 Hello and welcome. I am Liran, the content manager here at AutoDS. And today I've got a very special interview with someone who have been following for quite a while, Paul Jay Lipsky, the e-commerce mentor, the educator, the instructor, the motivator. He's got a couple of courses on eBay and Facebook marketplace, dropshipping, Facebook dropshipping. Paul, thank you very much for being here today. We're going to talk about many things regarding dropshipping, e-commerce, profiting, product research, and so much more. Thank you for being here today. How are you doing? I'm doing great. It's a pleasure to be here. Super excited for this. So yeah, fire away. I'm ready. All right. All right. Let's do it. Question number one, Paul, how long have you been dropshipping? I've been dropshipping for getting close to six years now. I had originally started trying with Shopify. I know a lot of people jump into dropshipping kind of that route because it's so popular. So many people talking about it, but I quickly discovered that it's really hard, especially for a beginner on there. So I eventually found eBay dropshipping, which was where I first saw success with it. A lot of experience in six years of dropshipping for sure. And is that your only form of passive income today? I mean, some call it a passive income, even though, you know, it still requires work. It requires, you know, creating it and running it and managing it. But at some point it does turn into a passive. So is today for you, is that the only form of a passive income or is there true potential to, to actually also make it your main source of income? No. So I've expanded since then. It's not just eBay. I've moved on and also do Facebook marketplace dropshipping. And I wouldn't consider it, I think at first I consider it just a side hustle, something I just kind of did on the side. But as time has gone on, adding that, adding Facebook marketplace, dropshipping, kind of doing all of that. There's a lot of potential there. It doesn't just have to be kind of like a side hustle income. And what would you say are the pros and cons of the dropshipping business model? Like give us the biggest ones. So the pros, the cool thing I love about dropshipping is that it's very hands off in terms of handling the inventory. So you don't need to, you don't need to go out and actually get the packages, repackage them up and send them out. You know, a lot of e-commerce sellers, they'll have their garage that's full of items and then when it sells on eBay, they'll rummage around, find it, repackage it and then send it out. You don't have to worry about any of that. I love that dropshipping is completely hands off. You can do it anywhere because of that. So I traveled full time for two years while dropshipping. All I had was my laptop. I had some hotspots that I would use while traveling. So I love that part of it. And I also love how you can scale it up because of that. A lot of the other businesses, you have to buy the inventory upfront, which means that your money is locked away until it sells. And it could take weeks before it's even available for sale to the customer. But with dropshipping, you don't buy anything until you know someone has already bought it. So it really doesn't tie up your inventory as much and allows you to scale up a lot faster. And you could also say from that, that, you know, if something doesn't work for your business, then you can easily just replace that really quick with another form of marketing, more maybe different products. You can change it up easily as opposed to having inventory like you stated. And now you're stuck with that inventory. You can't even research new products. You can't make any movement until you sell those products off the shelf. So no investing in inventory is one of the biggest pros. I completely agree with you there. What would you say some of the cons are at least one main con of dropshipping? Yeah, I think one of the biggest cons is that you have a little bit less control over the kind of delivery of the product. I don't know how else to phrase it. But, you know, in a traditional business, you would have the package at home. You can inspect it first, make sure it's in good shape. If someone orders it from you, you can get out the door the same day because, you know, you want to give that good customer experience. And when you're dropshipping that part, you don't have control over. I mean, there are ways to kind of mitigate those problems by using reputable suppliers. And that makes it a lot better because there are really great suppliers out there who do ship out the same or the next day and only ship out good products that are well packaged. But I would say that's one of the cons, especially if you're working with new suppliers that you're not familiar with. Definitely. So in your beginning stages, you really have to take a good look at your suppliers, who they are, if they've been here for a while. And it does help if you have product reviews on their website so you can see that people who actually purchase from them. And if you want to take it one step further, I do know some dropshippers who really care about their products before they get started and they actually order one for themselves just to check it out. If you do this, but that's also another way to kind of get around that and get to know your supplier and their products. So, yeah, so I agree that that is one of the cons if you would on other dropshipping business model, but an easy way to work around it. You pretty much enter this one. Which selling channels do you have experience dropshipping on? You talked about starting off with Shopify and then you moved over to eBay, had much better success there. And also today on the Facebook Marketplace, which is still relatively new. I am still not seeing too much competition there. It's very profitable. You don't have to do as much product research as you have to do in other places because like I just mentioned, there's not a lot of competition there yet. And also because only people who live in the US or who are US citizens can really take advantage of that. But are there any other selling channels that we haven't spoken of that you tried and maybe it didn't work out or you tried and it did work out? Or are those the main ones? Yeah, I had also done Amazon dropshipping for a couple of years and that worked really well for a while, but I encountered some issues with that. So I actually stopped dropshipping on Amazon last year. And after I started doing Facebook Marketplace, but then Facebook Marketplace and also do Facebook shops, which is pretty much the same thing. But right, right. Facebook shops also is also, of course, a part of it. So where