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The real problem with dropshipping isn't necessarily finding products to sell or even running ads.
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It's if you're not careful, you'll be left with just a few pounds to put towards advertising, which just means everybody ends up selling the same products from the same supplier directories, they're using the exact same photos, they're running the same ads.
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So instead you have to so most people who tried dropshipping never actually talk about the real reason that it doesn't work for them.
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So today, Lewis and I are going to break down the problems that almost never get mentioned.
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And these are the ones that kill results before people can even realize what's happening.
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So, Lewis, let's start with the biggest one.
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What do you think is the core problem with the way that most people are taught to drop ship today?
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Yeah, so I think this one probably we can point to the numbers on this, because it often does come back to that.
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And what I mean by numbers is the margins, the profitability.
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So the profit margin that you're left with when you sell low-ticket, lower-priced items, which so many people on the internet talk about doing because there's this perceived low barrier to entry into e-commerce.
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So if you just sell these kind of products that you find on these types of supplier directories, these cheap, low-priced widgets, the margin you're left with, the profit margin that you're left with, are so thin that you just can't then afford to reinvest any of that profit or enough of it to meaningfully invest in ads to actually grow and get sales from the business.
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So you're left with like pennies or maybe a few pounds profit per order to put towards advertising.
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But then with that, remember, you have to then be able to profitably acquire the next sale and the next sale.
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And it just, you're you're dealing with such slim margins and it's such a small buffer that the room for error is so small that unless you're an absolute pro at this and you can make back your profit through the lifetime value of a customer when you get them to purchase again and again and again, it it makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to gain real momentum.
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So it's why we see so many people try that model with the low-ticket products and then say, Well, I was making sales, but for some reason it didn't work.
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And then when we dive into it, that's usually the reason why.
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Yeah, I think it's so important that people grasp this early rather than for some people they come to us after they the pennies drop too late, after they tried to sell low-ticket products with a few pounds of profit per order and wondering why they've got no money left over after they're spending on ads.
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So you've got to think about every sale that you make, you're gonna be selling a product on your website at the retail price that your customers are paying.
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And then you're gonna buy that product from your supplier at the trade price.
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That gives you your margin, which we say should be around 30% at least.
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And if you're selling a thousand pound high-ticket item that we sell, that's 300 pounds that you've got gross margin for every order.
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That then gives you 300 pounds to acquire that customer.
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And you're gonna spend a certain amount of money to acquire a customer with ads.
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If you've got 300 pounds, then you could comfortably spend 50 pounds and still have 250 pounds net profit after ads that goes into your back pocket to reinvest into the business or for you to enjoy the benefits of that lifestyle.
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Whereas what we're saying is with low-ticket items, if you've got a few pounds profit per order, you've got hardly anything to play with.
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So does that do a good job of kind of encapsulating that?
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And do you think it's important to pick that up early?
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Yeah, definitely.
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That is the key that people often only find out and realize once they're already starting to make sales.
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It doesn't present itself as a problem early enough in the process because the elation and the joy of making sales kind of buries it and hides it.
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And so people tend to kind of stick their head in the sand, either knowingly or unknowingly, that like I have a successful business, I have something that's making sales.
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But sales in them themselves, like the actual just uh ka ching sound that Shopify makes isn't necessarily indicative of a healthy long-term business.
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We want to know well, what do we have left over from that after our ad spend?
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And that's why we advocate for selling higher ticket products with higher price points, like you say, 30% profit margin.
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So if you sell a 2,000 pound pool table or sofa or home treadmill or garden dining set, whatever it is, 30% of that you keep.
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So 30% of£2,000 in that case would be£600.
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So you're keeping£600 on that one chiching, that one sale that came in.
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Now you have 600 pounds to play with that is yours.
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That's profit you can take off the table, and you can then use that profit, that 600 pounds, to go out and spend on ads to acquire lots more sales.
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And as long as you can acquire sales, you know, let's say you can acquire a sale at 100 pounds, right, for one of those types of product.
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Well, now you can go and acquire six more sales for that same price point because you have 600 pounds of money that you didn't even have before because you created that from the property so it's like becomes this self, the momentum starts to build until the thing is just rolling and like it snowballs and the cash flow that comes from it can be allocated correctly.
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The the opposite is true though, if you're selling really slim margin products, the more you sell, the less you have because you only make a tiny bit on profit.
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And if your cost to acquire those sales is higher than the profit you have, then your account will just be going down and down and down.
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And so you either need like external funding or investment or something, or even if you have that, you need a strategy to make sure in the long term you do generate profit from the business because otherwise you're just going to be making sales but no profit.
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So it's it's something to be very aware of, as you say, coming into this business.
