The popularity of short videos on social media networks is set to peak, according to Insider Intelligence/eMarketer data.
Time spent on video is set to plateau in 2024 and next year as messaging gains traction, predicted experts in Insider Intelligence’s Behind the Numbers podcast.
Video is set to make up 58.8% of social network activities this year, while 41.2% will be spent doing other activities. Next year, 60.1% of time is predicted to be spent on video and 39.9% on other social network activities.
Montana announced on Tuesday that it was appealing a November ruling by a US judge to overturn the state’s first-of-its-kind ban on the usage of the short-video sharing app TikTok.
Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen has filed a notice of appeal with the Ninth Circuit US Court of Appeals, reported Reuters.
Montana’s ban was supposed to go into effect on January 1, but US District Judge Donald Molloy ordered a preliminary injunction on November 30 to prevent the ban on the Chinese-owned app from going into force, saying Montana’s law “violates the Constitution in more ways than one” and “oversteps state power.”
According to Molloy, Montana attempted to exercise foreign policy authority held by the federal government, and the state’s action was overly broad, noted the report.
TikTok has been restricted on government-owned devices by several states and the federal government, but only Montana has attempted to ban the application outright.
If you want to become a successful Dropshipper and run a successful online store, then you need to have the right mindset in place and understand that Dropshipping isn’t some get-rich-quick scheme that will rain millions of dollars on you the moment you begin selling online.
Dropshipping is no different from other businesses out there, physical or online, and you must give it the same attention as if you’re opening a local Pizza place or a new Fitness gym.
There’s marketing to be done to get traffic to your store, goods to ship, and customers to support. The difference is that some aspects of a regular physical business are skipped and therefor your initial investment is much lower.
This unfortunately gives a false-impression to newcomers that Dropshipping can get them rich because all you need is a good looking online store and a cool product to make some bank.
But in reality, there’s a whole lot to learn before you can even begin Dropshipping and doing it fast will only lead to a loss of both time and money.
Fortunately for you, this article is going to cover absolutely everything you need to know before starting out with Dropshipping!
So if you’re serious about making it big with Dropshipping in 2024, then understand that you’re here for the long run and make sure to read the whole article because sometimes a single sentence can make a big difference.
Learn As Much As You Can From Professional Dropshippers
The one thing you don’t want to do is to skip on important lessons because you were too lazy or you just couldn’t wait to launch you first ad campaign to finally drive traffic to your amazing online store.
The night before you go to sleep will always be exciting and filled with hopes of waking up in the morning with a bunch of sales but in most cases it will be the opposite. The next morning will be you watching your laptop screen with a big round zero displayed on the Shopify dashboard.
And please don’t get me wrong – I am not saying this to scare you, this is simply the reality. It happened to Mordechai(the CEO of Ecomhunt and a 7-figure Dropshipper), it happened to me(a 6-figure Dropshipper and a Print-on-Demand seller), and it also happened to the best Dropshippers in existence.
Dropshipping is an art and successful Dropshippers are also in part professional marketers, so this isn’t something that you can replicate and succeed with if you have no prior experience.
As you advance with Dropshipping, you become a better marketer and you optimize every little aspect of your online business to get more sales. And if you as a newbie decide to skip that because you have no time or just because you’re in a hurry, then it will come back biting you where it hurts the most – Your money.
Where to learn how to Dropship like a Pro?
The year is 2024 and Dropshipping isn’t something new that just came out so there are plenty of learning resources, free and paid, that you can learn from and understand what you should do in order to be a successful Dropshipper.
My personal recommendation would be to learn from Ecomhunt where you get all the stuff you need in one place – From thousands of proven to sell winning products to Dropshipping features and professional learning resources. Everything is under a single platform called Ecomhunt and all the Dropshipping courses that you need are right there.
All the courses are beginner friendly and there’s no need in prior experience or special technical skills to start learning. Each course has its own level of expertise and you’ll see more complicated stuff as you progress which in time will be totally easy to understand after you went through the basics.
