 what is going on guys welcome to a new video so you've seen the title then today we're going to be discussing whether you should start dropshipping in 2019 so is it worth it so it's a video I've wanted to do for quite a long time I get a lot of questions from you guys and I wanted to put a lot of thought into it before I made this video just because I don't want to give you a broad kind of irrelevant answer that doesn't really help you guys out that much I wanted to give you like a more logical unbiased and better answer just so you guys can make the best decision really because ultimately then I don't want to give you guys false hope or lead you down the wrong road and in three or six months time and maybe hundreds of pounds if not thousands of pounds of investment and realize it's something that you don't want to do so what I've done then is a bullet point it kind of like the main points or fundamentals of what goes into a drop shipping business I've got some notes from my phone and I'm just going to work through them one by one and just kind of tell you guys then how they will be affected in 2019 and whether that's a good or bad thing then if you want to start a drop shipping business now before we get into the points I just want to make just want to say a quick note on skills so regardless of whether you succeed or not in drop shipping as long as you haven't spent thousands of thousands of thousands of pounds then I don't think you're going to regret the process because the skills involved in running the business that you'll have to develop and gain are going to are going to be valuable to you and your and your development and your life for a very long time so when it comes to running a drop shipping business then you need to know how to source products and negotiate with suppliers you're going to learn the ins and outs of building an e-commerce store and how to maximize conversion rates and essentially make the most money so when it comes to things like upsells and cross sales what they are what good ones are what bad ones are and then ultimately probably the most important skill that you'll learn is marketing so social media marketing it's absolutely huge and it's only going to get bigger if it hasn't already then I'm pretty sure at some point it will become the biggest marketing space in the world and if you get good at marketing and you can and you can turn a profit on pretty much any product then you you'll be able to walk into pretty much any business in the world and just get a job straight away if you can show somebody that if they put 10 pound in and you get them 20 pound out then they're going to pay you whatever you want as long as you're making them more money than you're costing them so in terms of the skills involved in building a drop shipping business they're very valuable and they're not just applicable to e-commerce and drop shipping they will apply to a lot of different walks of life essentially so anyway that being said then let's get straight to the points and point number one then is products and suppliers so as time goes on then more and more products are going to come onto the market and so are suppliers it's never been easier than to start an import business regardless of whether you're drop shipping or not if you're just buying products in bulk it's crazy easy now to do because of technologies and advancements in things like communication and shipping times if you think back to just 10 20 years ago before Alibaba existed then I wouldn't have a clue how to go about sourcing a product from China it was just this far-fetched idea that I just never would have considered I mean I would have been six years old at the time but had I been old enough then I just wouldn't have had a clue how to do it whereas now anybody with an internet connection and a computer can literally start a business a global business sourcing products from pretty much any country in the world and then sell them in any country in the world so as time goes on then there's going to be more products available to us which is always a good thing because there's more more ways of making money essentially and there's going to be more suppliers as well because as places like China and Vietnam and the Philippines as they start to realize the potential of being online and people like us essentially buying products on Alibaba or Aliexpress they're going to they're going to want to be part of that and so there's going to be more suppliers coming on to those kind of platforms and ultimately that's going to drive up competition which is always a great thing for people like us because it forces suppliers then to do two things number one is increase their quality because they want to have the best product better than everyone else that way people will source it from them and it's going to improve pricing as well obviously everybody's going to be competing on price so effectively then you're you're going to be able to find better quality products for a cheaper price and this is actually a really really important reason because if you walk down one of the main roads in in any kind of major city that's full of restaurants and bars then only the good ones survive and that's because they're providing a good service a good product at a good price the competition is so high unless you're good at what you do then you just won't survive so in terms of sourcing products and quality products from decent suppliers as well then it only becomes a good thing so a quick little story then for you guys because I know a lot of you like to hear stories about my past and things I've done so when I went to China last year then I met these two English