Ep 23 | Is It TOO LATE To Start A Dropshipping Store?

The first question of today is by Sean Lim.

I own a brand of Herbal Tea and Soap online. I am the manufacturer of these products too.
How do I create brand awareness and build a strong web of drop-shippers online?
Is there a great difference Facebook ads wise between selling your own brand and drop-shipping other people’s products?
Thank you sooooo much for your life saving videos!

You have two questions. Number one is how do I create brand awareness and build a strong web of dropshippers online? I don’t think that is going to be your first step into your market. In your business type that should not be the first step. Your first step is to basically focus on how you can actually have a direct ROI from the products that you are a manufacturer of. Dropshipping can come afterwards. If your brand starts to take off you can actually have people to be affiliate of your business or you can let them drop ship your product. In the beginning if you are brand new to the market, if you are just a manufacturer or you’re starting out, it’s very hard to convince dropshippers to dropship your products unless if you have your products in a particular network kind of like Aliexpress which obviously it’s going to be pretty hard because they are based in China. Anyway, going back to your business I would highly suggest you to start figuring out how you can get your product in market right away.

So to answer your second question which is, is there a great difference Facebook ads wise between selling your own brand and dropshipping other people’s products? It is absolutely the same. You’re just eliminating the dropship side.  You’re just basically fulfilling or selling your own products and have more control of them since that you are the only person that can actually sell those products which you have a competitive advantage of.

Here are my suggestions if you’re just starting out and selling herbal tea and soap online.  There are actually many strategies that you can pursue but I’m just going to share a couple of them with you so you can think of it yourself and see which one resonates with you the most.  Basically focus on one funnel at a time.  The first one is you should actually build the entire store to have all the products, the herbal tea and soap. And what you can do is find Instagram influencers to do shout outs for your products. You want to find people who are in the health space, weight loss space and in the fitness space. Let’s say that they have tried your herbal tea. They are absolutely awesome and all those other stuff and link it back to your store. That’s a way that you can actually get brand awareness out right away.

The second part is that you can actually create an herbal tea eBook. I’m not sure what kind of herbal tea you have. I would assume it’s going to be something for weight loss, home remedy, something gears toward fighting sickness or flu etc. What you have to do is basically have an eBook that educates people on the health benefits of drinking tea and why they should be drinking tea so that you know that when you have an opt-in page to give away the eBook you know that any person who actually subscribes to your eBook are the ones who are interested in learning more about herbal tea. From there what you can do is have your auto responder to basically talk about like a different tea every week or every day. You educate them and at the end of it, you say that “At XYZ store we sell premium herbal tea leaves” and basically ask them right away. What you’re doing is that you’re going after two sets of market, 1. You’re getting Instagram influencers to build your brand 2. You’re basically building a tribe of people who love your content and also giving you the ability to sell them based on the content that you have given out.

Last but not the least and that is if you are comfortable obviously, I suggest you to simply get camera or a phone and shoot a recipe video. In this case you’re giving some contents out.  I am just asking you to do this because I believe that in order for you to be successful you have to do things that are uncomfortable. I’ve seen a lot of this and it’s doing really, really well especially in the paleo and gluten-free markets.  So for example there’s going to be like some fusion tea that you can use like maybe using passion fruit juice or whatever, I’m not really in that market and tie in with whatever herbal tea you have and say “Because it has this herbal tea inside, it can help you increase your energy level etc.” You are basically doing a recipe video. I would tell you, recipe videos sell really, really well. You are giving out content and branding at the same time. Now, how do you turn this into a tactical standpoint and have an ROI with that? Simply create retargeting ads based on people who actually watched the recipe video. So let’s say that you’re doing a green tea smoothie and in your herbal tea line you have a green tea. From there, you can basically give away that free content, share that content and do that recipe. Anyone who actually watched that video of the recipe, guess what? You know that they are interested in that green tea. They’re not basically interested in yours yet but you can poke them of a retargeting ad saying that you are selling a premium grade herbal tea and give them an offer or get them to go to your store and checkout your product and basically buy your product. I hope that helped you out. These are just the things that I would do if I were in your position. Listen, anyone who is watching right now, there is no doubt that video content is going to be the key. In 2018, it is all about video content. If you want to actually shine out and beat your competitors, the only way that you can do aside from running Facebook ads in order for you to build your brand is to do a video content. This is why I’m always doing my video content just to shine out and have you guys build a tribe of followers obviously to listen to what I say.

