 What's kind of guys? Welcome to a new video. So today I'm going to be going through the top 10 questions I get asked about Shopify and about dropshipping. We're going to be covering everything then from what sort of address you need to use, do you need to register as a business, the new tax rules for the UK, delivery times and a lot more obviously. The plan is to spend about a minute on each question but if you want me to go into a bit more detail all you've got to do is simply leave a comment down below. I'll get back to you right away. I do respond to every single comment and then if necessary I can always record a specific video on a specific topic for you. So apart from that thanks Trunin. I hope you learned something new. I hope I answer one of these questions for you and let's jump straight into it. So question number one I get asked is it must be on a daily basis is do customers really wait three to four weeks? It typically comes from somebody who is new to dropshipping and perhaps have seen some form of a horror story in a Facebook group or something. The simple answer is no customers will never wait three to four weeks. The odd customer might but you're never going to be able to build a sustainable and profitable business in the long run if you're going to be delivering things in three to four weeks. The reason people think it's three to four weeks then is because they go into AliExpress they see that quoted delivery time of three or four even five weeks depending on what the product is and they think that is the date in which it's going to be delivered on or delivered kind of in and around that date when the actual reality is it will come a lot sooner than that. So as I record this video now at the beginning of April 21 then the delivery time for AliExpress standard shipping to the UK is in and around sort of 10 to 14 days so it is a lot quicker than the actual quoted time. The reason they quote such a long time is because if it arrives after that time you can actually open up a dispute with the supplier and get your money back and if they're shipping orders if they're shipping products sorry for 10, 15, 20 even 50 pounds and they're having to refund people for that that's potentially a lot of money that they could lose that would be out of their own pocket so it's much safer from their perspective to kind of quote that really long delivery time let it arrive a lot sooner and then obviously there'll be a lot safer and they'll have less disputes and less refunds to dish out. So just to recap ignore the delivery times on AliExpress to the UK and to the US I believe it's around 10 to 14 days AliExpress standard shipping if you use somebody like CJ drop shipping depending on what the product is whether it's got a battery in or whether it's just kind of like a standard CJ packet then to the UK looking at 7 to 10 days and I believe to the US even faster than that however I have tested that myself so depending on who you go with and what the product is in reality you can get it a lot faster than three to four weeks. Question number two how long does it take to make your first sale? So a super relevant question when people want to start a new business they're super excited to get going and everybody remembers their first sale so my first sale was on the 26th of June 2016 and I'll never ever forget that because this was brand new for me too when I first started. The best way to answer this question then is I would say within three days of running your first Facebook ad so depending on how long you have to put into your business obviously depends on how long it takes you to get your store to a point where it's ready to start advertising products but I myself I think I saw my first sale the second day I was running ads at five pounds per day so as soon as you've got your ads running and you've done your tags incorrectly there's no reason why you can't see that very first sale in those first few days too so to answer this question within three days of running your very first Facebook ad. Question number three then do I need to start a business before I start selling on Shopify before I start dropshipping whatever it is you choose to do and I believe as I record this video so at the beginning of April 21 then I think I'll find a screenshot and put it on the screen now but if you're based in the UK then I think it's a thousand pounds so once you've made a thousand pounds profit then you have to start declaring it to HMRC to the government and you can do that in many ways but the two main ways are either registering for what is called self-assessment which basically means you fill out some forms at the end of every tax year importing how much money you've made expenses so on and so forth a bit like a profit and loss and then the other way the other main way sorry is to register as a limited company which means you need to bring on an accountant who will submit your books again at the end of every financial year for your business so there's two different ways depending on how you do it will completely depend on your personal circumstances so I myself because I have property that isn't in a business then everything I do is always within a business to try and protect those assets essentially when you register as a limited company it becomes a separate financial entity and any money any kind of credit rating anything like that any assets within the company are then separated from yourself the best advice I can give in fact to answer this question is to speak to a professional speak to an accountant because they'll ask you lots of different questions about your own circumstances your personal income and so on and they'll help you make that best decision that's what I did question number four how much money do I need to start drop shipping I mean you can start drop shipping with as little as 50 pounds it costs you 30 dollars 29 dollars to get your Shopify store essentially live doesn't cost you any money to get products on your site so essentially for 29 dollars you can have a up and running business now obviously that's not practical you need to pay for some form of marketing to get ads onto your site I would say 500 pounds is a decent budget it'll allow you to kind of