After starting a Halloween-theme dropshipping store a few months ago, I found myself thrown in the Facebook marketing deep end.

Although I had help from the articles on the Oberlo blog and being able to speak to people with experience using Facebook ads, I still found my first proper leap into the world of Facebook ads an overwhelming experience.

Facebook seems aware that its ad platform is complicated because, along with forever changing the layout of Business Manager, it also offers a series of free courses and content to educate Facebook ads users.

And, in addition to all that, Facebook also has a bunch of people called Marketing Experts who reach out to those who use Business Manager to offer specific guidance on how you can launch campaigns and get a better return on ad spend.

Eager to learn what I could do with my new (and not very profitable) store, I took a call with a Facebook Marketing Expert to hear what they recommended.

Although I haven’t yet implemented any of the advice I got, it was an interesting process, and I thought it might be helpful to share it with others starting on their dropshipping journey.

If you’re still wrapping your head around the world of Facebook ads and Business Manager – or you’re merely curious about what a call with a Facebook Marketing Expert is like – read on to hear about my experience and the advice I got.

Why Is Facebook Marketing So Good For Dropshippers?

If you’re starting with your store, you probably know that Facebook ads – which covers advertising on both Facebook and Instagram – is by far the most popular form of marketing for drop shippers, but why is that? Here are a few reasons:

• The ads can reach a huge audience: Facebook has over 2.7 billion monthly active users worldwide and Instagram has over 1 billion – that’s some huge potential for your ads.
• It suits any budget: Whether you have hundreds to spend or hundreds of thousand, you can launch a Facebook ads campaign that will get results, making it an excellent option for small businesses right through to huge companies.
• It’s a breeze to scale: If you find a campaign is performing well, it’s straightforward to scale it up. For example, you could add more budget, use Facebook’s audience insights to retarget or expand your reach by targeting new markets.
• It works in tandem with your Pixel: The Facebook Pixel means it’s easy to track the people interested in your products and use this data to create ads that have a higher chance of converting.
• You have creative options: Whether you want to run video or image ads – or a mixture of both – you can do all of this from within Facebook ads. This flexibility is great as it allows you to create something you think will show off your product the best.

Who Are the Facebook Marketing Experts and What Do They Do?

There’s an enormous amount of money being spent on Facebook ads every day, and Facebook wants to keep it that way – this is where their Marketing Experts come in.

Facebook Marketing Experts are a team who work with people who regularly spend money on the Business Manager platform. They give advice and information relevant to your business, informing you of ways you can target your advertising or use features that will (ideally) provide better results.

Because Facebook Business Manager often changes and there are so many different options for how to run ads, speaking to a Marketing Expert can help demystify the platform – or at least highlight the features most relevant to your business.

Although it’s a Marketing Expert’s job to help those who use Business Manager, it’s also important to remember that they’re also employees of Facebook. Yes, they want you to succeed and use their platform correctly, but they also want you to continue spending money on their platform.

That’s not to say you should disregard what they have to say – they may be able to introduce you to a ton of features you weren’t aware of – but remember that positive results are not necessarily guaranteed.

How Can I Speak With One?

If you’re interested in speaking with a Marketing Expert, there’s only one way to do so – that’s right, you’ve got to spend that cash. Talking with people who have already spent money on ads means the experts have data and information about what you’ve been trying to achieve with your campaigns. As a result, they’re better able to give tips and advice specific to your business.

I can’t say precisely how much or how regularly you need to be spending on ads to be able to speak with an expert, but I first started getting emails after I spent around €700 over the space of about five weeks. Interestingly, even though I last spent money on ads back in early October, almost eight weeks later I still get the occasional email asking if I want to speak with someone, so you stay eligible for some time.

To see if you can speak with a Marketing Expert, go to this page and scroll down to the “Next Steps” section. If you’re not eligible for a call, you’ll get referred to other helpful resources that can improve your campaigns.

Tips I Got From My Facebook Marketing Expert

Speaking with my Facebook Marketer, Patrick, I got the impression that he was a super knowledgeable guy who knew the ins and outs of the product well – this is important because it’s not necessarily a given. You may end up speaking with someone new to Facebook, or who doesn’t quite understand your particular needs.

However, in my case, Patrick seemed to know what my best course of action was. He knew that I was running a dropshipping store, that it was Halloween-themed, and that it was reasonably new. Based on all of this knowledge, he gave several tips throughout our 20-minute conversation.

Use ‘View Content’ as My Conversion Event

After hearing about my store and its goals, the first thing Patrick recommended was that I change my event in my conversion campaigns to ‘view content.’

Although I had run some ads with ‘view content’ as the conversion event, at some stage, I had changed it to either ‘initiate checkout’ or ‘purchase.’ At the time, I thought it made sense to change; after all, I wanted sales.

Well, it turns out I was trying to run before I could walk.

Instead, I should have been trying to generate as many conversions events as possible to train the algorithm so that it could better serve my store further down the track.

By running some conversion campaigns with ‘view content’ as conversion event and others with ‘initiate checkout’ or ‘purchase’ as conversion events, the algorithm didn’t have enough data to accurately know who it should be delivering my ads to. And as a result, my ads weren’t as effective as they could’ve been.

How can you tell if your pixel has enough data to swap to a different conversion event? Business Manage makes it simple. See that green dot next to ‘view content’? This indicates it’s an active event, and the pixel has enough data to deliver on it accurately. If the event is inactive, it has a red dot, which was the case for ‘initiate checkout’ and ‘purchase’ for my store.