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And actually, you can just we say you can stack the deck in your favor in a way that you're not wedded to any products when you first come into e-commerce.
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So if you just want to run an e-commerce business and earn money online through selling products, think very carefully about what you sell before you start building it and putting in the work because you're going to put the same amount of effort in regardless of what type of products you sell.
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So you may as well be making a good profit from each of those sales.
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Yeah, we've done this from experience.
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We we both tried initially to sell low-ticket items, and now we're obviously running and teaching people how to build high-ticket uh stores selling high-ticket expensive products.
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And we can say from experience it's much easier, or it's actually the same amount of effort to generate sales with low-ticket as it is to generate high-ticket sales based on the effort you put in to find suppliers, upload them to your store, and run ads to make those sales.
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So it's uh it's kind of you know against uh common wisdom to think that it would be just as easy to sell a high-ticket item, but it's the same work involved up front.
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And yeah, I think you're just touching on the main point there, and it's something that people don't talk about, is because it's quite seductive just to show people sales on Shopify and to hear the ch-ching noise.
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When you look onto the advice around dropshipping that people are telling you about, they're telling you about how to make as much sales as you can.
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Sales, sales, sales.
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Uh, but what we advocate for with this podcast is actually going a level deeper than that and say, yes, sales is obviously the top line, the thing that runs the business and gives you money into the business.
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But how much you're actually left with at the end of each month is what really allows a business to grow and scale and sustain a great lifestyle that uh that you're able to build.
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So that's why we advocate for the higher ticket market.
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And the lower ticket just doesn't give you much room for profit per order to spend on ads.
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Are there any other issues that you think aren't talked about, Lewis, that are particularly relevant for people looking to do this low-ticket style drop shipping?
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Well, often it's the source of the information.
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I think it's so apparent online on platforms like YouTube that everybody's teaching this model, you know, of like go to AliExpress, find some products, mark them up tenfold, throw up a couple of AI-generated YouTube ad uh YouTube ad or Facebook ads, and then just, you know, hope that nobody sees that product and thinks, hmm, I wonder how much I could get that if I went direct to the supplier in China and then, you know, realizes that you're making your entire margin based on just like clever, shiny marketing and ads.
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The other thing is when you see those types of tutorials on YouTube and you follow them click by click and you're kind of fixed to the screen and you're like, right, I'm building a business, you're kind of caught into this illusion that you're building a business.
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But a lot of those creators might wait, make one or two videos like that, and then they disappear, or they pop up the next day teaching you about crypto or teaching you about Forex or some like property or you know, some other scheme that they've done because they kind of they make their income through like doing these very surface level make money online opportunities and they kind of analyze them, review them, like, you know, watch me speed run uh building a dropshipping store and then they disappear and then do something else, you know, the next week.
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I think you've got to have the consistency and the attention span that a lot of these creators aren't necessarily blessed with, I don't think, of seeing something through to completion and actually saying, no, I'm gonna build a business out of this that's gonna pay me long term, that's gonna provide for my family, that might not be the most shiny, coolest new AI-driven thing that, you know, has just emerged onto the marketplace, but it's built on solid fundamentals.
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It's built on principles that are timeless and have been here since before the internet, which is companies who make products, i.e.
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suppliers, want to get those products into the hands of customers.
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Now, if they don't sell directly, their route to market is through retailers like you.
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This existed since before the internet, it's just now become a lot easier since the internet has arrived that we can now be that shopfront without actually needing a shopfront.
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You know, we can create a digital storefront, run the ads, get those products into the hands of customers.
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And the difference is these suppliers don't sell directly in most cases to the end user and to the public.
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So it's not like you're finding a really cheap product, marking it up to an unreasonable level just to make your profit and then trying to dupe the customer into buying it.
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Instead, you're buying it at a trade price that they sell that to all of their retailers at, which is usually about 30% below the retail price that they recommend you sell the item at.
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And then everybody's selling it roughly 20, 30, 35, sometimes 40, 50%, if you get a good supplier that holds, you know, a decent margin.
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Um, and you then make your profit in like a way that retailers have have always done.
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And you're just doing it through a new model and a new vehicle, but the actual fundamentals are the same.
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So I think that's one of the mistakes that a lot of people fall into.
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It's like trying to get busy building before really zooming out and just looking at like the source of the information, you know, even to the point of are they doing this in the market that I'm even in?
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Like, are they someone who's based in the UK in our case?
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Most of the times it's not.
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It's like Americans who are teaching you how to do this model from China to the US and like play this game of arbitrage, which is just, in my opinion, it's a ticking time bomb that's just eventually going to come unstuck.
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And you see it when you see one of these ads for like a little cheap, I don't know, kitchen cooking widget or something that someone's selling, or some like dog pet toy or something.
