July 16, 2024 • 24 mins
In today's episode of the Drop Ship Lifestyle Podcast, I am sharing the Drop Shipping State of the Union for 2024.
In this episode, I share what is currently working with drop shipping, what we are currently focused on, and what I recommend for everyone who is already running a profitable drop shipping store, or considering starting one in 2024.
If you're not yet a member of Drop Ship Lifestyle, you can get a 2-hour free training class, my 500 Profitable Products Report For 2024, and a special offer on our award-winning Drop Ship Blueprint (Voted Best eCommerce Course by Shopify) by going to this link:
http://www.dropshipwebinar.com/
I use and recommend Shopify to build your store. You can sign up here for a 3-day free trial and get your first month for only $1:
https://dsl.life/shopify/
If you got value from this episode, please take a minute to leave a quick review. I read them all, and it's greatly appreciated :)
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello everybody, Anton Crowley here and welcome back to the
Drop Ship Lifestyle Podcast coming to you today with an
episode I am calling the Drop Shipping State of the Union for
2024. I'm recording this just in case
you're a a listener from the future in July of 2024.
And what I want to do today is something that I would typically
(00:21):
do on a members only podcast, but I wanted to post this on the
main podcast feed because I knowwhat we have a lot of drop ship
lifestyle members that have beenwith us for let's say 11 years
now. We just celebrated our 11th
birthday and a lot of people that aren't in Discord as often
might even not know about our new members only podcast.
So I wanted to put this out to the world.
(00:43):
So whether you are a long time drop ship lifestyle member, a
new drop ship lifestyle member, or somebody that is thinking
about becoming a drop ship lifestyle member that's either
running a store or considering starting one.
You know what is currently working with drop shipping, what
we are doing and what I'm recommending everybody do that
already runs a store, even if you have one at that is going
(01:06):
great, has been running profitably for years.
It is very easy to kind of get into a groove where, again,
things are working, you are happy, you're making the money
you want, you're living the lifeyou want.
But there are things that might have changed since the last time
you really took a good look at your store and your operations.
And there are things that we aredoing that I want to make sure
(01:28):
you're aware of. So as usual with podcast
episodes, it's not going to be the most technical.
I'm not going to be showing you where to click and how to
install things and how to configure different messages and
ads. But I am going to give you a
pretty solid overview. So again, you can have some
things to possibly work on in your current business or your
future business if you choose tostart one.
(01:50):
So First off, the main thing that I can't stress enough is
that over the past year or so, we've been able to do so much
more with less. And that always has been a big
thing with all of my businesses since I went through lots of
headaches and trials and tribulations since I've been in
this business over 15 years, back when I first started and I
(02:10):
kind of tried everything. I tried to really shave it down
to what works best and just stick with that.
But even more so, we've been able to do more with less and
get better returns on our investment of both time and
money because businesses have been really to say the simply as
possible easier to scale if you know what you are doing with a
(02:33):
lot of things that have come outand have just been available to
us recently in this past year orso.
Now, of course, I will mention AI, but don't worry, this is
only not, it's not only I shouldsay in AI episode.
And I also want to stress that just because things are simpler,
because I'm saying it is simplernow than ever, it doesn't just
mean that your chances of success are better because you
(02:55):
could basically accelerate anything you are working on
faster. But if you're working on the
wrong things or doing things incorrectly, you could be just
further accelerating something that's not going to work.
So even though it's easier, it'seasier if you know where to
basically put your focus, which again, has always been the goal
of Drop Ship Lifestyle and the drop Ship blueprint to show
(03:17):
people where to put that focus. So that time they're putting
into that business, whether it's15 minutes a day or 30 minutes a
day or four hours a day, it's going towards the things that
will have the biggest impact on your business, again, both in
terms of time invested and moneyinvested.
So when I say that we're able todo, do more with less, the, the
(03:39):
overarching thing that we are focused on and we've been
focused on, but again, now more than ever, because it's simply
easier is I'll give you 1 keyword here, OK?
So if you're going to take one thing away, it is authority.
Now, as you know with our businesses, since we are drop
shipping, we are selling products that we are competing
against other sellers for now inModule 2 of the blueprint, I
(04:01):
show you how to make sure your competition is in a certain
range where we like to see it. If it's too much, it's simply
too hard to get enough traffic to make it profitable.
But we know we're going to have competition.
So what can we do to stand out? Obviously everything in module
five of the blueprints, but we want to become the authority
site for our niche. So I don't don't care if you're
(04:22):
selling bounce houses or stand up desks or Persian rugs or
leather chairs, whatever you're selling, you want to focus on
becoming the authority in your niche.
And that does not mean being everywhere.
That does not mean having to invest a bunch of money.
It means following a few simple steps to become the authority.
(04:42):
So the main thing that has become easier is content,
content, content, content. This is why about five or six
months ago, there were nine brand new lessons created and
uploaded to module six of the blueprint all about search
engine optimization. And not just SEO from a product
page perspective, of course, that is covered in detail, but
(05:05):
SEO from a collections page perspective and from a blog post
and from a different actual pageperspective that you can create
on your store. And I've done other episodes on
how we are creating content. What I'll do is probably link to
some of them below. This lesson, I'm sorry, not this
lesson, this podcast, I'll also link to Module 6.
