 You know that old saying it's better to learn from other people's mistakes rather than make them yourself. Well, that's exactly what this video here is about. In this video, I'm going to talk about the 10 most common mistakes that you need to avoid when starting and creating your e-commerce business. So if you're in the beginning of your e-commerce journey, do not go anywhere. Watch this quick intro and let's go. What's up everyone? Hope you're all having a great day today. My name is Iran from AutoDS. I'm the content manager and I've also been dropshipping for the last several years. In this video, I want to teach you guys the top 10 most common mistakes that people usually make when they start off with their e-commerce business and I want you to learn from these mistakes and avoid making them yourself so that you will have a much smoother transition into this wonderful, wonderful business model. One second before we get started, do not forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel to always stay updated on all of the latest and all of the hottest topics that we have coming out in the world of dropshipping. So hit that subscribe button. Like and share this video if you appreciate the content and let's go. So let's go ahead and start talking about the most common mistakes that people usually make when they are starting off their e-commerce business and what you need to do to avoid it. So the first most common mistake that people usually make is not having a plan. Now what exactly does that mean? My plan is to create an e-commerce business. So what can go wrong here? Well let's put it this way. Imagine not having a plan and then diving deep down into uncharted territory. So I want to have my own e-commerce business. I don't really have a plan exactly how I'm going to do it. What's going to be my next step? All I know is that I want to start selling online so what do I need to do next? I mean I guess I have to put my product somewhere online for people to see. I don't know where but that seems like a smart place to start off. Then I'll just start uploading a whole bunch of products and whatever I think is interesting and let's see if that will start to sell. This means you don't have any plan whatsoever and to help you out with that we have a guide. By the way the blog that you're seeing here in front of me I'll leave a link to it right below this video with all of the links that I'll also show you in just a couple of minutes. Starting with this one. So if you want to have a good plan when you start your e-commerce business we have a link right here it's called how to start your e-commerce business right away. It's under step number one not having a plan what we just talked about and that will take you to the beginners checklist. A step by step guide on how to start your first e-commerce shop. Now this is relevant for anyone who's dropshipping on Shopify but we also have the same overviews the same guides for eBay, for Facebook Marketplace and more selling channels when we'll have them available soon. So if you will read this article you will see what step by step you need to take in order to start a successful e-commerce store in this case it's Shopify so let's skim through it really quick. Explore different markets and pick your niche. Step number two product research. Step number three identify your competitors so it makes sense right. You're starting off by seeing what types of markets you have what types of niches you have and then you start narrowing it down to something that's interesting to you and also something that is selling you learn how to do that through these guides. Then product research so you learn how to research the right products narrow down and find the ones that really will have the highest chance of selling on your stores. Then identify your competitors if you know what your competitors are doing if you learn from their success that's going to help you so much in the beginning of your dropshipping journey. Step number four build your successful dropshipping store so up until now we just researched all the things that we want to do so we created a plan by actually conducting real research and seeing what works. Then we'll go on to starting our own dropshipping store so in this case it would be Shopify and you can see here you have store themes you create your logos and so forth then you create an account on your supplier's website in this case it's AliExpress but it can be any one of the 25 plus suppliers that you can drop ship from today using AutoDS as an example. Step number six get your dropshipping software so you want to automate your dropshipping business in order to do that or why you want to do that in the first place is because you want to scale your dropshipping business you want to be able to really drop ship and make profits on huge numbers we're not here to make one to two dollars a day we're here to make 50, 100, 200, 300 dollars per day and more of possible and that is only possible when you are automating your business allowing it to scale and not limiting yourself to the only 24 hours that you have per day and with your only two hands you need to automate your business you need to have virtual assistants you need to automate as much as possible in order to take care of your daily tasks so I'm going to skip through this really quick upload products to your store of course that's the next step after you're done with all the product research phase you created your store now it's time to actually import products the ones that you researched the ones that you know will sell then you need to learn how to market your store so all of this and I'm not going to get into it because it will take too long but this is just for Shopify if you want to drop ship there as I mentioned you can also do it on the Facebook marketplace a totally different marketplace with much less competition and no need to pay any third-party services to bring traffic to your store and of course we also have the same guides for eBay so not having a plan that's the first mistake that people usually make they just dive right in okay I want to sell on eBay okay I want to sell on Facebook so I'm just going to do this and this I'm going to list these products and I guess that I'm going to be rich in just about a week or two so no you need to have a plan and you need to stick to that plan and now this brings us to the second mistake that people usually make when they start off their e-commerce business and that is not knowing your niche so if you remember on the full guide that we just wrote that we just saw on how to create a successful e-commerce store you know that