do you see higher sales conversion rates? Is it on eBay or is it on Facebook? Facebook at this moment. Right. Yeah, I thought you would say that. OK, so, Paul, my next question. What have you been your biggest ups and downs all along your six years of your dropshipping journey? And what best advice could you give to beginners who are just starting off right now, you know, they're listening to this whether it's on our YouTube channel, whether it's on the podcast, they're curious to get to getting started. So please share your biggest ups and downs during your journey. And of course, what best advice you could give for beginners when starting off? Yeah, I think I had the most ups and downs my first year. I just didn't know what I was doing when I got started around that time. There wasn't a ton of information out there about how to do eBay dropshipping. There was pretty much just one course and it was very outdated. So I had to figure it all out on my own. So that was a struggle for several months. But then I about six months in, I started to get it. I started to really understand it. I learned product research. That was really the key. And then I just saw this like hockey puck. I mean, sorry. Yeah. Hockey stick growth where it just kind of took off. And that was just amazing. And I remember the first month where I really felt like I was making good money from this, it was just an incredible feeling to see that. No, I just got to completely identify with you there. We pretty much have very much similar experiences for me. It wasn't a hockey puck, but the rest of the experiences that you described are spot on. Yeah. I think from there, the hardest part for me, like over the years, it's just or the challenges, I should say, it's just keeping up with changes, you know, like any business dropshipping is dynamic. It changes suppliers I've worked with in the past. I no longer work with because they don't make it easy for dropshippers. A couple of them. So I had to drop them out. And I was frustrating at the time because I was making good money from them. And then they stopped working. But what I learned is that if you are willing to push through and always adapt, that is where you succeed when other people will fail at it. And by the way, many times here, you'll find much more success than you had in the past. Whereas you thought in the past, you were like, you know, really killing it. And then you started making some changes. You started learning some new things because you had to adapt to something new, something different if you want to hang on to this business model. And then you all of a sudden figure out many things that, you know, make you actually profit more now than you did before and just make you a much, you know, make your business much bigger and more profitable. That's a really good point, really good point. So I'll tell you an example of that. When I started traveling full time, I was very nervous about it. I thought this isn't going to work. I'm not going to have enough time to run my business. So what I did was I use more software. That's when I switched to Autodesk. I got another virtual assistant and all of a sudden a few months later, I realized I'm working less and I'm making more money. And I just was like, is this going to keep working? It just kept working. It was incredible. Yeah. Okay. So and so what would be your best advice to beginners on how to overcome, you know, challenges that they will put up with in the beginning and they will put up with challenges. It's just, you know, the ones who learn how to work around it. What would be your best advice to them? A couple of things. One, ask for help. You know, this is a great community. You can find people who are willing to help you. People who've done this before. So ask for help and then just be willing to be uncomfortable and to try new stuff and to push through when things get tough. Because like you were just saying, that's when you can see enormous growth. Do you think there is enough room for everyone to become a successful drop shipper? I mean, you know, the word that we're talking about it, you know, some listeners would say, you know, we think they, you know, it may sound a little bit too good to be true. So what? So anyone can join. Anyone can profit. Is it that easy? So what would you say? I mean, do you think there's enough room for everyone to become a successful drop shipper today? I do, because if you look at the numbers, the amount of retail that is done online, I think it's something like less than 15%, which is just crazy that most items that are purchased today are still purchased in person, not online. And yet the e-commerce space is huge, but it's still in its infancy. So as the years go on, more people are going to shop online and they're going to do more shopping online. So it's just going to grow. So every single month, there are more and more buyers coming online. So yes, the number of sellers is increasing, but not at the rate that there's the number of buyers are. It's just crazy how much it's growing and how much further it has to go. That is completely, completely, completely true also from my experience. And we also had a huge, huge wave of new online shoppers ever since the start of COVID and it's just not going anywhere. So yeah, to all you listeners, you should definitely know this. You could also look it up on the internet, just check out the numbers, see what's going on month by month, year by year, zoom out. The more you zoom out, the better picture you'll have of what's actually going on. And you will definitely see that there is more than enough room. Definitely. And for sure. Paul, in your opinion, is eBay drop shipping worth it today? Yeah, absolutely. And for the reasons I stated before, and also, you know, if you just look at eBay's growth, I think, I think like three or four years ago, they, they went down in terms of revenue. It was like though it was one year where they went down, but ever since then they've seen massive growth every single year. So again, same thing. They're growing every year and they need more, more sellers. All right, I agree with you there also. I'm agreeing with you way too much today, Paul, but I still have something to find to, to challenge you there, but so far. So speaking about eBay, they are very sensitive to new sellers. It's they, they kind of kicked it up a notch in the last year or two. And, and I kind of understand that because like you said, six years ago when you started off, there weren't too many people who were teaching it. And I also had to, to take a drop shipping course of five years ago when I started and there weren't too many back then either. But that is when it started really