But what I'll say is, again, if you're one of those people that
(05:26):
has been up and running and profitable and happy with their
business. If content was something you
always kind of held off on in the past simply because you
didn't know what you didn't knowor you thought it was too
expensive to outsource, or you maybe tried it and didn't get
results. I'm telling you, now is the time
to do it. Because when it comes to being
the authority site in your niche, being one of those top
(05:50):
stores, if not the top store, what you want to do is find out
everything about your customers,what they are looking for and
what questions they are asking. Now, typically these questions
are asked on Google. So one way to see what people
are asking is just a search for your niche and variations of
your niche keyword. Scroll to the bottom of the
(06:12):
first page results on Google andit'll show you related search
terms. And these are there because
these are other things that people are typing into Google,
and some of them are things you may have never even thought of
before. And what you want to do is make
sure that you have content centered around all of these
searches. To become an authority site
doesn't just mean that people automatically think of you when
(06:35):
they think of your niche, which will come, but it means you are
covering your niche from every angle.
Now of course the way we make money from this is by having all
the products we can have from high quality suppliers.
That's what were the sales and the profits and everything is
going to come from. But if you want your site to be
the one that pops up for everything when people are
(06:55):
searching on Google and researching online, you want to
cover your niche from every angle.
Now, I'm still going to say thisisn't something that's going to
happen overnight, but this is something that you can set a
plan for once you do the research, which again, this is
outlined just so you know, if you're a member, again, I would
typically record this as a members only podcast, but this
is something that is covered howto do this research in module
(07:17):
six of the blueprints. Once you have this information,
you can literally lay out a plan, whether you want to be
creating or updating one contentpiece a week or two a week,
whatever it may be. And as time goes by, after three
months, six months, 12 months from now, guess what?
You're still going to have your business.
And if you focus on this contentstrategy, as this time passes,
(07:38):
you're going to see more and more high quality traffic that
by the way, cost you $0.00 to acquire.
That leads to more sales and that leads to a more stable
business. Now back in I believe it was
February, I posted a bunch of interviews that I did with
different members of our 100K club at Drop Ship Lifestyle.
And when I was speaking to all these successful members of our
(08:01):
community, one of the biggest things that I heard from them is
what they've either done alreadyor we're working on doing is
getting to a point where they'repaid traffic.
Basically, sales comes close to where they're free traffic, free
traffic sales come from, OK, so let's just say your business is
doing $300,000 a month and currently it's doing $250,000 of
(08:25):
that from paid spend. What people were looking to do
is bump up where the free traffic sales come from,
basically get more traffic from free sales.
And again, what's covered in those nine new lessons in module
six of the blueprints are what you need to do.
Again, it's not going to happen overnight, but if you start
today and you consistently focuson this, let's say you put in
(08:46):
even only an hour a week over these next, again, three, six
and 12 months, you will be amazed at what is possible with
your business. To give you an example, just on
our last coaching call that I domonthly for members of Dropship
Lifestyle, one of the members was asking me about restarting
his paid traffic because he hasn't touched it in a year and
he's doing over $150,000 a monthfrom his free traffic because he
(09:09):
put in that time. That again, in the beginning
might seem slow if you're putting in let's say an hour a
week for a year. But then guess what?
As time goes by, as Google recognizes your site as more and
more of an authority as you cover your your niche from every
angle, as you find from those Google related search queries
and by the way, from a website called Answer the public, you
(09:30):
will be the authority, if not one of the authorities in your
niche. OK, so that is the main focus.
That's the main thing that I want you to work on.
Now with that being said, of course, that's not the only
thing that is either easier I should say or different about
drop shipping now because again the whole theme, while authority
is what we want to do, we are still trying to always do more
(09:50):
with less. So let's just say you take that
approach I just shared with you and you focus about an hour of
your time a week on becoming theauthority.
OK, great, you are good with that.
Let that continue. Again, the results will grow and
compound on themselves, but whatelse should you focus on?
And for this section, I want to talk about traffic a little bit
and mainly because I, I, you know, again, I do these coaching
(10:14):
calls every month and I hear a lot of the the same things for
members of our community. And one of them is that they
tried performance Max ads on Google because of course Google
recommended that to them, whether that be a Google sales
Rep reaching out, saying, hey, Ihave some ideas for your
accounts or whether that just bea little suggestion that pops up
while they are in their Google ads accounts and they switch
(10:36):
from standard shopping to performance Max.
We'll just call it P Max from now on.
And they start to get great results.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But then after a few weeks, the
return on an ADS, the return on AD spend tanks.
Now, I have talked about performance Max in the past in
my community called the best thing I learned.
By the way, if you're not familiar with that, it's the
(10:57):
best thing I learned.com. This was probably, I don't know,
a year and a half, two years agowhen it first became a thing.
And what I wanted to do, just like I do whenever any new
opportunity arises, is tested. So originally what we did was
test performance Max on a bunch of our different ad accounts.
And for some of them, we did start to see great results.
(11:18):
For some of them, we spent a lotof money and the results were
nowhere near standard shopping. But what I saw, just like has
been reported by many Dropship Lifestyle members, is it starts
off relatively hot with a decentreturn on ad spend and that dies
out over time. Now I'm going to give you a
couple reasons why that happens before I make my final
recommendation for you. Again, if you're a new store
(11:39):
owner thinking about how to get started or somebody that's been
in this business for a while. So First off, we sell high
ticket items. As you probably know by now,
unless this is the first podcastyou ever listen to from me, if
you're selling low ticket items,maybe you have a chance with
Performance Max, but I don't recommend low ticket items.