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You look at the comments below ads like that, and people they're getting absolutely slated by people who have found the product for 10 times cheaper directly on Timu or AliExpress, and they're just pointing people directly to that one often.
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So that won't happen when the supplier that you're selling from doesn't sell the item directly to the public, and that they rely on their retailer network to get the items out into the hands of the public.
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So, yeah, we don't advocate for supplier directories, low-ticket products, or that kind of surface level thin information that you might get on um, you know, a basic YouTube tutorial that's like, hey, try this shiny model for seven days and see how you go.
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Because next week I'll be talking about something completely different.
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Like we've stuck with this for the long term, we do it in the UK market and we've seen it through both of us to the point where it is a full-time business, which is, I think, the mindset you have to go into this with if if that's what you want from it as an end result.
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Yeah.
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So only when I I went into the the high ticket model and I came across Dropship Unlocked, I knew that I actually wanted to have an online income stream that would be able to sustain me for the long run based on work that I put up front to build a business, build an asset, to pay me for years to come.
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So I knew that I went in with the with that intention of being in it for the long term.
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Uh I just needed to find a a partner service, yourself, Lewis, that would actually be able to stick with me for the long term.
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And the problem with YouTube and that type of content is that creators are incentivized to follow trends.
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And if certain business models are in trends at certain times, they'll jump into that, they'll make their money, they'll tell you the easiest method to do that model, which has the lowest barrier to entry, which is normally signing up to a drop shipping directory and importing products into your store and putting together a Facebook ad using AI throughout the entire process.
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And the the issue with that, as you say, is that yes, it's great for the creator to be able to make that and give somebody a low barrier to entry to set these kind of things up.
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Unfortunately, it's what the mass market do, it's what the majority of people do.
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They try and sell those products and they try and follow the same guidance.
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And when it's low barrier to entry, it's very often saturated because so many people can do it because it's so low barrier to entry.
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And then it means you you aren't selling high quality products.
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You've got long delivery times, and customers can see straight through the products that you're trying to sell.
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I tried it myself, you know, it's easy to fall into these traps following YouTube tutorials and and being left you know left to dry when you've when you've tried it.
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And I was getting these Facebook comments from people that can see right through the products I'm selling, telling me that it's just Chinese rubbish and they can go and go to the the the actual supplier, the directory themselves, uh go to the supplier, and then have the same delivery time to wait anyway, even if they came through through my store.
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So all a great learning lesson, but something that needs to be spoken about more.
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Um, do you see any other issues with the the type of dropshipping that that people don't really talk about?
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Well, I think yeah, the evidence is there, and and by all means go and learn that the hard way for yourself if you want to.
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But if you do want to heed our warnings and know that we've both been down that path, and so many other of our members inside Dropship Unlocked have and then have turned towards the community that that we run, you can also just learn from their mistakes if you want to avoid that lesson the hard way.
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But yeah, I mean the fundamental principles are higher priced items, so high-ticket items, as we call them, working with domestic suppliers, so who suppliers who are in the same country as the customers you're trying to get the products to.
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So for us, it's UK suppliers, UK brands who will dispatch the items straight out to a UK customer's doorstep without you touching the product, but yet you keep 30% of that profit margin.
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That then means you're able to afford to spend what it takes to get more sales and still be profitable on each of those sales, which is really important.
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So it's a cash flow generating business that is a net positive from month one, if you run it right.
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You're also building a real business.
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You're building something that's got, you know, good customer support, good reputation.
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You're not following some, you know, YouTube tutorial that will be outdated by next week because someone said that that this was the flashy new way to do things, you're building something that's there for the long term, that's gonna provide for you for years to come.
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So it's worth getting it right and building it with the right fundamentals in place, in my view.
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So if you are tired of going down that rabbit hole and the version of dropshipping that keeps getting talked about that was never really designed to work long term, and you'd like a more sustainable, reputable solution for you that could work here in the UK, then you can head over to dropshipunlocked.com forward slash start.
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So dropshipunlocked.com forward slash start.
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There we'll show you the model that real people are using every day to support their families and build actual lifestyle businesses.
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Brilliant.
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Yeah, and that's the exact uh process that I went through to join Dropship Unlocked to learn actually how I can sell products profitably online without getting stuck down the rabbit hole that I was going down while trying to follow YouTube advice, uh selling these low-ticket items where I had no money left over to actually spend on ads to generate the uh the sales profitably.
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So, is that part of the episode now where we're going to answer a question that we've received from a listener, which we like to do on every one of our episodes, because if you've got any questions that have come up in your mind while you've been listening to the episode or watching the YouTube video version, then we want to feature them and answer them.