blogs who had been importing goods by the container load and for about two decades and we're doing it a long long time and they told me this story then about this guy who was in the kitchen niche he was selling like high quality kitchen tops they were either marble or slate I can't remember anyway he was sourcing these kitchen tops by the kilo and he was paying by the kilo and he was paying about twenty dollars per kilo for these kitchen tops so he went to the canton fair which is the world's biggest import the world's biggest import export expo and he found this supplier then that was it looked legit like they had all their big banners of their company names and they had product samples their people in suits catalogs everything and they were showing him samples of pretty much the same product he was sourcing but they were quoting half the price so he thought he was going to the winner went back home to the UK struck a conversation online with them speaking to them over email and decided to place an order for a 40 foot container just straight away just commit it to a massive order of that load and he thought he was in the money because obviously he was paying half the price and when a container comes into the UK then there's a checking sheet which is basically where import and customs check it against what the supplier is saying so basically make sure that matches up so there's no funny business going on and because he was important by by the kilo then that was kind of like the main kind of like the main figure that had to match up so anyway the weights matched up the container finally arrived he went down to the port to accept it and collect it and he opened it up and all he found was rubble like just mixed and matched like broken up rubble it wasn't even the correct material the people who replaced the order with have literally have gone to the level of weighing the container and filling it to the correct kilogram of rubble so the whole thing was pretty much just a waste of money needless to say then the supplier just went underground and he never got his money back now I think that was about 10 20 years ago I can't really remember but in terms of things like that happening today yes it does there will be obviously there's going to be people out there that's that want to take advantage of people but it's a lot more difficult to do because just going aliexpress and alibaba now and you can see how long stores have been in business you can see how many orders they've sold and fulfilled you can see what start rating they've got so in terms of finding a good supplier as well it's just so much more easier to do now and if anything it's only going to get easier to do that if it cannot talk it's already really easy so in terms of finding products and suppliers then it's just a really easy process to do and if anything at all it's only going to get easier into 2019 so hopefully you guys enjoyed that little story then if you did please leave a like on the video and if you want to hear more stories like that then about my past experiences and ships to China then just make sure you leave a comment down below or something so anyway moving on to point number two then which is Shopify now to be honest with you guys I haven't used any other platform online any other e-commerce platform online in terms of like how in depth I've used it compared to Shopify I haven't so I can't really talk much about Shopify versus other platforms but what I can tell you is that if you want to make a lot of money then Shopify is more than adequate and in terms of one thing I have looked at is add-ons like things like the Shopify app market and extra apps you can get for Shopify if you compare that to any other platforms like WooCommerce, Wix, WordPress then the add-ons you can get at just second to none and that alone should be enough to sway your decision just purely because the add-ons you can get like will significantly increase your revenue if you use them correctly things like upsells and cross sales customizations you can do to your website free shipping bars countdown timers around certain times of the year great as well so in terms of add-ons then it's really good and since I started using it then going on probably two and a half years now it's changed quite a lot especially in terms of the reporting that you can do again I can't really talk about other platforms but what I'm trying to say is they keep putting more money into it and developing it so in terms of moving into 2019 and even further I can't see any reason why they wouldn't continue to do that and it goes back to that whole competition thing so there are loads of other e-commerce platforms so they're all going to be competing against each other which should make all of them up their game so Shopify should make sure they stay on top of everybody else and hopefully then keep their prices down as well so there's not really a lot more I can say about it ultimately you want to do your own research but from my point of view then I don't think you can beat Shopify now but I will say then that one place or one area then that Shopify does fall short to the other sort of things like Wix and WordPress is that it's not drag and drop so when it comes to design and customization in terms of the aesthetics and appearance of your site then it's not as flexible as other platforms but on the flip side of that then the customizations that Shopify does give you is more than adequate to make more than enough money than probably most of you do want to make and you can actually make those changes as well but you will obviously need some sort of coding experience and what a lot of people don't