I think a lot more people are going to be doing them than
recently. By the way, little side note for
(12:00):
this, the State of the Union, I don't know if you saw, but click
Funnels now has an integration with basically low ticket drop
shipping provider. So I think even more of these
stores are going to be popping up and closing, but it's not
just about competition. Why don't to sell them?
It's because the margins just aren't there.
But with that out of the way, just know if you don't already,
we sell high ticket products andperformance Max.
(12:21):
When it's trying to find new customers, it's showing them to
a percentage of people that haveno intent on buying.
Let's call it product 123 from your store for $1000 or $1500 or
$2000. So with that being said, the way
that we can really convert salesis to target our ads to the
people that are actually searching for the specific brand
(12:44):
names, product names and SKU numbers of the products that we
sell. These people know what they want
already. They have the money to spend,
they know what it costs. We just need to get them to
choose us. By the way, becoming the
authority is one of the ways to help with that in addition to
everything in module five of theblueprints.
But just know right out of the gate that a Performance Max
campaign for a high ticket item is not, is something that I see
(13:08):
as the best approach because again, we're not able to choose
our targeting. It's whatever the black box of
performance Max decides is best for us.
With that being said, you might be thinking, OK, that I guess
that makes sense Anton, but thenwhy do the campaign start off
hot or occasionally because thisis not guaranteed 100% of the
time. Well, typically it's because the
way Performance Max will start spending is based on what will
(13:31):
get you the best return on ad spend, which sounds great, but
what will get you the best return on ad spend is
remarketing. So when you launch new
performance Max campaigns, what will typically happen is almost
all of your budget. And again, you can't see this,
but almost all of your budget will be going towards your
hottest remarketing audiences. So the people that had already
(13:52):
added products to their cart on your store, the people that
already found you another way. And recently we're a website
visitor. So of course those people, when
they see a Performance Max ad, it's basically just a
remarketing ad that of course islikely to convert to a sale.
But what happens after time is Performance Max campaigns will
eat that audience, right? We'll call it eat that audience.
(14:15):
They'll spend the budget towardsthose people.
They will over saturate it. The people that were going to
buy from those remarketing ads will buy.
And then after X amount of time,depending on how much traffic
your site gets, those audiences will dry up and Performance Max
will start broadening the peoplethat they are showing to.
And what that leads to is a lower return on AD spend because
(14:36):
again, after those warm and hot audiences dry up, you'll start
showing to people that aren't searching for the exact products
you're selling. And of course, the conversion
rate will plummet and the returnon AD spend will disappear.
So with all that being said, when it comes to performance
Max, it is still not something that I recommend now.
Might that change in the future?Yes, but for now, stick with
(14:59):
standard shopping. Yes, we still use Alpha Beta
because that's what's proven to work most consistently with
starting budgets across many, many accounts.
Again, all of the people I speakto in our 100K club, which at a
minimum are doing $100,000 in sales, many of them seven
figures, some of them eight figures, they all started the
same way with 1A campaign standard chopping, 1 beta
(15:23):
campaign standard chopping. And then of course, as time goes
on, you optimize those campaignsand can break them out into
multiple alpha betas to better allocate your ad spend.
So please, if you're listening to this and you're maybe already
doing well and Google's pushing you towards performance Max
again at this time, State of theUnion in July of 2024, that is
(15:44):
not what I would recommend. Stick with standard chopping
alpha beta setups and then over time, you can break those into
multiple alpha betas segmented by however you want to segment
it. Typically will either do it by
best sellers, but they'll go on their own alpha beta so they can
get more budget. And then after that, we'll do
different profit margin potential so we can have our
(16:05):
budget segmented that way as well.
By the way, if you want more information on that, feel free
to ask in discord, feel free to ask me on a coaching call and
I'm more than happy to record, you know, a loom video or
anything you need there. But again, when it comes to ads,
we are still going simple, not with performance Max with
standard chopping, alpha, beta approach, OK, next thing when it
comes to remarketing, again, simplicity, we can do more with
(16:29):
less because Google is even better with remarketing and meta
tracking actually has recently got much better.
I'll give you one thing on that also.
But when it comes to our currentapproach for Google Remarketing,
we are using display ads with our product feed linked to it.
These are dynamic Google Remarketing ads.
So the people that are seeing them are people in an audience
(16:51):
of recent website visitors and the ads that they're seeing are
for the exact products they werelooking at while on our store.
So these have that extremely high conversion rate, this
extremely high return on ad spend, the one that performance
Maxwell basically take if you switch to that until it dries up
that audience. So again, we're still getting
that, you know, extremely high boost that the initial
(17:13):
performance Max campaign might give you, but we're getting it
consistently with low ad spends with very high return ad spend
through Google Display remarketing ads with our product
feeds from Google Merchant Center linked to them.
