January 23, 2025 • 22 mins
Want to drop ship profitably in 2025? Download our new dropshipping checklist for high-ticket dropshipping and follow along with this episode. 🔗 Links From Video:
► PDF Download: Drop Ship Lifestyle - Launch Checklist ► Google Drive (Make a Copy): Drop Ship Lifestyle - Launch Checklist ► Free Training + 500 Profitable Product Ideas: http://www.dropshipwebinar.com Related Training Playlists: ► Top 10 Niches For Dropshipping in 2025 📈 ► How to Strengthen Supplier Relationships ► Complete Shopify Tutorial For Beginners 2025 ► How To Get Traffic To Your Shopify Store ► How to Avoid The Facebook Ban Hammer
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
What's up everybody? Anton here from
dropshiplifestyle.com. And today my goal is to
hopefully make your life a little bit easier by giving you
a simple to follow checklist that you can use whether you're
building your first or your nexthigh ticket drop shipping store.
So what I did was put this together and you can either
download it to your computer, save it as a PDF.
(00:22):
This is what it will look like. You can print it out if you want
to do that and literally fill itout manually.
Or you can click a link below this video that will open it in
Google Drive. And this is what it will look
like there. And what I'm going to do in this
episode is just take you throughit so you understand how it
works. But if I can make it as simple
as possible, whenever we build new stores like we've been doing
(00:45):
for almost 20 years now, we always follow the same process
and we do things in a specific order.
And we do that because for certain things to work, you need
to complete certain actions first.
So if you've followed my podcastand listened to the 300 episodes
or if you've been through a bunch of my YouTube videos and
you're like, OK, Anton, I get all this, but I don't know what
(01:06):
to do first. Download this or open it in
Google Drive. It'll make your life a lot
easier. Now, before we go through these
steps, what I'm going to do is basically give you like simple
overviews of each of them. But I'll also just mention that
below this episode in the description, I'm going to post
links to other relevant episodesI've done on different topics
here, just in case you get to a certain step in this checklist
(01:28):
and you're like, wait a minute, like, what do I actually do
there? Again, I will link to any
relevant trainings where I have them.
OK, so with that being said, again, if you want to follow
along with me in this episode, just scroll to the description
and click the link either for the PDF version or for the
Google Drive version. And with that being said, let's
go ahead and start at the top with the first task.
(01:48):
Now the first task is business formation.
You'll see we have two differentthings that fall into this
category. And the reason we do this first
is because typically it'll take between sometimes a day,
sometimes a week to actually getyour business set up.
And when I say business, I mean business entity.
And that's something that we want to do first so that when it
comes time to actually start, start signing up for different
(02:11):
services or contacting suppliers, we actually have our
business already established. So we do this first, so it's
ready when we are. So the very first thing that I
would encourage you to do is choose between whether you want
to do business as a sole proprietor as in LLC or as in S
Corp. Now a sole proprietor is you
(02:32):
just doing business as yourself.So let's say I wanted to build a
rug store and I built the best rugs.com, right?
That was going to be my store. Well, it would be Anton Craley
who owns the best rugs.com. I would be a sole proprietor
because there's no business entity.
The business entity is me. And in that case, unless I got
an EIN number, which we'll discuss shortly, everything
(02:54):
would be attached to me personally and my Social
Security number. Now that is actually how I
started again almost 20 years ago.
But what I will say is back thenI had nothing to lose, right?
I was at that time, I think 21 years old and I basically just
said, OK, you know, I'm going todo business.
I didn't have any assets to protect and I was not business
(03:15):
savvy in the slightest. If you're going to do this
though, and you are maybe a little bit older, maybe you
have, you know, cash, maybe you have, you know, money invested,
maybe you own a home and you want to protect your assets a
little bit more and also get taxadvantage from your business, I
would recommend forming an LLC and electing to have that LLC
(03:35):
taxed as an S corporation. I'm not going to get into in
this video how that can save youmoney.
I have other videos on that, butit definitely can.
So again, if you're serious about this and you know you're
going to proceed with all the steps, my advice would be to
form an LLC and elect to have that taxed as an S Corp.
This is something you can do yourself online, but if you want
it to be really simple, you can just use a website
(03:56):
likelegalzoom.com. They'll set it all up for you.
And I think they even have an option where it's free and you
only pay the state filing fee. OK.
Once you decide on that and you get your, in that case, LLC
information, the next step is toyou see right here and what we
could do literally as you're following this along.
Oh, by the way, let me mention this.
If you decide to get this in Google Drive and not as the PDF
(04:18):
download, if you're watching thevideo version of this, you can
just follow along with me. What you want to do is click on
file, and then you want to clickwhere it says make a copy.
And when it makes a copy, that version will be editable for
you. OK, so do that.
Make a copy. You'll have this in your own
Google Drive account. Then you can edit it.
So once you make that decision, you can just simply click right
(04:39):
there in the check box on the left and that'll show you
completed the first task. You'll also see there is a
section we have here on the right for notes.
So in here you could just type in any notes you made.
You know, I decided to form an LLC, for example, I use
LegalZoom. Whatever notes you want to make
at any step, you could do in theright column on this document.
(04:59):
Now, once you decide on that, you're going to move on to Step
2, which is to apply for an EIN number and a sales tax
certificate if you need it. Now, an EIN number everybody
should have because this just separates the business from
yourself. Now, This Is Us Pacific.
