Am I on the right track?

[Paulo Vaz]

My store is powerjedi.com.

My promotion activities begun just over a month ago and I got only 2 sales of low value items.

I found it very hard to choose a niche at the beginning. I had the help from the Alidropship niche list and researched several niches but always found a lot of disadvantages like SEO and keyword high competition or lack of Facebook or Instagram groups. I wanted to choose a niche that would be easier to promote in the social media. In the end I decided to choose Star Wars merch because there are a lot of fans on social media, even though there would be some competition too.

Until now I decided to go with only social media free promotion. I want to go step by step and learn with the process before doing paid promotions. The Social Rabbit plugin is helping. The Instagram and Facebook got around 230 followers in about a month. I am sharing a post everyday to more than 30 Star Wars related Facebook Groups, with a commercial post every two days. This takes me about 1 hour of work a day because I have to share it manually to each group. But I think this strategy is good because I can reach between 10k to 60k Facebook users for every non commercial post and between 3k to 6k for every commercial posts. In a week it can reach 50k to 60k users on average.

The site is being visited by around 130 users per week. It has risen from around 20 in the first week and then stabilized on the last 3 weeks. The average session in the site is just below 1 minute and the bounce rate is around 84%. I don't know if these numbers are good or bad for this kind of dropshipping business.

My store was setup by the Alidropship team. I am using the price formula they recommend. Are the prices too high? Is there anyone prone to buy a mug for $20 or $30? It seems too much to me. By the other hand anyone can find a lot of the exact same products online (Amazon, eBay, independent stores and so on), even other Alidropshippers with the same niche. Why will anyone buy from my shop?

I would appreciate comments and suggestions about my site and the strategy.

Thank you!

 

[Direct Webstore]

I decided to choose Star Wars

There's the problem ... right there. FLOODED to death ... since the 1970s (pre internet brick & mortar sales too)

If I was you ... I start researching niches again ... something more "unique" and less flooded with competition that has been around for many, many years.

OR ... stay with Star Wars ... but narrow it right down to one aspect, character, thing or whatever ...e.g Star Wars craft and vehicles (selling models, construction sets etc of spacecraft, futuristic atmospheric craft, land vehicles etc)

Good luck and may the force be with you.

 

[Paulo Vaz]

... I start researching niches again ... something more "unique" and less flooded with competition that has been around for many, many years.

Thanks for your reply, Direct Webstore. I researched a lot of niches from the list published in the Alidropship website but found a lot of competition in all of them and hard to promote them in social media. In the end I thought Star Wars would be a possibility and I asked the opinion of my Alidropship support manager and she said it was a good choice.

In fact Star Wars is around 40 years old, but there are a lot of devoted fans in social media. Yesterday I reached almost 90k fans in Facebook Groups with just one post, so there is a lot of interest and people are very passionate about it and the interaction in Facebook and Instagram is great. The commercial posts also have a lot of likes and comments. The problem is the conversion to sales.

About narrowing to one aspect, it sounds a good idea in terms of differentiation from the competition, but I am afraid of the craft models and construction sets because I think there are a lot of fake items and I could get problems with that. I already got banned from some Facebook Groups because of illegal "Lego" items.

 

[Direct Webstore]

afraid of the craft models and construction sets

That was just an example plucked out of the air ... you'd need a bit of research to come up with a practical niche.

the list published in the Alidropship website

Every man and his grandmother has checked out that list ... finding out what the most popular areas are, choosing one, then narrowing it down to a niche is better in my opinion.

But Good luck. If you make any money out of it ... come back here and let us know.

 

[Paulo Vaz]

...then narrowing it down to a niche is better in my opinion.

Thank you for your ideas.

What about the pricing formula? Don't you think the prices are too high, at least in some of the categories?

 

[Direct Webstore]

What about the pricing formula?

Sorry. I don't know what your formulas are ... and I don't have time to cross reference your prices and Aliexpress's.

Mine start off like this ..

1 $0.1 < cost < $0.99 cost * 4.00 (e.g Costs $1 ... sells for $4)
2 $1 < cost < $1.99 cost * 3.98
3 $2 < cost < $2.99 cost * 3.96
4 $3 < cost < $3.99 cost * 3.94
5 $4 < cost < $4.99 cost * 3.92

... and continue on...

... and end up like this...

96 $95 < cost < $95.99 cost * 2.10
97 $96 < cost < $96.99 cost * 2.08
98 $97 < cost < $97.99 cost * 2.06
99 $98 < cost < $98.99 cost * 2.04
100 $99 < cost < $99.99 cost * 2.02
101 $100 < cost < $1000 cost * 2.00

 

[Paulo Vaz]

Direct Webstore, thanks a lot for sharing your price structure

 

[Direct Webstore]

Direct Webstore, thanks a lot for sharing your price structure

Actually, it's not mine. I got it from Super Agora, a member here ... but I've since changed it to go up in five dollar increments instead of one dollar ... It's "almost" the same as Alidropship's recommended formula structure.

e.g

$0.01 - $4.99 x 4.00
$5.00 - $9.99 x 3.90
$10.00 - 14.99 x 3.80

dropping 10c each time

to...

$100.00 - $1000.00 x 2.00

SO I only have 20 formulas instead of 100. But I still had Super Agora's in a text file, so it was easier to copy/paste that.

 

[lmendozajr]

Direct Webstore, nice price formula structure. I would also like to change my pricing structure which was set by AliDropship team in my store.

 

[Direct Webstore]

I've changed it again since then...to be more competitive.