What You Need To Know To Start Dropshipping Today. FAQ Special (Episode 144)

👉 Ready to start your own online store? Start here: https://dropshipunlocked.com/online-event?el=podcast-144-what-you-need-to-know-to-start-dropshipping-today 

🗣In this episode, Lewis Smith and James Eardley dive into the most common questions they get asked by aspiring entrepreneurs who are ready to start their dropshipping business. Whether you're feeling overwhelmed, unsure about the time commitment, or worried about tech, this episode provides all the answers you need to get started with confidence.

👉 Prefer to watch this on YouTube? Check it out here ➡️https://youtu.be/EVIhtYpEDMI

Topics Discussed:
 ★ How Much Time Do You Need to Start? Lewis and James share how even with a busy schedule, you can build your dropshipping business with just 1-2 hours per day.
★ Overcoming the Tech Fears: You don't need to be tech-savvy to succeed in dropshipping. Lewis explains how easy it is to use the tools and software required for a successful business.
★ Understanding the Costs of Starting: Find out how you can begin with a modest budget and scale without overspending. Learn why dropshipping doesn't need a huge upfront investment.
★ Why You Should Trust Dropship Unlocked: With hundreds of success stories, transparent processes, and real-life examples, Lewis and James provide reassurance about the program's credibility.

Links and Resources Mentioned:
 Pick up a copy of Lewis’ book: https://dropshipunlocked.com/book
Get Shopify for £1 a month for 3 months: https://dropshipunlocked.com/shopify
Get a free trial with a professional phone line: https://dropshipunlocked.com/circle

Key Takeaways:
 ★ You Don’t Need 40 Hours a Week: It’s entirely possible to start your dropshipping business part-time, with as little as 1-2 hours a day.
★ No Need to Be a Tech Expert: The process is straightforward, with easy-to-follow tutorials and tools designed for beginners.
★ Start with a Modest Budget: You don’t need a huge budget to start—many people begin with just £30 a day for ads, and that can cover substantial profit margins.
★ Trust in the Process: With hundreds of verified reviews and success stories, Dropship Unlocked offers a proven system with real results.

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/dropshipunlockedlewissmith
Website: https://www.dropshipunlocked.com/

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★★★ Dropship Unlocked - Lewis Smith ★★★
 🌏 Want to create location, time, and financial freedom? Watch Our Free Training ➽ https://dropshipunlocked.com/free?el=podcast-144-what-you-need-to-know-to-start-dropshipping-today

Transcript

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And if I was starting again today, the first thing that I would do is. Jared did 4,000,000 lbs and Adam quit his job and they all started by. There's one mistake that we see beginners make that almost guarantees that they'll. You don't need 40 hours a week. You don't even need 10, but you if you've got just. One or two hours a day. With the right system you can. We've now had over 3000 people go through this model and what we've noticed is the most successful ones will. If you're looking to start profitable e-commerce business this year but you're feeling overwhelmed about the amount of conflicting advice out there, you're very much not alone. I've generated over £5,000,000 in e-commerce sales and through our programmes we've helped thousands of people now across the UK build successful online businesses using a proven step by step system. Collectively, members at Drop Ship Unlocked have now generated over 8 figures in revenue. And today we're pulling out the curtain to answer the most frequently asked questions we get from our listeners. The real practical things that people want to know before they get started. So whether you're short on time, if you're not sure where to begin, or you just want to make sure you're taking the right first steps, this episode will give you the clarity and confidence to start your own successful e-commerce business. Perfect. Excited for this one, Lewis. That's right. We're going to be answering some of the most frequently asked questions that we have received from listeners over the years to put it all into one podcast episode. So the amount of value in this one is going to be huge. So Lewis, one of the most common things, the most common concerns that we hear from people, they say, I want to start drop shipping. I can see all the benefits but I just don't know if I have the time to dedicate to get a business set up. Can you reassure them? Absolutely that you don't need 40 hours a week to dedicated to this, at least not when you get started. Many of our members build their stores alongside full time jobs that they already have, or maybe it's family commitments. So what I'd recommend is if you can carve out say one or two hours per day, at least a few days a week, you can make significant progress with just a couple of focused hours every day. If you can follow a proven system as well. Like our step by step system is designed to fit around your schedule without overwhelming you. It's going to set you up with such a clear path that you're not going to be guessing. And the biggest bit of advice I'd give is try and just prioritise being consistent over being perfect. It's much, much easier to just take small, consistent actions that lead to those big results over time, rather than trying to be perfect from the outset. Agreed.

