The Dropship Unlocked Podcast

Easiest Way to Start Dropshipping (BLUEPRINT EXPLAINED) – Episode 135

• Lewis Smith & James Eardley • Season 1 • Episode 135

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🗣 In this episode, Lewis Smith and James Eardley explain the easiest way to start dropshipping, focusing on the importance of high-ticket products, selecting the right suppliers, and avoiding the pitfalls many beginners face.


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Topics Discussed:
 ★ Why High-Ticket Dropshipping is the Easiest Path: Lewis and James break down how selling high-ticket products allows for higher profits, fewer orders, and easier scalability.
★ The HomeTurf Advantage: Learn how partnering with domestic suppliers speeds up delivery and reduces customer service issues.
★ Choosing the Right Niche: Understand the importance of doing thorough research upfront to ensure you’re targeting the right market.
★ The Reality of Dropshipping: The hosts discuss why building a successful dropshipping business takes effort and frontloading the hard work is key.

Links and Resources Mentioned:


Key Takeaways:
 ★ High-Ticket Dropshipping is More Efficient: Focus on higher-priced products with larger margins to reduce the complexity of your business.
★ Domestic Suppliers Can Simplify Logistics: Partnering with local suppliers improves delivery times and minimizes customer service issues.
★ Niche Research is Crucial: Don't skip the niche research phase—it’s better to take your time upfront than to deal with problems later.
★ Think Long-Term: Focusing on sustainable growth and avoiding quick wins will set you up for a more profitable future.

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★★★ Dropship Unlocked - Lewis Smith ★★★
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Lewis Smith:

The easiest way to start drop shipping isn't what you think, because it's all about focusing on if you're following the traditional drop shipping path, the truth is, once you realize that everything changes for your business, and I wish I knew this before I started, I would have made a lot more money. Now I get it. Everyone is looking for shortcuts, but after making over 5 million pounds in sales, I can safely say that Welcome to the dropship unlocked Podcast. I'm Louis Smith, the founder of dropship unlocked, and with me is our Client Success Coach James Eardley. Now when we're not recording podcast episodes or running our own e commerce businesses, you'll find us helping aspiring entrepreneurs launch their own high ticket drop shipping stores. So if you're ready to build your own six or even seven figure online business, then head over to dropship unlocked.com. Forward slash, start now, sit back, relax and let's unlock your potential with the dropship unlocked podcast today, we're going to be breaking down the easiest way to start drop shipping today, and we're going to clarify some misconceptions that might trip you up along the way. So Lewis, a lot of people believe drop shipping is an easy way to start an E commerce business, but there is a lot more to it than that. It's not just about setting up a website, pushing a few products, so when it comes to actually choosing the right type of drop shipping specifically for ease. What should people be focusing on? Yeah, well, you'll have heard us say that we believe high ticket drop shipping is the way to go if you're looking to make a meaningful income, and do it with fewer orders, without the complexity, without all of the admin and the hassle of having to have 1000s of orders, all of the logistics that are required for a business like that, you can actually make some quite smart decisions early on in your journey to select a model that fits into the lifestyle that you ultimately want. And we believe high ticket drop shipping, so selling products that are higher priced, more premium and with a therefore more premium price tag attached to them makes your life as the business owner a lot more enjoyable down the line, and also serves your customer as well as well. So one of the other ways that you can simplify the business that we talk about the home turf advantage model that I've used since 2017 is using domestic suppliers. So using suppliers who are based in the same country in which your customers are based in. So when we say domestic, we mean in relation to your customers. Because the advantage this gives you is obviously the fast delivery, avoiding those long delivery times, and just reducing the amount of customer interaction that you have to have, because people aren't saying, where's my order? Why is it, you know, not arrived two weeks later. And if you can partner with suppliers who already offer this, who are in the same country as your customers, who have those premium products at the higher price points and are already drop shipping, it just ensures that you're slotting into a system that is already functioning. You haven't got to reinvent the wheel, and you can just benefit from it. From day one, that existing demand that's already there, you can tap into that, and you have a business that is viable right from the start. There's certainly a few traits like that that make it so much easier as soon as you go into this type of drop shipping. Previously, I was trying to do the traditional drop shipping route, and if I had done this from the very start, I'd have made a lot more money, because initially I was trying to find products that were only like 30 or 