What is drop shipping?
Before I start this Drop Ship Lifestyle review its important to have a solid understanding of what exactly drop shipping is. So to simply put it, drop shipping is when you make a deal with a supplier to purchase their products at a wholesale price (drop shipping wholesalers) and have them shipped on your behalf to your customer/s. You never physically possess the product/s nor do you have to worry about keeping inventory. You just need to operate your own e-commerce platform. Personally speaking from experience, I recommend Shopify.com when setting up your drop shipping website. This is just my take but these guys are the best hands down if you’re just starting out. It’s a very simple sign-up process that starts with a 14-free trial with all the features a paid member would get.
Once you get that sorted out you can contact and get approved as a drop shipper for that brand/distributor. Your supplier should be situated somewhere in the USA(read on to learn why) or at least have a warehouse in The United States where they regularly stock inventory.
Once you get approved your supplier will send you a product list and from there you can list the products on your website.
This program was designed to work best with you using your own e-commerce website. The only fee you’ll pay is Shopify’s $29 per month +(2.9%+.30 per trans.) So your main objective is to drive traffic to your website. Also, a lot of reputable brands don’t want their highly valued products paired with similar products of lower quality(cheap Chinese copies). It easily becomes a slippery slope when price-cutting is your only tactic to customer conversions.
So back to it, it’s best to create your own website through Shopify. They offer a free 14-day trial. In reality you only need about a week, but given some people’s schedules, 14-days is more than enough time. A bonus to this is if you need even more time they will grant you up to 14-days extra if you ask kindly. They offer 24/7 live-support and are usually on point from my experience.
Take a Quick Tour of Shopify
Shopify At a Glance:
Cost: $29 per month($14.99 w. limited features)
Pros: 24/7 support, Free SSL certificate, 2.9% + .30 per trans.
Cons: Not the best if your selling high-risk items
Bonuses: Free 14-day Trial, $100 Google Adwords coupon(Huge for beginners!)
Develop Your Own Opinion
When Someone Purchases
Once a customer buys from your website, you’ll then buy from your supplier and they will blindly drop-ship to your customer on your behalf. As far as your customer is concerned they bought the product directly from you. The end result is you get paid, your supplier gets paid and your customer gets what they’ve paid for. You have the authority to set the retail price in comparison to what your wholesale price is,this is your profit margin.
Avoid Easy to Find Paid Memberships
Before we go any further I’d like to point out the type of drop shippers you want to avoid at all cost. You want to work with private brands and stay as far…No. Run as far away as possible from the monthly paid membership with no MAP Pricing.
Why Should You Choose Private Brands?
For starters, private brands don’t sell directly to the public. Their objective as a business is to only deal with retailers including online merchants. When you’re going directly through the brand you’ll feel what it’s like to work with a company that actually takes pride in the products they sell.(Learn how to get leading brands to accept you as a drop shipper! )
Benefits:
- High Quality product images
- Family like customer support
- Fair price play or price protection
- Your suppliers won’t want to work with people who will lessen the value of their brands by offering cheap prices(i.e. selling a chair that should cost $200 for $99 because they’re OK with minimal profit margin.)
What is MAP?
Your supplier will set a MAP policy or Minimum Advertised Price policy, where you can’t sell the product for any less than what they say is OK. So for example, if I’m a headphone brand and I set the MAP on a pair of headphones at $150.00, then not one of my drop ship retailers can sell below this price. If they do and I find out, that retailer will be suspended or banned.
Importance of a MAP Policy
So say you find a supplier who doesn’t enforce MAP policies. Never mind the fact you’ll be playing a game of margins. These are the suppliers that are easy to find. If you think you’ve found a drop ship supplier with little to no effort, then sadly a million other people have too. You don’t want this trust me. Competition is a good thing but too much competition is a problem.
Have a test: Go to Google.com right now and search for any niche product and add the keyword “drop shipper” at the end. For example, “Cell phone case drop shipper”.
