightmare I have been through recently, all I will say is that you need a good host for a store as it takes more memory and disk space to run it, and like I said earlier Magento is a resource hog which caused me a lot of frustration!!
The Pros and Cons of Drop Shipping
The major positives about drop shipping are that you can target a wide range of keywords without having to stock all the products yourself. You also don’t have to deal with postage either. This makes your store a digital store, and pretty much the same as traditional affiliate sites.
I think there is a lot less competition as it does take more work to get a store online, so less people bother to do it. Not only that though, but I also think Google likes a well done eCommerce store, especially if you’re using Google AdWords, which is tougher to be able to do with information sites.
To be honest, I think if you can vary up your traffic sources the better it is, so it doesn’t have to be Google AdWords, just don’t have ALL your traffic coming from SEO, as that can look pretty suspect in Google eyes.
The negatives for drop shipping are that you are relying on another company to deliver the stock on time and in a good condition. If they don’t do this well, it reflects back on you and you look bad in front of your customers. This unfortunately has happened a few times to me already, and it is a concern, but nothing too alarming at this stage.
The other major downside is knowing exactly what stock is actually available. I have had to refund some orders when I found out from the supplier, after I had processed the sales, that they no longer had that item in stock. This is just part of drop shipping that you have to deal with, and thank fully it hasn’t happened much.
One last thing, at the moment I’m doing a lot of the tasks manually, such as processing the orders, which is not ideal, but I plan on getting someone to help with this soon. However until the store is really cranking I’m happy to do this stuff.
Results
So to wrap up, it took me about 4-5 weeks from getting the idea for the store to actually making my first sale. I don’t expect everyone will get results this fast, as I have experience with marketing online, but the fact is this is what happened for me. Right now I’m getting about 2 sales every day, which I will keep working on, with a target of 10 a day, and also building my email list with new customers and potential customers. In addition to this I’m also building the Facebook fan base too.
All in all this venture is turning into another successful site for me. So if people tell you that you can’t be successful with drop shipping don’t listen, as I am doing it right now and it has been relatively easy too.
There are loads of great niches you could do this in, and you don’t need a special drop shipping list, as all I did was get on the phone and chat to suppliers. You’d be a amazed at how positive the response is, especially in the USA.
Hope you found this post helpful, as always I would be super grateful if you would share my blog posts around by using the social media icons below!
Thanks everyone,
Matt
Related articles
Congrats on your success with drop shipping. I must admit it’s down the list a bit for me at this point, as I’m looking at other methods first and don’t want to get myself too far off track chasing the latest thing I read up on. But when I do come back to drop shipping later on I’ll make sure to re-read this post.
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 9:02 am
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Hi Michael
Yes indeed, you make a very good point, its always wise to stay focused on one thing until you get success with it. I always encourage people to do this.
Have a great day
Matt
I use wp store theme. And had my programmer make about 50 changes to it. Seems to be the best decision I ever made.
Hey Matt, I have 6 drop shipping sites that I run off BIG Commerce platform. I tired several platforms including Magento and BC is by far the best.
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 9:30 am
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Hi Ken
Thanks for the tip, I will have a look at Big Commerce
Regards
Matt
Hey Matt,
Great Post.
Have you got a preferred % Off that aim for to get off the Drop Shippers Retail price when negotiating with them?
I know it prob differs in every market, but would you be aiming at typical Wholesale prices (40-50% Off) or more like Affiliate percentages (20%).
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 9:27 am
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Hi Aaron,
I think 40-50 would be awesome, but you will find that hard to get. So I think anything like 15-25% is decent.
The thing is, the larger the margin, the more room you have to spend on paid traffic.
Matt
Dropshipping is a massive business, and one that should be embraced. Just type in “dropshipping” plus the niche you want to get into, and guaranteed there will be a large if not huge market out there. As Matt says, it’s all about the quality of the suppliers – don’t hesitate to dump the ones that constantly let you down. But building good relationships with your dropshippers is key to success – you make money, they make money. Simple.
