Podcasts about ecommerce lifestyle

In diesem Video seht ihr den München Vlog von Can, Emre und dem 7 stelligen Kunden Dario.

In diesem Podcast erlebt Emre seinen Urlaub mit der ganzen Familie

In diesem Video seht ihr die Reise von Emre Girkin in seine Heimat zu seiner Familie.

In today's episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton answers a question submitted via YouTube. “I'm thinking of spending a lot of money on ads with an engagement campaign and building my brand step by step until I start getting customers. Is this a good strategy?”

Want to start a new store FAST? This episode is for you. On a recent coaching call, a Drop Ship Lifestyle student asked me if they could build their store in a weekend. The shorter answer is yes, but there’s more to it than that… I break it down in today's episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast.

Do this AFTER the sale to build a customer base that loves your business. On the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, I often share individual marketing strategies for Shopify stores that work great on their own. I know these episodes are helpful for Shopify store owners who are up and running, but I also realize that they may be confusing for those who are just getting started on their journey. That is why in this new 3-part series, I share a complete Shopify marketing strategy that every eCommerce store owner should be using to maximize their results. This is Part 3: How To Be Loved

Don’t have a 100% conversion rate? This episode is for you. On the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, I often share individual marketing strategies for Shopify stores that work great on their own. I know these episodes are helpful for Shopify store owners who are up and running, but I also realize that they may be confusing for those who are just getting started on their journey. That is why in this new 3-part series, I share a complete Shopify marketing strategy that every eCommerce store owner should be using to maximize their results. This is Part 2: How To Be Remembered

If you build it they will NOT come… not unless you do this. On the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, I often share individual marketing strategies for Shopify stores that work great on their own. I know these episodes are helpful for Shopify store owners who are up and running, but I also realize that they may be confusing for those who are just getting started on their journey. That is why in this new 3-part series, I share a complete Shopify marketing strategy that every eCommerce store owner should be using to maximize their results. This is Part 1: How To Be Seen

“But Anton, there are only 4 quarters…” While that’s technically true, there is hidden value in what we call “Q5”. I explain how to find it in today’s episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast.

If you want to have your best year ever, listen to this podcast. Over the weekend I’ve been reflecting on what allows myself and our top students to consistently grow while others flatline. In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, I share a realization I had and what YOU can do in 2021 to have your best year ever.

People always ask me what I would sell if I was starting a new dropshipping store. In today’s episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, I answer that question.

Tired of spending money while crossing your fingers hoping that it will pay off? Listen to this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle to learn why you need to STOP “testing” products and start doing your research before choosing which products to sell.

I had a strange experience this past weekend… My wife surprised me for my birthday with a trip to the Smokey Mountains and tickets to a theme park. We had a great time, but it wasn’t what I expected. In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, I share a realization I had, and how we can use it to grow our eCommerce businesses together.

Use this email flow to instantly increase your revenue and profit! In our businesses, I am constantly looking for ways to increase profit without spending more money. One of the first things I do when we launch a new store, and one of the first things I do when working with a client in our mentor program, is implement a great abandoned cart flow set up to recover lost sales. It doesn’t take much time, it doesn’t cost any money, and it’s one of the easiest wins there is. In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, I share how many emails we send, when we send them, and the objective of each email in this flow.

Use this lesson to greatly increase the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts! In the last episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, I shared how we use both email flows and campaigns to maximize the value of our email lists. In this episode of the podcast, I share how to sync your ads with emails to take your results to the next level.

Use this equation to ensure you sell products & make a profit! In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton shares how to calculate profitability before sending visitors to your online store.

Ask yourself these questions at the very beginning… It’s important you know what you’re getting yourself into before you start a dropshipping business. It’s also important to know what to expect (both the good and the bad) before it happens. In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton shares the questions you should ask yourself before starting a dropshipping business.

One strategy we use to become the authority in our eCommerce niches is promoting content on social media that attracts our target audiences and repels those who are not interested. However, we don’t just do this to build engagement. We do it to build remarketing audiences to whom we can promote offers. Because the money is made in the offer campaigns and not in the content promotion campaigns, people often ask “how much money should I spend promoting content on social media? Anton answers that question in today’s episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast.

In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, I share a concept called “the snowball effect” and how to use it in your content marketing efforts. I get a lot of questions from people building new eCommerce stores about content marketing including: How many blog posts should you write? Should you hire a copywriter to create unique product descriptions? Do you need to create buyer's guides? All of these questions, plus many more, are answered in my coaching program, Drop Ship Lifestyle, but I wanted to share some tips in today’s episode of the podcast and share how we approach content creation when launching a new eCommerce store.

Why do brands and manufacturers pay us to sell their products instead of selling direct to consumers? Anton answers that question, plus more in today’s episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast.

In today’s episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, I’m going to show you how to make sure your ads are being shown to the right people at the right time so that you can find the easy money and increase your revenue and profits.

A spin-off in television is a new series containing characters or settings that originated in a previous series, but with a different focus, tone, or theme… Some of them flop and some of them are massive successes… the same can be true with “spin-off” eCommerce stores. In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, I share when and how to build spin-off stores the right way.

In the last episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast called “It’s On You”, I shared some problems we are having in one of our businesses, and a lesson about why, as the business owner, you are the one responsible for solving problems to the best of your ability, and as quickly as possible. I was thinking about that episode over the weekend and I don’t want anyone to take the lesson to the extreme and end up stunting their business growth... I say this because as a business owner, there’s always a million different things we can do with our time, and there’s always different problems that can be solved... however, as a new business owner it can be hard to know where to start. So assuming your website is up and running as it should be, today I want to share 6 easy wins for you to implement that can result in fast growth.

If you are going to invest time into something, it should be something that can grow on itself. I call this "The Compound Effect" and in today's episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, I share how we apply this to all different parts of our businesses to cause exponential growth.

