 So today I want to show you 10 logical reasons of why it makes logical sense to actually start your business, your e-commerce business on Shopify today. Talk to a lot of people probably on a daily basis, if not daily then certainly on a weekly basis, whether it's through DMs or messages or the Facebook group, and it's become clear that a lot of people hold off to actually start in their business until they have everything absolutely set up correctly. They have that one golden product, they have their store absolutely prim and perfect, and have essentially answered all the questions that they have in their head. Whilst to some degree you should be doing that because I don't recommend doing the complete opposite and just rushing into your business with a shabby store and rubbish products and rubbish ad campaigns. Once you get to a point then you just jump straight into it, especially if you're waiting for that one golden product because there's no better way to develop your skills when it comes to things involved in business than actually running a business. If you think about it, you're not going to learn how to drive a car by watching tutorials on YouTube. The only better way to get better at driving a car is to get in a car and actually drive it, and it's the same with anything certainly when it comes to dropshipping on Shopify. So in this video I'm going to take you through these 10 reasons to hopefully inspire some people to get started today because to be honest, you are running out of time. The idea of doing this video today is that it gives you perhaps a few weeks to iron those things out, test a few different products, maybe half a dozen different products to then set yourself up and put yourself in a position where you can then take advantage of the months that are coming, which kind of leaves me into point number one, which is obviously Q4 is coming, the obvious one. If we take a look at this information, this graph from Statista, which is usually pretty accurate, to be honest, if I had, I didn't actually see this before I planned this video, and I don't know how true this is, but it looks as if e-commerce sales in the US from the first quarter of 2009 have grown like quarter on quarter since until we get to 2020, obviously because of the coronavirus, it's kind of like a skew year, so you can pretty much ignore this, but then things certainly at the back end of 2020 and certainly into 2021 have resumed as normal. And as we can see, things are on the up again. So it's definitely proving to be a good year or certainly a good few months leading up to 2022. If we take a look at this post from thedrum.com as well, we can see I've highlighted it. However, November and December are the biggest two months by far in terms of sales volumes. Just to kind of draw your attention to what they say before, January, traditional period of post-Christmas discounting produces the third biggest sales peak as shoppers snag up bargains. So there's kind of two out of the 10 points. I was going to mention the other one later on in the video, but the three biggest months of the year then for you, for your e-commerce business should be November, December, and January. Point number two is Black Friday. This one cannot be ignored out of all the 365 days of the year, Black Friday will be your biggest. Again, if we take a look at statistic.com, the United Kingdom takes Black Friday quite seriously. In 2019, total retail spending during Black Friday alone, so in one single 24-hour period, equaled 8.6 billion pounds. Even if you captured a minute percentage of that, it can still be a significant amount of money. Black Friday, as we all know, is in the back end of November. So starting your business today gives you plenty of time to test lots of different products, get everything set up and in place to take advantage of that whole weekend. Not just Black Friday, but of course you have Cyber Monday just after that weekend as well. Point number three, e-commerce sales are continuing to grow year on year. So this isn't something that's just going to work for the next three months, for the next six months, for the next year, for the next two years. Establishing yourself now as a successful e-commerce business can literally provide an income for you as long as you do things correctly for the next 10, 15, 20, maybe even 50 years. Obviously, nobody can guarantee what happens. But again, if we just take a look at this graph from Statista, we can see the e-commerce sales just continue to grow and grow and grow. So this is something that isn't going away, it's going to stick around for many years. Setting yourself up by having a successful Q4 this year can literally provide you with a business that can last for certainly your lifetime, if not for many lifetimes to come. This is also backed up by Oberlo. Oberlo is a great resource, by the way. If you're not familiar with the blogs and the posts they have, I definitely recommend subscribing. They send out genuinely good, interesting emails. One I receive, for example, is the statistics. And this, I believe, is from the census.gov, as it says in the bottom left corner, so it should be pretty accurate. And again, this is US e-commerce sales from 2011 to 2021 in billions. And we can see year on year, it just continues to grow. And if I had to guess, I would say 2021 will be bigger and better than 2020. Point number four is starting a business now gives you some time to test product. So I won't go into too much detail because I've documented it in past YouTube videos, but it was six or seven products before I found that one winning product. Now, if you're a beginner, I don't recommend doing so, but if you are confident enough, then you can perhaps test three or four different products at one time. But if you're a beginner, what I would recommend is just test in one product