You use woocomerce
before that how many ecomerce cms tested ?

I will try now Woocomerce, I hope it works fine on SEO and Multilingual stores.
I Work a lot over Joomla, but is to many time consuming.
Magento and prestashop look fine, but if you need a SEO-Multilingual Store,
Really I dont Know how Magento or Prestashop gonna work :/

What do you Know about it ?
Best SEO-Mutilingula Store, With a Nice convertion % ?


Sorry about my english Iam native spanish spoken XD

---

[DELETED]

Thanks for your kind words. I agree this can be done by anyone they just need to jump in. You can read and learn as much as you like but until you start taking action, making mistakes and learning from them you are going nowhere. It's all about the journey.

Congratulations on your success, I too love EComm sites, making decent money, just wondering aren't your profits smaller buy just dealing with drop shipping companies as opposed to buying from China? I'm from Australia and I don't think we have drop shipping here I might look into it, but just wondering how much do drop ship companies in the US markup the prices on products?

Also what tool are you using for finding niches? I am using Ultimate Niche Finder, but I still have to have an idea on what specific area to work in, it doesn't do all the work completely like coming up with the Niche from scratch, please share some thoughts, since we are not in the same geographic market.

Feel free to PM me if you do not wish to discuss some methods on here, thank you.

This is a big bottleneck in my business. I can do everything else much faster than I can find good reliable suppliers in niches that are profitable and not over saturated. I think it's something you just need to find yourself though. Do some Google searching and make some inquiries. If you like at Alksense other posts he writes a fair bit about finding suppliers.

Also, once someone finds a good supplier it's unlikely they will want to share (me inclusive) as that will just increase their competition!

"I would really appreciate the help if you can tell me where I can source products to dropship to the American market"
- What I do is actually LOOK for competition. I brainstorm niche ideas that meet certain criteria and then I look for people who are already selling what I want to sell. I look for other online retailers who only sell for drop ship suppliers. Those who do not have warehouses, retail stores or showrooms.

"By the way, which store scripts are you guys using? Though I am not using Wordpress for my only store, I am thinking I might use for other stores I am planning on building. Would WP Store lack the professional look? What you reckon? There should be some themes around."
- I have tried almost every eCommerce CMS out there but at this point I ONLY use Shopify. They have the best customer support, the smallest learning curve and you will save a ton of money if you upgrade features of your store by using plugins from their "app store". Many off their apps that costs $20 and less would cost hundreds to have implemented into other eCommerce platforms.

"Do you think I can manage 10 stores all by myself in terms of SEO, Adwords, email management with dropship partners, customer service (email help)?"
- Yes, I run dozens at any given time with the help of a call center. Once you learn how to automated your businesses and choose niches that are not "customer service intensive" things will become much easier and require much less "hands-on" work.

Signed,
Another Anton

This part is the most time consuming part for me. I can get a dropship store up and running in no time, but finding the best wholesalers/dropshippers is the trickiest part. I don't want dropshippers that compete with their resellers, so I eliminate them right off the bat. It takes a lot of digging until I'm happy with the products I'm selling.

But other than that, I love ecommerce, certainly more than any other type of Internet Marketing.

[DELETED]

"How do you ensure your prices are competitive? These days many web shoppers use price comparison sites just before purchase, and even when you Google a product quite often one of the results is a price comparison between different stores."

I use these price comparison websites myself. That is how I get the majority of my traffic!

You will notice if you search on price comparison engine it may say $1,343.52 from 76 stores.

This isn't because the 76 stores magically priced their items the same.

It's because their drop ship suppliers MAKE THEM price them the same. This protects every retailers profit. It is called MAP pricing (Minimum Advertised Price) and all legitimate drop ship suppliers enforce it.

They are the ones you want to sell for.

"I mean if yous ell something you want to make at least $15-$20 from it."
- I personal want to make at least $40 off each sale from my drop ship websites.

"Do you employ someone for live chat?"
- I do now, but in the past I've handled it all myself. You basically get the same questions over and over and it's easy to train someone to answer them.

"Even though I am in the UK I only want a store selling to American customers. The international shipping costs often make it prohibitive. However, my current store, a UK based one, I offer free shipping to the UK and small fee rest of the world. Of course, my dropshipper takes care of everything in terms of sending it out, returns and so on."
- If you want to sell to US customers you can open a store that is targeted to US customers. I work with people who live all over the world and do business in the US. To get started you would however need a US corporation, a US bank account and a US merchant account.