Want an easy way to earn more from Google Ads? Then listen in to the newest episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast. This episode will help you increase your revenue. I recently taught a live online class called “Get Money Now” where I shared how to quickly bring more sales and profit into your online store. In Module 4 of that program, I shared how to promote offers via paid traffic including Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, Google Display Network Ads, and Google Discovery Ads. For this specific promotion, Instagram Ads were the clear winner with a 20.4X ROAS, the second highest performing ad campaign surprised me…. It wasn’t Facebook Ads, and it wasn’t Google Display Network Ads… the winner was Google Discovery Ads… In this episode of the podcast, I explain what they are, how they work, and how to use them for your own business starting today.

In today's episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton answers a question submitted via YouTube regarding Conversion Rate Optimization. “Any thoughts on including a Free Gift with certain products? Can this still be dropship-able?” Note: Anton's exact strategy for leveraging bonus gifts is taught in Lesson 5.6 of the Drop Ship Blueprint. Members can access the training by clicking here.

Almost all of our stores sell expensive items, and many of them are one-off purchases for our customers. With that being said, there are still ways to increase your CLTV (Customer Lifetime Value) In today's episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton shows you how it's done.

If you’ve been following this podcast, or if you’re a member of Drop Ship Lifestyle, you know Anton is a huge fan of working with what we call MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) suppliers. Unfortunately, not every supplier offers a MAP policy, and there are actually many parts of the world where MAP policies are not legally enforceable... So in this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton shares how you can still profit with Non-MAP suppliers.

In today's episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton answers a question submitted via YouTube regarding organic traffic for eCommerce: “What can I do to boost my organic traffic to my store?”

In today's episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton answers a question submitted via YouTube regarding eCommerce sales frequency: “How do you turn sales every other week into consistent sales?”

In today's episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton answers a question submitted via Facebook regarding merchant account reserves: “If Shopify has placed a 30% reserve on all my sales for a min of 120 days, what can I do since this is more than my profit margins?”

In today's episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton answers a question submitted via Facebook regarding Geo-Targeting: “Does it make any sense to target a town with 15,000 people and try to build our brand with ads? Or 1 million people, but in one city?”

In today's episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton answers a question submitted via YouTube regarding Facebook Ads.: "My Website Conversions campaign brings a lot of Add To Carts but not much sales. What is a good strategy to troubleshoot this issue?"

In today's episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton answers a question submitted via email by Tiffany P.: "Alternative payment processors to Shopify Payments? Unfortunately, 1 week into sales I had Shopify Payments deem my account as a risk and they are forcing me to use a 3rd party integration. I feel like this is something that doesn't get talked about a lot but I imagine happens to high ticket dropshippers since Stripe is a low-risk processor."

In today's episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton answers a question submitted via YouTube by another Anton.: "how do I choose my shipping options? cheap shipping but long, with possibly many returns due the time, or fast shipping but a very small profit margin because of the shipping rate?"

In today's episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton answers a question submitted via Facebook by Ben F.: "Hi Anton, would you explain the value a customer would have with buying from a retailer's store vs. directly from a supplier who also has an online store selling the same products??"

In today's episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton answers a question submitted via Facebook by Ruthie M.: "Will the course be updated to include the Google Free Ads now? Are the free ads also PLA's?"

In today's episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton answers a question submitted via Facebook by Marc B.: "Is there a metric you use to determine the budget for ads? What is an average cost per acquisition for a $50 product compared to a $1,000 product?"

In today's episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton answers a question submitted via Facebook by Angelique F.: "Local suppliers cost more, and the product selling price is higher. This translates to higher costs to the buyer. How do you overcome the higher selling price to customers?"

Are you at the point where you want to take your eCommerce business to the next level? Then private label dropshipping may be for you. In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton shares how private label dropshipping works, and when it should be considered.

The path to success is not a straight line. There will be ups and downs on your journey. To win, you need to be able to mitigate risks. In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton shares his strategy for starting small and keeping at it.

Looking to increase organic traffic to your eCommerce store? In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton shares 5 ways to help you do just that.

In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton shares 16 tips for building the ultimate product page on your eCommerce store!

We receive a lot of questions asking if the Drop Ship Lifestyle business model only works in the U.S. The short answer is no. This business model works anywhere in the world. At Drop Ship Lifestyle, we have many successful students doing business in the states from abroad, and many successfully doing business in their own countries. In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton shares the top things to consider when deciding if you should do business in the USA, or in another country.

​An increase in profit in your business can mean higher revenue. Higher revenue means people are looking at your products and you're getting them to buy from you. Yes, you're getting a lot of sales. But, are you really getting the highest potential income from your store? At the end of the day, it's really not how much sales you generate but how much money is left in your bank. If you want to know how to set your store to its highest potential then listen to our eCommerce Lifestyle podcast and apply what you'll learn to your business.

Nowadays, people don't want to start from scratch. For this very reason, done for you dropshipping sites have been made available. There are ready-made dropshipping stores that you can purchase. The question now is, "Is it worth it?" Listen to this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast to know if you are making the right decision.

If you keep on wondering whether you should use Clickfunnels or Shopify, then this episode of The eCommerce Lifestyle Podcast is for you! ​In this episode of The eCommerce Lifestyle, I will be comparing Clickfunnels and Shopify for your eCommerce store. In every business, comes a variety of needs and perception. Listen to the podcast to know which one you should use.

​If you are someone who wants to know if the product you're selling can get free traffic, then listen to this episode of The eCommerce Lifestyle podcast. ​Choosing the right niche is very critical in doing business, especially if you do not want to take money out of your wallet to spend on ads. What's Covered in This Episode: Realization from getting free traffic ​Four things to look for in choosing a product to sell with $0 ad budget

In this episode of The eCommerce Lifestyle, I'm addressing some questions I hear all the time. "Is eCommerce saturated? Are all the good niches taken? Is it too late to get started?" The reason I get these questions so often is because they're common, and reasonable, concerns for first-timers looking to build an online business. I mean, this model has been around for a couple of decades... Is it still possible to break into the market? Listen in to hear my take on whether or not dropshipping is too saturated in 2020!

“Is dropshipping dead?” was a popular question back when I first started dropshipping, and it’s still a popular question more than a decade later. In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, I’m going to go through all the common misconceptions about whether dropshipping is worth it these days. I’ll give you the real answers and show you exactly how alive and well dropshipping still is in 2020.