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So that's exactly what Vivian Hargreaves has done.
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She's got her comments in underneath the YouTube video version of a previous episode.
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Uh so that's what you need to do if you want to get a question answered.
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So her question for you, Lewis, is thank you, Lewis.
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Your enthusiasm is infectious.
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I'd like to contact you to see what would be the best step for me to take.
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But thank you very much, uh Vivian.
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I'm glad the enthusiasm comes through.
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Um I guess I'm enthusiastic because this model has completely changed my life.
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You know, it's uh it's a very powerful model.
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I've experienced it firsthand.
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But also, James and I have now seen thousands of people go through the program with some incredible case studies as well.
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So great to hear that you want to uh get in touch.
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The best next step in that situation is if you head to dropshipunlocked.com forward slash start.
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That's where I map out everything there.
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I answer any questions.
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And if you go on to join the program, I'll see you at one of our next live meetups and we'll get to meet in person.
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I look forward to it.
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There you go.
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We'll go one step further than being able to contact and actually coming along to it to meet up if you do want to join the program.
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And uh yeah, we we've got that coming up now, Louis, not too far away.
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We'll be planning the next meetup.
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So looking forward to that one.
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Absolutely, looking forward to it.
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So before we wrap up today's episode, um, if this episode gave you any clarity on how to actually get started with high-ticket drop shipping the right way, in our opinion, could we ask you for a small favor in return?
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If you're watching this on YouTube, could you just drop a comment below this video and like the video?
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Make sure you hit the subscribe button so you're subscribed to get new videos as and when they're released.
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Or if you're listening to us on a podcast app of your choosing, whichever one you get your podcasts through, would you take a few seconds to just leave us a quick five-star review?
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Takes you less than 30 seconds, probably, but it really helps other freedom-seeking parents and professionals who might be looking for an answer like this.
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Find this podcast.
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So thank you.
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Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Dropship Unlocked podcast.
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We hope you are leaving with new insights and inspiration to fuel your entrepreneurial journey.
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To kickstart your e-commerce business, head over to dropshipunlocked.com.
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It's the perfect place to start and get access to resources that will help you build your business from the ground up.
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And don't forget to hit that subscribe button for more episodes packed with strategies, tips, and success stories.
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But if you enjoyed this episode today, a five-star review would mean the world to us.
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And you might even get a shout out for the next episode.
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Thank you for choosing to spend your time with us today.
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We can't wait to bring you more insight on the next episode of the Dropship Logs Podcast.
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The real problem with dropshipping isn't necessarily finding products to sell or even running ads.
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It's if you're not careful, you'll be left with just a few pounds to put towards advertising, which just means everybody ends up selling the same products from the same supplier directories, they're using the exact same photos, they're running the same ads.
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So instead you have to so most people who tried dropshipping never actually talk about the real reason that it doesn't work for them.
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So today, Lewis and I are going to break down the problems that almost never get mentioned.
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And these are the ones that kill results before people can even realize what's happening.
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So, Lewis, let's start with the biggest one.
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What do you think is the core problem with the way that most people are taught to drop ship today?
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Yeah, so I think this one probably we can point to the numbers on this, because it often does come back to that.
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And what I mean by numbers is the margins, the profitability.
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So the profit margin that you're left with when you sell low-ticket, lower-priced items, which so many people on the internet talk about doing because there's this perceived low barrier to entry into e-commerce.
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So if you just sell these kind of products that you find on these types of supplier directories, these cheap, low-priced widgets, the margin you're left with, the profit margin that you're left with, are so thin that you just can't then afford to reinvest any of that profit or enough of it to meaningfully invest in ads to actually grow and get sales from the business.
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So you're left with like pennies or maybe a few pounds profit per order to put towards advertising.
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But then with that, remember, you have to then be able to profitably acquire the next sale and the next sale.
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And it just, you're you're dealing with such slim margins and it's such a small buffer that the room for error is so small that unless you're an absolute pro at this and you can make back your profit through the lifetime value of a customer when you get them to purchase again and again and again, it it makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to gain real momentum.
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So it's why we see so many people try that model with the low-ticket products and then say, Well, I was making sales, but for some reason it didn't work.
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And then when we dive into it, that's usually the reason why.
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Yeah, I think it's so important that people grasp this early rather than for some people they come to us after they the pennies drop too late, after they tried to sell low-ticket products with a few pounds of profit per order and wondering why they've got no money left over after they're spending on ads.
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So you've got to think about every sale that you make, you're gonna be selling a product on your website at the retail price that your customers are paying.
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And then you're gonna buy that product from your supplier at the trade price.
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That gives you your margin, which we say should be around 30% at least.
