Digital Dropshipping Mastery Review: The Misleading PLR Ebook Reselling Course By Tanner Planes

Digital Dropshipping Mastery is the newest course offered by Tanner Planes, one of the youngest e-commerce gurus you will find today. The course title, however, is a bit of a misnomer, as you will not be learning how to dropship, but instead will be repackaging Private Label Rights (PLR) ebooks that you sell for a profit. 

Tanner says that “digital dropshipping” is a still-untapped niche of the traditional Shopify dropshipping model. Rather than promoting a physical product and worrying about where to find your supplier, you will instead be selling a digital product that you have bought the rights to. This way, customers receive their items right away and are more likely to be repeat clients. 

However, digital products can range anywhere from digital art (like NFTs) to software to even music and photography. This adds an extra layer of inaccuracy to what you will be learning in the program (based solely on its title), as you will mostly be working with ebooks and PDF files in Digital Dropshipping Mastery. 

Thus, this "dropshipping course" is more of a highly elaborate affiliate marketing program focused on reselling ebooks and earning a profit through product bundling. 

In this Digital Dropshipping Mastery review, I will go over what you will be learning in the course, the hidden fees not mentioned by Tanner, and how other business models, such as local lead generation, offer more reliable and consistent income while being more upfront about what you need to do and what it offers. 

What Tanner Planes actually teaches you in Digital Dropshipping Mastery

Digital Dropshipping Mastery follows a simple 7-step process to get you to sell your first ebook easily on Shopify. At the heart of the program is a focus on what Tanner calls the “wrapping paper” - people buy what they like to see, not necessarily what will benefit them. Here, you are told to judge a book by its cover. 

Step 1: Find a niche

Tanner says that there are only three things that a person wants: health, money, and relationships. When selecting your first ebook, you should decide on what niche you would want to focus on. 

Step 2: Choose a product to sell

This isn’t really a step, as Tanner says you should just sell an ebook or PDF file. This is because they can be instantly downloaded after payment and don’t require much effort to buy the license for. I should mention that Tanner does say that these products should be valuable to the customer, but in the context of his sales video, it seems like the value is more on the topic of the ebook itself not on its actual content. 

Step 3: Source PLR content 

Here, you buy the rights to an ebook. Tanner shows you his favorite digital marketing business sites and says that you should just choose a book that allows you to modify its sales page and cover. He doesn’t mention that you should read the book or check whether the book is good at all; the content doesn’t seem to be a deciding factor. 

Try to find three books or a mastery course that flow well with one another. For example, if you buy a book about weight loss, try finding a guide on eating healthily as well. This will be further explained in step 6.

For now, though, you are just told to find 3 to 4 similar books and purchase the rights to them. 

Qualms on quality aside, this also means that you need to purchase several products upfront before receiving a sale. Keep this in mind, as this may mean that you need to have a relatively large capital to start this model. 

Step 4: Make your products attractive

Decide on who your target market is and rebrand the ebook to suit this demographic. For example, if you bought a general book about weight loss, you can niche this further to target busy women in their 30s. Tanner will teach you how to create a brand name that captures this audience’s attention. 

I need to keep stressing that this is regardless of whether the ebook does actually talk about the specific niche. In his sales video, Tanner chose a rather lengthy book about weight loss. He rebranded it to say that it offers 30-minute workouts for women in their 30s, but it’s incredibly unclear whether this book contained such information.  

Step 5: Design your product’s wrapping paper 

This is Tanner’s main module and teaches you how to design a visually appealing front page cover of your book. He recommends using Canva. 

Step 6: Create your storefront & systems

Once you have good-looking products, you should then set up your ultimate Shopify store. Tanner will teach you how to create a visually appealing site (again, adding to the “wrapping paper”) and then use product bundling to earn profit. 

In traditional product bundling, your main product is the most expensive item. Additional items (the “bonuses”) are then recommended at a discounted price. This way, customers feel like they’re saving money and gaining more value from their initial purchase. 

Strangely, Tanner recommends the opposite. In Digital Dropshipping Mastery, you are taught to make your main product the cheapest item, and your bundle items two to three times more expensive. This is to build “trust” among customers, who will now feel more comfortable about spending more for additional items because you gave them such a bargain at the very beginning. 

This does seem to be effective for Tanner, as he says that bundle marketing is the main source of income for Digital Dropshipping Mastery. Your goal is to get customers to purchase several products as a single combined unit. 