I started with just one to two hours per day while I was doing it alongside my 9:00 to 5: 2:40

00 job initially. And then I was able to leave the job after some time of generating consistent sales. And now I can put whatever time I want to put into it, but initially one to two hours a day. And it made such a difference that I had the master class to follow. Lewis, your, your the programme because I didn't have to find out what I was going to do. I just needed to follow the steps. So it's that much quicker to get into it every day. So I had one to two hours of, of productivity rather than one to two hours of trying to work out what to do next. And that makes a huge difference. Now, something else we need to overcome, Lewis, we get questions from people a lot saying that they don't feel like they're tech savvy enough to start an e-commerce business. So can you break that down for us? Yeah, it's a very common concern. We hear this a lot. I can tell you right now that you don't need to be a technology expert to make this work. And we make it very easy for beginners, people with no tech experience. So whether that's our step by step over the shoulder style tutorials. When I say over the shoulder, it's like you're literally sitting at the desk next to me looking over my shoulder at my screen following what I do. We provide very easy to follow video guides for every single step of the process. We also have support for you every single stage as well. So if you can use a laptop and just follow instructions, you'll be good to go. You don't need to learn like coding or any complex tools. Our systems are really designed for simplicity. We want you to have a simple business that you can enjoy running where you don't get lost in all the technology. So you can focus on what matters most, which is growing your business and freeing up your time so that you have that time freedom, that location freedom to be able to step back from the business and not get lost in the intricacies of technology. So yeah, absolutely. You don't need huge amount of technology expertise or experience to get started with this. We're very fortunate in the age that we live in today. The reality is we've had people from all different backgrounds join and succeed in the programme. And that's down to a lot of the fact that the tools that we use nowadays are so intuitive. They've been finely tuned to be very easy to start using, whether that's Shopify or Google Ads, anything that we use now. They've been changed to be nice and simple for the end user and that's huge. And then also the all the videos that we watch to learn how to do everything step by step. Before I met you for the first time, Lewis, I felt like I'd spent hours with you, felt like I knew you as a friend already. And that's just because of how much in depth content there was that I watched of you before meeting you. So it's a bit surreal meeting you for the first time. But yeah, the next thing that we want to talk about today is that a lot of listeners are concerned about extra costs. So something to to to discuss today is say somebody comes to you and they say, what's it actually going to cost to start? And is there any extra costs that I need to be aware of? Where would you start with that? And how would you advise people can manage these expenses when they start out? Yeah, I hear this a lot. This is a common question that we get. The good news is that starting out doesn't require you to have a massive budget, certainly not compared to a traditional brick and mortar business. And what I would recommend is start out with a modest budget. So many of our members begin with as little as £30 per day for their marketing. So you know they are allocating some money towards that advertising budget when the time comes, but it's not going to break the bank. And remember, selling high ticket products. If you sell a product for 2000 lbs at a 30% margin, that's £600 in profit from one sale. Think how many days of your ad spend that then covers without you having to worry about ad spend anymore and generate more and more of those sales in the meantime. So that's why starting with a modest budget works. And I say £30 a day, that is a modest budget in comparison to the kind of sales revenue that you can create from selling high ticket products using our Home Turf Advantage model. Try and avoid using unnecessary software as well, just to focus on the tools that are essential for your growth at the beginning. You can always tack on these kind of bells and whistles later if you want to. But to start with, to get you to the point of generating revenue, replacing your income, there's no need to overspend on fancy tools at the beginning. It really just, it's just a distraction and just try and keep your costs low and manageable. I mean, we teach you how to scale up efficiently at a positive return on ad spend without burning a hole in your wallet so that you should do it incrementally and eventually get to the point where you have a really sustainable business that pays for your lifestyle. That's right. When I was following the programme, Lewis, something that you made very clear was that we can do this on a very lean budget and you never told us to invest in any really expensive tools. It was just exactly what we needed to get started and start