 Whether you're a brand new dropshipper that's just getting started out in the game, or you're an experienced veteran, you're probably doing one of these 10 mistakes that I'm about to cover in your dropshipping business that could be causing you to fail. And if not fail, or at least limiting you from hitting your full potential. These are all some really common mistakes that a lot of dropshippers do, especially at the beginning. Now, there's no shame in admitting that, you know, you've made a few of these mistakes or you're currently making some of these mistakes. What matters is the fact that you actually remedy it right now. If you start fixing some of these different issues right now, then you can start scaling at a much faster rate. And with that being said, these are the top 10 mistakes that most dropshippers make. Let's go ahead and get started. Now, before we continue, I do want to know what your thoughts are on this. Have you made any mistakes in particular that you want us to know about? If there was, let me know also how you remitted it. Just let me know down in the comments below. I'm really interested to hear about this. I want to know what your input is on this video and what mistakes you made when you started dropshipping. Now, the first mistake on this list is setting too high expectations. So many people see so many people online talking about how they made over a million dollars. They made two million dollars. They made a hundred thousand dollars in a month and they go into dropshipping thinking these are the same results that they're going to get. Well, let me tell you from personal experience, that is not true. While getting started is pretty easy. Actually hitting big numbers like that, it takes time. There's a few things that you have to keep in mind. So for one, a lot of these people, they put in a lot of work into their dropshipping stores. It's not like they just started last week and they became a millionaire overnight. Some of these people have years and years under their belt. And with that comes years of experience and knowledge. Now, something really important that they learned throughout these years is what works specifically for them. Because let's say something that works for me could potentially not work for you. Reason being, maybe you're just not into it as much as I am, or maybe you have more knowledge on a different type of product. It's really all dependent on you. So always remember whenever you start something, whether it be your own e-commerce business, your own dropshipping business, or if you're starting affiliate marketing or even starting a YouTube channel, anything that you start brand new, it's going to take time. Can you go viral overnight? Yeah, it's definitely possible to go viral overnight. But is it likely? Maybe the thing is, there's just too many things that factor into that. But realistically speaking, when it comes to going viral, that's not something that's sustainable. You can't keep going viral over and over and over and over and over again to keep a steady income. Let's say, for example, you do go viral, you're going to eventually hit a peak. And then it's going to kind of start to die down. That is when you have to start building a bit more momentum and keep going at it. But that's assuming that you do go viral. Well, again, that is a possibility. It's not necessarily very realistic. So don't go into dropshipping with the mindset thinking, I'm going to get rich in a week or I'm going to get rich in a month. I've seen so many videos on TikTok, especially, that shows me first day dropshipping or e-commerce business or whatever it is. And it shows negative $200. Then second day, negative $10. Fourth day, $500. Tenth day, $1,000. One month, a million dollars. Going into pretty much any business with that mindset, thinking that you have to go viral overnight or within a week. Otherwise, it just doesn't work. That's going to cause you to fail pretty much every single time in whatever business that you're starting. And speaking about mindset, that actually leads me to our second mistake. And that's starting off with the wrong mindset, which is exactly what I just mentioned. Going in with the mindset thinking, I'm going to go viral overnight or I'm going to make $100,000 in two or three days. Otherwise, I'm going to quit or it just doesn't work. That is the wrong mindset to go into any business with. The mindset that you need to have when going into pretty much any business is a mindset of constant evolution and constant perseverance. You always need to change whatever you're doing if it's not working. If you see that something's not working and you're just spending too much money on it or you're just spending too much time on it and you're not getting any profits, then don't be afraid to change it up. Don't get discouraged. This is going to happen. You are going to fail. There are going to be a few products that are not going to sell. But that's just part of the business. That's part of pretty much any business. Not every single product is going to be a banger. So because of that, while it is important to go into the business being optimistic, you also have to be realistic and you have to know when to switch things up and to not get discouraged and to keep on going. That's the most important part. Keep on going. Don't stop. I'm not going to lie to you. There's going to be times where you're going to think that nothing's working and you're really going to want to quit. But those are the times that really build you into the entrepreneur that you need to be. You always have to remember that there's going to be a bunch of rough spots. But the same way that there's rough spots, once you get over those, you're going to have some pretty high highs. Then again, sometimes you're going to have some low lows and it's just going to keep on going. High highs, low lows. Sometimes you're going to be right in the middle. But at the end of the day, if you keep persevering, you're going to be reaching those high highs. And honestly, they're going to get even higher and higher. And