 So in today's video we're gonna be discussing drop shipping strategy or more specifically long-term drop shipping strategy then. We've all seen videos on YouTube titles and the headlines of does drop shipping actually work? Is drop shipping dead? Is it a scam? Can you make money drop shipping? And all of those things you've gotta realize are purely for views to get attention to that particular video or that particular piece of content. Ultimately there should be no argument to whether drop shipping actually works. It's just a fact now as long as you do it correctly that is. So you have to have three kind of core fundamentals for a drop shipping business to work. Number one is the product slash supplier. You have to have a good supplier that can supply the right product to a decent quality. You need a decent Shopify store that is trustworthy and professional and comes across as established and you also need an effective marketing campaign and attention grab in piece of content that goes out to the right audience on the right platform. Where drop shipping does have its disadvantages or not necessarily disadvantages it's just better ways of doing things is when it comes to the long-term sustainability of a business. So once you've tested the products you've drop shipped it for a couple of months and it's profitable you've proven that it works. Then in my opinion it doesn't really make sense to continue to actually drop ship that product. There's different strategies and models in which you should then apply to your business to do one of two things which is the two kind of main objectives of your business. So number one is you want it to be sustainable you want your business to last for many years to come. This doesn't make sense to make money for three months for six months and then find that your business is on the decline and you have to find a new product or you have to start again. And number two is you want your business to make as much profit as possible. That's the objective of a business at the end of the day is to make as much money as possible. And drop shipping is not always the best way to do this which is what I wanna show you in this video my six step business model and strategy that you should be using to accomplish those two things which is number one, maximum sustainability and number two, maximum profitability. And with that being said, that's the topic of the video. Thanks for tuning in. Hope you enjoyed the video but more importantly, hope you learned something new as well. So let's jump straight into it. So this is the six step process in which I put together it's kind of like a flow diagram there's different stages and there's different kind of qualifying factors in which you must meet before you move on to the next stage. So I'm gonna take you through it now. Number one is obviously your Shopify store you need a platform to sell your products on. I recommend Shopify it's just the best platform in my opinion. So you build a store to sell your products as a complete beginner I recommend going for a general store just because setting up your store initially is probably gonna take you quite a bit of time and it's probably not gonna look quite as professional as somebody who has experienced on Shopify. If you're more experienced then what I recommend is a one product or branded store this will help you as a business kind of come across as a bit more established and make it look like that you actually own the product and you're the original kind of creators and seller of the product which is definitely more beneficial from a customer's point of view. So if you want to buy kind of like a specialist product you'll probably go to a company or a business that specializes in that range of product. So to give you kind of like an example or a metaphor of what I mean by this if you want to eat Indian food one night you would probably go to an Indian restaurant that specializes in Indian food. You probably wouldn't go to a restaurant that sells English fish and chips or Italian pizza plus kebabs plus Indian food as well. You'd probably go to a specific Indian restaurant that specializes in it because they specialize you assume they will do a better job than anybody else and people will think the same thing if you're selling pet products they'd rather go to a pet shop versus a product that sells pet products, gadgets, kitchen stuff and so on and so forth. The advantages as well for a beginner having a general store is when it comes to the hit rate of finding products that actually perform well then it's obviously going to be a lot less versus somebody who's more experienced. So having a general store just kind of allows you to have that flexibility to test as many products as needs be whereas if you're a bit more experienced you can put a store together in a couple of days and it's not much kind of financial penalty or time penalty to have to redesign your store every time. Once you have a really good store make sure you get some feedback and once you're happy with it move on to step two which is testing your products. So this is using paid marketing to advertise your products. I recommend matching the product to the platform in which you're going to advertise if the product that you're selling is going to be or more suited for a younger demographic sticks things like Snapchat and TikTok. If you're going for a bit of an older demographic 35 plus stick to Google ads, stick to Facebook. An important note when it comes to the testing putting your marketing campaigns together the most important thing by far is the actual content you use. It needs to be attention grabbing and suited for the audience in which you're going to be advertising too. So as it says here, don't skip corners. Use either user generated content or actors or actually film the content yourself. Original content will always perform the best. Step three is kind of like your review phase so is what you're