Final Thoughts on a Dropshiping Business

It has been about 8 days since I started my dropshipping business and I wanted to share a few final thoughts on this new adventure. I hope my post does not sound negative, but I want to tell the truth about what I am feeling right now, but it does not mean that I am not going to give this business everything I got – because I am.

Ok, so I started on November 4^th, and I was able to start marketing on November 12^th. I have about 250 products, and I am learning which ones will drive in the customers. It is a learning process, but each day I am learning something new and making the adjustment. I know it has only been a week or so, and I have a ways to go yet, but those little adjustments here and there are making a difference. I wanted to share some costs besides the Alidropship premium website cost, which you could read about on my post Drop Shipping – Research. If you recall I purchased the premium site, plus I bought the installation package, marketing package, and the Sellvia membership. I also purchased an add-on from Alidropship which was for Social Media set up for a one-time fee of $45, and if you recall I had to do it myself, but they gave me the instructions. I have a hosting price of $48 a year. They offer three additional levels you can upgrade to which is Gold for $86 per year, Gold Plus for $129 per year, and Platinum for $220 per year. I believe I will be upgrading to Gold plus or Platinum, not sure yet. I have Sellvia membership price of $39.00 per month. I am considering purchasing another add-on from Aldropship which is called Promo Banner, it looks good and for the one-time fee of $19, it allows me to place a small banner on the top of my pages to showcase sales, etc. Another add-on I am considering is the Social Rabbit plug-in, this helps fully automate my site’s social media accounts posts and the price for that is a one-time fee of $69. So far these are my costs and of course I have Facebook ads I am running at a cost, and I am going to start Google ads as well. I am still moving along on getting my site promoted, but I want to make sure the products I have are going to bring in the customers.

Here comes my thoughts on the dropshipping business, and I don’t mean to sound negative if I happen to sound negative, it is just my thoughts – ok. Here it goes; I do not believe you can make $1000-2000 the first week unless you put in a large amount of money into promoting your store. Even if you have a great niche, making $1000 or $2000 the first week is not realistic, once again unless you throw money at your store. Another thing is the time to set up a “Business Facebook” account that allows you to promote, takes at least a minimum of 72 hours, even if you happen to use your personal Facebook account because Facebook needs to confirm your identity. Also, getting your store onto the search engines takes some time. I could say it took me at least 72 hours until I was able to confirm that my store was popping up on the search engines. I entered into Google or Bing “site: yourdomainname” to see if it was appearing. If it is not appearing, guess what, there is a lot to do just to get Google or Bing to find your site, and that takes a few days. Why, because there are millions of sites being added and it takes time for Google to find these sites.

There is a lot of factors that play into getting your store to bring in revenue, and it isn’t as pretty as all these companies or other individuals make it sound, heck even those that you see on social media making claims that they made $500 on the first day, nope not realistic, “again” unless you are throwing money at your store. Now, Alidropship offers a “Brand Awareness and Promotion” (linked for more information). There are three levels for a one-time fee; of either $900, $1990, or $2990 this is what they do in a nutshell:

The store will be promoted on multiple channels!

• Facebook groups. We place your store link on popular Facebook groups to reach millions of FB users.
• Classified ads. We make ads for your store and post them on the high PR classified ad posting sites.
• Social Bookmarks. Your site is placed on social bookmarking sites beneficial for indexing in Google.
• Quora. We search for questions relevant to your website and submit thoughtful answers along with your live website URL.
• SEO Backlinks. To let your site have better SEO rankings & appear among search results, we create powerful high DA backlinks.
• Guest posts. We get a guest post with your store link published on a high-traffic site.
• Google news + press releases. A professionally written press release promoting your store is distributed to 250+ news outlets.
• Social Signals. You get SEO-friendly powerful social signals (shares, likes, and overall social media visibility as perceived by search engines).
• Pinterest. Your store is promoted on 25+ high-traffic Pinterest boards.
• Twitter. Thousands of Twitter users see tweets about your store.
• Coupon websites. We manually submit your coupon codes to 30+ US deal websites.

I am not sure about purchasing this yet, it is quite out of my range for now, but I wanted to let you know about this service. Maybe this could be a reason why some dropship owners make $500 in one day, I am not sure. Alidropship offers quite a bit of services to get you making money, of course, all for a nominal fee. Let me wrap this up, I am not saying that it is impossible to make money from a dropshipping store, I just think it will take some time, but definitely, not a one or two-week success, again unless you throw money into your site. So for now I am considering this as a long-term investment, and hopefully within say 3 to 5 years, maybe longer, my site will generate some income, maybe not enough to write home about, but something extra for retirement would be nice.

As always I truly appreciate you stopping by my blog and as I try to always leave you with a thought, “Don’t believe everything you see or hear on social media about how successful some are at making $1000 day or in one week, but then again if you don’t try, you will be stuck in the same place – let’s move forward.”