Now, let me say, if this sounds like a foreign a foreign
language to you, then just meansyou know, you're probably newer
or haven't done this yet. But This is why I'm saying that
(17:36):
even though things are simple and simpler than ever, you need
to know where to focus your attention and need to know what
to do. So if that's not how you're
running your Google remarketing for any reason, just know in the
blueprints in Module 6, everything I'm talking about is
showing obviously via screen share lessons, step by step in
the newest Google remarketing lesson, which is in everyone's
(17:59):
members area. So just go in there, follow that
if you haven't set this up yet or if you're unsure if you have
it. If you don't, if you're unsure
that you have it set up with current best practices.
OK, so that is, you know, for ads, we covered basically cold
traffic through Google Shopping,Google standard shopping
campaigns. We covered remarketing through
Google Dynamic remarketing ads, and then when it comes to Meta
(18:21):
remarketing, this is something that we never stopped, even
though tracking did get very offand let's call it, you know,
wonky for a few years there. It's not perfect, nothing ever
will be when it comes to, you know, tracking, but it is better
than it's been in a couple years.
So for our meta remarketing, again, this is all covered in a
(18:43):
lesson in module 6. I'm going to sound like a broken
record, but I want to make sure if you're listening to this and
a member, you're not going to just, you know, turn off this
podcast, go into your meta edit account and try to set this up
from scratch because I give you step by step training for it.
But the the newest thing that I want to share with this is, yes,
we're still running Meta remarketing ads.
Yes, just like on Google, they are dynamic.
(19:03):
So the ads people see are for the products that they looked at
while on our store. But the newest thing is
integrating your Meta ads accounts with Google Analytics
4, which helps make tracking even better.
So when you log in to your Meta Ads manager, if you haven't
logged in there in a while, you should see a pop up that says
(19:23):
connect your GA four account Google Analytics 4 to Meta ads.
And I definitely recommend doingthis because if you've set up
Google Analytics 4 correctly, which you would have if you
followed the blueprints, it'll now link conversions between the
two, which makes the data even more robust, even more accurate.
Again, nothing's ever going to be 100%, but it is definitely
(19:46):
good enough to make business decisions off of, which is all
we can ask for now. You're still going to get sales
now and again that you're like, where did this come from?
I just saw in Discord this morning, we had a member asked
they, they had a, they showed a screenshot of their order in
Shopify. And the tracking it showed was
there was one click, one visit and a sale.
(20:06):
And it said the click was a direct Click to the product page
and there was no, you know, UTM parameters attached to it.
So what does that mean where that sale come from?
I answered this in Discord. But stuff like that happens all
the time because somebody might be looking at the the the
website on their phone, for example, then jump on their
computer to complete the purchase.
(20:26):
And that's not going to track through most of the time they
might have looked at it on, you know, their phone and sent it to
their husband or wife to buy andthey just click the link from a
text message or a Facebook message and then bought it.
And again, you're not going to see any data there.
But that's not at fault of Google or Meta.
That's just, you know, how tracking works.
That's why when we're looking atour return on ad spends at the
(20:49):
end of every month, we're typically looking at a blended
return on ad spend. So total revenue versus total
budget spent. We're still making decisions off
of return on ad spend at each campaign level, but there are
going to be sales that come through that just aren't
attributed to anything. But that's not going to help
whether you use, you know, Shopify Analytics or Google
Analytics or some third party tool that says they can track
(21:12):
everything. They're not going to track
things like that. OK, So what else do I want to
cover in this lesson? We covered content and becoming
the authority site and doing it in a very simple way as very
simple way. I should say.
I'm telling you guys, if you cancommit one hour a week to this
for 52 weeks, you will be amazedat where you are in July of
(21:32):
2025. So please, you know, set a
reminder on your your calendar, write it on a post it note,
follow the 9 new lessons in module six of the blueprint so
you know what to do. But commit an hour a week to it,
52 weeks and you will be blown away with where your free
traffic and conversion rate is for a year from now.
And I'm telling you, now is the time to do it because it's
(21:54):
easier than ever if you know what to do.
When it comes to ads again, we are still keeping things simple
without performance Max and by focusing on standard shopping
campaigns starting with one A1 beta and then breaking them up
as data and conversions come through.
And the last thing I'll say is when it comes to suppliers, I'm
just looking at my notes. This is one more thing that I
(22:15):
wanted to to add here. There are now more suppliers
than ever that have the opportunity to bring sales into
your store. Customers are researching things
at a deeper level, meaning they are looking at some brands that
maybe in the past you weren't even aware of.
So if you are a business owner, again, going back to how we
started this thing that's been around for a while, that's
(22:37):
making their money, that's very happy with how things are going.
I'm telling you, you probably are leaving.
You're leaving food on the table, right?
You, you have more, you have more that you can get.
So if you haven't done this in awhile, go to your top future
competitor stores. Go back to what I originally
teach you in Module 2 of the blueprints.
Look at their brand lists and look for brands that maybe you
(22:58):
either didn't find originally because they're newer or brands
that you maybe reached out to and didn't hear back from,
whether it be a month ago or sixmonths ago or 11 years ago,
because they're probably more. There probably is more room for
you to capture more market shareby adding these new brands that
again will help your authority. So guys, that is a quick state
(23:19):
of the union for members of Dropship Lifestyle.