generating revenue as quickly as possible. I think that's one of the biggest benefits of drop shipping is the fact that it's so low cost to get started. We don't need to invest in stock or any any physical locations or staff or anything like that. We can start with just a laptop or a tablet and start running ads with very low cost. It it's incredible, actually the the busiest model. Something else to discuss today as we go through the FAQs is a lot of people they are questioning basically who are we when they first come across us and why should we trust drop ship a lot to to learn how to start drop shipping. So what can you tell somebody that's listening today and they want to find out how trustworthy basically is the programme and drop ship unlocked? Yeah, it's funny, I was speaking to some of our members, our live meet up that we run for our drop ship unlocked members. We do these at quarterly live in person meet ups. And one of them was like, I didn't realise you were a real person. Like when they met you and I at the meet up, they were like, I thought you guys might be like AI generated simulations or something. And it's funny in this day and age, I guess you don't know who you can trust. You know, there's so many weird things online. But yeah, we're very much real. We, you know, we exist in the three-dimensional world as well as just on the screen and, and yeah, we have hundreds and hundreds of verified reviews now, both on Trustpilot, on Google Business, and from members of our programme across the UK. If you go to dropshipunlocked.com/reviews, you can read some of the things that people say. You can check out our YouTube channel. We've got a whole playlist on there of reviews from members that have been through the programme. I think unlike other programmes, most of our members are UK based and they're building successful businesses here. They're not just learning the theory. We also just like to be fully transparent. Like we do live store review calls as well, where we will dive into someone's store and we're actually kind of help them like make optimizations within their own store to make it better and doing like member case study interviews that we've done on the podcast as well. We've put out hard well, well over 100 podcast episodes now. I think we're up to like a episode 145 at this. So yeah, I mean, by this amount of time, if you've watched 145 episodes of us on the podcast, hopefully we've given you enough value to see that we at least know what we're talking about. We're both still doing this ourselves. We're running these types of e-commerce businesses. We've got skin in the game. It keeps us sharp and it holds us accountable as well. Running a community like Drop Ship Unlocked in that we want to know what's happening, what's at the forefront of e-commerce because things change, things move around and that's why we love doing it. And I think that's why we get such great feedback from our members as well, because they can feel that and they, you know, can, can see us and chat to us. We do twice weekly live Q&A calls and collaboration calls and our live meet ups inside the programme. Like we're there, we're not the kind of people that talk about this. And then when you get on the inside, we're nowhere to be seen. Like we're interacting everyday with our community because they're great like minded people. Yeah, that's the key to finding in today's day and ages. Something that really appealed to me to join the programme was that you weren't flashing a Lamborghini be behind you in like a Dubai penthouse and like it kind of feels a bit shady, a bit like cigar in the mouth kind of marketing tactics. But no, it's the opposite to that. It's, you know, real people doing the same businesses. I've learnt through the programme and I now do the coaching calls to help out with people that are in this the same shoes that I was in not too long ago. And we just want to build a fantastic community of ambitious people that are willing to do the hard work to build a sustainable e-commerce business. Now, for anyone that's actually considering whether they can trust drop shipping as a business model, we've got lots of member examples, haven't we? I think that's a good way of of kind of validating that drop shipping is still working today. Yeah, it's it's such a shame because drop shipping gets this like taboo reputation because of all of the low ticket, low barrier to entry, IE anyone can just kind of throw up a quick Shopify store and then link it to Aliexpress and, you know, call themselves a business owner. But then that leads to all kinds of problems down the line. If you know anything, the thing about the Home Turf Advantage model, which is our trademarked model, you know that that's not what we do. It's not what we recommend. We advocate for partnering with real brands here in the UK who can distribute products directly to your customers and where you can make 234500 pounds in profit on a single transaction on a single sale. That is worlds apart from like selling 20 LB fidget spinners from China that take four months to get to a customer and arrived broken in a crumpled up little package with a, you know, a customer demanding a refund the whole time that it's in transit. Like that's just, they're such different business models, but unfortunately they