1. Ben Malol Said:
In regards to Dropshipping being Dead... 🤦♂️
I wanted to reference a few things about Robert Zince's post, firstly to give some constructive feedback, because he did invest quite a lot of time writing it, which I'm sure wasn't in bad intentions,
And honestly, he did mention a few valid arguments that should be brought up.
But there are a few problems,
Firstly, you can't say Dropshipping is dead. Dropshipping is something that 100's of thousands of businesses are doing, generating billions.
Dropshipping definition: "move (goods) from the manufacturer directly to the retailer without going through the usual distribution channels."
The PROBLEM is that too many are looking at dropshipping the wrong way. It's not about how many products you test, or how much money you invested. It's not even about finding a "winner".
That mentality is self destructive, because it turns it into a numbers game. And you know what else is a numbers game? Filling a lottery ticket.
What you're doing is just filling lottery tickets, hoping that the next one is a winner.
Yes, your chances of winning are higher when you fill up 100 lottery tickets, compared to 1. But even then, your chances are slim to none.
Did you know that the Facebook Ads, and the product have actually almost nothing to do with the success of a product?
It's the Marketing and positioning you take with the product....
It's the Brand and the Story you tell through the product...
... and most importantly
Its the connection you make with your prospects, either on the sub-conscious, or conscious level.
No Facebook manual bidding, or optimization strategy will ever create that.
Not even testing 1,000 products will create that.
You know why?
Because anyone can test products, anyone can find some products on ali express, anyone can buy some facebook ads course and learn to run ads...
... and right there he was right. THAT is saturated.
But you know what isn't saturated, and will never be saturated? Learning to be a REAL Marketer. Creating a STORY, and learning to position your product in a way that no other can ever copy.
Because its NOT your product they're buying. Its the MARKETING they're buying.
And trust me when I say, that the right story, and marketing will beat the BEST Facebook Advertiser in the world.
Stop filling up lottery tickets
❌Ecom is not dead! ❌
Ecommerce is an online business model, simply.
Dropshipping isn’t dead either. My bank account can testify. 💸💸
🤔 Perhaps you’re having issues with Facebook Ads, rather.
But you already know that they can work; you might just think they’re a little bit harder to go around right now compared to 2015.
And you’re right; Facebook’s getting harder and harder. They require more skills, more dedication, more investment. It’s just how things are when competition grows.
If you haven’t had any success with Facebook, I highly recommend you check out 👏 Google Shopping Ads 👏. They’re the current low-hanging ball that doesn’t require as many skills to get right.
Google Shopping Ads are pretty much new. You’ve probably heard whispers of them, seen some juicy screenshots, have some questions. ❓❓❓
Well, I’m here to oblige. I wrote down steps on how to get started with Google. I tried to cover put together everything you need to know that you wouldn’t easily find online. These are steps, you should Google for more details. It’s impossible to cover everything here.
This is assuming you have a store and basic ecom knowledge. If not I'm sorry, I'm not writing a 594845th novel about making a store and how to dropship from Ali.
💰 1. Merchant Center
First step is to create your merchant center over at Google Merchant Center.
This is what filters / approves / disapproves your products for Google Shopping Ads.
Your store will get approved within 2 weeks. If it takes more than that, you need to follow up with Google’s support. While you wait, you need to move onto the next steps.
💰 2. Data Feed
Second step is to create your data feed to send your store’s data to the Merchant Center. I recommend using DataFeedWatch. If you’re on Shopify, there’s a free version from Shopify themselves that can cut it (not ideal).
This is how you’ll put your product in Google Ads/Merchant Center’s platform.
💰 3. Keyword Research
Third step is to look for products you can successfully sell on Google. As most of you know (I hope 😂), Google is a search engine. People enter keywords and expect to get exactly what they’re looking for in the results.
What you need to do is find the keywords that:
✅ Are not too competitive. You don’t want to have to bid $3 to get a click.
✅ Have a decent volume. No point on working on a keyword that has barely any traffic. I aim for 500+ searches per month.
✅ Will give you a chance at making the sale. Can you match the top competitor’s prices or are they too low for you? Look at the existing ads for the keyword you’re interested in and see if you can maintain a profit margin if you match their price. I recommend $15+, ideally $25.
** Not in the US? No problem! Use isearchfrom.com to see USA ads! **
To find these keywords, you can simply use Google’s Keyword Planner! (Tools, Keyword Planner). You’ll see they keywords’ metrics to give you an idea.
💰 4. Uploading within specific guidelines
Basically, people looking for products on Google are ready to buy them. They’re looking for a shop that has them, and probably shopping for the best price.
That’s where Shopping Ads come into play. It’s a quick way for people to browse products they need, compare prices, and finally buy what they need.
You don’t need to convince them about buying the product itself; Rather, you need to convince them about:
✅ Trusting your store
✅ Competing on the price
✅ The quality of your product
They’re hunting for a good deal. So, you just need to make it a good deal.
HOWEVER!
Google is a search engine. Who says search engine also screams SEO! Search Engine Optimization. Yup yup, the same thing you’ve seen describing blogs trying to rank on first page in the search results.
Google Ads’ SEO is a bit different, but similar. To do SEO, you need to plug the keywords you’ve found in step 3. In the title / description. Here are some guidelines.