realize as well is that when you start a Shopify account then you do actually get one hour's free like time with a Shopify designer if you go into the chat section then you can actually ask them to do things for you and you do like I said you do get one hour's free not design work with a Shopify designer so if you haven't used that yet and you do want to make certain changes then definitely something worth checking out so moving on to point number three and this is actually a really important point because if you want to scale your business then to be making significant figures then you're not going to be able to do everything yourself one of the hardest decisions is letting go of things things like customer services well which is like people representing your business on a like on a first instance like a first impression if you don't get your customer service right then it will just destroy your business so that's one of the hardest things to let go but it's also one of the most time consuming and I don't want to say unskilled but as people stand a drop shipping business then our main focus has to be on marketing because that's ultimately what's going to bring the customers in so point number three then is labor or virtual assistance then basically people to bring in and work for you so order fulfillment customer service and this is a really important point because as I mentioned if you want to scale so the point in which I started hiring VAs which was about 70,000 revenue just because I found myself spending probably two to three hours a day just on overload fulfilling the orders and two to three hours of my time at that point was a lot of time I was still working a nine to five so like I said it was it's not unskilled work but it's work that would have been better off done elsewhere so I could focus on the important thing so doing the product research and building Facebook ads and Facebook campaigns and moving into 2019 again as the internet grows especially in these countries that are less developed and people's skills as well people start to hear more about things like Shopify and opportunities for designers as well which is crucial again if you want to be successful with Facebook then I always recommend having your own unique ad whether that's an image or a video then more and more people are going to be coming online on people on places like Fiverr or Upwork and again it comes back to that whole competition thing competition is going to go create it it always always increases especially when it comes to the internet because more and more people are using it so as competition increases so does the quality of the work and it should drive down prices or at least keep prices very competitive which is always a good thing again for people like us who are going to be bringing people in then to help with things like that so to give you guys an example then of why virtual assistants and designers are so important then so going back to the whole order fulfillment so two to three hours every single day in two to three hours I could probably come up with maybe a list of five or ten really decent products or I could do that doing order fulfillment or I could pay someone $30 then to process my orders for the day so what I do is I pay my VA's $10 an hour regardless of whether they're doing order fulfillment customer service whatever it is now some of you guys who do have VA's might say that you can find people a lot cheaper than that and yes you can but the way I look at it is if you if you give somebody more than what they expect then they're going to return the favor and give you more than what you expect so if you're going to pay someone the bare minimum then expect the bare minimum service whereas if you pay someone what they expect and more then hopefully they should return that favor if they're a decent person and at the end of the day what's if I'm going to pay somebody $5 or $10 an hour over the course of three hours what's that $15 a day depending on what kind of products you're selling you can make that back for one single order so in my eyes then paying that extra amount is worth the return so all that being said they're moving on to the fourth and final point I feel like I've been talking for hours so if you're still watching now I really do appreciate it thank you very much the fourth and final and most important point then is marketing so this is going to be the biggie then and probably the the point that kind of turns you on to stand a store turns you off and that is so speaking about Facebook ads and because that's usually kind of the examples and what I talk about most in this channel now Facebook ads are getting more expensive so when I first started back in July 2016 then I could pretty much put an ad out and just average five pound per purchase and it would be no biggie like it'd be pretty easy to do I've documented it in past videos so just go and search for those and in today's world then that's not so much the case Facebook marketing has got so much so much bigger and again it goes back to that whole competition thing at the end of the day Facebook ads are bidding platform so essentially think of it like eBay everybody's bidding for that for that advertising space or that all for that cost per click or that purchase so the more people that are advertising in your space then the more it's going to cost you and again as it becomes more and more popular as more and more people cotton on to how effective Facebook is then it's just going to drive at prices so yes that's a bad thing but there's a few things in that we can do to make the most of it or at least adapt and make sure that we actually