eCom Success Academy was started by Adrian Morrison in 2017. It's an excellent course for dropshipping beginners. Some of the strategies in the training are bit older, but Adrian does provide weekly live coaching once you're part of the program. We compare this program with other top dropshipping programs of 2024. Does Adrian Morrison's course still live up to the hype? and is dropshipping the right business model for you?
Pros
Adrian Morrison has a lot of experience with teaching dropshipping and internet marketing strategies
Live coaching once per week
The training will also teach you other skills like Facebook advertising & e-mail marketing that you could use for other business models
Cons
More expensive than a lot of other dropshipping courses
They use upsell tactics which can be deceptive
The model of dropshipping Adrian teaches has some issues since you're still shipping from China which means customers won't get the product for 3-4 weeks. This leads to a lot of complaints and headaches.
Who is Adrian Morrison?
He was making $5.15 per hour at a car wash, and playing Call of Duty. He realized he needed to make a change, and so he learned affiliate marketing from his brother Anthony Morrison.
He got obsessed with running Facebook & YouTube Ads and promoting a Netflix trial offer where he would make $30 for each sign up. He treated this like a video game, working on it day in and day out. And he eventually got that business to $30K per month.
Since then, he has consulted with top social media influencers and multi-million dollar companies on Facebook Advertising. Facebook HQ even invited Adrian to their HQ. Shopify featured Adrian inside their platform to provide guides for their customers.
And his courses have helped over 100,000 people. Unfortunately, there's no way to verify these numbers.
Today Adrian Morrison is estimated to have a net worth of $5 million.
Many people may have seen his free content on YouTube called “Success TV” and “Profit Power Hour” that runs from 9 pm EST.
What is E-Com Quickstart?
E-Com Quickstart costs $37, and it's the lite version of his main dropshipping course. Only parts of the training are in there. It's designed to get people into his funnel & lower his paid traffic cost. Even if he breaks even, he can get people into his funnel and upsell his real course, which is the E-Com Success Academy which costs $2495.
What's included with E-Com Quickstart?
SUMMARY
There's still some good dropshipping training inside E-Com Quickstart for beginners. However, a lot of the advanced strategies aren't there. The best value is for $37 getting access to Adrian Morrison's weekly live coaching sessions. Don't expect to master dropshipping with this Quickstart program but it gets you introduced to the business model and help you decide if this business model is right for you or not.
What is eCom Success Academy?
eCom Success Academy is Adrian Morrison's main paid course that teaches you how to start a dropshipping business. Adrian shows you how to find trending products, how to create attention grabbing Facebook ads that triggers emotions and how to use funnels, e-mail marketing and a well designed Shopify store to sell e-commerce products to paid ads traffic.
Shopify has approved this course and made it available to their customers as well.
What is Dropshipping?
Dropshipping allows you to ship products directly from the manufacturers overseas to your customer. Therefore, you don't have to buy large inventory to start selling online. This allows you to create Shopify store on trending products, run some Facebook ads at it, and when the customer purchases from your store. You can take the customer's money and place an order to your manufacturer and they'll ship the products for you.
Why Adrian Morrison Loves Dropshipping?
This allowed Adrian to focus more of his time on tweaking Facebook Ads and finding the latest trending products using dropshipping product research tools.
Since you don't have to buy inventory, dropshipping becomes all about being able to test various products with multiple variations of Facebook ads to find winning combination. Just like in affiliate marketing, A/B testing is a huge part of dropshipping success.
eCom Success Academy Modules
Easy to follow step-by-step training on how to set up your Shopify store. How to install the right plugins to make sure your store not only looks the best but converts the best.
- Shopify store design
- Promotional Techniques
- Setting up your store and sales page
- Various Shopify Apps
- Building out the look and feel of your brand
- Shopify Quickstart
- Producing killer sales copy on the landing page
- How to ensure the checkout runs smoothly
- How to set up various payment processors
Adrian walks you through how to find the right type of products that will convert well with dropshipping. Products that solve problems, that address a deep pain point, products that elicit emotions or passions in people. Remember, in dropshipping, you need to capture someone's short attention span with a paid ad on social media.
Adrian then shows you how to find the right suppliers with excellent reviews from platforms like AliExpress or Alibaba.
How to read vendor feedback, negotiate lower prices, and scout for the best-selling products.
There's also a bonus section on how to do print on demand.