product research is one of the things that you really need to learn how to nail down here and product research also means knowing how to nail down your niche so if you have a good plan for your store you know where you're going to sell you know which suppliers you're going to use but you don't know what niche you're going to go for then your plan is not going to work all that well so after you have your business plan you need to know exactly what niche you want to sell in you can pick all kinds of random products you need to know how to conduct the right amount of product research but all that comes after knowing what niche you want to go for so some people go with one product stores and some people go with general stores where you have multiple niches inside and then you start to see what selling well and then you start to narrow down on that niche that's actually working well for you so you have to know what niche you're going for before you jump inside and once again as I mentioned it doesn't matter if you want to drop ship on eBay Facebook Shopify or any other selling channel knowing the right niche and some niches work differently on some marketplaces than others so it's all about testing but you do want to nail down your niche you do want to know what you're going for and not just test a whole bunch of random products and hope that your store is going to work with random products just being laid around everywhere now of course you do have to do a whole lot of product testing and a whole lot of niche testing before you start to narrow down on your niche but that doesn't mean that you need to combine a whole bunch of random things together that do not belong for example if you're going to sell a whole bunch of pet supplies it doesn't really make any sense to add home furniture and things like that have to do with that niche because home furniture has nothing to do with having a pet accessory or a dog color and so forth so what you want to do is for example if you want to test a pet's niche then make a pet's niche store and then break that down into different pet categories don't put a whole bunch of random niches in your store because it's not going to make sense to the person who is browsing in your store and just imagine you walking inside any kind of store inside a mall and you'll just see a whole bunch of things that really don't relate to the other so you'll get the same feeling that your buyers are going to get so know what niche you're going for you can test out different niches in different stores and see what works best for you you cannot be successful by only testing a few products or only a few niches it will start to work once you test test and test some more but know what niche you want to go for before you start or test out the right niches test out niches the right way before you start so that you will be able to know what niche you want to go for the moment that you are ready the third common mistake that people usually make when starting their e-commerce business is choosing the wrong e-commerce platform now on the one hand there is no such thing as right or wrong it's not like if you drop ship on ebay it will never work but if you drop ship on Facebook it will work for example a product that works well on ebay doesn't mean that it's going to work well on Facebook or on Shopify and vice versa another way for choosing the wrong e-commerce platform is let's say for example you don't like marketing you don't want to spend money on marketing and you won't don't want to learn marketing all too much you just want to product research you want to research the right products to sell and then you simply want to list them and sell them to a specific audience without getting too much into detail and without spending too much money on marketing either in this case Shopify is not for you because that is what Shopify is good for on the one hand there are no limits when you're selling on Shopify on your first day you can list thousands and thousands of items and market them to whoever you want and whenever you want but you'll have to pay Google ads or Facebook ads or any other traffic source to promote your product on ebay for example you have so much free organic traffic that you really don't have to pay any promotions and you don't have to pay any third party sources to bring traffic to your site as long as your product is what people are looking for then people will find it through your product titles so that's why you definitely need to optimize product titles on ebay that's how people are going to get your listing and you don't you don't have to pay anyone so some people actually really enjoy this e-commerce platform so I'll just sell on ebay there is no investment I only pay once I get paid and that's the business model that actually works for me even if my first seller account is limited and I can only list 10 items if I work my way up in just about a couple or a few months I will be able to list thousands of listings so it's a little bit of hard work in the beginning and it pays off later on and then on Facebook marketplace for example you have no limits whatsoever and you don't have to pay traffic sources so it has all of the advantages that ebay and Shopify has so it really depends on what suits your needs as a business owner which business model which e-commerce platform speaks to you the most that is how you will know how you are choosing the right e-commerce platform and by the way guys if I didn't mention it before I'm going to leave links to how to drop ship fully on ebay on Facebook marketplace and on Shopify just in case you guys have no experience whatsoever and you want to learn from the start from really starting from having no knowledge whatsoever to becoming professionals at it selling customer service product research from day one creating your account to the last day where you're actually handling customer service fulfilling your orders profiting and having fun so choosing the wrong e-commerce platform is mistake number three that people usually make mistake number four that people usually make when starting their e-commerce business is ignoring mobile friendliness this means that their website is not mobile friendly now most online choppers today moved away from the pc from their personal computers and from their laptops and they moved on to their mobile phones and their tablets so if your website does not support mobile does not support tablets then you're going to lose a bunch of cells without even knowing it so make sure that your website is mobile friendly if you have a store on ebay it's mobile friendly you don't need to do anything about that same