And just like you know, I said earlier, those thinking about
starting this, I know this is probably a lot of information
for somebody that does not even have a store yet, but I wanted
to put this out there just so you know, kind of what we're up
to, what we're focusing on and why it is now easier than ever
to do more with less. There are always new tools
(23:40):
coming on the market. There's always new strategies
you might hear about. Stick with the basics, focus on
what matters. That is how you build a
successful business. Also, final message again, if
you are a member and you're not aware of our members only
podcast, go to Discord, check out the announcement channel
because whenever I post new members only podcasts, that is
(24:01):
where they are linked from. So with that being said, thank
you everybody. I appreciate you and I will talk
to you in the next episode of the Drop Ship Lifestyle podcast.
See everybody?
Hello everybody, Anton Crowley here and welcome back to the
Drop Ship Lifestyle Podcast coming to you today with an
episode I am calling the Drop Shipping State of the Union for
2024. I'm recording this just in case
you're a a listener from the future in July of 2024.
And what I want to do today is something that I would typically
(00:21):
do on a members only podcast, but I wanted to post this on the
main podcast feed because I knowwhat we have a lot of drop ship
lifestyle members that have beenwith us for let's say 11 years
now. We just celebrated our 11th
birthday and a lot of people that aren't in Discord as often
might even not know about our new members only podcast.
So I wanted to put this out to the world.
(00:43):
So whether you are a long time drop ship lifestyle member, a
new drop ship lifestyle member, or somebody that is thinking
about becoming a drop ship lifestyle member that's either
running a store or considering starting one.
You know what is currently working with drop shipping, what
we are doing and what I'm recommending everybody do that
already runs a store, even if you have one at that is going
(01:06):
great, has been running profitably for years.
It is very easy to kind of get into a groove where, again,
things are working, you are happy, you're making the money
you want, you're living the lifeyou want.
But there are things that might have changed since the last time
you really took a good look at your store and your operations.
And there are things that we aredoing that I want to make sure
(01:28):
you're aware of. So as usual with podcast
episodes, it's not going to be the most technical.
I'm not going to be showing you where to click and how to
install things and how to configure different messages and
ads. But I am going to give you a
pretty solid overview. So again, you can have some
things to possibly work on in your current business or your
future business if you choose tostart one.
(01:50):
So First off, the main thing that I can't stress enough is
that over the past year or so, we've been able to do so much
more with less. And that always has been a big
thing with all of my businesses since I went through lots of
headaches and trials and tribulations since I've been in
this business over 15 years, back when I first started and I
(02:10):
kind of tried everything. I tried to really shave it down
to what works best and just stick with that.
But even more so, we've been able to do more with less and
get better returns on our investment of both time and
money because businesses have been really to say the simply as
possible easier to scale if you know what you are doing with a
(02:33):
lot of things that have come outand have just been available to
us recently in this past year orso.
Now, of course, I will mention AI, but don't worry, this is
only not, it's not only I shouldsay in AI episode.
And I also want to stress that just because things are simpler,
because I'm saying it is simplernow than ever, it doesn't just
mean that your chances of success are better because you
(02:55):
could basically accelerate anything you are working on
faster. But if you're working on the
wrong things or doing things incorrectly, you could be just
further accelerating something that's not going to work.
So even though it's easier, it'seasier if you know where to
basically put your focus, which again, has always been the goal
of Drop Ship Lifestyle and the drop Ship blueprint to show
(03:17):
people where to put that focus. So that time they're putting
into that business, whether it's15 minutes a day or 30 minutes a
day or four hours a day, it's going towards the things that
will have the biggest impact on your business, again, both in
terms of time invested and moneyinvested.
So when I say that we're able todo, do more with less, the, the
(03:39):
overarching thing that we are focused on and we've been
focused on, but again, now more than ever, because it's simply
easier is I'll give you 1 keyword here, OK?
So if you're going to take one thing away, it is authority.
Now, as you know with our businesses, since we are drop
shipping, we are selling products that we are competing
against other sellers for now inModule 2 of the blueprint, I
(04:01):
show you how to make sure your competition is in a certain
range where we like to see it. If it's too much, it's simply
too hard to get enough traffic to make it profitable.
But we know we're going to have competition.
So what can we do to stand out? Obviously everything in module
five of the blueprints, but we want to become the authority
site for our niche. So I don't don't care if you're
(04:22):
selling bounce houses or stand up desks or Persian rugs or
leather chairs, whatever you're selling, you want to focus on
becoming the authority in your niche.
And that does not mean being everywhere.
That does not mean having to invest a bunch of money.
It means following a few simple steps to become the authority.
(04:42):
So the main thing that has become easier is content,
content, content, content. This is why about five or six
months ago, there were nine brand new lessons created and
uploaded to module six of the blueprint all about search
engine optimization. And not just SEO from a product
page perspective, of course, that is covered in detail, but
(05:05):
SEO from a collections page perspective and from a blog post
and from a different actual pageperspective that you can create
on your store. And I've done other episodes on
how we are creating content. What I'll do is probably link to
some of them below. This lesson, I'm sorry, not this
lesson, this podcast, I'll also link to Module 6.