✅ Length of title: 60 characters
✅ Keywords % in description: between 5 and 10%
✅ Repeat title 3 times in description
✅ Only have relevant keywords
✅ Avoid characters such as /%?*$)( In the title. – is fine.
Find out more by searching on Google ( 😉 ). SEO is an art, it’s too long to explain everything here.
💰 5. Starting some ads
Now that you have some products waiting to get approved in your merchant center, time to get some ads rolling!
You need to create a ‘’Shopping Campaign’’.
This shopping campaign will target one country. All your products will be included in it.
For your bid strategy, use Maximize clicks. Cap your max click at a decent price. You can go between 10 and 50 cents. I don’t recommend going higher; it’s going to make it real hard for you to turn a profit unless you know what you’re doing. Which you probably aren’t. 😂
Put the ad priority at low.
💰 6. Monitoring your ads
Slowly, you’re going to start getting clicks and impressions. If you did it well, you’ll start getting some SALES! 🤑 🤑 🤑
Here are some issues to look out for:
❌ Your CTR is under 0.9%? Get better images or have a better price
❌ Your conversion is very low / at 0%? Check if you’re using accurate keywords, or check if your store is an untrustworthy mess.
❌ You spent so much money and didn’t get any sales? Lower your bid!
💰 7. Cutting the bad ducklings out
Not every product is meant to be a winner. 😢 Time to curate. 🔪
Now, in your general campaign, go to your ‘’Products’’ tab. In another tab, open your ‘’Ad Group’’ tab.
Check all products that spent more than $20 without pulling a conversion. In the ad group, filter them. Save the filter, then exclude all the bad products. Keep ‘’Everything else’’ included. 🔪 🔪
Voilà, you won’t spend a cent more on it. It’s out of sight, out of mind. You can move on with your life and leave the bad exes behind. 💔
💰 8. Scaling
In the middle of all this, you’ll find a bunch of winners. Some big, some small. You must love them all equally and nurture them with some lovely attention. 💖
Create a new campaign! Same as the campaign of earlier. Just duplicate your old one to keep your ad score.
EXCEPT this time, in the ad group tab, you’ll filter this one winner of yours. You’ll EXCLUDE ‘’Everything else’’ and INCLUDE ‘’Your lovely winner that is turning you a profit’’ 💖
Put the ad priority at medium.
You don’t need to exclude that product from your general campaign.
DO NOT:
❌ Drastically increase your bid. Example: your bid is at 0.2, don’t put it at 0.4! that’s a 100% CPP increase. Go gradually.
❌ Put a crazy budget. Take it sloooow and start at $20. Gradually increase if it’s doing good.
❌ Keep switching the bid around in panic. Give the algorithms at least 5 days to adjust. 7 is ideal.
DO:
✅ Keep notes of all your changes to be able to revert if you mess your CPP up.
✅ Remove keywords that are not profitable if they spend $20 without conversions.
✅ Be gentle with your changes. You want to grow together, not apart.
✅ Add more and more products to your store. You can’t always make a product sell more than 10 per month. It doesn’t matter if you have 500 products that sell 10 per month.
Your campaign might not immediately work! It’s fine! Wait 7 days to see what Google does. If it never peaks back up, pause that campaign, and leave the product in the general campaign where it’s making money anyways. You’re only losing out on a little bit of customization; better than nothing.
💰 9. Get familiar with Google’s chemistry
With that new harem of yours, you still got some work to do.
You’ve probably seen me mention ad score before.
What a curious beast. 🤔 It’s how your ad quality gets rated by Google.
Google will priorities you in the auction if:
✅ Your CTR is high (Good price? Good picture? Good accurate title?)
✅ Your website is good (Loads fast? Low bounce rate?)
Therefore, you will get a lower CPC, and show up higher in the results!
💰 10. Know if you’re doing a good job
After a month or two, you should aim for these metrics:
✅ 300% + ROAS (mine is consistently 500% even on my bad days)
✅ 0.3 CPC (mine are 0.5 to 0.25)
✅ $17 CPP (mine are $13)
✅ 5% of the products are winner (20% of mine are winners)
✅15% net profit (mine is 30%)
^^^^^^ Some realistic metrics for you to gauge how well you’re doing.
I wouldn’t ❌ expect to break even before a month. I would ✅expect to make a profit before the 2 months mark. If you’re not, you’re doing something WRONG! And you need to improve your system.
You should find some winners before 2/3 weeks in. Your winners will probably always stay profitable; so, the more you find, the more money you’ll make, and the more you’ll be able to test by hiring Vas with your profits to scale even FASTER. 💯
That’s a rough draft on how to get started with Google ads. It’s not complete; there’s too much to say on a simple Facebook post. But it’s enough for you to get the ball rolling and start your own research.
Google is RIPE for yours to claim. It’s a MASSIVE, UNTAPPED, UNSPOKEN OF platform. It’s the ‘’old’’ Facebook where you can pull ridiculous ROAS, with ridiculous efforts. Thank me later ;)
** It’s still a business, still requires an initial amount of efforts, and before you automate it, you’ll have to master it. But I’m a lazy, lazy ass (10 months per year on vacations, anyone? 😨 Wait, what? 😱), and if I made it work – so can you! **
Enjoy! 😉
3. CJDropshipping Said:
If Dropshipping Dead, CJ will Dead Soon. Just keep an eye on CJ, you will know if dropshipping works or not.