In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton shares how to run promotions that actually get results for your business. Links From Episode:

Have you noticed an increase in people talking about The Facebook Ban Hammer? So what's the deal? Listen in to this episode of The eCommerce Lifestyle podcast to learn how to keep your Facebook Ad account safe from the hammer.

In episode 100 of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton shares his winning strategy to ensure record-breaking year-end sales! Links From This Episode: All Previous Podcast Episodes Free Training From Drop Ship Lifestyle Leave a Review on iTunes

​In today’s interview episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton talks with Josh Stanton, one-half of the co-founding team behind Screw the Nine to Five. Anton first met Josh in 2013 when they were working at the same co-working spot in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Since then, the two have kept in touch while both growing ​ successful ​businesses that share the same mission: helping others find freedom ​through ​lifestyle design. During their recent chat, Anton talks with Josh about his early days as a digital nomad and how the Screw the Nine to Five movement has developed over time. Links From This Episode: Free Training From Drop Ship Lifestyle Screw The Nine To Five Book Recommendation: Secrets Of The Millionaire Mind

In this interview episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton speaks with Drop Ship Lifestyle member, ​Allan Philips. The two talk about how Allan learned that hiring isn't always as easy as it seems... and how to track conversions for draft orders and phone orders on Shopify. Links From This Episode: Free Training From Drop Ship Lifestyle

In this interview episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton speaks with Drop Ship Lifestyle community member and coach, ​​Jeff Tottenham. Jeff has been a member of Drop Ship Lifestyle for nearly five years, and he's been one of our coaches for the past few years. During those five years, Jeff has started a few dropshipping stores, a couple he shut down, but one has brought him massive success that he has been able to grow and scale to an exciting new level. ​Anton and Jeff discuss in this episode ​when it's time to 'pull the plug' on a store, and wh​at it's like running a successful store in a highly-competitive niche. The two also talk new strategies and Shopify apps, plus a bit of mindset advice ​from the view of a DSL coach. Links From This Episode: Free Training From Drop Ship Lifestyle eCommerce Lifestyle Episodes, Show Notes, & Transcripts

In this interview episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton speaks with Drop Ship Lifestyle community member,​ Anastasia Vankova. Anastasia started dropshipping in 2014 and is a long-time member of Drop Ship Lifestyle. As a ​digital nomad, she​ travels the world with her child and partner in tow. Thanks to the sales from her dropshipping store she's able to fund her ideal lifestyle. ​She recently hired her second virtual assistant to allow her more room to grow her business.​ Her and Anton discuss that, along with some other recent wins and Anton's advice on upgrading to Shopify Plus. Links From This Episode: Free Training From Drop Ship Lifestyle ​Follow along with Anastasia's travels on her Instagram, @bossmomtravels

Anton Kraly is the founder of Dropship Lifestyle and Ecommerce Lifestyle, companies offering online business training and transforming the lives of those interested in entrepreneurship, location independence and lifestyle design. Listen to Ep56 as Anton describes how reading a singular book back in 2007 inspired his ecommerce journey and how finding a community of entrepreneurs in Chiang Mai, Thailand led to a first DSL retreat in 2014, jumpstarting the company and fostering the robust DSL community. https://www.jimjimsreinventionrevolution.com/contact https://www.dropshiplifestyle.com/ https://www.ecommercelifestyle.com/episodes/ 05:02s Why JJRR podcast got started, getting locked out in Mexico 09:06s First discovering ecommerce and starting Dropship Lifestyle 11:31s Reading the 4 hour work week (Tim Ferris) 15:44s Reaching a crossroads of scaling or focusing on lifestyle design 18:25s Working with less customers, selling higher ticket items 21:50s Finding incorrect ecommerce information online in forums as inspiration for DSL  28:30s In person community as motivation 30:17s Reasoning for structuring conference with fun afternoon activities 32:08s  Dropping into Thailand and discovering ecommerce community 34:09s  Meeting Johnny FD 38:55s Working less and being more productive 40:57s Ideas come from reflection 42:08s Returning to the state, moving to Austin, TX and now to North Carolina 45:40s The next stage of ecommerce, ecommerce lifestyle podcast 47:05s Starting a podcast using Anchor 51:50s Dealing with technology; shopify and automating advertising 56:26s Buying a rug with augmented reality 57:20s Building websites, pivoting and testing 59:40s Trying to simplify, focusing on cutting rather than adding “Basically we’re trying to build sustainable businesses while making as much as possible with minimum effort. That means not actually trying to get all the traffic in the world to our websites but getting only buyer traffic.” “The big turning point where it went from like not a business just something I enjoyed to a business was actually the first ever retreat that we did.” “I thought it was me sharing some tips, and I realized it’s actually transforming lives of people, of members [of DSL].” Enjoy this episode? Share it with friends! Subscribe in Itunes or Google! Thanks to our Sponsor! Reach out for a free consultation. https://www.mgshlachter.com/  Reinventing architectural services. 

In the last episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast Magen asked: "I get very few abandoned carts but a fair amount of "add to carts" and "reached checkouts". Aside from risk reversal tactics you cover in the course.. Are there any tools or tactics you've used to increase the customer emails you get in-cart?" In this episode of the podcast, Anton shares his response. Links From This Episode: Interview With Magen Free Training Webinar

In this interview episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, I spoke with Isaac Smith about: How Isaac saved his store after seeing sales decline The importance of in-person masterminds Why bookkeeping can be a headache for dropshippers The mindset needed to be a successful entrepreneur How Isaac sold his store for a 30x multiple Links From This Episode: Free Training From Drop Ship Lifestyle: https://www.dropshiplifestyle.com/webinar/ Isaac's Bookkeeping Service: https://www.truvuebookkeeping.com/

In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton shares a secret that allowed his team to scale their Facebook Ad Spend by 3x! -- New to the show? Get all previous episode (and show notes) here: https://www.ecommercelifestyle.com/episodes/ Learn how to dropship profitably here: http://www.dropshipwebinar.com

In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton shares a test he ran over the weekend which resulted in lowering Facebook CPAs by 67%!