Step 7: Start marketing 

Tanner prefers using Instagram and Facebook to market his products, however you can use any form of social media (or hire a social media marketing agency) or engage in diferent social channels to earn money online. He doesn’t really get into detail about how you should go about this, though, which leaves the impression that this isn’t covered in the course. 

So, all that being said, aside from the $500 that you will spend to learn Digital Dropshipping Mastery (that is, if you don’t purchase Tanner’s bundle package to also enroll in his other course, Zero to $1M with Facebook Ads), you will also need to:

Tanner says though that you can start out with a budget of only $200. 

What else should I know about Digital Dropshipping Mastery? 

Once you enroll in this dropshipping course, you will have lifetime access to a self-paced module that covers 10 hours of video content and 54 high-value strategy modules to build your first dropshipping business. Students should be able to complete the entire program in 1 month and will receive daily tutorials. 

Students will also have immediate access to a private Discord community and first access to future bonuses. 

Tanner also offers 6 bonus modules:

The 2 other ways you can use PLR ebooks

There are 2 other popular ways to use your PLR ebook. Once you claim full authorship of a PLR book, you can combine it with other products or convert it into different formats and content. If you’re unsure about reselling one, you can consider these options: 

You can use it as a giveaway to attract more clients and build your email list

One of the most popular ways of using PLR ebooks is to use them as lead magnets to grow your email list.

If you own your own website or blog, you can use a relevant PLR ebook to attract new clients by asking visitors to your website to enter their email addresses or personal information if they want to receive a free book. Then, you can use email marketing to drive more traffic to your Shopify store.

People like receiving free stuff, and if the PLR ebook you gave is of high quality, you have a higher chance of building customer loyalty and trust. 

You can repurpose the ebook for other content creation 

You have complete rights to your PLR ebook, so you can repurpose it and give your audience great content. There are so many ways you can consider, including writing shorter articles from it, converting the content to a video, or even using the information in a podcast (similar to the Audio Income Academy). 

Why changing your PLR ebook is important

Remember that anyone can access PLR products. Even when you buy the rights of one, another person can do the same. So, it’s important that you rebrand your PLR ebook and become a content creator if you want to build online credibility and visibility. 

Duplicate content does not add value to the web and your website or blog may not be placed on the first page of search engines. In Tanner’s program, you will just change the cover, but you are free to modify the contents in any way you want, including removing unnecessary data or even adding more information.  

Who is Tanner Planes?

After finding success selling one item on Instagram, Tanner started his own YouTube channel to share his story and teach other teens how to earn passive income using Facebook ads and other SEO essentials. He now owns several 6 to 7-figure stores and swears by dropshipping. 

He also offers another course called Zero to $1M with Facebook Ads. 

What does Tanner Planes teach on his YouTube channel?

Tanner regularly posts videos on how to earn passive income using “digital drop shipping” and finding a winning product. If you’re hesitant about the $497 price tag, you can easily find valuable information in his free videos. 

Tanner also posts videos on his personal weight loss and bodybuilding journey. 

CONCLUSION: Is Digital Dropshipping Mastery worth it? 

There is income potential in reselling and rebranding an ebook, but it requires you to always be on the lookout for the newest books to sell. Additionally, it would be better if you looked at the content of the books you are selling so that people really benefit from what it is you have to offer. 

I will give Tanner the benefit of the doubt that he didn’t cover this aspect at all in his sales video to save time; but any business owner would agree that customer loyalty is reliant on how well they trust your brand: Sell them a lemon and they will only buy from you once. 

If you prefer to write an ebook yourself or have someone ghostwrite one for you, that’s also an option - but this will take more time and money. You'd also need to learn digital advertising or enroll in other individual courses to become a certified SEO expert or learn how to attract Instagram influencers to promote your product. In essence, reselling ebooks is not a passive income business opportunity, and is better suited for those who are willing to put in hours of work every day.

So is this the best dropshipping course out there? No, especially because it doesn't teach you how to start an actual dropshipping business in the first place. In Tanner's course, you would mostly be doing affiliate marketing and creating a strong online presence.

If you want a better option to earn money online, I'd recommend local lead generation, which creates websites for specific business niches. With this model, you target a population that is already interested in a service but where online competition is low enough to get your website ranked on the first page of Google using local SEO tactics.