HI THERE!

Looking to learn the secrets of dropshipping success? You’ve come to the right place!

Welcome to this guide, and congratulations on taking the next big step in your pursuit of an online stream of income.

I’ve been dropshipping for more than 10 years now and I’m thrilled to be your guide throughout this list of 18 Secrets From Successful Dropshippers Every Beginner Needs to Know.

They say you need a mentor to win in business, but the honest truth is you only need their advice.

But where can you find these mentors, and how can you discover their secrets?
Fortunately, we’ve taken care of that for you.

We’ve gathered up 18 dropshipping secrets from several of the most successful dropshippers we know. Some are business owners, some are former Drop Ship

Lifestyle coaches, and others are insanely-successful members of Drop Ship Lifestyle. With them, and their experience-tested tips, you’ll learn the secrets to what it really takes to succeeding at dropshipping.

But at the end of this document, the focus should be on taking what you’ve learned and applying it. Without execution everything you’ve learn goes to waste– and we want you to win!

Enough with the intro, now let’s get into it!

1.FIND THE ‘RIGHT-SIZED’ NICHE

Avoid a target market that is too small to reach the number of sales that you need to earn a comfortable income from your store. Rather than focusing on one type of product, a good strategy to increase your potential market size is to focus on multiple product lines.

Be careful though, there is a balancing act here. While you may sell multiple different product lines, they still need to be products that would appeal and be bought by the same customer. This will enable you to retain the benefits of running a niche store.

2.INVEST IN YOURSELF!

The very first thing you should do when starting your own business is investing in yourself and in the tools required to get the job done. The $1,000 Macbook Air I bought over three years ago has given me the tool to build my dropshipping stores, update my blog, and even record and edit podcasts all of which help contribute to me making over $100,000 a year.

The $1,000 I spent taking the Dropship Lifestyle course gave me the skills and knowledge to build stores worth over $100,000 as I’d average $2,000-$5,000 a month in profit per store. The $1,000 in books I’ve read over the years has expanded my mind and given me to confidence to go from making $600 a month to making well over $100,000 a year currently.

3.YOU CAN GROW AS BIG AS YOU CAN IMAGINE, YOU JUST NEED TO BELIEVE IN IT.

The very first part of the Drop Ship Lifestyle course is all about mindset, and it’s #1 for a good reason. Having the correct mindset and belief in yourself is paramount to your success as an entrepreneur.

4.GRAB YOUR MOST PROFITABLE TERMS FROM PLA’S AND RUN SEARCH TEXT ADS.

Most people get overwhelmed when it comes to Search Text Ads. They think they need to do 100’s of hours of keyword research. While that helps, you can launch your Search Text Ads by only looking in one spot.

Look at the search query report for your shopping ads. Take your most profitable terms. Run Search Text Ads to those keywords. Essentially, you’re increasing your visibility for your profitable terms from PLA’s. You’ll be boxing out competition and increasing your sales volume

5.THIS IS NOT A HOBBY, IT’S A BUSINESS.

The main difference I have seen between successful dropshippers and unsuccessful dropshippers is the mindset. Many people go into dropshipping looking at it as a hobby or a project. The successful dropshippers approach dropshipping as a business model. Once a newbie moves away from the ‘hobby’ mentality and more into the entrepreneur mentality, success comes along.

6.DON’T TAKE SHORTCUTS.

Unfortunately, people think that dropshipping (or any other simple way of making money) is a get-rich-quick approach. Therefore, I have seen many dropshippers get one supplier approved, upload a few products on their site and launch Adwords and Facebook Ads without optimizing anything. Follow the process because it works. Don’t skip a step because it could be crucial to your success.

7.DON’T GET OVERWHELMED WITH NICHE SELECTION.

Everyone struggles with this but what you need to do is open your mind. Get out amongst the shops and big stores for a day just walking around observing what is out there, always observe what’s around you. It’s amazing how many uncommon things there are that can be potential winners.

8.RESEARCH YOUR SUPPLIERS, KNOW ABOUT THEM AND THEIR BUSINESS

Know your suppliers before calling! Look at their website and read the About Us page. If they have been established for 20 years and have won a few awards, let them know when talking to them in conversation.

That shows you have taken time to learn about their business. If there is other information on their site, learn how to incorporate that into the conversation. It’s also recommended you know how to answer if a supplier asks you the question “What do you know about our business?” If you can answer that confidently it shows the supplier you’re serious about their business.

9.DIFFERENTIATE!

The Drop Ship Lifestyle methodology is built around comparison shopping – meaning that most of your buyers are likely to shop and compare with multiple stores, before they buy from you. So, if you’re going to get the sale, you had better stand out. It’s not enough just to be another store on the list.

It’s possible that you might get a few sales that way – but if you’re looking for sustained success, you need to stand out by offering some kind of UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITION (or UVP). Every store will have their own unique value, but in all cases, your UVP must do 3 things, in order to truly set you apart from the competition:

DIFFERENTIATE – Has to be unique
RESONATE – The customer must value it (need, want, desire)
SUBSTANTIATE – You must be able to prove it

10.KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID (AKA THE KISS THEORY)

Don’t get caught in the weeds, trying to add too many plugins, apps, code edits, etc.
They are only going to slow you down in the beginning. Fundamentally, all you need to succeed and convert sales are these things:

A clean website
Good product descriptions (& images)
Your clear UVP
And a good offer (pricing, promos, free gifts, etc.)

