In this review, we'll talk about who Liam Thompson is, if he's a legit YouTuber and what his 100 day experiment with dropshipping was like.
Later, I'll share my dropshipping story and honest opinion on the business model.
First...
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hey, I'm Ippei!
I began my entrepreneurial journey back in 2014.
Dropshipping was one of the business models I've had some pretty good success with.
Today, my favorite online business model is local lead generation where I make sites like this...
This site is just one example of what my digital properties look like.
These sites allow me to earn a passive income because they generate leads for local business owners.
I'll explain a bit more about that later on but...
If you want to know more, just hop over here!
Who Is Liam Thompson?
With 1.49 million subscribers and over 147 million total views on his YouTube channel, this 20 year old New Zealander isn't a nobody.
You may know Liam because of some of his most creative videos.
The motto for his YouTube channel is to simply "do stupid stuff on camera".
He studied engineering but then dropped out to become a full-time YouTuber in 2018.
The day after reaching one million subscribers on his YouTube channel, he celebrated.
How?
By feeding his dog, Max, 1 million pieces of dog food.
He obviously didn't eat it all and since he had already opened the bags, he gave them to the SPCA out in Auckland.
Liam also taught Max how to pet his cat named, Frodo.
That video is pretty funny and has over 5.5 million views.
Liam's most watched video though, the one that made him blow up, was when he taught Max how to play Minecraft.
His dog successfully destroyed spiders, jumped and walked in the game.
That video has over 19 million views.
Liam has a unique sense of humor which is why I'm not surprised so many people subscribe to his channel.
What's crazy is that Liam has an estimated net worth of $600,000.
What can I say, he's got a legit following and his content is pretty good.
One of his many videos is one where he tried Shopify dropshipping for 100 days.
Let's see how it went for him.
Liam Tried Shopify Dropshipping For 100 Days
Same as I did, Liam had come across mixed reviews of this business model so he figured he'd give it a shot and see what kind of results he could come up with.
This whole business is pretty much outsourced, so your main job is to promote the products you choose.
Sounds easy enough, right?
Liam breaks down his dropshipping journey into the 3 P's.
3 P's
What did his preparation look like?
First, he came up with a business name and logo.
Then bought a domain, got set up in Shopify, chose a theme for his store, downloaded necessary apps and got his social pages up & running.
At this point, he had spent some money just to kick things off.
Next up...
Product selection.
He took his searching talents to Oberlo for this part.
Liam finally found a product he thought would go viral and called it, Steely.
A bendable, reusable steel straw.
He did some critical thinking and thought that it would be cheaper to just order a straw and take pictures as well as videos for his ads.
6 short weeks later, the straw finally arrived.
He made his first ad showing how to assemble the straw and how it works.
Then, he made a custom audience and uploaded the ad to the Business Manager section of Facebook.
He set his budget at $5 per day but his first ad didn't go so well.
After trying 4 different audiences, he was able to get a few visitors but nothing solid.
Days after his failed first try, the English government banned the use of plastic items in April 2020.
An answer to Liam's prayers from the Dropshipping gods!
With that news, he knew he had to get another ad up in the market ASAP.
He immediately took a picture of the straw, made an ad, chose an audience and put the ad straight to work.
30 minutes later, he saw that his CTR (Click Through Rate) improved.
Bad news though.
Liam saw the same straw he was already promoting.
Except it was better.
This made him realize he had to start all over again with a new product.
This time, he chose a hand and foot imprint kit for babies.
He called it, "My First Imprint Kit".
The images and videos on Oberlo were already good quality, so he just used those.
After making a few more ads and audiences, Liam got his first sale.
Getting the first sale is always a big deal.
Hours later, he got his second one and thought he was on his way to the millionaire lifestyle.
In the days that followed, he was still going through his ad spend but no more sales.
All Liam could do was regroup.
With summer looming, he felt it was best to promote a different product.
This time, a portable smartphone fan.
A few ads and audiences later, he'd spent $70 with no sales.
His website visitors increased but still, nothing.
Liam began to wonder why he stopped promoting the baby imprint kit and decided to do it again.
He made a new logo, website, more ads and audiences.
Weeks later, he made 2 sales but lost $185 in the process.
Believe me, that's not a good feeling.
Liam's dropshipping dream was crushed and at this point he decided to give up.
500 hours of work.
$500 investment.
Total profit: $24.98
In the process though, he learned things like web & graphic design, FB ads and social media promo.
After this experience, Liam said he won't recommend dropshipping but that if you do decide to get into it, to set a monetary threshold for yourself.
If you spend that much and don't make any profit, call it quits so you don't dig yourself into a deeper hole.
I went through some of the same things Liam did in his 100 days with dropshipping.
Let me show you what I went through and what I think of dropshipping now.
My Experience With Dropshipping
I got into dropshipping in 2017 because I heard the fuss about eComm.
Mind you, I was already making money with my local lead gen business.