The longest module with 63 lessons. Learning how to run Facebook ads is the most technical aspect of the dropshipping business. But it is a crucial aspect of the business because you're spending your own money everyday to run Facebook ads. If you don't optimize it correctly, you may not make your money back, instead begin losing money on your ad spend.
Topics covered:
- Keyword Mining
- Re-targeting Campaigns
- Look-alike Targeting
- Intersect Targeting
- Page Post Ads
- Creating Ad Copy
- Split Testing
- Carousel Ads
- When to kill or scale your ads
The better the targeting the lower your CPC or Cost per click. Adrian did a good job making a complex topic and simplifying it down for a beginner.
Adrian covers everything in this module, including Facebook Pixel, which he spends 2 hours on it. Pixel gives your store trackability. Anytime someone buys your product, the pixel lets Facebook know who that person was and so the ad can optimize and begin show the ad to more people that's got similar interest as your customer that just purchased.
He also goes in-depth on the do's and don'ts of Facebook Ad copywriting and what types of images / videos work best. I'm personally a fan of creating dropshipping video ads.
CRITIQUE
My critique for Adrian's Facebook ad training is that he doesn't go over what to do when you get your ad account banned or suspended. This is quite a common occurrence when you start aggressively scaling your Facebook Ads. There are strategies to get your ad account unsuspended or creating new ad accounts, but the strategies are constantly changing as Facebook gets smarter at fake account detection. Adrian should cover this in the course.
Once you have become profitable with dropshipping. It's time to hire some VA (Virtual Assistants) that can take over some of the mundane tasks of dropshipping. Primarily, handling customer service, because one of the issue with shipping products from overseas is that shipping times can take 3-4 weeks and so you're going to have customers that are wondering if they got scammed. Speedy response is critical to prevent chargebacks. You also want VA's that can take the daily purchases and then place the proper orders to the manufacturer. You should be always focused on studying the competition and looking to launch new products. You won't be able to do that if you're bogged down with dealing with customer service issues all day. Many people use Upwork to hire VA's.
Also, it's quicker and more effective to outsource specific tasks at all stages of your journey. Why should you spend hours designing a logo that looks amateur when you can pay someone a few bucks to make a classy logo?
Lastly, you also want VA's that can monitor your Facebook ad performance and help you with some of the product research. Monitoring trends or go through large data set and find products that meet certain metrics.
This is an extension to the last module. Once you have the team, how do you best manage your team? Adrian recommends few different softwares to help you do so. Adrian likes to use Asana.
Also what tasks do you need to prioritize on a day-to-day basis with your team? What metrics should you look at? This is great for dropshippers that are ready to scale.
Adrian covers how to sell your dropshipping business, which is quite unique. We haven't seen a lot of other dropshipping courses talk about selling the business because most dropshippers create Shopify stores to get temporary success while the product is trending. Selling the business requires a drop shipper to build a reputable brand that sells multiple related products. And then building out the social media presence around this brand, possibly using influencer marketing.
Adrian Morrison doesn't have his own story of selling a dropshipping brand, so this short module of 12 minutes, we felt, didn't cover this topic in-depth enough. Most of the training seems to center on keeping a basic profit & loss spreadsheet, that can be found anywhere online.
Most dropshipping stores you build will not be developed further. In order sell a brand, you really have to convert a dropshipping business to an e-commerce brand that has other digital assets other than just a Shopify store that sells other manufacturer's products. You need things like social media followers count, engagement, profit/loss statement over multiple years, unique image & video assets that represents the brand well, etc. Take a look at our dropshipping vs. e-commerce article to get an idea of what it takes to build a brand that's worthy of companies buying.
1. Profit Power Hour Video Archive - Adrian's weekly live coaching that dates all the way back to 2016. Many of the videos are outdated strategies, but you may still find tons of gold nuggets. You could simply start tuning into the new lives he's doing every Monday. He uses the hand written tool a lot. I suppose it's better than just looking at a talking head.
He covers every facet of the dropshipping business. Tons of product research & Facebook ads training. Sometimes mindset & having the right expectations.
2. Emailing with Anthony Morrrison - Adrian's older brother, Anthony Morrison, walks you through 26 videos of how to approach e-mail marketing. He has learned e-mail marketing through affiliate marketing.
Unfortunately, all the videos are using white board and a lot of explanation about concepts and theories about email marketing and not enough showcasing of real world examples.
3. Outsourcing Mastery - Here you get a few basics about getting a team up and running to hand off some of the day-to-day tasks. Adam Radar is the presenter but there's not much info on who he is or why he's providing the info.