start slowly but it will limit you to how quickly you can scale and how quickly you can reinvest into your business ultimately the best way to answer this question is as much as possible but I would say once you have at least 500 pounds then that gives you kind of at least the first month or a couple of months of testing really really slowly to kind of dip your toes in and kind of get to grips with how Facebook has work and how to run a business basically if you're new to this then I will recommend to everybody you regard it so whether you have say 500 pounds to invest or five grand to invest I would always say start slowly spending little amounts make all those mistakes spending say five pounds a day rather than spending 500 pounds per day question number five what address shall I put on my store so to answer this great it's completely up to you so when I first started I was on quite a tight budget so I put my home address I soon realized that as people start sending returns back to me I didn't really want it coming to my dad's house at that point I used to live at home with my dad so I invested it in what was called a virtual office it's basically a building that has physical offices in which people can go and rent and because there's a concierge and a secretary they basically lease out virtual addresses so there's nothing physical but they essentially allow you to register your business there get posts sent there and you can go and pick it up or they'll post things for you and kind of take on that secretarial role for you so to speak they're out of the ways too they're out of the businesses and services you can do so I'll put on a screenshot now of I think they're called UK post box of all the different pricing and plans they have there's lots of different ways you can use a PO box with Royal Mail so it's completely up to you you can put your home address or you can use a virtual address or you can use one of these other kind of virtual office services which I believe are sort of anywhere from kind of like 10 to 30 pounds per month depending on what you want them to do for you if you have the money I would say it's 100 worth having a proper address a professional address it'll make your business look that much more professional and therefore trustworthy and obviously you haven't got to worry about privacy issues or anybody potentially showing up at your house now I drop ships I believe probably for maybe 18 months 12 18 months before I got a virtual address so I was using my home address for all that time and nobody came and knocked on my door I don't think you'll ever have to worry about it but from my own kind of personal standpoint of you I would just prefer to separate the two question number six should I start a general store or a niche store so this is a really important question if you're a beginner because you don't want to put lots of work into a particular store find out it's not working then have to start a scratch and kind of redesign and rebrand a completely new store so I would say it's difficult to answer this actually it's probably 50 50 or depending what your long-term goals are so if you're not worried about what kind of products you sell you just want to sell something that makes money I would say definitely start with a general store because it gives you that flexibility to rapidly test through different products and then once you find something work definitely transition that into a branded store but if you're not worried about kind of hopping on different trends trend hopping I like to call it and you just want to kind of build a brand and you're still happy to work your job for the next 6 12 months where you build something in the background pick a niche you have an interest in it will come in handy when it comes to things like creating content finding interests to target and actually product selection and product development itself so if you're happy to do that then definitely just go straight to a niche store question number seven can you still drop ship to the UK after Brexit the short answer is yes you can however the point in which you pay VAT and the amount in which you pay VAT on has changed however is still doable there's a lot of pros to the new rules but there's also a lot of cons to the new rules this is a topic which I will definitely be covering in its own video to kind of give you both sides if you like right now just to kind of like touch on the surface so you used to pay VAT at the point of import as it goes through customs they would check the value of the packet and then they would issue an invoice the delivery company sorry would issue an invoice at the point of delivery or they'd put the invoice through your door and you would have to go online and pay it or go to the post office and pay it before you could get that actually particular products but now it is charged on the point of sale which means there's none of that paperwork essentially you have to keep a record it's our responsibility now if you drop ship from outside of the UK and EU into the UK and it's our basically responsibility now to collect that VAT and then pay it quarterly to the government whilst it may sound ultimately like a bad thing I think the fact we've left the EU now opens up lots of different potential opportunities that I think the UK will take advantage of once we've got Covid under control but the immediate kind of benefits to it are we can now drop ship any value of products regardless and then we're going to have to pay VAT on it so we can start drop shipping more expensive products which have bigger profit margins to kind of counteract that VAT that we have to pay now the other advantage is it kind of forces people to either source products in bulk which in turn will benefit their business because they can offer shorter shipping times which will increase their conversion rate and increase their profitability so it kind of transitions people from drop shipping into sourcing bulk a lot quicker which in my opinion is a much more beneficial thing to do for your business point about eight how do I deal with returns this is something there's a lot confusion around this particular question because obviously the product for a lot of people comes