 In today's video, we're going to be talking about some hard truths about dropshipping, primarily why the majority that start ultimately fail. A lot of the times the biggest factor in this is the unrealistic expectation that some people have because of other dropshippers that they see who give the impression of overnight success. In reality, there's tons of effort that goes behind the scenes that goes pretty much completely unnoticed. People spend a lot of time doing proper product research, testing different products, testing different marketing techniques, coming up with the perfect store, making it look as good as possible so the customer has trust in purchasing from there. People even have assumptions before they start dropshipping about the business, which already puts them in a spot to fail. For one, people think that it's oversaturated or that the business is completely dead. Other people think that if they just put up any item, people are going to flock to the websites and start buying. And then there's another demographic of people who think, why are they going to buy from my store when they can just go somewhere like Amazon, Target, or any big retailer or even purchase directly from a supplier like Alibaba? Why would they purchase from me when they could just go to any of those? Well, in this video, we're going to address all of those concerns so that way you can be part of the 1% that actually does succeed. So let's go ahead and roll that intro and let's get to it. What's going on everyone? Mar here with AutoDS and if you like informative videos in the dropshipping business and tips and tricks on how to be able to start and scale yours and be part of the 1% that actually does succeed, make sure to hit that subscribe button and ring that little bell notification so you don't miss out on any future videos. Now, before we do get started, I do want to mention that everything that I'm going to talk about in this video, I'm going to have in an easy to reference cheat sheet. Now, if you do want access to that cheat sheet, all you have to do is comment down below, hashtag succeed 2023 along with your takeaway from this video. And I'll reply back with a link. So let's go ahead and start by talking about some of the reasons why people set themselves up to fail before they even start. So for one, some people think that dropshipping is just completely flat out dead. So some people will go in with this negative mindset and either they just won't start at all or they'll get discouraged really early on and just completely quit. Some of the things that can be attributed to this is for one, people not finding overnight success. So as I mentioned before, some people have this notion of some big named dropshippers that make it look a bit easy because they don't fully show all of the work that they put in prior to being this successful or they just weren't there to witness the start of the journey. So maybe they'll try dropshipping for a week, two weeks, maybe even a month. And if they don't find much success or if they don't get many sales, they'll quickly get discouraged and completely give up. Remember that if you aren't getting many sales, if you're not getting a lot of traffic to your website or to whatever platform they're going to be dropshipping on, try to switch things up a bit. If you have your own website, try to test out different marketing strategies, test out different products. If you're selling on a platform such as eBay or Amazon or maybe Etsy, do the same thing and switch it up. Try to switch up your products, switch up the images. Make sure you have high quality images, optimized titles, as well as descriptions and overall have an aesthetically pleasing look to your store because that helps build trust in the customer and helps bring a few sales. But always keep in mind that you have to keep going. And when one thing doesn't work, try another. But don't give up because if you do give up, then you could have been one change away from either success or getting the ball rolling in your store and start bringing in more sales. Another assumption that people have that pretty much sets them up for failure from the start is the fact that they think that dropshipping is oversaturated. Now, it's not that dropshipping is oversaturated. What's oversaturated are the products that every single person's trying to sell. In reality, pretty much every single business out there is already oversaturated. How many coffee shops don't you see walking down the street? How many online retailers that sell a specific type of clothing? Don't you see online? How many people are selling the exact same item on eBay, Etsy, Amazon, and they're all still getting some sales. It's not about the fact that the business or the items are being oversaturated. It's about standing up above the crowd and being unique and just overall standing out and getting noticed. When you're dropshipping, try to sell unique items or unique variations to popular items. For example, don't try to sell the exact same phone case that every single person is selling. Try to sell one that is similar to it, but maybe has a few different features like a pocket in the back or easy wireless charging or something along those lines. Maybe one that has a special material that allows it to stick to certain surfaces on the wall so that way people can take videos or selfies easier. Now, if you're having troubles finding winning products or popular products that have been proven to sell and are currently trending, then you can easily head on over to our platform over at outofds.com and check out the winning products section. Here you have tons of winning products that have been proven to sell in the past are currently trending and with different variations to help you stand out from the crowd. Let's take for example, this pair of bracelets. Let's go ahead and click on it. And once it loads up, you can see all of the details on the item itself, as well as some of their details that can help you market and sell this. Now, when I'm talking about unique products that can really help you stand out from the crowd, this is the type of item that I'm talking about. This is a set of bracelets. It comes in a set of two and they connect to each other pretty much no matter where they are. So you can connect them to your phone and then you can tap it. You can do whatever you need to it. And then the person on the other end with their own bracelet are going to receive the message that you send them or a little light up, maybe it's going to vibrate or they can be sent a quick message. These types of products are phenomenal for times like Valentine's Day, birthdays, Christmas, pretty much almost any event, as long as it's targeted towards a couple or a married couple. Now, as you can see, there are different variations as well. So you have different colors like you have the silver and