thing for Facebook marketplace but if you have a store on Shopify you do want to make sure that it is mobile friendly you have tools on Shopify that will help you do that but just make sure it's on point there the fifth mistake that you guys want to avoid is simply losing focus when in the beginning of creating your e-commerce business there are going to be hundreds of tasks and only 24 hours in a day to take care of them so what you want to do is not lose focus know exactly what you're going to do throughout the day before each day begins before you start working have a to-do list and make sure that you have the most critical tasks set out in the beginning and make sure that you carry out all of the tasks that you set out for yourself if you do not create tasks for yourself in the beginning of the day you'll simply get lost in them during the middle of the day and you won't take care of all of the important things that you need so create your plan know what you're going to do throughout the day don't lose focus and don't give yourself an excuse to finish until you took care of enough tasks to help your business grow mistake number six that people usually make when starting their e-commerce business is underestimating the real amount of work that's actually needed to succeed in this field so many people see dropshipping as a passive income so I'm going to create an online store I'm going to add some products there people are going to buy it everything is going to be automated I don't really need to do much besides ad products they'll start to sell and that's pretty much it I'm going to enjoy the sales I'm going to enjoy the profit and everything will be right in this world that is not actually how it works and when you underestimate the amount of work that you need to succeed in e-commerce that's another point of failure this actually requires a lot of work from the first day when you are creating your online store researching the right products to sell and product research does not take a minute or two testing the market doesn't either you're always testing different products you're always testing different niches you're always handling customer service you are fulfilling your orders you're handling all of the customer service all of the customers messages or complaints you're answering all of their questions and of course you are growing you're never standing at the same position you're always expanding you're always moving forward so if you have 20 listings on your store today then tomorrow you should have 50 and the day after you should have 70 and then you should have 100 you should always move up and climb up the ladder otherwise you'll be at the same spot and you won't move anywhere is dropshipping a source of passive income yes it definitely is but it's not going to be that in the beginning definitely not in the first couple of days and in the first couple of months this is where you need to put all of the hard work inside and if you underestimate any part of that hard work then this is not going to work out for you reason number seven or mistake number seven that people make when starting their e-commerce business is they don't hire people to help their business grow and this goes along together with number six because if you underestimate the work that you need to succeed then you don't understand that you actually need to hire people to help your business grow so i want you guys to think of one successful business that you have heard of that doesn't hire employees because it's a one-man show can you think of any neither can i and that is because you have to hire people to help your business grow no store no franchise will ever be successful with only one person as their employee now that doesn't mean that right in the beginning you need to have employees because you need to have money to pay them and usually you're going to use money from your profits or from your revenue to pay your workers so that they'll bring you more revenue and more profits and that way you can continue to grow but in the beginning you need to know yourself how to manage your online business so if you do not know how to run and manage your dropshipping business if you are not profiting yet then it is not your time to hire employees to help you grow your business at least not yet but do keep this in mind because when you start to sell when you'll start to grow and there will be a small limit that will stop you from growing and that limit is the time that you don't have on your hands that is when it is the right time to hire a virtual assistant to help you run manage and grow your e-commerce business a lot of people get stuck at this part they don't want to trust other people to handle their business they think that everything is fine they're fine with making five hundred dollars or one thousand dollars a month and that is the comfortable spot for them then maybe they don't need to hire virtual assistants but if you want to make higher numbers than that then you need to know when is the right time and hire virtual assistants to help your business grow mistake number eight that people usually make when starting their e-commerce business is not setting the right return shipping and payment policies and this is right for any selling channel that you're using so the customer needs to know what's going on with his order or when he's going to get his package before he even makes an order and many times when they see the right return shipping and payment policies then it's a no-brainer for them they will have enough confidence to buy from your store but in order to get that confidence in the first place they'll need to read these policies many online stores that i see dropshippers running on Shopify for the biggest example some of them do not have return policy shipping policies and then you don't have the biggest answer to the question that you have as a buyer when am i going to get this product where is it coming from so if i'm buying it from the u.s is it coming from china is it going to take three or four weeks to get delivered or is it going to take a day or two so you need to let your customers know or you need to let your potential buyers know what to expect and to get the right amount of confidence that they need in order to hit that checkout button and purchase that product from your store for that one of the things one of the most important things that you need is return shipping and payment policies of course if you're dropshipping on Shopify you need your terms of service and other pages and by the way guys we have a full 80z Shopify dropshipping course if you guys don't know i'll also leave