Run the Campaign as a CBO Campaign

The next piece of advice Patrick gave was that I should turn on CBO or campaign budget optimization. According to Facebook, CBO helps you get the most out of your campaign budget – that’s the amount you set at the campaign level, rather than at the ad set level – by delivering the best results possible.

Patrick recommended that I run a campaign with three ad sets, all targeting different interests and letting CBO find the most exceptional opportunities to get the best results – for example, the highest return on ad spend (ROAS). This means that instead of spending equally across all ad sets, one ad might get allocated 80 percent of the budget because CBO detected that that particular ad was the best way of using my budget to achieve the highest ROAS.

This advice made total sense to me as we already know Facebook has an insane amount of data to train its algorithms on, so it stands to reason that CBO would be better able to figure out how to get the most from my campaign than I would.

Someone intimately familiar with Facebook ads may be able to get great results by studying ad results themselves. However, for beginners like me, it makes more sense to design a great ad creative – something Facebook can’t do – and then let CBO figure out where to allocate its budget – something Facebook can do.

It’s also worth noting that CBO will soon be mandatory for all Facebook ads, so even if you’re not entirely convinced, it’s still worth running a few CBO campaigns to see how it works and to make sure you’re covered when the switch happens.

Use a Slideshow or Carousel for Creatives

After recommending I run a CBO campaign with three ad sets and setting my conversion event to ‘view content,’ Patrick then suggested that I use either a slideshow or a carousel for my ad creatives.

Carousels are a great way to show both video and images in your campaigns, plus they let potential customers see more of your products, which may entice them more than a single video or image would. I had used carousels in one of my early campaigns, but I wasn’t sure if it was better to use this format or stick to single images or videos, so it was nice to hear Patrick confirming my choice.

However, I’d never used the slideshow option before, which is something that can be created directly in Ads Manager. The slideshow creator lets you choose things like a slideshow template, how long you want it slideshow to be, how many seconds you want each slide to appear, and what music you want in the background.

From there, Facebook will auto-generate a slideshow. It’s effortless to do, and the algorithm will even adjust your slideshow to put the slides that work the best at the front.

Other Ways to Get Great Tips For Facebook Ads

If you’re not eligible for a call with Facebook Marketing Expert, there are plenty of other ways to learn about how you can make Facebook ads work for your store. Here are a few of the best to get you started:

Facebook Blueprint

This is a free online learning portal created by Facebook to help build your marketing expertise. There are a ton of different courses available here, including a step-by-step guide to creating ads for your business. Even if you do speak with a Marketing Expert, they’ll likely send you to Blueprint tutorials relevant to the advice they gave anyway, so this platform is a great resource for all levels.

Oberlo’s Facebook Ads Course

We know how vital Facebook ads are to dropshippers, so we went ahead and created a three-part video series dedicated to this very topic. Our Facebook ads course covers information about the pixel, how to create the right campaign for your store, making your ad, and how to budget for it. There are also some additional Q&A videos cover a lot of the major questions dropshippers have. And, if you really want to invest in your dropshipping, we cover Facebooks ads in huge detail in our dropshipping course Oberlo 101.

Start Yours Podcast

As well as talking in-depth about a range of topics relevant to dropshippers, Oberlo’s Start Yours podcast also has episodes that dig into the ads tactics used by successful dropshippers like Ryan Caroll. After all, what better way to learn Facebook ads than from the people who have mastered their ads and made big money.

Final Takeaways

After speaking with a Facebook Marketing Expert, I feel as though I have a reliable roadmap for where to go next. And, while I had tried a few of the suggestions beforehand, I’m now curious to go back to those strategies and give them more time to work properly. Facebook ads can be a hard world to navigate alone, so hearing confirmation that some of my strategies were on the right track was reassuring.

If you’re eligible for a call from a Marketing Expert, I would recommend taking them up on the offer. They may have some great ideas that you haven’t thought of, or if you’re already proficient at running Facebook ads, you could ask them to review your current strategy and get some feedback from a knowledgeable source.

If you’re not currently able to book a call, then making use of the Blueprint courses is another way to get Facebook-approved advice for what to do with your ads. We’re living in the age of information, and this is certainly one area where there’s no shortage of content.

It can be difficult to keep an online business afloat for 16 weeks, so when you hear about one that’s been around for 16 years, it’s hard not to be impressed.

Since opening his store in 2003, Adam Greenspan has managed to scale it to the point where it’s a leading brand in his niche. And his main competitors aren’t small-fry websites either, they’re huge brands like Amazon and Home Depot. (Don’t worry – we’ll get to his store and his niche in a second.)

However, Adam’s story isn’t one of a flashy online business that allowed him to retire early and spend his days driving sports cars and drinking cocktails by the pool. Instead, it’s about years of hard work maintaining a full-time job and spending his free time keeping his online store ahead of competitors until he was in a position to fully commit to it.

But make no mistake about it, Adam’s store is plenty successful. In fact, it makes around $102,000 in sales – and $12,000 in profit – every month.

And that becomes even more impressive when you learn he’s done it all selling wallplates.

Eager to learn more about his journey selling such an unusual and specific item, I recently spoke with Adam and got the scoop about how his bright idea for an online wallplate store came to life.

Starting a Store Selling… Wallplates?