4. Sizzle Product Sniper Software - This is an exclusive software platform created by the Morrison brothers that enables you to spy on what products are going viral on AliExpress & Facebook. If you are going with the AliExpress model, it will save you time.
TBH there are a handful of similar product spy research softwares and browser extension which do the same. But with all these spying platforms, it also means swarms of people are all following the same trends for products. Meaning everyone gets a smaller slice of the pie or your product won't stay profitable as long.
5. Case Studies - Adrian's uses a few case studies of his top products, specifically focusing on his approach to advertising on Facebook. These specific examples show you how he set up his ads and get attention. Sadly, he still doesn't reveal his Facebook bidding strategy. Another thing to keep in mind is these are from a few years ago and what worked then might work anymore. Over time I've learned to be cautious of copying templates from courses. See, the problem is there are 1000s of people all copying the same thing. Firstly, customers get sick of it. Secondly, if there's any nifty hacks or work-arounds, platforms eventually catch on and add a filter to prevent you doing it. Thirdly, platforms and trends change fast - I'm sure you can think of plenty of examples on social media that didn't exist a couple of years ago.
eCom Success Academy FAQ
What's eCom Success Academy refund policy?
It's not easy to find a refund policy on the ESA sign up page but we found their policy once we digged deeper. eCom Success Acdemy is a NO REFUND policy.
It's a $2495 price tag so make sure this is the course you want because all sales are final with them.
is there eCom Success Academy Affiliate Program?
Yes eCom Success Academy pays out 40% commission or $998.80 per sale. You could refer your friends and family or try to promote the course using YouTube videos or a blog.
Here's their leader board of affiliates.
There is Adrian's brother, Anthony near the top. Tai Lopez is probably familiar to many after he blitzed YouTube with ads for his social media course. And Bob Proctor is known for appearing on the movie "The Secret" as well as being a motivational speaker. Who unfortunately passed away recently.
These people all had big following already. And they simply promoted ESA as an affiliate to their email list & followers.
BTW: I'm not an affiliate of eCom Success Academy. My #1 recommendation is no longer dropshipping, it is local lead generation.
What's the success rate of Ecom Success Academy?
It's difficult to determine the overall success rate of eCom Success Academy, however according to most polls the success rate for dropshipping is around 10%. Keep in mind, this is people that tried dropshipping, including people that didn't invest in a course. So the ESA success rate should be bit higher than 10%. Also, most people never stick with things. They give up when they sense first signs of difficulty.
Can I succeed with eCom Success Academy if I'm broke?
Even though dropshipping offers a business model that requires low startup costs compared to most businesses, since you don't need to invest in an inventory, you still need money to run the Facebook ads. You will not find a winning product & winning ad on your first try. It takes some time testing different ads till you find the home-run combination. And testing means you need to invest some money running Facebook ad campaigns. The very realistic number that students should be ready to risk is $3000 to $5000.
is eCom Success Academy a scam?
eCom Success Academy is not a scam. Some people like to claim that a high-ticket course like this is a scam because you can find the same information online for free. However, when you look into the training and compare it to YouTube videos, it becomes clear that the paid courses offer much more in-depth insight on many of the aspects of dropshipping business. Paid courses like ESA also come with weekly live coaching where you can ask the course creator questions and get real time feedback. We feel that if you can afford it, this live interaction with experienced people in the field is worth the price tag.
is eCom Success Academy up to date?
The course originally came out in 2017 and Adrian dropped an update on 2019. He updated the Facebook Optimization, more print on demand strategies, Instagram ads, and new 30 Day Live Bootcamp. On his weekly Profit Power Hour, he continues to share new strategies such as subscription-based dropshipping. Perhaps some of the training modules itself could use some revamping.
is eCom Success Academy worth it?
The coach is legit and the training is outlined neatly and easy to follow. This course is great for beginners. Although we feel that it's lacking some advanced strategies of advertising dropshipping store like using TikTok, creating engaging video content or Adwords.
$2495 price tag makes it one of the more expensive dropshipping courses out there, but you do get weekly coaching with Adrian Morrison, who is constantly running Facebook ads for dropshipping and his own courses. That combined with their support makes this investment worth it in our eyes, if you can afford it.
eCom Success Academy Alternatives?
If $2495 is out of your budget, we have also reviewed more affordable options that still made it on our best dropshipping courses list.