doing at the moment is the product you're testing profitable. So after one to two months testing review your results. If it's profitable move on to step four. If it's not profitable go back to step two of testing products. At this stage at stage three as well you should also consider making it a long-term business. There should be many things you consider here besides just how profitable it is. I would say in my opinion it helps to have an interest yourself in the actual product you're selling. Ultimately the business that you run. Yes you want it to be profitable and yes you want it to be sustainable but you also want it to be something that you enjoy as well. If you decide you want to make this a long-term business for many years to come moving on to step four this is where we need to build a brand. We need to establish ourselves as a market leader and as a professional that's selling this product. So you either completely create a new store around this particular product or you can edit your store to match the product and this is where we start branding it. So as I mentioned we need to build an oppression of legitimate professional and established business. At this point all of your content, your logos the fonts you should be using should all be uniform throughout your website and throughout your social media platforms as well. And then it goes without saying at this point you should have a physical address, a telephone number, contact forms, email address, customer domain, everything you would expect to see from an established business. Once you've completed step four step five is then private labeling your product. This is when it comes back to the profitability aspect of your business. You want your business to be as profitable as possible just makes sense and drop shipping and fortunately it's not the best way to do this. It's obvious that when you're buying one unit at a time i.e. drop shipping it's gonna be a lot more expensive versus say buying 500 or 1000 units at a time. So this is when it makes sense to move on to private labeling your product. To do this speak to manufacturers on Alibaba make sure you get trade assurance so whenever you place that order then essentially you're protected through Alibaba's payment systems. Private label your products and kind of establish that product and match it to your brand and it will help separate you from your competition is you want your logo printed on that product. In terms of shipping now and fulfilling the products you can either use a fulfillment warehouse this will continue to let you essentially run your business 100% online. Or number two if you're on a budget you can choose to ship the items out yourself which is what I chose to do in the beginning. The sixth and final step is product development. So this is where you make your product unique so that nobody can essentially come into the market and compete with you. At this point if your product is the same as every other product on Aliexpress or CJ drop shipping or wherever you're sourcing the product from then anybody with a big budget and the right strategy can come into the market and compete with you very, very quickly in fact. Whereas if you move on to step six which is the product development phase at this point you should probably have 500,000 orders maybe 2000 orders and you should have some returns at this point as well. You should have some feedback from customers what they do like about the product what they don't like about the product and this is where you take this information into step six which is product development and in this step we're gonna make the products unique we're gonna separate the products from anything else on the internet so nobody can copy our products exactly. And as it says there think of ways of how you could improve it. How can you make it solve maybe more than one problem? How can you make it solve an even bigger problem to give you an example? I drop ship pet pools they're kind of like foldable pet pools but when you fold them up then unless you kind of like wedge them between something that hold them quite tightly because of how rigid the material is then they pretty much end up expanding anyway. So when you put it on the floor in your shed or wherever you're storing it they expand it gets a bit messy and it just kind of increases the risk of it getting ripped and so on. So what I'm actually doing at the moment is speaking to suppliers about whether they can actually attach kind of like a clip on either side so then when you fold it up it kind of wraps around and then clips in to basically keep it nice and neat in a nice kind of easy storage package for the customer. And again, nobody's actually doing that at the moment on Alibaba, on CJ Dropship and all on Aliexpress and this is just kind of one simple way of explaining how you would separate or develop a product to make it different and make it unique. So with that being said that is the six step business model and strategy. Any questions on any of these stages make sure you let me know in the comments section below. I do read every single comments I will get back to you and I will give you my honest answers. Let me know what kind of content you guys want to see as well. I do these videos for you guys at the end of the day so if there's anything at all that you want to request post it down in the comments section below. If you enjoyed this video please do make sure you leave a like and of course if you want to see my content make sure you drop a sub as well. One final quick message before you go if you are looking for a program that will take you through everything you need to do step by step from day one starting as a beginner from scratch make sure you check out my Ecom Academy comes with my full support and guidance as well so you get all the help and support you need along the way. And with that being said thanks again for watching I'll see you in the next one.