As an early adopter of the internet and online shopping (“I remember when Amazon used to sell just books”), even in the mid-90s Adam Greenspan knew there were big opportunities to be had in the ecommerce realm. And he was keen to stake his claim.

He was making a living working for companies like Yahoo and entrepreneurs like Mark Cuban – he’d seen the possibilities and knew they were only expanding.

After moving to Dallas in 1998, Adam met a friend who worked manufacturing wallplates – you know, the decorative plate that goes around the power outlets or light switches in your home. Although it seems like an odd product to consider creating a business around, it was a product that sold well for his friend.

“You’d say, ‘Oh Wallplates, who really needs that?’ But actually, everybody has them and everybody has a ton of them.”

As the world of ecommerce grew, Adam sensed a great opportunity to sell these products online, especially as it was a pretty uncompetitive niche at the time. So, in 2002 he started talking with his friend about selling his products online and in 2003 Wallplate Warehouse went live.

The Power of Specific Niches

Adam’s store is the perfect example of a niche store – a very niche store. And it also has the advantage of being an evergreen niche, meaning there’s always going to be demand for the product he stocks. After all, as Adam told me: “Every home has a lot of light switch covers and outlets in them.”

It’s something he thinks is key for new entrepreneurs to focus on. “It doesn’t matter which market you’re in, but you really gotta find that niche market. If you could find that really niche market I think you could be successful.”

And taking a look at the steady popularity of wallplates over the last five years, it’s clear that this was a great niche to be involved in.

Because Adam was so focussed on wallplates – with a few night lights thrown in the mix – he was able to gain a really deep understanding of his target audience, their pain points, and how to deliver what they need.

“My typical customer goes to Home Depot or Lowe’s, and they spend hours walking around and they can’t find everything that they’re looking for because they don’t stock them all,” Adam said. “And then they come to us and they’re like, ‘Oh, well, we wish we had found you prior to our hours spent searching.’ Since we’re not like Amazon in the sense that we don’t have millions of other products around our product, it’s very easy to just go on [Wallplate Warehouse], get what you need, and get out and be done with it. Which is what customers want.”

Knowing this about his customers meant that Adam was able to develop a well-known, trusted brand by focusing on bringing his customers exactly what they needed. It was a method that worked and worked quickly.

“It was a success from the beginning,” he says. “It was a constant increase of traffic and sales. [The manufacturer] really wasn’t selling much online. And then within just a few months, I was one of his top retailers.”

So how exactly was Adam able to handle processing all of these orders on top of keeping the online store running and working his full-time job? Well, aside from having good time management, it was also because he operates using the dropshipping model.

A Million Dollar Dropshipping store

Don’t know what dropshipping is? Allow us to explain. Dropshipping is a business model where a store owner never has to keep large amounts of stock or ship items. Instead, a customer buys an item from a store, which then places an order with the supplier. From there, the supplier packages and ships the product directly to the customer.

Because there’s no need to bulk buy and hold stock, it’s a low-cost and low-risk business model, and apps such as Oberlo have made it easier to dropship than ever before.

But, just because it’s low-risk, doesn’t mean that dropshipping businesses can’t make a whole lot of money.

Adam’s store made over $1.3 million in sales in 2018 – and it’s on track to make even more in 2019.

While Adam started Wallplate Warehouse with just one supplier – his friend in Dallas – after seeing the success of the store, he began working with others. These days Wallplate Warehouse has three different suppliers across the United States and Adam is always open to working with others. “We’re always interested in adding new merchants who are willing to dropship,” he says.

Because light switches and power outlets differ in appearance by country, Adam’s store only ships to customers in the United States. And although this might seem like a restriction, it helps ensure faster shipping times and makes it easier to stay connected to his customers.

This connection to his store’s visitors has meant he’s been able to execute a very targeted marketing campaign, including some long-term strategies that might seem surprising when thinking about Wallplate Warehouse’s products.

A Switched-On Marketing Strategy

Even before his store was live, Adam was busy thinking about things he could do to help the business succeed.

Although most of the SEO tools we now have at our disposal weren’t available back in 2003, he was acutely aware that having a good brand name would both help him rank well on Google and make it instantly obvious what he was selling.

“It’s funny, because when I talked with my friend, who is a manufacturer, I said, ‘I think I’m gonna use the name Wallplate Warehouse.’ And we kind of laughed.”

Although Adam admits that his store’s name is a bit cheesy, it also worked. “When you do a Google search, you type in ‘wallplate,’ it’s like the first thing that comes up.

But just having a good name or domain won’t help your website rank on Google. For that you need a thorough SEO strategy.

Aside from his website being optimized with things such as good images, meta descriptions, and keywords across his landing pages and product pages, Adam also created a blog for his store.

Yes, that’s right, a blog that entirely revolves around wallplates and night lights.

And you thought writing blogs about swimwear or watches was hard.

Different Content for Different Search Intents

The Wallplate Warehouse blog has 15 pages worth of content – or around 70 individual articles. It covers things from how to clean your light switch covers, finding decorative wallplates for your living room, and how to choose the right size plate for your outlets.

And while Adam concedes that the blogs aren’t heavily read, they do generate traffic to the site – which is the ultimate goal of having them.

Adam’s website covers topics that capture two types of search intent – informational searches and transactional searches. While not everyone reading these blogs will immediately go on to purchase something, they both play an important role in his short and long-term strategies.

Informational searches: These are usually done when a person wants to learn more about a particular subject, though they probably don’t want to purchase anything at that specific moment.