rising the amount of courses that you have, the amount of people that all of a sudden become mentors and, and course creators. And what just happened in my opinion was a huge wave of new dropshippers who don't know what they're doing. And they simply created seller accounts, you know, started selling items, didn't really learn what to do, got sales, didn't know what to do with that, didn't ship out the items, collected the money on their PayPal accounts, which, you know, when eBay was working with PayPal and, and, and that's pretty much it. And, you know, people would complain that they're not getting their items. And then eBay started to kind of, you know, crack down on this, not that they don't support dropshipping. We both know that they do, but they, I'm sure that this affected the way that they review new sellers who want to become new sellers today on eBay. So we did notice that eBay is much more sensitive today on a new seller accounts than they were in the past. So what tips would you have for newcomers to avoid getting temporary or permanent suspensions right from the start? Cause they didn't really know what they're doing. You have to prove to eBay that you're a good seller. They are a marketplace that's built on trust. They want trust between themselves and the buyer. That's what they care about. So you, when you're selling there, you're selling to eBay's customers. That's not your customers. So you have to, you have to respect that. And you have to show to eBay that you are a good seller. And it's really not that difficult. You know, you have to make sure you're doing everything right. Like responding to customers messages, uploading tracking numbers, taking care of returns. But in the first few months, what I think is the most important is don't come out the gates like super fast. Okay. You can list up items for sale, but do it slowly. Don't list up a ton of items right away. And we're seeing that if, if people come out and they list up just a few items here and there and, you know, not a ton all at once, they have a much better chance of success and kind of showing to eBay that they're a good seller. Right. So take it slowly, work your way up. Don't list a thousand items on your first day. You won't even have the limits to do so. But even if you did, that's not something that you would want to do. And take it slowly, give the right information and reply, of course, to your customers, to their cases. If there are any, you shouldn't have too many right from the get go. But, but of course, reply to all of your customers messages most more importantly than that. It's important, but more importantly, update tracking information. eBay is that they're looking at you with a magnifying glass right from the start. So, and like you said, they care about the buyers. They care more, I mean, they care about the sellers too. But, and of course you have buyers protection, you got seller protection, you got on both sides, but your product as you, as the seller, your product or the products that you're selling, eBay's product are the customers that they're giving you. So you want, so they really want you to take care of the buyers that they are giving you organically 100% for free. So, and yeah, speaking about free, that's also going to bring me to my next question. But like you said, take care of your buyers, care about them. You're actually running a real business and you should, you know, think about it that way and act accordingly. So, like you said, your buyers requests, if there are any cases, upload tracking information, import items easily, don't start, you know, don't run through the gates right from the start. Take it slowly and there's still maybe a temporary suspension just to get them on the phone. And, you know, they ask some very basic questions from my experience, you know, who you are, what type of items you're planning on selling, how many items you want to list per month. And usually after that, they pretty much open the gates. So it shouldn't be much of a problem, but it's very important to know what you're doing before you actually take action. How much starting capital do we need to start dropshipping on eBay? So I always tell people that the best thing you could have is a credit card that you use just for your business, just to stay organized and a few thousand dollars in capital on that. At first, that's all you need because as you start to scale up, you can ask for credit increase on that. Honestly, credit cards are the best way to go because you can order the product and then when you get paid by eBay, paid off and keep the rest as profit, rack up credit card points or cash back, honestly, the best way. And how much would I need to spend on day one? Like how much what are my expenses to dropship on eBay if I want to create my seller account today? What are the costs? Oh, so the costs are pretty low. You can sign up for an eBay account technically for free if you wanted to. There are subscriptions, but if you're going for cheap in the beginning, you don't have to do that so you can get a free account. And then you would sign up for the software like AutoDS, which, you know, you can get a pretty cheap treat. Sorry, a cheap trial of usually. So it can pretty much come with that pretty much no no investment or really, really low startup investment. To start up in the eBay account today, by the way, with, you know, ever since they partnered with Payoneer, they they're even giving you more listings today. I think it's no less than 100 free listings that you're getting right from the start. So, you know, even if you create a new seller account, they usually start you off with 10 items. So, you know, you're going to have to increase your limits a few times. But but even getting 100 items to list for free for me, it's it's it's it's a great way to start because you can list 100 items, you can test them out, you can see what's what sells, what won't sell, remove them, replace them, wait to get sales and then use the profits that you're getting from your from your sales to upgrade your subscription. So like you said in the beginning, you only pay once you get paid. And it's a very lucrative business model. It's it's it's not so good to be true. You need to learn your way around. But once you do, it actually becomes very fun, very addicting. Yeah, very addictive. And and yeah, I would agree with that. So it is ever since you make your first sale all the way until until the end, I mean, it stays that way. How much money can beginners and I know this is it's not the same answer for everyone. But how much money can beginners expect to make when dropshipping on eBay? Yeah, it's a hard question to answer, because I know there are