silver, snake, black, silver, the figure of black, silver, and a few others. The sourcing price for this is going to be about $118, which is what you're going to end up paying for it. And the retail price that most people are selling this for is about $159.95 or $160, which gives you a potential profit of about $40. Not only that, but you also have some extra information like a sample Facebook ad. So this ad is how it's being advertised on Facebook. And we even give you the demographics that you can market to. So in this case, you have the gender, both male and female, between the ages of 20 to 45, that are single and married with interests in romance, technology, and fashion. Of course, these are just suggestions. You can always play around with the different demographics to reach either a wider audience or a more specific audience that you want to target. And if you scroll down a little bit more, then you're going to get some of our Adodias insights, which just tells you about the product, its features, and how it's being marketed. And we even have a example website. So you're going to have a link here to an example website where somebody's actually selling this particular product. And as you can see, it took us to Circle and Look. And this is actually a pretty nice product page. Now aside from our winning product section, you also have supply recommendations. So let's say we're looking at this huge plush on AliExpress. If you scroll down a bit and keep going, you're going to see the recommended from Kato Garden Store. In this case, this is the name of the supplier, but these are some of the recommendations from supplier. A lot of the times we're going to put some new products here that they're trying to get some exposure to so that way people can see them and purchase them and try them out. In the supply recommendation section, you can find some pretty unique items and some new ones. Now let me give you a quick tip. If one day you're scrolling through your Instagram feed or your Facebook feed or whatever it may be on your browser and you come across a product that you really like and you think is pretty cool and you want to add to your dropshipping store, but you don't know where to source it or where to purchase it from, check this out. This is how you can do that. Now, even though we are on the AliExpress website right now, you can do this using pretty much any image you find online. So first look for a clear image of the product. Let's say this one. And all you have to do is go ahead and right click it and then search images with Google. Then if your browser doesn't automatically pick up the image, it's going to give you this right here. It's going to turn the whole screen gray and it's going to tell you to select the image. So I'm just going to select this little mini TV and then on the right, you're going to get Google Lens and it's going to give you suggestions for that product or to purchase it where you can purchase it at retail and even where you can purchase it from a supplier for cheaper. So as you can see here, we have some visual matches. So it pretty much just means that Google found some images that look like the one that you are searching for. So if you scroll down, you're going to see there's a place that sells it for $9, which is called Joom.com. Then you have AliExpress, which is $19.64. Even though here you find it for $36, this is probably from a separate supplier. Then you have other variations from other sellers, like this one from Amazon, this one from eBay, Alibaba, and this one from Brando. So as an extra tip, if you want to find some similar variations or the same exact product that comes across your feed or any website that you're on, go ahead and right-click it, search with Google, and you're going to have tons of options. Now last but definitely not least, we have Selly's Now playlist on our YouTube channel. Here you have tons of different videos based around different categories or different niches with the hottest products to sell. Not only that, but we also have monthly product videos that come out every month, giving you some suggestions on the best products to sell for that upcoming month. Now the next assumption that sets people up for failure is thinking that pretty much any product is going to sell. And I can tell you right now that not every single product is going to sell. Some products are in fact outdated, so people really aren't going to want them anymore while other products don't really bring any value to the customer. Don't assume that every product is going to sell just because you like it. Remember, that's your personal preference. That doesn't reflect the views of the millions of other people out there. Some people might not like what you like because they just don't have the same style or they just won't find any use in that particular product. Remember that as a drop shipper, we're selling products that people like, not products that we like. Do some research on trends. Check out some trends that could be upcoming or maybe some niches that tend to become a trend at certain parts of the year. For example, we can go to Google Trends and let's say I want to start selling summer products, maybe swimsuits, beach accessories, pool accessories, things like that. So for that, I'm going to go on over to Google Trends and then I'm going to search up a niche or a product. So let's say, for example, pool toys. Let's go ahead and explore. And then here we're going to get the interest over time. Now, this is only from March 27th, all the way up until today, which is actually March 28th. So this only reflects one day's worth of searches, which really isn't going to help us much. But as you can see, there's not much searching and then around five in the morning for some reason, there's a few small spikes. But let's go ahead and broaden that a little bit. And instead of the past day, let's try the past five years. Now, this is where we can really start taking advantage of this data. So as you can see, there are spikes throughout the five years. So each year there's a spike. There's one, two, three, four, five. Typically, the spikes are starting around April, the beginning of April between April 8th to 4th. Let's check out this one. Same thing between March to April is when it starts to pick up. The year afterwards, March to April is when it starts to pick up. So right around where the spike starts to go up or right before that is when you want to start selling your products. So that way you can take advantage of the hype. And you can see because of the data from the past five years, it's proven that between March to April, people start searching more and more for pool toys or maybe swimming accessories. Google Trends is a very powerful tool. So make sure you don't sleep on it and make sure you take advantage. Assumption number four. Nobody is going to purchase from me at a higher price when they can