40 pounds each or 30 $40 and so every time I made a sale, it would maybe net me about 15 pounds, 20 pounds profit. So I needed to make a significant amount of sales to make my target income. And when you make a significant amount of sales, you've got a significant amount of customers to look after. Customers to look after. You've got a significant amount of orders to fulfill, the deliveries to arrange, and it's a lot harder work, but you have to really go through this. And when I look came across the drop ship a lot master customers. It was like mind blowing for me, that actually it was easier to sell high ticket products than it is to sell low ticket products. Why do you think so many people are in that mindset when they think about an easy drop shipping that they should go for cheap products that they can find on AliExpress, find a drop shipping supplier and start setting up Facebook ads the same day? Why is it not obvious that that's like harder in the long run? Yeah, what's the expression common sense? Isn't that common? It's like when you think about it and looking back, hindsight is a wonderful thing, right? You think, of course, it would be easier to sell products with higher margins. Maybe it comes down to a sense of self belief and self worth from early stage entrepreneurs and people who've never run businesses before, and think, Okay, I'm going to create. A business. Oh, but I don't have experience, so why would anyone buy expensive items from me? And you forget that you're going to be doing the same thing regardless the value and the price of the product isn't correlated with your experience as an entrepreneur. You know you're just opening a shop. What you sell in that shop is almost secondary. So think of it that you're starting a business. You're starting a shop. Regardless what you then stock the digital shelves of that shop is up to you. So make that decision consciously. Don't just sell the first thing that you know, some site markets to you as an easy business model, because there seems to be like a low perceived barrier to entry. The barrier to entry is the same, if not harder, with selling cheaper products, because you then have to try and make it work financially, like you said, and squeeze your profit margins down and make it work with ads. If you can just make 234, 100 pounds profit on every sale that you make, you actually create a lot more buffer, and therefore it's actually easier as an early stage entrepreneur and someone with limited experience, because you've built in that margin for error that that buffer for you. So yeah, I think it's probably down to just misconceptions, self belief, noise on social media, people touting the low price model because there's no barrier to entry in that. Well, they say there isn't, and they say that, like that, anyone can do it, because it's it's true, anyone can go to AliExpress team who open up an account and then just chuck a load of products on a store. Well, they don't tell you is that later on, you know, you'll end up getting your account suspended, or your customers will complain, you'll make no profit on the orders that you make after ad spend. Whereas, if they were honest and they were like, if you're someone who's willing to make a phone call to a supplier, maybe go and speak to a supplier in person and actually put yourself out there, you're way better off creating a defensible business that does have a little bit of a fence around it that will stop the dabblers from entering that market. Because the people that would never pick up the phone to a supplier, or never, you know, go and see a supplier, are therefore never going to enter that market and be your competition. So, yeah, I think it's, um, it's probably to our advantage, right? That people don't go straight into it definitely, definitely to our advantage, because most people's mindset, like you say mine was as well, was to go after cheap products, I could easily start selling without having to get on the phone to a supplier, but that means that there are hundreds 1000s of these stores selling the same products, whereas when you go into the high ticket game, you've suddenly separated yourself from people that aren't taking it that seriously, who are just going straight to low ticket items and but I think there's something we need to touch on here, Lewis, is that when We think about easiest drop shipping methods, people often start and think about how easy is it to start, and then they don't think about the longer term gain, or the longer term reality of what it's like to run that business once you've got it up and running. So because we've run dropshipping businesses for years now, we know the reality is that setting up a drop shipping store isn't easy. It may be simple steps to follow, but it isn't an easy business. There's no get rich quick scheme. So talk to me about what you think about the the reality of it. It's like with drop shipping. And talk to me about the the way that you would get into drop shipping if you were trying to do easy, but not just easy in terms of setting up easy for the long term. Yeah, it's it's funny, like, if you relate this to offline business. I was chatting to a friend recently who's probably in his 60s and has his own business, like a transport business, right? So he's he's got couriers. They do big transportation for, like business to business things. Now he set up his business years ago himself. He was the guy doing it. He was like leasing the trucks, hiring the