Anton Kraly is the founder and CEO of Drop Ship Lifestyle & eCommerce Lifestyle. He focuses on empowering people through eCommerce and better marketing. He and his team are constantly researching and testing to discover what works best in digital marketing and eCommerce. Resources Dropship Lifestyle (how to start an online store) eCommerce Lifestyle (grow your e-commerce business) Anton Kraly on YouTube Anton Kraly on LinkedIn

In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton shares the safest market to sell to if you want your eCommerce store to be around for years to come! -- Get your FREE BOOK at https://www.dropshipsecrets.com/ ^ just cover shipping ^ Get Drop Ship Lifestyle at https://www.dropshiplifestyle.com/webinar/ -- This is Episode #74 of the eCommerce Lifestyle Podcast. Listen to all previous episodes by searching for "eCommerce Lifestyle" in your preferred podcast player.

In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton talks about what to do AFTER the sale is made if you want to stay in business! -- Get your FREE BOOK at https://www.dropshipsecrets.com/ ^ just cover shipping ^ Get Drop Ship Lifestyle at https://www.dropshiplifestyle.com/webinar/

In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton shares the advice he just gave to a Drop Ship Lifestyle member on their monthly coaching call.

Oh no! Shopify crashed for longer than we can ever remember! In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton talks about whether or not it's time to switch platforms, and what we can all learn from this experience. Listen to all previous episodes at: https://www.ecommercelifestyle.com/episodes/

In this episode, Stacy sits down with eCommerce coach Anton Kraly. The two discuss Anton’s best practices for digital marketing to drive eCommerce businesses, why Facebook ads shouldn’t be your main source of traffic, and how to add 30% to your monthly revenue with email marketing campaigns.

Today I'm Casting The Pod with my friend Anton Kraly from the Ecommerce Lifestyle podcast. . Anton is an expert in the areas of ecommerce and drop shipping and he blew me away with all of the value he gave us in this interview. . Here are just a few of the things we covered: . *Why Anton decided to launch his podcast . *How he is serving his podcast audience . *How he is using Facebook marketing and retargeting strategies to promote his podcast . *His specific advice on how podcasters should be taking advantage of ecommerce. . This episode is AMAZING! Be sure to tag me in your Instagram Story and let me know what you thought of it!   Here is how you can connect with Anton:   Website: www.dropshiplifestyle.com  Podcast: https://www.ecommercelifestyle.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dropshiplifestyle/   Join our FREE PODcastermind Community www.LaunchFixGrow.com  

In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton shares how to set up multiple touch points at every stage of your funnel so that you’re never reliant on one platform or traffic source. You can find all previous episodes of the podcast (with transcripts) here: https://www.ecommercelifestyle.com/ New to eCommerce? Check out my free training webinar here: https://www.dropshiplifestyle.com/webinar/

How does one actually build and scale a successful ecommerce business? One of the options available is called drop shipping and it's probably the easiest way to start selling physical products online. In this episode Anton Kraly, creator of Drop Ship Lifestyle and host of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, talks to Josh about this underground business model. Listen in to find out how it works and why it could be a good fit for you.

In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton talks about tier 1 and tier 2 sources of content and traffic.

In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton shares where he’s moving to, and what to do when you get bored of your normal routine.

In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton talks about how dropshipping is the perfect launch pad for anyone who wants to become an online entrepreneur. He also shares some tips for Conversion Rate Optimization.

In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton shares how to come up with content ideas that your audience will actually want to engage with.

In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton shares how to prepare for trade shows when your goal is to secure suppliers for your eCommerce store.

In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton answerers a question about sales tax that came up after the South Dakota vs. Wayfair ruling in the Supreme Court.

It's February of 2019. The economy is at record highs and there is a lot of cash changing hands... so is now a good time to sell your business? In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton shares his thoughts on the current market and how to think through what is sure to be a life changing decision. -- Want to come to our Prague Retreat? Email me! anton[at]dropshiplifestyle.com with subject link: Prague

In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton shares a lesson on why we need to accept randomness in our businesses. Note: this episode was originally posted as an Instagram Live video. If you're not following us on Instagram, you can do so here: https://www.instagram.com/dropshiplifestyle/

In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton shares an update on Campaign Budget Optimization for Facebook. This episode is a follow up to “The Death of Facebook Ad Account Managers” podcast.

