For many, joining the Drop Ship Lifestyle program is the start of a new journey. What’s unique about the DSL community though, is you won’t have to go that journey all on your own.

One of the best examples of this is our Drop Ship Lifestyle Coaching Program. This is a group of six who have been through the DSL course, found incredible drop shipping success, and decided it was time to pay it forward.

Our Coaches Share Their #1 Drop Shipping Tip For Finding Success Starting at Day One

With our elite group of Certified DSL Coaches, you’ll get the help you need to grow a successful drop shipping store of your own.  You can schedule 1-on-1 calls, group calls, attend local meetups, and gain access to advanced training.

More importantly, our coaches work hard with DSL members to ensure they never feel alone, frustrated, or confused in their drop shipping journey. Working with a coach is one of the best ways we set our members up for drop shipping success.

So, with that being said, we’ve decided to round up all of our drop shipping coaches and ask them, “What is the one drop shipping tip you wish you could give to every newbie?”

Allen’s Drop Shipping Tip

Below is Allen Aguilar’s best tip for drop shipping newbies. He has been dropshipping in the States for more than a year using the Drop Ship Lifestyle program.
Now he averages approximately $55k in sales a month and is getting ready to open a second store.  Having been an entrepreneur since 2013, Allen owned his own consulting company and coached companies on business, management, finance, and sales.

Naturally, he likes helping others achieve their goals and dreams. His key strengths are getting supplier approvals, Shopify optimization, and Adwords. And that is exactly why he is such a great fit as a DSL Coach.

Don’t be Impatient

I have DSL students and people, in general, getting angry or panicking when they don’t make a sale a day after they launched. I have also seen new dropshippers want to abandon their niche when they don’t get approved by a supplier after just 3 phone calls.

Creating a business takes time. Creating a successful business takes even more time. Hard work doesn’t pay off overnight. Consistency and relentlessness will win the game, not speed.

Brent’s Drop Shipping Tip

Below is Brent William’s best drop shipping tip for beginners. Brent hit $170k in revenue by month 10!  He’s had an exciting journey with his store, which is what inspired him to help others achieve their goals. He wants to give back and help others live the lifestyle they want to live!

If you’re looking for a drop shipping coach who has just been through the drop shipping process and achieved success fast, then DSL coach Brent, is your man. He won’t sugarcoat things though, but he will provide constructive feedback and motivate you to achieve your goals.

Brent is a great motivator and an expert at niche selection making him a valuable asset to the DSL coaching team. He can also coach you to effectively communicate with suppliers and customers.

Don't Get Overwhelmed with Niche Selection

Everyone struggles with this, but what you need to do is open your mind. Get out amongst the shops and big stores for a day, pay attention to what's around you as you walk around. It's amazing how many potential winning niches you can find.

Also, when using Google Shopping you can search broad words like outdoors or furniture. Then on the left hand side, reduce the search down to items over $500 or $1,000 (Perfect Priced Items). You’ll get a ton of interesting ideas by scrolling through all the pages. By using broad keyword search terms can uncover things you never thought of.

Brian’s Drop Shipping Tip

Below is Brian Angel’s top tip for beginners to achieve drop shipping success. Brian is currently managing two drop shipping stores that generate $70k per month, and they continue to grow faster and faster.

Brian is a valuable member of the DSL Coaching team. He’s skilled at navigating members through the early challenges of building a business, and developing the strategies needed to be successful. He used to be a manufacturer, so he knows exactly how to build relationships with them!

In one way or another, Brian has been coaching and teaching business for the better part of 20 years.  He is very passionate about working with drop shippers to optimize their business for maximum profit.  His key strengths are supplier relationships, optimizing your Shopify store, and lead value optimization.

It’s Not What You Know – It’s What You DO CONSISTENTLY That Counts

DSL is not a course… it’s a blueprint.  So, follow the process and get things done.  Learning will only get you so far, if you don’t apply it.  Seriously…don't wait to put what you've learned into action!

Jeff’s Drop Shipping Tip

Below is the #1 drop shipping tip Jeff Tottenham loves to share with beginners. Jeff was working a full time, 70 hours a week job when he created his first drop shipping store four years ago. Within two months, he made his first sale.

Now, he just launched his second store, and is close to averaging $43K a month, while quickly approaching the $100K milestone.

Jeff became a DSL coach to help others change their lives and create a lifestyle through drop shipping. As someone who used to work 15 hour days, it still feels surreal to him. Jeff’s key strengths are drop shipping supplier approval, Google PLA’s, and optimizing Shopify stores. He also has found success drop shipping on Amazon and eBay.

