How I made $126,927 with dropshipping during Covid-19 pandemic
By: Mary Humphrey
Tags: Covid 19 Pandemic, Entrepreneurship, Dropshipping, Make Money Online, Dropshipping Business

Hi, I’m Mary, 27. I didn’t graduate from so-called dropshipping courses and have no idea how to get rich quickly as you may be thinking right now. Due to Covid-19 pandemic, I lost my job. I couldn’t even get out of my house because of lockdowns in my country, which left me no choice but to find another job that was based online. That brought me to dropshipping.

Back then, I learned everything about dropshipping on the Internet. I joined almost every ecommerce/dropshipping group on Facebook and Reddit but found it not quite helpful as I expected. Fortunately, I came across some valuable stories on experienced sellers’ blogs in which they illustrated the whole journey they had been through. I scrutinized them, picked for myself some main points, and implemented them my way.

Learn fast and act differently. That was all I did in those 4 months. I never wait until the time seems ripe as dropshipping is all about working, not waiting. So, if any of you are looking for a business of your own, CREATE IT NOW or never.

I’m still far behind the respectful sellers from whom I learned things. But as “the more we share, the more we have” — the mantra I always live by, I share my shallow knowledge anyway.

My journey towards today’s milestone can be wrapped up in the following 7 steps. I hope my sharing today will be somehow valuable, and good enough to inspire some of you to get a fresh start and be your own boss with dropshipping.

1. Pick a dropshipping niche that works

At first, when I just got started, I picked the “women bag” niche, which I thought to be profitable and easy to step in. However, that act was such a grave mistake.

The niche has always been enormous, and full of big players. I had no idea about the fashion trend, what people wanted to wear that year, and I even had no interest in working on it.

Then, of course, I failed. But that couldn’t stop me from starting over again, with another niche that has still been my lifeline until now: Cat.

You might be wondering why I chose that niche. Here is my answer:

I love it.

I am the only child in my family, and I’ve got a cat called White to play with since I was a little girl. White and I were so close that my mom let her move out with me when I had to live and study far from my home. So far, we’ve welcomed 3 more babes to our little apartment, and so I become the young mom of 4 little cats, and take care of them all, on my own.

I know it well.

I am exactly what my target customers are. Maybe there are a few differences between us, but that means nothing because we all love cats. We followed cat Instagram accounts, joined cat lovers’ groups on social media, talked about cats, and laughed at cat memes all day long.

So, my advice for this part is just do it, but do what you love. Pick the niche that you love, and know about, then you’ll get the passion to get going and succeed.

Do what you love and money will follow.

Even if you make the choice, and you are still not convinced, find some data to back it up. Do some internal research about what other people already did, and how you can do it differently, as follows:

Search main keywords on search engine tools, like Google.

Spy on big players of the niche (website, Instagram, Facebook pages)

Do market research on the revenue and profit margin of the niche in the last few years.

The search volume of keyword ‘cat products’ throughout the year 2019, according to Google Trend.

2. Get in touch with reliable dropshipping suppliers effectively

Suppliers are the go-to solution for those who have no self-manufactured merchandise and have never owned a business before as well. They help you source products, pack and ship them directly to your customers. That means all you need to do is to get your stuff sold, your suppliers will take care of the rest. However, suppliers don’t come to you easily. You have to find them.

At first, I started sourcing from AliExpress, but it didn’t take me too long to realize that AliExpress merchandise came with bad descriptions and images. Not to mention, I could find them on hundreds of other websites.

Then I chose to approach US-based suppliers, instead of China-based counterparts. It’s true that I could get a better deal with Chinese companies, but due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the shipping originating from China could be prolonged.

I did due diligence carefully before approaching companies that I thought to the best fits for my early-stage dropshipping business. What I looked for in those companies?

Return and refund policies must be crystal clear and straightforward, and somehow beneficial for me.

Minimum order quantity required must be acceptable for me.

Product quality, images, and descriptions must be good at least.

Their clients didn’t leave them too many negative reviews.

After the due diligence, I found several names that seemed potential.

However, getting in contact with US suppliers via email could be a nightmare, even though we speak the same language. Back then, the reaching out thing was only done until I made a call to talk directly with their representatives.

Eventually, there was only one supplier that I could head to a partnership. Fortunately, we’ve still cooperated till now. Plus, my dropshipping business welcomed 2 more suppliers along the way.

3. Sell on self-own ecommerce site rather than marketplaces

It’s often hard to find a home for your stuff.

Back then, fortunately, I made a good decision when I decided to create my own storefront on ShopBase. You know why?

The profit margin of the products I sold was really low. If I did sell on marketplaces, like Amazon, or eBay, I would have to split my tiny profit to them.

Instead, I chose to sell on my own site. To be honest, back then, my budget was a bit so tight, $3,000, that I had to minimize the money out by all means. So, I went for ShopBase, from which I got a 14-day trial, free marketing tools, and a storefront template. I was surprised at how quick it was for me to create a website and have it ready to sell. As I am not a computer whiz, I always get stuck with technical-skills-required tasks.

