Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
What's up everybody, Anton here from dropshiplifestyle.com.
And today we're going to cover what I'm calling the Dos and do
nots of niche selection for dropshipping.
Now, if you're not aware, I've been in this business now myself
for 17 years, helping other people to build highly
profitable semi automated storesfor 12 years now.
(00:20):
And the biggest thing people getstuck on, especially when they
don't know what they don't know is niche selection, picking the
right types of products to sell.So whether this is your first go
at drop shipping and you want toget product selection AKA niche
selection correct from day one, or whether you've tried with
this in the past and it hasn't worked, I would guess for most
(00:41):
people the reason is they got niche selection wrong and that
really is the foundation of yourbusiness.
You can literally do everything else right, but if you don't
pick the right type of niche from day one, nothing else you
do matters. The business is either never
going to take off or will eventually crash and burn.
So what I did is put together a list.
Again, I have the DOS and the donots.
(01:03):
We're actually going to start with the do nots to make sure if
the people don't have that long of attention span, get the
biggest takeaways and don't makethose mistakes, then we will get
into the DOS. So first thing you should not do
when picking a niche for drop shipping is follow your passion.
And I know this is counter intuitive to all the business
(01:23):
books you've probably read abouthow you should do what you love
and you'll never work a day in your life.
Listen, when it comes to this business of building an online
store and selling products to people that actually want them,
you do not want to sell things that you are passionate about.
I have built for myself dozens of stores for Drop Ship
lifestyle members. We have built thousands of
(01:44):
stores and they are not built around what we love to do in our
lives. Listen, my passions are golf.
I love golf. I also love technology.
I'm not going to try to sell Callaway golf clubs online and
compete with Golf Galaxy and thePGA Superstore and Callaway
themselves. And I'm not going to try to
sell, you know, iPads and compete with Apple and Best Buy
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and Costco and the massive giants of the world.
So your passion should not even be in your head when you're
thinking of what products shouldI sell.
The way I think about it is the business and building these
dozens of stores I built for myself.
My passion is running these businesses, delivering high
quality products to customers that want and need them, and
(02:25):
making that business more and more healthy.
Make the business your passion, not the products you sell.
So that is the first do not, do not #2 is do not build A1
product store. This is something I don't see
talked about as often anymore, but it was this big thing online
a few years ago where everybody was trying to find one product,
(02:45):
build a Shopify store and just promote that product like crazy.
That is not a good business strategy because what happens if
nobody wants that product from the day you build your store?
We might think, well, then I built a store and tested it.
Well, why even do that? Why waste your time?
Or what happens if you build that one product store and it
does take off and then somebody smarter than you with more
(03:05):
experience than you just comes in, builds a better store, runs
better ads, and takes you out ofbusiness.
Two months later, you're back tosquare 1.
So do not build A1 product store.
Next number 3, do not build a general store.
So a lot of people again think, I want to test all these
products. I'm going to build a store
called at antonsmegamall.com andI'm going to have some of this
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and some of that, and I'll put up new products every week.
Whatever, whatever is viral, I should say whatever's trending
and see if I can get some sales for it.
That is not a good strategy. One of the things that allows us
to stand out as online retailersis becoming experts within a
niche, and we'll get more into that later.
But you want to build a store that can eventually become an
authority site for whatever niche you choose, not for some
(03:50):
random products. If people want random products,
they can go on Kimu, they can goon Ali Express, they can go on
Amazon. So do not try to compete with
the world by trying to sell a little of this and a little of
that and seeing what takes off. OK #4 is do not compete on
price. Now, am I saying you have to
sell at higher prices than everybody for the same exact
(04:11):
products? No, not at all.
Instead, what you should do is try to find MAP suppliers.
I've done a video on this which I will link to, but MAP stands
for minimum Advertised Price andthese are price controls that
are offset and enforced by the brands which we sell for.
So if I sell this desk I'm at right now for $1000 and that is
minimum advertised price. That means if you sold it as
(04:34):
well, the lowest you could sell it for is $1000.
Take competing on price out of the equation because if you do
sell in a niche with no price controls or you're trying to
just undercut everybody, it's a race to the bottom.
And even if you do get sales, your business will not be
profitable. OK, Last, do not, do not rush
the process of niche selection. I get it, especially if you are
(04:57):
brand new to the world of drop shipping and you're just like,
Anton, I want to do this. I am so ready, I'm committed.
Let's go. Niche selection, if you do it
right, takes time. It should not be something you
just jump into and hope it works, because hope.
Sometimes we get lucky with it, but most of the time we don't
know. Again, what we don't know, we
hope something is going to work.We might have a good feeling,
(05:17):
good intuition, but if that is not based on data, it's not
going to work. And what I always say is this
business model is extremely simple, but it's not easy.
