Drop shipping without Shopify is more profitable than ever!!

Hi, the TheBrute here again with an amazing share with you guys!

First of all, I would like to discuss how I started drop shipping, what I did, and how it worked for me!

For those who dont know what is drop shipping, can refer to this article.

Till now I have done over 50K$ in sales within 4 months with two stores.
This article describes about my story pointing out all the mistake I made during my journey.
If youre in learning phase you can learn a lot & save money and time from testing these variables
Almost every point I mentioned should be considered important, ignore the variables what I dont talk about!
I have also talked about the apps and software I have used and I recommends only which are useful.

And even if you are stuck somewhere, I can help, as time is important, I am helping because when I started no one agreed to help me. I wasted so much money & time, which you can save to use with the perfect strategy to research product, and test them with facebook ads.

My Skype ID: The.Brute if you see too many impersonators just add @hotmail.com to the username

I will go first for High rep member on the forum for mentorship in order to get vouch here on the thread. I am providing mentorship too.

Requirements-
A Store.( I would Recommend Wordpress).

If you dont know, how to you use wordpress, you can order a custom store on Alidropship and theyll handle the rest.

Or else you can visit basic WordPress tutorial on youtube,

How to install plugins and themes in WordPress.

I dont recommend you to go with Shopify, it will eat up your budget soon.

But there is lot of value below.

Many guys in front of me have done over 10k sales a day and over 500k$ sales per month with 20-40% net profit.

I dont have those 100k-500k$ like big results, but I have figured out what works and what not, you might become better than me in short time

PS: You can skip my story and continue from Targeting strategies, but I have mentioned what main mistakes I made in my journey.

Short Forms I might had used below:-

VV - Video Views Objective.
CC - Custom Audience.
LLA - Look Alike Audience in Facebook.
95% & 75% Video viewers are people who were interested in your advertisement video.

My Story

I started drop-shipping in 2016 December after getting pitched & excited from those bulky screenshots from bragging Gurus over the internet, it was fascinating as well as very seducing that made me enter into the drop shipping thing.

I signed up for 60 days Trial Shopify!

Phases Below Describes Every Step I took During My Journey.

Phase# 1

Struggling- Spent 2-3k$ - Earned through affiliate websites.
I was spending like crazy over Facebook ads with only aim to become a millionaire in the first month lol.

Mistakes:

I thought FB ads were easy and I can master it after watching 10-20 youtube videos because every video taught something different which motivated me with feeling that this time it will work.
No experience with FB ads, I had money in the pocket so just spent it massively.
No experience with product research, I tried to sell what fascinated me always!
Finding a new unique trend that nobody ever had discovered in past was my biggest mistake, like finding a new fidget spinner. Finding a new Bitcoin-like thing.

Phase # 2

I remember I tried over 100 product and was not getting results as expected, and till date I haven't found my winner/ace product yet and I was struggling to get even single sale a day. Till this time I had spent over 5k$.

Mistakes:

Always tried to target USA, AUS, CANADA, UK & NZ as taught on youtube and by Gurus.
Always checking one product with one audience type in technical language one adset per product on Facebook (Biggest mistake).
Fascinated By Shopify themes and apps as per recommendation by gurus and wasted ton of money.
My chosen theme was not optimized for conversion and doesn't look like a real shop!
Paid Shopify for 2-3 months as trial was over, and the transaction fee to Shopify even I was not using Shopify payments I have to pay 1-2$ for every transaction that occurred over the store so in total 3 months I paid 400$ to Shopify alone with apps.

Phase #3

I was getting sales but was still running heavily negative in ROI (Return Over/On Investment).

Mistakes:

I got stuck on one product which got me 34 sales in one week and tried it again and again with new ads and creatives/ new ad account everything. But at last it did not work out and I invested over 1600$ over that product on Facebook ads as I was forcing it to work. (Moral never fall in love with one product, you cannot force people to buy your crap. If its a winner it will show you the results right away!)
I was fascinated with products that gave me sales even it was not profitable.
I did not test products over a different audience.
I thought facebook will send only buyers to buy from my store as computer bot, I did not realize that these are real people they must be excited by the ads I publish! Secondly, store must give the feeling of real store brand. (Everything must be setup correctly & you must take everything seriously and dont ignore even a small glitch/bug.)
Used Shopify as other people recommended and never got results with it, I would recommend you to please shift to other cheaper platforms and once you hit your numbers, you can hire local guys to outsource your stuff.