Now why do I recommend Ecomhunt and not some other Dropshipping course out there? Well, one of the reasons is the fact that I’m working at Ecomhunt so I’m a bit biased here, duh.
But the second reason, and the most important one, is that I don’t want you to be spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars out there and only get a single course in return.
Where if you compare it to Ecomhunt, you get it all for a monthly cost that won’t make you go broke – Daily winning products, learning resources, Dropshipping features, 1-on-1 professional consultant, 24/7 support, and much more.
The second best option is going to Youtube and searching for Dropshipping courses.
You’ll find plenty of Youtubers who are doing a great job at explaining from scratch about Dropshipping, building online stores, showing live examples from their own campaigns, and basically everything else you’ll need to start.
My advice to you if you go the Youtube way is to pick a one or two big Dropshipping Youtubers and just follow what they teach without looking too much on other Youtubers.
It’s just that every Youtuber out there has its own system and his own method of selling and you can’t possibly learn from them all and expect to get the same results when you launch your own campaigns.
Note: There are many great Dropshipping Youtubers out there but not everyone is legit so don’t fall for the 6-figure Shopify dashboards that are displayed. It’s better to go with the safe option which is a big Youtuber who has made a name and has shown real results, than some small Youtuber who promises riches beyond your wildest dream if you just copy his methods and join his “secret” discord channel.
Pick Your Product/Niche First
One of the first mistakes newbie Dropshippers do is building an online store without having an idea what they’re going to sell there, and it doesn’t matter if their aim is having a general store.
The issue is that once you start building a store without having an action plan, you first of all tend to lose yourself in the process and it eventually costs you money just to maintain it.
So it’s not only the temptation to pump the store with products and get traffic going, but it’s also just paying for holding the store…
I’ve seen plenty of Dropshippers that start with building a store with no real plan in hand and a couple of months later it was still being “built and perfected”, patiently waiting for product number 300 to be uploaded for the big event of going live.
So instead, I strongly advise that you first do your product/niche research and only after that go for the store building. No only it will be easier because you’ll have an actual plan, but it will also save you money because product research doesn’t cost money.
If you’re looking to pick your first winning product, you can read all about it in this article. We also have a huge section in our Ecomhunt Masterclass course and on other courses about winning products and how to pick them.
Build Your First Store
Now that you have learned how to Dropship and have a product in mind that you want to sell, it’s time to start building that store.
The way we teach building store is by starting out clean and keeping the costs at minimum while focusing on the important stuff like tweaking the store and doing the necessary to have the maximum conversion rate possible.
This means that you won’t be seeing us spending hundreds of dollars on Logo and Banner designs, or spending a month building a store because we want it to have 100 products minimum.
Even if the store has a single product, it’s enough to get started and building such store shouldn’t take you more than 2 days tops.
To shorten the building process and to avoid doing mistakes that will cost you money, you can either follow what we teach in the store building section of the course, or just watch a video of us building a store.
Like this Youtube video where Mordechai shows from scratch how to build a one-product store + product selection, ads, and even shares the full numbers after running the store for a few weeks.
Remember that it’s better to follow and copy what other successful Dropshippers are doing instead of doing it yourself with no clear understanding of how a good Dropshipping store should look like.
You can always check on Ecomhunt and find the links to successful stores that sell winning products. Learn from them, take inspiration, and replicate the same for your online store.
Create Your Ad Creatives
You’re not Amazon… The people that will visit your store are mainly there because they saw your ad while browsing Facebook or TikTok and they simply clicked it.
They had no intention of buying anything and it just happened that your product ad was so good that they couldn’t resist clicking on it and checking it out.
This means that if you want to get clicks on your ad, clicks that will be worth your money, you have to create an appealing ad. An ad that isn’t just a copy of what everyone else is doing.
The #1 mistake of newbie Dropshippers is that they take the first video they see on the Aliexpress page and think that it will be enough to get sales. I call it zero effort marketing which leads to, you guessed it, zero sales.