I actually have used WooCommerce and I personally didn't have any problems with them. There are tons of other great eCommerce solutions out there that work great as well... it's not that I dislike them, it's just that I like Shopify more.

I said it earlier in this thread but I'll say it again; they have the best customer support, the smallest learning curve and you will save a ton of money if you upgrade features of your store by using plugins from their "app store". Many off their apps that costs $20 and less would cost hundreds to have implemented into other eCommerce platforms.

I like them because they save me money long term and because I can launch highly converting stores with them in just days. No waiting around for programmers and designers who I have to keep paying for updates. Just a solid infrastructure that's easy to modify.

Getting started with eCommerce

You can start here... hope that helps!

You're absolutely right! There are companies out there that try to make drop shipping easier for newbies but in opinion all they do is hurt their customers by not leaving enough room for profit.

To help, I've created my course (which getting AMAZING feedback!) and I'm working on a BIG project right now that puts seven years of drop ship supplier sourcing into one resource.

Stay Tuned!

I completely agree. This is why a lot of big box stores are going out of business.

Customers get their ads and even sometimes go to their stores to test the products, then they jump on google with their smart phone and buy at the store with the best price.

I only work with drop ship suppliers who accept returns. With that being said, every supplier has their own return policy and their own terms. I make the return policy on my stores basically a summary of my suppliers polices to protect myself.

It typically works like this:

If the customer receives their item(s) and are unhappy with them for any reason they have 5 - 10 days to return them (this varies on my sites based on my niche and based on what my competition is doing).

If a customer wants to return any item they have to first email my company for an RA# (return authorization number).

To return an item is has to be repackaged the way it was received.

I provide my customer with the drop ship suppliers warehouse information for the return and obtain return shipping labels from my suppliers to send to my customer.

If the customer does decide to return the item they are responsible for actual return shipping charges and their calculated refund is issued once their item(s) arrive at my suppliers warehouse. (this is also when my suppliers refund me or provide me with credits towards future orders).

Regarding the customer finding out another company is involved; it's no big deal. If you go to Best Buy tonight and buy a 70'' Sharp LED TV that you have problems with they are going to tell you to call Sharp about it. We are not branding the products we sell as our own (at least that's not what I teach).

Hope that helps!

Thanks,
Anton

This has been a great thread so far. I've been dabbling in IM for the last 4 years, but have always thought about getting involved in e-commerce. It seems more stable and the kind of business you can truly sell at a later time.

Thanks for the info!

It's not easy to find a product that isn't being hawked and sold with razor slim margins by hundreds of other dealers.

In the last two years I have found three. It took me a lot of trial and error. However, those 3 product lines are putting a lot of money in my pocket this holiday season.

But I spend several thousand dollars and three months before I made a dime.

MAP is a huge part of being successful in this business. I will ONLY sell for suppliers who enforce it and if I see competitors who are undercutting it and find out the suppliers are not taking action I remove all of their products from my stores immediately.

Think of it like this; If sell for suppliers who don't enforce MAP policies all you are doing is advertising for your competitor who is willing to make the least amount of profit.

Need to have a niche on eBay these days. Simply trying to make a buck consistently over time now takes a much more business minded approach than the average seller cleaning out his closet. eBay has mad a lot of changes that have been frustrating to many but at the end of the day it's because they needed to clean a very dirty house and slow down the invasion of it's customer base that migrated to Amazon for their purchases.

Again, it does take a bit more work but the long term benefits will really kick in and you'll have something worth while where all your no longer competing with so many sellers that had the same excuse for abandoning eBay.com as a sales channel all together.

can I ask if your niche is big or not? 3 suppliers in a year, seems super low

How would you go about checking if MAP is enforced. Would you email your rep and ask them "wtf is this?" type question? Is there a way to find out if they enforce map policy without having to upload thousands of products and spend a bunch of time signing up with suppliers?

Thanks!

How is it that having a dropshipping site can be successful, when most people have not established trust with your site ? Isn't it easier for customers to just go to Amazon and shop from there ?
Looking forward to your feedback.

It depends on how many I can find in any given niche... It can be as low as ~100 or well over 10,000. My average is probably around 3,500 though.

I've got 3 ecommerce sites with about 1,000 each that I put in manually. Got another one with 10,000 that is fed by a datafeed.