Phase #4

Being a student I had spent all the money I earned from here and there like with the Instagram influencer and web hosting affiliate marketing and some Fiverr gigs and I was on the road to quit drop shipping out! But still after watching and reading motivational blogs as well as quotes, I took the risk of my carrier dedicated to be a drop-shipper and as an affiliate marketer, I stood up to rise again and this was the time of 2017 October when there was huge competition in Facebook ads and still I was targeting Big 5 countries as I mentioned above blindly.

I took the step out of my fleet tried a product that was working for others according to my research which was neither spooned by any guru on youtube nor even I got to know about it on any course, I just blended everything up.

I shifted from Shopify to WordPress (Alidropship) taking some hopes in heart that one day dropshipping will work for me.

In spite of trying product I liked, I tried the product which was working for other stores with better values and better offer, instead of copying other store product descriptions, I wrote myself as I was doing with affiliate marketing. This time, the difference was instead of digital product it was a physical item.

I started getting more sales than ever before!
Then in November, I was going to quit, but I asked my family for money and my mother gave me around 6k$.

However, this time it was do or die for my dream as an entrepreneur.

Believe me or not, in this phase I was trying the products which were working for other competitors and caching trends, and boom I found my first winner product and just after that another winner product and this was the time I was enjoying my hard work from past 1 year I was doing 900-1800$ each day with 20-30% profit margin for next 5-6 Weeks and after that product died out.

Although I was not able to scale to 3k-5k a day, I was able to write up my own recipe to find and test products.

In December, I got another winner product that changed my life.

In the Below Image, I experienced the first winner product, as my 5$ budget adset gave me 9 sales on the first day!

From This

I was trying to scale the above product and was little successful, although I was investing in testing scaling adsets with different strategies.

To This

And the last it worked and I was profitable with this scaled adset, for around 3 Weeks. The below stats are of january.

My Order Value is good and the conversion rate with alidropship is awesome

Some Real stats on Facebook dashboard!

Yes you need to invest in the testing but once you hit the winner you can recover 10x what you invested, but it is only possible when you do it with perfect strategy and plan.

You need sales not "Add to carts", if you cannot manage the profit at low price at which you are getting sales, stop selling that product.

Like in below image I got so many ATC but the conversion was not good.

In the Below, Image second is the winner product, while the first getting sales but not profitable, I tried almost 25+ audience forcing it to work but it did not.

Targeting Strategies

Let me explain you the type of interests on Facebook first:-

Well, there are two types of interests on Facebook.

Broad & Targeted interest respectively.

Note: I see people understanding broad interest and small/narrow interest on the basis of size.

Broad interest & Sub Interest - It is just general one-word interest in which it contains all the basic and sub-interest under it (Sub interest can be called narrow or small interest). For example, dance or dancing can be considered broad interest under which sub interest like dance class, dance school, dance club etc, will come. So the point is people interested in dance class, dance school, dance club are interested in dance (the broad one). But not all who comes under broad interest dance or dancing know about sub-interests.
In more depth, people would know what is dance. Facebook might keep them under broad dance interest but many of those people would not be interested in dance classes, and other dance subcategories.

Similarly, people who know fishing (Broad) will not be interested in fishing rod
But people interested in fishing rod will be interested in fishing

Hope you got what I am trying to say lol.

All the Long Interests ( like ABC XYZ OR ABC DEF GHI etc more than 2 or 3 words) come under narrow interests category and only specific people know it.

VV Strategy - Here I run VV campings to get a lot of shares and comments to the world wide audience and created a CC audience of people who had watched the video more than 95% & 75% of the video. And then Creating LLA for BIG 5 Countries and running Purchase Conversion Ads
Tried over 5-10 Product and it did not work out for me, I was getting sales here and there, but was not profitable.

Cold & Hot Audience - Unless you have a niche brand where you sell one or similar items in your store dont try to go with this method.