Whether you live in the US or you're planning on doing
business in the US from abroad, you should still get an EIN
number. And this is basically the number
(05:22):
that you'll be giving suppliers and any other people you work
with instead of, again, your social.
So you can apply for an EIN number right on the irs.gov
website. It cost $0.00, takes about 5
minutes. And for a sales tax certificate,
if you are in a state where sales tax is required, you
should register for a sales tax certificate.
(05:42):
These are sometimes also called resale certificates.
But for this, again, very simple, you could do it online.
Just go to Google and Google your state name plus sales tax
certificate. Make sure you go to the.gov
website of your state and you can apply for one there.
Now, once you get to a point where your business is growing
and growing and growing over time and you reach an economic
(06:02):
Nexus in other countries, I'm sorry, other states, I should
say, then you'll need different sales tax certificates for other
states. But Shopify will track all of
that for you, which spoiler alert, we're going to get to
Shopify later. So just know you don't need, you
know, more than one sales tax certificate in the beginning.
And for people that are based ina state where there is no sales
tax, you don't even need one in the beginning.
(06:23):
Now, once we complete those two tasks for business formation,
we're moving on to niche election.
And the first thing that I'm going to recommend you do is
brainstorm 50 niche ideas. Now for members of our program,
the Drop Ship Blueprints, we have a worksheet document that
people work off of here. But basically what you want to
do is brainstorm 50 different niche ideas or 50 different
(06:44):
product types that you can use to then move through the next
steps, which is where you're actually going to research them.
Now we want to have at least 50 because we want to find multiple
winners, multiple good ideas, and from there we're going to
pick which one we like the best.But after you brainstorm 50 and
you either put them into a Google Sheet or write them down
however you want to do it, the next thing we're going to do is
(07:05):
research the average price point.
So if you go to Google and search for these products and
you go to Google Shopping, what do these things typically sell
for the most popular ones according to Google Shopping?
And we want that to be $200 or more.
From there, we're going to research competition and we're
going to make sure there are 10 or less stores advertising the
(07:25):
most popular products in the given niche that we're
researching. From there, we're going to
research demand and make sure there's at least 10,000 monthly
searches for the products we want to sell.
And after that, we're going to research seasonality and look
back over A5 year period to see if the niche is seasonal,
meaning it peaks for a few months a year and then falls off
(07:46):
a Cliff and comes back, or if it's consistent year over year,
month over month, week over week.
And that is what we want, not something that's seasonal, but
something that sells consistently so that we can
build a store and profit again, week over week, month over
month, year over year and build a healthy business that can
either create a second stream ofincome or replace our full time
(08:06):
income. Now once you have all of this
research done the and you find ones that by the way pass all of
those tests I just mentioned, the next step is to make sure
you can locate at least 20 drop ship friendly suppliers.
Now what's a drop ship friendly supplier?
It is a supplier AKA brand that actually makes the products you
(08:27):
want to sell that is being sold on other online only stores and
we want to find at least 20 of them.
Now, it doesn't mean you're going to become authorized to
sell for all 20 on day one. Most likely it's not going to be
anywhere near that. Maybe you'll get a 50% approval
rating, meaning if you found 20 brands, you'll be authorized to
sell for 10 of them on day one. And the rest you'll get over
(08:47):
time as your business grows and you have more of a trust factor,
if we want to call it that. Now before we move on to the
next steps, by the way, we covered nine so far.
There are 29 total on this checklist.
I just want to mention if you want any more specifics,
specifically when it comes to niche election and market
research, I do have a free webinar.
It's are usually around 2 hours long and on that I go into
(09:09):
detail and you can actually watch me perform all of these
research tests. So if you want to see that you
can go to drop ship webinar.com,DROPSHIP webinar.com and that'll
be linked up in the description as well.
But at this point, once you finda niche again, any of your 50
that passed all of these tests and then you could find at least
20 drop ship friendly suppliers for then we're going to move on
(09:32):
to the next step of this process, which is signing up for
Shopify. Now that is our e-commerce
platform of choice. If you've listened to any
previous episodes, you definitely know that I've been
using them exclusively now sinceI believe 2012.
So going on 12 years, no, 13 years now to 2025 when I'm
recording this. Yeah, that's, it's the best
e-commerce platform. It's what we use.
(09:54):
By the way, if you want a three day free trial and then your
first three months for just $3, literally it's an insane deal,
you can go to DSL dot life slashShopify and 90 days, just so you
know, is more than enough time to launch your business.
In fact, we have many members that do it within 21 days.
Again, you know, why not pay only $3?
(10:15):
So that is DSL dot life slash Shopify.
That'll be LinkedIn, the description as well.
But once you make your Shopify account, the next step on our
checklist here is to create thatShopify store.
So I'll link to again, a resource on that.
Don't worry, I got you covered. And then basically what we do is
upload what I call demo products.
So at this point, again, we don't have any suppliers that
(10:37):
we're actually selling for, right?
And don't worry, again, that's coming in the checklist.
We do things in order for a reason like I mentioned, but the
next step is to build that store, make your logo make it
look like you wanted to look with your color scheme and
whatnot, and then uload demo roducts.