Two reasons. One, stocking your own items and selling is a lot of work; secondly, if they go for the dropship method its not easy sourcing businesses that will do that for you.

The former is more profitable but carries with it greater risk and more more work.

It does mean barriers to entry is higher in ecommerce compared to blogging, which in my opinion is not a bad thing as it means less competition for people who do it well.

Either tack the price of shipping onto the price and offer "free shipping." Personally, it's just not worth it to me to offer products in that price range.

MAP stands for Minimum Advertised Price. Reputable brands (who drop ship) enforce these policies to make sure that retailers don't lessen the value of their brands by selling their products for cheap prices. This protects the suppliers brand and protects the retailers profit margins.

The MAP question has already been answered, but I've only run into the dropshipper problem once and that was with Aliexpress. Fortunately, it was a test purchase and I'm the one who didn't get the product. You need to choose your dropshipping companies carefully and choose companies with good reputations.

Do you drop ship for other online retailers? If you set up a drop ship program you could contact all of your competition and try to get them to carry your brand...

what is your niche

Sam's ecommerce WSOs are great. Got one myself.

I don't know how much of a difference it makes but I add them to all of my stores.

I just take take my logos and have them converted to .ico files here:

favicon.ico Generator

This would be an item included on the ridiculously long list of "things that have almost no impact on sales which I will get to when the important stuff is done."

I've contacted 5 different drop ship companies... They all say I need a brick and mortar store before I can sell their stuff online or they have too many drop shippers or only deal with large websites.

It's very frustrating.

I guess I'll try to visit some random trade shows and hope to get lucky.

I always set up my websites prior to contacting drop ship suppliers in whatever niche I am entering and you're right, I personally don't know what my profit margin will be prior to getting approved for accounts and seeing price lists.

From my experience the average NET profit on my stores is ~20%. I have some stores where it's as high as ~40% and some where it is as low as 15%, but it's typically averages out to be right around 20%.

To have the best chance of getting yourself into a profitable niche you have to put most of your work in PRIOR to building you first store while doing your market research.

There are a lot of things I look for prior to choosing a new niche to enter but the main things that I need to find are at least 30 suppliers of whom all enforce MAP policies.

Hope that helps!
- Anton

I don't always know what the pricing is before I'm accepted by a wholesaler, but I do know that if they are too high, there's no contract that says I have to sell their stuff. There's often/usually at least several if not more, wholesalers for a good niche. I use more than one and won't hesitate to drop one if I can't make a profit from them.

Which eCommerce platform are you using?

It's typically very simple to install the tracking code... you should just Google "your eCommerce platform + Google Analytics for eCommerce" and try to find installation instructions.

Good Luck!

Are you listing your items in the various shoping feeds? That's where I'd start. Make sure you're using every one of them.

Another quick question - do you do any content creation to supplement your products? that could be a good way of attracting visitors using more traditional SEO principles. I've worked with folks who published "how-to" guides for their products, and put all their instructional material online and that's been helpful. If you could create content based on how to get the best use out of your products, that would help too.

Hi,

With a drop ship business you receive the payments directly from the customer. I use a merchant account, PayPal and Google Checkout to give my customers the most options as possible at checkout.

I own some stores that ship internationally but by far the majority of my sales come from the USA (with Canada being a distant second).

I've never targeted overseas markets but if you're planning on doing business in the US I would 100% recommend sourcing suppliers from the US.

Hope that helps!

- Anton

I mostly sell large and expensive items items online so I am able to offer free shipping and absorb the cost myself.

Most of my sites sell for 20+ suppliers so it's common to ship from various places. I can tell you that customers do not mind this at all. You just need to keep them informed and send them tracking info for each individual piece as it becomes available and you will not have any problems

- Anton

The first time is always the hardest

The good news is you can take all of information you are learning by correcting your problems now and then use that knowledge going forward entering more and more niches.

I am still stumped by this question that another user asked:

":The issue I see ---if I have customer John Smith order products A, B and C and they are all shipped from different drop shipping companies? What do I do then? That is a lot of shipping"

I was thinking about that last night.If someone comes to my site and say they grab up five products which happen to be from five different suppliers, and the shipping is 5.00 a piece for example, I doubt they are going to be happy paying a total of 25.00 shipping and would probably leave my site to go to another site. So there is absolutely no way around this other than keep the customer informed?

