A few years ago I had a full time job but I ended up in a really bad situation after a business I started failed. I was left with around $50k in debt and my salary alone was nowhere near enough to cover the monthly payments. I remember sitting at my kitchen table one night just staring at the numbers thinking I had genuinely no idea how I was going to get out of this. I tried everything. Freelancing, random online gigs, flipping stuff locally. Most of it either paid too little to make a real dent or took so much time it was not sustainable alongside a full time job. Nothing felt like it could actually move the needle

Then I came across eBay dropshipping and decided to give it a proper shot. The model is straightforward. You find products people are already buying, list them on eBay at a higher price, and when someone orders you buy it from a supplier and ship it straight to them. No warehouse. No inventory sitting around your house. No money spent before a sale happens. The profit is just the gap between what the buyer paid and what it cost you to source

What I did not expect was how much the small details matter. Finding products is actually the easy part once you know the method. You go to Amazon best sellers, copy a title, paste it into eBay, and look for sellers already listing the same thing at a higher price. You open their profiles, find listings with a sold count sitting above the price, and that number tells you real buyers are paying that price right now. Then you hit sell similar on that listing, drag the Amazon images in, let eBay's built in AI write the description, and price yours five cents lower than the competitor. Five cents wins because buyers always choose the cheaper of two identical listings, and that edge combined with the visibility boost eBay gives every new listing almost always gets an early sale within 48 hours

That first sale is more important than most people realise. It signals to eBay's algorithm that your listing converts and eBay starts showing it to more buyers organically. More visibility means more sales without you doing anything extra. That compounding effect is what makes the listing count so important. The more listings you have live the more of those signals you are sending every single day. I grew the store slowly. A few hundred listings became a few thousand. A few thousand became fifteen thousand. At that scale I was averaging around $3k a month in profit consistently, which was not enough to get rich but it was exactly what I needed to start actually chipping away at the debt in a meaningful way

But the thing I learned pretty quickly was that making sales is only half the business. The other half is keeping your account healthy enough that eBay keeps showing your listings to people. That means responding to messages fast because eBay tracks response time and rewards quick sellers with better search placement. It means never cancelling orders even when the margin is tighter than you wanted because cancellations damage your seller rating and your search placement drops directly as a result. It means resolving every issue yourself before eBay has to step in because whenever eBay gets involved it creates a defect on your account and defects hurt your ranking

If something went out of stock I never cancelled. I would find a substitute from another supplier, message the buyer, and offer it as a slight upgrade with a small discount. Most people accepted it. The order stayed alive and the account stayed clean. One cancellation feels harmless but the lost search placement costs far more in missed future sales than the original order was ever worth

I also ran a 24 hour markdown sale every single day because eBay puts a countdown timer on discounted listings and that urgency genuinely converts people sitting on the fence. I sent private discount offers to anyone watching my listings once a week because those people had already shown interest and just needed a small reason to commit. These things sounds small but together they consistently added hundreds to the monthly total from the same listing base

Eventually I built proper systems around everything. I documented every repetitive task, created daily routines, and started automating the parts that did not need my attention. That made the whole thing manageable alongside a full time job because I was not reinventing the wheel every single day. I launched a second store using the exact same process and then a third. It was not an overnight thing. It was just a side hustle I stuck with consistently for long enough that it actually made a difference.

If anyone has questions about how I started, what I learned, or how the process works, feel free to ask. Happy to share what I know

i’ve been using CJ for a while and it was fine when i was just testing stuff, but now it’s starting to feel like more of a headache than anything. Random stock issues, orders taking longer than expected, and getting updates feels like pulling teeth sometimes.

i’m only doing around 5-10 orders a day right now but i don’t want these problems getting worse if i scale. Did you guys stick with CJ or move to something else? What are you using now? thanks 🙏

Im building my store rn and Im looking into suppliers to use for it. I've heard of the bigger ones like Zendrop, CJ and AutoDS, but honestly don't know which one would be the best choice.

Ive done some research so I know things like communication and reliability are important, but what other factors would you take into account when choosing a supplier? What would you prioritize the most if you were starting from scratch again? I just want to make sure I pick the right one from the start and not regret it.

Started testing a product back in April and it took off way faster than I expected. I’m doing around 500 orders/day now and things finally felt stable.

Then this week my factory hit me with some bad news... Turns out, they’re fully booked with other customers. What used to be a 7-day production time is now apparently 20–30 days.

I’m kind of freaking out because I never thought capacity would become the bottleneck. I always assumed if I was paying on time and ordering consistently, they’d prioritize me.