Barb Reply:
June 8th, 2012 at 1:36 am
I have searched for dropshippers by using Google and putting in dropshipping and the niche. I found that 99% of what comes up is still the middle man. To find the actual supplier to dropship from is very hard. Even if you do find the original supplier of products I find that unless you’ve been doing this quite awhile and have made a successful website then your chances on getting accepted by them is slim. Unless you can get the original suppler your profit margin will be lower than you would like it to be in order to make any real profit. I don’t give up trying to find a good supplier but it’s not easy and it takes a lot of work.
Interesting stuff!
I myself have been thinking about this too, I want to build one here in the Netherlands.
My first idea was to make a dropship site selling little electronics like all kinds of LED lights, for parties, for the house etc..
And thought maybe Dealextreme.com is a good source for this, although the shipping will take damn long and have chinese writing all over it lol. Not sure if this idea will be profitable though.
Or else was thinking of selling electronics and stuff that have to do with the enviroment, which is a growing business I believe.
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 9:26 am
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Hi Phil
I wouldn’t drop ship from overseas, as the delays in shipping will be terrible and customers will not want to use your store again.
Matt
Phil Wilson Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 9:34 am
Thanks for the tip, I’ll consider and look for alternatives, and will need to do some research whether selling such stuff is profitable.
Hi Matt. There is a lot of rubbish on the net and it is generally quite tiresome to sort through it to find the real gems. I can unequivocally say that your information and service has been and hopefully will continue to be invaluable.
As for the Open Source Software. i did a lot of research and due diligence many years ago and came accross Prestashop. At the time it was a minnow but had huge potential. I am glad to say that a year or so ago it was voted the best OSS for ecommmerce and I have been nothing but impressed with it from the very beginning.
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 10:10 am
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Thanks a bunch Nick, will look into Prestashop
Matt
Hi Matt,
Great post.
One thing I think about is how do you make sure your dropshipper isn’t slipping a thank you note from their company inside the package. So they get the customer onto their list.
Does your dropshipper use your website name and telephone no. as the “sender” details on the package.?
I guess you could always get a friend to place an order every month and see how the parcel turns up. Bit like mystery shopping in the offline world.
Also a good way to check out the condition and how well the item is packaged as its part of your brand image really. Also, sometimes (especially women like my wife) enjoy opening a well package parcel with little thank you notes handcrafted etc makes it a fun experience to open a well package item. Like Apple do.
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 9:25 am
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Hi Ross
Yeah you raise some very good points. The first thing is that you must provide the invoice for the supplier t place in the box. As far as whether they place something in there too is a good point and something I have wondered. I think you idea of testing a sale is a good one!
Thanks for your comment
Matt
Hey Matt –
This is good stuff, I’ve definitely considered getting into the physical product arena, especially lately what with all these Penguin shenanigans. I think things are really making a move towards high quality hands on sites like the one you’re building, as opposed to set it and forget it niche sites.
It’s great to hear that the drop shipping model still works, you don’t really hear about a lot of people doing that nowadays… you’re right though, it really is win-win for both parties involved and definitely seems worth looking into.
I’d love to hear more about your ventures into the physical product
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 10:04 am
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Thanks John, and yeah I will continue to update my blog with new tips
Matt
Thank you for this post. Its really helpful, by the way did you contact your drop shipper via Alibaba? I’d like to know.
Anyways thanks again and good luck with expanding your business.
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 9:59 am
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Hi Ike
No I did not use Alibaba, but I do like that site and have used it for other business ventures.
Matt
Denise Reply:
June 5th, 2012 at 9:49 am
I used Alibaba Express once to see how long it would take the product to reach me and the quality of the product. From the time of my order to receipt at my doorstep was 10 days total. The quality was as expected.