So product variety is important to attract customers?

I don't stock up a store until I've been accepted by the wholesaler and know that I can make a profit from their products.

Big Thanks to Anton

spent a full day reading this thread, only clicked on it to find out the best way to SEO e-commerce sites, as an SEOr I have been getting a ton of requests lately from local businesses to seo their e=commerce sites like local jewlers etc, so copied and pasted a lot of the methods you guys have posted here, but been thinking on building my own e-commerce site since reading the 4HWW by Tim F a couple of months ago.

And I guess on the time and money it would cost me to SEO some other persons e-commerce site, I would be better building my own e-commerce site,and start to dropship...

I will have to politely say goodbye can't do it, businesses with ecommerce sites think you are way to expensive because the joiner down the road got a page 1 listing for a couple of hundred quid. (uk)

Anyway enough of the rant. If I have understood everything correctly, I can source U.S. dropshippers sell to U.S. and Canada etc, but because I am from the U.K. I won't be able to get a U.S. bank account set up, so I would have to use paypal and Google pay etc ?

Has anyone outside the U.S. done this successfully ?

best Mike

Thanks for the very helpful info.

Hi Alksense,

Could you share the info on how your Singapore course member set up his account? I'm from Malaysia and am interested in getting into dropshipping.

Thanks.

Yes, that is true.

In 2006 when I first started doing big money with PayPal (tens of thousands of dollars/month) they locked our account BUT I was able to have it resolved very quickly.

It was basically my fault because my business partner and I were not entering all of the tracking information into PayPal so we were flagged for the liability on their end. I had to enter tracking information for about 20 shipments or so and once PayPal confirmed everything was delivered (about a week later) they unlocked our account.

Another thing to consider with PayPal (and some other merchant accounts) is that if they think your business is even the least bit "risky" they will attach a rolling reserve to your account.

In my situation they told me it was based on volume but I have a 7% 90 day rolling reserve on mine. Meaning they hold 7% of every sale from my company and deposit it into my account 90 days after the sale is made.

curious if anyone who recently started this can update their progress. I am going to start next week with 4 days off. What is your monthly cost when starting. Let me know if I missed something:

Monthly cost:
1) Shopify - $30
2) Shopify transaction fees
3) Paypal transaction fees
4) Advertising ??

One-time Fixed Cost:
1) web-design

Annual cost:
1) Domain - $10


Thanks
Carl

I believe once you hit a certain level, you be assigned an account manager. Everything will be a breeze then. I got a 5% rolling with a 75 days rolling reserve(down from 10%, 90 days). Every business model is different. You got to speak to your account manager. They will help you to resolve most issues you have.

Only Shopify Unlimited has no fees. The other ones have transaction fees.

You're very welcome! and congrats on applying your knowledge and taking another shot at eCommerce.

There definitely can be a steep learning curve if you just jump into this business blindly... That's how I got started and when I look back now I can't believe some of things that I did wrong in the beginning! I had no clue about SEO or any type of advertising but I took a chance and modified what I was doing as I grew my business. This just goes to show that you don't need to know it all to get started, but you need to get started to have a shot at making it work.

Good luck to you on your new venture. If you ever have any questions I'd be glad to help.

- Anton

So what would you say you are doing differently know in round 2? I am a totally newbie and bought a website from someone---yes, i am actually making money---but I am still not sure if I can make it off of this. I am pretty sure I am making mistakes left and right---but I just need to keep reading and learning.

What would you like to know about them? I personally use Shopify as the platform for my stores but there are a lot of people on this forum that use Magento who would be able to help you with any detailed questions...

Congrats on getting started with eCommerce! I'd be glad to answer any questions you have and as you can see there are A LOT of people on these forums who have valuable information to exchange with everyone.

Hey Cynthia,

What type of eCommerce sites do you currently own/operate? Do you sell for established brands or sell unique products?

I ran into a guy here in NZ who set up these entities (Foundation in Panama), and I would not recommend it. You will eventually get nailed - sooner or later. I believe in paying taxes, as the government creates the infrastructure in which you live in - roads, hospitals, military, libraries, police, etc.

Dolce / Gabbana got busted for this type of structure:
Dolce & Gabbana Fined Millions For Tax Evasion - Forbes

I wouldn't try to avoid taxes... especially with today's climate. Most the Euro banks that were used in U.S. tax evasion are changing their laws so the customers name can be given. And plus, you'll still have to pay taxes on your income.