O. What I mean by that is, again,
if I was building that rug store, what I would do is go
online and either find stock images of rugs or I would use a
(11:00):
tool like Magic Media from canva.com and get AI generated
images of rugs. I would make a handful of
product pages on my store that looked like the products were
actually going to sell, but I'd give them fake names, write fake
descriptions. And we're doing that so that
when we contact suppliers, whichagain we're going to get to,
they can envision what their products will look like on our
(11:21):
store. But once you complete this step
of the checklist, again, your store is built, it's looking
good, you got those demo products uploaded.
We move on to the next step, which is choosing a domain name.
Now again, I have done other episodes on domain name device.
So I will link to a relevant 1 below in the description.
If you get stuck at this step, check that out.
And from there, once you have your domain name, by the way, we
(11:44):
buy it straight through Shopify.It's $15 a year.
The next step is to remove the password from your Shopify store
because Shopify, the way it works, when you first create an
account, it's not visible to theworld.
If somebody went to your domain name, it would ask them to type
in a password to basically get access to it.
So at this point, we are in disabling the password
protection so anybody that goes to our URL can see the site.
(12:08):
And the reason we're doing that is because the next step is when
we're starting to actually get suppliers.
So the first thing I want you todo before you even reach out to
any of the brands that you foundin your earlier research when
you found those 20 brands is to add your phone number.
I'm sorry, to add the suppliers websites, phone numbers and
emails to your master supplier list.
(12:30):
Now your master supplier list iswhat you already researched
earlier when you found those 20 plus brands that are drop ship
friendly. You're simply going to Google
their brand names. You're going to find their
actual websites. So the brand URL, not your
competitors, but the brands you want to sell for, you're going
to put that on your supplier list.
Their phone numbers, you're going to get that from their
website. Their e-mail addresses, you're
(12:51):
going to get that from their website.
You're going to put that all next to your supplier names that
you found earlier. Now after that, the next step is
to actually set up a business e-mail address.
So this would be your name at your store.com.
So you know, Anton at thebestrugs.com, whatever we
choose, sales@thebestrugs.com, support@thebestrugs.com.
(13:13):
And to do that, by the way, we use Google Workspace.
That's what I use. That's what I recommend.
You could basically use Gmail, but with professional e-mail
address. We're also going to get a
business phone number for that. If you want a toll free number,
I recommend mightycallmightycall.com.
But if you just want like a regular toll free number, you
can use Skype number or Google Voice and it'll literally ring
(13:35):
to an app on your phone with anyof those 3 methods.
So you'll know when you're getting a business call and you
can also make outbound calls from that business phone number.
OK. So you're not using your
personal number on your website now for a mailing address.
This is also something else thatwe get and that I recommend for
those we get them at UPS stores.So let's keep that in mind.
So we're not putting our home address on any documents or on
(13:55):
our website. Now, next step is to get
approved with your first five suppliers.
Remember I mentioned earlier youwant to locate at least twenty?
Well, at this step we're becoming authorized retailers
for at least five of them, meaning we are reaching out to
them. We are, in my case, always
calling them when we find a phone number because it's just a
lot quicker to get a yes or a no.
After they approve you, they aregoing to send you all the
(14:18):
information you needed, their product images, their product
descriptions, their product names, their product pricing.
And what we do next is upload those to our store and then we
remove those demo products that I mentioned earlier.
Now we have live product on our store.
We have no demo products. Our store is basically ready to
open for business. But before we open for business,
(14:38):
we want to make sure that we have the highest probability of
turning future website visitors into customers.
So this is when we move on to the steps that I call optimizing
for conversions. And the first step that we're
doing here is installing an urgency app and a review app on
Shopify. Now, there are lots of different
apps that are good for urgency. By the way, I don't recommend
(14:58):
fake urgency, so keep that in mind.
I recommend actually having realexpiring coupon codes, so
special discounts that actually do expire at a set time.
And then for the review app, we use an app called judge dot me.
They have a great Shopify app. That's what I recommend.
And as far As for an urgency appgoes, if you're a member of Drop
Ship Lifestyle, again, our program, we actually have our
(15:20):
own Shopify theme called Manhattan and that has this
built into it. So you don't need a third party
app for urgency. You would just use what we built
into Manhattan again, the Drop Ship Lifestyle Shopify theme.
Now next step once that's set upis to add content pages to your
Shopify account. These are things like your About
Us page, a price match policy, your privacy policy, terms of
(15:42):
service, your shipping and returns policy is all of those
you wanna have added before you actually go live.
Next step is to create Facebook and Instagram business pages.
So whatever your store name is, whatever I said before, you know
the best rugs, I'd make a Facebook page called The Best
rugs. I'd make an Instagram account
called The Best Rugs, and after that I would install Shopify
(16:03):
e-mail on my store. Now, Shopify e-mail is used for
e-mail marketing and with your Shopify account, it's actually
free up to 10,000 emails you could send every month.
So make sure you install that sooner rather than later so that
you can follow up with everybodythat opts in for your e-mail
list on your site. Now, how are they going to opt
in? Well, you're going to have
(16:24):
abandoned carts. You're also going to have people
that purchase, so they're going to be customers.
But the next step is to set up actions in your Shopify account
for those bounced visits and abandoned carts.
Now, abandoned carts, you probably know what that means.
Again, people start the checkoutprocess and don't finish.
When that happens, we have an automated e-mail series that
goes out to them that basically says come back.
(16:45):
For these reasons, complete yourpurchase and bounce the visits.