many factors like if you have an older eBay account, some people come in with the eBay account they've had for years with higher limits, which is great. Yeah, which is you have that use it. The gold mine. Yeah. But some people are coming in brand new and it's also a matter of experience. But, you know, I've had students, for instance, who have we've made a couple hundred dollars their first day with just a couple of products selling. You know, it's possible. It's not that's not typical, to be honest, but it's definitely possible. Right. Right. And some people take a few weeks to really get going and to understand it and even to see their first sale, which is which is OK. I mean, you have to be patient with yourself. Especially if you're brand new. Right. Right. Usually comes down to product research. How long did it take you to sell your first item? Do you remember? It took me ever since you listed it. Yeah, I'm trying to remember. I think it was just about a week or so. But at that time, I was just listing up random stuff. I it was guesswork makes sense. It's same for me, by the way, took about three to four days. I didn't make much profit off of it either. I thought that, you know, you have to be super cheap, super competitive because you have to make sales. So I only made like 50 cents profit. And I was like, wow, I just made money online and, you know, from there. And it's just pretty much scaling it up. What is the best way, in your opinion, to conduct product research today for eBay? I know that there are many methods, but if you could just, you know, bring it down to your favorite method. My favorite method is really going on to eBay, you know, using a tool like Zeke Analytics or the Autodesk Finder because they're, they can see what items are already selling well on eBay. And if you're able to find products that are already doing well, you can sell those same products or you're very similar products. You know, let the market speak for itself. There it can tell you, eBay literally gives you the information saying these items are popular and no one's buying these items. So sell the ones that people are actually buying already. You don't have to go out and reinvent the whole thing. So, of course, you can use paid tools like you mentioned, like Zeke Analytics. Some people like to start manually and not put any money up front, even if it's for auto DS, so they would like start completely manually. And they would also, you know, try to find a way. So like you said, eBay also gives you this information. You can just search for something on eBay, you know, filter the sold items on the left side and see what listings actually sold from that search that you wrote. And that could also give you an idea. And then you can go back, you know, to, you can use, like you mentioned, also the finder to give you some product ideas, which would also add it automatically. And there are many methods, but like you, like also, like you said, it's all about testing. And when you started off, you were just pretty much randomly listing items, maybe without even seeing what's selling and what's not. You just saw something, you know, you kind of thought, well, maybe I think this will, this might sell, which isn't, of course, the best strategy, but you were just starting off just like anyone else. And later on, you start to also learn, you know, from what sells, you know, you start to multiply that by, by adding more products similar to that and so forth. But when really, when just starting, starting off right from the bat, once again, like you said, eBay gives you the information, you just need to know how to work your way around the platforms, find those sold listings, find those sold items and try to look for similar products to that. That's one of the best ways to conduct product research and also to learn about what products are really fitting into the dropshipping business model, for sure. From your experience, Paul, what are the best dropshipping products that will bring in higher profits than the one that, rather than the ones that I sold at the start and only made 50 cents five years ago? I really like, I really like furniture because it is so high ticket, high ticket. Yeah, I mean, it does, I'm not, it doesn't have to be terribly expensive furniture, you know, something around a hundred dollars is plenty of things are kind of around that range, which is, you know, a little bit higher ticket. But I love it because it's, it is a bit higher in price and it doesn't have really a set inherent value, meaning a lot of items like electronics, people generally know how much it should cost. And particularly for electronics, people tend to shop around for it. But furniture, people see it for sale and it's kind of like whatever price it's set at is what people believe it should be worth. So it's very easy to sell it on eBay, add a markup. It's higher priced, so it's going to be more profit with for the same for the same margin percentage. And it's just good products that people are usually willing to spend a lot of money on. So yeah, I like furniture. Yeah, that's great advice, by the way, really good, really good advice. So fine products that's hard or that will be difficult or that most people will not try to research that product and look for it in many different other places. So like you said, like electronics, it's very easy to conduct product research on on many electronic products and find the same item, you know, but with furniture, it's much, much, it's much more difficult. Most people don't even try to research it. They just see it, they like it, you know. And the higher the selling price, the more you're going to profit because, you know, we're profiting in percentages. So of course, the more expensive, the more we're going to profit. So that's some really good advice there. So you also mentioned that you have experience with Facebook marketplace and also Facebook shops dropshipping. What would you say is the best way to conduct product research there as opposed to eBay? So the challenging thing about Facebook is that they don't really give you the data like eBay does. So it's a little bit more difficult to know what's popular on there specifically. They'll sometimes give you information like generally what's selling well, but it's not terribly helpful. But what we have found is that because Facebook is a market, Facebook marketplace is a marketplace, obviously, then we're seeing that if an item is selling well on another marketplace that's similar like eBay, then there's a really good chance that is also going to sell well on Facebook. So honestly, a lot of our research is we do the same research we do for eBay, we go to eBay, see what's popular. And you