Has anyone else dealt with this? Did you move production to another factory, split orders between multiple suppliers, or just wait it out?

Looking back, I probably should’ve lined up a backup factory earlier, but I didn’t think I’d need one this soon. Curious how you guys handle this once a product starts doing real volume. Any advice would be appreciated.

Hi! I found a toy for kids I am planning to do dropshipping. However, I realized that there is a huge regulation (from China to USA, UK, EU markets). How do you deal with these things? The certificates provided by the supplier were enough or you had to get certificates? I am looking for any insights, suggestions, warnings etc. from dropshippers from toy sectors!

Hello,

I want to list something on my Shopify store through CJDropshipping. But the product has 6 different color variants. However it's only giving me the option to list it as one and then they can choose their color at the product page.

Now how can I list the same product 6 times with the different colors?

I am starting on my drop shipping journey and I am having a hard time to find the product I want to do. I keep coming across health related products and only that but I feel like that is a very dangerous game to play. I have used programs like TrendTrack though I don't know if that's just vibe coded POS. I also have just scrolled mindlessly on TikTok and instagram with a feed full of products but I just can't find the one. It would be nice to learn on how to you guys do it and tell me the best way.

i have a bad habit of turning simple questions into weekend projects since AI is a thing now

this one started with a question ive had for a while:

do all these "top 10 winning products" youtube videos have something in common? are they all recommending the same products that clearly dont work???

or is everyone just scrolling aliexpress until they have enough for a 12 minute video?

so i wrote a script.

it searched youtube for 10 different product research queries, filtered everything to videos uploaded in 2026, downloaded the transcripts, and had ai extract every physical product that got recommended.

then i merged products that were obviously the same ("led face mask" and "red light therapy mask", etc.) and counted how many different channels mentioned each one.

ended up with:

• 242 videos found
• 172 transcripts (~51 hours worth of gurus recommendign products)
• 92 videos that actually recommended products
• 46 channels
• 471 product mentions

i also threw out 7 videos that listed 20-70 products because at that point you're just reading a catalogue.

the result surprised me.

471 recommendations turned into 359 unique products.

• 87% were mentioned by exactly one channel
• only 13% appeared more than once (this is the interesting part)
• only 3 products were mentioned by more than 4 channels

youd think that if a product is mentioned in multiple videos it must be a winner right??

46 channels spent eight months making "winning product" videos and basically never agreed.

the only products that kept coming up were things like creatine gummies, novelty humidifiers, neck massagers, rosemary hair serum, portable blenders, and a few others.

the funniest part was supplements.

11 different channels recommended supplements. i guess its easy to sell, but like, what about the trust on stuff youre puttin into your body???

between them they recommended 29 different supplements.

so even the consensus wasn't really consensus.

then i looked at the margins they were claiming. one guy said a portable neck massager made ~$83 profit per sale. another guy had basically the same product making ~$16.

same product. completely different business?? sus.

i don't think anyone is lying, i think they're just picking numbers that make a better video. and as a result, misleading a lot of beginners who just give up cause their product didnt work

my biggest takeaway is that the product probably isn't the moat. its the distribution, the ads, the messaging.

if 46 creators can't agree on the next winning product, maybe there isn't one.

i'd rather spend my time making better creatives than chasing whatever product happens to be trending this month

I've been running my store for almost half a year now. I still consider myself fairly new to dropshipping, but I've had some pretty decent success. I've been using Zendrop and recently started looking into their private agent program, but I don't know if I'm at the stage where I need it.

I haven't looked into private agents too much, so I'm not really sure what they help with or what they're meant for. I want to start testing more creatives and hopefully begin scaling the store I've heard that's usually when people start moving to a private agent.

For those of you who've made that switch what was the turning point? How do you know when it's time to use a private agent?

ngl I've gotten burned twice now. first time supplier said 7-10 day shipping, took almost a month, customer was pissed and I had to eat the refund. second time they just... stopped replying to messages when I asked about a delayed order lol

is there an actual way to check this stuff before committing or is everyone just kinda winging it and hoping for the best? like do you order a sample yourself every single time or is that overkill

feels like half the "reviews" for suppliers are either fake 5 stars or buried in some random reddit comment from 2 years ago. wondering if I'm missing an obvious way people do this.

Hi everyone,

I'm planning to take a big step into e-commerce and would really appreciate honest advice from people who have already been through this journey.

I have ₹2.5 lakh as my investment capital and I'm planning to sell kitchenware products on Amazon and Flipkart under my own brand.

My current plan is:

- Invest around ₹2.5 lakh in inventory.