Those are people that are on your site that are either just
idle so they keep your site openand don't do anything for a
while, or they start to move their mouse up to exit out of
your site. What we do then is have a pop up
appear that asks them for their e-mail, typically in exchange
for a discount when they enter their e-mail, we use Shopify
(17:05):
e-mail to send them a series of emails offering the discount to
get them to actually come back and place their order.
This is really going to increaseyour conversion rate and make
your store much more profitable,which is why we're doing all of
these things before we even worry about getting a website
visitor. But once you complete those
things, it is time to move on tothe last group of action tasks
(17:26):
that I'm giving you on this launch checklist.
And these are all revolving around getting traffic.
OK? So once your store is
optimizing, optimized for conversions, again, at this
point you already have the real products on it.
Now it is time to get traffic. So the first thing I'm going to
recommend you do is review something that I have called our
compliance checklist. Now, this is something that's in
(17:46):
Module 6 of the Drop Ship Blueprint for members of Drop
Ship Lifestyle. And this goes through everything
you want to literally triple check before you sign up for any
ad accounts to make sure your accounts don't get banned.
Again, if you're not a member ofDrop Ship Lifestyle, I think you
should become one. Check out Drop Ship webinar.com
for a free training plus a special offer to enroll.
You'll save yourself some money,get some bonuses.
(18:08):
Again, Drop Ship webinar.com andwhat I'll also try to do is see
if I have any relevant episodes of the podcast on compliance,
and if I do, I'll link to them in the description as well.
But once you do that, you make sure your site is ad compliant.
We're going to move on to the next step, which is where we
sign up for a Google Ads account, where we sign up for
Google Search Console, and wherewe sign up for Google Merchant
(18:30):
Center. So Google Ads probably doesn't
need an explanation. That's how you give Google money
and they give you website visitors.
Google Search Console is free, but it basically helps you get
indexed faster. So get free traffic from Google.
And it also shows if there's anyerrors on your site.
And then once traffic starts coming through, it'll show what
keywords people are searching again for free and what they're
(18:50):
clicking on. And Google Emergency Center, if
you don't know what that is yet,it's a way you can submit your
products to Google so that you can appear in Google Shopping
both in the free section and thepaid.
Now after that, what we're goingto do is set up our first Google
Shopping campaigns and our Google remarketing campaigns
specifically pay close attentionto the word Google Shopping
(19:11):
campaigns. We're not doing search text ads,
we're not doing display ads on Google.
We are doing Google Shopping, which are the highest converting
source of traffic we have. So that's definitely what should
come first when it comes to investing money into ads.
And then remarketing is also setup within Google where if
somebody goes to your website, they're looking at product 123,
(19:32):
then they go to cnn.com or basically any huge website
online, even smaller websites, they'll see that exact product
they looked at on your store andit'll, if they click it, it'll
take them back to that product page on your store.
Now after that, what we do is sign up for Bing Ads, sign up
for Bing Webmaster Tools and also with Bing Merchant Center
(19:53):
where you can add your store to Bing same way we do it for
Google. Now.
If you're wondering like, why would I even set up stuff on
Bing, listen, it's going to makeup like 20 or 25% of traffic in
comparison to Google. But that's still a massive
amount of people that you can get that can buy from you where
your competitors most likely aren't running traffic.
So don't skip this step in the checklist.
(20:13):
But after that, what you're going to do is just proceed to
the next step, which is creatingyour first Bing shopping
campaign. Now Bing knows most people that
sign up there are coming from Google, so they make it very,
very simple. And when you're setting up your
Bing campaigns, it's going to ask you do you want to import
your campaigns from Google? You're going to say yes.
(20:34):
And everything you set up on Google for Google Shopping is
going to automatically be imported and created inside your
Bing ad account. And from there, the only change
I recommend making is lowering your budgets.
So whatever you set your daily budgets are daily budgets at, I
should say for Google, just makeit 25% of that for Bing.
(20:55):
Now after that, the next step we're going to do is sign up for
Facebook, AKA Meta Business Manager.
And in there, we're going to next final step, create your
first Facebook remarketing campaign.
This is also going to be a dynamic remarketing campaign
with a very small budget. And what this is going to do is
once people find your website bycoming to, again, coming from, I
should say, Google Organic or Google Shopping, whatever it is,
(21:18):
when they go on Facebook or Instagram later in the day,
they're going to see ads from your store that show them the
exact products they were lookingat.
And when they click those links,it's going to go straight back
to those product pages so they can complete their order.
In addition to that, again, you're going to have your
remarketing set up across every site.
Google is installed on Google AdSense, I should say.
And because you set up Shopify e-mail and you set up those
(21:40):
different automations for abandoned carts and abandoned
visits, those people are also going to be receiving emails
from you that's going to bring them back and get you a much
higher conversion generate and make your store much more money.
So guys, I hope you found this checklist helpful.
Again, any relevant trainings that I have, I will post below
this in the description so you can check them out.
But definitely if you haven't already or you haven't recently,
(22:02):
my advice would be to go to dropship webinar.com, DROPSHIP
webinar.com. Get that about two hour free
training that goes into everything in detail.
And you can watch me do these things via screen shares.
And other than that, make sure you download this while it's
available. The link to the Google Drive
document will be below. Open it, U click file, make a
(22:23):
copy. You'll have an editable version
inside of your Google Drive account or simply click the PDF
download link and you'll have this PDF saved on your computer
where you can go through it or print it out and use it, you
know, with a pen and paper. Old school.