per week. So one week, dedicate yourself to testing the product. If it doesn't work out, move straight onto the next one. And what you can do is actually while you're testing one, then actually in the meantime, get your ads set up or all your ads or create your ads depending on where you're going for them. So you're ready to jump straight into the next product as soon as possible. If you have a success rate similar to mine of the sixth product to test in one product per week, that takes you up to about the first of November, which gives you about six or seven weeks to take full advantage of before I've fully cut off point before Christmas. And this leads me on to my next point, which is sourcing a bulk quantity of stock. If you're familiar with my channel, you know I'm quite keen on doing this with some of the products that I find that prove themselves to be successful just to kind of bring costs down. And of course, when you're shipping your items out to a customer and it's getting there in two to three days, it's a lot more profitable and a lot more. It keeps your customers a lot happier basically and they're much more likely to come back and shop with you again. So it's not only is it more profitable in terms of sale versus sale, in terms of the long term kind of sustainability of your company, having a bulk quantity of stock selling a warehouse like I've got out here definitely proves its benefits. I perhaps could record a video on this actually in the future just going through all the pros and cons of actually doing this. Let's give you an idea of how long it takes to get stock in if you are ordering it in bulk quantity. Here's a random product that I found on Alibaba. The lead time estimate time of days is eight. Now that will be eight days for them to manufacture it or for at least to get them for them to get it ready, sorry and actually dispatch it. If you're going by aeroplane it's going to be a lot more expensive but you can actually get it delivered from China to your doorstep in about five to six working days as long as nothing goes wrong. So give or take two or three weeks but obviously if you start your business now and you find a product in the next couple of weeks it gives you a lot more time to kind of set yourself up speak to a few different suppliers get a few different quotes perhaps even order a sample before you then jump into placing that bulk order if you want to go down that route. One other advantage to having stock sat in your local country that you're selling to obviously the cutoff point for drop shipping for Christmas is going to be a lot sooner versus shipping UK to UK. So it allows you to take advantage of that kind of extra week or two leading up to Christmas. Point number six is if you have a successful Q4 then it allows you to build up some capital, some cash, some money that you can use to then invest into something else. So it could be that you're saving for a house it could be that you want to take the family on holiday or it could be that you want to put it back into your business or into a new business to then set you up for 2022. So what I actually did was when I first started in 2016 once I found a product that was successful and proved itself and it was making me money I was then able to use that money to keep buying in more stock, get it private or labeled build a brand around that product build a store around that product and it's a business that I still have running today. So one good Q4 can and will make all the difference. Point number seven which I touched on earlier on the video which is January is the third biggest month of the year and obviously when it comes to January there's obvious niches that are just proven to absolutely skyrocket in popularity and it makes it easy when it comes to picking products that you know are just guaranteed to sell during those months. And the biggest one, the elephant in the room is obviously the fitness niche. Things like leggings, things like gym equipment anything to help people get fit and get healthy it's the number one New Year's resolution then you're definitely onto a winner if you do it correctly. And this is backed up by a simple Google Trend search for gym we can see the spike since 2012 always happens in January. Every single year as I scroll across January, January, January until again 2019 COVID hit and things completely different change but here as things go back to normal history will definitely repeat itself and in January anything to do with fitness and health is going to spike in popularity. Number eight is shipping time. So a great reason to start your business today is because shipping times are better than ever to be honest from CJ drop shipping from AliExpress. If we take a look at this product on AliExpress we can see we have 10 day free shipping from China to the UK which is just brilliant. Now if you exclude last year again because of COVID things were completely different the year before again best case scenario you're still looking at two to three weeks perhaps whereas now I think over the last few years AliExpress has definitely realized how significant or how bigger market drop shipping is they've invested into the drop shipping center and improved that and they've probably encouraged their suppliers to offer faster shipping so they can capture more of that drop shipping audience. So point number eight is that shipping times at the moment are really, really good. If suppliers can keep this up all the way into November, December then that will be absolutely brilliant because it means that kind of transitioning into sourcing bulk quantities won't be so beneficial because you'll still be able to get your products to your customers in time and ship them out as late as possible but that's yet to be seen we'll see how things go. Point number nine is data. So if you watch my