Storecoach seems quite pricey. Have you tried it?

Anton, forgive me if this has been answered in this thread or on your website (I have done my best to read through both), but won't the suppliers want references as part of the application process?

How does one get over that initial hurdle and get approved for accounts without any references?

Hey Marco,

All of my product pages rank very well for supplier name, product name and SKU# search inquiries. I typically do not have unique descriptions created but instead use those provided by the supplier along with all other relevant product information that they send to my company.

I think the main reason my product pages rank so high is because of the meta tags I use. I have great page titles, meta keywords and meta descriptions for each product and this usually allows me to outrank the majority of competition.

I've never been charged for a CSV file before but I don't know if things are different overseas... I've only ever done business with companies from America and Canada (while drop shipping).

I can't answer your question about 100 products and free shopping engines being enough to generate sales because there are wayyyyy too many variables from product to product and from niche to niche. You really need to spend the bulk of your time research different markets before entering a niche. It can be annoying because you don't make any money at this point but if you get started on the wrong path then it's likely that you're store will never be successful no matter what you do.

Shopify (the eCommerce platform that I use) works in just about every country in the world and is available in almost every language.

Hope that helps.

Thanks,
Anton

Hi,

@alksense; thanks for your great reply!

But how I find out which niches/products sell good list on free comparison sites?
How I find that out?

PS: If I understand you right,products who are in demand, I should list more than 100 items on free cmparison sites to see good results, also 100 items are not enough?


best wishes
marco005

Hey Marco,

If a supplier does not have a CSV of their products to send you there are always other options... one would be to extract the data from their site and/or catalog manually (which is a nightmare but usually pays off), another would be hire an outsources of freelancer.com or a similar site and have them extract the data manually for you for cheap, and another option would be to hire someone with scraping software to automatically extract the data from your suppliers website.

Hope that helps!
Anton

Drop shipping is just one of many ways to make money via eCommerce. Basically; instead of purchasing inventory in bulk and then creating an online store to sell the inventory you are selling inventory for wholesalers who warehouse the items themselves.

I promote physical products as an affiliate as well (mainly as an Amazon Associate) and although there is some overlap between running an affiliate store and running an eCommerce I can tell you they are very different business models.


Back in October Google Shopping switched from free to a PPC model so now you do have to link your Google Merchant Center account to your Google Adwords account if you want your Product Listing Ads to run.

It's very easy to do. You can set up your account here: www.google.com/merchants

Regarding your second question; some suppliers will approve you with just an EIN# which is how I got started. Once I started making money I had my accountant open an S Corp for me and I got my sales tax certificate.

Hey Marco,

I think you meant to say is that the only possible way to make money with a drop ship store without paying for advertising is SEO traffic. I'm editing your statement because there are a lot of paid advertising sources that bring in a lot of highly converting traffic and obviously you can make money with paid traffic.

If you're only looking for free sources of traffic then some that work well are:

- On site SEO
- Guest Blog Posts
- Niche Related Forum Posting
- Social Media
- TheFind.com

Hi Marco,

I don't use any plugins like that. I would recommended asking for advice in the main forum here. Maybe someone can help you out.

That's too bad about suppliers in Europe. I only do business in the US so I have no expierence with your market.

Thanks,
Anton

haha, thanks but someone else actually shared that tip (another person named Anton). Hopefully it helps you figure out how to do business in your country. Good Luck!

You don't really need a US bank account. You just have to be able to pay and get paid. Paying suppliers is very easy, I have never had any problems paying American suppliers with my European credit cards.

There are many ways to accept payments online. Maybe the best thing to do is first study the differences between payment gateway, merchant account and 3rd party processor and then decide what option is best for you. There are many options available for people outside the US too.

A US bank account would probably help in some situations when doing business in the US but it's definitely not a must.

[DELETED]

I'm sorry I don't use Shopify so I can't give you any hints. But I know there are always options.

Just two examples:

- 2Checkout is a very popular 3rd party processor and available almost worldwide.

- Authorize.net is a very popular payment gateway and you can get a European merchant account to go with it.

No one in the states will ever see any difference when making a payment.

But you really need to do your own studying and find the best option for you. It depends on many factors.

Sorry for the delayed reply. I've been away from the forums for awhile while traveling around Thailand...

