Launchers Academy by Jaiden Vu is an ecommerce mentorship agency that helps people make money online with dropshipping using their Dropship to Brand model. Their model has you build out a general store first. When you find a winning product, you then brand your store around your winning product and scale it.
There isn't much of a difference between how Jaiden teaches dropshipping and what you'll learn from another course. They simply take a more calculated approach in Launchers Academy. One that will help you save time in your dropshipping business.
This Launchers Academy review will uncover if what Jaiden and the other coaches teach in their curriculum will put you on track to make consistent money online. I'll also explain how local lead generation pays you a monthly recurring income without having to deal with the hassle of paying for traffic on social media or selling any physical products like you do with dropshipping.
Pros
Jaiden has generated over $10 million in revenue by the age of 27.
Current students benefit from an individualized service because they keep the number of members in the program low
24/7 live support.
Live Q&A sessions each week
The Launchers Academy team will audit your campaigns, marketing content, and even your landing pages each week.
Facebook and Instagram ads training
Cons
No transparency with what you're going to learn in each module of the course before you buy in.
If you choose dropshipping as your career path, know that it doesn't pay you an income you can rely on each week or each month.
After you get started, weeks and months can pass before you find a highly profitable product.
Price
Launchers Academy costs $995.
Refund Policy
Launchers Academy handles refunds on a case-by-case basis. According to their TOS page, they do not issue refunds to people who haven't done their due diligence before joining the program.
Training
3-7 month mentorship; They provide you with training videos that teach you each basic step of the business model.
Group
Exclusive Slack community where you and fellow Launchers can get support. This is only available if you sign up for the Intermediate and Elite mentorship programs.
Origin
They started Launchers Academy in 2021.
Reputation
They have featured Jaiden Vu on Forbes, Yahoo Finance, and more. He has a good online reputation. I only found one blog article claiming Jaiden is a fraud for allegedly paying for fake articles.on platforms like Forbes and Entrepreneur.
Top 5 Dropshipping Mistakes People Make
1. Choosing the wrong niche
Choosing the wrong niche is one of the biggest problems many online marketers make. Many don't do enough research to see if there is an actual market demand for products in a certain niche. They choose niches based on emotion alone, which is why their eCommerce stores never take off.
2. Mediocre product research
Many people who attempt to make money with dropshipping don't do enough product research. They think that by just choosing any niche and any product, they'll make money. There is more that is required of you before you see any sales. To know if a product has a high potential of providing a high ROI, you must be thorough in your research to understand what makes it valuable, how it works, and more. To help you do thorough research, use software such as Ecomhunt or DropshipSpy. You can even find a legit online dropshipping mentor to show you how to be thorough in your dropshipping business.
3. Ignoring their paid traffic campaigns
Beginner dropshippers they think they only need to set up one Facebook advertisement to make money. They'll set it and forget it for days or even a week. Paid traffic campaigns should not be ignored, especially when launching a new product. Ad campaigns need to be monitored often so you can make sure everything works properly. You also need to monitor your metrics often in case you notice your campaigns need adjusting. Ignoring your paid traffic campaigns can be costly.
4. Poor customer service
Many dropshippers want to make all the money but they don't want to deal with customers. Someone should have told them about Amazon FBA first. If you don't provide excellent customer service, you will not build a reputable brand. As a result, your customers can end up boycotting any products you sell in the future. Poor customer service will hurt you no matter what type of commerce you're in. It can cost you money, especially if you have to process refunds. To avoid having to deal with customer service, you can hire a sales team to handle any customer service issues. This way, you free up your time to dedicate to product research and communication with your suppliers.
5. Not checking product quality before advertising
Before promoting any product, you should have your supplier send you a test order of the product you're going to sell. If you don't do this, you are playing Russian roulette. Those products may not be of good quality and if they aren't, you can expect your customers to ask for refunds. The wise thing to do is to put in a small order shipped to yourself so you can inspect the products. If you build a good rapport with your supplier, you may get them to send you free samples. Once you find a dependable supplier with quality products in an in-demand niche, you can then focus on advertising a product you know is great.
What does Launchers Academy cover?
Jaiden and his team teach you their method for finding a winning product and being able to spot products that won't be lucrative for you. They call this phase their "product matrix".
You'll learn how to get your Shopify store up and running.
In the third step, they teach you how to create a video for your product to best showcase it. The video is going to give your customers a better look at your product and, in most cases, is a huge reason people will buy it.
