In this review, I'm going to review who Hayden Bowles is and what he spoke about when in a video he gave reasons why you shouldn't start dropshipping.
After, I'll talk about what my experience with eComm was like and if I think it's a worthy business model to get into.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hey, I'm Ippei!
Ever since I become an entrepreneur, I fell in love with making money.
More important is how I make it.
Yea, I've been pretty successful with dropshipping, but my #1 online business model is local lead generation.
It's earned me my most passive income.
In a nutshell, I create sites like that tree care one above that generate leads each month for local businesses.
They pay me each month for those leads and I earn money each month passively.
If you want to know more about lead gen, just hop over here.
Who Is Hayden Bowles?
Hayden Bowles is an online entrepreneur who's been able to generate 7-figures in the eCom space.
When he was 12 years old, he was already trading stocks then got into making influencer pages on Instagram where he made a bit of cash.
He eventually got to the point where he was making $2500 per month because of Instagram and affiliate marketing combined.
With that money, he began to dip into eCommerce.
As his income increased, he began to create more eCom stores.
Hayden realized he was in the big leagues when he hit $70,000 in one month.
In his last year of high school, he dropped out and had to leave his house because of it.
He decided to move to Los Angeles and eventually launched a training program called Hacking Shopify Dropshipping to help people successfully run eCom businesses.
Something that helped Hayden not only be successful but also stay successful was to be frugal in the early stages of his entrepreneurial career.
Instead of spending whatever money he got and getting comfortable, he saved his money and kept grinding.
That's why today, Hayden's net worth is about $1.2 million and he's still making a boat-load of cash.
On his YouTube channel, he's posted a ton of videos which share his struggles and successes.
The content he posts is all about eCommerce and his love for cars.
One of the videos Hayden posted was about why people shouldn't start dropshipping.
I have my own reasons why people shouldn't too but let's get into Hayden's reasons.
According To Hayden: Why You Shouldn't Start Dropshipping
Hayden this video 3 months ago explaining why folks shouldn't dropship on Shopify.
The reason is that there are new restrictions.
First, Hayden talks about payment processor restrictions.
The reason why these have been put in place is because of COVID-19.
Back in March of 2020, so many companies stopped shipping out their products as quick as they normally would.
Why?
Shipping times slowed down big time.
You may have noticed that if you ordered something online, it took at least a month to arrive around that time.
People just decided to cancel their orders because of it.
Even I canceled some orders I placed.
As a result, payment processors ended up getting a huge amount of charge backs.
You think payment processors liked that?
Not even a smidge.
This is why now they're stricter and the problem is felt when you want to open an account.
One of the things they now ask for is a supplier agreement.
That's just a document that shows that you'll be doing business between yourself and a supplier.
It’s a simple document.
In all reality though, it's a nuisance when you’re trying to conduct business.
Another reason why Hayden believes it’s not worth getting into dropshipping is because of Facebook.
Facebook has really increased the limitations for dropshippers.
How?
They've imposed what’s called the Feedback score.
Facebook is able to get feedback from customers after they’ve purchased your products.
This is actually a good thing though.
If your customers are all getting their products on-time, then you shouldn’t have to worry about anything.
If this is the case, your Feedback score goes up and Facebook doesn't mess with you.
There is a problem though.
Alert!
Facebook has started to disable ad accounts!
Why?
Facebook can estimate if you're on a decline with your Feedback score.
Even if you haven’t dropped under what your threshold is, they'll still assume that you’re headed for a decline.
Unreal!
Facebook has a threshold of a 2 when it comes to your Feedback score and they don’t want to see accounts with low scores because it looks bad on them.
Remember that Facebook users are really their customers even though they buy from you.
If the quality of your products are good, that will help you keep your customers happy but, you still need to be careful.
If you want to jump into dropshipping, pay attention to your feedback score.
A third reason why Hayden doesn’t recommend dropshipping has to do with errors on your part or even on the part of the supplier.
If you mess up once, things can go real bad, real quick.
Think about it, unhappy customers equate to negative reviews.
That negativity bleeds into your feedback score and sales.
We already know Facebook is watching that.
There are also some bad people in this world.
How so?
Comment bots exist and there are people that will use those bots to spam your posts on Facebook and Instagram.
You’re definitely more at risk when you start off because your initial posts don’t have much engagement yet.
It's a sad truth.
Hayden also shares a bad experience he had with a supplier.
His supplier tried to not fulfill 4500 orders of a product.
Can you believe that?
They said they sent out the products when they didn’t.
What followed were issues with his ad accounts, his brand name and don’t forget the payment processors.
What a hassle!
Still though...
Hayden tried to make things right by refunding each customer and STILL sent out the products!
At the end of the day, even though it wasn’t Hayden’s fault, he had to take the hit because his supplier screwed up.
That sucks.
That entire experience cost Hayden $15 million in sales.
To avoid issues like this, it’s best to have someone verify each order.
The moral of the story is that there’s always going to be a risk here.
You really have to be careful in everything you do, pay attention to your structure and how you set things up.
As Hayden says in this video, “Trust but Verify”.
The truth is that you can’t avoid bad experiences but, finding the right supplier comes with time.