Calling Suppliers When You Have No Products

When I first start calling suppliers, I start with the Bronze suppliers that have dealer applications available on their website first.  I submit the application online, then immediately I follow-up with a phone call.  My goal is getting the supplier to approve the application and send over their product data in one shot.

This saves me a ton of time because they usually have their data setup for easy upload so I don’t have to waste time loading dummy products.  The second reason I start with bronze suppliers is that I have more confidence when calling gold suppliers by already having live products on my drop shipping site.

Michael’s Drop Shipping Tip

Below is Michael Coghlan’s best drop shipping tip for newbies. Michael has been a coach with us since we started the program and he’s the perfect example of a great drop shipping coach.

Coaching gives Michael a chance to share an incredible amount of knowledge in a half hour phone call. But he especially enjoys working directly with the newest DSL members looking to strike gold in the eCommerce world.

While Michael helps members grow all aspects of their drop shipping businesses, niche selection, supplier approvals, and optimizing for conversions are his specialties. As a DSL coach, he helps members dominate in those specific area, making running the rest of their stores a breeze!

Thinking BARELY Outside the Box

I always see people thinking of either super common ideas, or just crazy outlandish ones for their niches. My best selling product ever was a portable ice maker.

If you think about it, it was just barely outside the box. Not as common as a refrigerator, but not as UNCOMMON as say a walk in deep freezer for a restaurant. Finding that nice balance early on makes niche selection a much easier process.

Vincent’s Drop Shipping Tip

Below is Vincent Roy’s top tip for drop shipping success. In 2012, he quit his office job to travel the world and live independently. Similar to Anton, Vincent first heard of drop shipping in Tim Ferris’ 4 Hour Work Week. So in 2015, he began the DSL course and four months later, he had hit $10,000 in sales.

Now, he’s a DSL coach and is excited to teach others how to drop ship while sharing the enthusiasm so common in the digital business world. Vincent can help you find a unique and scalable niche. His other areas of expertise include, market research, business set-up, website design, optimizing for conversions, and generating traffic for your store.

Persist, Persevere, and Trust in Yourself and the System

You can probably make money selling in any niche, but some are more competitive and saturated than others, making it more challenging. So even if you choose a ‘virgin’ niche (that already sells but from big chain stores and you would be the first one to create this targeted niche store), it’s still going to take a lot of consistent work to grow your business.

Having a dry spell with no sales, especially in the beginning, doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve chosen a bad niche; it can simply indicate you need to work on your website design or advertising campaigns. Any store or business requires a lot of work, especially when starting out. Drop shipping is no different.

As you can see, we’ve got an incredibly smart group of coaches in our DSL Coaching Program. For them, helping new members of the Drop Ship Lifestyle find drop shipping success is what they love to do.

Working with a DSL coach is one of the easiest ways to ensure that you’re not alone on this drop ship journey.
If you’d like to learn more about all that is offered in our Coaching Program, visit here.

The Easiest Way to Be Successful with Dropshipping

Simplicity.

That is the one word that we are focusing on in 2018. Really, it’s the one word that every single thing we do in our businesses should revolve around.

During my entire career, which spans over 12 years of building online businesses, I’ve noticed one thing. It's that all of us entrepreneurs are constantly becoming obsessed with whatever the newest trend is.

Whenever I hear about the newest thing that’s working for someone, even I want to try it for myself right away. Especially when I see new companies trying different strategies, I think, “Oh I need to try that right away!”

Overall, I guess trying everything has worked out for the best, because I’ve figured out all these things that work. But also, I’ve spent a lot of time on things that weren’t really necessary and they were more the result of my entrepreneurial ADHD-like spirit kicking in.

So again, a lot of time has been spent on things that we didn't have to do. And when I say we, I mean myself, I mean the entire Drop Ship Lifestyle team, our virtual assistants, pretty much everyone involved.

Less Distraction, More Focusing on What Works

In a recent team meeting I had with everyone that works on Drop Ship Lifestyle projects, we discussed figuring out a better way to tackle the year ahead of us. And the word that kept popping up was “simplicity”.

By the end of the meeting, we had decided that for having a successful 2018, our word would be “simplicity”. Which, for us, means that we know exactly what we want to get done, we know when we want it to be done by, and we know there’s no room to start adding other things in.

We’re keeping things simple this year. What that means is when a video comes out with another new technique, we don't have to try it.

