Shopify Dropshipping

Correct

If so it sounds like a no brainer

what happens if a customer wants a refund?

I had been selling Chinese "handmade toys" on Etsy this entire time dealing with shipping bullshit when it could have been someone elses problem?
Is there anything the internet cant do?

Do you have to manually purchase the goods from the supplier and enter in their shipping details for each order?

You ask them to return it to "this address" being th chinese supplier. You then give them a refund. Same with change in sizes etc. Just make sure your supplier accepts those things.

You can if you're starting out but good practice to start correctly from the beginning. If you use shopify there are a lot of good plugins that automatically send customer info to the suppliers. If you don't use shopify, there are still a lot of good third party plugins for Woocommerce or just standalone things too.

show us your website, to see the products etc..

Sure. It's www.bombora.co.nz
We have a 50% off sale going on, feel free to use it. If you do end up buying something include Veeky Forums somewhere on the notes or something and I'll make sure to throw in some freebies etc.

nice

Who made the website?

I did.
It was a free theme. We just bought a premium theme and I'm in the process of setting that up.
None to minimal coding language required for setting up a Shopify website

What are the upkeep costs like?

What exactly are your expenses?

but if your client receive the package (sent from the supplier) it will not be written 'bombora" on it

Monthly shopify subscription which is $29.99 USD a month..
A few plugins for analytics and dropshipping $20 USD a month.

Everything else is an extra. We run Facebook ads worth $250 a week.
We run Instagram ads worth $200 a week.
Giveaway about $100 worth of stock to influencers a month.
Pay some friends to get memes to post on our Instagram. (Like $3-5 a meme depending on how much effort there is lol)

I think that's about it.

>Pay some friends to get memes to post on our Instagram. (Like $3-5 a meme depending on how much effort there is lol)

kek

You can get custom packaging on your items.
I am a big fan of good packaging so I made sure to get that sorted. Our packages don't have any chinese supplier packaging.

Tell me about it lmao

How about initial investment? You mentioned custom packaging, what other initial fees are there?

Also, do you have employees? If so, how do you pay them? And how reasonable is it for a single person to do all the work?

read the fucking thread, no packaging, no need for employees once the site is set

What was your initial startup cost?

See the comment below you.
No other initial investment. Custom packaging just makes the item more expensive. E.g: Instead of getting the shoes from supplier for $30 I get it for $35. So I just adjust my prices accordingly.
No other initial fees.
Have meme employees. $5 a pop.
No other employees. Just me and the other founder. One person can easily do the job themselves.

See,

Can the janitors/mods archive this thread please?

why?

Is this a full time job for you?

Also, how do you know if a supplier is shit or not? Considering it's cheap Chinese, I imagine they must be awful.

How much is the shipping time from China to Australia?

Is it possible to do this without a relationship with the supplier? How did you tell the guy in China that you would be selling his products for a profit? Also, what do you tell antsy customers because shipping from china typically takes quite a while?

do you even '4 hour work week' by tim ferris? hello-o! get with the PROGRAM already duh-uh. like 5 years ago called...and they want their RETARD back!

Do you have tools to automatize the transactions, between your website and the real shipper ? ( Tools that transfers buyers details, ect)

I'm studying Mechanical Engineering at Uni because I want to have a nice degree.
I am purely studying for information. No plans on working as an engineer.
So this gets me by while I study. Helps me pay off Uni, buy a nice car and live relatively free.
Might make it a full time job after I graduate.

Yeah, some items were duds. We always order 1 of each item before putting it on the store. We check how good the items are and the quality.
We went through some shitty products before settling down on what we have here.
It's Chinese but very good quality. You have to go with your gut and remember if something is too cheap, it's probably trash.

Depending on the item, we have some stock that we can send out within Australia since we're based here.
Otherwise it's around 2 weeks or 10 days.