To answer your question; each supplier you work with will have their own return policies. I typically only work with suppliers who accept returns back to their own warehouses.

It's very important to read all of the policies that you are agreeing to when applying for new supplier accounts. Other things to look out for is who's account they will ship on (yours or theirs) and if they charge restocking fees.

You basically want to pull all the columns and move them into a templated spreadsheet that shows all the column names your particular cart of choice uses. For example, a column in your supplier's feed may be called 'Name' and you will want to copy & paste all of the cells in that column into the 'Title' column in your cart's templated feed file. Once you have all of the desired columns in place you can save and upload the feed file.

As far as how much customizations/changes are required, it depends on how unique you want to make your product pages. The more unique content your product pages have the easier it will be to get indexed and ranked well in Google. In today's Google, pages that contain no real unique content and pages that are extremely thin on content are tough to even get indexed.

I recommend learning the concatenate function in Excel (or OpenOffice). It's a powerful function that allows you to create generic "templated" product descriptions and then snag portions of the data from within other cells in the spreadsheet. This allows you to create one solid product description for each product type, and then customize all simultaneously by using concatenate to pull in data elsewhere on each product row. Very powerful stuff!

To brainstorm ideas for new niches I usually think of things that I've recently bought online, I ask family and friends what they've bought online, and I check business brokers websites to see what "big money" eCommerce sites are being sold (not the small time ones on flippa).

I then research all of these niches and try to "reverse engineer" the businesses to see if I can compete.

My recommendation is always to figure out what YOU would be willing to pay for, and then sell that.

Ecommerce is ultimately a way of selling people things that solve their problems. Start by identifying a problem that isn't being solved the way you want it to. There are definitely people out there who have the same problem as you.

This seems to be how a lot of the biggest and best stores started out.

E-commerce is certainly the way to go,al the information from online marketing gives you an advantage. I can take any actual product, choose appropriate search phrases and position them to targeted visitors for a website.

I find that I can still rank very high with supplier provided content as long as I have unique page titles, meta keywords & meta descriptions.

More than anything suppliers (the ones you actually want to work with) are looking for retailers that they can trust.

As soon as you are approved to sell for their brand (whether it be on a drop ship model or buying inventory) you now represent them. They want to work with companies who will not only bring them sales but who will also protect their brands value.

This can be done by knowing that you will enforce their MAP policies, hearing that you will feature their brand on your store, and by explaining to them why your customer service is great.

The last thing a supplier wants to deal with is a retailer who sells for their products and then leaves their customers in the dark because where do you think the customer will go calling if the retailer abandons them? Straight to the supplier...

It's not as easy as just calling and saying "hi, I want to sell your products". You're developing a very REAL (and hopefully very profitable) business relationship. It doesn't have to take a long phone call or email chain but you do have to assure them that your company is legit and that you are in business to make money but only while also offering great customer service and trying to raise the standards of shopping in whatever niche you're in.

Do you already have a store set up? That's the first step I take before contacting any suppliers when entering a new niche. I have the entire store built and I upload "demo" products to it so suppliers can see it before it approving me. I also show them what spots on the site where I will feature their brands products. This really helps.

Good Luck!
Anton

I actually offer free shipping on all of my eCommerce sites and I sell for drop ship suppliers so my shipping costs are often built in to my wholesale cost.

If a customer buys two or more items from the same supplier on one of my stores then I make more money because I save on shipping.

If a customer buys two or more items from multiple suppliers then I make the same amount that I would if two separate customers ordered the items.

- Anton

Took me a little bit but I have read over all the posts and responses in this thread and I have questions for Alksense, Dave_Hermansen and anybody who has been running the ebiz game. It seems that both of you are very familiar with eCommerce and especially dropshipping. I have worked in IT for over 13 years and with eCommerce software for over 7 years. I am by no means calling myself an expert maybe just a little bit more seasoned on the technology side.

I was a little surprised to see some of the low margins on some of the ecommerce stores discussed here. I have been doing research for a couple months now and the niche that i am looking at the margins seem to be in the 40%-45% range. Could this just be because of the market I am looking at or just luck? I am looking to use dropshippers but I am also wanting to include wholesale inventory and eventually buying from overseas.

What are your thoughts on ways to increase margins such as personalization, gift boxing, etc..

