Welcome explorer

You’re back in the Slipstream. Your weekly exploration into the way of entrepreneurship, self-improvement and lifelong learning.

You’re here because you believe one thing:

The better the quality of your ideas, the better the quality your life

Today’s issue is going to give you another leg up.

LIFE/ PRODUCTIVITY/ WEALTH/ ENTREPRENEURSHIP

The low-ticket dropshipping model making millionaires

When I graduated high school, a scary 16 years ago, I had little knowledge about the world and how it worked. I had in me the imprinted belief that you must get a job, work really hard and then retire with the money you make, far into the future. If you did well in school, then you shouldn’t just get a job, you should get a good job.

I did quite well in school, having hit an above 95% average. Though my options forward were engineering, medicine or actuarial science. I ended up going down the path of chemical engineering (chosen because it was the hardest of engineering and me falsely equating difficulty of work with earning potential). That was 4 years of studying and around R400,000 ($20,000) in tuition fees.

As a chemical engineer, starting salary was around R300,000 net per year. After 5 years this would be around R600k, and after 10 years you’d probably be earning R1 million ($50,000) net per year.

Dropshipping, by contrast, is offering people the opportunity to be earning $50,000 net after just 1 year of work. And there’s no official study period. However, one probably needs a few weeks, a month at maximum, to grasp the ideas and variations and potentially do a course or two. The business model and tactics are simple enough. The rest is learned on the job.

Instead of investing $20,000 in tuition fees and 4 years of studying hard engineering, do dropshipping instead.

For 1 year of dropshipping, it would cost $18,000 for the year, with $1000 a month for living costs and $500 a month for testing products and ads.

At the end of the year, you would (most likely) have the skills to build out dropshipping stores and makes $10,000+ months easily. You would probably already have a store that does that as well.

The trade-of between Chemical engineering and Dropshipping is immense. If the outcome is $50,000 in net income per year, one path takes 14 years while another takes just 1.

That is insane leverage when you think about it. Move through life 14 times faster? That’s basically a different life altogether.

But this is why we we’re now seeing so many 20-something millionaires on Youtube. It’s the advantage of the internet.

These guys make me hopeful. They show what is possible. They also show how they did it.

The internet is an amazing place if you know where to look.

The rise of the internet

The internet is actually still very young.

The future, as futurists say, is already here. It’s just unevenly distributed.

That’s why its taken me, and you, so long to find out about the dropshipping model. We were far from the innovative edge of the world.

The internet has helped changed that.

The internet is still growing rapidly, and more people are going online, more of the time in order to do more things. It is increasingly taking up more of our lives and is the medium that joins us together, especially on a global level.

The younger generations have grown up with internet from day 1, they don’t know what the world is like without it.

These internet-natives connect to their friends , build relationships, store memories and buy things using the internet.

As such, eCommerce is a growing sector for which the potential is near limitless.

Dropshipping, is a specific category of eCommerce, and is a relatively low-cost way of building a business online. It’s very possible to start this business as a a solo founder (solopreneur / 1-person business), and many have done it while still operating a full-time job.

It makes it a great side hustle, but also a rewarding full-time job once you have built up the required skills.

So, what exactly is Dropshipping?

Dropshipping is a type of business that sells items to customers on the internet. It does not hold any inventory, instead it has an agreement with a supplier(s) to send the items direct to the customer. The customer finds the online store and pays the dropshipper for the product. The dropshipper pays the supplier and passes the delivery details so that they can deliver the product to them.

The items sold can be small and cheap like cosmetic jewellery that cost less than $1. The items can also be be large items like outdoor water fountains that sell for multiple thousands of dollars. It all depends on the more specific type of dropshipping you are aiming to do, which depends on the products you want to sell and the people you want to sell them to.

The items solid are usually sourced from China, via Ali Express or fulfilment partners. Due to a rise in long shipping times, there are newer companies that offer warehousing and fulfilment services to dropshippers within the customers country, thereby allowing quick shipping times and happier customers.

Building your store is usually done via Shopify - an easy to use software platform that allows you to create a website for you products and accept payments from customers. It is a no code platform, so allows you to create you store via themes and templates and easy-to-use functions within it’s store editor.

Building your store on Shopify is the equivalent of putting up a corner store on The Internet!

Choosing which customers to sell to is an important part of the process. Knowing your customer and where they hang out (online) is essential to reaching them with your ads. If people don’t know about your store and products, how will they ever visit it and make a purchase? This is the skill of marketing. Running ads can become a bit technical, but if 17-year olds are doing it and making bank, I’m sure we can manage. Selling on different platforms becomes a skill. Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. are some of the common platforms used to market and sell dropshipping goods.

Lastly is fulfillment and customer service, which if everything is done well, will not take up much of your time. Via the platforms it can be easy to handle discussions, disputes, returns , etc. At some point you can hire a virtual assistant to handle the customer service aspect while you focus on growing the revenue to the store.

So, to recap, the dropshipper has to learn and gain the following skills before being successful

1. Find good products (Product Research)

2. Find reliable suppliers for the product (Sourcing)

3. Building a high converting website (Store building)

4. Creating ads (Video editing, image editing)

5. Running ads (Media buying)

6. Customer service

(Beats the 56 modules I had to do in my engineering degree!)

Generally, the dropshipping entrepreneur will be selling multiple items during the year across multiple stores, based on what’s trending during those times.

Bonus - Leveraging AI and automation enables the dropshipper to get even more done for his time and effort, increasing his overall earning potential.

The moral of the story is this. The internet is still growing (its like a teenager at best). eCommerce is a growing giant. Ride the trend with dropshipping and make bank.

Degrees are outdated ways of surviving and thriving in the modern world.

Adapt or get left behind.

Remember, in a year from now, 12 months would have passed whether you decided to get into dropshipping or not. Your life could be on a different path, or just another repeated chapter in the book of your life. The choice, every day, is yours.

WEALTH

How to get started dropshipping

1. I Made $400,000 In 30 Days To Prove Dropshipping Isn’t Dead In 2024 - YouTube

   • Ecom King sharing his methods to killing it

2. How To Actually Start A Dropshipping Business In 2023 (FREE Course) - Sebastian Esqueda

   • Seb E dropping his methods for making it in Dropshipping. He’s been doing it for ~7 years making him an OG in the space

3. I went from $1,000 to 8 Million - My Story - Sebastian Ghiorghiu

   • Seb G is another OG, this time sharing the entire life story from rags to riches. Get inspired, if he can do it, so can you.

Were you forwarded this by a friend? Sign up to The Slipstream to get life expanding ideas delivered to your inbox every Saturday

The Slipstream is your gateway to content and thought on financial freedom and escaping the matrix through entrepreneurship.

Join the battle for a better life by gaining access to better ideas!

No spam, only value!

And as always, if you’ve got anything interesting to share and think I’d enjoy it, just reply to this email or DM me on Twitter (or any other platform for that matter).

Till the next time,

- Karmsheel