drivers, getting everything going, and now he's passed on the business to family members who now run that business. And he's like just living his best life, like just enjoying his days and just doing whatever he wants, playing sports, playing golf. And is the business owner. So on the surface of it, you could look at that and say, like, did he start an easy business, or did he put in a hell of a lot of work early on so that he could have an easy Yeah, I'm saying that word, like almost ingest an easy life later. Because, yes, he's created this amazing life, but he front loaded that work. He put that work in. He took that risk initially, of hiring those drivers, of getting that warehouse of, you know, putting probably entering a business that he didn't have much experience in and believing in himself. So the same is true here with us. Like, are we looking for an easy business from day one where, like, we can just click a few buttons and go to AliExpress and temu and upload a few products and then, like, oh, it's all really easy, but then creates loads of headaches later, and isn't really a business that we can live off, or are we looking for a business that actually creates an easy life for us eventually, but might require some foundational hard work that we can embrace initially? If you front load that work like put the hard work at the front of course. It's going to be tough. Any business worth creating will be tough to do. Otherwise there'd be no barrier to entry, and it would be flooded with competitors. So yes, we've got to get over that initial hurdle that separates all the people that you know will never put in that effort. But once you do that, that as I say, it's pretty quiet at the top because that initial perceived, um, burst of effort that's required just makes so many half hearted entrepreneurs fall by the wayside because they just don't have what it takes to get over that initial, front loaded hurdle. And I the way I think of it is it's going to be hard either way. Would you rather condense that difficulty into a short time frame and front load it, or would you rather just have a really hard life from now until you retire? Because it's you almost can't choose. Well, you can choose your difficulty, but it is going to be difficult either way. So ultimately, with this it's a business. There's no such thing as an easy business. It takes consistent effort. It takes having the right mindset. And it's not a get rich quick scheme. Don't fall for that trap. If someone's telling you that it it's going to be easy. Be very suspicious of what they're what they're selling, but building a successful drop shipping business, just like any other business, whilst it's challenging, just remember, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it. And if you can take that approach, that long term, delayed gratification approach, of I'm going to put in the work now, because later, I want to have a life where my team run the business. The hard work initially was done. I got over that hurdle, and now I'm able to reap the rewards from it. Think it takes that longer term approach to understand that the launch phase, or the startup phase, realistically lasts, what two months, one or two months when you're building a website, signing suppliers and launching but the duration of time where that business is up and running and making you an income, we're still running the businesses that we started. I started mine four years ago, and so that's been a lot longer of a phase than my initial two month starter phase, or however long it took to get live with ads and start making sales. So realistically, what you need to realize is everyone's so quick to think about the two months of setting up and what's going to be easy now, in the first two months to get up and running, when really the mindset shift is thinking more long term and realizing that the duration of your visits is going to last a lot longer than the launch phase. So if you can think about what's going to be easy after the launch phase, and that's going to give you a lot of a lot of help, why do you think people are naturally more inclined to be thinking about the short term that the launch phase rather than the long term phase? Yeah, so if you it's funny, if you think of like a graph with the x axis along the bottom of time right so time throughout now, until you know, the end of our working career, most people, you know in a job that they work hard in, that they're always vying for promotion, trying to get a pay rise, trying to work their way up the ladder, are probably hovering around, I don't know, like a five Difficulty, something like that, like they're not really pushing themselves, but they're also not kind of coasting. They're just like doing what they need to do to hit their targets. Maybe it's a six. If you start a business like this and someone says to you, okay, it's going to be an eight or a nine for a few months, you're going to have to really put in the effort. But then after that, it drops to a two for the rest of your career. Occasionally, it might jump back up to a four if you have a problem and you need to bring in a team member or hire someone, or bring, you, know, redesign a website or something, but then you're back to a two because you're a business owner and you've front loaded that work. You You tolerated that six months of eight, 910, difficulty, right? But it was fun. You enjoyed it, but it was difficult. Versus someone else who says, Okay, you want to quit