It's simple enough that people with no technical experience
that have never run a business before can figure out.
We have many of them in our 100Kclub at Dropship Lifestyle that
have figured it out as they went.
(05:38):
But you don't just get lucky over and over again to the top.
You get lucky by trusting the process, making smart decisions,
and not rushing through everything because you want to
make $10,000 next month. That's not going to work out for
you. OK, so those are the do nots.
Now for the people who I still have your attention, which I
hope I do. Let's get into the do's.
(05:58):
What should you do? Again, avoid everything I just
said. Stay away from those mistakes.
But what should you do when it comes to niche election for drop
shipping? Number one is get specific.
When I say get specific, I mean niche specific.
I alluded to this in the do notswhere I talked about not
building a general store. What I want you to do instead is
build a niche specific store. So I gave you earlier that
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example of, oh, if I sold this desk, well, if I was going to
sell this is a standing desk, I'm sitting at it.
But if I was going to sell them,I would build a stand up desk
store and my long term goal would to become an authority
website and authority online store that people would know
like and trust and shop from when they wanted a stand up
desk. Same thing if I sold the rug
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that's underneath me, I would build a rug store.
Or if I built these lounge lounge chair store, I would
build a lounge chair store and focus on that.
You want to be the best in your niche and you want to be niche
specific. Now this comes to the second do
and that is find competition. So a lot of people think, oh,
drop shipping is saturated. To me, the way we do drop
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shipping, that basically just means e-commerce is too
saturated. There's too many people selling
online. Listen, people are selling
online because it is working. Am I saying every store you find
is a success story? No.
But if you are trying to find a niche that no one's selling in
yet, it's for a reason. It's because people aren't
buying those products. So finding competition is a good
(07:26):
thing. Now you want it to be the right
type of competition. You want it to be online only
stores and that's going to bringus in to our next point here,
our third due. This is to find at least 20
potential brands that are drop ship friendly brands that you
can also sell for again in your niche.
So let's just say it was stand up desks.
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As I'm doing my research, I wantto find online stores that rank
on the top page of Google results.
I want to go to their contact uspage, they're about us page and
I want to see if they mentioned they have a retail location or
if they have a warehouse. And if if they do, guess what?
They're not a competitor. I want to find those online only
stores and then as I navigate through their store, I want to
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find at least 20 brands that they sell for because then what
do I have? I have a list of 20 brands that
I know are drop ship friendly. They are good with working with
online only stores and I overtime have a goal now of
getting approved with as many brands as I find in that niche.
That's going to find you more winning products and that's
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going to diversify where your sales and income come comes
from. Going back to a do not of A1
product store. Let's just say I wanted to build
a standing desk store and I tried to find one awesome
standing desk and I was like this is it, this is my business
and it takes off and that supplier goes out of business or
raises their prices and then what I'm out of business.
No, we don't want that. We want diversity, diversity
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within our niche of different brands that we sell for at least
20. We want at least 100 products
across all those brands and thatis how we can build something
that will last overtime. Now, another thing that I
haven't really mentioned yet, but it's very important.
This would be number, let's see 123.
Number 4 for our dues is to finda niche with an average order
(09:10):
value of at least $200. Average order value, meaning
what the customer is paying you when they're buying from your
store. Now there is a caveat here,
which is if the products are large and heavy like the
standing desk, we would want that price to be even higher,
maybe 800, nine, $100,000. That way we could still offer
free shipping to our customers and have healthy profit margins.
(09:32):
By the way, our target net profit after all expenses is
30%. So keep that in mind too.
If you were selling a product for $40 and someone buys it and
you're making 30%, what is that?Like 12 bucks, 13 bucks?
What are you going to do with that, right?
How are you going to run ads? So again, at a minimum, you want
your average order value for theniche you choose to be $200 or
(09:53):
more. Now this is going to bring us
into the 5th do which is do findniche that is not dominated by a
few big brands. And when I say brands, I mean
retailers. And again, going back to the
golf example from earlier, if I wanted to sell golf clubs, I'd
be competing directly with some of the biggest entities in the
(10:14):
world. I'd be trying to sell Callaway
golf clubs that sell on Callawayand again PGA Superstore and
Golf Galaxy. I'd be trying to sell TaylorMade
clubs that they sell direct to the public.
I'd be trying to sell Cobra clubs that they do the same
with. So how am I ever going to get
into that market? Another, another example would
be if you wanted to sell again, let's go with headphones, right?
What are people buying when theybuy headphones they want?