Get those things right first, and prove your concept. Then you can start tweaking (and beware… you will Never stop!)

11.CALLING SUPPLIERS WHEN YOU HAVE NO PRODUCTS

When I first start calling suppliers, I start with the Bronze suppliers that have dealer applications available on their website first. What I do is I submit the application online then immediately I follow-up with a phone call. What I try to do is get the supplier to approve the application and send over their product data in one shot.

This saves me a ton of time because they usually have their data setup for easy upload so I don’t have to waste time loading dummy products. The second reason I start with bronze suppliers is I have found that when I have all live products on my site that I am much more confident later calling gold suppliers because I am legitimately up and running.

12.WHEN CALLING SUPPLIERS HAVE A BUYER’S MINDSET, NOT A SELLER’S MINDSET

When I call a supplier I let them know that I’m potentially interested in becoming a dealer for their products. I tell them what I like about their products and then I ask them a series of qualifying questions. I ask them what type of lead times they have, I ask if they ever run out of stock and how often it happens. I ask about what type of product images and data sheets they have available. I ask if they have a MAP policy and how strictly they enforce it.

Depending on the product I also ask about how they handle returns or damages. I ask the supplier if I can pay them with a credit card and if I can use their shipping account. Lastly, I let the supplier know that I offer free shipping and I ask them what type of margin I could expect if I sell their products at MAP.

Remember that when you take on a supplier it’s a partnership. If a supplier doesn’t hold up to their end of the deal, you are the one who looks bad in the customer’s eye

13.DON’T BE SCARED TO SPEND MONEY ON PLA’S

When I first started dropshipping, Michael Erickson’s in depth PLA training was not available. I am in a highly competitive niche so clicks could range anywhere from $3 to $5 per click. Needless to say I spent some serious money learning the in’s and out’s of google PLAs.

With that being said, the learning curve for new students has been drastically reduced. You are going to have to spend money to learn how to make money; but it won’t be a fraction of what one would have to spend 3 or 4 years ago to figure out Google. Remember, that you will be learning advanced advertising techniques so be patient with yourself. But also know that once you figure out how to do this correctly that your life will never be the same because if you do it right you can 10x what you spend on Google in sales generated.

14.THINKING BARELY OUTSIDE THE BOX

I always see people thinking of either super common ideas, or just crazy far outlandish ones for their niches. My best selling product ever was a portable ice maker. If you think about it, it was just barely outside the box. Not as common as a refrigerator, but not as UNCOMMON as say a walk in deep freezer for a restaurant. Finding that nice balance early on makes niche selection a much easier process.

15.ABANDON CART CHECKOUTS

A surprisingly large number of new dropshippers do not realize that you can check abandoned carts in your Shopify store by clicking on the ORDERS tab and seeing the “Abandon Cart” section appear. Clicking on that will show you if people have recently added items to cart, gone through most of the checkout process; but left before purchasing. Sending emails to try and recapture these customers is one of the most efficient ways to close more sales immediately!

16.USING A CUSTOMER TRACKING SOFTWARE FOR FREE:

Knowing what your customers are doing on your site is VALUABLE information.
Many of the coaching calls I take on use the free trial of Lucky Orange. This app can immediately help you learn more about your customers and website interactions in just a few days!

17.PERSIST, PERSEVERE, AND TRUST IN YOURSELF AND THE SYSTEM

18.SCHEDULE YOUR TIME WISELY

This means cutting down on watching TV or looking at what your friends ate today on social media. There are even Chrome extensions to only see ads in Facebook!
Scheduling your time wisely means cutting out the fat to focus on what’s important. It also means NOT grinding 16-hour days for weeks in a row.

Remember you’re building an online business to ultimately have more time outdoors or doing what it is you like doing, right? So start scheduling days off, shorter days (to force yourself to be more productive), naps, and whatever it is you like doing. Do work hard on your store, but please don’t exhaust yourself doing so. Being busy does not necessarily equal being productive.

CONGRATULATIONS!

Now…If you haven’t already, it is time to put your newfound knowledge into action!

You can do this. You deserve a second stream of income that is completely controlled by you, one that can work on whenever you choose and take a break from whenever you choose. Or, if your goal is to create an online stream of income that can replace your 9-to-5 entirely so you can quit your job, you can achieve that as well – and you’ll get it if you work hard and follow my proven system.

When I was first starting out in the eCommerce more than a decade ago, I remember
how overwhelming the process of building an online business was. One of the key things that enabled me to achieve success was ignoring the “I need to build a business” thought, and just focusing on the very next step I knew I had to take… the little but important next action that would take me that much closer to realizing my goal.

So, whether you’re feeling overwhelmed by this or whether you’re just excited and ready to get started, take that very next step. And then the next one after that. And before you know it, you’ll be looking back at how far you’ve come as a successful business owner and entrepreneur