4 Real Dropshipping achievement Stories + Beginner Tips

The dropshipping operating schedule continues to develop, with the global trade valued at $301 billion as of 2024.

While the opportunities dropshipping offers are obvious, knowing how to construct a successful dropshipping business is less obvious. Many dropshippers battle to discover trending products, associate with reliable suppliers, and attract traffic to their stores.

That’s why it’s valuable to listen from experienced dropshipping entrepreneurs who have found ways to scale their businesses.

Read on to discover from specialist Shopify dropshippers on what achievement looks like and how to achieve it.

What’s the average dropshipping achievement rate?

Search Reddit, Quora, or other online forums, and the general consensus is that most dropshipping businesses fall short. But it can often be challenging to distinguish between businesses that have no prospects of achievement, and those that simply require more period and property.

To view dropshipping achievement, you’ll require to put in challenging work and period to make your business profitable—just like the established entrepreneurs below.

4 dropshipping achievement stories

Starting a dropshipping business means entering a quick-paced industry. Every month brings recent competitors and recent strategies to remain ahead. So what are the winners doing that others aren’t?

view how these Shopify store owners using dropshipping in their businesses:

1. Tze: $19,000 profits in 2 months
2. Cole: $2 million in just over a year
3. Andreas and Alexander: Hitting the $10 million per year mark
4. Sarah and Audrey: $1 million sales with influencer marketing

1. Tze: $19,000 in profits 2 months

Tze Hing Chan co-founded the dropshipping store Subtle Asian Treats, which sells bubble tea plush toys and other hand-picked cute merchandise. Started during the COVID-19 pandemic, Tze made $19,000 in profits in just two months of dropshipping bubble tea plush toys.

But he didn’t leave straight from enterprise to achievement. There were many failures and lessons along the way. Tze started out selling phone cases, then moved on to kitchenware and martial arts products before finding his most profitable product concept: plush toys.

What made this dropshipping store a achievement?

A trending dropshipping niche

Tze knew that bubble tea was up and coming within Asian communities, so he looked for bubble tea-related products on AliExpress. He started selling bubble tea-themed phone cases—they were excellent things to make and sell—but he didn’t view excellent profits margins.

A professional store

Tze made sure to receive worry of his store. He edited each product photo and wrote compelling product descriptions. He wanted to replicate the look and feel you get from stores like Nike and Adidas.

Interactions with customers

Tze also was transparent in the buying procedure with customers. His product pages included a shipping policy: shipping times and origins of the products, so customers had the correct expectations. He took period to engage with followers on Facebook and Instagram, building relationships with people and influencers. He also kept back response times low so customers never felt they were dealing with a scam site.

2. Cole: $2 million in just over a year

After hearing about dropshipping when he was 18, Cole Turner became obsessed with learning how to sell online. In just four years, the youthful business owner built an ecommerce store that made over $2 million in sales between March 2019 and May 2020.

Cole first built a general store to test a variety of products. He eventually found a piece of jewelry that grabbed shoppers’ attention. He quickly scaled up Facebook ads and worked to redesign his general store into a one-product shop. That one store netted him over $75,000 in sales before he sold it to another ecommerce business owner.

It wasn’t until his third dropshipping store that he brought in over $2.1 million in sales in just over a year.

What made this dropshipping store a achievement?

Scaled Facebook ads

Cole generally uses Facebook advertising as his primary sales channel. He starts by identifying two different groups interested in a product and targets ads at them. Then he collects enough data to view which throng the ads worked best on, and increases his budget.

A long-term brand

The only way a store can compete today is through brand identity and distinctive selling propositions. Even if you are dropshipping from AliExpress, you require to look and feel like a legitimate business. People require to depend you.

excellent customer service

One way to construct depend with customers is through excellent customer back. Cole adds a phone number for customers to call or text with concerns or questions, along with available back times. During business hours, all queries are answered within 30 minutes of receiving them, which makes customers feel heard and valued.

3. Andreas and Alexander: Hitting the $10 million per year mark

When Andreas Koenig and Alexander Pecka first started dropshipping, their objective was to hit $1,000 per day in turnover. After a year of trying and making no money, they found their niche in the pet industry and started making $500,000 per month in 2019.

Today, Andreas and Alexander’s pet business is making over $10 million per year.

What made this dropshipping store a achievement?