All those options work. So hopefully you got value.
If you did, let me know in the comments.
And with that being said, I'll be back next week to share
(22:43):
something else, hopefully just as valuable, if not more right
here on Dropship Lifestyle. Thank you everybody.
What's up everybody? Anton here from
dropshiplifestyle.com. And today my goal is to
hopefully make your life a little bit easier by giving you
a simple to follow checklist that you can use whether you're
building your first or your nexthigh ticket drop shipping store.
So what I did was put this together and you can either
download it to your computer, save it as a PDF.
(00:22):
This is what it will look like. You can print it out if you want
to do that and literally fill itout manually.
Or you can click a link below this video that will open it in
Google Drive. And this is what it will look
like there. And what I'm going to do in this
episode is just take you throughit so you understand how it
works. But if I can make it as simple
as possible, whenever we build new stores like we've been doing
(00:45):
for almost 20 years now, we always follow the same process
and we do things in a specific order.
And we do that because for certain things to work, you need
to complete certain actions first.
So if you've followed my podcastand listened to the 300 episodes
or if you've been through a bunch of my YouTube videos and
you're like, OK, Anton, I get all this, but I don't know what
(01:06):
to do first. Download this or open it in
Google Drive. It'll make your life a lot
easier. Now, before we go through these
steps, what I'm going to do is basically give you like simple
overviews of each of them. But I'll also just mention that
below this episode in the description, I'm going to post
links to other relevant episodesI've done on different topics
here, just in case you get to a certain step in this checklist
(01:28):
and you're like, wait a minute, like, what do I actually do
there? Again, I will link to any
relevant trainings where I have them.
OK, so with that being said, again, if you want to follow
along with me in this episode, just scroll to the description
and click the link either for the PDF version or for the
Google Drive version. And with that being said, let's
go ahead and start at the top with the first task.
(01:48):
Now the first task is business formation.
You'll see we have two differentthings that fall into this
category. And the reason we do this first
is because typically it'll take between sometimes a day,
sometimes a week to actually getyour business set up.
And when I say business, I mean business entity.
And that's something that we want to do first so that when it
comes time to actually start, start signing up for different
(02:11):
services or contacting suppliers, we actually have our
business already established. So we do this first, so it's
ready when we are. So the very first thing that I
would encourage you to do is choose between whether you want
to do business as a sole proprietor as in LLC or as in S
Corp. Now a sole proprietor is you
(02:32):
just doing business as yourself.So let's say I wanted to build a
rug store and I built the best rugs.com, right?
That was going to be my store. Well, it would be Anton Craley
who owns the best rugs.com. I would be a sole proprietor
because there's no business entity.
The business entity is me. And in that case, unless I got
an EIN number, which we'll discuss shortly, everything
(02:54):
would be attached to me personally and my Social
Security number. Now that is actually how I
started again almost 20 years ago.
But what I will say is back thenI had nothing to lose, right?
I was at that time, I think 21 years old and I basically just
said, OK, you know, I'm going todo business.
I didn't have any assets to protect and I was not business
(03:15):
savvy in the slightest. If you're going to do this
though, and you are maybe a little bit older, maybe you
have, you know, cash, maybe you have, you know, money invested,
maybe you own a home and you want to protect your assets a
little bit more and also get taxadvantage from your business, I
would recommend forming an LLC and electing to have that LLC
(03:35):
taxed as an S corporation. I'm not going to get into in
this video how that can save youmoney.
I have other videos on that, butit definitely can.
So again, if you're serious about this and you know you're
going to proceed with all the steps, my advice would be to
form an LLC and elect to have that taxed as an S Corp.
This is something you can do yourself online, but if you want
it to be really simple, you can just use a website
(03:56):
likelegalzoom.com. They'll set it all up for you.
And I think they even have an option where it's free and you
only pay the state filing fee. OK.
Once you decide on that and you get your, in that case, LLC
information, the next step is toyou see right here and what we
could do literally as you're following this along.
Oh, by the way, let me mention this.
If you decide to get this in Google Drive and not as the PDF
(04:18):
download, if you're watching thevideo version of this, you can
just follow along with me. What you want to do is click on
file, and then you want to clickwhere it says make a copy.
And when it makes a copy, that version will be editable for
you. OK, so do that.
Make a copy. You'll have this in your own
Google Drive account. Then you can edit it.
So once you make that decision, you can just simply click right
(04:39):
there in the check box on the left and that'll show you
completed the first task. You'll also see there is a
section we have here on the right for notes.
So in here you could just type in any notes you made.
You know, I decided to form an LLC, for example, I use
LegalZoom. Whatever notes you want to make
at any step, you could do in theright column on this document.
(04:59):
Now, once you decide on that, you're going to move on to Step
2, which is to apply for an EIN number and a sales tax
certificate if you need it. Now, an EIN number everybody
should have because this just separates the business from
yourself. Now, This Is Us Pacific.
Whether you live in the US or you're planning on doing
business in the US from abroad, you should still get an EIN
number. And this is basically the number
(05:22):
that you'll be giving suppliers and any other people you work
with instead of, again, your social.
So you can apply for an EIN number right on the irs.gov
website. It cost $0.00, takes about 5
minutes. And for a sales tax certificate,
if you are in a state where sales tax is required, you
should register for a sales tax certificate.