Denise
Hi Matt,
We use the Shopp plugin for shopping carts. If you are selling less than 500 products it is good. You don’t need a specific template, you can design as you would in wordpress because it is a wordpress plugin. The support is pretty good. There are plugins for Australia post and Eway (payment processor) which allows you to connect with the major australian banks and get the fee % down. The only downside (which is a head scratcher) is that you can’t upload the products with a csv file. I had my programmers write a simple script to load it into the mysql database. Someone had previously written a csv upload but with the new version decided not to support it because they weren’t getting paid. Any how, other than that it is pretty good and they have brought out a new version with all the bugs from the new version fixed. My coders love the platform because they can design without the usual constraints of other carts. You can get a developer licence for $300 or about $60 per site.
A word of warning about one shopping cart. Never ever use CRE Loaded as a shopping cart. The support is poor and the software is buggy.
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 10:10 am
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Thanks for sharing
Matt
Hi Matt,
I have received a couple other emails about webinars etc on the subject. Its definitely a hot topic and seems really viable. I am in the same position as one of the earlier commenters that I’m wading my way thru other areas and have no time to implement this model yet but surely want to in the near future.
Thank you for giving us some details about how and what you are doing.
I just wrote a post a couple days ago about being thankful for all the good advice I have able to find as I was either introduced to or stumbled across the handful of PROS who generously provide great advice. I was happy to include you Matt.
I know I’m just a nobody trying to learn this IM stuff while keeping my brick and mortar business going but I really do thank you for making affordable courses (enjoyed Rapid Profit Formula) and lots of free info available. It all really helps.
One question I had was :…Have you looked into the FBA program through Amazon and if so what were your thoughts on it?
Again,…thank you Matt. Looking forward to your thoughts
Regards,
Greg Snyders
http://www.redridgewinecellars.com/kudos-to-the-pros-who-really-help-people/
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 9:58 am
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Hi Greg
I’m glad you are giving it a good go and that you have found my information helpful. I haven’t used the FBA program myself sorry.
Matt
Hi Matt,
How did you track down the supplier who was willing to drop ship for you?
Did you ask the biggest player in the field? or hunt down a little guy?
Fiona
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 9:56 am
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Hi Fiona
I just did some Google research and then got on the phone and called loads of companies.
Matt
Hi Matt
This is what I have been in for five years and built up an excellent business I learnt your affiliate methods and added them to my eCommerce site and today I rank very well I purchased Brittnay Lynch and Eric Lancheres coarses from you and getting improvements on my site all the time I look at my competitors and I can see myself push ahead I am finding that that the load time of my site is slow and I have tried Erics methods I think it is the hosting.
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 9:56 am
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Right on Grant, that’s what I like to hear, someone who takes action and gets results. Keep on cranking man!
Matt
Hi Matt,
I’ve used Business Catalyst for ecommerce sites before and found it a good way to go. It includes the ability to manage your database from within the platform as well which I found to be very useful.
Regards,
Sam
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 10:05 am
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Awesome, thanks Sam
Matt
Hi Matt,
Congratulation on your Drop Shipping success.
I tried with it but found very difficult !!!!!!
If you find the Right Products, it’s difficult to find Reliable Drop Shipper, if you find the Reliable Drop Shipper it’s difficult to make money with their products, since the profit margin is so slim.
Would appreciate if you briefly advice us how you are researching the market for Drop Shipping Products, Finding the Reliable suppliers and making good margin out of it.
Thanks
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 10:29 am
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I just go into niches I consider to be good ones, I have certain criteria I look for, and then I just get on the phone and call up as many suppliers as I can. Ideally anything above 15% is doable, but 25% is even better as you can do paid traffic. If you can’t find any of these then yeah it will be harder.
Matt
Hi Matt
Great information as usual! Its definitely an area I want to get into when the time is right and I have enough time to devote to it.
Just out of interest have you looked into Storecoach.com. I started going through their training a while ago but just haven’t had the time to go any further with it. Would love to get your take on it.
From a comment above I’m surmising that you only source locally. Do you only then target local customers in NZ (I assume)? Does this limit the amount of customers you are able to market to?
Once again thanks for the great info.