I did consider Shopify, but the subscription fee was too high to afford. Shopify is well-known for its diverse app system, but many of which are paid apps.

4. Optimize storefront that sells

As promoted, the dropshipping storefront provided by ShopBase was already well-optimized for selling. However, as I’m always looking for perfection, I wanted my storefront to be more than well-optimized, and be able to speak my personality.

The thing is, in those days, I had no idea about what a perfect storefront looked like. I tried to show as many products as possible, in the hope that someone visiting the site would like one of those. But actually, no one did. My storefront looked just like a mess.

Then, I did some right things.

I posted my site URL up on dropshipping groups/forums and asked if there was someone that could give me a few comments and advice. I also did the same on the ShopBase dropshipping community. Above all, I visited big brands’ websites that sell cat/pet products to see how they organized things. By combining all of what I learned, I created a formula for creating a good storefront for myself, as follows:

Homepage

The homepage is important because it gives visitors the first impression of your store. So it has to be related to your niche, professional, and impress the audiences at first glance.

At first, I spent quite a lot of time choosing the photo that I was going to put up there. I ended up picking the photo of my 4 Scottish cute cats that my close friend, Adam, had helped me with taking and retouching. Adam is a professional photographer.

Next, the slogan. It has to be short, yet catchy and easy to memorize.

I added a CTA button on that image that helped take my visitors straight to my products. Here is what my homepage looks like:

Brand name and logo

Like the slogan thing, it’s hard to come up with a brand name idea that works. I finally used a tool called Namelix to help me with that. Also, I got a premade logo for the brand name I picked. All free.

3 criteria that the tool needed to generate a brand name for me, as follows:

Brand keywords: cat + shop + buddie

Name length: I chose medium with 6–12 letters.

Name style: I chose a brandable name, which is the most picked option.

The tool showed me quite a load of brand names, each of which came with a specific font, size, and color. I ended up picking CATBUDDIE with 4 different colors in logo. Personally, I think it’s perfect: short, simple, easy to memorize.

If you can’t find the logo that you like with the tool, consider using fiverr.com. With just $5, you can get the logo that you want by hiring a person who is a professional designer.

Another tool for name generation that I find quite helpful: whoer.com

Product description

As I mentioned earlier, I used to dropship bags, and at that time, I invested a lot of time in creating ‘king’ content, especially for product description. That’s because I was certainly sure that fancy description generated sales.

But when I switched to the cat niche, that approach didn’t work. It took me quite a long time to realize that product description for cat products didn’t need to be fancy. Instead, go straight to the point, and keep it short and clear: What are the highest value features of the product, and how is it going to benefit my customers?

Besides, I invested in product photography. I tried to display my products with catchy, high-resolution photos in different product angles, and use videos if possible.

A picture is worth a thousand words. A video is worth a thousand pictures.

5. Select payment gateways that suit your business

There are many payment gateways that you can choose to get paid. The two most popular ones might be PayPal and Stripe.

I started out with both PayPal and Stripe. In general, it took me more time and effort to get a Stripe account than a PayPal one. But Stripe is way easier to use.

My money once got held in 6 months by PayPal. It was Christmas time, and the total transaction value surged. I ended up getting the whole money back 6 months later, but it was such a tough time that my dropshipping business was about to collapse.

Unlike PayPal, Stripe holds money for 3 months only, which allows small businesses like mine to manage the cash flow and get going.

That said, my advice is to use both of these payment gateways in parallel. That will undermine the risk in which you can’t get paid by your customers once one out of those runs into trouble.

6. Don’t get started with influencer marketing if you are on a tight budget

The 3 most crucial things to get a dropshipping site up and running are product niche, payment gateway, and traffic — someone used to say that to me. And I totally agree with him. So it’s time to work on traffic.

First, I spied on key players in the animal niche and found out that they all succeeded with influencer marketing, so I followed.

In case some of you might wonder how to find key players in your niche, my method is to ask Google.

😊And here is its answer. (It sounds cliché but Google is quite helpful, right!?)

Or:

They had an ecommerce website and an Instagram account. They promoted influencer marketing, in which they gave each influencer a free code.

Back then, an influencer was the one whose Instagram account boasted over 5K followers. They posted things, tagged the brand, and gave the free code to audiences on Instagram. Once a customer checked out on the ecommerce site applying that code, the influencer got paid.

I did exactly what they did: contact 10 influencers (I found influencers by viewing the tag section on the brand’s Instagram), give them free codes and wait. The approach did work. I got my first sales very soon, but there was not much left on the table. The marketing cost was so high that it cut into my profit margins.

After half a month my influencer marketing campaign was launched, my revenue reached $2,000, but the cost exceeded it. Then I realized that influencer marketing only went well with big brands, not mine.

In short, following the leading players is an excellent way to go. But before going forwards, you need to take a step back and consider whether that way fits your business or not. If your brand-new business is too different from them, you might consider not to imitate.