My Dropshipping Case Study: Selling Shark Onesies
Ok so, in 2017, dropshipping was big.
I decided to give dropshipping a shot.
You can obviously get results quick with FB ads, so I thought it was a smart move.
The first thing I had to do was decide what kind of store I was going to build.
It was my first time so, I went with a general store.
I jumped into the Shopify platform, got my domain, chose my theme and added some apps to help my website look reliable in the eyes of customers.
It was now time to choose a product to sell.
For my first product, I think it was genius which one I chose.
The Baby Shark song was such a big deal so I thought, why not find products that will resonate with anyone who listens to that song.
Parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts.
After 20 minutes of searching on AliExpress, I found the product.
As much as that song may have driven adults crazy, these onesies would absolutely capture their attention.
I added the onesie to my Shopify store without thinking too much about it.
I also made a Facebook page to show that our main product being sold was the shark onesie.
Now it was time to setup my Facebook ad in the Facebook Business Manager.
I also had to make sure to get the Facebook pixel added to my site to help collect data on the audience I was going to target.
For example, the pixel will show you if many people are getting to your checkout page, but not finalizing the purchase.
In that case, you might want to make some adjustments to your site by adding some calls to action.
Before I went live with my ad, I made sure to create my custom audience on Facebook.
After Facebook approved my ad, it was time to see if I'd get any sales.
When my first sale came in, I made a total of $5.
I had to spend $20 though.
I said to myself...
"I'm just going to increase my budget".
Also, I tested different ad sets with different targeting metrics.
What were my results?
I ended up with 102 orders and made over $4300 in sales.
I didn't pocket that though.
After expenses, I walked away with only a few hundred dollars.
I wasn't particularly happy with that.
Therefore, I went back to the drawing board.
This time testing different images for my ads.
One of the better converting ads was this video.
I had my friend dance in a shark onesie.
As a result, the ad had a ton of engagement.
Then, the unexpected happened.
This is a real thing.
Think about this...
If you saw the same ad time after time, wouldn't you get tired of seeing it?
Of course.
That's exactly what happened.
Everyone in my custom audience saw my ad.
There was no need to keep showing it to them no matter what changes I made.
Ads have an expiration date so, you need to look for another product every few months.
At the end of my dropshipping journey, I ended up with the following numbers:
Almost $49K looks good but, after subtracting product cost and ad spend, I only profited, $3000.
$3000!
Was it all worth it to me?
Why I'm Not Dropshipping In 2021
I didn't think that all of the work I did was worth it.
Dropshipping in my opinion is very demanding.
First of all, testing which Facebook ads convert best can get real expensive and is time consuming.
Also, the rise in Facebook ad cost is going up every year because of the rise in competition on the platform.
I'd rather not spend my money on Facebook ads to only make a small ROI.
You also can't forget to check up on supplier pricing.
Believe me, that can change overnight.
Imagine you don't stay on top of that, the price goes up, but you didn't make the price change on your Shopify store.
You're going to lose money.
Either that or you're going to deal with angry customers.
Speaking of angry customers, no matter how good you think you and your product are or even how good shipping times are, at some point, you will come across unhappy customers.
This business model is too much of a hassle.
The reality is that Facebook ads and dropshipping really don't have the benefits that my lead generation business has.
Here are some of the differences.
Dropshipping
Lead Generation
Let me explain why lead generation is my #1 online business model in 2021 and how I earn my income passively.
My #1 Online Business Model: Local Lead Generation
I earn my lead gen income passively by ranking simple websites on Google.
What do I mean?
Take a look.
As you can see, this site has made me $2000 per month, every month ever since 2015.
Once I got this site built and ranked at the top of page 1 of Google, I exclusively sent the leads that my site generated to a local tree business willing to take on more work.
The skills I've learned have allowed me to simply build out sites offering a service and get paid for the leads my sites generate.
Take a look at this infographic that will better help you visualize what the lead gen process looks like.
The lead gen coaching program that I joined in 2014 has been a huge reason why I've succeeded at this model.
There are over 6900 students from all over the world in the program.
All of us are focused on building out more lead generation sites.
The resources and contacts in the group are a huge boost to every one of our businesses which is why we make sure we stayed tuned to each and every live call.
Our digital properties make us money every month and we're not worried about monitoring ad spend or checking supplier pricing like you do in dropshipping.
Also...
We don't even need to worry about market saturation because there are so many niches and each niche is different from market to market!
As lead generators, we're more focused on scaling so that we can continue making a positive impact on the lives of local business owners.
The truth is that leads are in high demand.
So many business owners know that truth but don't have the skills to generate more customers.
Our skills are saving businesses and changing lives.
Patric shared his experience in our group on how his life changed.
Patric is just one of many students that have similar experiences and are just crushing it in the lead gen space.
I'm so glad I took that call back in 2014.
I went from working a rat race 9-5 job to now being my own boss.
My goal is to continue building out more sites, more digital assets so that I can keep on earning what we call "mailbox money" on autopilot each month.
Here are more reasons why local lead generation is my top online business model in 2021.
If you still wanna learn more, just click the link below and set up a call.
There's no obligation at all and you'll have all your questions answered.
This is the way.
See ya.