(05:42):
These are sometimes also called resale certificates.
But for this, again, very simple, you could do it online.
Just go to Google and Google your state name plus sales tax
certificate. Make sure you go to the.gov
website of your state and you can apply for one there.
Now, once you get to a point where your business is growing
and growing and growing over time and you reach an economic
(06:02):
Nexus in other countries, I'm sorry, other states, I should
say, then you'll need different sales tax certificates for other
states. But Shopify will track all of
that for you, which spoiler alert, we're going to get to
Shopify later. So just know you don't need, you
know, more than one sales tax certificate in the beginning.
And for people that are based ina state where there is no sales
tax, you don't even need one in the beginning.
(06:23):
Now, once we complete those two tasks for business formation,
we're moving on to niche election.
And the first thing that I'm going to recommend you do is
brainstorm 50 niche ideas. Now for members of our program,
the Drop Ship Blueprints, we have a worksheet document that
people work off of here. But basically what you want to
do is brainstorm 50 different niche ideas or 50 different
(06:44):
product types that you can use to then move through the next
steps, which is where you're actually going to research them.
Now we want to have at least 50 because we want to find multiple
winners, multiple good ideas, and from there we're going to
pick which one we like the best.But after you brainstorm 50 and
you either put them into a Google Sheet or write them down
however you want to do it, the next thing we're going to do is
(07:05):
research the average price point.
So if you go to Google and search for these products and
you go to Google Shopping, what do these things typically sell
for the most popular ones according to Google Shopping?
And we want that to be $200 or more.
From there, we're going to research competition and we're
going to make sure there are 10 or less stores advertising the
(07:25):
most popular products in the given niche that we're
researching. From there, we're going to
research demand and make sure there's at least 10,000 monthly
searches for the products we want to sell.
And after that, we're going to research seasonality and look
back over A5 year period to see if the niche is seasonal,
meaning it peaks for a few months a year and then falls off
(07:46):
a Cliff and comes back, or if it's consistent year over year,
month over month, week over week.
And that is what we want, not something that's seasonal, but
something that sells consistently so that we can
build a store and profit again, week over week, month over
month, year over year and build a healthy business that can
either create a second stream ofincome or replace our full time
(08:06):
income. Now once you have all of this
research done the and you find ones that by the way pass all of
those tests I just mentioned, the next step is to make sure
you can locate at least 20 drop ship friendly suppliers.
Now what's a drop ship friendly supplier?
It is a supplier AKA brand that actually makes the products you
(08:27):
want to sell that is being sold on other online only stores and
we want to find at least 20 of them.
Now, it doesn't mean you're going to become authorized to
sell for all 20 on day one. Most likely it's not going to be
anywhere near that. Maybe you'll get a 50% approval
rating, meaning if you found 20 brands, you'll be authorized to
sell for 10 of them on day one. And the rest you'll get over
(08:47):
time as your business grows and you have more of a trust factor,
if we want to call it that. Now before we move on to the
next steps, by the way, we covered nine so far.
There are 29 total on this checklist.
I just want to mention if you want any more specifics,
specifically when it comes to niche election and market
research, I do have a free webinar.
It's are usually around 2 hours long and on that I go into
(09:09):
detail and you can actually watch me perform all of these
research tests. So if you want to see that you
can go to drop ship webinar.com,DROPSHIP webinar.com and that'll
be linked up in the description as well.
But at this point, once you finda niche again, any of your 50
that passed all of these tests and then you could find at least
20 drop ship friendly suppliers for then we're going to move on
(09:32):
to the next step of this process, which is signing up for
Shopify. Now that is our e-commerce
platform of choice. If you've listened to any
previous episodes, you definitely know that I've been
using them exclusively now sinceI believe 2012.
So going on 12 years, no, 13 years now to 2025 when I'm
recording this. Yeah, that's, it's the best
e-commerce platform. It's what we use.
(09:54):
By the way, if you want a three day free trial and then your
first three months for just $3, literally it's an insane deal,
you can go to DSL dot life slashShopify and 90 days, just so you
know, is more than enough time to launch your business.
In fact, we have many members that do it within 21 days.
Again, you know, why not pay only $3?
(10:15):
So that is DSL dot life slash Shopify.
That'll be LinkedIn, the description as well.
But once you make your Shopify account, the next step on our
checklist here is to create thatShopify store.
So I'll link to again, a resource on that.
Don't worry, I got you covered. And then basically what we do is
upload what I call demo products.
So at this point, again, we don't have any suppliers that
(10:37):
we're actually selling for, right?
And don't worry, again, that's coming in the checklist.
We do things in order for a reason like I mentioned, but the
next step is to build that store, make your logo make it
look like you wanted to look with your color scheme and
whatnot, and then uload demo roducts.
O. What I mean by that is, again,
if I was building that rug store, what I would do is go
online and either find stock images of rugs or I would use a
(11:00):
tool like Magic Media from canva.com and get AI generated
images of rugs. I would make a handful of
product pages on my store that looked like the products were
actually going to sell, but I'd give them fake names, write fake
descriptions. And we're doing that so that
when we contact suppliers, whichagain we're going to get to,
they can envision what their products will look like on our
(11:21):
store. But once you complete this step
of the checklist, again, your store is built, it's looking
good, you got those demo products uploaded.