Blog topics such as “A Beginner’s Guide to Positioning Electrical Wall Switches” or “Cleaning Your Light Switch Covers the Right Way” are examples of blogs that are perfect for informational searches.

While these blogs might not result in an immediate sale, they’re a fantastic way to add credibility to your brand and establish it as one with useful information. This can make all the difference in the future when these visitors may want to buy.

Transactional searches: These are searches made when someone is ready to purchase. They’re generally much more specific as the user has already done research on their options.

Many of the blogs on Adam’s website capture visitors when they considering specific types of wallplates, such as “Ceramic Wall Plates to Give Your Home an Elegant Look” or “Brass Switch Covers to Improve Your Home’s Aesthetic Appeal.” These articles serve a different intent than the more general ones.

Meanwhile, his product pages are also optimized to fully convert those users who are ready to buy.

Creating a blog for your website can be a time-consuming process and it can be costly if you outsource the work, as Adam does. However, there’s a reason why many successful online businesses take the time to create one: they work.

Blogs help you gain credibility, make your website more visible, and can be a fantastic way to make sales.

But as we know, you should always have multiple marketing channels and for Wallplate Warehouse by far the biggest form of marketing is pay-per-click.

Spending Money to Make Money

While Adam’s homepage and blogs rank organically on Google and other search engines (never forget Bing), his pay-per-click links have their high position because they have money behind them. For every customer who arrives on Wallplate Warehouse after clicking on one of these paid links Adam is charged a fee – hence the name pay-per-click.

Pay-per-click ads are easy to spot on Google because they have the little ‘Ad’ or ‘Sponsored’ labels next to the URL.

Although pay-per-click marketing has an ongoing cost, as long as the cost per click is much lower than the price of the item that the customer buys, it’s a great strategy. And for a business like Wallplate Warehouse, which rarely has orders for just one thing, using PPC is a no brainer. “It’s costly,” Adam admits, “but it pays off.”

Wallplate Warehouse’s conversion rate speaks for itself. At 4.66 percent, it’s more than double the eCommerce standard of about 2 percent. Not only is this hugely impressive, but it’s absolute proof that having a niche store selling items that meet a need is an excellent foundation for success.

While Adam used to manage all of Wallplate Warehouse’s PPC campaigns himself, eventually, it became so complicated that he knew he had to bring in outside help. “It got to a point where if you were not taking classes and constantly being updated on the constant changes, it was almost impossible to manage.”

This is something that many entrepreneurs struggle with, and for Adam, whose skills lie on the creative side of things, he overcame it by hiring help when he reached the limit of his capabilities.

Moving on to the Next Step

Having been a designer by trade, leaping into the world of business was certainly a different direction for Adam. But after years of building Wallplate Warehouse into a well-established and reputable store, he’d become an expert on his products and could also see other opportunities ripe for the taking.

Blending his original skillset with the knowledge he’d gained, Adam started talking with his manufacturer friend, and the pair came up with some concepts for night lights.

Although Adam had never created physical products before, using his design know-how, he was able to turn their ideas into 3D prints, which were then made into samples, and could finally be sold online.

These days he estimates that around 50 percent of the night lights sold through his main manufacturer are products that he’s designed. And not only that, but his designs are also sold in brick and mortar stores like Home Depot and Lowe’s – the same businesses that Wallplate Warehouse competes against.

Aside from designing products, Adam also designs the packaging that goes with these items, often making several different packaging variants for each product so they can be sold in different stores.

It’s a lot of work and takes a lot of time, but it’s what Adam loves to do, which is ultimately why he decided to sell Wallplate Warehouse.

“I’m trying to sell the business so I can focus on design, on product design, package design, which to me, is my real passion,” he said. “I do love having a business, and everything goes to my family and me, but I do want to focus on that. It’s difficult to do both. It’s just time, right? You can only have so much time to spend on that.”

Wallplate Warehouse is now up for sale on the Shopify Exchange. Adam says he’s keen to get a fair price and help the new owner with the transition period, and then he’s ready to return to his design roots full-time.

After 16 years in the wallplate game, it’s time for some other products to shine.

To be an entrepreneur is to be different. Ask any successful entrepreneur and they’ll tell you that they feel it every day. Entrepreneurs don’t want the same things everyone else does. The idea of a stable 9-5 office job? Just the thought would send a shiver down their spine.

Instead, entrepreneurs are driven by a passion to do something new, to push the boundaries of what’s possible. But often, entrepreneurs have trouble sticking to the rules. They might have struggled at school, forced to spend hours listening to teachers drone on about subjects they have no interest in.

In fact, some of the most successful entrepreneurs never made it through college. Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Travis Kalanick of Uber were all college dropouts. Increasingly, high schoolers are choosing to skip university altogether, feeling that the education system hasn’t kept up with the pace in which new technologies and industries are emerging.

Larry Summers, the economist and former president of Harvard University agrees, “Not enough people are innovating enough in higher education. General Electric looks nothing like it looked in 1975. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Stanford look a lot like they looked in 1975.”

Add the explosion of student debt, and the fact that almost half of millennial graduates feel that their degree was “very or somewhat unimportant” to their current job. It’s no surprise then that so many young people are questioning the path they just assumed they’d be traveling down.

Emma Reid is part of that new generation. She’s one of many young entrepreneurs who are carving out their own path, outside of the expected school-to-university track.