An emotional connection

Niches based on people’s emotional connections, like pets or children, may provide you more opportunities to differentiate your products.

Facebook ads and organic marketing

Andreas and Alexander’s first ventures failed because of lack of advertising and marketing encounter. They found achievement after investing more vigor into Facebook ads and organic marketing.

Invested period and vigor

Andreas and Alexander didn’t provide up when their first efforts failed. They knew that making money online was a matter of perseverance and continuous learning.

4. Sarah and Audrey: $1 million sales with influencer marketing

Sarah and Audrey are two ecommerce entrepreneurs who each started a dropshipping business before joining forces in 2019.

The typical sales channel for successful dropshipping is Facebook ads, but these two women saw the potential in influencer marketing, which proved to be profitable in the long run.

After conference at an business owner occurrence, Sarah and Audrey worked challenging to expand their brand into the US trade. They worked with influencers on Instagram and numerous product placements.

The pair were wildly successful during US lockdowns, bringing in over $1 million in sales in just a few weeks through their dropshipping business.

What made this dropshipping store a achievement?

spectators appeal

Sarah and Audrey carefully considered their target spectators and the marketing channels they prefer.

Influencer power

Influencers can make all the difference to your achievement. Sarah and Audrey sent up to 200 emails per day looking for the perfect influencer match. Try to establish direct relationships with influencers, eschewing agencies.

Use Instagram Stories for product placement and promotion

Once you establish relationships with influencers, use their most effective platform to promote your products.

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How to be a successful dropshipper

Inspired and ready to become an ecommerce business owner yourself? Here are six key elements you’ll desire to master to become a successful dropshipper.

1. Add worth
2. Focus on marketing and SEO
3. Specialize
4. Have a long-term perspective
5. propose due service
6. Don’t get hung up on the details

1. Add worth

Having a solid schedule for how you can add worth for your customers is the most crucial achievement factor. This is significant for all businesses, but much more so in the globe of dropshipping, where you’ll be competing with legions of other “me too” shops carrying similar products.

With dropshipping, it’s straightforward to ponder you’re selling customers a product. But successful tiny merchants comprehend that it’s not only the product they propose—they’re selling insights, information, and solutions. You ponder you’re an ecommerce merchant, but you’re also in the information business.

So how are you going to add worth and assist solve problems for your customers? If you’re unsure, spend some period reading about dropshipping niches to comprehend the best ones in depth. If you’re struggling to respond this question for a given niche, you may desire to consider picking a different trade.

If you’re not able to add worth through standard information and guidance, the only thing you’re left to compete on is pricing. While this has been a successful schedule for Walmart, it’s not going to assist you construct a successful dropshipping business.

2. Focus on marketing and SEO

Coming in a close second to adding worth as a key achievement factor is being able to drive traffic to your recent site. The #1 issue and frustration recent ecommerce merchants face is a lack of traffic to their websites. Too many merchants slave away for months on the perfect site only to launch it to a globe that has no concept it exists.

Marketing and driving traffic are absolutely essential to the achievement of your business and are challenging to outsource well, especially if you have a tiny budget and are bootstrapping your business. You require to receive the personal initiative to develop your own SEO, marketing, outreach, and guest-posting skills.

This is particularly crucial during the first six to 12 months, when no one knows who you are. Following your site launch, you require to dedicate at least 75% of your period on marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and traffic production for at least four to six months—that’s correct, four to six months. Once you’ve established a solid marketing foundation, you can scale back and coast a bit on the work you put in. But early on, it’s unfeasible to place too much emphasis on marketing.

If you’re not a marketing or SEO specialist yet, the following resources and blogs are a great way to get started:

SEO resources

• Moz. One of the most popular SEO communities online. Moz’s beginner’s navigator to SEO is a particularly excellent resource for those starting out.
• Seach Engine Land. An extremely prolific SEO blog, with dozens of recent posts each day.
• SEOBook. A popular SEO blog and the home of a paid private throng for SEO professionals.
• Brainlabs. This marketing and SEO agency has a top-notch blog and a number of high-standard training courses and tutorials, many of which are free.

Marketing resources

• Seth Godin’s blog. Solid high-level advice on marketing and building an spectators.
• Copyblogger. Content marketing tips with an emphasis on writing effective, compelling copywriting.
• Mixergy. Interviews with successful entrepreneurs in the technology and online fields. Not concentrated exclusively on marketing, but lots of applicable information for aspiring entrepreneurs, including marketing and early-stage advice.