Now take a look at the search results… Loads of them right?
Now all you have to do is choose a cheap program and you’re only a few steps away from waking up to $1,000 in sales right? WRONG!
These are the suppliers that we absolutely want to run away from as fast as possible.
What’s The Problem?:
1.These companies tout drop shipping as their main focus and don’t put enough emphasis in the value of their brand.
2.They maintain more of a volume goal and to achieve this they won’t set a MAP policy. That means prices can hit absolute rock bottom! You don’t want to play a game of margins for customer conversions! We’re doing this so we can live a more passive lifestyle, not a hectic one.
3. They want you to “sign up” and pay for a niche product-list that probably hasn’t been updated or edited since its inception. Sounds like anyone can join… Not what we want!
The Problem With The Internet
There are a load of free resources on the internet and the only problem with that is… There are a load of resources on the internet with wrong information. It’s quite hard to pick and choose which one you should invest your time into rather than reading them all or even worse, unluckily reading only wrong information. There are critical steps that are not difficult to implement but imperative your success that a lot of the free resources don’t offer. You kind of have to go by your gut instinct and even then, you could be wasting time that could be spent making money.. I personally can attest that I first tried drop shipping through Doba. What a mistake that was…
My problem with per month Drop Shipping programs that provide your products:
1.All their products were pretty much generic crap.
2.The products were being sold for much cheaper on 3rd party platforms like Amazon and Ebay.
3.They also wanted a monthly fee as well!
This was my introduction into the world of drop shipping and it doesn’t have to be yours. .
Drop Ship Lifestyle Review
I personally learned everything I needed to know about drop shipping from Drop Ship Lifestyle. They have a very intuitive program that teaches you the foundations of running your own e-commerce website.
DROP SHIP LIFESTYLE
- step by step approach to running a successful drop-shipping website.
- opinions and insight from people who know what they’re doing
- Life-time access to forum and training. The Forum will play an immense role in your success.
- A place with like-minded individuals to interact and share ideas.
Develop your own opinion
After about 2-months I finally got my first legit sale and I can tell you at that moment nothing in the world could of wiped the smile off my face! I didn’t have to take a risk by buying the product until it sold or worry about pre-stocking it. I just created a platform where interested customers could come and view brand name products at a competitive price.
The hardest part to joining DSL was making the commitment to push “buy now”. Although, as with anything good these days, that good thing is never for free. Once you get past the purchasing phase you won’t have any regrets, trust me. I was able to do this by remembering that this was a personal investment in myself and that I believed I would gain valuable knowledge from this endeavor. Besides you pay this initial amount with the idea that you’ll make your money back 100x for years to come. When you look at it like that, the whole idea of this becomes a lot easier.
First Impressions!
I was very skeptical at first as well because of the initial investment required before starting the course. What eased me over a bit was that you can get a refund if you’re not happy within 30 days of your initial purchase. If I’m being honest, the course videos are extremely informative(constantly updated as well), but it’s all about what the DSL forum has to offer. You also gain access to this for life as a member so any new updates or training modules will be available for your accessing.(the fee you pay is for a lifetime membership so no monthly fees.)
There is a plethora of shared information varying from people doing it big to very first day newbies. A lot of ideas are passed over with common questions and success stories on this forum. It will be the very catalyst to helping you find your very own success. Click here to visit DSL and learn more
It Only Gets Better As you progress!
At this point in time I’m extremely happy with what Drop Ship Lifestyle has done for me. I have a much better understanding of e-commerce and making money online.
Why You Should Consider Drop Ship Lifestyle:
● This system is EASY to understand and implement.
● There’s NO complicated traffic generation required. It’s really straight forward!
● No need to dedicate a lot of time to this.
See For yourself
If you do a simple search about making money online. You’ll see there’s plenty of software out there that guarantees to generate you income online. Some may work and some may not. I tried Doba and it was a complete failure, but I knew there was some program out there that did work because, how else are people doing this and making a living? This program has allowed a lot of people to quit their full-time jobs and live a very relaxing lifestyle.