Going back six years, the concept of owning an e-commerce business where you could set up a site, sell a physical product, and never have to hold stock was extremely appealing. That concept has died down in recent past. Today we have someone on the podcast who is here to report that drop shipping is not dead. It is sustainable if it's done right. We're going to hear how our guest is perpetuating that sustainability with his business. Anton Kraly is the founder and CEO of DropShip Lifestyle & eCommerce Lifestyle. His business is focused on empowering people through eCommerce and effective marketing. From a book that he absorbed in one week, Anton got his website up and his business going. He learned all about AdWords and how to make it so his site got those clicks. Anton takes us on his twenty-year journey from delivering a physical product, then moving onto product listing and inventory on a larger scale, to eventually going back to the true drop ship model. A successful drop shipper's job is to build a store with a desirable product, make it look good, have excellent customer service, and then sell, sell, sell. Episode Highlights: Benefits of drop shipping versus building your own brand. The disadvantages of drop shipping – if any! Anton's tips on where to find products. The average order value Anton recommends. How to convince the manufacturer to take you on as a seller. The best platforms to use for sales and website examples to review. How to advertise and where to find clients. Marketing channels to use other than Google. The importance of self-management/DIY when building. We discuss the Amazon factor and its implications for the drop ship model. How to use drop shipping as a stepping stone to building a brand. Transcription: Mark: About five or six years ago Joe we had an e-commerce business … man maybe even more than that, maybe seven years ago or right around the time you started at Quiet Light Brokerage. I remember like the hierarchy for e-commerce businesses right at the top was having a drop ship business. Because people love the idea that you could set up an e-commerce physical products business but never actually have to touch the product like oh this is beautiful. Today they've kind of fallen out of favor. We don't see drop ship business as often and I think it's because people think that they're just kind of easy to spin up and then they get wiped out. But you had somebody on who is in the drop ship world and loves it and is doing a great job. Joe: Yeah. Anton Kraly 's been doing it for about 20 years. He actually started in New York. He had a bakery route where he had a truck literally delivering bakery products to different retail outlets and set up a website and started dropping shipping bakery products all around New York online back 20 years ago. Fast forward to today he really talks about the differentiation between owning a physical products e-commerce business and large amounts of working capital rolling like crazy and taking all the profits putting it right back into it and [inaudible 00:01:56.5] that story versus a drop ship model. A drop ship model; he really hones in on the fact that it is mostly pure profit. You're focused on advertising dollars; that's important. We talked about the average ticket size and why it's important to be larger rather than smaller and US manufacturers and how to find them. Like you said five, six years ago it was all the rage. I think it's a great model, to be honest, we think it's fantastic. It takes less working capital to get started if you do your research and really focus in on some of the things that he's talking about. I think it's a great opportunity for somebody to start their own business versus buy. I know you had Amanda on the podcast about that. I think it's a great opportunity to go that route if there's not a ton of money for startup capital and you really don't want to do imported from China which can be complicated. Mark: Yeah. Look at one thing and think about these ideas of fading niches and fading business styles is that if you find a business today that is in one of these fated business setups like drop shipping; if it's doing well today that's most likely a highly sustainable business. We look at these things and we say oh well drop shipping didn't work because it's just not sustainable for the long term. If somebody has been doing it and is doing it now today then there's something sustainable about it. I would agree that the old model of just taking a product feed and throwing it up there, yeah there might be some problems with that. But drop shipping is still viable if it's done right. So I'm interested to see what he's doing specifically for that sustainability and protecting against that competition and hearing how this will all work. And this is fascinating. Again this is kind of a blast from the past but how it works today. So let's get into it and see what he has to say. Joe: Let's go to it. Joe: Hey folks it's Joe from Quiet Light Brokerage and today I've got Anton Kraly with me on the line. Welcome Anton, how are you? Anton: I'm doing very well Joe. Thanks for having me. Joe: It's great to have you here man. You know the process; we've talked about it just before the recording started here. Why don't you give the folks a little bit of background on yourself and what you do with ‎Drop Ship Lifestyle? Anton: Sure. So yeah my name is Anton Kraly. I built my first e-commerce store way back in 2007. I started off then selling cookies online and basically just got into the business after reading I think a book that got most of the entrepreneurs [inaudible 00:04:07.8] started which was the 4-Hour Workweek. I mean it introduced me to back then Yahoo Stores and AdWords. So I spent a week figuring it out and it worked. I since then kind of been working my way up selling more and more expensive products and transitioning from what used to be an importing model to the drop shipping model. Joe: One week? You took the book 4-Hour Workweek and in one week you got a listing up and running and a business off there? Anton: Yes but before that, I thought that e-commerce and building websites was like this big thing that took a team and $100,000 plus and all these … you know just technical people. And that book what all it gave me was you can go to YahooStores.com and spend $29. And the website was ugly. It was very ugly but I had a delivery route for a bakery in Brooklyn, New York. So I had this idea that I could build a website. I had access to these bakery products. I figured out Ad Words and just said hey we'll use keywords like New York Bakery, New York Cookies, and said I think my little descriptions were moved out of New York and missed New York Bakeries? Click here. And yeah I started getting sales like almost right away on that. Joe: That's amazing. I love it. I love the story and I love the action in terms of just doing it and getting things done. It didn't have to be perfect. If you waited for it to be perfect you would still be working on it for sure. I think I built my first site for $50 so congratulations you got me beat. So … but you were actually physically owning the products in terms of the baking goods and at one point you worked in to just drop ship. Can you touch on that a little bit? Anton: It's funny actually I was I guess technically drop shipping then but what I had at that time … I was 21 years old right out of school and I bought a delivery route for a bakery in Brooklyn. Joe: Ah okay. Anton: What I had basically was the rights to pick up boxes of cookies and sell them to a section of Long Island where I was living. And once I started this business at first I was just shipping them myself like literally having USPS pickup branch boxes and then I just said to the bakery like hey can you guys just ship these things for me and they said yes. So that was drop shipping. I didn't know what it was but after I was doing that … not for long, probably a few months I just was thinking like okay I'm selling $20 boxes, $30 boxes making like $10 per sale if that net so why can't I sell something that costs $200 or 500 or a thousand. So my initial plan back then or is my plan of action and what I did was go on e-Bay, look at completed listings and just looking for things that sold consistently. I buy at now prices, basically identified some items, I still don't know what drop shipping was so I found a website Alibaba.com and started importing. So I did that probably for two or three years import only. Bringing in dozens of containers from China to Long Beach in California and all my e-commerce stores back then were on that model. As I did that again after a few years of traction and doing really well growing like doubling over year over year I actually started to have companies reach out to my stores. And they would say hey we saw your website, we see you sell these things, we make these things do you want to sell ours? And they basically introduced me to drop