Kind regards
Annette
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 10:52 am
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Hi Annette
I haven’t tried storecoach, and yeah I source locally, and yeah sure you’re limited to your local customers, but you don’t need lots of customers if they all repeat buy off you!
Matt
I used Magento for my first ecommerce store and found it to be really cumbersome. I moved the store over to Interspire, which is really powerful and best of all it’s simple to use…
The problem with interspire is… I just got an email the other day saying the company is dropping Interspire from is product line, so support will be fading out in the near future 🙁
apparently the want to focus on their main product BigCommerce. Hope that helps.
Hi Matt,
quick question, do the drop shippers supply a csv of their catalog which includes images or image paths?
Are they in general au fait with the techno side of getting their products onto our site?
Curious,
Greg
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 3:08 pm
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Hi Greg
Some do provide this, but to be honest I just did it all manually as I like to write my own unique descriptions and take time over this, so I don’t like to just upload bulk using CSV.
Matt
Hey Matt,
thanks for sharing your drop shipping experiences.
I have found the big obstacles with shopping cart software is extending for customisations. Shopify is another worth a look.
When setting up your site, did you get the drop shippers to agree before you had any products on your site or did you set up some dumby content to begin with?
Cheers for your thoughts.
Thomas
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 3:07 pm
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Hi Thomas
Yeah I made sure I had a company that agreed before I went ahead with the store.
Matt
Hello Matt,
I Think This eCommerce Template is AWESOME, Please Check it Out
Sorry Matt Forgot To Give You The Website
http://shopperpress.com/
Hi Matt,
It’s funny that you wrote this post right now, because I have just started a dropshipping project here in Mexico. I have Magento set up because I had used it for other projects, but it really is a pain…
I also agree with you regarding the blog being very important. I even have take the extra step of creating a separate site that will be for product reviews, etc. to build it up as an authority site funneling traffic to my ecommerce site. This is in addition to the blog, it does not replace it.
Best of luck, and I look forward to reading more about your experience!
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 3:06 pm
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Awesome stuff Zeph
Matt
Hi Mark,
very interesting article, thank you.
Drop shipping is my area of focus.
YOu said you are not happy with Magento. It is difficult to learn as I heard. I used osCommerce for a lot of shops. It is basic php mysql and lots of people can work on it.
Here are a few secrets I found:
If your Drpshipper is in China you could virtually market too all over the world. Oftentimes non english speaking countries can be a good market if the shop is translated.
If a Dropshipper has a website, you coult get a programmer to read the products directly from the website into your shop. Same with instock details.
I had the same problem with doing a lot of manual work. But know with PHP5, you can write a script that logs into your dropshippers custoer area and looks for shipped orders and parcel numbers. Then the script can automatically update your own shop and send customer notifications.
Generally, automatisation is key. Just yesterday I made a script that posts one product every 4 hours to Facebook.
The more images you have, the longer people stay. I have an average time on website of 7 minutes. My rankings keep climbing. But linkbuilding is still needed.
Anyway, I am just love eCommerce and thanks for your article,
Volker
I like this concept and your information is awesome. However, I am from an Asian country and sad to say, there will be cases when customers take advantage of refund policy to enjoy free “rental use” and then return them even when the product works perfectly. How do you handle frivolous refunds that can bleed you try. Does low ticket items also comes with money back guarantee? Thank you
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 3:06 pm
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Hi
If this is the case then you need to start that there are no refund for a product unless it is faulty.
Matt
Drop shipping with e-commerce has worked better for me than anything else I’ve tried. It is alot more work than the typical affiliate marketing.
I currently use storesonline and have had no problems. I have heard others had problems with them and they filed lawsuits so I’m not sure if they are worth your time.
Adwords is set up for them to make money more so than the customer. I tried them and saw what they had to offer and walked away.
Thanks for the information about these kind of sites.
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 3:05 pm
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Interesting points Darline
Matt
Hi Matt,
my experience has not been as good as yours unfortunately.