kind of both fall under the same banner of like drop shipping. Because the, the thing about drop shipping is that as a business model, it's existed since before the Internet. You know, like you bought something like a, I don't know, a garden patio, huge furniture set from the Argos catalogue. If anyone's old enough to remember what that was before the days of the Internet, then the likelihood is that huge patio furniture set probably wasn't sitting on a shelf in the Argos warehouse. It may have just come from the manufacturer and Argos would have been the retailer. They took in the money from you, the customer, and then they just paid the trade price. So whatever the lower price that they get charged was to their manufacturer, who then just sent it straight out to you, the customer. You probably wouldn't have even known that. You'd have just seen a box arrive and been like great patio furniture's here because you got the service that you you purchased. So I think that's the thing to remember. Like companies like wayfair.com. Huge like. Very, very successful brand. They are predominantly a drop shipping retailer like lots of big companies use this as a fulfilment model. They might just not call it drop shipping, perhaps they call it like direct dispatch or something like that. You know, it's like these direct from manufacturer. So that's the first differentiation when you're thinking, can I trust drop shipping? Like don't just look at the taboo kind of parent level of that. Look at like, well, can I drop trust it as a business model? Like basically, can I trust that it works? And you only have to look down the High Street at some of the brands I mentioned like Argos or John Lewis or Tesco. Like a lot of these big retailers do use it for certain products, not all their products, but for some. The other thing that you can dive into is like what the members that have worked with us have experienced as a result of doing this. So we've got lots of not just like kind of short videos, but like long form conversations with members of our community who've achieved incredible results with this. Like just a few examples of people that you could watch episodes of on our YouTube channel are like Jared, for example, who was a member that joined us and has now done over £4 million in sales with a home turf Advantage drop shipping store. Then you've got Adam who made over 300,000 lbs in less than a year in sales from his business and then used it to quit his job. Like that was a great story. Adam's now in our mastermind and is someone that you know, we, we speak with regularly. Mason made over £70,000 in his first few months running and ads on his business and he I believe he was was he 18 when he joined the programme or 19? 18, yeah. Yeah. So like we've got members from all different walks of life, from different backgrounds. We've got like nurses, we've got people who work in construction, we've got people in the trades, we've got people with professional backgrounds, people who've never had a job and they're fresh out of uni. Like you can make this work if you commit to it. If you are, if you're coming into this like a sponge, ready to just absorb knowledge and just follow a proven process, you can absolutely make it work. And hopefully watching some of those videos, those long form member interviews will inspire you and build that belief that this is a proven business model. This existed long before the Internet, long before the guys in Lambos in Dubai were shouting about it. Like this is something that is real and I can absolutely do it too, especially if I serve a graphic in the UK that are affluent that have money that can pay for these types of products. Like you don't need to be your own target customer. Remember that as well. Like just because you wouldn't go out and buy a maybe a sofa for 3 1/2 grand doesn't mean there's not someone out there that would. Just because you're not a BBQ enthusiast that would spend £2000 on a BBQ doesn't mean there's not a guy down the road that would. This is the thing you have to kind of remove yourself from the demographic and remind yourself you are the retailer, you're serving a customer demographic, but you don't have to be that customer demographic. And I think that then opens up your mind to the possibilities and the level of demand that's out there for your products. And we obviously validate that with you inside week two of the programme to ensure that what you sell is in demand and that customers want it already. Exactly. And all the conversations you mentioned there, the long form conversation with Jared, Adam Mason, Suraj, that the list goes on, on the pro on the YouTube channel, they all go to show that they followed a path and they've got the results after following the same path that somebody else has done. And, and if you want to hear about member success stories or find out what it's like to go through the programme, the podcast is there. I, I'm a member myself. I was a member. I now would help with the coaching, but I'm on 145 episodes of the podcast. So if that's not enough content to hear from somebody who's been through the same footsteps, then I don't know what will be. And but yeah, I just got, I've got a story to share. It wasn't too long ago that I was just dreaming of location, time, financial freedom