(TL:DR on bottom)
As I write this, my Facebook advertising account (both personal and business) are locked, until I get a bank statement. TikTok ads are running but while impressions are high click through are not even 1% as of yet. Microsoft is also reviewing the product. With this in mind, I am about 90% sure I picked a failing a product. So with this said, let's get to my story.
My experience with e-commerce is zilch, nadda, nothing. I have been searching, reading, watching. From Dropshipping to Amazon FBA and Affiliate Marketing (I am choosing to not touch this).
Now, I think I have done good enough research to at least get started. I wanted to do branded dropshipping. Or rather, normal dropshipping, turn it into a brand and scale it. This seems to be a route a lot of people take and a lot of people succeed.
Now, here is where my story takes a turn. I will say to anyone reading, new or not. Patience is a virtue, and is extremely important.
Queue me 1 week after extensive research, in my excitement and absolutely no product research I head over to my county clerks office and register a DBA (Doing Business As). First mistake. You want an LLC for tax reasons. Of course its not a huge mistake as you can file later as a LLC.
Now, at this point I'm thinking "general store)," I register for Doba (a dropshipping market of suppliers) and get some products up. But early on I knew this would not work (even before I started advertising).
Now, I had vowed to only ship from the US. Mistake number 2. While you can do this in the future, when you have the funds for a bulk order. But starting out? HA, good luck.
A few days later I decided to stick to one product: dog grooming. Keep in mind I still haven't advertised crap, and I still did no product research. I pick an item from spocket, it was a pretty good clipper grooming set. Truthfully I probably could have gone this route. But no, I had to continue making mistakes.
I decided, screw spocket and doba. I will just use AliExpress and Oberlo as neither has a steep sub price.
I found this product (won't say what it is this time) and jumped on board. No prior research (again, another massive mistake), and decided to go with it. I made the website as best as I could with what I had, another mistake. I did not get professional pictures or a video. This mistake would turn out not to matter, though.
I get the website ready, get advertising ready. TikTok has auto generated video app to use on shopify so that's what I did. This i do not think was a mistake, as its working far better than I thought. Just not good enough.
So I setup TikTok ads, and Microsoft ads, even though they are reviewing the product. I launch the TikTok campaign.
A day later, I've had roughly 200 hits. No abandoned checkouts, no orders, not any information filled out. So I start thinking why this is.
I do some product research. I'm heavily over pricing. Now, for my biggest mistake. I CAN'T LOWER THE PRICE. Else I'd go into the negative. See heres the problem. Not only is the product I picked over priced, even on AliExpress. They only allow DHL delivery. So not only would I be over paying, I have to charge double the selling rate anywhere else.
Lessons learned: DO YOUR RESEARCH
While i'll let this continue to go for a few days, I'm fairly sure I can throw in the towel on this one. However, I did learn some valuable lessons. Especially to never, ever underestimate e-commerce and the work that needs to be put in. I will try again, I will not give up!
TL:DR rushed into dropshipping with absolutely no patience or product research and no plan, likely to fail this endeavor.
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