Stacking Small Audience Interest - Stacking Small interest work but only when you do it correctly. But this thing never worked for me in starting, but it works now

Flexing- This always gave me higher CPM for the USA at starting like 70$ but for WW 10-15$ (Cost per 1000 people reach), but once you have experienced ups and downs these all strategies do work Cheesy

.

If you don't know what is flexing and stacking just google it.

What's Working Now?Metrics

You can find tons of product research video over the youtube, try them and figure them out, also watch some FB ads video but dont get carried away with the stuff the guys mentions

use your common sense.

Recommended Metrics the ads:- For Big 5 Countries for low range product!

CPC (Cost Per Click) = Under 1$ , but if are profitable with high ranger product, keep it running.
CTR (Click Through Rate) = This shows how many people are interested in your product, indirectly how your advertisement impacted your targeted audience to buy the product you are advertising, so the more CTR the more good chances to get sales thus low CPC.
CPM (cost per mill or cost per thousand) = For winner even in USA it will be like 5-10$ and on world wide 1-2$ or even under 1$

Metric before Killing & scaling Adsets!

After 300 Reach your CPM is not under 30$ for BIG 5 kill your adset, try different audience (Obviously under 5$ CPM in WW)
After 500 Reach you haven't got any shares or less than 4 shares on your post, it means people are not interested in it you have test different audience or try a new product.
People will say that keep running you ads for 2 days and 3 days before killing it, this was the reason I lost all my money in FB testing, At starting, I get few sale on a new product and none for next 2-3 business days the cost per purchase keep on increasing and never become profitable ( but yes you can test different audience with same product), FB cant find buyers, dont stick to such product.
Beware of lucky sales, I don't know how this happened but sometimes, just after you launch new adset for new product you get a random sales and nothing more than that.
Before scaling you must check whether the adset giving you sales is constant or not, your adset must have the consistency of giving 3-4 sales each day for next 3 days.
Before you scale the ROI must be more than 3x as it will gradually decrease as you continue to scale.

You Dont Need Any Guru Course To Build Your Ecom Federation!

ABOUT THE AD

Ad-copy

Since I have started, I saw tons of youtube videos and tried so many courses,
Except for only few guys, hardly anybody has discussed about writing a perfect blend of adcopy!

When you are advertising on facebook, people are scrolling over the feeds and whenever they find something interesting they stop and watch it whether its an image or a video.

That interest we want into our ads, your audience must show interest over your ads and this is only possible when you blend your product with their needs and passion but not yours!

Your adcopy must engage them, should be eye catchy & professional.

The Blend

ADCOPY

You must always argue, question, surprise, bug or even accuse your audience to stop them from scrolling.

I always ask a question and accuse them or write a funny line related to my video lol.

CREATIVE

Your creative must be exciting to your audience so write your ads in a way they look perfect, within first 7 seconds of the video you have the chance to convert the viewer into a buyer.

ADSET

I do budget 10-15$ adsets even 8$ are enough for Big 5 testing phase.
I always do more than one audience now.
Always use 1 day conversion window, 7 day never worked for me.
Try to target other countries rather than BIG 5 Read Top online shopping countries related article on shopify blogs and other blogs over the internet, hope you know how to search
I always use auto-bid.
Always check people who live currently in this location.

#Conversion Aim

Always use Add To Cart Or Purchase conversion pixel, you dont need any custom conversion nor a seasoned pixel!

Did you get that?
This question confused me very much at starting, but after personal testing and results. I am on the conclusion that Facebook optimizes your ads at the adset level nothing more than that.

Do not try view content, do not try Engagement Ads(PPE), I don't know how it works for some guys but it don't work for most!

For retargeting use DPA ads & reach as objective.

WHAT METRICS IF YOU DONT GET SALES?

Kill the ads if it gave you 2-3 sales on the first day and none on the next 2 days. (Dont be emotional, rather try another audience)
Dont kill the ad if it is constant for past 3 days and its not working well for 2 days.(There are some bad days in ecom too)
If you getting high CTR, Button clicks so as more view content & still less or no sales that is not the problem of your facebook ad, your website is not optimized
Solution can be - Just change your product page description a bit & reduce price. Even if you are not profitable, kill!
Facebook sends real people to your store, so your store must be compelling & real in order to get sales.

