Drop Ship Lifestyle founder Anton Kraly reveals what it really takes to make money dropshipping with Shopify. The first thing that every successful dropshipper does is consistently and persistently follow up with the top tier suppliers in their niche. “What I mean by that, and if you’re a member of Dropship Lifestyle you’ll know this, but I recommend finding at least twenty potential brands to sell for; high quality brands that make products that people want,” Anton says, “that are warehoused domestically.”
“Now, from day one, if you’re a new store, guess what?” he continues. “They’re not all gonna approve you. And some people might make a couple calls, get rejected, and think, ‘Oh man, let me go the easy route.’ And then they go and try to dropship using the arbitrage model. Or maybe they plug in an app to their Shopify store that lets ’em dropship from China, just because it’s easier. No need to keep calling suppliers and keep getting rejected, right?”
Don’t fall victim to this. You have to do the boring work, you have to jump through the hoops necessary to become an authorized retailer. After fifteen years in the game, Anton’s still doing this himself and it still sucks. But it’s a necessary evil. So continually hit up those premier suppliers and try to get approved for as many as you can. That way your business is more well-rounded. You’re not just putting all your eggs in the basket of the first one that gave you the green light.
The second thing that every successful Shopify dropshipper does, that actually makes money online, is they put time and effort into uploading products. So after you get approved for five, ten, twenty exclusive suppliers, you might have hundreds or even thousands of products available to you to dropship, right? But here again, people get lazy. When you wanna upload products to your store, and you wanna do it the right way, it’s a tedious task, it’s not much fun. But guess what? Welcome to business.
Assuming you wanna earn as much money as you can from your Shopify store, embrace the monotony. Upload every product from every supplier, and don’t take shortcuts. Go all-out on pictures, titles, descriptions, bullet points, the formatting, everything. Make sure, when someone finds your store, they’re compelled to take out their credit card and actually buy. Or don’t, but just don’t come crying to Anton about how you’re not making any money, okay?
Let’s see, what else? “The third thing everybody making money dropshipping is doing,” Anton says, “is talking to their customers. Especially in the beginning. And you might be thinking, ‘Well, how can you only work ten, twenty hours a week if you’r running a huge store and you have all these customers?’ Well listen, over time, once you know your business better, then yes, you outsource things and you just oversee your team. But before that, you need to talk to your customers.”
This means replying to emails in a timely manner; asking everyone who buys for a review; asking them what they did and didn’t like, and what you could do better in the future; attending to your live chat, if you have it enabled on your Shopify store; including a phone number and actually answering it when people call; and so on. Moral of the story here? It’s not about manifesting your way to a Lamborghini in the driveway. You have to show up, shut up, do the annoying work (at least in the early stages), and then the money will come.