when I was stuck in a unfulfilling 9 to five job. And I just wanted to have my own business that I could run from anywhere in the world and allow me to live a life of way more freedom than I had when I was in that nine to five job. So yeah, it's there for you as an opportunity to grab hold of with two hands if you're ready to, to go for it. And now success is there for all to see, I'd say. Lewis. So for those people that are feeling like on the fence, is there anything that you'd like to say to push them over the fence or get and take action when they're maybe holding themselves back? I think, yeah, if you're the kind of person that benefits from seeing others do it, do go through some of those case study videos, do watch them, do absorb that content because it's kind of like osmosis that you'll start to just absorb that belief from other people. You get to borrow the courage from others that have taken the leap that you're considering, you know, or maybe about to take and watch videos. Like I was chatting to someone at our meet up the other day that said, I just joined the programme and it was Neil's episode. When Neil was on the podcast. That was the video that got me to say I'm I'm getting off the fence. I'm doing this and so you don't know who will resonate with you. Not every one of our members that we had long form interviews might resonate with you, but watch a load of them and just see who you feel like. If they can do that, I can do it too. Like their backgrounds not dissimilar to mine, or I think I could actually even do it better than them. And if they're succeeding at this, just imagine what you could do. So we're very proud of all of our members and they're all from different backgrounds, they're all from different starting positions. But what they all have in common is they are action takers. They took action and they committed, and so I think that's the secret. 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 dropshipunlock.com/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 favourite 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 that part of the episode where we like to answer a question from listeners because we'd like to know what's on your mind when you're listening to these episodes. So if you've had something pop up today and you thought, oh, I'd love to know what their thoughts are on on this and that, then simply comments beneath the YouTube video version or wherever you're watching this video, we'll pick it up and it may get featured in an upcoming episode. Now this week, the question has come in from Rob Fraser 2253 and Rob has asked is there a way for us to watch someone build one of these high ticket drop shipping businesses from scratch? Yeah. Thank you for your question, Rob, and I'm very glad you asked it because I recorded a three-part series on YouTube where I complete a new store from scratch and I recorded every part of the process along the way. So if you go over to YouTube now and you search for drop ship unlocked, I started a new drop shipping business from scratch. If you search for that, you'll see the video right there. It's a three-part series and that's a great example of like someone actually building one of these high ticket drop shipping businesses myself. If you want to see one of our members and how they've done it, you can actually see an existing store that's generated over 100,000 lbs in sales that uses the home turf Advantage model that James and I went through a live store review call breaking down what they've done well, but where it could also be improved. So this is like a sneak peek into one of the sessions that we do for our members inside the programme. So if you search for on YouTube, drop ship unlocked. Reviewing a 100,000 LB Shopify drop shipping store. If you search that on YouTube, you can rewind that. If you missed that, you'll find that one too and you'll be able to watch it. So hopefully 2 great examples there of a store that I've built from scratch and a store that our members have built from scratch as well. Absolute gold. I had a friend say to me recently that he watched that three-part series and went from being a complete beginner to having a niche validated and a store built. Ready to run ads so. Incredible the power of those videos that that Channel, that series is on the channel now. So thank you, Lewis. Great views to to go and watch after this video today. But we're first going to highlight a recent review that we've had for the podcast because we'd love to give you a shout out if you give us some love on this podcast. And we have a recent review from Ethan Dalolio, 04, for sharing your thoughts. And he said, love it fellas, keep doing you. Thanks so much for your review, Ethan. Glad to hear that you've been enjoying the podcast. If this episode today resonated with you, consider sharing it with someone who might benefit from it. Perhaps share it with them on social media. Your recommendation helps us grow our community, but it also helps us to continue delivering valuable content to you. So a quick share can make a big difference to someone you know. 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 kickstart your e-commerce business? Head over to dropshipunlocked.com/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 Drop Ship Unlocked podcast.