Out of desperation mostly. My bills were stacking up and I had just been laid off from my job. I was scrolling online one day and read an article about dropshipping on Shopify. So I watched youtube videos and tried to build the store myself and to my surprise, it was actually really difficult.
I gave up on that and found an ad on Facebook that promised to build me a store for free using AI. So I went with that option. They delivered the store to me but it didn't look good and the products they selected for me just didn't work. I was feeling pretty let down and hopeless at the idea of dropshipping at that point. I've seen so many people online flexing their lavish lifestyles making money online dropshipping on shopify and they made it look so easy.
I then stumbled upon DropshipForSale and they had a coffee brand store setup service for sale. So I done my research and learned that approximately 62% of the worlds population drinks coffee. The coffee market is estimated to be valued at $102 billion annually. So that got me thinking, if I could tap into just 0.001% of that, I would make $1,020,000 per year which is mind blowing and would absolutely change me and my family's life.
When I purchased their store setup service, it cost me just under $200. I think it was $199. They reached out to me and helped me name my brand. They were amazing. They designed my logo, registered my domain and designed my store. They also connected my store to a coffee supplier in the United States. Within 24 hours, my store was ready. I was ready to make my millions. I was so excited to set my store live.
I went live with my store and on day 1, I generated $0 in sales. I was deflated, angry and upset. I completely forgot that marketing was required to make sales. I read through the handover package that DropshipForSale sent me and learned about TikTok micro influencers.
A micro influencer is someone on TikTok with 5-50k followers. They get views on their videos. So I started reaching out to people on TikTok and asked them to post a video about my brand. It cost me $10 to send someone some coffee. The first TikTok video someone made about my brand generated $10,483 in sales. I couldn't believe it.
So I continued to reach out to more and more influencers and sent them my products and the business really took off from there. If you want to be successful with dropshipping, you have to be creative. It's not just going to happen overnight.
