 So in this video, I'm gonna give you my take on the whole virus situation. Just take you through the kind of steps and actions I'm taking with my own drop shipping stores. And then also answer some of those most popular questions that I've been getting asked, which are typically from beginners, wondering whether now is a good time to start a e-commerce business. And then also from those people who are already running existing businesses, and they're not sure what to do basically whether they should turn their ads off, pause their stores, stop doing things all together, or try and source their products elsewhere. Just answer those type of questions. First of all, I wanna start the video off by saying that not all Chinese suppliers are shut down. I'll put some screenshots up on the screen now so you can see that some are still running some art. So in terms of giving kind of blanket advice, it's pretty impossible to do. The best advice I can give you is to speak to the individual supplier, send them a message, reach out to them like I have and simply ask them what their current situation is. In terms of actually running a online retail company, a mail order company, then I think there's a really huge opportunity to be had. So if you can actually source your products, then I think you should continue as normal and simply just focus on your marketing. Obviously, keep an eye on the data, keep an eye on the numbers. And as long as things look good, then just keep running as normal. One thing, or one piece of advice I would give you is if you do speak to a particular supplier, so send say half a dozen messages out to different suppliers. The same scripted message that you can pre-write, something along the lines of hey, how are you currently fulfilling your orders? What is the lead time on order fulfillment? And those that come back and say we're operating as normal always run a test purchase to find out. Last thing you wanna do is switch your ads on, make say 50 orders in a day and then realize they're actually taking a week, two weeks to actually fulfill those orders. So just make sure you run a test purchase and they stay true to their word. Like I mentioned earlier then for a split second, I think now is actually a great opportunity if you are running an e-commerce business or drop shipping business, doesn't matter what kind of business. If you're selling things online, I think now is a great opportunity. For many reasons really, because of the whole situation, then a lot of people, I've spoken to many people in fact that have switched off all their Facebook ads. Me, for the certain products that I can't source, I've done the same. So what that means with Facebook ads being a bidding platform, the auctions are gonna be cheaper and in return you're gonna see lower CPMs which is actually something I've seen already just in the last few days. So definitely a good thing. The second thing as well is with people isolating, spending more time at home. What do people do at home? They watch TV and they go on their phones. They scroll through social media. They talk to each other, tag each other. There's gonna be so much more activity on social media now. So again, that's another great opportunity to be had or a great reason why now is a good opportunity because more people are gonna be spending time, spending more time on Facebook and more time on social media. So my advice then for those existing businesses just to kind of summarize is that do not switch off absolutely everything. Don't quit, don't pause. Just try and resume as normal if possible. So like I said, send loads of different messages out to different suppliers, try and source your products and if you can't then only at that point pause things. Whatever you do, do not continue to sell our products that you can't fulfill. For those existing audience where it's gonna look like it's gonna be a few weeks you haven't got a supplier to fulfill them for you. Make sure you get in contact with your customers, do the decent thing, explain the situation to them and let it be their decision whether they want to wait or not. Do not force them or hold them to that if they want to refund because they don't wanna have to wait two, three, four, five, six weeks, whatever it's gonna be and then do the decent thing or refund your customers and ultimately just keep operating as a legitimate business. Now for all those people watching this video that haven't got a drop in business but have been looking into the business model for quite a while then to offer my advice I would say now is a great time to get started especially if you're one of these people that or at some point maybe everybody in this country will have to kind of spend a certain amount of time at home when they come into contact with somebody or it could be a multitude of reasons. So you're gonna have more time now than you probably ever will get between now and any time in the future until you retire. So now is a great time to kind of capitalize on that free time and even if you don't start running ads at least start building a Shopify store you get a two week free trial and even after that two week trial you can create a new email address and create a new store and just keep developing your skills building your store get some products ready create some ad creatives and when things do go back online or when you get to that point where you can start to source your product then you're ready to jump on Facebook ads or Instagram influencer marketing or any kind of marketing you like as soon as possible and like I said with more and more people spending time at home now is the time to be an online advertiser. Now with all that being said then and the kind of drop ship inside of things being covered I just wanna kind of finish this video off by mentioning the fact that drop shipping is not the beyond and for end all it's not absolutely everything you can do like there are progressions on from drop shipping which can make you or set you up to be better equipped for situations like this. So typically the business model while we're running at the moment is I'll use drop shipping to kind of test products within Facebook on the market typically to the UK as well and see if I can sell a product consistently and profitably for at least a couple of weeks preferably longer if I can and then what I'll do from there or what I'll do to progress from there is start sourcing that product in bulk from Alibaba. So we're going to Alibaba try and find multiple different suppliers get some quotes and find out MOQs different materials people use, et cetera order samples and then try and then start stocking items in the UK. So when situations like this happen albeit not very often then you're better equipped but to be honest there's a ton of more advantages to stocking your own items in the country you're selling it to from short delivery times which in return will lead to less refunds better customer service higher customer retention and I won't bore you in this video because it's not a topic but perhaps if you guys want more content on that sort of thing make sure you let me know by putting a comment in the comment section below I read every single comment as well so if there is a question you guys want to ask me simply post it down below and I will get back to you and that pretty much it I don't need to make the video very long hopefully I've covered all the kind of questions and fears and worries that you guys might have but again like I said if I haven't just simply post it down below and I'll try and answer your questions as best as I can thank you very much for watching I hope you enjoyed it I hope it helps you out if it did please do make sure you do me the favour of hitting that like button please subscribe as well for regular content and finally make sure you guys stay safe and healthy and I'll see you in the next video