 what's going on guys welcome to a new video so in this one i'm going to be answering the top 11 frequently asked questions i get asked about dropshipping i get messages every day questions every day across all the different platforms youtube facebook instagram and it's brilliant i love talking to you guys it's great to hear from people who want to change their lives for the better and do that by starting a dropshipping business however it's understandable starting a business it is a risk it is a financial investment people want to make sure they have the answers to as many questions as possible before they start that business so what i've done is i've collated i've put together the top 11 questions i get asked and i'm going to answer them all in one go in this video so next time somebody asks me one of these questions i can just redirect them to this video thanks for tuning in hope you guys enjoy it and let's jump straight into question number one so one of the most popular questions i get asked is what address should i use what address should i put on facebook what address should i put on my Shopify store because they don't want to put their home address out there on the internet for the whole world to potentially see now it can feel like that i felt like that in the beginning but to be honest it's nothing too much to worry about when i first started by furry first drop shipping business back in 2016 i was exactly the same i was really hesitant about putting my home address on my website online in case people would come to my house and knock on my door and complain about a product or whatever it may be at that time i was living at home with my parents as well so that just kind of added to the to the pressure or worry however i was so skint at the time i truly was on a low budget for starting my drop shipping business but i hated my job on the other hand i hated my job so much it was a small risk to take given the potential reward or my potential goal at that time which was always ultimately to be able to quit my job and do drop shipping full time so i thought what the hell this is worth the risk and i did it anyway i used my home address for about four months um it took me about three or four months before i made a single penny in drop shipping so if you're on your first one or two months and you still haven't made any money don't worry you don't need to worry it's perfectly normal at the end of the day if drop shipping was as easy as it looked on youtube everybody would be millionaires by this point anyway going back to the whole address thing so i had it on my website for the first three months or so um i didn't have a single customer come to my front door um which will be pleased to hear about it was very rarely used it was only used for returns which i'll get onto in a second when we address that question there are a couple of workarounds so if you have the money to do it there's services out there which will give you a virtual office what a virtual office is basically a big office building where people will rent physical offices it will have a reception it will have a concierge and they'll offer the service of being able to use their address for your business even though your business isn't based there or isn't stationed there so for example before i had this whole office here which i rent to run my businesses from i used to have a virtual office address so it was company name at mercury house so on and so forth it looked really professional nobody could trace the business back to my personal home address we were all good to go if you're looking for a similar service in the uk go to i believe it's called ukpostboxservice.com or if you search for uk virtual office services you'll be able to find people that will give you that same service for about 12 pounds per month a lot of them will come with mail forwarding at an extra cost too so you could be based in the north of scotland have an address that says your business is based in london and they'll forward any returns or letters that you receive to your business straight to your home address the other option is a po box however i don't know why anybody would choose this option because it's a lot more expensive and a po box is not as professional as your business at mercury house london may fair some of them will give you partial addresses like that which is pretty number two people ask me all the time because they're worried that when the parcel arrives at the customer's door because obviously it's going direct to there won't the customer see the invoice know how much we've paid and then be annoyed or kick off whatever it may be so the easiest work around is get it shipped to yourself and then turn it around yourself and forward it on obviously it's going to add on a couple of extra days plus an added postage cost and when you get to 50 orders a day you won't be able to keep on top of that sort of thing so in the beginning you could do that however like number one with the whole addressing it's not a big issue i've been dropshipping now for six and a half years and i can count on both hands maybe even one hand the amount of people have actually questioned the paperwork or what's actually on the parcel when it arrives to the customer i'll try and dig out an image i'm sure i'll have a return knocking about somewhere here so i'll take a picture and i'll put it on the screen now so this is essentially what your customer will see and like i said it's nothing to worry about you can also ask your suppliers at the time of fulfillment to not include any invoices or promotions or anything like that so again there's no trace back to a chinese supplier number three should i sell to the uk or the us this is definitely a popular one on youtube because the majority of information the bigger channels are americans as people in the us all the screenshots all the sales numbers that sort of thing is typically in dollars so people just assume dropshipping equals united states however my advice would be the ultimate thing you can do is test lots of different countries see which one is where you get the traction and then optimize your store but ultimately make sure that anybody who comes on to your Shopify store can shop in their local currency otherwise he's going to put them off and it's going to lead to your business failing so take it from your own personal standpoint of you whatever country you're based in watching this now if you're based in the uk and you're used to shopping in british pounds if you went onto a website and had to pay in australian dollars it's probably going to put you off you're probably going to leave and try and find that product here in the uk locally so ultimately i would always stick to local first because it's also going to come into play with question number four which is how do i deal with returns if you're in the uk selling to australia and you've got an australian customer that wants to return that item they're going to kick off they're not going to be happy about having to return it back to the uk so in this instance this is what you would do or here's the different outcomes number one is a customer says their product is damaged you ask for an image or a video of this if it's within the first 14 days and or 30 days whatever your returns guarantee is and it looks like the item hasn't been mistreated then you're obliged to give that person a refund however the item is broken so i don't want it the customer doesn't want it tell them to put it in the bin and refund their money scenario number two is they just want to return the item for every reason it's not broken however they just want to return it again if it's within that period then you're obliged to do so in which case i'll get it i'll get the item sent back to myself to my office that way later on down the line or over time you'll build up kind of like an in-house stock a certain quantity of the item should there be any issues further down the line with existing customers or people who reach out and contact you they place an order they get that order confirmation that says it's going to be two weeks or a week depending what the item is of course and they say actually i need this within three days i'll check