APPS I HAVE USED

Commerce Inspector - if you can figure out how to use this correctly, you can find winning product very easily.
FB Audience Insight Plus - I dont know how much time I wasted finding small and highly targeted interest (sub interests or narrow interests discussed above), which never worked out for me.
FBDOWN.NET - to download competitor Video.
Filmora & PS - I use it to edit videos with photoshop.
Connectio.io - Full of waste!!
Ecomhunt, pexda, and any other sites - are just earning money from you guys, although I don't recommend them.
Companion labs - yes they work, you can try once you hit a winner.
I will add more, currently I dont remember what I had used in past lol.

The best app till now I used, the email extractor! I Highly recommend newbies to get this, FB CANDY

Listen, you dont need to buy any course all the basic & technical stuff is on youtube for free & still if you want to try courses I suggest go with group buy sites you can get courses way cheaper than there actual price.

But still, no course or no one will teach you their secret sauce, you have to understand it!

Most of the courses I tried to teach basic and technical stuff like how to set up fb ads!
They dont teach how fb ads work! some of them do teach about pixel seasoning which is outdated now! Facebook is way smarter than we think!

But what do you need is the perfect strategy to test product, and how to be profitable.

So after you watch youtube videos & courses, write down everything on paper then plan yourself to make the best strategy out of what you have learned so far to test products.
Remember, scaling is different for different product, some product cant be scaled, and some can be scaled easily.

Still Need Help?

Already I shared a lot. But still if you need help? I can help you with small consulting fees as time is important and in our industry time is money.

I don't want to be a Guru, but I want to help those out here who are struggling and lost in the world like once, I was investing and getting no result, I can help you through teamviewer guiding step by step how to setup adsets in the right way.

How to setup campaign in 2018, what countries to target and what metrics you would need to keep your advert running.

I know many of you would be against me that why am I charging because people dont value free stuff, and time is important, hope you understand.

What Topic Ill share?

Finding The Winning Product, confirming.
Testing Product on Facebook.
Deep understanding of facebook ads and pixel without any complication - you can do anything with brand new pixel no need to cook/season your pixel like other people claim on youtube and gurus.
How to be the customer on every other similar shopify store without paying a buck? (I might remove this soon)
Optimizing your Store.
Why You dont need Shopify and save thousands of $$$ with Wordpress.
A Strategy ofcourse.

There will be 4-5 Teamviewer Season of 1-2 hour each.
Consulting Fee: Depends on your experience! & Mainly you'll need to signup with my affiliate links thanks

Note:Be ready to invest, 1-2k$ investment for facebook ads testing phase, eventually youll need experience too how things work and it will take time, you might lose some money in the beginning so what I can do is, guide you on correct path instead of building your own, with every step as you move. Most importantly my time is important, I need results I am telling you something, that no one will and you must value that!

"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." - Benjamin Franklin

The Last words:

I got almost what I invest with knowledge and experience that is priceless now!
Although I became better with time, and your journey timeline can be short or even more longer than me, you might be smart at grasping things better than me but remember there's always end of everything, what matters is how many times you stand up, if you are having the similar story, just continue dont quit! Just use your common sense and dont get carried away.

You can read the most valued article I ever read from somebody I don't know
http://savvybloke.com/shopify/

If above link is not working for you, you can try web cached version here

I am here to learnedou guys, I can share what I learnt and hope you value that, most of the key point I shared above freely are not discussed anywhere else.

Why I am charging for consulting?
As I have discussed I lost around 8k$ just to understand how this stuff works, as it appears to be easy to a newbie(From Bragging gurus & Youtube videos which are free).
I can save you from the trouble I had faced during my journey, to learn the strategy about the market. You can use the rest of the money in correct product testing strategy, rather than spending & wasting a lot like I did. Without the help that I am getting to you learn the same, it will waste lot of time & money for you same as me.

For Haters:

I dont sell myself short, I charge for time and services. There should be no shame in asking for a price when its comes to any monetary outcomes when I or even you help someone to achieve goals through which they can change their life although I have already provided so many key points.
I have learned a skill over couple of years of hard work, seeing up and downs.
Everybody here is quite matured and knows that free is a good way to attract customers period nothing else is free in this world.