Hi All,
Started my first store and would like to share details with you. No sales yet!
It's almost like playing the lottery, only with unlimited number of tickets. The value of the auto importer cannot be overstated. Cleanup of the item should take less than 2 minutes... the link, one sentence describing it, some witty remark, additional information (like batteries not included) and what is actually included was my template.
Doing it the hobby way, probably won't lead me to any sales at all. Still it was fun, and maybe I will dump a weekend or three to do it the "right" way later. Pissing away $1 dollar a day on Facebook, just to see how it works... seems no matter what parameters I use, it says "target audience is broad" which would be fine for a general store anyway...
Total true "non-luck" monetary cost (luck defined as picking a winning niche or hitting it big with a general store, non-luck defined as picking several niches / several stores since the first one is unlikely to succeed goes with anything in life) is probably several hundred to several low-thousand dollars, realistically. The technical requirement is also there. Still cheaper than anything, and easier than anything.
~ B
Started my first store and would like to share details with you. No sales yet!
- Some minimum technical skill required such as DNS, cPanel, so on. I haven't used Shopify yet, but maybe this is one drawback of Wordpress -- more technical skill required. This is to be expected. One annoying part is DNS redirection takes 24-48 hours, so I had to wait before being access it after installing the HTTPS cert (yes, another technical requirement)
- Importing the products and cleaning up the products is a major pain... taking the AliExpress descriptions and names and cleaning them up. I created a template, one sentence to draw them in, one additional sentence with additional information and one line of what they get. I have not tried the automatic import, because even if I automatic import I have to cleanup the link and description so I reasoned better to select the products.
- I was setting up the prices manually, and it took a long time. Using my own knowledge of what people would want to pay. I was also selecting the products, based on my own knowledge of what people would want to buy. This is probably a mistake for making money.
- I started by e-mailing Aliexpress suppliers about dropshipping, about 20 have said they support it (even if they say order must match purchase address) and only 1 didn't know what it was and no rejections
- Definitely use the auto importer, to drop in all the items. There just isn't time to select the items, plus what I want is obviously not what everyone else wants
- Definitely use price brackets and automatic update. There isn't time to manually price every item based on your own personal biases
- Definitely pick a niche (or three or five) and rotate away from niches that need a lot of details and custom work. It seems like people are having success picking licensed merchandise. Well, I would never do that, but if I was starving and desperate and had no job and education, my morals might be corrupted! Better yet, create a general store with five "niches" or ten "niches" and import thousands of products. With the autoimporter this can take a matter of hours not days or weeks.
- Definitely create good copy for the Facebook ad. Everything depends on the copy, and the Facebook video / Instagram ad. All the time you save on technical setup (importing products, updating products, pricing) you use on advertising. Everything is about the advertising. I would spend 95% of time on the advertising and 5% of time on the technical crap.
- Buy dozens of AliDropShip licenses and dozens of domain names and do it en masse (very possible since it's only a one-time fee the MAIN ATTRACTION of AliDropShip to me). Hosting being 80-100 dollars / year, domain name 15 dollars, the plugin 100 dollars I think I would piss away 3k - 5k to really setup a business if I wanted to, all made possible due to AliDropShip. Suboptimally, create one general store with dozens of niche categories, and try to target the Facebook ads to the niche homepage instead of the landing page (internal link).
It's almost like playing the lottery, only with unlimited number of tickets. The value of the auto importer cannot be overstated. Cleanup of the item should take less than 2 minutes... the link, one sentence describing it, some witty remark, additional information (like batteries not included) and what is actually included was my template.
Doing it the hobby way, probably won't lead me to any sales at all. Still it was fun, and maybe I will dump a weekend or three to do it the "right" way later. Pissing away $1 dollar a day on Facebook, just to see how it works... seems no matter what parameters I use, it says "target audience is broad" which would be fine for a general store anyway...
Total true "non-luck" monetary cost (luck defined as picking a winning niche or hitting it big with a general store, non-luck defined as picking several niches / several stores since the first one is unlikely to succeed goes with anything in life) is probably several hundred to several low-thousand dollars, realistically. The technical requirement is also there. Still cheaper than anything, and easier than anything.
~ B