they're ultimately going to overshadow any lows that you go through. Now that takes us into our third mistake. Picking a product and sticking to only one product, even if it doesn't work. You have to learn when to retire product. And if you're just starting out, I don't suggest you start a store focused around just one product. Start with something like a general store, or at the very least, start a niche store. Something where you can try different products in, whether it be in the same or different niches. If you go in with just one product, you're going to be really disappointed because chances are, you're not going to know how to target the appropriate audience. It's good to start off with a pretty broad niche or again, various niches and see what works. See what works for you and see what gets you more sales. Once you start to see what works, then you can build on that. You can either start adding more products to a particular niche or you can start focusing down to a particular product in that niche. But don't be stubborn and get stuck with just one product, especially if it's not working. If it's not working, learn to retire it, learn to accept defeat and move on. If you keep trying to make that one product work, even if you've tried a few different marketing angles or trying to switch up a few different things for your business to be able to actually sell it, at the end of the day, what you're doing is you're going to be wasting a lot of time and you're going to be wasting a lot of money and you're going to end up discouraged and you're just going to quit. So that's why it's really important to vary yourself, vary your niche, vary your products, especially at the beginning. And speaking about different variations, that's going to lead us into our next mistake, which is sticking to just one supplier. Typically speaking, Aliexpress. Now, as we always say, Aliexpress is a great supplier. A lot of people knock it because they have some long shipping times, but let's be real, that is no longer an issue. If you look through Aliexpress, you're going to find products that can get to your customers within two weeks, which is totally acceptable. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. Two-week shipping is great. That works. One month shipping, that's a whole other story. Those are the suppliers that you want to avoid. And that is why you want to vary your suppliers and you want to have a few different options to choose from. One supplier might have quicker shipping for one particular product, while another supplier might have quicker shipping for a different product. You can also find different products from different suppliers. Some suppliers won't carry some products. Some suppliers are going to have different variations on certain products. But most importantly, if you have a product that's popular, there's a possibility that you could sell out or that your supplier could sell out because it's probably not just popular on your store. It could be popular in a bunch of different stores. And if your supplier runs out, then you're pretty much missing out on money. People can't place the order for that product. So what do you do? You vary your suppliers. Having multiple suppliers means if one supplier runs out of a particular product, you can easily just go on to the next supplier and order it from them. That way, you're not missing out on any profits. You're not missing out on any sales. And you can keep on making money. Now, before we continue, if you're enjoying this video, if you're finding it helpful and if you're finding it entertaining and informative, please make sure you smash that like button. And while your mouse is right there, just go ahead and move it over to the left a little bit and hit that subscribe button. After you do that, make sure you ring that little bell notification so you don't miss out on any future videos. All right, let's go back to it. Now, the next mistake that could be causing you to fail or at the very least holding you back from your full potential is starting off or sticking to a very low budget. While it is possible to start off with zero dollars, it's very hard to be able to scale from that. It is possible, it's definitely possible, but it's going to take a lot longer than if you had a certain budget already set out. So if you can set aside maybe $500 or $1,000, you can scale a lot quicker than you would be able to if you start off with zero dollars. So if you start off with an actual budget, let's say a minimum of $500, you can allocate a lot of that money to either doing some product testing and more importantly, marketing. If you market your products correctly, if you're running Facebook ads, if you're doing TikTok videos, running TikTok ads, then you're going to scale a lot faster because you're going to be able to get in front of the eyes of a lot more people, a lot faster. If you're not doing that, if you're starting off with a very low budget or even zero dollars, then it's going to take a lot longer to be able to build momentum. The reason for that is because you're going to be making smaller profits at first. Instead of reaching 500 or 600 people each day or maybe even more, you're probably going to be reaching only 10 or 20. And then that's something that's just going to slowly start building upon itself. Now, the next mistake we're going to cover is spending too much money or spending it in the wrong parts of your business. When you're getting started, one thing that's very important is actually setting up your website if you decide to sell on your own website. And a lot of people think that it's really hard to design a website for your dropshipping business because they don't have much experience in it. So they decide to hire a website designer. And website designers cost a pretty penny. They could be pretty expensive, sometimes $3, $4, $500 on the cheap side. So let's say you start off with a budget of $500 and you hire a website designer. Right there, you have pretty much your entire budget gone only on the website. While the website is important, it's