from China does it go back to the supplier in China no it doesn't whatever you do if you try and tell your customer to ship an item back to China then they will send you a very unpleasant email trust me so either it depends on the scenario so if it's a really cheap product and it's broken no point them sending it back to you let them keep it and send them a new one if it's a really expensive product and it's broken I'd get them to send it back to you if they've just changed their mind and it's expensive definitely get it sent back to yourself if it's a cheap product I'd still get them to send it back to yourself because then you can keep that as emergency stock should somebody send you an email of if this product isn't delivered by the end of so and so and gives you like a deadline if you have that little kind of quantity of stock in your house or your office wherever it is that you can use to kind of deal with customers like that I want to say get it sent back to yourself and get it sent to your virtual office so you can go and pick it up or they'll forward it on to you or just get it sent back to your home address question number nine I think this one is probably worthy of a video on itself because a lot of this depends on what the product actually is so should I use facebook ads google or instagram etc so to give you kind of like a brief overview of the three different platforms I would say facebook ads are great for trending products that are super specific to a particular interest so for example dog products obviously super easy to target dog owners and specific owners of certain breeds which make products like that ideal things like personalized print on demand is great for facebook too google is great for selling products that people are currently looking for to buy so obviously when people are on facebook they're not in a buy mood they're not looking to spend money so the products you pick have to kind of be in line with that whereas people go on to google and they will search for products they want to buy on google so it kind of opens up the scope and the type and the criteria behind the product changes so products like that work really well on google so for example if you try to sell a sofa on facebook you'd struggle but if you try to sell it using google ads I think it'd be a lot easier because people will genuinely go on to google and search by sofa or cheap sofas or whatever it is and then finally we have instagram anything that's really visual or brand heavy does really well on instagram because when I say instagram I'm going to assume influencers because this is what typically most people use it for influencers are great for getting that instant validation for your particular product so to try and advertise something as a new business with a small following people aren't going to buy into you and your brand to begin with is going to take time whereas if you hand over your product to a really popular influencer then instantly that trust they have in that influencer instantly transfers over to you and your business so when it's a product like if you're trying to start a new clothing brand or a watch or something like that which is super difficult to target specifically on facebook then products like that really work well on instagram and then finally we have question number 10 if you're still stuck with me this long I really do appreciate it so thank you very much why are people buying from my store so again I'm going to do a specific video on this topic but basically it can come down to three different things I touched on these and the core elements the three keys to any successful Shopify store yesterday so if you haven't seen that video make sure you go and watch it but basically it's if you get a lot if you get lots of people onto your site and they're not buying then the problem lays on your site your site obviously is putting people off because they're not buying if they're not even hitting the add to cart button then there's some serious issues it could be the imagery it could be the layout it could be the text it could be the font it could be the price of the product it could just be the overall look of your site if nobody's clicking your ads then it's one of two things it's either your tags in the wrong audience or you have a product that people just aren't interested in you'll be able to see this straight away depending on what your cusp of link click and your click through rate is if you've got cusp of link click of over two pounds per per link click then that could be an indicator but obviously there's lots of other things like your quality rankings and things like that and then the third one is obviously the product itself and again this will be reflected in the results and the information coming back from Facebook but there will be a specific video where I'll show you some infographics and just dive a lot deeper and with a lot more detail into this question and with that being said guys thank you very much for watching I hope I answered those questions adequately for you or not if not please do come back to me leave a comment in the comment section down below I will read it and see it and I will respond to you and one very final and quick thing then before you go if you are looking for a course to kind of hold your hand through the whole process of standing e-commerce business then please make sure you check out my e-commerce academy we've had some awesome results recently from some of the members to give you kind of like a brief overview then it comes with all the step by step video guidance that you'll need but then also comes with the support and kind of hand holding if you like from myself and the academy team so regardless of what point you're at in your journey if you need help with anything you can reach out to me and you'll get an answer directly from me if you still have your hesitations about joining there is a free callback service too so me and you can jump on the phone together talk together go through any kind of hesitations or questions or what it involves and ultimately just see if the academy is going to be the right fit for you or not and with that being said thanks again for watching and I'll see you in the next one