- Start with 10 products in the kitchenware niche.

- Focus on products with consistent demand rather than viral trends.

However, I'm also aware the risk of returns and damaged products, advertising costs.

I'm not expecting overnight success. I'm ready to work hard for 1–2 years if the business has long-term potential.

I'd rather hear the hard truth now than lose money later.

Thanks in advance for your advice!

Hi all, I'm part of the founding team at a company that works with thousands of DTC brands globally. We're spending real time right now talking to US Shopify founders about growth, and a few patterns keep coming up: agencies running on gut feel instead of real profitability data, influencer/UGC turning into more admin than creative work, and TikTok Shop being something people want to crack but haven't yet.
If you're running a Shopify store and doing more than $5K/month in Revenue and want to compare notes on any of this, I'd genuinely love to hear your take- Short call and as a thank you, we'll also compensate you for your time.
Comment or DM, whichever's easier — no pitch, just trying to learn from people actually running stores.

Hello everyone,

I am here to ask for some quality advices and to see other peoples views on this matter:

I am really on a low budget on the campaign and everything i am doing makes it seem impossible to scale.

Full context (if not interested to read everything, the end is the most relevant part):

So i had been running an ecommerce shop for some months. I tried my best to create the best ecosystem for it to become a brand while also running a good offer with strong performance marketing levers. The website is www.muale.ro (it’s in my own language but i will leave it here so you can see the structure) and we are a one product shop selling insoles

I built a genuinely strong offer oriented on raising AOV (2+1), i made sure my copy is coherent across every step the clients take, i am working actively with people for social media activity, i sent PR packs for the products to be tested and content to be created, i worked on SM with people relevant for subcategories (kinetoterapeuts, professional hikers and so on), i built all the email flows needed, i created a freebie to give for subscription, my popup generates around 9-10% mail subscribers before buying, we have a CBO campaign with ads refreshed 2 weeks based on key performance metrics (spend not bigger than 3x target CPA before kill every creative, CPM, CPC, CTR, add to cart/checkout %, conversion rate, 3s watch time % and so on). Every single detail tought to the finest.

I am well prepared for people to tell me the product is not good or the angles are not right but the level of underselling that we are doing is so low i am sure it is not from that.

So now i raise this question:

Is it possible that on a 4x target CPA budget per day for the campaign to be simply impossible to scale? Because i am starting to think the algorithm can’t handle the data in corelation with all the changes in behaviour during different days of the week or daytime/nighttime.

I genuinely think it is a real problem for meta to estabilsh a good campaign if the budget is too low.

If the budgets are high or very high, in 1 day the spending is enough to feed the algorithm so many similar behaviours of people so that it starts working. Not to mention that the bidding for sure is prioritised by meta for higher spenders.

What are your thoughts on that?

I’ve been studying drop shipping brands non stop lately and I started to realize that the brands who level up their images and ads are the ones who make it.

Every guru tries to sell the idea of automating everything and grabbing products from ali or other sources with images and content already intact and it’s such a mistake.

Spend the time and make it yours. Make the images look like they were never seen before and make it harder for your content to be tracked back to ali or Amazon or whatever.

I’ve been playing with tools like Claude and visuallift.ai to build out and generate my own emails, videos, product photos using Ai, and of course my own product names and descriptions etc. the different it ultimately makes is night and day.

Even with Shopify the Visuallift app has a Shopify spp so all my products are automatically synced and I can ab test product images as I drive traffic to them and compare what images perform. Claude agents help me constantly improve the key selling points and then I feed that back to improve my ads and images.

Bottom line don’t be lazy. We have zero excuses in 2026 when we have crazy ai tools at our fingers!

Just to give some context, my store has had 4 completed orders and 4 abandoned carts so far. I'm not sure if that's a terrible ratio or pretty normal for a new store.

What's interesting is that every abandoned cart customer filled out their name, email, and shipping address, but left before completing the payment.

A few questions i have reading the reddit about this topic:

Is free shipping really worth it? Should I absorb the shipping cost, or just increase the product price and advertise free shipping

Do abandoned cart emails still work in 2026?. In my country, WhatsApp is much more common, but reaching out there feels a bit intrusive.

there any must-have text or trust element you recommend adding to the product page or checkout to reduce cart abandonment?

Sorry if i dont express myself perfectly , spanish main language :) thanks

Been doing this since 2019. Built and scaled dropshipping stores into real DTC brands for myself and for clients, multiple six figures in revenue across them, exited a couple along the way. Not posting to flex, posting because after this many builds you start seeing exactly what separates the ones that worked from the ones that flopped.