As I’ve previously mentioned, only members have access to the DSL forum, which is probably the best part in terms of just getting real help in real time from people who are doing this on the daily as well as being as committed as you are. The training guide is great as well. It takes a very simple approach and it’s quite extensive.
DSL uses a step by step process that includes informative videos that not only walk you through but, hold your hand along the way through the process. The best part is this can be learned by anyone. You don’t to need be some kind of entrepreneurial mastermind for this to work.
The e-commerce industry is going to reach over $400 billion by 2017 in the USA alone. Why not take a small cut of that? Who’s saying you can’t?
Here are a couple examples of demo stores that DSL uses to give you an idea of what you’ll be creating:
http://razorsharpshave.com/
http://www.enlightenchandeliers.com/
Imagine being an authorized retailer for thousands of products that you will never see or touch. Once a sale comes up, you merely forward payment and keep the profit while never having to pre-purchase any inventory!
It’s On Your Horizon Now!
I can only show you the fresh water stream in a time of drought guys. I can’t drink from it for you! My goal today was to inform you about something that I found very useful and thought you may find useful as well. I feel if you can at least take something from this post that intrigues you to learn more about drop shipping or real proven ways to make money online in general then I did my job. If I can push you one step further from leaving the job that you hate then, I’m happy.
It’s great to see people not afraid to take a risk and achieve success, however it may be. I was out here in Thailand trying to figure out other ways to make income besides teaching English. At one point I had eventually built something on Ebay but it was short lived. One customer complained that the product I sent wasn’t as described (a size medium pocket t-shirt but was too small and instead wanted to keep the shirt and get a full refund. In the end Ebay banned my account after over 100+ positive transactions)
Not to mention Ebay wants 10% of my profit margin, which is freaking huge! Don’t forget paypal taking 4.4% as well! That’s almost 15% of your profit margin gone… What’s the point then?
Take The Risk
So If you’re interested in investing minimal capital in a proven business model that can increase your income then I would highly recommend you learn more about DSL. It’s super easy to get started and you’ll have a huge community of people like Anton and other successful drop shippers that can help and offer wisdom. It took me about 2 months to get my first sale but I’ve seen post on the forum with people getting their first sale in as little as two weeks! It all really depends on how fast you build your store and how down to the “t” you follow the program. Remember there is no re-inventing needed on your part. You just have to follow the program and you are guaranteed results!
Anton Kraly, the creator of the DSL course built his first e-commerce website for just $29 bucks and did $300,000 in his first year.
Express Yourself
How does the term ” location independent” business sound to you? No need for a physical storefront or employees, no rent or electric bills. You can decide how much work you want to put in. What’s your goal? There is no reason why you can’t easily do $500-$1000 per month if you dedicate time and execute the program accordingly.
In closing…
So overall you will develop your skills in sales, web design, marketing, supplier relations and customer service. You will gain crucial knowledge into what really is the future of business. It’s an investment that could potentially change your life.
So If you want to learn more about the process from someone who has done over $5 million usd in sales then I’d advise you head over to DSL and learn more about the program from Anton himself.
There is no rush to sign up, take your time and think about if you really want to run a business from your laptop.
There are a series of live trainings that will go over the fundamentals of drop shipping. If you have read this far and your interested then I implore you to consider this program and see if it could work for you. It’s definitely not for everyone, but if the idea living a location independent lifestyle speaks to you then what the heck are you waiting for?
Also, Since I myself am a DSL member, I will gladly help you through the process. you can at anytime ask me for help, guidance or opinions on your progress. The forum is also full of expert-opinions as well and it will be a huge part of your DSL experience. There may be a bit of a learning curve, but it’s not rocket science, I promise! You won’t become a millionaire overnight, but you can build a profitable business that will allow you to live a lot more comfortable. Money can’t buy happiness but it can make life a bit more enjoyable!
Here is a free list of 187 niches you could choose from!