just go to Amazon, Target, Walmart, or even directly to the suppliers like Alibaba or CJ Dropshipping. While you might know what Dropshipping is, that doesn't mean that our customers do. Our customers probably have no clue what Dropshipping even is or probably have never even heard of it. The reality is that most people aren't going to think of finding a supplier for certain products. So a lot of people aren't going to look at a product and think I can find this cheaper at AliExpress or CJ Dropshipping because a lot of people don't even know about those websites. Typically, those kinds of people that think about getting it at a cheaper price, me, for example, aren't our target demographics. Those aren't the people that we're trying to sell to. We're not trying to sell to deal seekers or people who want the cheapest price. We're looking to sell to impulse buyers. People that look at a product and they think I need this now and they're going to go to the website and just make the purchase immediately. This is another huge reason why we need to have products with a huge wow factor. Products that are unique, products that are new and just catch the buyer's attention. These are the type of buyers that we're looking for. These are the types of customers that we're going to be selling to. We're going to be selling to the people that don't think about buying it cheaper anywhere else. We're looking to target the impulse buyers that need this item now. Now with that being said, if people click onto our store and they see that it's a mess, the pictures are not professional, the descriptions don't really make much sense and the product titles are meh. Then they're going to click off because they're going to think that it's a scam. Unfortunately, with the rise of drop shipping and the rise of e-commerce overall, a lot of people have been getting scammed. So some people will place an order in a particular store and they'll just never receive the item. Because of that, people have been pretty weary of purchasing from just any website that they see, any ads that come across their Facebook or Instagram feed or even the videos that they see on TikTok. People see these and they think this looks pretty cool. I want to purchase it, but people might think that the website could be a little sketchy. They just came across it on Facebook. So it's not really a proven website. It's not something that they've heard about a lot. That's when you need to build the trust with your customer or your potential customer. So in this case, this is when you really want to make sure that your store is aesthetically pleasing. You want to make sure that it's welcoming to the customer. It's easy to navigate. Everything is properly laid out. Write product titles, good product descriptions, professional photos. All of these things build trust with a customer. It makes them feel a lot more comfortable to make a purchase. Now, not only do customers sometimes think that a dropshipping store can be a scam because of how it can be laid out or how it's presented, but dropshippers themselves sometimes think that the business is also a scam. Now, let me start off by saying that that is the furthest thing from the truth. Dropshipping is not at all a scam. Now, the reason some people think this is because while a dropshipper can be charging $50 for an item, the same customer can go to Amazon and purchase it for $20 or $25. So every store has its own prices. That's one thing that for some reason people don't fully understand. You can sell the same product for a different price and it's not a scam. Think about it this way. You can have a loaf of bread from Supermarket A and they can be selling it for $5 while Supermarket B can be selling the same loaf of bread for $8.50. Depending on how the store is laid out, depending on how you feel when you go into the store, Store B can be selling a lot more of that same bread even though it's more expensive, almost double the price because people feel more comfortable going in there. People like the vibe. People like how everything's laid out. Everything looks good. Everything looks clean. Your store layout is very important. Make sure that you put work into making your store look good and overall just trustworthy. Let me give you a quick tip that can help you gain a few more sales or a bit more trust from your customer. Try adding customer testimonials on your product pages or even on your homepage. When people read past customer's positive reviews, it gives them more comfort in actually making the purchase and handing you their money. If there's one thing that you're taking away from this video, please let it be that you need to have realistic expectations. Don't go into it thinking that you're going to have overnight success because you found two or three products that a lot of people are selling and people are liking. Remember to not have unrealistic expectations. There's a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes in marketing, product research, designing your store, everything takes time. While overnight success can happen, the chances are very slim. Just like any other business out there, always be prepared to put in work to succeed. Stay motivated. You need to stay motivated throughout the entire process so that way you can keep testing out different products, keep testing out different marketing strategies. As long as you're in that right mindset and you're always motivated to succeed, you're going to succeed because you're going to keep trying different things until you find one that actually works. Remember, be realistic. Not every single product is going to sell and not every single ad is going to work. Sometimes you're going to lose a bit of money. That's just the harsh reality of it. But since we are dropshipping, remember that our losses are very minimal. We don't have any overhead fees. We don't have to worry about buying large amounts of inventory. We buy our inventory as we get orders. So again, there's not much to lose to this day. Dropshipping is still a booming business. So if you've been wondering whether or not you should get into it and start it, then yeah, you should jump into it. Stay motivated. Keep practicing. That's the biggest thing that you need to do. Keep practicing with the proper knowledge and tools such as knowing what to look for and implementing automation into your business. Anyone can succeed. It's just a matter of staying motivated and staying in the right mindset. Remember that if you want to be a part of that 1% that does succeed in dropshipping, all you have to do is hit that subscribe button as well as ring that little bell notification so you don't miss out on any future very informational videos in the dropshipping business as well as the best products to sell. Once again, my name is Mario with AutoDS. Huge thank you to all of you for being here and I'll catch you all next time.