Moving on to the second question by Rafi.

hi fred
hope this time u will answer me .
all most 10 days running ad i did not get any sale but data that i got as bellow

website adds to catr :690
web regitrations completed :691

website leads :689
website purchases :690
website searches :690
website content views :2076

cpp :.$05
ctr:10.29%

cpc :$.04

total reeace :6708
frequency 1.17
relevance score :9
i need ur advise what to do with that ad?
running that ad or scaling ?
how do i scale ?
rafi

So you’ve been running ads for 10 days and you have gotten no sale, if that’s the case drop that product. 10 days is too much running time and you’re wasting way too much time on that one particular product if you’re still not getting a sale.

However looking at your data I find it a little bit interesting. You said website add to carts is 690. Web registration completed is 691. Website leads is 689. Website purchases are 690. Website searches are 690. Website content views are 2,076. Cost per purchase is $0.05. CTR is 10.29 Cost per click is $0.04 Total reach is 6,708. Frequency is 1.17. Relevancy score is 9.

First of all, the data looks very awkward to me to be really honest with you. I have a feeling that your pixels are installed incorrectly. I’m not sure if you’re an ecom or you’re basically doing affiliate marketing or building your digital business.

You had given me add to carts, website registration completed, website searches and website leads so ultimately at the end of the day I can tell you right out the gate there is something wrong with your pixel. I can tell flat out because there’s no way that you’re getting this kind of data and you’re not getting a single sale. So you asked me, “I need your advice on what to do with the ad, running the ad or scaling it, how do I scale?” I don’t even need to basically share with you how to scale because you are getting data that is irrelevant and incorrect right now. I will actually drill down to the culprit first on why you are getting this kind of data points which doesn’t make sense. It totally doesn’t make sense to me. If you have 690 add to carts and not a single sale, there is absolutely something going on that is seriously wrong. You definitely want to look at that.

Again, I don’t think that at this point you want to focus on running more ads or focus on scaling an ad or figuring out how to scale an ad especially if you’re not even getting a sale. There’s no point of scaling an ad because you’re just going to waste more money. I hate to say that but that’s the truth. What I would actually suggest you to do is please go back and drill down to the culprit on why you are getting all these weird data points because from my experience looking at this there’s something wrong with your pixel. You definitely want to take look at it and see what’s going on. Go into your pixel page and see what pages are actually firing those pixels and firing these conversions because if you don’t have the right data you can advertise and invest your money and be wasting a lot of money. That’s what I would suggest you to do first Rafi.

Moving on to the third question of the day by Admon. Admon said,

I have an ad with a 2.9% CTR (link), $1.09 CPC (link) and $31.66 CPM, and i’ve got 17 “Website Purchases” but no sales on my Shopify store. FYI, I did a $10 a day adset and ran it for a day. What’s going on here?

What’s going on here is I firmly believe it is a pixel problem too. I’m not sure what you have chosen for your conversion event because it seems like right now Facebook is not optimizing based on your actual website purchase. It’s actually giving you different conversion data. So if you’re inside your Facebook ad reporting and you hover over the conversion for that ad set it will actually have a mini pop up window to tell you where that 17 “website purchases” come from. If you’re not getting a sale and you’re getting 17 “website purchases” I will assume that there is something wrong with the set of your ad and Facebook is not really optimizing a piece of your purchase, they are actually looking at everything. They’re maybe add to carts, maybe initiate check out or maybe website search etc. What I would suggest you to do is before you do anything else Edmund go into your ad reporting inside your Facebook ad manager and hover on top of that 17 conversion, it will give you a little bit of a pop up window to tell you the break down of that 17 conversions. That is very important that you want to take a look at.