You can read our FAQ. I think I explain the shipping times there. If not, my bad I'll add it.
Basically we just say we ship from our overseas warehouse.
You could but having a relationship is always better. They know that you are selling their shit for a profit. They don't care lol

How do you deal with a pissed customer?

And what kind of laws do you need to be worried about? Here in the US we have a lot of laws protecting consumers. Worry about those.

Yup. Read previous replies. Everything is automated. Did things manually at the start because those plugins cost and you don't need it when you sell like 2-3 items a week. But once you have 10+ a day you want to automate.

And how do you deal with taxes?

Pissed ones are about shipping times so we just keep contact with them to ensure they don't think we scammed them or anything.
Otherwise mostly it's people wanting a size change. No one has gotten very pissy at us yet.
As to laws, there are no laws we gotta worry about as long as we operate legitimately. We pay tax, have our company incorporated and have a good TOS and PP.

>www.bombora.co.nz
hooo well aint that some shit.? the Faggot Store done called.... they want their merchandise back!! ha ha whooosshhh

Taxes are incorporated into our prices. We record all our sales then we pay tax when we transfer funds from our PayPal account to our bank account.

Huh. Why incorporated rather than llc?

lmao you good my man? How big is your belly?

Kind of curious how you found the articles you're selling. Did you set out knowing that you would sell clothing or did you just happen upon it? Have you tried selling other things? When you started out, did you simply hop on Alibaba/Aliexpress or something and shopped around for things you thought you could sell?

llc usually a U.S thing.
Aus and NZ we usually just Incorporate when starting a company. We also own the company 50% 50% with a partner.

We knew summer was around the corner for Oceania so we just looked at Ali to see what looked good yet was relatively cheap. Ordered 1 of everything we thought looked good. Spent around $150 on that.
Then weeded out the trash items and went with the good ones.
Took pictures of the items and used it with models etc.
But yeah just thought "what would we want?" and went from there. Helps both of us are part of the demographic we are trying to sell to.

actually, i'm currently starving to death because may dad only pays me $1.50CAD per meme produced and won't let me move out until i pay him back for all the titty milk i drank when i was a baby.

Wow you took the pictures yourself?

Looks really professional. Did you outsource that?

Would it be safe to do this with some of the counterfeit goods that can be found on aliexpress

Won't be able to get too big from that. If let's say Adidas wanted they could sue you but if you're relatively small (Less than 100k a year revenue) they won't go after you. (Don't quote me on that, I'm assuming). So it's not a sustainable business but you technically could. You're better off just selling that on FB groups and to friends and family desu.

post more proofs boi.

Sounds pretty straight-forward. Maybe I've missed it, but how long did it take you overall, from finding the right products, to checking them, to setting up the shop and selling? Any problems you ran into along the way?

Thanks!
Yeah we did. You'd be surprised what a good camera can do. We got a friend who studies Photography to take the photos for us. So that probably helped. She did it for free. That was cool

If you work for Shopify you are doing a great job.

E-mail us at [email protected] and I can reply to you telling you you're a faggot.

Lmao. Nah I don't. To be honest, once we grow a bit more, I'm migrating to Wordpress Woocommerce. They don't take as much of a cut from each sale.

How much of pure profit you get in a month?

Yeah pretty much.
Finding right products: 3 days
Ordering and checking them: 3 weeks
Setting up store and social media: 1 week
First sale after set up (that wasn't friend or family): 7 hours

We started selling a different pair of glasses and they ended up being shit. A customer bought them for $20 and they felt like $2 glasses. Cheap plastic. Had to refund him and stop selling that item. This was after we spent $100 on advertising the product. So that was dumb. The glasses were the only thing we didn't order and check before selling. So again, always order an item first and check it yourself before selling it to the public.

Last month we made approx 10,000 revenue. Around $7300 profit. Split that into two with the co-founder.
$3650 each. Put around $3000 of it back into the business. So did the co-founder.