I called her up to hear more about her story. She takes us back to her beginnings as an 11-year-old entrepreneur, hustling to make $100. Then she takes us through the journey to building a $500,000 ecommerce business that she later walked away from. Through honesty and vulnerability of the realities of what it takes to succeed, Emma shares her experience as an entrepreneur.

Emma Reid the Entrepreneur

When I first came across Emma on Instagram, I could tell she was different. The 22-year-old Australian has built a following around her ecommerce advice and mentoring services. Through it, she’s committed to sharing the reality of life as an entrepreneur, without the smoke and mirrors.

The world of ecommerce gurus is crowded, but Emma stands out. In a sea of gurus posing next to lamborghinis, Emma proudly displays her own – a blue 2004 Toyota Camry with sun faded paint. “Cars are not assets,” she declares. “That’s why I don’t need a fancy one.”

She doesn’t need to try to come across as the biggest, baddest ecom hustler. For Emma, entrepreneurship is natural.

School on the other hand? She hated it.

“It just didn’t interest me,” she says. “I wasn’t learning at my own pace, and I wasn’t learning things that I was really passionate about learning. But when I was learning online stuff, it just really excited me and I’d get obsessed. I could never do that with school.”

So at age 16, she decided she would skip university and devote herself to a different path. After all, she’d already found her passion online. Choosing not to go to university, Emma says, “opened up some doors for me and opened up my mind to other avenues. I realized that you can make money doing other things. And you don’t have to go and get like that piece of paper.”

Instead she credits much of her success to to video games, and the fact that she’s been at this entrepreneurship thing for a while now.

Beginnings of Entrepreneurship

At 11 years old, Emma started her first online business. Flashback to the pre-Facebook days, and Emma was spending all her time on the social networking game Habbo Hotel. The site allows you to create a virtual character, build your own hotel, and furnish it with little pixelated furniture. To build the lushest pixel-hotel, you’d need to have enough Habbo credits, an in-game currency that could be purchased with real-world dollars.

Sensing an opportunity, Emma found a loophole that allowed her to spend her pocket money on Habbo credit gift cards, buy in-game furniture, and then flip it when prices went up. Then she could then sell onto other players for cold hard cash. Each transaction, she’d make a small margin.

“I made about 100 bucks doing that, which was pretty fun at 11,” she says.

An avid gamer, Emma believes that video games are ideal breeding grounds for entrepreneurs.  “I’ve met a few people that were really into video games that are entrepreneurs,” she says. “Often they’re successful because they’re used to leveling up, gaining experience, and the grind. Also when you’re young and you’re involved in online marketplaces with in-game currency, I think that can give you a different relationship with money.”

At 16 came her next business idea. Over the previous few years, she’d been spending her time building up followers on her Tumblr blog, and had amassed over 100,000. She installed advertising on her page, and as traffic grew, so did her revenue. She’d heard of affiliate marketing, and realized she could use the traffic on her blog to generate money through affiliate links. Soon, she was making thousands of dollars a month.

What she didn’t realize is this was a big no-no in Tumblrs books. She’d violated their terms of service. In one swift moment, all 100,000 of her Tumblr followers were gone. Ouch.

She immediately realized how vulnerable she’d been by having her whole audience contained on someone else’s platform. It meant she had to play by their rules, and in the end, they had all the power.

“I learned a lesson that you have to control the traffic. Otherwise if you’re just on someone else’s platform, then they can shut you down.”

She stored the event away in her mind, another business lesson learned.

It was some time in 2016 when Emma first heard about dropshipping. She’d come across a post on a forum detailing the process of running an ecommerce business without holding inventory.

Her entrepreneurship senses tingled.

“I spent probably 10 hours reading the entire thread,” she says. “Then I chucked up a store on WordPress on my new fitness blog, and got a sale that first day.”

Her first product? Bracelets with fitness quotes attached, a clever product match for her blog filled with stretching routines and fitness advice.

She was about six months in and her business was growing, to the point she was processing hundreds of orders a day. But then things came apart. Customers began to email her, asking where their products were. They hadn’t received them. She didn’t know what was happening, but reached out to her supplier that was handling the deliveries. “I had around 300 orders, and then the supplier didn’t fulfil any of them,” she says, sighing.

The situation quickly descended into a nightmare, as more customers complained that their order never turned up. “I had to process all these refunds. No other suppliers had it, and I just didn’t know what to do. It was too late.”

Pro Tip: Having a great supplier makes all the difference to your success. Check out our guide to finding the best dropshipping suppliers.

The Rise and Fall of the $500,000 Store

Then in May 2018, Emma decided to try dropshipping again. This time, she built her store with Shopify and used Oberlo to connect her store to suppliers’ products.

She began scouring Instagram for potential audiences to sell to. She already knew she wanted to focus on selling jewelry (more on her product strategy coming up), but she needed to find an audience to target. On Instagram she came across a niche community of animal lovers, and began interacting with them.

She’d spend all day and into the night working on the animal jewelry store. But it didn’t feel like work. The hours would happily melt away, as she entered a state of flow.

“I was working pretty much 100 hours a week. I was obsessed with it, and just testing everything and scaling.”

Her store began to pick up sales. Slowly, slowly, then all at once.

By early December, the holiday season was in full force and shoppers were purchasing more than ever before.

“Everyone was buying for Christmas, so I scaled up my ads,” she says. “I was spending over $5,000 a day.”

As demand for her products skyrocketed, her supplier began to fall behind.