Instead you want to bring something new to the table, something more professional, something that will make people stop from scrolling and checking your ad.
You can have the best product in the world but if the ad isn’t good enough then there will be no clicks…
Here are a few pointers that will help you produce the best ad creatives for the products you dropship:
Try getting new footage of the product you sell – One of the ways you can try is by asking the Aliexpress seller for it. There are people behind each listing that want to get more sales, same as you, so try asking them for new footage and there’s a chance they’ll give it to you which will help you create new ad creatives. If that option isn’t available, there’s always the option to film the product yourself or send it to a person on Fiverr for a product review. This is enough to produce a lot of new content that will work great for you ads.
Scroll stoppers – Make sure the first 3-4 seconds of your video are catchy enough to make people stop from scrolling. If the video is boring right from the start, you’re going to miss a lot of clicks.
Research your audience – If it’s ads for TikTok for the younger audience, then the ad needs to be fast paced and engaging. If it’s for older women on Facebook, then maybe a slower ad and in a different format will work better. Learn your audience, check your competitors, do your research, and don’t just launch the same ad type for them all.
Call-To-Action – Don’t just end the video without asking your audience to perform a certain action. Sign up now, buy now, it doesn’t matter… As long as you call them to perform that action, this will get you more people to actually do that.
Always test new creatives – Never stop testing! Even if one of your ad creatives is bringing you tons of sales, you should never stop working on new ad creatives to test. Those who got tired from your ad and those who missed it can suddenly change their mind if they see a new ad. You can never know so you must always be on the lookout and test new creatives.
And again, follow what already works and don’t try to reinvent the wheel if you’re just a beginner. If you find a winning video ad that has lots of engagement, then take inspiration from it. Don’t go full Steven Spielberg mode because it will usually end up not working…
Launch Your Ads
Now that you have everything ready, it’s time to create your ad campaigns and launch them. By the time you reach this step you should have a clear understanding of what you should do and shouldn’t.
For example: You shouldn’t launch a campaign while having a single ad creative because you give no chance to Facebook or TikTok to optimize and see which creative is most liked by your target audience.
You also shouldn’t jump to a different product after only testing it once and without reading back the data and trying to figure out what exactly went wrong.
You see, this last step is where you truly go on your own way where you decide on how much money you can spend and how many tests you can run. The difference is that if you do it alone, you’re in risk of losing much more than if you learned it from the people with real selling experience.
So once you reach the launching ads step, all’s left for you is to run your ad campaigns and analyze the data you receive back. If you do it the right way, without cutting corners, then your success rate will be much higher than anyone else who decided to skip a few steps.
Most newbie Dropshippers look at the Ad Launching step and think of it as the most important part of Dropshipping, while in reality it really isn’t. It’s just a way to get traffic to your store and that’s it…
The most important part is everything that comes before the Launching Ads part.
To Sum It Up
I hope this article helped you understand what it takes to become a successful Dropshipper and how you need to approach this entire business model in order to finally make sales with your online store.
If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments below.
Happy Selling!
Struggling to find good products to sell? Not sure who’s your target audience? Tired of losing money on products you were sure were “winners”?
Then Ecomhunt is what you need! Find hot winning products that are added daily, spy on their ads & stores and import them into your store in 1 click and Start Selling Today!
Some of the biggest problems brands and advertisers in the US, France, Germany, and the UK have with retail media networks are the cost, the lack of third-party verification, the small amount of on-site ad space, and the lack of activation options, according to a DoubleVerify study released in August 2023.
Retail media networks refer to retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Target, where marketers can advertise.
Insider Intelligence/eMarketer anticipates that omnichannel retail media ad spend will increase 28.6% this year to approximately $60 billion.
However, this expansion may be hampered by the numerous challenges that businesses confront while implementing their retail media plans.
Retailers may add value to advertisers by providing new and innovative ad formats, greater data sharing, and more activation help.