Here are some of our favorites.
eCom Elites by Franklin Hatchett
Course is only $197 and it's over 34 hours long. Comprehensive step-by-step training. He does offer weekly Q&A sessions as well. So if you're strapped for cash, this is definitely not a bad option. Read our full eCom Elites Review for more info.
Trillion Dollar Growth by Royston G King
This program offers online entrepreneurs to build their ecommerce online business with Shopify dropshipping. Offers weekly zoom calls which are recorded and given to students. This program offers 1-on-1 mentorship plus 2 free courses about dropshipping and print on demand. For more information, read our Trillion Dollar Growth Review.
Some of the Challenges of Dropshipping in 2024
Rising Cost & Unpredictability of Facebook Ads
There's currently more advertisers than Facebook's ad inventory, which means ad costs are higher than ever before. The ads operate on a bidding system. This is the unfortunate side of paid ads. Eventually, these platforms get very expensive and the results become unpredictable. Depending on what competitors are running ads, it can make your ads profitable one day and unprofitable the next day. This unpredictability makes this business not so hands-free these days.
Apple released its IO14 update for the iPhone
This update removed a lot of the off the app tracking that Facebook was doing on many of their user base. Their ability to track users browsing behavior after they left the Facebook site helped them create a personal profile of each user with their interests, habits, and wants. They've been able to make billions off the data collected on their users to sell highly targeted advertising. And we are already seeing complaints on FB groups and Reddits about lack of conversions for ad campaigns. Not surprising as the data quality becomes weaker to target many users.
Your Facebook Ad Account Getting Suspended
This has been an issue for dropshippers and affiliate marketers for a long time. Facebook has awful support system and when your ad account gets banned, it takes forever to get reinstated. When your only traffic source is paid traffic, one suspension can mean you're out of business overnight. Even when you follow all the guidelines, you can still get suspended automatically if your ad gets enough complaints. This is sometimes outside your control and makes this business not as stable as the gurus try to make it seem.
The Duration of Winning Products is Going Down
As more people get into dropshipping, the business model as a whole is getting more saturated each year. And there's tons of tools now that allows you to spy on the competitor. What a lot of dropshipping gurus teach is to use these tools to rip off winning ads & products that's already going viral. This way, you don't have to do all the testing to find it yourself. You can just copy from the winners. This creates a business model that races to the bottom because each new copier can set the price lower, until eventually the product becomes unprofitable.
Is Dropshipping Profitable in 2024?
If you're checking out these dropshipping courses, you've likely seen some "testimonials" with insane sales figures. And you've probably been tempted to think that could be you too.
It's way too easy to get all excited about 5-figure and even 6-figure stores. But the cold hard truth? Those digits making you dream of luxury vacations, a swanky new home and exotic cars, well...it's not painting the real picture. That number is just sales revenue, not profit.
Dropshipping profit margins is at 10-20% when you have a winning product that's going viral. And this might last couple months but it'll never last long-term because other dropshippers will eventually copy your entire business.
What are some of the other unforseen expenses in dropshipping?
- Cost of the product
- Shipping & handling
- Paid ads or influencers
- Buying creatives (images & videos)
- Store & web hosting fees
- Buying & renewing domains
- Any outsourcing to VA's
- Customer refunds & chargebacks
- Taxes
Dropshippers underestimate the cost of paid ads and taxes.
My best advice is to keep your money to reinvest back into your business. Hold off on going on vacations for a good while. Because the profits can unexpectedly dry up from various unforeseen variables.
Dropshipping can still be profitable in 2024 but its more difficult than it was 3-4 years ago. You need to invest in proper branding, web design and video ad creatives to ensure that your dropship product looks like a legitimate high quality brand.
Dropshipping Trends to Watch Out For
Here are some things to take into account about dropshipping:
- There are more than 1,000,000 stores on Shopify already. This isn't taking into consideration WooCommerce and other platforms.
- Many people prefer Amazon so they can use Prime Shipping for 2 day delivery (or less).
- Other big-brand retailers are getting into the fast shipping niche.
- The same suppliers for dropshipping are also selling those products themselves on Amazon, only cheaper.
- There are so many spying plugins that any hot product or great ad is cannibalized quickly as everyone copies on it.
- You have to keep researching for new products.
- Facebook Ads are getting more expensive but less effective meaning it costs you more per sale.
Now get this, depending on what country you're planning to sell to, there's some scary things on the horizon that you'll need to research:
- Some materials are in short supply or increasing in cost - many producers/suppliers won't guarantee a price beyond a week or two and availability can be tricky.