not going to be as important as how you market it. Look, if you're starting off your own website, you're more than likely going to be starting with Shopify. And Shopify has a ton of different free themes that you can get started with that are extremely easy to customize. And if you don't know how to customize them, honestly, just go in there and start poking around. The best way to learn is by poking around and getting your hands dirty. At first, it can look a little bit complicated, but trust me, Shopify makes it super easy to navigate and they make it very easy to actually customize and get it done the way that you want it. And honestly speaking, if you don't want to customize it, you can leave the themes the way they are and just change around a couple of different pictures so that way it matches whatever you're selling and you'll be fine. It'll actually look pretty good. Will it look more like a stock website or a basic website than a few others? Yes, but it's not going to look bad. The themes that they have on Shopify actually look pretty good. And honestly, if you really do want to work on the design of your website, a simple YouTube search of how to build a Shopify store will give you tons of different results. So don't stress the little things. Don't stress your website design too much and don't spend too much money on that. Another thing that you don't want to spend too much money on is different products that aren't working or spending too much money on marketing that's not working. If you notice that one product isn't working, even after you're spending money on ads and you change it up a little bit and it's still not working, then it's time to retire that product or at the very least retire the budget that you have for the marketing on that and focus it somewhere else or on a different product. When you stay persistent to one product trying to make it work no matter what, chances are that you could waste a lot of money that could have been reinvested somewhere else. Another huge mistake that a lot of people make is not having different offers. Offers are what's going to sell your product. If you have a product that's more expensive than your competitors but you have a better offer, then chances are that sale is going to go to you. So take for example, competitor A is selling a plain deck of cards. And they're selling it for $5. But you're selling that same exact pair of cards but you're selling it for $8. But you're including an ebook with a few different games and the instructions to be able to play with those cards. Chances are that sale is going to go to you instead of them because you're giving them a better offer. You're giving them a little bit extra. On top of that, you can also be offering things like buy to get one free, buy to get free shipping, things along that nature. If you can offer something better than your competitors, if you can add a freebie in something that's relevant to the product that you're selling, chances are the sales are going to go to you rather than your competitors, again, because you have a better offer. I've seen this happen all the time, especially with t-shirts. I see t-shirts on let's say Etsy, they sell for $25 with free shipping, while others sell the t-shirts for $18, but you have to pay for shipping. Most of the time, 99% of the time, there's going to be more sales with the t-shirt that's offering free shipping, even though the price is pretty much going to equal out to the same sometimes, if not even a couple of bucks more. Now, one thing that goes hand in hand with offers are upsells. And if you're not offering any upsells, then you're definitely missing out on profits. So when it comes to upsells, you always want to be able to offer something that can complement the item that your customer is purchasing. So if somebody's purchasing a pencil case, offer them a couple of different pencils or a few pens, something cheap, something that can go along with it. Let's say you have a store that focuses on athletic peril. If your customer is purchasing some gym clothes, then you can offer them or you can upsell them and offer them a gym bag to go along with their merch, something that they can use to carry to the gym. Because that's what they're going to be using this apparel for. Or at least that's the thought behind it. Because let's be real, how many people don't buy gym clothes and then they just end up wearing them throughout the house and never go to the gym? Another example is if you're in the gaming niche, if somebody's purchasing, I don't know, let's say a gaming desk from your website, you can easily offer them a gaming chair or you can offer them a monitor that goes along with the desk or a gaming keyboard, a gaming mouse, anything that has to do with gaming and is an accessory that can be used with that desk, that can be considered an upsell. You're upselling them by offering them something to go along with the item that they're purchasing. Of course, it has to be relevant. I'm not going to be offering to upsell somebody a t-shirt if they're buying a gaming desk, it just doesn't make sense. It's not going to be relevant so they're pretty much most likely never going to actually buy the upsell. Now, this next mistake is one that I've seen a lot of beginners make and honestly, this is probably the number one thing that gets a lot of people to stop almost as soon as they start and that is coming across the wrong information and sticking to that, not getting the right information, not doing research yourself and only going by what others say. So, there's this huge problem about fake gurus specifically right now on TikTok. This used to be a huge issue on YouTube. It kind of still is. There's a lot of fake gurus on here and there's a lot of people that claim to make tons and tons of money but right now it's not as big of an issue as it used to be. But on TikTok, that's a whole different story. There's so many accounts on there and the thing is, is that when it comes to TikTok, it's so easy to actually go viral that if one of these videos picks up traction, it