can even look at other dropshippers on eBay, look at their stores and just see what's selling well, because there's a really good chance that if it's selling well in eBay, you could sell it for faith. You could sell it on Facebook marketplace, the exact same items. Your advice is just spot on. So Facebook marketplace, no, I wouldn't say no, but the lowest competition you'll ever find. You can just go to bestsellers on other websites, other marketplaces and list them there and just test that out that way. And that's also the way that we also run a lot of e-commerce stores. Many of them are Facebook marketplace and Facebook shops. And that's the same strategy you just spoke about. So I was really happy to also hear that answer from you. My next question I'm not even going to ask it is Facebook dropshipping profitable? I think we pretty much went over that. So I'm going to skip over to the next one. Is there a possibility for account restrictions on Facebook? Like we noticed them a little bit on eBay, like we said, there are ways, of course, to get around it. Just have the knowledge. But do you have the same experience also on creating Facebook shops and Facebook accounts for the marketplace? No, I've heard of, I think like one person who had a problem with their Facebook marketplace account, but they were telling me that they were from outside the United States and they set up a fake account and they did it on their fake person's name and they're like a fake social security number. And I was like, dude, you should not be messing around with stuff like that. Like don't create a fake social security number. But that was the only issue I've seen. Nothing, you know, Facebook, there's nothing that I've seen no rule saying don't do dropshipping or anything like that. We've been doing it with no issues. Yeah, Facebook is relatively new to the commerce and e-commerce scene and they will be releasing more features. They are trying to grow and they notice the potential in this market. They realize that they've been missing out, you know, throughout all these years and now they want to, you know, get a bite of that cake. So dropshippers welcome. But do make sure, guys, if you are not US citizens, if you don't have a US IP address when you're, you know, browsing on Facebook and if you don't have your own social security number, you will not really be able to dropship on Facebook, let alone the fact that you won't have the shipping options when trying to list items. So you won't really, you know, your listing won't show up to all 50 states and that way you won't really be able to dropship except to a small certain geographical location. But so you do have to have that in order to pass the SSN verification after making $599 in sales. So take that into consideration also. But yeah, don't create fake accounts. Don't use fake information. Guys, please don't do that. So the different ways we can dropship on Facebook is the marketplace and Facebook shops. Facebook shops is relatively new to the market. I mean, first they started with a marketplace. They noticed the potential. It's working pretty well. Now they open Facebook shops. So now you're pretty much, you know, you have your own, you have your own storefront. You have better analytics. So it's also a nice thing to have. Okay, now that we have a better understanding of eBay and Facebook dropshipping, let's talk about, let's get a little bit more specific here. What's the next step in dropshipping besides product research? There's many things we need to know, right? So in product research is one of the most important things. What would you say the next most important thing to know is? I think something that's overlooked, I really think it's important to do some optimization of your listings, really your titles. A lot of people will just, when they list up the item, just take the title that's given to you by Walmart or whatever supplier you're using. I've seen a lot of benefit to changing that title and filling it with keywords that people are going to be searching for. It really optimizes it, helps it show up in a search results and makes your listings stand out from competitors. So that, if you're willing to put the time into doing it, it makes a huge difference. But it's worth the time because you're optimizing your product page, you're standing out from the competition, you will stand out on eBay search results. There is no better way to get to the front page. You can also promote your listings, which is good. It's like, I see that as a bonus, but if you optimize your titles, which is the most important thing on your product page. And then of course, also the product description, make sure all the specifications are there, but the product title is one of the most important things like you said. And once again, I'm glad that you said it. Even for those of you who are working in bulk, even if you're, so I know there are some who are importing in bulk. So they have like a limit of 10,000, 20,000 items and they just import a whole bunch of products in bulk and they simply don't have the time to optimize them one by one. And then what they usually do is optimize a product only after it sells. Because if it's sold, maybe it's interesting. Now let's optimize it, let's make more sales. But then on the other hand, yeah, like I completely agree with you also here to no surprise optimize all of your listings. I have a few thousand up and none of them went without optimization before moving it to an active listing. So definitely optimize your listings. It's like getting to first page on Google. Everybody wants to be first page on Google, just like eBay sellers want to get to the first page on eBay. And the way to do that is to just optimize your title. You don't have to learn marketing, you don't have to learn Facebook ads, just learn how to create a really good and attractive title and of course relevant to the product. So yeah, I agree with you there, product research, optimize your product pages. Those are two very, very important things if you wanna start making your first few sales and scale your way up from there. How can we find reliable drop shipping suppliers to source products from? And how can we actually make sure that they are trustworthy? So honestly, whenever someone asks me this question, I always tell them, hey, log in to Autodesk and go to add an item, it'll give you a dropdown with all the suppliers it works with. And there's a reason Autodesk has decided to add that supplier. And it's because there's been several drop shippers who have said, hey, I use this supplier, it's a really good supplier. I wanted to work with Autodesk. And Autodesk wouldn't add that supplier. This has been my