Congrats, looks like you're on your way. How much do you work on it each day?

Great thread mate. It made me think about some stuff I can start. You're the legend!

Cheers!
It completely depends.
It's pretty much on auto pilot. Today I've been working on it all day because I'm redoing the website but some days I won't spend a minute on it.
I'd say on average I spent about 50 hours a week during the starting period and spend about 20 hours a week now.

Cheers man, glad I was able to help. Don't hesitate to hit me up if you need any advice. More than happy to help.

How long have you been doing this?

This business for 3 months now.
But had an Instagram marketing business that I sold a year ago. Also been doing some e-commerce on the side before then.
So not completely new to the scene.

Any resources for doing this sort of thing for someone totally new?

Well done, lad. Congrats!

What kind of plugins for analytics and dropshipping do use/recommend?

Nice congrats. I tried dropshipping with clothing from aliexpress but the sizes were all fucked up due to weird asian measurements. people started complaining and i closed shop. i see your sticking with mostly accessories so you wont have this problem.

good luck charles.

Shopify offers some really good success stories and tips and tricks. I've learned a lot from those. Reddit droshipping AMA's are pretty good.

Oberlo is amazing. Mailchip is a must. Retargeting by adaplo is a nice marketing touch.

How did you develop your PP and TOS? Write it yourselves?

How do you get people to see your shit that is for sale? Isn't it hard to get visitors?

Yeah, we have that problem with our shorts currently. I am smaller medium fit so I fit M. But my friend is a larger Medium fit and he can't fit the M's. We are trying to sort out either custom sizing or warn users upfront that they should probably buy a size bigger.

Shopify gives you a template to go off. We used that and talked with a Commercial law lecturer to help us make sure we don't have any legal loopholes that could fuck us.
Maybe might have to be a bit more comprehensive if you're based in the U.S though. With all your suing laws and shit.

It was hard as fuck at the start.
Friends and family is your first go to. Then Influencers. Give free shit to Instagram users with 1000-10000 followers. They have a good reach but aren't too demanding because they don't have millions of followers.
Post around blogs, make Veeky Forums posts, Reddit posts, Keep social media flowing. Make posts no matter how little engagement you get. It will grow trust me. Our Instragram posts have on average 20 more views per new post. Keep content up and people will start flocking.

>$25 profit

It's an example you mouth breather

Is it a single paypal account? What if there is a dispute?

I've heard horror stories of paypal accounts getting locked up over simple disputes.

Single.
I've had that happen before.
Worst case it gets locked up for 1-2 weeks.
So far no shitty customers.

What do you mean by influencers?

Kids who have large social media followings.

if even one customer complains and pretends it's not the same product, won't paypal lock your account?

Nah. There is an investigation into it. We can provide receipts and shipping info of the item they ordered etc. It's easy to clear charges. The worst is when the account gets locked while this investigation is in process for 1-2 weeks

What kind of money does Shopify take? And by what means? Do they track sales on the site and just take a cut off the top?

Hay man, don't know if I missed this but if you use AliExpress, do your customers complain about shipping times? I remember shipping was usually weeks and it cost a shit ton to reduce it. How long are your shipping times?

2.9% + 30 cents.
Yeah from each sale.

We can do express shipping for some items because we have some stock. That takes max 5 business days overseas or 1-2 days Aus NZ. Otherwise 10-15 business days for other shipping.

Interesting. I found that AliExpress was cancer for comunicating with supliers. What dropshipping plugins do you use? Just Oberlo? And where do you store your stock?

Do you contact them directly and just ask?

Stock is in my house. In a cupboard. Have about 100ish items there.
Yeah it kinda is. AliBaba has cancer suppliers. Express has better communication I found.
You don't need much communication anyway so no big deal.
And yeah Oberlo does the trick

Another thing, do you only ship to Aus and NZ? I shipped to USA for my biz and shipping times took fucking forever. I know u can customize all that shit on Shopify