When I go to a conference and have a conversation with someone and they tell me how well Strategy X, Y, and Z is working for them, I’m not going to come back and be like, “Hey guys, guess what we're doing tomorrow!”

Personally, my reasoning is that if my team and I focus on what we know works (and after 12 years, we know what works) then we’ll get better results because there are no distractions. We’ve mapped out the year on our marketing calendars and we know exactly what we need to focus on for the bigger picture in 2018.

Now why does this matter to you? Well, I want you to do the same thing.

Obviously, my whole goal here, the whole reason Drop Ship Lifestyle is a company, is because I want to pass on my experience and help you find success of your own.

Finding 6-Figure Success

In a recent Drop Ship Weekly video, I shared the one thing that we’re doing with our 6-Figure Coaching Program students, and hopefully you can implement this into your own business as well. This strategy can serve as a framework for how to be successful in 2018.

Our 6-Figure Coaching Program is designed to get members of our drop shipping community to  $100,000 or more in monthly gross revenue. What that looks like for most people is scaling up to crossing a million dollars in total sales. A lot of the members who join this program aren’t making six figures a month yet, but are very close.

The below spreadsheet is an example of what a million dollars in revenue can look like. We plan for everyone in our 6-Figure Coaching Program to spend about a $100,000 in advertising costs to get to that million dollar mark. (And this doesn't all get spent at once. It takes time!)

The goal here is for everyone to basically net about 20% of gross. That means if they do $1 million in sales, with $200,000 in net (total) profit at the end of 2018. Again, this is a journey I am taking our 6-Figure Coaching students on. It's something I hope you can implement in your own drop shipping business.

In January, we started implementing email marketing and setting up email systems. In my 6-Figure Coaching Program, I’m sharing the same strategies I use to give them easy wins. When you turn on our email campaigns, you should start making 20-40% more revenue right away!

And if for sure reason, you don’t have the money to spend on email marketing, know it’s very, very affordable right now. Plus, it’s one of the best things to spend money on, because once you have automated email sequences setup, they will continue to run and make you money.

Setting up our email marketing systems is a very simple thing to focus on first. And all it takes is two months to get everything setup for the year.

Now, in March we are starting to work together on this $1 million target by focusing on creating Facebook Ads for drop shipping stores.  Then, in May, we’ll be diving really deep into search text ads, which means that by the time summer starts rolling around, everyone is going to be at a high level and doing $100K+ in monthly sales.

Once you start making $100k+ a month in sales, it’s time to hire a business manager. Doing so will help you set back and focus on the bigger strategies that will scale your business to new levels.

July through September, right before the holiday shopping season kicks in, we focus on creating our own ‘private label’ brands that are sold in our drop shipping stores.

Make a Plan to be Successful, and Stay Focused

So again, why am I sharing this with you? If you’re probably (hopefully) thinking, “Cool. This next year I don't want to do $40,000 in sales anymore. I want it to be over a $100,000 in sales every month.”

If that's your goal and you don't have a plan to get there, what you’re going to do is  the opposite of ‘simplicity’. Which usually ends up being a huge waste of time.

You’re going to be reading blog posts, listening to eCommerce podcasts, and come across YouTube videos on drop shipping. You’re going to get some emails and attend some webinars. All along the way picking up little techniques to try for a few weeks.

And they are going to work, or they’re not.

Either way, you’re going to hear something else and want to try that instead. And by the end of the year, there is going to be like 20 or 30 different techniques and tips that you tried to piece together into one strategy.

Of course, maybe one or two of them will stick. Though most of them are going to be a waste of your time. That's because you don’t have an actual system to follow.

Remember, Simplicity is the Easiest Way to Be Successful!

So again, simplicity is what we are focusing on in our businesses. We feel strongly that it’s the easiest way to be successful in 2018. I know it’s not only going to lead to better results, but less stress on the entire team and on the entire organization.

And the same thing goes for you! If you want to have this year feel easy but still be successful, focus on simplicity with a plan in place.

If you’re in this situation now, and want to get your drop shipping store to the $1 million mark in revenue with $200,000 net profit, I would recommend going through a 6-Figure Coaching Program. While this program is very affordable and has a high return on investment, it might not be something you can afford right now. That’s why I wanted to share some insight from inside the 6-Figure Coaching Program.

Just know that the things above, email marketing, Facebook ads, search text ads, hiring a business manager, and private labeling, are things you can definitely do yourself. It will take longer on your own, but it’s a great plan and it’s simple.

What are you focusing on to be successful? Let’s keep up the conversation and share with me in the comments!

This topic was also covered in a previously recorded video on my YouTube channel.

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