But what I'll say is, again, if you're one of those people that
(05:26):
has been up and running and profitable and happy with their
business. If content was something you
always kind of held off on in the past simply because you
didn't know what you didn't knowor you thought it was too
expensive to outsource, or you maybe tried it and didn't get
results. I'm telling you, now is the time
to do it. Because when it comes to being
the authority site in your niche, being one of those top
(05:50):
stores, if not the top store, what you want to do is find out
everything about your customers,what they are looking for and
what questions they are asking. Now, typically these questions
are asked on Google. So one way to see what people
are asking is just a search for your niche and variations of
your niche keyword. Scroll to the bottom of the
(06:12):
first page results on Google andit'll show you related search
terms. And these are there because
these are other things that people are typing into Google,
and some of them are things you may have never even thought of
before. And what you want to do is make
sure that you have content centered around all of these
searches. To become an authority site
doesn't just mean that people automatically think of you when
(06:35):
they think of your niche, which will come, but it means you are
covering your niche from every angle.
Now of course the way we make money from this is by having all
the products we can have from high quality suppliers.
That's what were the sales and the profits and everything is
going to come from. But if you want your site to be
the one that pops up for everything when people are
(06:55):
searching on Google and researching online, you want to
cover your niche from every angle.
Now, I'm still going to say thisisn't something that's going to
happen overnight, but this is something that you can set a
plan for once you do the research, which again, this is
outlined just so you know, if you're a member, again, I would
typically record this as a members only podcast, but this
is something that is covered howto do this research in module
(07:17):
six of the blueprints. Once you have this information,
you can literally lay out a plan, whether you want to be
creating or updating one contentpiece a week or two a week,
whatever it may be. And as time goes by, after three
months, six months, 12 months from now, guess what?
You're still going to have your business.
And if you focus on this contentstrategy, as this time passes,
(07:38):
you're going to see more and more high quality traffic that
by the way, cost you $0.00 to acquire.
That leads to more sales and that leads to a more stable
business. Now back in I believe it was
February, I posted a bunch of interviews that I did with
different members of our 100K club at Drop Ship Lifestyle.
And when I was speaking to all these successful members of our
(08:01):
community, one of the biggest things that I heard from them is
what they've either done alreadyor we're working on doing is
getting to a point where they'repaid traffic.
Basically, sales comes close to where they're free traffic, free
traffic sales come from, OK, so let's just say your business is
doing $300,000 a month and currently it's doing $250,000 of
(08:25):
that from paid spend. What people were looking to do
is bump up where the free traffic sales come from,
basically get more traffic from free sales.
And again, what's covered in those nine new lessons in module
six of the blueprints are what you need to do.
Again, it's not going to happen overnight, but if you start
today and you consistently focuson this, let's say you put in
(08:46):
even only an hour a week over these next, again, three, six
and 12 months, you will be amazed at what is possible with
your business. To give you an example, just on
our last coaching call that I domonthly for members of Dropship
Lifestyle, one of the members was asking me about restarting
his paid traffic because he hasn't touched it in a year and
he's doing over $150,000 a monthfrom his free traffic because he
(09:09):
put in that time. That again, in the beginning
might seem slow if you're putting in let's say an hour a
week for a year. But then guess what?
As time goes by, as Google recognizes your site as more and
more of an authority as you cover your your niche from every
angle, as you find from those Google related search queries
and by the way, from a website called Answer the public, you
(09:30):
will be the authority, if not one of the authorities in your
niche. OK, so that is the main focus.
That's the main thing that I want you to work on.
Now with that being said, of course, that's not the only
thing that is either easier I should say or different about
drop shipping now because again the whole theme, while authority
is what we want to do, we are still trying to always do more
(09:50):
with less. So let's just say you take that
approach I just shared with you and you focus about an hour of
your time a week on becoming theauthority.
OK, great, you are good with that.
Let that continue. Again, the results will grow and
compound on themselves, but whatelse should you focus on?
And for this section, I want to talk about traffic a little bit
and mainly because I, I, you know, again, I do these coaching
(10:14):
calls every month and I hear a lot of the the same things for
members of our community. And one of them is that they
tried performance Max ads on Google because of course Google
recommended that to them, whether that be a Google sales
Rep reaching out, saying, hey, Ihave some ideas for your
accounts or whether that just bea little suggestion that pops up
while they are in their Google ads accounts and they switch
(10:36):
from standard shopping to performance Max.
We'll just call it P Max from now on.
And they start to get great results.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But then after a few weeks, the
return on an ADS, the return on AD spend tanks.
Now, I have talked about performance Max in the past in
my community called the best thing I learned.
By the way, if you're not familiar with that, it's the
(10:57):
best thing I learned.com. This was probably, I don't know,
a year and a half, two years agowhen it first became a thing.
And what I wanted to do, just like I do whenever any new
opportunity arises, is tested. So originally what we did was
test performance Max on a bunch of our different ad accounts.
And for some of them, we did start to see great results.
(11:18):
For some of them, we spent a lotof money and the results were
nowhere near standard shopping. But what I saw, just like has
been reported by many Dropship Lifestyle members, is it starts
off relatively hot with a decentreturn on ad spend and that dies
out over time. Now I'm going to give you a
couple reasons why that happens before I make my final
recommendation for you. Again, if you're a new store
(11:39):
owner thinking about how to get started or somebody that's been
in this business for a while. So First off, we sell high
ticket items. As you probably know by now,
unless this is the first podcastyou ever listen to from me, if
you're selling low ticket items,maybe you have a chance with
Performance Max, but I don't recommend low ticket items.
I think a lot more people are going to be doing them than
recently. By the way, little side note for
(12:00):
this, the State of the Union, I don't know if you saw, but click
Funnels now has an integration with basically low ticket drop
shipping provider. So I think even more of these
stores are going to be popping up and closing, but it's not
just about competition. Why don't to sell them?