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And if you're selling a thousand pound high-ticket item that we sell, that's 300 pounds that you've got gross margin for every order.
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That then gives you 300 pounds to acquire that customer.
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And you're gonna spend a certain amount of money to acquire a customer with ads.
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If you've got 300 pounds, then you could comfortably spend 50 pounds and still have 250 pounds net profit after ads that goes into your back pocket to reinvest into the business or for you to enjoy the benefits of that lifestyle.
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Whereas what we're saying is with low-ticket items, if you've got a few pounds profit per order, you've got hardly anything to play with.
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So does that do a good job of kind of encapsulating that?
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And do you think it's important to pick that up early?
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Yeah, definitely.
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That is the key that people often only find out and realize once they're already starting to make sales.
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It doesn't present itself as a problem early enough in the process because the elation and the joy of making sales kind of buries it and hides it.
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And so people tend to kind of stick their head in the sand, either knowingly or unknowingly, that like I have a successful business, I have something that's making sales.
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But sales in them themselves, like the actual just uh ka ching sound that Shopify makes isn't necessarily indicative of a healthy long-term business.
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We want to know well, what do we have left over from that after our ad spend?
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And that's why we advocate for selling higher ticket products with higher price points, like you say, 30% profit margin.
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So if you sell a 2,000 pound pool table or sofa or home treadmill or garden dining set, whatever it is, 30% of that you keep.
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So 30% of£2,000 in that case would be£600.
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So you're keeping£600 on that one chiching, that one sale that came in.
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Now you have 600 pounds to play with that is yours.
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That's profit you can take off the table, and you can then use that profit, that 600 pounds, to go out and spend on ads to acquire lots more sales.
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And as long as you can acquire sales, you know, let's say you can acquire a sale at 100 pounds, right, for one of those types of product.
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Well, now you can go and acquire six more sales for that same price point because you have 600 pounds of money that you didn't even have before because you created that from the property so it's like becomes this self, the momentum starts to build until the thing is just rolling and like it snowballs and the cash flow that comes from it can be allocated correctly.
00:05:04.639 --> 00:05:14.000
The the opposite is true though, if you're selling really slim margin products, the more you sell, the less you have because you only make a tiny bit on profit.
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And if your cost to acquire those sales is higher than the profit you have, then your account will just be going down and down and down.
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And so you either need like external funding or investment or something, or even if you have that, you need a strategy to make sure in the long term you do generate profit from the business because otherwise you're just going to be making sales but no profit.
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So it's it's something to be very aware of, as you say, coming into this business.
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And actually, you can just we say you can stack the deck in your favor in a way that you're not wedded to any products when you first come into e-commerce.
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So if you just want to run an e-commerce business and earn money online through selling products, think very carefully about what you sell before you start building it and putting in the work because you're going to put the same amount of effort in regardless of what type of products you sell.
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So you may as well be making a good profit from each of those sales.
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Yeah, we've done this from experience.
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We we both tried initially to sell low-ticket items, and now we're obviously running and teaching people how to build high-ticket uh stores selling high-ticket expensive products.
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And we can say from experience it's much easier, or it's actually the same amount of effort to generate sales with low-ticket as it is to generate high-ticket sales based on the effort you put in to find suppliers, upload them to your store, and run ads to make those sales.
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So it's uh it's kind of you know against uh common wisdom to think that it would be just as easy to sell a high-ticket item, but it's the same work involved up front.
00:06:36.079 --> 00:06:45.279
And yeah, I think you're just touching on the main point there, and it's something that people don't talk about, is because it's quite seductive just to show people sales on Shopify and to hear the ch-ching noise.
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When you look onto the advice around dropshipping that people are telling you about, they're telling you about how to make as much sales as you can.
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Sales, sales, sales.
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Uh, but what we advocate for with this podcast is actually going a level deeper than that and say, yes, sales is obviously the top line, the thing that runs the business and gives you money into the business.
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But how much you're actually left with at the end of each month is what really allows a business to grow and scale and sustain a great lifestyle that uh that you're able to build.
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So that's why we advocate for the higher ticket market.
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And the lower ticket just doesn't give you much room for profit per order to spend on ads.
00:07:18.879 --> 00:07:26.639
Are there any other issues that you think aren't talked about, Lewis, that are particularly relevant for people looking to do this low-ticket style drop shipping?
00:07:26.879 --> 00:07:29.120
Well, often it's the source of the information.
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I think it's so apparent online on platforms like YouTube that everybody's teaching this model, you know, of like go to AliExpress, find some products, mark them up tenfold, throw up a couple of AI-generated YouTube ad uh YouTube ad or Facebook ads, and then just, you know, hope that nobody sees that product and thinks, hmm, I wonder how much I could get that if I went direct to the supplier in China and then, you know, realizes that you're making your entire margin based on just like clever, shiny marketing and ads.