I’ve been working on a dropshipping business for some months now. I launched my first ecommerce store two months ago and haven’t made a single sale. It’s quite shocking to me, the prices are competitive, the website is good looking, I’ve always an offer advertised on home page and I get 20 visits a day, but no one seems to bother buying.
I check my stats every day, and people come through product keywords or buyer keywords like “widget for sale” so I’m still trying to understand what’s wrong. If there weren’t buyers I wouldn’t see the first two pages of Google full of ecommerce stores.
Now I want to try a second store on another niche, maybe I was simply unlucky with the first one, I really don’t know what to think at this point.
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 3:04 pm
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Hi Giulio,
20 visitors a day is low, but anyway, you need to look at a number of things: price, payment options, site load speed, your copy, the layout, the products and of course it could be the niche, but if there are loads of other great stores then it should work, just a matter of persisting with it.
Matt
Dan Reply:
June 5th, 2012 at 4:42 am
You probably are not getting any sales because just about every item I looked at on your site said “Option choice(s) not available”
Giulio Reply:
June 5th, 2012 at 1:04 pm
That is weird, it’s happened probably when I last updated the prices one week ago because I checked all the items one by one when I entered them. It must be some bug in the shopping cart I suppose. Anyway, thanks very much for telling me this, without you it could have taken weeks before I noticed the problem.
If you are interested in my products, write to me through the contact us page, I’ll arrange a special discount for you to say thank you 🙂
Hi Matt,
Oscommerce and Cre-Loaded are pretty good alternatives. I also found using WordPress with WP E commerce and a couple of other plugins which I cant remember worked pretty well for setting up shops.
Matt, A great concept and have this on my to do list.
It is interesting to hear your experiences & challenges.
I believe Steve Clayton has a product called Eformula that is meant for this type of online store, worth a look to see how it fits with your concept.
Will be interested to learn more about your experience.
Thanks for sharing.
Regards NeilB
Once again great stuff Matt, some coaches teach that you should register as a company (or get a d.b.a), in order to get more companies to work with you. What are your thoughts?
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 3:00 pm
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Yes you should register a company for all online marketing purposes. I have a separate company for my eCommerce, but you can have it all under one company.
Matt
Love this case study on drop shipping! I know SaleHoo (Owned by Mark Link I believe) has a newer store option they’ve put together. I believe the cost is something like $29/mo but you can try it out for $1 for 30 days I think. I’ve looked into it as a possible idea but haven’t made the decision to commit the time to doing what you’ve done yet… 🙂 So your post is definitely encouraging!
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 2:59 pm
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Thanks Lance
Matt
Hi Matt
I have an eCommerce site, and i have been concerned that using the drop shippers product descriptions is hurting my organic seo due to duplicate content
Do you recommend making my own unique product descriptions.
i find when many people are trying to sell the same products it is very hard to rank the site and get traffic.
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 2:59 pm
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Hi Yehuda
Yes most definitely write your own unique descriptions, or you will have issues with your SEO.
Thanks Matt
For some more great tips…..I will put in a file and have a good look into it shortly.when I have more time to do some research.
Cheers
Linda
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 2:58 pm
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Sounds good Linda
Matt
Another fantastic post Matt, thank you.
Recently I’ve been narrowing down niches that I’d really like to be a part of and drop ship products. I finally got my list down to one niche that I got super excited about, only to spend days on google trying to find a supplier.
I thought of contacting bigger, more established stores to see if they would share their supplier info but thought that maybe a little cheeky after receiving a few polite emails saying that they would not divulge that info, but good luck.
So, I started to look overseas in the US, rather than just Australia, but have not found a real supplier yet. I’m kind of targeting multiple product brands, but all related to one niche. Maybe that’s my issue. However, I heard that you might bring out a drop ship course, do you have a date set for release yet? I’d love to have some genuine trusted guidance from someone like yourself. Congrats on your success too Matt! Wish me luck 🙂 I need it…
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 2:57 pm
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Hi Lee
Sounds like you are doing great, just keep plugging away. I am not bringing out a dropship course, friends of mine were, but they have decided not to now.