I use pinnacle c a r t, but i am planning to move to magento. I have heard great reviews about it. I also want to try out woocommerce but i am not use to word press., any suggestions on which is better? Any feedback or suggestions shall be appreciated.

my current website is oneluvsmokeshop.com

No problem. I've just sent you a PM

Hi Mary,

Glad to hear from someone else who has also had success with eCommerce. I've sold quite a few online stores myself.

I've never used aliexpress (I've heard mixed reviews) but I'm happy to hear that you've done well with them.

I tried WooCommerce once and while you can build a nice looking store with it I really prefer using a hosted eCommerce platform. Not just because I wouldn't want my site hacked but also because I prefer having them store my customers CC information rather than have any of that on my servers. To me it's well worth the monthly hosting fees.

The only thing I know about that industry is that it is HIGHLY competitive. Does the brand you are working out a deal with already have recognition in Brazil or anywhere else in the world?

- Anton

Thx Mary. You and Anton seem to agree on the self fulfillment issue.

You are exactly right.

The real money is, and always has been, in eCommerce - not affiliate marketing. My eCommerce clients will gross between $25k and $100k per week with their online stores, and that's pretty standard for an eCommerce site, but you throw those numbers out here and no one believes them because they try to think of it in terms equal to Amazon commissions. You'll never get those kind of numbers out of simple affiliate offers.

But yeah - it's work. Anything worth doing is. The people who just import products from a dropship supplier and launch a site then kick back are never going to be successful. The "autopilot" model will always fail. But if you're selective about your products, and actually make an effort with the design of your site, writing your own descriptions and taking your own photos, and know how to drive some traffic you'll win every time.

Let me just say, I have tried a few PPC adword campaigns and never broke even. Now I see why.

I am bookmarking your calculator. It is fantastic!

Bottom line: with the current cost of clicks and average conversion rate, it is tough to make any money.

I don't disclose who my clients are here, but this is pretty much an average revenue point for any serious small to mid-sized eCommerce site - brand owners on the high side, and sellers on the low side. You just gotta disconnect the "affiliate mindset", because eCommerce gives you more control over your product selection and that makes all the difference in the world. Most of the people here who are "doing ecommerce" just have pages of dropship products, and that's the worst way to do it. You need to have a real relationship with suppliers directly in order to get good pricing.

[DELETED]

Definitely. People are doing it everyday. Some suppliers will only require an EIN# and I know a lot of people that are getting approved for accounts with US based suppliers while using their foreign business info.

Spend years researching the markets; spend thousands testing various product niches and work about 11 hours a day, 7-days a week.

That's what I've done.

It works.

No quick fix.

Making money is serious business for serious people who face serious obstacles and competition.

Research and take the time needed to set up something unique about your supply chain. Google and the phone are a good place to start. There are a lot of ways that you can approach building healthy supplier relationships.

I like to think of the acronym "READ" when thinking about the supply side of my businesses.

Research
Evaluate
Apply
Develop

You'll spend a lot of time early on in the first 3 stages, but how I've gotten pricing that beats amazon in the past is by building great personal relationships with my suppliers. Get to know them personally, take your time, ask them about their goals, give before you get.

Yes, but I don't know if I'm allowed to post a link to my blog on here.. PM me if interested.

I don't think drop shipping is a particularly good strategy personally but as for ecommerce in general... its work. Its the difference between a real business and a "passive income". My observation has been that many here are expecting a WSO to reveal the magic formula they "just haven't figured out yet".

The sad part is if those same people would stop screwing around with CPA offers and affiliate programs and focus that energy into ecommerce they could be making a real full time income instead of scraping for commissions. If two guys that run a tire shop can make 15k a week selling auto parts online, anyone can.

I think a lot of people assume that eCommerce has a greater barrier of entry than other ways to make money online. I also think people assume it's easy to make quick cash other ways online so they spend their time trying to learn them.

However, since I've posted this thread back in December I can see that this section of the WF has been growing with people who make money via drop shipping that actually know what they're talking about

You build a brand. When was the last time you saw a cheap copycat unseat the leading brand?

It never happens.

How many Fiverr clones, Twitter clones, Facebook clones, etc. have you even heard of much less actually making a dent in the original? Heck, even in retail you can get generics of every product on the shelf and not one generic has ever over-taken the big brand it was copying.

You can do this with eCommerce too. That's why sites like ThinkGeek and Zappos are successful selling the exact same products you can get on Amazon and other sites, and everyone who tries to copy their model with nothing but a dropship supplier and a $100 website fails. Minimal input = minimal output.