shipping. Because they explained you don't need to buy this, you don't need to put it in your fulfillment center. You can just list these products, you sell them, and we'll ship them for you. Joe: Let's define that then. For people that don't have the experience set that you and I have go ahead and define drop shipping and how it's different from owning your own brand and physically owning the products and shipping them yourself. Anton: Got it. Drop shipping really is a high level term so if you Googled it you could find probably 10 different business models that technically would be drop shipping. And the way that we do it is basically we consider ourselves Internet retailers. So the way I like to describe it is if you went to a shopping mall and let's say you went to Dick's Sporting Goods right? They're a retailer. You go there and you buy Nike shorts and maybe Callaway golf clubs and whatever brands make kayaks and they sell other people's products. So that's how we do drop shipping. So again instead of building a site and let's say … you know I have a sofa behind me, so instead of making sofas or private labeling sofas we would just go out there and find the top 50 or 100 whatever it is sofa company is for us in the US because that's where we do business. We would reach out. We would say hey you know we see your products and we own this site and would like to sell them. And the arrangement on the drop ship model is they give us their full product catalog. They give us all their descriptions, their SKUs, their images, they just give us all the content and then us as retailers it's our job to make them look good on our websites. Basically, make sure we're taking care of customers and then, of course, our job is to drive visitors and then turn those visitors into customers on our online retail stores. Again the difference is I wouldn't ask those 50 sofa companies can I buy ten of all your best selling products and ship them to my warehouse. I would just get the sales on my website after the sale is made the order gets forwarded to whatever brand it is. The brand ships it direct to the consumer. So again your job as a … and the way that we do it your job as a drop shipper or internet retailer is to build a good store that has great product descriptions that actually has existing customer service and that gets really good at finding buyers bring them to your website. Joe: Yeah. So you touched on some things that I think are advantages of drop ship over owning your own brand but I want you to go ahead and give me two or three there and then we'll talk about them for those listening in the audience. Anton: Yeah; definitely, so back again let's … maybe 2008, 2009 when I was only importing. Basically, I was limited in terms of growth, in terms of revenue because every time I place an order with China I had to put down at least 30%. Before the container got to California I had to pay the balance. Joe: A container … I mean we're talking about a tractor trailer load size— Anton: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:09:32.2] Joe: —a lot of money there. Anton: Yeah. That's right a lot of cash. And basically, that's what happened. Our growth back then was limited based on how much cash I had. Again I had … only I had what was coming in so it was a bankroll sitting there that I could draw from. So basically yeah that was an issue. And then also if I wanted to add new products, back then I probably had between 10 and 20 different SKUs. So I couldn't just say I want to sell … I want to double the amount of products we offer and sell those. I just didn't have that option because again it was cash prohibited. Joe: Number one might be … I mean if someone is starting out on their own and they don't have a whole lot of working capital they may seriously consider drop shipping versus finding, building, designing, private labeling their own brand and then ordering some from an overseas country. Anton: Definitely. Joe: So working capital. If somebody is strapped and doesn't have tens of thousands of dollars to start off with. Anton: Yes. Joe: Okay. I got you. What kind of working capital do you think the … an average drop shipper that's someone that you train needs? What's the ideal situation? Anton: So it depends if you want to outsource things. Again like when I first started I built all my own websites and I created all my own ads and I wrote all my own emails and I did it all myself. So if you want to be the type of person or if you are the type of person that does all the work it really doesn't cost that much as far as a budget. Maybe honestly like a thousand dollars, $2,000 in the high end is like that's okay, again, if you're willing to do the work. If you do want to outsource things like uploading products and having unique descriptions and having content created for your website, I wouldn't recommend outsourcing ads at first but if you wanted to do all that then maybe 10,000 bucks and you can get set up with a nice looking store that's pretty much ready to go. Joe: So drop shipping is not dead right? You know I just … before we started recording we've just had a very attractive drop shipping site go into contract in the in the mid million and a half range actually. Most people that are out there looking for a business think physical products and own their own brand so that they can in many cases they do it on Amazon or a Shopify store. What are the disadvantages that you've experienced by being a drop shipper versus owning your own brand … well owning your own brand, you still own the customers as a drop shipper. Anton: Yeah. Joe: But what are the disadvantages? Anton: So we've done it both ways and let's go to it. We can talk about this but if you are again we'll just keep using the sofa example. If I sold for 50 different sofa brands and I had a successful store I would know what the top 20% of products were. I would know what sells the best. And then again what I used to do … I don't do this anymore I'm planning actually my move to Charlotte is to get back into this but what we used to do is introduce our own brands then on our website. We basically just okay we have 50 brands now we have 51, one of them being ours where we could sell our versions of the top products and maximize profit there. So that's the biggest advantage if you have your own brands. The margins just simply are higher. You can make more money because you're not paying for someone else's brand equity basically. Joe: Okay, I got you. That makes a heck of a lot of sense. Anton: Yeah the other one is we usually … I mean you could speak about this but sale price. If you want to sell your store and you have your own brand that could be a bigger package. It could be more valuable to a buyer that wants that. But that would be another advantage. Joe: Maybe. Yeah, there are a lot of advantages and attractive features about drop ship. Number one, no working capital required. A lot of the people that own their own brands and launched their own business with a brand starting out they do it bootstrapped. Maybe they don't have … maybe they have got 5,000 instead of a thousand or two like you talked about for drop shipping business but every ounce of profit that they make if the business is growing like crazy and they're just trying to keep up with volume of orders and inventory so they don't run out what I see is for 24months they're taking all the profit and putting it right back into buying more inventory and there's hardly left … any left over for them; its discretionary earnings, its taxable income, because they're buying a lot of inventory. But they don't get to pull a hold off out of the business and I sense that with a drop shipping business and I've seen it there's a lot more pre-working cash flow because you're not actually buying that physical product and so you've taken the order and have the money hit your account right? Anton: Yeah and that's the beautiful thing. So like you mentioned with building your own brand and constantly having to reinvest if you're growing to purchase more product, typically with that the payday does come when you sell the business. That's when you get all that money out. As the business value grows but your cash flow doesn't … or your free cash flow. And with drop shipping yeah if you do this the right way and you're working with the right type of suppliers and of course you're not overspending on traffic you really do control your costs. So most of your costs are variable so having … even if you're in reinvesting like a little bit more into traffic and trying to raise your budget it is realistic to have a 20% net profit every month in cash that you can then again determine what you want to do with. If you want to invest it into a business or do you want to take it out? So our cash flow from day one is much much higher than when you're going to be trying to scale your inventory. Joe: Okay. So let's talk about I want to start the drop ship business, I'm convinced