Regards
Matt
Hi Matt,
I have had an e-commerce store for a year and a bit now. I signed vendor agreements with 4 dropshippers who are all in USA. I sell to the US market only. In Australia a good shopping cart is ashop.com.au. I’m thinking of using this for my next e-commerce venture based in Australia.
Great info and thanks for all your advice and posts.
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 2:56 pm
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Great comment, thanks Owen
Matt
Hi Matt,
I’ve been involved with drop, shipping from both my client’s side and my own personal store side. Finding quality drop shippers was the hardest for me overall.
I love using Zencart … easy to setup, though you do have to know CSS and understand the gist of PHP in order to design the look and to customize with addons. Zencart is free and well supported.
I’ve actually been thinking about getting back into the e-commerce business, as I’ve been away personally for a few years. I’m doing a small site … Word Press blog + cart addon. But I’m also thinking about doing a larger site again, using Zencart, for another niche.
Best of luck to you!
~ Barbara
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 3:02 pm
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Thanks for a great comment Barbara
Matt
Hi Matt
I’m assuming you’re selling to the US? Did you have any problems getting drop shippers to work with you because you live in NZ?
Thanks for any info
Gail
Matt Carter Reply:
June 4th, 2012 at 5:54 pm
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Hi Gail
I am not selling in the USA, I sell locally. But the USA has a lot more companies willing to dropship, and I can’t see why they would care too much if you are not in the USA, just need to give them a credit card to charge for the orders.
Matt
Matt
Hi Matt
This really is thorough information on dropshipping. It has to be a good thing to supply people with products they are looking for.
When I looked into dropshipping for Ebay in Australia I found it very difficult to choose a product from what was available. It sounds like dropshipping is making a wave now.
Yes, Magento is not very friendly for programmers. And of course it needs a lot of resources. It’s expensive to have dedicated servers for starting e-commerce business :(.
I have tried many other shopping carts and most of them are quite expensive (especially addons). Now I am using OpenCart and I really like it. It has all functions what I need and programming is very easy like in WordPress (php html). And also OpenCart file structure is very intuitive and addons are not so expensive like others have.
Also don’t use WordPress for e-commerce because it is created for blogging only (if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail).
Some opinions about dropshipping. I like it a lot because it looks like real business- you have phone number, company name, company address, trust seal, even your name and picture on site. It brings a lot of trust to customers and also for search engines. If you have affiliate links, adsense or cpa then you have to get always new customers only and margins are very low. Google hates these kind of “sites” because they are usually spamming and hiding their identity. You have noticed that most e-commerce sites were untouched after penguin update.
The reason why most of “gurus” are teaching only how to manage above mentioned spamming sites is because it easy to do. Just create one tiny wordpress site and put some articles and way to go. If they will tell you that dropshipping is the best solution and you need to create US company, US bank account (you have to visit US for this) and US merchant account (very hard to get) then how many low budget customers will join “guru’s” networks.
Matt Carter Reply:
June 5th, 2012 at 6:11 am
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Great points Jama
Regards
Matt
The software is good but their customer support was absolutely appalling. It took days to get an answer and they never did explain it properly.
I use cs cart which is a commercial version of so commerce which is flexible and works well even on big websites. Check out http://www.glasstablesandchairs.com which has used cs commerce for years. This site does more than $ million dollars per year without a hitch although it runs on a dedicated server.
Hi Matt,
How are you doing it so late in the system, this drop Shipment subject was first introduced to me by the people who had the Commission Blueprint , now after a few years go by you seem to have caught into it, there is nothing new here, only that the super affiliates and the like have realised that there is life after the death of the Internet marketing and this is the reason why there is a slow to catch this wave due to a slight paradigm shift.
I tried doing this only with one product some 12 years ago just to see if the internet is the way to go as it was relatively new, I sold some exercise machines and other products that even a handicapped person would have liked it shipped to their door and in some instances I have had to assemble the products for them, which I did not mind for a few $’s more.