survive so number one is sell more expensive products so it's going to become harder to achieve those lost cost those low cost per purchases but if you sell more expensive products then there's going to be more room in there to effectively account for your marketing cost so if you follow me on instagram i'll post a lot of stuff on there when it comes to my own facebook ads and you'll see that i average anywhere from sort of kind of around a nine ten pound per purchase so depending on what your product costs obviously that's going to fit in or it isn't and also what you need to be doing what's going to be key then pretty much from now onwards is building a brand or at least building a following on social media because the more followers that you have on social media then the less money you're going to have to invest into into marketing so put it this way then put it this way then as a new business with zero followers then in terms of organic traffic we might get one or two from when we put a post on instagram or facebook whatever it is but essentially 100 percent of our traffic then is going to come from marketing which is so it's a hundred percent paid traffic whereas if we had a million followers across all platforms then essentially every time we put a post out which is going to be free then we're going to get a significant amount of traffic so that's what that's the way you've got to look at it you've got a kind of it's like a balancing act so facebook ads starts up up here and then organic traffic is here but as you build your following then you want to do it like this and obviously as your organic following increases then the amount you spend on ads should decrease because essentially you can bring more people onto your store just through posting on social media and just to illustrate then how important this point is you've probably already heard the story by now but it's one of the Kardashians I think it's Kylie Jenner has one of the biggest Shopify stores in the world that did almost a billion dollars in sales in the first year and she didn't run a single ad it was all just by pushing her products through her social media following so in terms of starting a business now and moving forward then branding or like I said at least having a social media following is going to be absolutely critical to your success if you just purely try and rely on your facebook ads then you can be successful but what I'm saying is that it's going to be difficult or at least going to be a lot more difficult than if you had that big or large or social media following to back and that goes for email marketing as well so I'm not going to go into too much detail now but when I talk about facebook ads you obviously have your front-end ads which is essentially going out to cold traffic so it's the initial point of contact with a potential customer and every time they see your brand and hear from you then obviously they start becoming more aware of you and if they enter into your store you can retag them so retagging ads are going to convert a lot more so that's going to drive down your cost per purchase and if they make a purchase and allow you to to essentially send them emails then again that's another way that's another point of contact and again another way email marketing is one of the cheapest ways of marketing as well and that's going to make people bring it in again that's going to drive down your overall cost per purchase across all platforms so I guess to kind of summarize then facebook ads for 2019 they're going to get more and more expensive but like I just mentioned there are a few things you can do about it but that being said then that still doesn't take away from the fact that facebook ads add the most powerful it's the most powerful method of marketing in my opinion because in terms of the level of of tagging you can do on your actual customer suit like just to name a few like crucial things so age, gender, interests, location, what platform they're on you just don't get that on any other kind of marketing platform so it's still the place to be and if you want to get involved in dropship and you've got to think about it long term and if like I said if you put a lot of time into facebook ads and learn it then it's going to be such a valuable skill so if you're thinking about getting started dropshipping in 2019 then you've got to think of it of a long term and kind of like a journey or a development and if you put a lot of time into facebook ads and develop those skills then that one skill alone will make you a millionaire whether that's your goal or not it's such a valuable skill like I said if you can make somebody more money than what they have to pay you then pretty much any business in the world will want to hire you so to kind of summarize then I'll give you like an overview of this video then dropship in 100 yes in terms of pretty much any other business model just to talk about the required investment upfront is kind of minuscule compared to other other similar business models so yes it's definitely worth standing 2019 but just be aware of the points that I've just discussed and if you guys have got a different opinion to me or what are your thoughts then leave a comment down below I'm always interested to hear from you guys and see what kind of like the general consensus is and that being said then I'm going to wrap the video up I've got absolutely no idea how long this video is it could be 10 minutes it could be half an hour and there's going to be a lot of editing to do but anyway if you're still watching thank you very much for watching I really appreciate the support and I'll see you guys in the next one