- The U.S. is supposedly on the verge of hyper-inflation. Among other things it means the dollar will be worth less and increases in the cost of living will leave less $$ for spending on non-essentials.
- The UK is struggling to import goods due to limited truck drivers with the new EU restrictions.
- Shipping times from China have been getting longer and longer. In some cases, I've heard of 45 days - why would someone wait that long versus 2 days on Amazon?
An Alternative Business: Local Lead Generation
Dropshipping is just one way to make money online. It's certainly not the only online business that we like.
Amongst all the online business models out there. Local lead generation is at the top of our list.
You build & rank simple websites at the top of Google search and these sites generate free traffic and leads to small businesses like roofers, electricians, contractors, etc.
These sites produce much more consistent results than Facebook ads.
I have these sites that's been making me consistent income since 2015.
There's a coaching program with 7400 students whose lives are changing with this skill-set that allows them to quit their 9 to 5 and build a truly sustainable passive income from home. Go here for more info: Local Lead Generation Coaching Program
I think I was ripped off by a employee of Ecom success pros
They told me fantastic things they took $5000 out of credit card and then now they don’t return my calls. Their numbers are still good. I’ve called them and leave messages and they don’t return my calls, and I have not made a penny in six weeks nor has anybody discussed with me any products to represent that we can sell and share the profits
It happened to me today! 7/19/24!!! I’ll keep trying tho… maybe I’ll get lucky or talk to some authority today!
Will not recommend it. What matters for them are upsells…
The morrison brothers are con artists
There was a facebook group of scammed people, but the brothers used legal pressure to close it down
They do not care about students- they will scam the elderly, the ill, the disabled, no qualms at ALL. I lost a lot of $$ and one (all expensive) product has never worked at all. Once they thought mike was off and the attitude in what i heard was 180 degrees from the "live" person. The law doesnt go after them. They claim to be methodists but sure dont act like it.
Dropshipping is risky because of paid ads. It doesn’t help that the coaches don’t help.
Some interesting points here. You mention FB ad bidding but even in your post about Cattawampus, all you did was drop $20-30 a day. FB takes care of all it for you.
I'm not successful at all in my dropshipping business, but I tried my hand a tshirt sales and I'm pretty happy with it on Etsy.
The problem with Shopify pulling your account anytime is mitigated by owning your own site.
By selling custom products, you're not competing with other drop shippers. But that's the whole point of any business, do better than the others, even if you're doing the same thing.
We bought into Adrian Morrison scam. He tells you they will build you a working ready to go shopify site with selling products. In 5 months my brother an I spent $14,000 on things like his coaching program where you get no direction. All they do is push website upgrades that he makes money on like optimized up sell, booster theme ect. The site they built look amateurish the add-ons they sold us slowed it down, and made it difficult for potential buyers to navigate so they would leave.
They only people that make money in his program are Adrian his bother, shopify, Facebook, and all his affiliates.
If you read a positive review about Adrian and his company its from an affiliate, that im sure at the end of the review there will be a link to send you to Adrian company pushing you to buy one of his programs or products.
If I knew his course was about pushing his garbage products that don't work to unsuspecting people so you can make a cut and make him rich, I would have never taken it.
I am already successful in many business, I have taken many training and coaching programs in my life. However this is the biggest scam I have ever seen, so hopefully I can help people not waste there money.
Drop shipping is the worst thing you could do products are bad, stuff take weeks to get to your customers. If you have an existing business and you have products that you already sell, it could work.
However don't waste your money on anything too with Adrian Morrisons or ecomm success.
Thank you for this detailed account of your experience. I suspected as much and am glad I have hunted for reviews. You've saved me a lot of time, money and angst. 🙏
I bought his course a year and a half ago, I lost trust in him and in what he teaches after finding out that he’s not focused 100% Into the course. He also does crypto investments and creates apps that he later sells to his own students on subscription basis. If he’s gonna make millions of dollars from poor people, then he should update the info in there (to say the least), and Bob Proctor doesn’t give a shit about you either, he’s just in it for the money. Take my advice, look for someone else.
I don’t think ecom is sustainable in the longrun
I would think everyone is in it for the money or why would you do it? If the value of what someone offers is greater than what you receive then someone's success is just a marker of someone value in relation to what they are giving to you.
Hey nice blog.
I was looking at Adrian Morrisons course but you made some good points. However I do like what you do. Love to know more.