It's because the margins just aren't there.
But with that out of the way, just know if you don't already,
we sell high ticket products andperformance Max.
(12:21):
When it's trying to find new customers, it's showing them to
a percentage of people that haveno intent on buying.
Let's call it product 123 from your store for $1000 or $1500 or
$2000. So with that being said, the way
that we can really convert salesis to target our ads to the
people that are actually searching for the specific brand
(12:44):
names, product names and SKU numbers of the products that we
sell. These people know what they want
already. They have the money to spend,
they know what it costs. We just need to get them to
choose us. By the way, becoming the
authority is one of the ways to help with that in addition to
everything in module five of theblueprints.
But just know right out of the gate that a Performance Max
campaign for a high ticket item is not, is something that I see
(13:08):
as the best approach because again, we're not able to choose
our targeting. It's whatever the black box of
performance Max decides is best for us.
With that being said, you might be thinking, OK, that I guess
that makes sense Anton, but thenwhy do the campaign start off
hot or occasionally because thisis not guaranteed 100% of the
time. Well, typically it's because the
way Performance Max will start spending is based on what will
(13:31):
get you the best return on ad spend, which sounds great, but
what will get you the best return on ad spend is
remarketing. So when you launch new
performance Max campaigns, what will typically happen is almost
all of your budget. And again, you can't see this,
but almost all of your budget will be going towards your
hottest remarketing audiences. So the people that had already
(13:52):
added products to their cart on your store, the people that
already found you another way. And recently we're a website
visitor. So of course those people, when
they see a Performance Max ad, it's basically just a
remarketing ad that of course islikely to convert to a sale.
But what happens after time is Performance Max campaigns will
eat that audience, right? We'll call it eat that audience.
(14:15):
They'll spend the budget towardsthose people.
They will over saturate it. The people that were going to
buy from those remarketing ads will buy.
And then after X amount of time,depending on how much traffic
your site gets, those audiences will dry up and Performance Max
will start broadening the peoplethat they are showing to.
And what that leads to is a lower return on AD spend because
(14:36):
again, after those warm and hot audiences dry up, you'll start
showing to people that aren't searching for the exact products
you're selling. And of course, the conversion
rate will plummet and the returnon AD spend will disappear.
So with all that being said, when it comes to performance
Max, it is still not something that I recommend now.
Might that change in the future?Yes, but for now, stick with
(14:59):
standard shopping. Yes, we still use Alpha Beta
because that's what's proven to work most consistently with
starting budgets across many, many accounts.
Again, all of the people I speakto in our 100K club, which at a
minimum are doing $100,000 in sales, many of them seven
figures, some of them eight figures, they all started the
same way with 1A campaign standard chopping, 1 beta
(15:23):
campaign standard chopping. And then of course, as time goes
on, you optimize those campaignsand can break them out into
multiple alpha betas to better allocate your ad spend.
So please, if you're listening to this and you're maybe already
doing well and Google's pushing you towards performance Max
again at this time, State of theUnion in July of 2024, that is
(15:44):
not what I would recommend. Stick with standard chopping
alpha beta setups and then over time, you can break those into
multiple alpha betas segmented by however you want to segment
it. Typically will either do it by
best sellers, but they'll go on their own alpha beta so they can
get more budget. And then after that, we'll do
different profit margin potential so we can have our
(16:05):
budget segmented that way as well.
By the way, if you want more information on that, feel free
to ask in discord, feel free to ask me on a coaching call and
I'm more than happy to record, you know, a loom video or
anything you need there. But again, when it comes to ads,
we are still going simple, not with performance Max with
standard chopping, alpha, beta approach, OK, next thing when it
comes to remarketing, again, simplicity, we can do more with
(16:29):
less because Google is even better with remarketing and meta
tracking actually has recently got much better.
I'll give you one thing on that also.
But when it comes to our currentapproach for Google Remarketing,
we are using display ads with our product feed linked to it.
These are dynamic Google Remarketing ads.
So the people that are seeing them are people in an audience
(16:51):
of recent website visitors and the ads that they're seeing are
for the exact products they werelooking at while on our store.
So these have that extremely high conversion rate, this
extremely high return on ad spend, the one that performance
Maxwell basically take if you switch to that until it dries up
that audience. So again, we're still getting
that, you know, extremely high boost that the initial
(17:13):
performance Max campaign might give you, but we're getting it
consistently with low ad spends with very high return ad spend
through Google Display remarketing ads with our product
feeds from Google Merchant Center linked to them.
Now, let me say, if this sounds like a foreign a foreign
language to you, then just meansyou know, you're probably newer
or haven't done this yet. But This is why I'm saying that
(17:36):
even though things are simple and simpler than ever, you need
to know where to focus your attention and need to know what
to do. So if that's not how you're
running your Google remarketing for any reason, just know in the
blueprints in Module 6, everything I'm talking about is
showing obviously via screen share lessons, step by step in
the newest Google remarketing lesson, which is in everyone's
(17:59):
members area. So just go in there, follow that
if you haven't set this up yet or if you're unsure if you have
it. If you don't, if you're unsure
that you have it set up with current best practices.