assumption. You guys wouldn't add this supplier unless it was a good one, a reputable one, one that people were actually making money from. So that's why, honestly, that's honestly what I tell people to do. I'm glad that that's the answer that you're giving out to them. So, okay, so you can just see some of the suppliers from Autodesk. And if you don't have the platform, just autodesk.com and click on suppliers up top. You'll have a list of about 25 of them. That should give you a very good starting point for what suppliers you should start working with. And also advice for me, usually don't work with just one supplier. Nobody likes to put all their eggs in one basket when running a business of any sort. So speaking about suppliers, one of the most used suppliers, and still until this day is Amazon. And sure, they're great. Many work with them. I work with them. But recently, they have simply, they have not been super easy to work with. It's still, of course, possible. I don't know how, but some suppliers like Amazon or mainly Amazon, they lock by your accounts after you put in about, I'd say more than 10 orders per day consistently. At some point you'll find yourself all locked out of your Amazon account. This actually started way back when people used to abuse gift cards. This was a couple of years ago and I was very deep into that scene. I was like buying discounted gift cards, a $100 gift card I would buy for $75. I'm not sure where the sellers were selling it to Mary, getting it from. Later on, I would learn that they're stolen from Nigeria and all kinds of other places where people just find, find stolen gift cards and they sell it to you. But never mind. So Amazon cracked down on this. They started locking a whole bunch of accounts. Many people with their money inside, I lost hundreds of dollars. I wouldn't say lost hundreds, but profited hundreds of dollars less than what I should have profited in those months because I just kept getting locked out of my accounts with so much of gift card balance locked inside that account and there's no way to get it back. So today, I'm not working with gift cards anymore. I definitely put that on the side, working with credit cards. But even with that, after, I would say, once again, 15, 20 orders per day on one account, you can still find it locked every now and then. Not such a big deal because you don't have any funds inside. But still, what would you say is the best way to avoid this from happening because a lot of people still want to drop ship from Amazon and I completely understand that. What would be your thoughts about this? Yeah, like you were saying, the problem people have been seeing is they start getting orders for Amazon. They go to place on Amazon after like 10 or 15 orders per day. They're accounts locked. They can't use it anymore to buy stuff. So a strategy around that, that people have been doing is they're creating multiple Amazon accounts and spreading out their orders among those accounts. Now that is a challenge. I would call that a more advanced solution because you have to keep those accounts isolated, meaning different names, different emails, different phone numbers, different IP addresses, and you have to, you know, I'm not gonna get into like how you do that exactly, but it's complicated, right? But it does work. I know people doing it successfully. So that is one option. But I've been telling a lot of people just use Walmart. Walmart's a great supplier. If you're new, you can get into Amazon later. You can figure out that stuff later, but for now just do Walmart. It's a really, really good supplier. Unless you have a fulfillment service, there are some people, some services online that will actually fulfill your Amazon orders for you. Like they take care of those multiple accounts, spreading them out so that you don't have to worry about it. Unless you're able to find one of those, then I would just stick with Walmart, honestly. It's a great supplier or one of the other ones. But Walmart I think is a great one to start for beginners because it's so easy. I agree. Walmart is a great supplier to start for beginners. They're a great alternative to Amazon. You can also use automatic order fulfillment also to fulfill those orders. So not just Amazon, or you can just also do it by yourself. There is also all kinds of offerment order services. There's automatic orders where for example, like in Autodesk for example, it uses your buyer accounts, but it automates your orders using your buyer accounts. And then you also have a FBA that's fulfilled by Autodesk, which can also fulfill your Walmart orders. For example, without using any buyer accounts, you don't have to worry about anything. So yeah, so that's another also great advice. But the biggest one, the biggest takeaway here is to just try out more suppliers and Walmart being a top alternative to Amazon. We're nearing the end here, but we still have some very, very good questions up ahead. Okay. Do you think using automation tools, you pretty much answered this, but automation tools, is it beneficial for dropshippers or can they also make it manually? Oh yeah, so okay. So when I started, I tried to do it all manually because I was being cheap and it was such a pain. Like it is such a pain. One, the listing, it just takes so long to list an item manually. So having a software that can do it saves you just a ton of time. And then every day I would have to go and check all my items on Home Depot and Walmart and see if the price, it's just the software. Prices and stock. Yeah, for how much you're paying for it, it is well, well worth it. So I think it's a requirement, honestly. Especially if you're trying to be competitive, there's, you just, you don't wanna spend all your time listing the item and checking the price and stock levels. You wanna spend your time doing product research. So anything that you can do to give you more time for product research, like using software, is well, well worth it. Software that will help you, like you said, manage price and stock monitoring. So if the price changes on your supplier side, it will change automatically on your store. Same thing for the stock. So prices and stock, it's changed automatically according to whatever's going on with your suppliers. Quick, importing products quickly because that just takes up a lot of time. Copying and pasting all that information. And like you said, and also the images downloading, uploading and making sure everything is correct and then checking every day too. And I start off the same way as you, by the way, cheap. I can do it all on my own. Let's scale this to the moon and then you realize that you're investing your time doing things that are not really