I think you're under-thinking it... this is one of the reasons I say to always build a brand.

You could copy Zappos and call it "Hexiussos" - copy every product, every image, every description, every everything, and you will still never have the prestige they do. Know why? Because they're freaking Zappos - you're just a guy who copied them.

That's the power of being a brand.

Don't worry so much about the copycats, no matter what you do people will copy your site layout and tactics... but they can never "be you". So your job is to make "being you" mean something to buyers. That's the difference between being "just another eCommerce site" and being an authority.

Killer advice from Ron Rule here. Branding is everything in ecommerce, and is really the key to ranking organically in Google these days as well. Building a brand goes hand-in-hand with building authority in Google, and the more authority you have the more organic traffic Google will send you!

I think PPC is more important than SEO; That doesn't mean ignore search engines completely, but there's a difference between making pages that a search engine can understand and rank properly, and "optimizing" your pages around keywords. I always make sure sites are naturally conducive to what search engines like to see, but I don't waste time with stuffing keywords into product descriptions or link building.

To me, PPC is cheaper because my time has value. If I want traffic from a search engine, I'd rather just pay what I'm willing to pay for a visitor to be sent to my page than try to create multiple landing pages optimized around different keywords and then constantly worry that a competitor will step up their game and outrank me, or Google will change something that pushes me down, thus undoing everything I just did. It's also instant gratification; if I bid on a keyword today, I will get visitors today. If I optimize a page for a keyword today, it may be weeks before I see how well that keyword is performing organically when if I had just paid for traffic, I would have already been making sales.

Your most valuable asset is your name recognition, and your second most valuable asset is your customer database. If you utilize those two properly, it doesn't matter what page you're on in Google.

Google has never made any retailer famous.

If Google disappeared tomorrow, sites like Amazon and eBay would make more money than ever and sites that rely on search engine traffic to stay alive would fade away into history.

The largest site I run currently does about $5 Million a year (~$15k a day) in sales from organic Google traffic - most people here would consider that a dream come true, but frankly it scares the shit out of me. That's a huge chunk of that business that we have absolutely no control over, and could disappear tomorrow because some decision-maker at Google decided to change the way they score relevance. That revenue affects everything from what products we stock to how much employees are paid, and the last thing I want is for a Google change or aggressive competitor to upset that balance. So while I appreciate the "free traffic", I don't consider it stable traffic.

This will sound crazy to a lot of people, but right now I am actually working on bringing that number down and replacing those sales with paid traffic. To me it's like insurance... I'd rather pay $1-2 million to guarantee I'll continue to get that $5 million than leave it in Google's hands and inevitably one day lose the $5 million.

But that said, it's the customer database that really brings the most value. It's a million times easier to sell additional products to customers you already have than to find new ones. Having direct access to 2 million past buyers is worth a lot more than Google page one for any keyword.

But to get there, paid traffic is the way to go. Launch your site, spend all of your money on paid traffic, and reinvest all of your profits back into paid traffic for the first year. Keep nothing in your pocket, and pay nothing in taxes because your company runs at a break-even while you build your customer base. As you're doing this, re-market to those customers. Put new products in front of them. Segment the data based on aggregate purchase histories to show customers products they're likely to buy, and do this until your repeat business exceeds your new business. Even if they never buy another product as a result of your re-engagement, they will remember your name. This is how Amazon makes $80,000 per minute - they literally only profit 1% of that revenue and the other 99% is the cost of making it. But 1% of $80k per minute is roughly $1.15 million per day net, and I'll take that over every other eCommerce model in the world.

MAP policies are illegal in the European union, for better or worse. In fact, to my knowledge MAP is pretty much only a US thing.

If you are a beginner in drop shipping and eCommerce sale, you can not cope with the wholesale site, I recommend, that you try slowly, step by step, with the help of experienced in this way of marketing like Wholesale Portal, and see its possibilities as seller.

Wow, it seems like you've went ahead and tried to create an entirely new platform...

My method is really much less complex than that. I basically just find existing businesses that are already making a killing and reverse engineer their stores. This method requires much less guesswork and no real investment of capital to get started.

If you're interested there are a ton of resources online to help you get started but unfortunately I can't help you with the platform that you're trying to create.

Good luck with whatever you choose!
Anton