22-year-old Melvin Chee from Melbourne, Australia Went from experimenting with ecommerce dropshipping His During semester break to a six-figure business in just 3 months. He Had Previously started Several different businesses, Many of qui failed spectacularly. Some efforts de son Were featured on BBC News and StartupDaily, aim His biggest hit so far Was Largely started by accident. It was a conversation he saw about dropshipping with Oberlo in a Facebook group that got the wheels turning. As he explains it:
I Decided to give it a go after-Oberlo coming across in a Facebook Group back in December. I thought, why not give it a shot as an experiment During my semester break, and that's how it got started.
What's dropshipping?
With dropshipping, e-commerce store-owners can sell and ship products to customers Their Actually without ever seeing or handling the products. After you sell a product, you simply buy it from a supplier and have it shipped directly to the customer. Dropshipping is far from perfect, it's purpose Clearly one of the Easiest ways to jump-start an online store.
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Melvin got started with less than a $ 100 investment. All he could in was His Time, a domain name, and Shopify has Oberlo + subscription. "Dropshipping allowed me to focus on what I do best; Bringing in traffic and converting customers "he says.
Picking a product idea
Given the access to thousand of dropshipped products, Melvin started off by picking His store category - clothing. Then he Narrowed That very broad category down by testing a constant stream of ideas, retaining the ones That Gained traction and Removing the ones That did not work.
As a tiny startup, he Knew he needed to find a kennel to inhabit. The challenge in a clothing alcove is the difficulty of Gaining Attention with a single product daily use like basic T-Shirt, competitively-even if it's priced. The key for _him_ Was adding value to the T-shirt through what's printed on it. When you sell shirts with messages like "I speak fluent sarcasm," Suddenly you-have something That will appeal to a specific audience, and you can use to your benefit That.
Melvin notes, "I first regarded more-size or fitness clothing, goal Then picked youth clothing and accessories with trendy hipster style, qui fit the Instagram marketing channel Where I had some experience. "
Launching a store
When building a store, Melvin recommends putting aside your dreams of Being a huge supermall , at least in the Beginning. What you really need as a small startup is a straightforward approach to selling your products, and a basic online store reserves this goal perfectly well.
You can go to gold Reviews another Shopify hosted e-commerce platform, register a store, pick a ready-to-use store theme, and you're ready to roll. Do not invest a lot of time in customizing it or designing the perfect logo; That can all happen later as your ideas gain traction. If you Lack confidence in your e-commerce skills, search for free e-commerce shopping That can lead you through the launch Entire process.
Keep in mind, HOWEVER, That "building something nobody wants is the ultimate form of waste." Making sales is the only proof of your store's utility, so That needs to be your first and primary focus.
Marketing strategy
Before launching Actually His store, Melvin Spent a good deal of time building an audience on Instagram. "Hands down, Instagram has-been the greatest in terms of ROI on every dollar Spent," Melvin notes. In three months, he's managed to build over 130k followers on Instagram and find 'loopholes' to please use Instagram as a go-to channel for building an e-commerce business.
Melvin Analyzed Instagram happy and shared what is already popular, Such As hipster clothing with humorous quotes. Then he retargeted the traffic he received from Instagram over to Facebook to further Top push the target audience to make purchases Single.
Instagram posts combined with Relatively low-key calls to action Such As "Tag Someone Who Would Wear This" Boosted Melvin's blind commitment and Reduced advertising costs, qui in turn allowed His Apparels Co. company to Quickly build momentum.
Melvin goes on to say That new store-owners must Quickly learn to speak the Sámi language as Their customers. The first thing to do is to suit les voice golden theme for the business, as well as shaping the right image before anything else. He notices That Many e-commerce startups are try trying to speak too many languages to a poorly defined audience, qui only reserves to the customer confused and fails to make a store stand out in a crowded market.
For Those of You Who matter if Instagram is right for your business, Melvin Suggests checking out Shopify's guide, 50 Ways to Make Your First Sale, qui he says is the beginner's Holy Grail.
It looks like the combination of focus on sales, a specific Niche product, and the right Message Delivered through the right channels Worked quite well in transforming what Melvin thought of as a summer break experiment into a life changing business.
After serving more than 4,000 customers, Melvin Sold His business to focus on finishing His studies. He's looking forward to traveling as a nomad for FEW months, as he says, "to experience life while building the next dropshipping venture."
This post Originally published on Medium.