All in all, I no longer have a current website, the one above was one of them, now I have been Internet free for quite some time, but will need better strategies to do a $BN sales even if they are envelopes for less than a $.
I like you as you have a picture of yourself as well as you seem like a genuine fellow.
There, I have loads of emails but they are all Spam selling all kinds of newbie stuff, There are many that just sell a system or 1/2 without any support, I will shoot them with a pee shooter if only I knew what they looked like.
Cheers
Matt Carter Reply:
June 5th, 2012 at 6:10 am
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Hi
Of course I knew about drop shipping a long time ago, I just never had the desire to do it until now.
Matt
Thanks for this post, very helpful.
Paul
You shared the strategy and I would be happy to reveal the niche that I’m doing this in. For HandbagsMART (dot) come I use dropshipdeals (dot) come products. — Handbags inspired by designers. I
Hi Matt,
you really have to check out storecoach com! there is no better info and training on the web about e-commerce and they have the best e-cart with hosting! i’m not an affiliate! just go check it out, they also have a forum and a good one! all info and training are free some of the softwares to, e-cart + hosting is 29,99
@ NeilB: “I believe Steve Clayton has a product called Eformula that is meant for this type of online store, worth a look to see how it fits with your concept.”
Steve Clayton is just the promoter! and owner of some off the softwares they use! the real geniuses behind the systems are the hermansen brother’s ( storecoach ) they worked togehter with clayton on e-formula 1,2 and 3!
David
Hello Matt,
Glad you are making out well with your drop shipping business. this is the way you suggested i go and it is still on the top of my list of things to do. i am still working on getting my existing sites ranking better and getting above the curve.
i do have to thank you though for all of your help. I originally bought the Rapid Profit Formula awhile back (seems like 100 yrs ago) and have been following you ever since. With your help and others I have quadrupled my income from last month and actually have checks coming this month from Google and Amazon and have sales in other affiliate programs as well.
I am working hard on this month to at least double again and keep this going. I really don’t want to go get a job!
TTYS,
Shaefercd
Matt Carter Reply:
June 5th, 2012 at 5:57 am
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Great stuff Shaefercd!!
Matt
Hi Matts,
When i was loooking for e-commerce solutions, I evaluate Magento and Prestashop.
Magento is a good solutions if you have budget to mantain it, because when the shop grows, Magento and the plugins require big resources for run well like your comment
And Prestashop, is with no doubt the first that I recommend today. Easy to install and configure, huge active community (and growing), continious updates, the server resources don’t require a big investiment.
Greetings
Valentin
Hey Matt,
When I first started out with making money online, I went to eBay. Then when I sold everything not nailed down in my home on eBay, I went to dropshipping… I found dropshipping to be way too time consuming, but then I was really green back then. So, maybe with my 3 + years experience in this online making money niche, I could give dropshipping another look!?!?
Thanks for the suggestion!
Cindy
Hi Matt,
So glad to see this article on dropshipping. I’ve been using 2 wholesale dropshippers since July 2011 to source my online store. I use BigCommerce as my shopping cart. It was easy to setup and product updates are easily done. I love using Big Commerce and I love the wholesale dropshipping business model.
I’ve only been in profit for 4 months now, but I expected that. It was a slow learning process but I’ve managed to get on the first page, position 5 of Google, finally!!
I’d pick opening an online store over MLM any time.
Hope to see more articles from you on the subject.
Denise
Matt Carter Reply:
June 5th, 2012 at 5:09 pm
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Great stuff Denise
Matt
Hi Matt,
Great post as I am always looking to broaden my knowledge
through use of dropshippers at my site. Have you thought of
using an alternative to ebay listing site that does not charge
all the fee’s that some listing site charge, free hosting and the company sends traffic on your behalf you build your webstore
with colors, banners, video for each product and theme that
you choose there’ even an affiliate program easy listing of items
and editing and much more and more to come all at no extra charge and never a valueation fee.
