Supporting your Family with Dropshipping

This week, we’re going to peek into the world of Pierre Emmanuel, a French immigrant who made a killing with dropshipping to support his family after their move to the U.S. He used his digital marketing expertise to rake in almost $1 million in revenue his first year.

And now, he’s giving us his five juiciest tips for you to use in your own entrepreneurial adventure.

 

1. Keep detailed records.

This one gets a lot of newbies. If there’s unusual activity in accounts like PayPal or Shopify, those companies might place some of your money on hold until they’re sure you’re legit.

Both companies reserved part of Pierre’s cash after he got a bunch of returns. (Another lesson: don’t sell cheap plastic products.) Eventually, he got his money back after proving he was legit.

The point is: keep detailed records of your business activities so that you can prove the incomings and outgoings from your accounts.

 

2. Invest in good marketing.

ThisPierre is a bit biased about good marketing. He knows the value.

At one point, he paid $2,700 for a stunning product video for his Facebook ads.

While this seems like a lot upfront, he made way more in revenue as a result of using the video in his ads.

This just goes to show you that some extra investment in quality can take you far in the long run – so think twice before you take the cheap route for all of your marketing efforts.

 

3. Spy on your competitors for inspiration.

Nothing like a good ol’ game of spy.

Pierre has a great trick that helps him to validate his products. He uses Facebook’s “Page Transparency” section to spy on the ads of other businesses. Genius.

Pierre says: “I spy a little bit on the competitors to see the numbers of views they have on their ads. And I know, because it’s my job, that an ad that has one million views is probably an ad that is working because if not, you’re spending a lot of money for nothing.”

Always take advantage of the tools available to you. Your competitors definitely will.

 

4. Build a system that works for you.

Pierre is constantly on the hunt for winning products for his general store.

So he needed to create a good, repeatable system. His system has two parts: the first one was the Facebook spying we just talked about.

The second part is using Facebook ads to see if the news products will sell. “Most of the time, it doesn’t work… But, if a product is really, really working, it’s worth trying 10 products that aren’t working. It’s part of the game.”

 

5. Ride the ups and downs.

Spoiler alert: it’s pretty likely that your first try will fail (and second, and maybe even your third…).

This is 100% normal. Even Pierre had a few rough dips where he had to scale back on his advertising and scramble to find new suppliers.

But he bounced back in the end. He says: “If you find it really rough in the first month, maybe you’re just in a slump period… There are always ups and downs.”