I want more cash flow. I'm not worried about a big sale down the road although they are very, very sellable businesses. How do I find the products? How do you find manufacturers that are willing to allow me to sell their products on their behalf? Anton: Yep. So as far as finding products there's so many things out there but basically what we look for for some general rules of thumb is expensive products. Our average sale price we want to be usually a thousand dollars or more. We do sell products for less than that but that's the average order value we're looking for. We also look for different product types where customers really don't care what brand they get it from. So an example I sometimes give is let's just say someone heard oh a thousand dollar products price. I want to sell televisions or high end gaming monitors. Well, I would say that's a bad idea because if someone wants to buy that they're going to buy a Samsung TV or an LG monitor and that's not a company you get approved to sell. But if you wanted to sell something like sofas or books shelves or any of these products types no one cares … no one says I want this brand name sofa and I have to have that. So things that … yeah, there's really not brand loyalty. That definitely helps and things where there is a lot of possible variation or colors. So another example I give is chandeliers. So someone buys a new home like we're trying to do now you want to replace the lighting fixtures. If I want a chandelier I can go to Home Depot and Lowes and see what they have. But if I see something on Pinterest or Instagram and I want this specific size and color and amount of bulbs like I'm not going to find that at a local store. So China might stack the cards in your favor by going for things where customers are usually drawn online, to begin with, to make those purchases. Joe: Okay so – Anton: [inaudible 00:16:14.8] to search for a new iPad but something generic. Joe: Right. So something generic with a high ticket item. How do you find those manufacturers? Anton: Yeah. So Google … I mean that's really what we do. And one of the tips I could tell people not to do is don't look for drop ship suppliers online. Because when you go that route what you're going to find is directories and middlemen that typically charge like a monthly fee for access to their products. They really are middlemen. What you want to do is always get approved directly with the brands that you're selling for. So you don't want to go through a distributor if at all possible. You definitely don't want to go through any one that calls themselves a drop ship supplier director or anything like that. Again going back to the sofa example, I would go on Google, I would type in whatever I want to sell; maybe three sitter fabric sofas. I would go through Google. I would open every website in a different tab that sells them. I would look for either a page called brands or manufacturers or suppliers. And I would go ahead and then open or make a document with every company name I found there. And basically, I would work off that list. So I would build my own list of not … again like I wouldn't call them a list of drop shippers, I'd call them a list of brands that manufactures sofas. And then I would reach out to them old school by picking up the phone and saying hey this is Anton from AntonSofas.com, I found your website and these products and thought they'd be a great fit and who can I speak to about getting approved for an account and take it from there so yeah. Joe: How do you convince them to allow you to be a drop shipper when you haven't built a website first or is the—? Anton: We built the website first. So yeah if I was getting into a new industry let's … again sofas, I build a website. I would upload maybe five or 10 stock images. Everything else would be finished though, the about us page, all of it. Then we have blog posts up there. The whole thing; the phone number would work, the live chat would work. And then when we spoke to them we would say basically we're launching this website on whatever it is you know March 1st and our plan is to work with X, Y, and Z companies. So mention some of their competitors that makes sofas that's probably well-known and respected. And we could say our plan is to launch with again these companies, we'd love to have you on board. We think that your products whatever it is X, Y, Z that we found on their website would do really well. If they ask tell them a little bit about our previous experience, how we're going to get traffic. Tell them about how customer service is everything with our business and kind of go through the things that we know that they're looking for and the things that … they're also the things that we know we have to do to make the store successful. Joe: Okay. So build a website on the product and then start the marketing and we'll get to that in a second. So in terms of building the website do you have examples on Drop Ship Lifestyle of what one looks like that would be an ideal one to build? Anton: We do. We have a bunch of different links. I could send you some to check them out but I think one of them that we have a lot now is in lightandchandeliers.com so if anybody wants to check that out. We also have HappyPawsDogStore.com. So those are websites that are built on Shopify using the Drop Ship Lifestyle theme that we had built and they just show again what the site would look like at that stage when you're ready to start contacting suppliers, get approved, and [inaudible 00:19:17.6]. Joe: So you answered one of my other question which is which platform do you prefer and it sounds like Shopify. Okay. Anton: For 99% percent of stores, yeah. Joe: All right so you've identified the niche that you want to go in to, you build the website, and then you find the manufacturers and develop the relationship and bring their catalogues into your website. How do you go ahead and find the customers and market the brands? Anton: Yep so our favorite way is still through Google Shopping by using Google product listing ads. Those are the ads if anybody goes on Google and types in a product name or you can just use the general niche name you'll see the little images of different products. It'll show the product's price. It will show the store name. So we advertise there and then also if you're … if you search that on Google and put shopping you'll see all the ads there. And it's just always been like back in the day I think when I first started it was called frugal.com and like that's always been our highest converting source of traffic. So we focus on not just having our products there but really optimizing our product feeds to make sure that we are getting a good ROI. Because the big … since again all of our expenses are variable our biggest expense is marketing. So we spend a lot of money on ads. And so I'm just making sure that we are putting it in the right places and monitoring it. Like we we're always reviewing our ad campaigns. That's what drives the business. Like you need a high converting website, you need great brands, but if you're not really active with … inside your Google ads account then it doesn't matter. So yeah that's what drives our sales. Joe: So that initial one to $2,000 that you thought was a big budget initially does that include the advertising budget when you launch? Anton: Most of that would be going in there. And this is another good thing I should have mentioned earlier but speaking about how these are cash flow businesses with the way that we do advertise to get the majority of the time it's either coming from a Google product listing at search or someone searching for a brand name or a product name or an SKU number or it's something that we optimize for on our website where they're searching again and they're finding us organically. But by the time people find us they're typically trying to figure out am I going …with where my going to buy from basically. They know they want product X, Y, Z and they're looking to figure out where they should buy it from. So we do a bunch of stuff on our websites to have them choose us. But also by the time they click one of our ads they're either going to buy or not buy typically in like three to five days. So it's not like we're spending whatever a hundred dollars today and hoping it comes back to us two months from now. Joe: Wow. Anton: Spending money now and if we're not [inaudible 00:21:34.0] positive within a few days then turn it off. Joe: Let me just summarize and differentiate the business model between owning your own physical brands folks and the drop ship store. Again I just want to wrap it up and summarize if you're not wrapping up a summarized. So building the shop … you're building the store, you're spending a total $2,000 budget all in and that includes advertising. With a physical products brand, you're doing that as well but you're ordering the product from let's say China, for instance, waiting for that product