We move on to the next step, which is choosing a domain name.
Now again, I have done other episodes on domain name device.
So I will link to a relevant 1 below in the description.
If you get stuck at this step, check that out.
And from there, once you have your domain name, by the way, we
(11:44):
buy it straight through Shopify.It's $15 a year.
The next step is to remove the password from your Shopify store
because Shopify, the way it works, when you first create an
account, it's not visible to theworld.
If somebody went to your domain name, it would ask them to type
in a password to basically get access to it.
So at this point, we are in disabling the password
protection so anybody that goes to our URL can see the site.
(12:08):
And the reason we're doing that is because the next step is when
we're starting to actually get suppliers.
So the first thing I want you todo before you even reach out to
any of the brands that you foundin your earlier research when
you found those 20 brands is to add your phone number.
I'm sorry, to add the suppliers websites, phone numbers and
emails to your master supplier list.
(12:30):
Now your master supplier list iswhat you already researched
earlier when you found those 20 plus brands that are drop ship
friendly. You're simply going to Google
their brand names. You're going to find their
actual websites. So the brand URL, not your
competitors, but the brands you want to sell for, you're going
to put that on your supplier list.
Their phone numbers, you're going to get that from their
website. Their e-mail addresses, you're
(12:51):
going to get that from their website.
You're going to put that all next to your supplier names that
you found earlier. Now after that, the next step is
to actually set up a business e-mail address.
So this would be your name at your store.com.
So you know, Anton at thebestrugs.com, whatever we
choose, sales@thebestrugs.com, support@thebestrugs.com.
(13:13):
And to do that, by the way, we use Google Workspace.
That's what I use. That's what I recommend.
You could basically use Gmail, but with professional e-mail
address. We're also going to get a
business phone number for that. If you want a toll free number,
I recommend mightycallmightycall.com.
But if you just want like a regular toll free number, you
can use Skype number or Google Voice and it'll literally ring
(13:35):
to an app on your phone with anyof those 3 methods.
So you'll know when you're getting a business call and you
can also make outbound calls from that business phone number.
OK. So you're not using your
personal number on your website now for a mailing address.
This is also something else thatwe get and that I recommend for
those we get them at UPS stores.So let's keep that in mind.
So we're not putting our home address on any documents or on
(13:55):
our website. Now, next step is to get
approved with your first five suppliers.
Remember I mentioned earlier youwant to locate at least twenty?
Well, at this step we're becoming authorized retailers
for at least five of them, meaning we are reaching out to
them. We are, in my case, always
calling them when we find a phone number because it's just a
lot quicker to get a yes or a no.
After they approve you, they aregoing to send you all the
(14:18):
information you needed, their product images, their product
descriptions, their product names, their product pricing.
And what we do next is upload those to our store and then we
remove those demo products that I mentioned earlier.
Now we have live product on our store.
We have no demo products. Our store is basically ready to
open for business. But before we open for business,
(14:38):
we want to make sure that we have the highest probability of
turning future website visitors into customers.
So this is when we move on to the steps that I call optimizing
for conversions. And the first step that we're
doing here is installing an urgency app and a review app on
Shopify. Now, there are lots of different
apps that are good for urgency. By the way, I don't recommend
(14:58):
fake urgency, so keep that in mind.
I recommend actually having realexpiring coupon codes, so
special discounts that actually do expire at a set time.
And then for the review app, we use an app called judge dot me.
They have a great Shopify app. That's what I recommend.
And as far As for an urgency appgoes, if you're a member of Drop
Ship Lifestyle, again, our program, we actually have our
(15:20):
own Shopify theme called Manhattan and that has this
built into it. So you don't need a third party
app for urgency. You would just use what we built
into Manhattan again, the Drop Ship Lifestyle Shopify theme.
Now next step once that's set upis to add content pages to your
Shopify account. These are things like your About
Us page, a price match policy, your privacy policy, terms of
(15:42):
service, your shipping and returns policy is all of those
you wanna have added before you actually go live.
Next step is to create Facebook and Instagram business pages.
So whatever your store name is, whatever I said before, you know
the best rugs, I'd make a Facebook page called The Best
rugs. I'd make an Instagram account
called The Best Rugs, and after that I would install Shopify
(16:03):
e-mail on my store. Now, Shopify e-mail is used for
e-mail marketing and with your Shopify account, it's actually
free up to 10,000 emails you could send every month.
So make sure you install that sooner rather than later so that
you can follow up with everybodythat opts in for your e-mail
list on your site. Now, how are they going to opt
in? Well, you're going to have
(16:24):
abandoned carts. You're also going to have people
that purchase, so they're going to be customers.
But the next step is to set up actions in your Shopify account
for those bounced visits and abandoned carts.
Now, abandoned carts, you probably know what that means.
Again, people start the checkoutprocess and don't finish.
When that happens, we have an automated e-mail series that
goes out to them that basically says come back.
(16:45):
For these reasons, complete yourpurchase and bounce the visits.
Those are people that are on your site that are either just
idle so they keep your site openand don't do anything for a
while, or they start to move their mouse up to exit out of
your site. What we do then is have a pop up
appear that asks them for their e-mail, typically in exchange
for a discount when they enter their e-mail, we use Shopify
(17:05):
e-mail to send them a series of emails offering the discount to
get them to actually come back and place their order.