Your cost per click link is great and so as your CTR. It’s just that your CPM is $31.66. After you have figured out where that 17 “website purchases” came from based on what I have just taught you, you have to actually drill down what age and demographic are affecting your CPM and are not clicking on your ad. You will find a particular gender or age range that is not converting as well but their CPM is a lot higher just turn them off. That’s what I would suggest you to do. Your CTR link at 2.9% is really great. It’s just that the CPM is a little bit expensive. Again, I would suggest you eliminate the age range and the gender that is affecting your CPM and is not producing the result that you want based on the data points that you already have.

Moving on to the fourth question of the day by Michael Jameson. He said,

I am having a difficult time with Alliexpress fixing my Credit Card Appeal process and I am losing customers and money. Its been going on since November 27th. Any advise on how to try and speed up this process. Hundreds of people are having the same problem. It is taking way too long. I have contacted chat sessions on Alliexpress, Left dozens of emails and nothing has been done.

This is an Aliexpress thing. Obviously, I don’t know how they work and how their business is structured. However, what I advise you to do is just set up a new account and fulfill the order first while you’re waiting for the credit card appeal to get processed and done. For now, maybe ask for your friend or wife or girlfriend’s credit card, create a new Aliexpress account and just fulfill the current orders that you have so that you’re not getting pissed off customers. Again, it is a process that people would need to go through. It sucks, I agree with that but again there’s nothing you can do other than wait and be patient. In the mean time, get a new Aliexpress account. It’s free, right? Get a new account, get a new credit card and just go at it and start fulfilling your orders first. That’s what I would suggest you to do.

For the last question of the day byHortence Levene. Hortence said,

Hi Fred….Thanks again for the knowledge that you share with us.
My question is…..is it too late to start a e-commerce store seeing that its the last month of the year. I read the e-book and it was amazing. Now i am ready to start applying what i have learned.

Again, I said this earlier. It is never too late. It doesn’t matter if it is the last day of the year. It doesn’t matter if it is the first day of the year. It doesn’t matter if it’s Black Friday. It doesn’t matter because when you’re building a business you’re not building a business based on seasonality. You’re building a business based on sustainability. The truth is ecommerce transaction is projected to transact over like $4 X of what we are having in 2017. With that, guess what? It is never going to be too late but what I’m trying to say to you is that start taking action, start applying because if you stop or procrastinate or not take action, you will regret and you will missed out on the trajectory of the trend that ecommerce is going on right now.

So don’t let those excuses be on the way, just take action. It doesn’t matter because there will always be people who are going to buy products online and there will be more and more people buying products online. For those of you who are watching right now and you are procrastinating to start creating your ecommerce store seriously throw that all the way and start right now. Today is Saturday, start now, start right after this video, start working on your store because the longer you wait the less opportunity that you will achieve and the more time you’re basically wasting right now.

That’s really it for today’s daily huddle. I know that we have a lot of people here right now even on a Saturday. I love it! I hope that you’re on Facebook because you are working on your ads and checking out on your competitors and not just scrolling on your news feed. If you are on YouTube I hope that you are not watching your favorite show or those parody thingy online. I hope that you’re gaining your knowledge or investing in yourself at the same time.

On Monday, very, very, very exciting thing is going to happen. Obviously the deadline for our raffle to a trip to Vancouver all paid by me ended on midnight last night. Now what I’m going to do on Monday during our daily huddle which is going to be at 6PM Pacific, 9PM Eastern, I’m going to basically do the raffle to see who is going to be the winner of the paid trip to Vancouver and to meet me in person. We’re going to spend a full day one on one and I will basically coach you on your business. Make sure you are here with us on Monday at 9PM Eastern and 6PM Pacific to see if you are going to be the winner or not.

That’s all I really have for today guys. Listen, we’re going to have more amazing stuff coming. I am gearing up something that I’m working on. I know that during holidays a lot of people wind down but during the holidays I’m going to do something pretty amazing that will start right in the New Year. I’m going to make sure that you guys send a New Year resolution with me to actually build a business. I’m going to give you guys a lot of training and a lot of content to help you build your business. This is going to be something that no one has talked about in the industry; no one has shared about it. I’m going to actually do something that will blow you guys away so make sure you open my emails, come to our daily huddles, follow me on Facebook, and subscribe to my YouTube channel to make sure you always get the latest and most amazing content from me. Other than that I look forward on seeing you guys on Monday. Bye for now.