(10:36):
If they want good headphones, they're going to buy Sony's or
Bose or Apple. We're not going to get into a
niche like that. We're going to get into a niche
that people know what they want,but they don't really care what
brand name is on it. Again, think of the desk.
I told you when I bought this, Ididn't care who made it.
I cared that it was a bamboo finish and that it was wide
enough and that it could supportenough weight to hold on my
computer screens. Same thing when I bought this
(10:58):
rug, I wasn't looking for an Apple rug or a Sony rug, I was
or a Callaway rug. I was looking for a rug that fit
this room that was blue because it's my favorite color.
That's how I made the decision. That's the type of thing you
want to think of when you are doing niche selection for your
drop shipping store. So this is going to bring us in
to the 6th DO, which is trust the process.
(11:20):
If you take all the things I just took you through for the DO
nots and all the things I took you through for the do's into
account as you are doing your research, which again will take
time, time, then you can trust the process and know that you've
done the due diligence and that when you're building, it might
take you 3 weeks, it might take you two months, it might take
you three months to start seeingtraction.
(11:41):
But if you've done the research,you know you have a niche that
is built to last. Not for a a sale here and there,
not for a couple great months, but something that you are
working towards becoming the authority store for or one of
the authority stores for that can serve you and your family
for years to come. So guys, I hope you found that
helpful. What I wanted to do is add
(12:02):
something extra into this episode and that is shout out
some Dropship lifestyle members that recently posted their
results in our Discord. So first we have PCYKO who said
they got their first 3 supplier approvals in two days.
That is awesome. So congratulations to you.
Next we have Robin who said something for you all to think
(12:24):
about. My first few weeks of opening
the store was crickets and tumbleweeds.
Again, trust the process, right?So a couple weeks tumbleweeds.
Then last week I thought I wouldtake Google scary recommendation
and boost my daily budget to 60 from 15.
Over the next three days I got 6orders totaling over $5000.
Again, 6 orders over $5000. That's why I'm saying you want
(12:46):
high prices you're selling for, you're going to make a lot more
money a lot faster. So said got to be careful with
the ad spend gamble, but it's looking interesting.
So I love it and congratulationsto Robin.
So next we have Azim and he saidif your offer is good, you can
do wonders in Google ads. This is just the last seven
days. Data total spend 2600, total
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revenue 80,000. ROAS was 2000 per cent.
OK, So again, if you have the right type of products, the
right type of niche, as you start getting sales, you can get
more and more comfortable spending more money on ads.
And again don't do this from dayone, but like Azim did in the
last seven days spent 2600 bucks, did 80,000 in sales.
(13:30):
Then we have KM who said on board of the new supplier spent
around two weeks on PLA's. And beta negative keywords only
skew numbers and brand names. Thanks.
Drop ship lifestyle if you don'tknow what PLA is and beta
negative keywords are, that's something that module 6 of the
blueprint covers in the Google Shopping section.
But this led to KM getting her first sale for $2135.00.
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So congratulations to you, KM. Then we have a bat, Dan, who
said on a hot streak over 8K products sold per days, per day,
eight business days in a row. So I love that.
Congratulations, Dan. He said more.
I'll put it on the screen for anyone watching the video
version of this, but congratulations to Dan.
Then we have Anderson who said today I received my first sale.
(14:13):
I'm still in module 4 uploading my products and acquiring more
suppliers. I'm sort of shocked because I
don't have any ads yet and just picture guys going back to the
do's and do nots. If you tried to sell again
Callaway golf clubs, do you think you'd get a sale without
even running ads? No, of course not because it's
dominated by some massive business entities.
But if you get into a niche withthe type of suppliers like I've
(14:34):
just told you about, then it is possible to get sales before you
even turn your ads on. This is the common theme I've
heard from many drop ship lifestyle members.
And again congratulations to Anderson.
And then we have KM who came back and said got my first big
sale today. So happy.
Remember K Ms. first sale was for over 2000.
Well this sale was for $4935.00.So congratulations again to KM
(14:58):
and everybody else in the Drop Ship Lifestyle community who is
trusting the process, following the lessons to AT asking
questions when they get stuck and making big things happen.
So if you're a member of Drop Ship Lifestyle, I appreciate
you. If you're not a member yet, you
want to know more, you can go toDrop Ship webinar.com for a free
training. I'll link that below.
By the way, I also have a list of 500 profitable niche ideas in
(15:21):
that training that's free for you again at Drop Ship
webinar.com, linked below. And as always, if you got value,
please give the video a thumbs up.
If you didn't, that's cool too. But if you got a ton of value,
also consider hitting that subscribe button because we have
a lot of new videos coming out that you'll definitely enjoy if
you enjoyed this one. All right, guys, thank you.
I appreciate you and I'll see you in the next one.