your job, here's a business model that's a two from day one. So your graph starts now at two. You're like, oh, I can drop from a six down to a two and be a two forever. It's like, no, it's a two now, but it will jump up to like a 910 later, because you're going to be inundated with problems and dynamics. So it's almost like you can't escape the numbers, like the the units of difficulty that are going to appear along that graph are the same. It's just whether you choose to absorb them now or kind of push them into the long grass and, like, kick the can down the road for later you it's going to catch up with you. So that's the way I view it is, like, do the foundational work properly to start with, so that you're not repeating yourself and having to, like, reinvent it all later. And, yeah, I guess that's why people go for the easy option often, because they're lured in by the like, oh, I can drop down to a two difficulty on the graph, fantastic. I'll just do that and quit my job, and everything will be fine. Yeah. And people tend to set their goals three months in advance, or this month I'm going to do this, or even just this week I'm going to build a store. And so then they're thinking about, What can I get done in a week? And I had this feeling constantly when I was building my first business of a rush on my mind constantly. If I just want to be live, I want to be making sales, I want to quit my job ASAP, but I wish I had taken a step. And I was taught this lesson when I went wrong and I failed, and I failed my first few drop shipping businesses, and I had to come into the master class to realize that front loading the work is a completely different way of looking at things, because, yes, you have to voluntarily put yourself to a harder level of difficulty than you would have been on when you're just in a job, only because you have to do the job as well as run the business, but with the long term approach, knowing that eventually you hire a VA, your ads are running and profitable, and the store can be managed for you, like it has been now for, like, over three years since I first hired my VA. And yeah, it's, it's being able to see the longer term vision of when you build a business, rather than focusing on what you're gonna have to do right now. But on this topic, then the people that have come to this video and were like, video were like, I want to build the easiest possible drop shipping model. We still believe this is the easiest way of drop shipping, but it's just flipped on its head, not right now. It will be easier in the future. So why do you think it's easier then for people to do the work up front, rather than in the long term? Well, just zoom out. Just literally, if you look at your life as a timeline, zoom out when you're asking the question of, what's the easiest business model? Don't, don't think what's the easiest way to make money this week or next week or this month? Like, there's loads of ways you could do that, that then fall flat on their face two months in and you're back to work in the job, zoom out and say, Okay, now what is the I hate the word easiest. Think it's it's the wrong way to look at it, because you should enjoy and embrace the challenge and the difficulty. But there's no doubt that the difficulty drops once you have systems in place, once you have a VA virtual assistant hired, once you have your ads running, you can go and chill and live in Bali like you're doing right now, and just lay back and be by the pool and really, like, essentially, live the life that I talked about my friend living, where he's just enjoying his retirement whilst still owning the business. So it's almost like he's he's not retired. He still owns the business, but he's just not in the business, and hasn't been for a few years now. And so I think, yeah, if you're thinking about what's the easiest way to build an E commerce business? Zoom out a little bit and look at the holistic view and ask yourself, Okay, before I answer that question over what time frame are we talking if you want a long term sustainable business that's going to be around for years to come, do you really want to mark up cheap widgets from China and hope that you can keep that arbitrage profit level difference going for years into the future. I think the way the world's going, it's unlikely that that's going to last for too long before you get swamped with competitors and before they start selling directly to customers. But if you're working with reputable UK brands, selling products that are 1000 pounds, 2000 pounds, and netting 30% margin on that, you're clearing 600 pounds profit in every sale. Those retailers, those suppliers, their route to market, are retailers. They are have partnerships with retailers that have been around since before the internet existed, and they will continue to do so. So you're just slotting into a proven existing business model where you're the business owner, and I would argue, in the long term, that's the easier option, but I agree that the term easy has so many different connotations with it that isn't the reality. So perhaps you've come to this video because you've searched easy way to start drop shipping, and I think the first thing to address is if that's what you're searching for, if you're looking for the easy way to make money, then there's a lesson for you here. Is that you'll have to grow yourself. You'll have to go through difficulties. There will be challenges for you to achieve goals that you've never