OK, so that is, you know, for ads, we covered basically cold
traffic through Google Shopping,Google standard shopping
campaigns. We covered remarketing through
Google Dynamic remarketing ads, and then when it comes to Meta
(18:21):
remarketing, this is something that we never stopped, even
though tracking did get very offand let's call it, you know,
wonky for a few years there. It's not perfect, nothing ever
will be when it comes to, you know, tracking, but it is better
than it's been in a couple years.
So for our meta remarketing, again, this is all covered in a
(18:43):
lesson in module 6. I'm going to sound like a broken
record, but I want to make sure if you're listening to this and
a member, you're not going to just, you know, turn off this
podcast, go into your meta edit account and try to set this up
from scratch because I give you step by step training for it.
But the the newest thing that I want to share with this is, yes,
we're still running Meta remarketing ads.
Yes, just like on Google, they are dynamic.
(19:03):
So the ads people see are for the products that they looked at
while on our store. But the newest thing is
integrating your Meta ads accounts with Google Analytics
4, which helps make tracking even better.
So when you log in to your Meta Ads manager, if you haven't
logged in there in a while, you should see a pop up that says
(19:23):
connect your GA four account Google Analytics 4 to Meta ads.
And I definitely recommend doingthis because if you've set up
Google Analytics 4 correctly, which you would have if you
followed the blueprints, it'll now link conversions between the
two, which makes the data even more robust, even more accurate.
Again, nothing's ever going to be 100%, but it is definitely
(19:46):
good enough to make business decisions off of, which is all
we can ask for now. You're still going to get sales
now and again that you're like, where did this come from?
I just saw in Discord this morning, we had a member asked
they, they had a, they showed a screenshot of their order in
Shopify. And the tracking it showed was
there was one click, one visit and a sale.
(20:06):
And it said the click was a direct Click to the product page
and there was no, you know, UTM parameters attached to it.
So what does that mean where that sale come from?
I answered this in Discord. But stuff like that happens all
the time because somebody might be looking at the the the
website on their phone, for example, then jump on their
computer to complete the purchase.
(20:26):
And that's not going to track through most of the time they
might have looked at it on, you know, their phone and sent it to
their husband or wife to buy andthey just click the link from a
text message or a Facebook message and then bought it.
And again, you're not going to see any data there.
But that's not at fault of Google or Meta.
That's just, you know, how tracking works.
That's why when we're looking atour return on ad spends at the
(20:49):
end of every month, we're typically looking at a blended
return on ad spend. So total revenue versus total
budget spent. We're still making decisions off
of return on ad spend at each campaign level, but there are
going to be sales that come through that just aren't
attributed to anything. But that's not going to help
whether you use, you know, Shopify Analytics or Google
Analytics or some third party tool that says they can track
(21:12):
everything. They're not going to track
things like that. OK, So what else do I want to
cover in this lesson? We covered content and becoming
the authority site and doing it in a very simple way as very
simple way. I should say.
I'm telling you guys, if you cancommit one hour a week to this
for 52 weeks, you will be amazedat where you are in July of
(21:32):
2025. So please, you know, set a
reminder on your your calendar, write it on a post it note,
follow the 9 new lessons in module six of the blueprint so
you know what to do. But commit an hour a week to it,
52 weeks and you will be blown away with where your free
traffic and conversion rate is for a year from now.
And I'm telling you, now is the time to do it because it's
(21:54):
easier than ever if you know what to do.
When it comes to ads again, we are still keeping things simple
without performance Max and by focusing on standard shopping
campaigns starting with one A1 beta and then breaking them up
as data and conversions come through.
And the last thing I'll say is when it comes to suppliers, I'm
just looking at my notes. This is one more thing that I
(22:15):
wanted to to add here. There are now more suppliers
than ever that have the opportunity to bring sales into
your store. Customers are researching things
at a deeper level, meaning they are looking at some brands that
maybe in the past you weren't even aware of.
So if you are a business owner, again, going back to how we
started this thing that's been around for a while, that's
(22:37):
making their money, that's very happy with how things are going.
I'm telling you, you probably are leaving.
You're leaving food on the table, right?
You, you have more, you have more that you can get.
So if you haven't done this in awhile, go to your top future
competitor stores. Go back to what I originally
teach you in Module 2 of the blueprints.
Look at their brand lists and look for brands that maybe you
(22:58):
either didn't find originally because they're newer or brands
that you maybe reached out to and didn't hear back from,
whether it be a month ago or sixmonths ago or 11 years ago,
because they're probably more. There probably is more room for
you to capture more market shareby adding these new brands that
again will help your authority. So guys, that is a quick state
(23:19):
of the union for members of Dropship Lifestyle.
And just like you know, I said earlier, those thinking about
starting this, I know this is probably a lot of information
for somebody that does not even have a store yet, but I wanted
to put this out there just so you know, kind of what we're up
to, what we're focusing on and why it is now easier than ever
to do more with less. There are always new tools
(23:40):
coming on the market. There's always new strategies
you might hear about. Stick with the basics, focus on
what matters. That is how you build a
successful business. Also, final message again, if
you are a member and you're not aware of our members only
podcast, go to Discord, check out the announcement channel
because whenever I post new members only podcasts, that is
(24:01):
where they are linked from. So with that being said, thank
you everybody. I appreciate you and I will talk
to you in the next episode of the Drop Ship Lifestyle podcast.
See everybody?
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.