Ecommerce marketing resources

• Shopify blog. A comprehensive ecommerce blog with frequent posts on how to effectively promote and trade your online store.
• EcommerceFuel. Tips from an energetic ecommerce business owner on how to found, develop, and trade online stores. Written specifically for person store owners and smaller stores.

3. Specialize

Almost every successful dropshipping store we encounter has one thing in ordinary: it specializes in sure products. The more that stores specialize, the more successful they tend to be.

You don’t desire to just sell backpacks. You desire to sell backpacks designed for around-the-globe travelers obsessed with lightweight gear. You don’t desire to just sell safety camera equipment. You desire to focus on safety systems for gas stations.

Many ponder narrowing their focus limits their potential customer base and will expense them sales. Just the opposite is factual. Specializing allows you to communicate more effectively with your customers, stand out more easily from the competition, and compete against a smaller field. Specializing is rarely a impoverished shift to make in a dropshipping enterprise.

If you’re launching a store in a recent niche you probably won’t recognize what segment of your customers to focus on, and that’s OK. But as you earnings encounter with your customers you should identify the segment that’s the most profitable and that allows you to add the most worth. Then, try positioning your business to focus exclusively on those customers’ needs and problems. You’ll be amazed at how your conversion rates skyrocket, even if you’re charging a additional expense worth.

recall: if everyone is your customer, then no one is. Specialization makes it easier to differentiate yourself, fee a additional expense worth, and concentrate your marketing efforts more effectively.

4. Have a long-term perspective

Building a dropshipping business is like building anything else of worth: it takes a significant level of commitment and property over period. Yet for some rationale people assume they can construct a inactive six-figure turnover with dropshipping after a few months of part-period attempt. That’s just not the way it works.

It will realistically receive at least a year to construct a business that generates an average packed-period turnover.

It’s also significant to comprehend that the first few months are the most challenging. You’ll battle with doubts, run into issues with your website, and likely have an underwhelming website launch that generates zero sales. comprehend that this is normal. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither were any successful dropshipping businesses.

If you mentally prepare for a challenging beginning and don’t expect to get wealthy overnight, you’ll be much more likely to stick with your business until it becomes a achievement.

5. propose due service

The Internet has always been a fairly transparent place, but the recent rise of social media has made your business reputation even more significant to your achievement online. If you don’t treat your customers well, they’ll often let the entire globe recognize—including many potential customers.

The biggest customer service hazard for dropshipping merchants is having tunnel imagination on per-order profits and losses when fulfillment issues leave awry. As discussed in our Amazon dropshipping navigator, it’s critical to receive that dropshipping can get messy, that you’ll be paying to tidy up some messes, and that you shouldn’t always try to pass those messes on to your customer. If you aren’t occasionally losing money on person orders to make customers joyful, you’re probably not providing very excellent service.

Having joyful customers is the best form of marketing. As is factual in all businesses, it’s much easier to make a sale to a satisfied customer than to try to convince a recent prospect to buy. If you treat your customers exceptionally well, they’re likely to spread the word and refer others your way. With top-notch service, you can construct a business where repeat customers generate much of your turnover.

Making customer service a priority sets your dropshipping business up for achievement, so ensure it’s a priority from the outset.

6. Don’t get hung up on the details

Don’t focus too much on the details. Your business name, logo, theme, or email marketing service aren’t going to determine your achievement.

What makes a business successful are the things we just talked about: adding worth, marketing, due customer service, specializing, and a long-term commitment. Still, recent merchants will spend weeks, sometimes months, struggling to make a selection between two shopping carts or providers. That’s valuable period better spent developing the core aspects of the business.

Do your research and make an informed selection, but don’t let tiny decisions paralyze you.

The most significant step to successful dropshipping

The most significant step—the one that most people never receive—is to actually get started building your ecommerce business. This is the hardest thing for most people, usually due to terror and uncertainty.

It’s a ordinary misconception that successful entrepreneurs have a rock-solid certainty about their business at the outset. When you dig a little deeper, you’ll discover that most had fears and reservations about how things would turn out. Yet they moved forward with their schedule despite these doubts.

If you’re solemn about building your own dropshipping business, you’ll require to do the same. Do your research, assess your options, and then shift forward with that information in spite of your fears and reservations. It’s what entrepreneurs do.