achieved before. You'll have to become a person that you're not at the moment, and that takes pain, because you have to go through the growth, and you have to learn new things and be open to things. So think about the way that you're you're approaching drop shipping, and understand there's going to be work involved either way. There's new work involved if you don't succeed, and you go in a nine to five job for the rest of your life, but if you choose to front load the work, like we're suggesting, yes, it's not going to be easy straight away, but over the long term, you build a business that has so many advantages compared to others that you could rush into right now, like the low ticket drop shipping that we're comparing it to today, give us some real, tangible examples, Lewis, of things that you would do up front when you're front loading the work that gives very easy, tangible results that we can show people of why it would be easier in the future if you do that work up front. Yeah, absolutely. And the term easy, just to address that for a second. If I had discovered an easy, quick way to make money and suddenly it was working, I would be very nervous, and I would probably lose sleep over it. I'd probably struggle to sleep soundly at night. And the reason I say that is because I'd think, well, if I found it that easy, who else is nipping at my heels? Who else is doing exactly the same? Whereas I pride myself on the fact that I did that hard work. I did that six months, 12 months, at a, you know, 789, difficulty, because that's what created my moat around my business, and I know that I put in that work that will separate me from the 99 That don't do that. And if you're in the 1% and you think I would rather do that and put in the time now so that I can enjoy the rewards later, and then I think that's the way to think of it. You don't want to be constantly looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life just because you suddenly stumbled across some easy business model. So it's like you say, it's almost that the fool's gold. It's the it's not the right thing to be searching for in the first place, because you end up worrying if you do find this. But yeah, to answer your question like, What are the tangible things that that you can be doing to start with? I mean, if you, if you don't do the niche research upfront, for example, you're going to end up having a very hard time serving a market that possibly does not even exist, because you're thinking, Well, I'm passionate about these products, or, you know, I heard from a relative that they bought something like this, so this is really a market that I'm sure will do well, and you're kind of dealing with a very small sample size, and you've taken a bit of a gut instinct approach, rather than a data driven approach, that could end badly, and does for many people who don't research and thoroughly validate the niche markets that they're going into. So that's an example of some of the hard work. People are like, I find it so hard to pick a niche and like, Well, yeah, it can be time consuming. But you know, you go through our niche validation criteria, where we've got like, nine different criteria and all of the walk through steps on how to do it. It's like, yes, it can be time consuming, but you'd rather do that and be sure that you're building a business on solid foundations, rather than just kind of go with the first one that you see and do it on an instinct and just hope that it works. The other thing is like, if, for example, if you don't build your MVS, your minimum viable store, you could have a very difficult time signing suppliers later, because, say, you didn't do the hard work of building the the website. When you go to suppliers, they're gonna say, Okay, show us your presence. Then, like, show us who you are as a business, and you won't have anything to show them because you didn't front load the work. So it's all of that stuff. It's like the research, the build the you know, setting things up the right way, having your business, bank account, your limited company, your ad accounts working, you're retargeting. What like those things take time, and there are steps to do it. They're not necessarily complex, but they just take time. And they just take a willingness to learn. And the list of that stuff goes on and on, but if you don't front load that work up front, then, yeah, you're probably going to face a lot of difficulties along the way, because you're constantly searching for shortcuts Exactly. That's why I found it so so beneficial to have the the master class to follow when I built my business, because I knew that this it was all set out sequentially. There was a reason for the things I did early on, because it would come to fruition later in the process. So maybe I didn't understand initially why it was so important to have a business bank account set up from the very start. Then I got to the next stage, which was signing up to having my professional email address and my personal phone line, and I had a business bank account to pay for those subscriptions, or I set a limited company at first as soon as we went through the process, and that meant when I signed suppliers, I had my legal entity in place. So it all makes sense, but for a reason, you've got to do the hard work up front to get yourself in the great position to capitalize down the line. And so that's why having that approach of front loading the work gives you an easier life down the line. So you