This is really going to increaseyour conversion rate and make
your store much more profitable,which is why we're doing all of
these things before we even worry about getting a website
visitor. But once you complete those
things, it is time to move on tothe last group of action tasks
(17:26):
that I'm giving you on this launch checklist.
And these are all revolving around getting traffic.
OK? So once your store is
optimizing, optimized for conversions, again, at this
point you already have the real products on it.
Now it is time to get traffic. So the first thing I'm going to
recommend you do is review something that I have called our
compliance checklist. Now, this is something that's in
(17:46):
Module 6 of the Drop Ship Blueprint for members of Drop
Ship Lifestyle. And this goes through everything
you want to literally triple check before you sign up for any
ad accounts to make sure your accounts don't get banned.
Again, if you're not a member ofDrop Ship Lifestyle, I think you
should become one. Check out Drop Ship webinar.com
for a free training plus a special offer to enroll.
You'll save yourself some money,get some bonuses.
(18:08):
Again, Drop Ship webinar.com andwhat I'll also try to do is see
if I have any relevant episodes of the podcast on compliance,
and if I do, I'll link to them in the description as well.
But once you do that, you make sure your site is ad compliant.
We're going to move on to the next step, which is where we
sign up for a Google Ads account, where we sign up for
Google Search Console, and wherewe sign up for Google Merchant
(18:30):
Center. So Google Ads probably doesn't
need an explanation. That's how you give Google money
and they give you website visitors.
Google Search Console is free, but it basically helps you get
indexed faster. So get free traffic from Google.
And it also shows if there's anyerrors on your site.
And then once traffic starts coming through, it'll show what
keywords people are searching again for free and what they're
(18:50):
clicking on. And Google Emergency Center, if
you don't know what that is yet,it's a way you can submit your
products to Google so that you can appear in Google Shopping
both in the free section and thepaid.
Now after that, what we're goingto do is set up our first Google
Shopping campaigns and our Google remarketing campaigns
specifically pay close attentionto the word Google Shopping
(19:11):
campaigns. We're not doing search text ads,
we're not doing display ads on Google.
We are doing Google Shopping, which are the highest converting
source of traffic we have. So that's definitely what should
come first when it comes to investing money into ads.
And then remarketing is also setup within Google where if
somebody goes to your website, they're looking at product 123,
(19:32):
then they go to cnn.com or basically any huge website
online, even smaller websites, they'll see that exact product
they looked at on your store andit'll, if they click it, it'll
take them back to that product page on your store.
Now after that, what we do is sign up for Bing Ads, sign up
for Bing Webmaster Tools and also with Bing Merchant Center
(19:53):
where you can add your store to Bing same way we do it for
Google. Now.
If you're wondering like, why would I even set up stuff on
Bing, listen, it's going to makeup like 20 or 25% of traffic in
comparison to Google. But that's still a massive
amount of people that you can get that can buy from you where
your competitors most likely aren't running traffic.
So don't skip this step in the checklist.
(20:13):
But after that, what you're going to do is just proceed to
the next step, which is creatingyour first Bing shopping
campaign. Now Bing knows most people that
sign up there are coming from Google, so they make it very,
very simple. And when you're setting up your
Bing campaigns, it's going to ask you do you want to import
your campaigns from Google? You're going to say yes.
(20:34):
And everything you set up on Google for Google Shopping is
going to automatically be imported and created inside your
Bing ad account. And from there, the only change
I recommend making is lowering your budgets.
So whatever you set your daily budgets are daily budgets at, I
should say for Google, just makeit 25% of that for Bing.
(20:55):
Now after that, the next step we're going to do is sign up for
Facebook, AKA Meta Business Manager.
And in there, we're going to next final step, create your
first Facebook remarketing campaign.
This is also going to be a dynamic remarketing campaign
with a very small budget. And what this is going to do is
once people find your website bycoming to, again, coming from, I
should say, Google Organic or Google Shopping, whatever it is,
(21:18):
when they go on Facebook or Instagram later in the day,
they're going to see ads from your store that show them the
exact products they were lookingat.
And when they click those links,it's going to go straight back
to those product pages so they can complete their order.
In addition to that, again, you're going to have your
remarketing set up across every site.
Google is installed on Google AdSense, I should say.
And because you set up Shopify e-mail and you set up those
(21:40):
different automations for abandoned carts and abandoned
visits, those people are also going to be receiving emails
from you that's going to bring them back and get you a much
higher conversion generate and make your store much more money.
So guys, I hope you found this checklist helpful.
Again, any relevant trainings that I have, I will post below
this in the description so you can check them out.
But definitely if you haven't already or you haven't recently,
(22:02):
my advice would be to go to dropship webinar.com, DROPSHIP
webinar.com. Get that about two hour free
training that goes into everything in detail.
And you can watch me do these things via screen shares.
And other than that, make sure you download this while it's
available. The link to the Google Drive
document will be below. Open it, U click file, make a
(22:23):
copy. You'll have an editable version
inside of your Google Drive account or simply click the PDF
download link and you'll have this PDF saved on your computer
where you can go through it or print it out and use it, you
know, with a pen and paper. Old school.
All those options work. So hopefully you got value.
If you did, let me know in the comments.
And with that being said, I'll be back next week to share
(22:43):
something else, hopefully just as valuable, if not more right
here on Dropship Lifestyle. Thank you everybody.
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