stock here and if we've got it we can send it out uk locally from our office here number five how do i start drop shipping business it's a very simple three-step plan i could perhaps do a more in-depth detailed video on this one number one is you need to find a product number two is you need to build your Shopify store around that product so it's branded and then number three is you need an ad creative to then use on your marketing platforms so first of all establish what products you're going to sell make sure it's a product that's safe to sell it's got the profit room it's got the margins for profit in there it's trending it's in demand and you know for a fact people are buying it number two build your branded Shopify store around that product make it professional get a good logo color schemes fonts everything and then number three get some user generated content around that product so you have a few different ad creatives to test question number six do i need to register as a business before i start selling so from personal experience this is exactly what i did whether you follow this is completely up to you or not ultimately you should always seek your own advice when it comes to things like taxes i was young and naive at the time when i started i didn't care about legalities i didn't care about taxes i just started selling i wanted to make money so i could quit my job fast forward four or five months i was making over 20k a month and i thought i should probably get an accountant at this point to help me deal with things like taxes income expenses and that sort of thing so it was at that point in which we registered our company and from that point onwards and since then i've been with the same accountant he's taken care of everything to my knowledge however this is kind of like the textbook process that people should go by number one is they should notify this is if you're in the uk by the way so number one is you should register for self assessment this is if you're going to be a sole trader you're basically telling the government that you're starting a business so that at the end of every single tax year you have to submit what's called a self assessment it's basically a breakdown of your income and expenses so they can work out how much profit they've made and from that they can work out how much to tax you however i do believe you don't need to declare any income until you've made your first one thousand pounds that is to my knowledge what you should always do is go to the government website just search self-assessment or self-employed taxes or self-employed income or when to register for self-assessment and all the latest up-to-date information will be there on the dot gov website number seven how much money do i need um as much as possible is probably the most accurate answer but as a very minimum this is a very very very minimum is 200 pounds with 200 pounds if you get everything bang on perfect from the very beginning you can build a business a drop shipping business with 200 pounds from the ground up but you will be reinvesting every single penny for the first few weeks or even months to build up that cash reserve before you can start taking money out of the business preferably i would say somewhere between sort of a thousand pounds and two thousand pounds ideally unless you have a mentor or course to follow this going to put you down the right path save you from testing dozens and wrong incorrect creatives and shows you how to properly build and design a Shopify store so just as a recap then 200 pounds if you're an experienced professional 500 pounds if you have a mentor showing you along the way every step and then about a thousand pounds if you have a course that actually works to show you but hey how long does it take to get your first sale so again this is going to vary based on how well experienced you are when it comes to drop shipping if you're really good at drop shipping and know what you're doing you've got a decent store good product ad creative marketing campaign you can get your first sale on your first day a lot of the people i work with this is the case they will see their very first sale within hours of running their very first advertisements instead of asking how long does it take though a better question is probably how much do you have to spend because ultimately this is how you gauge the results of your ads as a referral or thumb if you've spent the same amount as the cost of your product so if you're selling the products for 40 pounds if you spent 40 pounds on an ad set on facebook and you haven't seen a sale by then something is wrong and you should switch it off you should definitely see at least one sale before you reach that point of ad spend number nine how do i test a product on facebook i'm going to be producing a video later this week on this i'm not going to say too much but in the beginning really small spends put out to lots of different audiences with a couple of different creatives run it for two three days max see what happens use the breakdowns to find out where the interest the clicks the purchases are coming from then take a very few hand selected ad sets the best performers to then duplicate into your scaling campaigns and this is where you double down on those significantly increase your budgets get those ad sets out of the learning phase and producing optimal results question number 10 is how to deal with long delivery times number one steer clear of alex so we'll go from an ali express perspective first number one steer clear of any supplies that don't offer guaranteed 15 day delivery otherwise unfortunately it could be anywhere from two three or four weeks also make sure you're crystal clear about your shipping policy your shipping rate make sure the customer knows exactly realistically when they're going to expect their product even if it is going to take two weeks tell them it's going to take two weeks and if they like the product enough they'll be willing to wait you can also use people like cj drop shipping who have warehouses all across the globe they may even have the products that you want to drop ship in the stock in a fulfillment center in the country that you want to sell to in which case you'll be able to offer competitive shipping times against any local business another option is also drop shipping agents these are people who specifically specialize in fulfilling drop shipping orders they'll know all of the best shipping methods and have all of the right contracts with the right delivery companies and shipping companies and they should be able to get your items delivered in less than two weeks if somebody can't guarantee you that i will try and find somebody else they can do not try and sell an item that's going to take over two weeks to get to the customer that's too long and it will only result in a headache in customer service complaints that you'll have to deal with charge backs from pay power and credit card companies and also negative comments on your facebook page and posts which is detrimental significantly detrimental to the success of your business number 11 last but not least should you advertise on facebook or tiktok the best thing you could do is test both see which one you get the most success on and then double down on it me i'm pretty biased with this question because all of my experiences on facebook i've been advertising on facebook since 2016 i've spent a lot of money on facebook so i know it pretty well so i'm a big fan of facebook despite the hate that it gets ultimately though from a from an unbiased and an honest answer both platforms can work it's just a matter of testing both and seeing which one works for your business and so with that being something guys that is the top 11 frequently asked questions about drop shipping i hope you've enjoyed the video if you're stuck with me this long make sure you subscribe to see more of my content i'd really appreciate that make sure you drop me a like as well so i know what sort of content you guys enjoy so i can make more of it all the best if you're starting a business this q4 make sure you come back at any point and ask me any questions thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next one