helping you grow your business. So yeah, definitely for sure that some of the best benefits that we have from automation tools like AutoDS. What would you say is the best way to continuously scale when drop shipping? Well, we pretty much hinted in all kinds of ways but you're ready to scale, what's the way to do it? Two things, or three things. I'll say three things. So first, maybe I'll say four things. So, the more the better. But I might lose count. But one of the things is just more products. Okay, again, not in the beginning, go slowly. And by the way, I wanna interrupt you here. Sorry, I wanna interrupt you here. So it's great advice because there's also the thing with eBay flagging accounts. We didn't talk about this and there's not much to say about it. At one point or another, eBay also flags drop shippers accounts. What does that mean? By the way, also people who are not drop shippers. But what does that mean? That means that at some point they say, okay, there are people who are drop shipping. There are people who are, and there are people who aren't doing it. The ones who aren't doing it are gonna be a little bit higher on our search results. The ones who are doing it are gonna be a little bit below. So we're going to affect your search, your placements a little bit. And I thought this was a big, big issue and many people still think it is. But let me just say something here. So when eBay flagged my account and I believe that happened in the month of April, 2020. April 20th, 2020, if I'm not mistaken, I will even check it later because I really remember that date. I woke up one day. I only had 400 listings on my eBay store. I woke up one day and I told my wife, I was like, something happened. Like I used to get like 10 cells a day and now it's like I only got two or three cells last night. Like something is happening, something is wrong. I went to the traffic results and I noticed that the traffic dropped and then I noticed that I got an email from eBay regarding your account being flagged or something like that. Of course, everything still works but you dropped in placement. So then on the one hand you can say, okay, you know what? If I'm only gonna make three, four cells a night, it's not so worth it. Maybe I shouldn't be spending so much of my time on this. Or you can think, well, if I only have 400 listings now but I can list 2000, why don't I have 2000 listings up in the air? Let's see what will happen then. And that is exactly what I did. I put more work in and then I've had, even with a flagged account, much more cells and profit than I did when I had 400. And it just brought me way back into the game much more than I had before. So I completely agree with having more listings as one of the best ways to scale your business. Sorry, Paul, go ahead. No, that's a great, great story. I'm glad you shared that. Yeah, so I think just adding more products is one of the best things you can do. The second thing, it's kind of second and third point is anything that you can do to automate and free up your time. So we talked about auto DS and how that can take a lot off your plate but also virtual assistance. You can hire VA's who can help you do product research. And so now you might be spending maybe 10 hours a week, maybe just five hours a week doing product research because you're working a full-time job. If you hire a virtual assistant, they could be working 30 hours a week just doing product research. And that is such, and if you teach them the right way to do it, that is such a huge boost to your store. So. I agree. And then what's left for you to do if you have pretty much 90% of your business being automated and the other 10% is being done by the VA, which is product research, what's actually left for you to do as the big boss? Yeah, I mean, you just log in, make sure everything's working, check in with your virtual assistants. And I mean, for me, I mostly focus on is the finances, like the bookkeeping and all that because that's on me, that's personal stuff. So, you know. Right. You know, that's the cool thing about it. And that's good. And yeah, and from there, you can just decide maybe if you wanna open up another store and continue moving down that road of just continuing to scale it. So yeah, that's some really good advice. And maybe that's advice that I also need to take. By the way, I'm still doing the product research just cause I really, you know, after so long, after doing it for so long, I just can't, it's hard to just give all that trust to someone and let them take it from there. But I completely agree that it is a good step to take definitely. Yeah. Was that the last advice that you had there? You said that second and third? No, I have one more. But you kind of touched on it, which is the last thing that you can do after you've kind of freed up a lot of time and that really helps you grow is look for ways to expand your business. Whether that's adding another store, like you said, or maybe taking a risk, trying a new supplier or a new tactic with them. You know, maybe the first time you heard about those gift cards, you were like, I don't know if these kind of work, but you try them anyway. You know, be willing to try some, take some risks and try some new stuff. But this comes to no surprise to anyone, but I completely agree with you there, Paul. So you guys heard about many things that Paul had to say. We're not done yet. We still have a couple more questions and we're gonna round this up. But if you guys haven't heard about them, I don't know why or how, but you can check out, of course, his YouTube channel. I'm gonna leave the link to it right below this video. And speaking about that, you guys heard many things that Paul had to say and believe me, that's just the tip of the iceberg. But he does have two courses where you guys can learn from if you are interested in eBay or Facebook dropshipping, Facebook marketplace and shops. He has courses on all of this. So Paul, what exactly can we expect to learn from your eBay and Facebook dropshipping courses? Yeah, so there are two different courses. One's eBay teaching you everything you need to know about eBay dropshipping. The other one's Facebook course. So it includes marketplace end shops. And like I was saying before, the frustration I had when I took a course six years ago was that it was out of date and nothing really worked in it. So, I mean, one thing I'll say off the bat is that everything is always updated. I update the course about twice a year, like once every six months. So everything in it works, it's up to date, but it's a complete guide. It's A to Z. I assume that you know nothing about eBay, that you won't even know what dropshipping is. You