You can try it out for $1.00 and advertize 5 of your favorite sites on your webstore http://mylilurl.com/fzgb
300 Elite Team
Hi Matt,
I forgot to mention that you can sell all products with Buy Now
and not in Auction if you choose.
300 Elite Team
Thanks for the post Matt.
I seriously thought about trying drop shipping a few years ago but after doing some extensive research I never actually got round to doing it. Maybe now that a little water has gone under the bridge it may be the right time to revisit drop shipping. I must say your post has rekindled my interest, and adding another string to the bow can never do any harm.
Thanks again, Matt.
Paul.
Matt Carter Reply:
June 5th, 2012 at 5:08 pm
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Good to hear Paul
Matt
Hi Matt,
Dropshipping is down my to do list, but i do use Amazon to do the same thing i suppose ! They sell most things, people trust them to deliver etc. The only problem is small commission percentages, so i build mini sites for affiliates, that works very well.
Hi Matt,
This is another fantastic post, thank you for sharing this case study on dropshipping. I’ve been thinking of giving it a try but I’ve kept away due to one of the downfalls you mentioned in your post “out of stock”. As there is an app for nearly everything, I have been thinking that there must be a way for the supplier to send out an out of stock message on products to their customers, it probably already exists!
Matt,
I’ve used Volusion and BIg Commerce. Both are good, but I prefer Big Commerce. The downside to it is that it’s support hours are in the USA Central timezone. Whereas Volusion has 24 hour phone support. But both have great online help files.
JoAnn
Matt Carter Reply:
June 6th, 2012 at 5:07 am
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Thanks JoAnn
Matt,
I found this article very timely. As it seems to me that physical product has a lot to commend itself if you find the right niche.
My interest for dropshipping was sparked by listening to a recent Amazon Money Machine webinar.
But once I got into it I found there was a requirement to have either a US or a UK bank account. Further investigation indicated that this was rather difficult and perhaps costly to achieve.
So I find it interesting that you are doing it locally in NZ. I am based in Australia and wonder if local drop shipping is viable here.
Hey Matt.
I have no experience in drop shipping but I do have experience with some jewelry e-commerce stores my wife and I owned. We started with os commerce but that was too simplistic of a program so we graduated up to Magento.
I echo your response about Magento. A major resource hog, some really nice features, but a pain to work with… especially when you’re use to WordPress.
Congrats on the drop shipping site. Nice work.
HI Matt, I like your post very much and like to get your emails and have been for a whlie now..
I have been online trying for two years now – but no success with making anything work – I was looking at your video youtube product, but I just do not have any budget left, as buying some products before wipe me out and now i not sure if anything works to make a living online and build a business..
Could you recommed any free way for me to get some money just some coming in would be a great help matt…
I was building a list but now just lost my aweber account due to not having the fund … I only had six on there my list so not to bad ..any help matt would be wonderful mate….
Regards, Simon newcombe…
Hi Matt,
Been doing this for 6 years now. If you are not dedicated and willing to work really hard you won’t make it. To get more drop shippers I joined certain groups on LinkedIn and asked if anybody wanted to dropship for me and got plenty of extra dropshippers all for free!
Thanks for the great article.
I am in the midst of launching a drop ship site. My problem lies in the shipping quandry. Multiple vendors, shipping from multi locations. I have found no open source solutions for this. One vendor ships from California, the other from New York, etc. No one…no one allows you to assign shipping based on per product or per Manufacturer, without investing serious $$.
I may invest those $$ in the future, but for now, I just don’t have it. So I think I may be forced to set an average flat rate, understanding I may lose $$ on some sales, until I can find an open source solution. Would love to find out how others are handling that…..free…not paid.
Drop Ship is definitely better than brick and mortar but have not found a good worldwide distribution. Your market is limited and sometimes the margins are not adequate. There is a lot of competition out there and you have to find a niche market.
Great Post and a wonderful blog