“Everything was going crazy but my supplier was taking a while to send because they didn’t have enough stock to keep up,” she says. “I was trying to send to fulfilment centers at that stage, but I started a bit too late. The stock wasn’t arriving in the US fast enough.”

Customers were eagerly waiting on Christmas presents, but they weren’t arriving in time.

“I had to refund a lot of people, do a lot of customer service,” she says. “That was really bogging me down.”

Her store had made over $500,000 in revenue, but after spending all of her free time processing refunds and dealing with angry customers, she was burned out. History had repeated itself from her first store, but this time it was at a much bigger scale.

“I actually quit the store because I didn’t hire out, and I didn’t put systems in place.”

“I wanted to do it all myself because it was so fun for me. But eventually problems happen and you’re so focused on fixing your problems that you can’t hire out once it’s too late.”

So she turned off her ads, shut down her store, and stepped away. “I decided let’s just leave it there, try to recover a little bit and plan what’s next.”

Learning to Master Her Mindset

From the outside, Emma’s business looked like a success. After all, she’d made over $500,000 in revenue in less than a year.

But it left her feeling exhausted and altogether defeated. She needed some time away.

“I picked a few hobbies and read a lot of books and reflected and kind of figured out where I was gonna go next with this,” she says.

And as she read books like Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins and How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams, she began to see how she was holding herself back.

“I realized that I was doing way too much myself, and that I needed to actually connect with people and work on myself,” she says. “I realized I needed to build up the foundations, build some confidence to actually go on camera, or go to events and talk to people or hire people.”

Ever since she began her entrepreneurship journey selling Habbo Hotel game credits, she’d been doing it alone.

“Now I’m starting to see that you definitely need to be in that environment where you’re around more people and brainstorming, throwing stuff at each other and improving on ideas,” she says.  “That’s how you can really grow.”

So in mid 2019, in an attempt to push herself outside of her comfort zone and meet more entrepreneurs, she started publishing videos on YouTube and Instagram. She’s started a new store too, and has made over $30,000 in revenue so far. In her videos she proudly shares her successes, but more importantly, her failures.

“Showing your flaws and failures alongside your success is so important,” she says.

With a change in her mindset and her burgeoning new store, Emma has set her sights on something bigger than she ever imagined before. When I ask her where she’ll be in five years, she answers confidently, “I’ll be starting a multi-million dollar white-label brand.”

I can’t help but believe she’ll do it.

Unpacking the Four Secrets to Emma’s Success

1. Jewelry is a Winning Product

Since her first dip into ecommerce, Emma has stuck by one product type – jewelry. “It’s lightweight and small and you can price it higher,” she says. The weight of the product matters too, because you’ll be able to score free or very cheap shipping from your supplier. That means you can pass those savings onto your customers, making a more attractive offering.

But more importantly, jewelry isn’t just jewelry. “There’s lots of different niches that you can relate jewelry to,” Emma says. “So you can sell fitness jewelry to people who are really passionate about fitness, or animal jewelry to people who are really passionate about their favorite animal.”

Check out some jewelry product ideas you could target to animal lovers:

2. Look for Niche Communities

One of the best ways to set yourself up for success is to look for an audience that is deeply passionate about the niche you’re thinking of targeting. You might choose dogs, babies, fishing, or beauty. These are all things that people will gladly spend their time and money on.

To find these audiences, Emma first turns to Instagram. “I do a lot of research on Instagram using hashtags, you can find these small little niche communities on there,” she says.

Since you know yourself best, it can be useful to consider yourself as the ideal target customer, and to interrogate your own likes.

“It also helps to look at your own hobbies, and what kind of audience you’re in. Ask yourself what you’d be interested in buying. You could also consider your friends, what their hobbies are and what they’d be interested in buying. Actually show them a product and ask them what they think about it,” says Emma.

3. Try a 1+ Product Store

As a rule, Emma says, “I just don’t really believe in general stores.” Instead, she’s found success through setting up 1+ product stores. That is, creating a store where all your marketing focuses on one product, but within the store you also offer complementary products that you can use to upsell. You might sell different colour or design variants of the same product, or other products within the same niche.

In the end, you’re targeting the same audience with all your products, but offering them the chance to toss a few other products they’ll like in their basket before checking out.

“When you can really focus on one product and one audience then you can really dive deep into that and figure out exactly how to promote to them and create a brand around that,” says Emma. “But if you’re spreading yourself so thin on lots of different products, then you’re not going to go that deep and really make it work.”

4. Try Free Traffic Methods

Especially when you’re in the early stages of building your business and trying to test your products on different audiences, it pays to think about free traffic methods first. But as Emma warns, with free traffic strategies what you save in money you’ll pay for in your time.

“It takes a lot of time and energy, but anything free usually does.” she says. “But if you have a really limited budget, or are super new in the ecommerce space, then I highly recommend going this route.”

Emma shared her two most successful free traffic tactics.

Instagram interaction and comments: “I tried to figure out who my ideal customer was, and what hashtags would they be posting in, then I commented a lot on the pictures. In the early days, I was being pretty spammy by following everyone I could, and not leaving valuable comments. It wasn’t until I changed my approach that it started to get results. I began interacting like a real human and actually having conversations with people. I was building a community, not just an Instagram page. I would try to do 100 comments a day. Try to get to know your audience. Build up some sales, some pixel data, and some profit to use for ads later.”