a link to that right below this video so if Shopify is the marketplace for you if that's what you want to learn to dropship on and have success definitely watch that course it's 100% free and we have about 40 videos in that course one by one step by step on how to start and how to handle all of your dropshipping business from day one including product research audience research how to market your products on facebook ads and so much more mistake number nine that people make when starting their e-commerce business is they do not spread out their marketing tests so for example i know that i want to dropship on Shopify let's say for example and i only tested let's say two or three products i made one ad set for each product that's how i that's how i try testing out my product it didn't work the products didn't work or maybe the marketing didn't work but it just didn't work out and i don't want to spend any more money i don't want to spend any more time because so far it's been a waste the biggest mistake with these decisions is that you didn't test it out enough if spending a budget on ads in the beginning is hard for you if that's difficult for you then Shopify is not the selling channel that you want to start with which brings us back to choosing the wrong e-commerce platform so you chose the wrong platform here you went with Shopify even though you don't have a budget to run ads so you won't be able to test these products and that way you weren't able to test the products correctly so spreading out your marketing tests i wasn't able to spread out my marketing tests because i chose the wrong e-commerce platform so once you'll have all of these reasons down together you'll see how things will start to work so in this case we did choose the right platform and we spread out our marketing tests correctly which means we tested more than one product we tested more than one selling channel and we tested more than one way of marketing and when i say more than one i don't just mean to test as much as you can nobody's going to give you the right secret formula what product to sell and what marketplace because no one can even give you this amount of information why because today it's relevant and you did know about it or you didn't know about it but next week something else is going to be relevant so the more you test the more you will find out and the more you will learn and you'll also notice the yearly cycles and the yearly patterns of products and niches and categories that sell more and less at specific times of the year you will only learn this by spreading out your marketing tests so spread out don't test only one niche and only one category or just two the tenth mistake that people usually make and this is one of the biggest ones obviously my personal favorite not automating your e-commerce business guys when i learned about business automation that's when my business really skyrocketed and the same is going to happen for you all of the logics will also bring you to the same answer business without automation just like saying a business without workers right without virtual assistants without employees cannot grow is always going to limit itself same thing when you do not automate your e-commerce business this is another way of saying i'm hiring someone to do the work for me to take care of daily tasks that i don't need to waste my time doing it if somebody else can do it for me and i can invest that extra time that i just earned by growing and expanding my e-commerce business even more so when you automate your e-commerce business i mean using a software that helps you monitor your prices your stock so when you're adding products from your suppliers and the prices there change you want the price to also change on your store so you won't lose money on an order or if a supplier goes out of stock on a product that you also have on your store then you also wanted to go out of stock on your store too so price and stock monitoring so you don't have to refresh all of the products that you have on your store and imagine having thousands of products in front of your suppliers websites every day to see if there are any changes in price or in stock also you want to automate orders so when you start hitting 5, 10, 15, 20 orders per day you want to start automating it instead of fulfilling each order by yourself manually or having your virtual assistant do it today software can help you 100% fulfill your orders and here i'm definitely talking about auto-DS doing all of this business automation all of these things to really help you guys grow and manage your e-commerce business without making mistakes that people usually make like i just mentioned in this video and without of course adding automation to your business price monitoring stock monitoring handling customer service and even adding virtual assistant accounts to take care of your store all of that can be done with auto-DS of course also mentioned order fulfillment easy returns and when i mean order fulfillment i mean 100% handling your order so you get an order from one of your buyers the system will automatically go to your supplier site and order the product for you using your buyer account or its own buyer account so you don't even have to have your own there are so many advantages of automating your e-commerce business just like you're not familiar with any businesses who have ever become really successful without hiring employees that doesn't really make sense same thing goes for e-commerce and for drop shipping no big drop shipper and no big e-commerce store owner can do it manually without using software to help automate their business so once you have drop shipping software and once you have virtual assistants these are the legs to the table of your drop shipping business once you have those you can scale you don't have to limit yourself and the skies will really be the limits for you that wraps up this video for the 10 e-commerce mistakes that people usually make when starting their e-commerce business so do not make these same mistakes yourself get all of this knowledge that you got from this video use the blog articles that i will leave a link to right below and keep learning your way up avoid making these mistakes learn from them and good luck with your drop shipping business once again guys subscribe to our channel if you haven't done so yet because this is the type of content we deliver along with so much more like this video if you enjoy the value share it so that your friends and family can also learn about the wild and amazing world of drop shipping thank you for watching and good luck with your new drop shipping business