It´s not easy!
There are tons of SaaS services out there, apps, drop shipping gurus who all try to make you believe it is easy to make big money as a e-retailer with drop shipping. We prefer to give you the truth! It´s hard, it´s really hard! But who ever said success would come easy? It shouldn’t be easy either. If you ask any successful person that are self-made millionaires, they all have something in common.
1) They worked damn hard for it and put the hours in!
2) They all made sacrifices and some kind of investment.
3) They very rarely make it on their first try. Most try many times before they hit the Jackpot.
In Finland they have the best expression for a business owner and entrepreneur. The call them Yrittäjät which in direct translation means some one who tries. We love this word for an entrepreneur, because all entrepreneurs try´s to make something out of their business.
They also have a saying in Finland “You can´t call yourself an entrepreneur if you have not gone bankrupt or failed at least 3 times” Read it again and take this in. YOU CAN´T CALL YOURSELF AN ENTREPRENUER IF YOU HAVE NOT GONE BANKRUPT OR FAILED AT LEAST 3 TIMES” I dare to promise you the most successful people has failed many times before they succeed. Do not be afraid of failure, embrace it and learn from it. And most important of all, do not give up! Persistence and hard work is the best tool for success.
You all probably know about the success story of DW – Daniel Wellington, founded by a young Swedish entrepreneur called Filip Tysander who sells watches for over 200 million euros per year mostly online. You can read about it on their webpage here: https://www.danielwellington.com/global/our-story/
Filip early understood the value of influencers on Instagram and was one of the early adopters to use these channels to reach his customers. For us at Droshi he is a big role model.
Do you think DW is his first company? I can tell you it is not. We know about at least 2 companies he did not manage to make a success out of. One was an online store for the very popular thin ties called smalslips.se at the time. And the other was a watch brand with plastic watches in different colours that he copied from Triwa that was very popular which he made a cheaper model of. Many other entrepreneurs succeeded with these products, he did not. But he made something far greater which you can see today in DW. He probably had more “failed” businesses or ideas he tried to set up that we do not know about. Imagine if he would have stopped and given up, then he would not have the number 2 most sold watch brand in the world today with the most expensive apartment ever sold in Sweden for over 10 million euros in the middle of Stockholm and a Bentley Continental.
Why are we telling you this? Because many services and gurus out there will make you believe you will be a millionaire working only 20h/week with a budget of 4-500 euros/month or much less. Sorry to say, but this is just pure bs. Instead we say like this:
If you cannot work hard for your business, you do not deserve to make any money and you most likely will not! If you think you can make millions with a start-up budget of 200-400€ euros/month and from that build millions I say, good luck.
It is possible, but probably 99,99% chance you will fail. You won´t find your one hit wonder on your first try. You need to test your marketing and do A-B testing to see how to find your customers best at the lowest cost and also see the demand for your product. If you are eager to start your own business, we honestly say instead, save up so you have at least 1000€ in start-up capital. This will increase your chances a lot. And if your dream is not worth losing 1000€ which is possible you might do, never mind starting at all. Go buy yourself a new iPhone instead.
We could say, buy a subscription with us for only 79€/month and you will be rich! As many others. But we won´t. Because we want you to be successful. If our customers are not successful, we will never be. So, we prefer to tell the truth to give you the best tools possible and no false expectations.
Shopify is an awesome service offering first time entrepreneurs to open a business with a very low investment. But you will need an investment! Have you ever heard about the expression takes money to make money? This is 100% true. Shopify has a huge churn rate = drop offs. If you do some google research for this, you will find out they have about 70-80% that does not continue after 12 months. After 24 months it´s much less left, and how many do you think makes it? This is the ugly truth! If you think you are going to make a lot of money, without hard work and without any investment from yourself you will most likely fall under these 80-90% entrepreneurs who will not succeed. Ask yourself first, do I really want this and why? We do not want to scare you away from opening up your first business, but the contrary we want you to take that first step. But we also want you to examine yourself and ask yourself, am I a wantreprenuer or an entrepreneur.
The difference here is a wantreprenuer wants a lot, usually have big dreams but does not make this happen. They expect everything to come easily and very often for free and do more talking than doing. An entrepreneur puts the shovel in the ground and starts digging, building up a sweat, educates themselves, does mistakes but moves on and never gives up. This is a doer!
Droshi is also very unorthodox in our way of working. We are not afraid of our competitors, instead we embrace them and learn from them, trying to be better than them to give you as a customer a better service and system. You can always sign up with us for free so you know what you get and can test our service at free.droshi.com without any card credentials etc needed.
We also have no problems to say www.oberlo.com is absolutely awesome with their educational videos! You can learn a lot from watching them and reading their blog. And if you want products from Aliexpress I would say this is the best service to use on Shopify. There is also a very similar service to us with high rating on Shopify called Spocket. Check them out too. If you are looking for US or Canadian products these guys are probably better than us as we focus mainly to get European suppliers. But if you want European drop shipping suppliers and products, I dare to guarantee you, we are the place to go at Droshi. If you find any place in the world with a bigger assortment of European drop shipping suppliers, we will give you our Enterprise package worth 2390€ to you for free!
We built our service to make the threshold smaller and help mainly start-up’s who wants to get into the e-commerce easier. Our founder himself had an e-commerce store back in 2007. Drop shipping was not very well known or used at this time and there was not any apps or systems for it as today. He made an investment of about 20 000 euros just to set up his store and buy in 22 products he wanted to sell. But he missed out on the biggest part to make your e-commerce business successful, a marketing budget! Rookie mistake. Not having money for marketing when opening your store is set for failure. Imagine yourself opening a café in the middle of the woods, you can have the best coffee and cinnamon buns in the world, but no one will ever find your place without a sign or advertising. Same applies to your online shop, without marketing you are just a café in the middle of the woods.
Our best suggestions to get started with your online shop is:
Save up money so you actually have a decent start-up capital. You will need it! And keep in mind. Budget and deadlines almost never hold.
- 1) Find a good e-commerce platform such as Shopify or Woocommerce.
- 2) Find a good drop shipping service that fulfil your needs, if not us, there are plenty others out there.
- 3) Make sure you have a marketing budget when you get started!
- 4) If you fail, don´t worry. Most people do the first time and many times more. If you truly want to be an entrepreneur and run your own business. Work hard, study your market, educate yourself, be persistent and do not give up.
Make sure to check out our product catalogue to see if we have anything you want to sell in your store! free.droshi.com
Cheers
Team Droshi