Ambassador programs: “After commenting so much, people started to naturally reach out and wanted to be ambassadors for the products, so I made an ambassador program. I didn’t send out free product but the ambassadors get a 40 percent off lifetime discount, as well as 20 percent commission when someone buys through their 20 percent off code. This code is personalized, like NAME20. The real kicker is, I made a lot of initial sales from the ambassadors buying the product themselves. Since they got 40 percent off and wanted the product in their hands to create better content. And the more ambassadors you have posting about you, the more of their friends start asking to join. Then it snowballs.”

One of the advantages of ecommerce, and especially dropshipping, is that anywhere in the world with an internet connection can be a target market.

After all, you’re not looking for foot traffic to your physical store. You’re looking for web traffic in your online store.

That said, some markets are better than others. This post will look at Oberlo’s own data and hit on some of the best places for you to sell. We’ll look at:

• The best countries to dropship to
• The biggest markets for dropshippers
• A few less obvious markets that outperform their populations
• Some of the traits that the best performing markets have in common

So if you’ve ever wondered about the best countries to dropship to, read on!

The Best Countries For Dropshipping

No Doubt: The US is the Top Market

We’re going to devote a lot of ink to all of the countries where you can dropship other than the United States. But before we do, let’s be clear that the United States is a huge market for Oberlo merchants.

We thumbed through some data and identified which countries placed the most orders for Oberlo-sourced products in 2017. Here is what the Top 10 looks like, sans the United States:

And now, with the US:

Let’s splice that another way: Total orders from the US versus total orders from the rest of the world:

Yeah, the United States is definitely the top dog when it comes to generating dropshipping sales. It’s not hard to cook up theories for why that is. It’s the biggest economy in the world, for starters, and has the most mature ecommerce industry around. Amazon is from the US, eBay is from the US, Etsy is from the US, and on and on. Oh, and the US has launched more ecommerce stores with Oberlo than any other country for three straight years.

Of course, there are some drawbacks to targeting the US. The market is thoroughly saturated, which both increases competition and drives up advertising costs.

So with all due respect to the States, let’s take a closer look at some other countries that you should consider as you build your marketing campaigns and dropshipping strategy.

Scandinavia FTW

Oberblo’s list of top 20 markets for merchants is thoroughly diverse. Countries span North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The languages spoken include English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Dutch, as well as the 780 languages spoken in India.

Despite this diversity, however, you can’t help but notice that Scandinavia – those three sparsely-populated countries sitting atop Europe – is very well represented and could be the best countries to target for dropshipping. When we look at where Oberlo orders were sent, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark all sit in the 11-20 range.

This is noteworthy for a few reasons. Here is that 11-20 group by population:

Okay, India (1.3 billion) and Mexico (127 million) kind of skew things. Here is that same group, minus India and Mexico:

Now we can see just how petite Norway (NO), Sweden (SE), and Denmark (DK) are. Sure, New Zealand (NZ) and Ireland (IE) have even smaller populations, but Scandinavian countries combined have about 21 million people.

So why are they such good countries for dropshipping? Let’s speculate.

First off, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark have spending power. As anyone who’s ever gone out for a drink in Oslo or Copenhagen knows, these countries are expensive. According to the International Monetary Fund, all three are among the 11 most affluent countries in the world, per capita.

But that’s part of the beauty of dropshipping: You can sell to markets with huge spending power without having to pay local prices. You’re not paying Scandinavian manufacturers to produce products, and you’re not paying Scandinavian rent prices to own a store.

You’re launching Facebook campaigns and including those countries in your location filters. And chances are that whatever you’re charging for your dropshipping products, it’s not as much as Scandinavians are accustomed to paying for local brands.

Another possible factor: People in these countries speak exceptional English. In all three countries, more than 85 percent of the population speaks English.

English isn’t the official language of dropshipping. There is no official language. But it’s a good one to have in your back pocket. A Facebook ad or catchy Instagram post in English will have a bigger potential reach than a Facebook ad in, say, French.

So remember that Scandinavia is a place where your English headlines and product descriptions will be understood. And not only that, understood by people who, on average, have more money to spend at your store than just about anybody else.

Dropshipping in Australia

Already No. 3 in the world, dropshipping in Australia still has room to grow. By 2021, online sales across the country are expected to reach $15.44 billion which shows the growing popularity the industry is having. But what are the areas that can make you the most profit when dropshipping in Australia? In 2018 top categories by orders include:

• Women’s Clothing
• Home and Garden
• Beauty and Health
• Jewelry and Accessories
• Sports and Entertainment

As a fast growing market Australia has the potential to push your ecommerce store to huge success without having to alter your marketing material from English. Possibilities are endless with this top market when dropshipping as many of the popular payment gateways operate in this country, such as PayPal, PaymentExpress, and Shopify Payments, so online payments will not be a problem for you.

Online Businesses in France

With a population of 66.9 million people and an expected GDP per capita of 42,400 USD by 2022, France has a growing ecommerce landscape that makes for an enticing dropshipping market. France came in among the top 5 dropshipping countries by orders in 2017 and 2018, making it a winning market for our merchants to sell in. Does this information interest you? It should. The French care about beauty and health, but also like to indulge in jewelry sales.