have to have a bit of a longer term vision, because there's no shortcut to success in business. Now, before we wrap up thing, it's important that we mentioned another episode for somebody that's looking to to have more insights about how to avoid common traps like searching for easy drop shipping. So those people that want to avoid running into costly mistakes, we've made an episode all about that, which is episode 101 of the dropship unlock podcast, and that's called the top five drop shipping mistakes that will cost you 1000s. So Louis, to wrap up on this topic today. Do you have any final thoughts for anyone that's looking to start their drop shipping journey? I'd say start small. Make sure you're setting up the right foundations as you go. Be very clear on what your vision is for the business and for your life. It's about long term consistency. Don't look for the short term, easy, quick wins necessarily, like those are there, but will they last? Probably not. And just be patient that delayed gratification. Be prepared for a tough start. There are some difficult chapters in the early stages of the journey, but trust the process. Take inspiration from the people who've been through those phases and shared stories in our you know, success story podcast episodes we've done recently, and the results will follow. So be willing to go through that. Zoom out. Look at the bigger picture. Ask yourself, Do I want a long term, easy life, or do I just want the easy, quick, win now, and if you want to get started and you'd like our help to do so, head over to dropship unlocked.com, forward slash, start where we've laid everything out for you, right. There. Are you enjoying the podcast? We'd love to hear from you leave a comment or a review, and we might feature it in an upcoming episode. And for detailed show notes and resources, visit dropship unlock.com forward slash. Podcast. If you found value in any episode of this podcast, please, could you take just 10 seconds to leave us a quick five star review on your favorite podcast app? It helps us more than you can imagine, and who knows, you might just hear your comments read out on the show. Thanks for being a part of our community. Your support helps us keep delivering new episodes to you every week. Now it's time to answer a question that we've received from a listener of the podcast. So if you have any questions that have come up while you've been listening to today's episode or watching, all you need to do is comment beneath the YouTube video version of this episode today. Not only will it be answered in the comments, but it may also be featured in an upcoming dropship unlock podcast episode. So that's exactly what Danny Wheatley has done. So Danny Wheatley, author on YouTube, has asked, love this, do you have videos that show how to set everything up? I'm a complete beginner with a small budget to start with. Thanks for your question, Danny. And absolutely yes, we do. We've got loads of content on our YouTube channel to help you set up your E commerce business. Using our home turf advantage model, we break down the entire process step by step, everything from finding suppliers to setting up your store, getting started with high ticket drop shipping using all of the steps that we go through. And if you're looking for a complete structured guide, then the best place to go to is probably head to dropship unlocked.com, forward slash, start, and that's where we lay everything out for you. Guide me through what to do next and making it very easy to follow whatever your budget is. Danny, perfect. Looking forward to seeing you inside. Danny, okay, thank you, Louis. Now it's time to highlight a recent review that we've had for the podcast as well, because if you leave a review for us, we want to give you a shout out. So that's exactly what Paul Haynes has done. So Paul Haynes, I know he's in the program. Paul Haynes, seven, five, double, two. He shared his thoughts recently, and said, after watching one of the previous success stories that we had on the on the YouTube channel and on the podcast, you said, Well done, Steve. Love your tenacity and very inspiring. Yeah, I totally agree with your comment, Paul, it was a great conversation with Steve, and he's going to do very well. So excited to continue following his journey. Thanks very much for your review as well, Paul, we really appreciate it and glad to hear that you've been enjoying the podcast. So thank you for listening today. If you enjoyed today's episode, maybe share it with a friend or a colleague. It's a great way to spread the knowledge and help someone else on their e commerce journey, and we appreciate every bit of support that you give us. Thank you for joining us on this episode of the dropship unlocked podcast. We hope you are leaving with new insights and inspiration to fuel your entrepreneurial journey, to kick start your E commerce business, head over to dropship unlocked.com, forward slash, start. It's the perfect place to start and get access to resources that will help you build your business from the ground up. And don't forget to hit that subscribe button for more episodes packed with strategies, tips and success stories, plus, if you enjoyed this episode today, a five star review would mean the world to us, and you might even get a shout out on the next episode. Thank you for choosing to spend your time with us today. We can't wait to bring you more insights on the next episode of the dropship unlocked podcast. You