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The other thing is when you see those types of tutorials on YouTube and you follow them click by click and you're kind of fixed to the screen and you're like, right, I'm building a business, you're kind of caught into this illusion that you're building a business.
00:08:09.120 --> 00:08:36.480
But a lot of those creators might wait, make one or two videos like that, and then they disappear, or they pop up the next day teaching you about crypto or teaching you about Forex or some like property or you know, some other scheme that they've done because they kind of they make their income through like doing these very surface level make money online opportunities and they kind of analyze them, review them, like, you know, watch me speed run uh building a dropshipping store and then they disappear and then do something else, you know, the next week.
00:08:36.720 --> 00:09:02.000
I think you've got to have the consistency and the attention span that a lot of these creators aren't necessarily blessed with, I don't think, of seeing something through to completion and actually saying, no, I'm gonna build a business out of this that's gonna pay me long term, that's gonna provide for my family, that might not be the most shiny, coolest new AI-driven thing that, you know, has just emerged onto the marketplace, but it's built on solid fundamentals.
00:09:02.080 --> 00:09:08.559
It's built on principles that are timeless and have been here since before the internet, which is companies who make products, i.e.
00:09:08.720 --> 00:09:11.919
suppliers, want to get those products into the hands of customers.
00:09:12.000 --> 00:09:16.399
Now, if they don't sell directly, their route to market is through retailers like you.
00:09:16.559 --> 00:09:26.240
This existed since before the internet, it's just now become a lot easier since the internet has arrived that we can now be that shopfront without actually needing a shopfront.
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You know, we can create a digital storefront, run the ads, get those products into the hands of customers.
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And the difference is these suppliers don't sell directly in most cases to the end user and to the public.
00:09:38.080 --> 00:09:46.399
So it's not like you're finding a really cheap product, marking it up to an unreasonable level just to make your profit and then trying to dupe the customer into buying it.
00:09:46.559 --> 00:09:56.159
Instead, you're buying it at a trade price that they sell that to all of their retailers at, which is usually about 30% below the retail price that they recommend you sell the item at.
00:09:56.320 --> 00:10:04.320
And then everybody's selling it roughly 20, 30, 35, sometimes 40, 50%, if you get a good supplier that holds, you know, a decent margin.
00:10:04.480 --> 00:10:10.480
Um, and you then make your profit in like a way that retailers have have always done.
00:10:10.639 --> 00:10:16.480
And you're just doing it through a new model and a new vehicle, but the actual fundamentals are the same.
00:10:16.799 --> 00:10:19.840
So I think that's one of the mistakes that a lot of people fall into.
00:10:19.919 --> 00:10:31.679
It's like trying to get busy building before really zooming out and just looking at like the source of the information, you know, even to the point of are they doing this in the market that I'm even in?
00:10:31.840 --> 00:10:35.279
Like, are they someone who's based in the UK in our case?
00:10:35.519 --> 00:10:36.559
Most of the times it's not.
00:10:36.639 --> 00:10:46.240
It's like Americans who are teaching you how to do this model from China to the US and like play this game of arbitrage, which is just, in my opinion, it's a ticking time bomb that's just eventually going to come unstuck.
00:10:46.480 --> 00:10:54.799
And you see it when you see one of these ads for like a little cheap, I don't know, kitchen cooking widget or something that someone's selling, or some like dog pet toy or something.
00:10:54.960 --> 00:11:06.960
You look at the comments below ads like that, and people they're getting absolutely slated by people who have found the product for 10 times cheaper directly on Timu or AliExpress, and they're just pointing people directly to that one often.
00:11:07.120 --> 00:11:17.519
So that won't happen when the supplier that you're selling from doesn't sell the item directly to the public, and that they rely on their retailer network to get the items out into the hands of the public.
00:11:17.679 --> 00:11:32.879
So, yeah, we don't advocate for supplier directories, low-ticket products, or that kind of surface level thin information that you might get on um, you know, a basic YouTube tutorial that's like, hey, try this shiny model for seven days and see how you go.
00:11:32.960 --> 00:11:35.120
Because next week I'll be talking about something completely different.
00:11:35.279 --> 00:11:47.279
Like we've stuck with this for the long term, we do it in the UK market and we've seen it through both of us to the point where it is a full-time business, which is, I think, the mindset you have to go into this with if if that's what you want from it as an end result.
00:11:47.440 --> 00:11:47.600
Yeah.
00:11:47.759 --> 00:12:03.039
So only when I I went into the the high ticket model and I came across Dropship Unlocked, I knew that I actually wanted to have an online income stream that would be able to sustain me for the long run based on work that I put up front to build a business, build an asset, to pay me for years to come.