But don’t under-estimate the French market as they have healthy spending in clothing, home decor, and entertainment, according to our historic data.

ePacket Delivery

Here are the top 20 markets that accounted for the most Oberlo orders in 2017:

1. United States
2. Great Britain
3. Australia
4. Canada
5. France
6. Germany
7. Brazil
8. Italy
9. Netherlands
10. Spain
11. New Zealand
12. Norway
13. Mexico
14. Sweden
15. Switzerland
16. Belgium
17. Ireland
18. Denmark
19. Israel
20. India

A diverse group, to be sure. Although one thing is consistent across the board: With the exception of India, each country supports ePacket delivery.

ePacket, for those not familiar, is a cheaper, faster delivery method for products coming out of China. Given the high volume of dropshipping products that are sourced from China, ePacket lets store owners offer better delivery options to markets around the world.

There is a chicken-or-egg element to this: Are buyers in these countries placing so many orders because of the ePacket delivery system? Or is ePacket available in these markets because they are huge ecommerce players?

It’s hard to say, but the fact remains: The top tier 20 markets for Oberlo merchants are almost exclusively countries that have ePacket.

If you want to take advantage of ePacket, it’s one of the filters you can use when you search for products to import into your store inside Oberlo:

Here’s the full lowdown on ePacket:

Facebook Penetration

Facebook is a great way to reach your target audiences. The only catch: Your target audiences need to be on Facebook. So Facebook penetration is something to keep in mind if you use Facebook for marketing.

Let’s look at a list of countries with the highest Facebook penetration, starting with Taiwan and its 66 percent Facebook penetration to see if there are top dropshipping countries among the list. The bold countries also appear in the Top 25 of total orders from Oberlo merchants.

• Taiwan
• Chile
• Argentina
• Australia
• United Kingdom
• United States
• Canada
• Malaysia
• Turkey
• France
• Brazil
• Mexico
• Peru
• Spain
• Colombia
• Italy
• Thailand
• Philippines
• Venezuela
• Germany
• Poland

There are a few things for dropshippers to note.

* Malaysia, the eighth-ranked country in terms of Facebook penetration, has been 28th, 24th, and 29th in total orders of Oberlo-sourced products from 2016 to 2018.

And this isn’t fueled by Malaysia having a huge population (it’s 45th worldwide) or tons of disposable income (it’s between 40 and 50, depending on the source, in per capita income).

But still, Malaysia has consistently accounted for a healthy chunk of Oberlo orders.

* The Philippines, meanwhile, has for three straight years been in the top 30 in Oberlo-sourced purchases, despite ranking lower than 100 in spending power.

We don’t want to make too many assumptions, but we do know that Malaysia and the Philippines have a high rate of Facebook usage, and that there are lots of English speakers in each country: In Malaysia, the majority of residents speak English, and in the Philippines, English is one of two official languages.

If you’re in North America or Europe, Malaysia and the Philippines might seem like the edge of the world. But they’re actually a lot closer to China – the potential birthplace of the products that you’re selling – than more “traditional” markets.

These are both countries to keep in mind if you have an English store or set up English ads.

Considerations Before Dropshipping in Any Country

Starting a dropshipping business in any country is not an easy feat, but knowing the steps you need to take and devising a good plan of action can help you overcome some of the hurdles along the way to make the journey less bumpy. The following 4 considerations are important before you start your dropshipping business in any country, regardless of country size and market saturation.

Decide Your Niche

Every ecommerce business solves a problem for a customer. The first step in a dropshipping journey is to find a product that serves a purpose for your target audience. Write down a few things that would solve some of your problems and start to research the ability for you to turn this into a dropshipping business. Consider your interests and those of your friends and family. Is there a niche here that you can excel in because of your knowledge? The sky is the limit with dropshipping as almost any product can be found on Oberlo.

Select Dropship Suppliers

Suppliers are hugely important to the success of your business. Finding a supplier that can provide a product that is high quality and delivered to your target country can help create a trusted brand around your business. But finding a supplier that is untrustworthy can ruin the reputation you have sought to build. This is why it is important to build a close relationship with your suppliers and to order samples from them to experience the service first-hand. If you are not happy with the service your potential suppliers give to you, then you shouldn’t choose to do business with them.

Every business has different expectations. It is important for you to understand your business expectations and provide high-quality service to your customers always.

Product Pricing

Dropshipping products may seem cheap, therefore charging a lower price than competitors could be a pricing strategy that you think is viable. If you plan on investing in advertising, designers, and website developers though this may not be a good option as you will not earn enough profit to grow your business beyond the start-up stage. Instead consider the investment you will make for your business and factor that into your forecasted sales. Now you can make a decision on pricing that is more in line with your business goals and profitability.

Competitor Analysis

Once you choose your products, suppliers, and pricing the final step on your ecommerce setup journey should be a competitor analysis to fully understand the competitive landscape in your market. If you are planning a dropshipping business in certain countries you can factor local competitors in at this stage to really understand the extent of your future marketing efforts. This competitor analysis will also help you understand if your goals and forecasted sales are over-ambitious while trying to build your brand.

Best Countries to Dropship to

One of the biggest advantages of dropshipping is that you can get your products anywhere. Top dropshipping countries like the United States, United Kingdom, and other “usual suspects” will continue to account for the biggest chunk of Oberlo merchants’ orders.

That said, our data shows that the best countries to target for dropshipping and viable dropshipping markets are scattered from Scandinavia to the Asia-Pacific. And you don’t need to do anything to reach them that you wouldn’t be doing already.

While different countries have their own quirks when it comes to shipping, chances are that your suppliers will be able to deliver products to customers no matter where they are.

Some food for thought the next time you ask yourself which markets to target!