can come into it completely a newbie with no information and by the end of it, you will have a successful store, a store that's up and running. So that's what I have to offer for it. So it's aimed specifically for beginners and would advance or people who are already dropshipping on eBay and Facebook marketplace, they already know the ins and outs, but they just don't have much success at it. Could they also find your courses beneficial? Yeah, absolutely. Because I always feel like there is a certain amount of information you need to be successful. And maybe half or 70% of that, you can find on YouTube or online for free. Like it's out there, but it's just kind of all scattered everywhere. So the course kind of brings it all together in a sequential, easy to follow way. But then there's also that 20, 30% that's missing. And that's in the course. And I see a lot of people who start stores, start dropshipping on their own, and they're making very simple, but big mistakes. And so the course kind of shows you what those are so that you can actually finally start making money. Sounds interesting. Sounds really interesting. And how much do your dropshipping courses cost? So the, you can just go to my website because the prices might change, but the eBay course is, actually the eBay course is not gonna change. It's $297 that's the way it's been. That's the way it's gonna be. So that one doesn't change. And then the Facebook course, I only opened that up for enrollment a couple of times a year. So you'd have to get on the wait list for that. And is that like a live course that they're gonna do with yours, an online course? It's an online course, but it's done as groups. Cause it's kind of like group coaching. I see, I see. Okay, so there's kind of like a small, like a community also being built around there where they can also, I'm guessing, also speak with one another. And since it's group coaching and all, very interesting. And I like the fact that you are updating your courses. Like you mentioned twice a year, I think it's really, really important because many courses just, you know, they get outdated and dried out after a while. And the people who created them don't really care because they see that people are still signing up. So it's like they're still making money and that's all they care about. But for you, I can see that it's beyond that. And you're also working from true passion. And you really care about, you know, your courses and your students by still putting in work into your courses. And you're not just saying, okay, I finished it. So there's no reason to continue updating it now. So it's, I'm glad to hear that. Last question, last question. Where do you see yourself in the future? And do you see yourself continuing to drop ship even two, five years from now? Gosh, I don't even know what I'm gonna need for breakfast tomorrow. You know, the crazy thing is if you had asked me five years ago, if I would be drop shipping for five years, I don't know if I would have believed it because I don't know. I just, that seems so far away, you know what I mean? But now that I've been doing it this long, I know that it eBay drop shipping has been around for a while before I had even gotten into it, way before. And we just always find a way to make it work. Whether that we have to pivot, try new suppliers, whatever it is, and it continues to work and be lucrative. So I see myself in this for the longterm, like it works. I love it. I love teaching people about it and making YouTube videos. So I think I'm going to be in the space for a long, long time. I completely agree with you. And now everyone's probably laughing by the times. How many times I completely agree with you in this interview, but definitely for sure. And even if things change and I'm sure that they will, we learn to change with it. We learn to adapt and we learn to continue profiting and scaling along the way, always learning new things. It's a great, great business model to adopt. I definitely, if you made it this far into the interview, then you're already interested. You are serious about getting started. You are very curious about it. So remember guys that there's a limit to how much, there's not really limit to how much you can learn, but you need to find a good balance between learning and also taking action. I know that a lot of people who just like to learn, learn, learn, learn, take a small piece of action, didn't really work. They go for another year of just learning and then they just don't really take action anymore. So of course you can't have one without the other. You need to learn, you need to take action. Then you need to learn from what you did and also from what you didn't do and take action and continue the balance between learning and taking action. And it's inevitable. It's just a matter of time before you find your true success, maybe a new passion in life, a passive income. You can start it as a side hustle. And I know many people who turned it also into their main hustle and probably will never look back. So Paul, thank you very much for being here today. I completely appreciate it. I think that you gave some very valuable information here to people who are interested in getting started or maybe people who did start didn't really have much success. And now they have that small extra motivation to understand that if you just push it a little bit further, if you just learn a little bit more, if you just take the right steps this time, then of course you will make it this time. And for those who haven't started guys, now is the time, now is actually the best time where I don't know when you're listening to this video, but we're nearing Q4 right now of 2022. It's the best time of the year to be an e-commerce store owner. The best time of the year to be a drop shipper. The biggest sales and profits are right ahead of us. And every year we see the numbers just growing exponentially, the revenue, the online shoppers. So if you ever wanted to take action, there's no better time than now. Paul, thank you very much for being here. Once again, guys, if you wanna learn about his eBay course, his Facebook course, I'm gonna leave the link to his YouTube channel right below this video in the video description. You can get to his YouTube channel. By the way, Paul, do you have the links to the courses there? Or should I also add it under this video in the description? You could add the links down below if you wouldn't mind. Okay, okay, sounds good. So guys, you're gonna get the links to that too. You're gonna get the links to his YouTube channel. Go learn and don't forget to take action. Paul, thank you very much for being here today. I completely appreciate it. Thank you.