00:12:03.200 --> 00:12:07.039
So I knew that I went in with the with that intention of being in it for the long term.
00:12:07.120 --> 00:12:12.879
Uh I just needed to find a a partner service, yourself, Lewis, that would actually be able to stick with me for the long term.
00:12:13.039 --> 00:12:19.279
And the problem with YouTube and that type of content is that creators are incentivized to follow trends.
00:12:19.440 --> 00:12:41.039
And if certain business models are in trends at certain times, they'll jump into that, they'll make their money, they'll tell you the easiest method to do that model, which has the lowest barrier to entry, which is normally signing up to a drop shipping directory and importing products into your store and putting together a Facebook ad using AI throughout the entire process.
00:12:41.279 --> 00:12:50.000
And the the issue with that, as you say, is that yes, it's great for the creator to be able to make that and give somebody a low barrier to entry to set these kind of things up.
00:12:50.240 --> 00:12:54.000
Unfortunately, it's what the mass market do, it's what the majority of people do.
00:12:54.159 --> 00:12:58.240
They try and sell those products and they try and follow the same guidance.
00:12:58.399 --> 00:13:05.440
And when it's low barrier to entry, it's very often saturated because so many people can do it because it's so low barrier to entry.
00:13:05.600 --> 00:13:08.159
And then it means you you aren't selling high quality products.
00:13:08.320 --> 00:13:13.200
You've got long delivery times, and customers can see straight through the products that you're trying to sell.
00:13:13.759 --> 00:13:21.440
I tried it myself, you know, it's easy to fall into these traps following YouTube tutorials and and being left you know left to dry when you've when you've tried it.
00:13:21.519 --> 00:13:37.679
And I was getting these Facebook comments from people that can see right through the products I'm selling, telling me that it's just Chinese rubbish and they can go and go to the the the actual supplier, the directory themselves, uh go to the supplier, and then have the same delivery time to wait anyway, even if they came through through my store.
00:13:37.840 --> 00:13:41.840
So all a great learning lesson, but something that needs to be spoken about more.
00:13:41.919 --> 00:13:47.440
Um, do you see any other issues with the the type of dropshipping that that people don't really talk about?
00:13:47.679 --> 00:13:54.399
Well, I think yeah, the evidence is there, and and by all means go and learn that the hard way for yourself if you want to.
00:13:54.480 --> 00:14:08.799
But if you do want to heed our warnings and know that we've both been down that path, and so many other of our members inside Dropship Unlocked have and then have turned towards the community that that we run, you can also just learn from their mistakes if you want to avoid that lesson the hard way.
00:14:08.879 --> 00:14:20.559
But yeah, I mean the fundamental principles are higher priced items, so high-ticket items, as we call them, working with domestic suppliers, so who suppliers who are in the same country as the customers you're trying to get the products to.
00:14:20.639 --> 00:14:32.000
So for us, it's UK suppliers, UK brands who will dispatch the items straight out to a UK customer's doorstep without you touching the product, but yet you keep 30% of that profit margin.
00:14:32.159 --> 00:14:40.240
That then means you're able to afford to spend what it takes to get more sales and still be profitable on each of those sales, which is really important.
00:14:40.399 --> 00:14:48.000
So it's a cash flow generating business that is a net positive from month one, if you run it right.
00:14:48.240 --> 00:14:49.840
You're also building a real business.
00:14:50.000 --> 00:14:53.840
You're building something that's got, you know, good customer support, good reputation.
00:14:53.919 --> 00:15:05.679
You're not following some, you know, YouTube tutorial that will be outdated by next week because someone said that that this was the flashy new way to do things, you're building something that's there for the long term, that's gonna provide for you for years to come.
00:15:05.759 --> 00:15:10.480
So it's worth getting it right and building it with the right fundamentals in place, in my view.
00:15:10.720 --> 00:15:29.679
So if you are tired of going down that rabbit hole and the version of dropshipping that keeps getting talked about that was never really designed to work long term, and you'd like a more sustainable, reputable solution for you that could work here in the UK, then you can head over to dropshipunlocked.com forward slash start.
00:15:29.840 --> 00:15:32.399
So dropshipunlocked.com forward slash start.
00:15:32.559 --> 00:15:38.879
There we'll show you the model that real people are using every day to support their families and build actual lifestyle businesses.
00:15:39.200 --> 00:15:39.440
Brilliant.
00:15:39.519 --> 00:16:00.080
Yeah, and that's the exact uh process that I went through to join Dropship Unlocked to learn actually how I can sell products profitably online without getting stuck down the rabbit hole that I was going down while trying to follow YouTube advice, uh selling these low-ticket items where I had no money left over to actually spend on ads to generate the uh the sales profitably.