In the last step, you learn how to test products and scale using Facebook ads and TikTok.
Who is Jaiden Vu?
Jaiden Vu is chef turned successful high-ticket eCommerce coach who was born in Toronto, Canada and raised in Vancouver with his two siblings. At a young age, they diagnosed Jaiden with autism, and he was always fighting and getting suspended from school. As a teenager, he got involved with drugs and, because of his family's economic issues, Jaiden stole food from convenience stores. When he was 15 years old, he weighed over 200 pounds, battled with depression, and attempted to kill himself on 5 occasions.
He grew an interest in cooking because he felt he could meditate. After dropping out of school, he started working as a dishwasher and worked his way to the corporate head chef. Still, he kept doing drugs, which left him broke.
In 2016, he took another gamble and quit being a chef to become a salesperson in an MLM business selling nutrition/weight products online. He became suicidal when months would pass without him making any sales. Jaiden didn't give up, though. He eventually became the company's top performer, but the time came where he didn't like to be told what to do. This is when his entrepreneurial journey began.
He started several companies, though some didn't succeed. One company that succeeded was Vantura Cosmetics. It's an ecommerce business Jaiden founded in 2019 that sells organic and vegan cosmetics. In 2020, he started Black Peached. This was a sales agency that taught businesses and entrepreneurs how to sell, generate traffic, and close more deals. In 2021, he co-founded Launchers Academy, which he is actively promotes alongside his co-founders.
On the Jaiden Vu YouTube channel, he has over 9.7K subscribers, and on his Instagram account, he has over 137K followers that get to view the content he posts about dropshipping.
The Launchers Academy Podcast on Apple Podcasts
Jaiden Vu hosts the Launchers Academy podcast on Apple Podcasts where he and his co-founders, Melissa Ng and Christy Liu, talk about all things dropshipping. They started uploading weekly episodes on July 14, 2021, but have uploaded nothing since August 17, 2022.
What is the Launchers Academy Success Kit?
The Launchers Academy Success Kit is a basic dropshipping training offered by Jaiden Vu. In it, you get training on how to leverage Google trends to figure out what products are trending each month and how to create your Shopify store in under 2 hours. You also get access to a live training Jaiden put together where you learn how to succeed with dropshipping in 2023. There is also training on how to spot good and bad products and how to build your brand.
This is not an in-depth dropshipping training course that will teach you everything in detail. It is only a training that will open your appetite regarding the world of ecommerce and towards the end, there is an upsell into the higher ticket program.
The Launchers Academy Success Kit costs $97.
Launchers Academy Successful Students
Yaqeen is a Launchers Academy alumni who has found massive success with the program. After joining Jaiden's course, she started making $1,000 per day. She was never exposed to digital marketing and did not know how to generate traffic, but she never gave up and learned the advanced Facebook strategies that now pay her thousands per day. Her goal is to reach $1 million in revenue by the end of the year she joined the program.
Phillip learned so much about the dropshipping world from the Launchers Academy curriculum. He admits this program exceeded his expectations. It took only 2-3 months for him to find a profitable product. He tested 3 products. The third one sold well. Phillip sold over 200 orders and made over $8,000 in sales in only one month. He credits the guidance and resources Jaiden provided to the great experience he's had.
What is a good budget to start dropshipping?
According to Jaiden Vu and Christy Liu, a good budget to start dropshipping is $1,000. You will pay for your Shopify account ($26 per month) and initial test inventory to ensure quality. Those costs are minimal, but most of your budget will go to Facebook and Instagram ads because you will need to test several products to see which one is a winner. Jaiden said that you should expect to pay between $100 and $150 in ad spend per product for only a few days. With a $1,000 budget, that means you're testing between 5-10 products.
If you sign up for a credit card, you won't even have to use your own money just yet. But be careful, you risk ending up with debt if your products fail and you get no sales.
Launchers Academy Secret: How To Scale A Winning Product
What's not mentioned in the video: Single-product stores have the highest conversion rates because sellers dedicate all their marketing efforts to a single product rather than many.
Why do most dropshippers fail?
Most dropshippers fail due to:
- Following the wrong guidance.
- Not dedicating appropriate time for quality profitable product research.
- Impatience, causing them to cut ad campaigns prematurely before fully split-testing and letting the algorithm take effect.
- Working with unreliable suppliers that produce sub-quality products and have late shipments, leading to low client retention.