What attracted me to dropshipping was that you can get paid traffic through Facebook ads.
It's like turning on the traffic with the snap of a finger.
I'd also heard people say that scaling was easy.
All you had to do was spend more on your ads to make more profit.
Easy enough, I thought.
So I got started.
The first thing I did was choose which type of store I was going to set up in the Shopify platform.
There are three types of stores you can setup...
3 Types of stores...
I chose to just go with a general store to start off.
I then choose a domain, a theme and also added some apps.
Question...
What are the Apps for?
These help your site convert because they add a sense of trust and value to your site.
Examples of these are:
- Free Trust Badge
- Privy
- Countdown Timer
Once I got all of that setup, the time came to choose a product.
I outsourced my products from AliExpress.
As we all know, the Baby Shark song took the world by storm.
So I decided to sell shark Pajama onesies.
Genius much?
Yup.
After adding the product to my Shopify site, I added images, wrote some ad copy (description) and included some other shark products like a T-shirt.
Next, it was time to get all set up in Facebook.
I got my Facebook page dialed in.
Then came the ad creation.
After choosing my campaign objective, I setup my Facebook pixel and chose a custom audience.
Right before going live with my ad, I made a post on my Facebook page so that if people actually clicked on my profile name, they'd see the product I'm selling.
It just makes it easy to believe that I'm legit that way.
Question...
What were my results?
I spent $20 to get one sale which earned me a profit of $5.
My huge mistake was thinking that if I increased my ad budget, I'd make more sales at the same rate.
I believed that lie.
My eCom journey ended with a little over $4,300 in sales and a conversion rate of 1.56%, which flat out sucks.
Just to give you an idea, the average conversion rate in Facebook ads across all industries is 9.21%.
I was way below that average mark.
All in all, I profited maybe a couple hundred dollars after factoring in expenses.
I didn't give up though!
I kept testing and one particular ad that worked well was a video of a friend of mine dressed up with one of those shark onesies.
That ad helped me get my conversion rate to between 3%-5%.
After a month, my performance plummeted again.
The truth is that people get tired of seeing the same ad again.
That's called ad exhaustion.
After some time, it's just not going to be as effective.
Looking back, I made $48K in 30 days.
Not bad, right?
Wrong.
After expenses, I ended up with around $3000.
That's why in 2020 and 2021 I just don't mess with eCom or Facebook ads.
Dropshipping is super demanding of your time and most importantly your money.
You have to constantly test and monitor ads.
That's expensive especially since the cost of FB ads is on the rise.
If you don't do it though, you can expect to spend hundreds and even thousands of dollars in a matter of days with no results.
How could I forget that you have to also constantly be checking supplier pricing and deal with unhappy customers.
In my opinion, even though you can make money with eCom and Facebook ads, they just don't have the benefits that local lead gen does.
Let me explain what I mean.
How I Earn $50K+ Per Month Passively With Local Lead Generation
You read that right, I earn that money passively.
How?
By ranking on Google and generating free organic traffic.
Take a look at this site.
This is a limo site that I made in 2014 and I ranked it for the keyword of 'limo services' in Lansing, MI.
If you need a limo on a Friday night in Lansing, you're probably going to type in keywords such as:
Keywords...
Just to name a few.
This site is #1 in the map when you search for those terms as well as organically under the map.
Once the site ranks, it starts to generate leads.
No need to pay for ads.
Am I the owner of a limo company?
No, but I contact a local limo company who's willing to take on new customers.
Once I find a biz owner that can handle the work I send them every month, we come to a mutual agreement where I get a monthly commission.
Here's a visual of what that process looks like.
I love this business model because it's such a versatile one.
You can go into recession proof niches such as HVAC and plumbing.
Also, a business owner can't fire you since you're the one who owns the digital asset.
The asset being the lead generation site which is ranked at the top of page 1 of Google.
If a business owner is nasty to customers or has a bad habit of not picking up the phone, send the leads to a better business in the same town.
This is such an easy sell too because you can send leads in advance.
reason with me...
What business owner looking for more work is going to turn away free leads?
What separates this from Homeadvisor is that you're sending the leads exclusively to a business owner and not to 3 different contractors.
When owners realize that, they'll pay a premium for your services.
I joined the lead gen coaching program back in 2014 after working at an auto parts counter in Detroit.
I put my head down and got to work as soon as I joined.
Now, I'm at the point where my lead generation sites are all making me money passively each month.
Once I rank the sites, there's little else I need to do to them.
The coaching program also has a private FB group for support.
The value you get out of the FB group is far and beyond what you can imagine with all of the resources and contacts inside.
We have 2 weekly coaching calls which help us all keep the mindset of success and I can say that those calls are priceless because of the amount of info provided.
If you want to change the way you live your life, are coachable and ready to put in some work so you can earn a monthly passive income, jump on a call with us.
Hopefully this is a good fit for you.
See you on the inside!