00:16:00.320 --> 00:16:15.919
So, is that part of the episode now where we're going to answer a question that we've received from a listener, which we like to do on every one of our episodes, because if you've got any questions that have come up in your mind while you've been listening to the episode or watching the YouTube video version, then we want to feature them and answer them.
00:16:16.080 --> 00:16:19.120
So that's exactly what Vivian Hargreaves has done.
00:16:19.200 --> 00:16:23.840
She's got her comments in underneath the YouTube video version of a previous episode.
00:16:23.919 --> 00:16:26.399
Uh so that's what you need to do if you want to get a question answered.
00:16:26.559 --> 00:16:29.919
So her question for you, Lewis, is thank you, Lewis.
00:16:30.080 --> 00:16:32.240
Your enthusiasm is infectious.
00:16:32.399 --> 00:16:36.159
I'd like to contact you to see what would be the best step for me to take.
00:16:36.480 --> 00:16:37.919
But thank you very much, uh Vivian.
00:16:38.080 --> 00:16:40.000
I'm glad the enthusiasm comes through.
00:16:40.159 --> 00:16:43.840
Um I guess I'm enthusiastic because this model has completely changed my life.
00:16:43.919 --> 00:16:45.840
You know, it's uh it's a very powerful model.
00:16:45.919 --> 00:16:47.360
I've experienced it firsthand.
00:16:47.519 --> 00:16:53.279
But also, James and I have now seen thousands of people go through the program with some incredible case studies as well.
00:16:53.440 --> 00:16:56.159
So great to hear that you want to uh get in touch.
00:16:56.320 --> 00:17:03.200
The best next step in that situation is if you head to dropshipunlocked.com forward slash start.
00:17:03.360 --> 00:17:05.039
That's where I map out everything there.
00:17:05.200 --> 00:17:06.559
I answer any questions.
00:17:06.640 --> 00:17:11.200
And if you go on to join the program, I'll see you at one of our next live meetups and we'll get to meet in person.
00:17:11.359 --> 00:17:11.920
I look forward to it.
00:17:12.079 --> 00:17:12.400
There you go.
00:17:12.480 --> 00:17:18.799
We'll go one step further than being able to contact and actually coming along to it to meet up if you do want to join the program.
00:17:19.119 --> 00:17:22.240
And uh yeah, we we've got that coming up now, Louis, not too far away.
00:17:22.319 --> 00:17:23.920
We'll be planning the next meetup.
00:17:24.000 --> 00:17:25.039
So looking forward to that one.
00:17:25.200 --> 00:17:26.240
Absolutely, looking forward to it.
00:17:26.400 --> 00:17:37.839
So before we wrap up today's episode, um, if this episode gave you any clarity on how to actually get started with high-ticket drop shipping the right way, in our opinion, could we ask you for a small favor in return?
00:17:38.000 --> 00:17:42.960
If you're watching this on YouTube, could you just drop a comment below this video and like the video?
00:17:43.119 --> 00:17:48.079
Make sure you hit the subscribe button so you're subscribed to get new videos as and when they're released.
00:17:48.240 --> 00:17:56.880
Or if you're listening to us on a podcast app of your choosing, whichever one you get your podcasts through, would you take a few seconds to just leave us a quick five-star review?
00:17:57.119 --> 00:18:05.599
Takes you less than 30 seconds, probably, but it really helps other freedom-seeking parents and professionals who might be looking for an answer like this.
00:18:05.759 --> 00:18:06.880
Find this podcast.
00:18:06.960 --> 00:18:07.519
So thank you.
00:18:07.759 --> 00:18:11.920
Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Dropship Unlocked podcast.
00:18:12.079 --> 00:18:17.200
We hope you are leaving with new insights and inspiration to fuel your entrepreneurial journey.
00:18:17.359 --> 00:18:22.240
To kickstart your e-commerce business, head over to dropshipunlocked.com.
00:18:24.319 --> 00:18:30.400
It's the perfect place to start and get access to resources that will help you build your business from the ground up.
00:18:30.559 --> 00:18:37.039
And don't forget to hit that subscribe button for more episodes packed with strategies, tips, and success stories.
00:18:37.519 --> 00:18:41.759
But if you enjoyed this episode today, a five-star review would mean the world to us.
00:18:41.839 --> 00:18:44.319
And you might even get a shout out for the next episode.
00:18:44.799 --> 00:18:47.039
Thank you for choosing to spend your time with us today.
00:18:47.279 --> 00:18:52.640
We can't wait to bring you more insight on the next episode of the Dropship Logs Podcast.