Is Launchers Academy worth it?
Launchers Academy is worth it because they go far and beyond what most online coaching programs do. They not only teach you how to get started with the business model, but they teach you how to avoid products that won't really make you money. They also look at your work (landing pages, campaigns, etc.) before you launch it to make sure you are on the right track. Other dropshipping courses don't offer this.
On their website, they share many testimonials about the success students have had, which proves this course is valuable. Launchers Academy also doesn't take on that many clients so they can take their time helping each student without rushing through the curriculum. There are other cheaper alternatives to this program if you just want to learn the basics of the business model, but you are in excellent hands if you invest with Jaiden.
If this course doesn't sound right to you, you can check my article about Finance Simple and Ecom Stride Academy. It offers a dropshipping course as well.
Launchers Academy Alternatives
Performance Dropshipping by Hayden Bowles is a course where you'll learn how to start your dropshipping business from someone who has made over $22.5 million in the world of eCommerce. Hayden shows you everything you need to know to get started. He also shows you how to scale by using Facebook and TikTok ads. Hayden's goal is to get you to create a brand instead of just an online store. He has over 50 training videos and provides you with his sourcing list and agents he uses to scale.
Price: Performance Dropshipping costs $500
More Info: Performance Dropshipping Review
Supreme Ecom Blueprint 2.0 by AC Hampton is another course that will point you in the right direction to make money with dropshipping. When you sign up, he gives you a list of almost 1000 profitable products for you to choose from. This makes your job easy when just getting started. The primary way he shows you how to generate traffic is with paid ads on Facebook. AC also teaches you about SEO and how to layout your website the right way. There are over 30 training videos and he made updated the course in 2022 with the newest strategies and iOS14 updates.
Price: Supreme Ecom Blueprint costs
More Info: Supreme Ecom Blueprint Review
If you want to learn dropshipping for free, you can watch The Ecom King YouTube channel and see how Kamil Sattar starts everything from scratch. For more alternatives to Launchers Academy, check out my article on the best dropshipping courses.
Is dropshipping worth it in 2024?
Dropshipping is worth it in 2024 because you can realistically make as much money, if not more, than what you make at a 9-5 job from the comfort of your home. Also, startup costs are much less than Amazon FBA and you don't have to ever touch any physical products since your supplier ships directly to consumer.
But it is much harder to earn 6-figures in the eCom space than it was only a few years ago. This is because of the rise in competition, which is also the reason Meta's CPM has increased 61% each year in the last few years. Product research and split-testing are time-consuming, expensive activities. By the time you find a profitable product and an ad creative that converts well, you may already be down hundreds or thousands of dollars with no return on your investment.
You also need to take time and find a reliable supplier who has great communication, will ship your products securely and in a timely manner. This requires you to take the time to vet several suppliers. Ideally, you want to work with suppliers in the United States.
If you don't find a reliable supplier, aren't always on the lookout for the next profitable product, and aren't great at creating ads that drive conversions, you will not make a lot of money in eCommerce.
How profitable is dropshipping?
Dropshippers can make between 10%-40% profit for each sale. So, can dropshipping make you rich? Well, if you can find a winning product, you can make around $1000 - $4000 per month or more in your first year of dropshipping. This equates to between $12,000 and $48,000 per year. The rest of the sales you generate goes towards paying for inventory, marketing, and shipping. Regardless of what the statistics say, how much you make with dropshipping will depend on the product you choose, how you promote it, the wholesale price you negotiate with your supplier and if you can hire a team to help you grow.
All in all, any online business models can make you money, but none offer the benefits that local lead generation does.
Local lead generation is better than dropshipping, here's why...
Local lead generation is not as demanding as dropshipping is because you don't need physical products or paid traffic to see results. You rely on free organic traffic to generate traffic for your digital properties (lead generation sites).
This digital property I built over 7 years ago offers tree care services and has paid me $2000 ever since I built and ranked it on Google in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
As long as you rank your digital property at the top of the search results for the most relevant search terms in the niche you choose to get into, you will generate leads. When you do, you send the leads to a local small business who is looking for more work each month.
Business owners are happy to pay for exclusive leads each month and you can even charge them each week.
To learn how to reach financial freedom without having to pay for traffic and deal with the hassle of doing product research, finding reliable suppliers, paying traffic or dealing with customer fulfillment, check out the local lead generation training program.