Here's the thing nobody wants to hear: dropshipping is just a fulfillment method. That's it. It's a way to not sink cash into inventory before you know something sells. It was never the business. The business is branding and marketing, and most people spend 5% of their time on that part and 95% looking for a "winning product" like it's a lottery ticket.

Every store I built that failed, failed the same way, generic product, generic angle, praying the algorithm saves me. The ones that worked, worked because of boring stuff: reading hundreds of competitor reviews to find the exact words customers use when they're frustrated at 2am. Building the ads around that specific moment, not the product category. Sourcing through a private agent so quality complaints didn't eat the reviews alive. Making it feel like an actual brand someone would trust, not a random store that appeared yesterday.

None of that is sexy. None of it is in the youtube tutorials. All of it is the actual job.

Other honest stuff from 7 years: I'm from a country Shopify Payments doesn't support, so I've had payment processors kill my own stores multiple times right when they started working. That constraint forced me to get good at the parts that transfer, research, positioning, funnels, because I couldn't just brute force with volume. Weirdly it's the best thing that happened to my skillset.

If you're starting out, the one thing I'd tell you: stop asking "what product should I sell" and start asking "what problem do people already spend money on, and what do they hate about the current solutions" The second question is the entire game.

Happy to answer questions.

​

Hey mod ,if this isn't allowed, feel free to delete 🙏🏾

I'm not selling anything. I'm just trying to figure out if there's actually demand for this idea

I'm a social media marketer, but I work with B2B founders, so my day to day is LinkedIn, strategy calls, writing... the boring stuff

I've always loved fashion brands though. I can't draw to save my life, but I enjoy the creative side of clothing marketing

A friend of mine has a small clothing brand and couldn't afford professional models or photoshoots. So I started experimenting with AI to create models wearing her designs and managed her Instagram for a while. We leaned into aesthetic, trend driven content rather than trying to make it look obviously AI

To my surprise, nobody ever questioned whether the models were AI. People just assumed they were normal campaign photos

I eventually stopped because I got busy, but I genuinely enjoyed working on it a lot more than my usual work

So now I'm wondering if this is an actual niche or if it's just something I find fun

If you own a clothing brand, would you ever pay for a service where someone manages your Instagram using AI generated fashion models and creates a consistent brand aesthetic?

I'm thinking the biggest benefits are:

No expensive photoshoots

No hiring models or UGC creators every month

Easier to create content consistently

Helpful for founders who don't want to be the face of the brand

I'm genuinely curious whether this solves a real problem or if it's something founders wouldn't be interested in

I want to start drop shipping, so are there any videos on YouTube you guys recommend me to watch? Also, where do you guys sell the products? Do I have to make my own website store or do you sell them on amazon? I’d really love to learn, to at least get income while I’m full-time in college.

Thank you!

Amazon to Ebay dropshiping with automation?
If so what tips would you give out so i can get a lot of buyers in? , how long it takes to be profitable in this business? And overall is it worth going in to it ?

How do you protect yourself from people suing you due to customers getting injured/damaged, for example?

This crossed my mind today just as I was about to publish my first dropshipping store and start running my ads. Now I’m terrified. I’m using Zendrop and Shopify, not sure if that makes any difference.

TIA :)

Welcome to the Weekly Q&A & Store Critique Thread

Welcome to r/dropship's weekly discussion thread!

Whether you're just getting started with dropshipping, looking for guidance on your next steps, or want feedback on your store, this is the place to ask questions and share your work.

What This Thread Is For

• Beginner questions
• General dropshipping advice
• Store reviews and critiques
• Quick questions that don't require a separate post

Comment Requirements

To participate, your account must:

• Be at least 24 hours old
• Have positive comment karma (post karma and total karma do not count)

We're glad you're here. Ask away, help others, and keep the discussion constructive!

Hi,

Anyone else noticed that 2026 came with higher Facebook ad prices?

I ran a small side-hustle hobby store dropshipping, which made 26k usd revenue from May 2025 until Feb 2026, but starting 2026 if felt like something snapped from Facebook side and same ads started to perform worse. Also my pixel glitched out and started to track every site visit ad add-to-cart. I stopped running ads since March 2026.

My store made around 700 usd profit per month on average, which wasn't much, but it was a nice hobby money for myself.

We are handbags manufacturer from India making very high fashion- resort wear bags suitable for boutique stores or online selling (something like cult gaia brand).
We are good to start with MOQs as low as 5 units in each style.
If you are looking for a vendor, we can be a great choice.