YouTube videos you know I'm quite loyal to Facebook ads it's been my main platform that I've used to generate my sales from and Facebook ads work better on data. If you start advertising in the peak in the middle of Q4 it's gonna be a lot difficult to acquire that data or certainly a lot more expensive to acquire that data versus doing it today. So by starting today running some ads you get to acquire that data, let the algorithm, the pixel learn who your ideal customer is so that when you start to ramp up your budgets and attack Q4 Facebook already knows who your ideal customer is and it will spend the majority of that budget showing it to the right people instead of having to experiment and find your right customer in the middle of Q4 essentially. So by starting now you'll be able to set yourself up to take full advantage of Q4. The 10th and final point then is proven products. So coming into Q4 the same products that we'll sell this year will be the same products that sold well last year and will be the same products that sold the year before the year before the year before or certainly within niche anyway. Obviously things like toys, things like gadgets and anything that can double up as a gift then you're definitely gonna be onto a winner. So definitely do your research, look at the trends, use Google Trends perhaps use certain tools like sell the trend, have a look on the Facebook ad library, see what types of ads and what types of products people were advertising this time last year and then just start testing, see what gains traffic, look at your data and then essentially let Facebook show you which way to go. So in terms of the 10 points that's the 10 points. One thing I wanna quickly touch on to end the video off is my advice for Q4 strategy. For anybody sat watching this video now and not quite sure what direction to go I wanna talk for a minute or two just about what I did when I first started in 2016 and it still works year on year because essentially the principles will be the same. The products might not necessarily be the same but the principles and fundamentals certainly will. So what I did then was I jumped on a trend. When you're starting a business in September two, three months even a month before we come into Q4 it's not enough time to build a brand. So don't worry too much about establishing a story and a significant following behind your business before you start selling your products. Just find a product that's proven to work that can double up as a gift and fits kind of like the niches and the types of things people buy and Q4. You can use tools like Google Trends just to double confirm this and essentially just commit to a product that you know for certain is going to sell. If you're comfortable with Shopify design in stores and it takes you no longer than a day or two to get a really nice store looking together then stick to a one product store or a niche store. Try and establish yourself as a market leader and original seller of the products that you're selling that way people will trust you more and they're much more likely to buy it from you versus somebody else. Second thing, when it comes to advertising this product or posting content on your Facebook pages just make sure it's original content. I can't stress this enough. It can and it will make the difference between success and failure. If you have an ad from somewhere like Viral e-commands that has similar music and similar kind of texts that comes out and kind of similar slideshow of images or the same person in the video people will assume you are the same as everybody else and if they didn't give off a good impression they will assume you're the same company and they will not buy from you. Or worse yet, they might have already bought it from that company, seen your ad and have no interest in buying the product again. When it comes to a Facebook ad strategy then for Q4 there's a couple of different ways you can go about it. If you're on a really small budget then my recommendation would be to actually start with traffic campaigns because for every pound you spend will be the equivalent to seven pounds spent on a WC campaign in terms of how many people you actually reach. During this phase you don't necessarily have to worry too much about the amount of sales you're bringing in just try and get as much traffic on your site as many ad to cats as possible and once you have enough you can then use that data to generate and create lookalike audiences and that's where you're gonna make your money. Second strategy is to go straight to WC campaigns, test three large audiences and before you write off an audience and before you write off a product try and spend three to five times the product cost. So if for example you're selling a product that's 30 pounds try and spend a minimum of 90 pounds on that audience advertising and selling that product before you completely write it off and consider it unprofitable and a losing product and moving on to the next one. And with that being said guys I'm gonna wrap the video up there. I know we only briefly touched on the Q4 strategy if you wanna see more in-depth video where I could break it down and perhaps put together a PDF or something let me know in the comments section. Before you go if you are looking for a step-by-step course to take you through exactly what you need to do to get the most out of Q4 I am releasing a new course on October 1st in approximately two weeks so make sure you check out the first link in the description below. It'll take you to a waiting list, pop your email in you'll get a notification of when it's released and you'll also get a 20% discount on the launch price as well. So if that's something that interests you make sure you check it out first link in the description below. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one.