Retailers will also need to form alliances, such as Walmart Connect’s alliance with NBCUniversal, to remain competitive, according to Insider Intelligence/eMarketer report, “Retail Trends to Watch in 2024.”
In the early days of SEO, the home page was considered the most significant website page because everyone acquired connections from directories and reciprocal linking, which predominantly resulted in home page links.
However, notes an article at the Search Engine Journal, because people connect to content, the most significant pages for many websites are now the inner pages.
The article says it is a long-standing link-building practice to create links to important core pages so that pages about XYZ have a greater chance of ranking for XYZ.
Therefore, the article states it was surprising to hear Gary Illyes, an analyst on the Google Search team, say that Google prioritizes a site’s homepage.
John Mueller, a senior search analyst, and search relations team member at Google, has also voiced the importance of the homepage as the first point to crawl a website to find more pages and to map how many clicks away they are from the homepage.
While Google’s Keyword Planner is an excellent tool for discovering new keywords, ChatGPT is a viable option. You can tell it the landing page you want keywords for, and it will give you a few options.
According to a report in the Search Engine Journal, You can ask ChatGPT to include a specific term in each keyword recommendation to make them more relevant.
Then, you can prompt ChatGPT to find keywords similar to those already found.
You can also use the AI tool to help you write ads. In addition, you can use ChatGPT to find audiences for your ads by asking what kind of consumer would buy the product.
Email marketing produces excellent outcomes and provides the highest ROI. Examine the channels and the ROI they generate, according to an article on Mobile App Daily.
That is correct; email marketing outperforms all other notable marketing methods, including SEO and content marketing. The report noted that email marketers may expect a whopping ROI of $40 for every $1 spent on email marketing.
Personalized emails with the recipients’ first names in the subject line have higher open rates (18.3%) than without (15.7%).
Keep testing different emails to find which ones get more opens and results.
Retail sales in the United States increased 3.1% between November 1 and December 24, according to a Mastercard study released on Tuesday.
The increase is lower than the 3.7% growth projected by Mastercard in September and the 7.6% increase seen last year as higher interest rates and inflation weighed on consumer spending, reported Reuters.
Amazon and Walmart increased deals in the United States through November to entice bargain-hunting buyers, but analysts said the reductions were not as steep as the previous year when retailers were faced with excess stock following the epidemic.
“Consumers are still spending, but they’re still price conscious and want to stretch their budgets,” Arun Sundaram, an analyst at CRFA Research told Reuters. He described the weeks between Cyber Monday and Super Saturday as a “soft period” for buying, but customers took advantage of the last weekend before Christmas to get “big deals.”
According to the survey, e-commerce sales expanded at a slower rate of 6.3% compared to 10.6% the previous year, as the popularity of online shopping fell from epidemic highs.
According to a Happy Returns survey commissioned by PayPal, 81% of US adult digital consumers evaluate return policies before making a first-time purchase, and 55% abandon their basket if return procedures are inconvenient.
According to a forecast by Insider Intelligence/eMarketer, the total return volume in the United States will reach $931.85 billion next year.
By 2027, that sum will surpass $1 trillion. One of the advantages that sets Amazon Prime apart from other shops is its free and quick returns.
The data also revealed that 73% of shoppers see a poor return experience as a reason to stop shopping with a particular store.
Gen Zers and millennials are more inclined than previous generations to do holiday shopping at the mall in person. Still, according to The Harris Poll, Gen Xers and baby boomers are more likely to purchase online via retailer websites.
However, the most preferred shopping strategy across all generations is to shop online at Amazon, reported Insider Intelligence/eMarketer.
According to our projection, Amazon will account for 41.9% of US retail holiday e-commerce sales this year, totaling $106.18 billion.
According to an August 2023 Jungle Scout poll, more than half (51%) of US consumers begin their online buying search on Amazon, outperforming search engines (39%), Walmart.com (34%), and YouTube (23%).