goes viral, gets millions of views and then it's gonna get a bunch of people that start in the business and they're immediately gonna stop because they're being fed the wrong information and they're not thinking for themselves. Don't go by what you see on just one video or just one influencer or one creator. Do research. Go through different creators. Check out different channels. There's a lot of resources online. There's a lot of resources on YouTube and there's a lot of legitimate people on here that actually do make a living dropshipping. They're very successful dropshippers and they teach honestly how things are done. But the same way that there's a lot of people that go into this trying to help you, there's always gonna be a few people that try to scam you. So always do your own research. Always compare and contrast the different videos and please don't just stick to one source. Don't just stick to one YouTube channel or one TikTok channel for all of your information because chances are if they have something different that all of the others have, then more than likely it's probably not true. A lot of the times these people come up with some pretty crazy claims or some wild things that they say that can really attract a lot of people and on top of that, they'll show a lot of stock footage. They'll show fake videos of them on yachts or fake videos of yachts, of a luxury lifestyle, huge apartments and at the end of the day, it's all fake. It's all prerecorded, it's all being reused and it's most likely not even them. So please, while there are a lot of very legitimate content creators out there that try to help, there's always gonna be a few that aren't. So be weary, think for yourself, do your own research and compare and contrast different videos, channels and creators and all of the information that they present to you. And the last mistake that we're gonna cover is not keeping track of your finances. You need to make sure that you keep track of the money that's coming in and the money that's going out because if you only focus on the money that's coming in and you don't realize how much money you're spending, you can easily overspend and you can go into the negative. You could be losing money if you're not keeping track of your finances and that will definitely cause you to fail. I can bankrupt an entire company, keep track of your finances. One of the easiest ways to do this is simply by opening up a separate bank account. Sometimes I understand that people don't have access to open up a business bank account and in that case, it's perfectly fine. Just open up a second regular personal bank account, a checkings bank account, or even open up a savings account, somewhere where you can keep the money that you're gonna reinvest into your business and where you can keep your profits. As a bonus mistake, don't overspend. This has to do with keeping track of your finances. So don't overspend your money. It's gonna be really easy to look at a large bank account that you have that you've been saving up over time with all of your different profits and thinking, I can start dipping into this. While, yes, it's fine to be able to dip into your money and use it to have some fun, of course, it's your hard earned money, but don't overdo it. Try to set aside a budget. Try to set aside some money that you're gonna have for fun and keep it to just that. Don't simply just use it whenever you feel like it. Set something aside. Have maybe a different bank account where you have one bank account for, let's say, your profits, one to reinvest back into your business and let's say another one to keep up your Shopify store or make the purchases from your suppliers. Now, speaking of making purchases from your suppliers, there is one very easy way to actually avoid having to have a bank account specifically for purchases from suppliers. And that's by using AutoDS. Now, when you're using AutoDS, you have the option to pay for your products or the products that you're sourcing from your suppliers with a balance that you have loaded on the system. So in order to do this, it's super easy. All you have to do is, of course, first sign up for AutoDS. If you don't have an account, you can get started right now for just $1 for the trial period. But once you have everything set up, it's super easy to load up a balance. All you have to do is just run over up here, hover over where it says balance and click on load. Once you hit load, you just choose your desired amount and that's it. Whenever an order comes into your store, AutoDS is going to go ahead and make that purchase using the balance that you have on here. Honestly, this is something that's extremely handy because it'll ensure that you always have money to pay for your products because if you can't pay for your products, then you can't get your products to your customers and in turn, you're not going to be making any money. So you need a little bit of money saved up. You need to have a little bit of money on the side to actually pay for your products. And those were the top mistakes that most dropshippers make that can cause them to fail or at the very least withhold them from their true potential. Have you made any of these mistakes before? Please let me know down in the comments below. I want to hear what you think. I want to hear your experiences. Let me know if you've made any of these mistakes before. Let me know if there's any mistakes that you think that I missed, something that you made, that you want others to know and you want them to watch out for. It would be greatly appreciated. Just let us know down in the comments below. Huge thank you to everyone for watching, especially if you made it all the way to the end. If you did make it to the end, that means that you more than likely enjoyed this video. And if that's the case, please make sure you smash that like button and hit that subscribe button so that way you don't miss out on any future videos. Huge thank you to everyone for watching. It truly does mean a lot. My name is Mario with AutoDS, and I'll catch you all next time.