Again, I raised the question “how to get traffic effectively for a small dropshipping business?” on Facebook groups/ecommerce forums. I finally got my answer:

7. Win customers with Facebook ads

What do I wish I knew before using Facebook ads to get traffic/sales?

Be open-minded. I used to assume so many things instead of just testing them. Do not write off an idea just because it’s simple, weird, or unconventional. TEST EVERYTHING!

Target your list. Build a contact list of your customers/subscribers. With Facebook Custom Audiences, you can easily upload your list and run ads targeting these people.

Be patient. Ads won’t turn into sales overnight. It takes money and time. Keep watching your ad performance, and modify your ad setup until you target the right audience.

Campaign objective: Conversions

The very first step to run Facebook ads is to set the campaign objective.

At first, I was quite confused between the 2 options: traffic vs. conversions. I picked the latter randomly, which I now realize that was a good act. Why?

Facebook’s algorithm is extremely smart. If you set conversions as your objective, Facebook will target exactly those who used to make a purchase via/on the platform. That does increase the likelihood of customers buying your promoted stuff by a lot.

But if your objective is traffic, the platform will target those who used to like, share, comment on other previous posts, no matter whether they have the buying intent or not. (And according to my experience, in most cases, they don’t.)

👉 My advice here is to set conversions as your campaign objective, always.

Demographics & Targeting strategy

I did a lot of research on what my target customer could look like. Then I set ads like the following:

Locations: I targeted people living in the 4 countries that I thought to be rich: my homeland (US), the UK, Canada, and Australia.

Age: 18–65+. I sold the stuff that people of all ages possibly wanted to buy. However, only people aged over 18 could have their own credit card to make a purchase.

Gender: Instead of All, I chose women as women like online shopping more than men.

👉 As my budget was a little so tight that I had to set the target audience carefully, to make sure that every penny spent on advertising counted. I often tested 3 or 4 ad sets in a week. Once any of them won and seemed scalable, I switched to target all genders in all countries worldwide.

Targeting strategy

If I targeted those people who were interested in cats in general, the number of people targeted would be huge — about 59 million. Therefore, I sized it way down to just above 3 million by setting the audience as those who were concerned about the 4 following cat breeds:

American Shorthair cat

Maine Coon cat

Persian cat

Siamese cat

They were all the most popular and petted cat breed in the 4 nations that I targeted.

Placement

I targeted mobile devices as people mostly browse Facebook on their cell phones. For both Facebook and Instagram, I chose Feeds and Stories ads.

Ads copy

Below was my very first ad set back then, which I assumed to be too short, simple, and uncompelling to be able to grab any Facebook users’ attention. However, eventually, it did generate a number of sales for me.

So, what is the point?

That is, you have to test over and over. You never know which ad set is going to work, and which isn’t. Just keep testing and testing until you find what has the best performance.

And it took me months of testing to realize that ad copy isn’t necessarily long and fancy. Research shows that it takes only 2 seconds on average for a Facebook user to decide whether or not to click through an ad. It means that within those 2 seconds unless ad viewers get your point of why exactly they should buy your product, your ad gets neglected.

So, what could help the audience get your point immediately? Funny words and icons, a discount, an offer, or something else?

According to my experience, promotion comes first. The bigger discount, the easier it is to get attention.

But as you can’t always run flash sales all the time, the second important thing is your lead sentence. Your copy must begin with something that your audience can relate to, such as a quote.

When everything is done, don’t forget to offer free shipping, even if it means you have to increase the products’ price by a little bit. Last but not least, drop a product link that is clickable.

Budget

I spent $20 per day for the CBO campaign with 3 ad sets with different targets and tested them in 3 days. After that 3 days, I scaled the ones that generated sales and stopped the others.

Surely many of you will have the same question as mine back then, that is “should you set a bid cap for your ad?” — it depends. If your business is backed by deep-pocket investors and can spend about $1,000 on ads per day, go ahead and bid. Otherwise, bidding is not necessary yet.

8. What did my final result look like?

The initial cost I put in my dropshipping business was about $3,000. It’s not a fortune but a large amount of hard-earned money for me. You might need more or less to step in the business I’m doing now, but it never makes sense when someone tells you that it doesn’t cost that much.

In my case, it costs more than that. It’s my luck not to be knocked down before I ran out of money. The cash kept flowing in and out. The day’s revenue got spent on the days following. Earn and spend — it’s an unstoppable cycle in which I needed to determine where I was going to invest my money in.

All hard work paid off. Here was my performance from February 2020 to the end of May 2020:

$126,927 revenue for 4 months (from Feb to the end of May 2020).

All of my experience was revealed earlier. That said, I still want to share one last thing — the thing that matters most in the way I’ve operated my dropshipping business.

Don’t hesitate to do what you want to do. If you want to be like me, you need to take action immediately. Find your niche, portrait your target audience, craft a dropshipping website, and sell globally. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes, because indeed, I made more mistakes than I could even count.