to come in, putting it up on Amazon, spending some money to get traffic either to Amazon from Facebook or some other source and doing sponsored ads in Amazon. So far we've spent, we've spent, we've spent, we've spent, and then you're going to get paid out every two weeks from Amazon. Your advertising budgets are going to take and blow your credit cards once a month. With Drop Ship Lifestyle or drop shipping, you're not spending any money on product. You're building the website and you're building … doing the marketing campaign. And it sounds like if somebody is going to take … you start getting orders right away after a few days, weeks of advertising again even your advertising budget is with your credit card and you're not getting … you don't have to pay that depending upon the time or the month when you launch for another 30 days. So you're getting the revenue from the sale before you have to buy the product and you're just sending the … do you send an invoice, an ACH wire, or do you—? Anton: No. Joe: Or some of your manufacturers take a credit card as well? Anton: Most of them are credit card. So whenever we can we go credit card and so yeah the points if anybody's into that is amazing. I haven't paid for travel in like 12 years so you'll want to use rewards cards. Joe: There was a time when I was spending … the highest I ever spent was 50,000 a month on Google Ad Words when I had my business and we furnished our house, we took vacations, everything for the points. Now let me just talk to buyers and sellers, particularly sellers out there when it comes to points. Something like this if you've got a drop ship business and you're doing it this way that Anton's talking about, if you are spending $100,000 a month on inventory and advertising, of course, you've got to pay for it in advance. Anton: Mm-hmm. Joe: So … but if that's 100,000 points if you use a point converter or a cash back credit card. That is what's called an owner benefit. Anton, I want you to pay attention to this and talk to all the folks that you train. Anton: Okay. Joe: That is an owner benefit that you should track because if and when you sell your business it needs to be added back to the add back schedule as an owner benefit and can boost the overall value of your business. I just launched one recently and he travels the world and does it all with … no, I'm sorry he buys all of his inventory with credit cards and that gives him an enormous amount of cash back. I think it was something let's call it $25,000 cash back over the course of the trailing 12 months. If your business is listed at a three time multiple everyone that adds $75,000 to the overall value of the business. For buyers, if you're looking at businesses and you're looking for some instant equity if a broker didn't list cash back points or anything like that and sometimes you've got like Anton said travel you can convert those. With our American Express there's we've got a certain number of points and we can convert that to cash. That's the amount we're talking about. But that could be instant equity in a business for a buyer if you're taking over drop ship model and your broker didn't do that or the broker that listed the business didn't do that you can. Okay, how much are you spending? What kind of points? You know using credit cards do the math and it's definitely instant equity. Okay, sorry long rant there. The biggest thing for me and so when I'm talking to buyers and mostly sellers and I'm going to say this for the folks that are listening the biggest mistake you can do … make is not pay attention to the details of your financials and documentation. A little thing like that, we all work so hard when we've got our own businesses to drive top line revenue and talk oh I'm doing this many millions in revenue. That doesn't matter as much as the bottom line number and when you pay attention to that that actually brings more value when you do decide to exit your business. Okay, Joe is done ranting. All right so other than Google Shopping what other marketing channels are there in terms of paths to growing the business itself? Anton: So the ones that we … I'd say use every time so it varies, so you find some industries where there are certain placements but whenever we're building a new store we will be obviously Google is our number one. Organic traffic is big. We used to invest a lot of money into it trying to rank major keywords. We don't do that anymore. What we do now is just focus on site and make sure that all of our product pages especially once we know which our top 20% of products are going to be, we make sure those are extremely unique and optimized because that's just free clicks and free sales. So organic is big for us. Bing, believe it or not, we advertise. It's probably 10% of our overall marketing budget. Joe: I'm not sure if I believe it or not. Okay, 10% all right. Anton: We're putting some money there. There are people, they're sales. Joe: Okay. Anton: We can't scale it. Every time we try to scale it it breaks. But add a small budget and it works. Facebook we are big on but only for remarketing and the reason being we do sell high ticket products. So to put an ad for a chandelier in front of someone that likes I don't know what interior design they're not going to buy it so … retargeting though we are big there. YouTube ads actually work really well for us as far as remarketing also. And then one of our other ones that budget depends on what industry are in and what's out there but advertising on other content sites that already exist. So you can call it influencer marketing but it could either be a business, website, a content site, it could be someone's personal content site. But either doing like paid promoted articles or taking out ads in the sidebar. Either way but trying to form relationships with people that already have the audience there and then paying them to either have them talk about us or to allow us to put a little banner on their website. Joe: I got you. And a lot of the stuff you just talked about, we've had guest experts on that do YouTube ads or might do influence or marketing things that of that nature. Are you generally finding the people that you work with managing all of this themselves early on how … somebody that doesn't have the expertise to do that what do you advise them to do? Anton: Typically if they're starting from scratch and they want to build a business and with this type of business I don't recommend hiring anybody from day one. I recommend like learning at least … look do it yourself and get it profitable and then okay look for someone that might want to run your content side of the business or look for an agency that can manage your Ad Words but I really … for most people when they're starting I say do it yourself. It's easy to throw money away and I made this mistake early on with my e-commerce businesses. We were profitable but when I look back I spent all this money in like fees into all these companies and I didn't know enough to know that I was grossly overpaying for a lot of things. So yeah lesson learned. Joe: That's the beauty of experience and age and wisdom right? You get to remember all your mistakes and what you might have done differently. Talk to me about Amazon. Anybody got drop ship businesses that are reselling on Amazon and if so how do you do that? Anton: I'm sure the answer is yes. I'll tell you we don't do any drop shipping on Amazon haven't even ad … I used to advertise there back when they allowed Amazon product ads to go to external sites. But that's been gone for a few years. Yeah, there's some people that I work with, some of them are students at Drop Ship Lifestyle that have their own drop ship stores that do what I've spoken about earlier where they'll introduce their own brands into the mix of their drop ship store. And typically when they do that they'll also have their products on Amazon because they know that people at least a percentage of them will also with Amazon and look there. With the type of brands that we work with typically when we are getting approved to sell for them and we're signing the agreements, one of them says that you're not going to sell on 3rd party platforms like companies like e-Bay. They don't want to sell us to sell there. Same thing with Amazon reason being is because if they're going to have their products there they usually do that internally. A lot of the times because the items are usually expensive and margin heavy they're not the type of items that people are private labeling and putting on there. So it's really at this point I'm sure this will change in the future but at this point, it hasn't been a huge factor because I think our price points are higher and again the items are usually like too big to be sending over to FBA and paying storage fees. The numbers don't work at this point with that model. Joe: Do you foresee any danger as a drop shipper that the Amazon business model is going to be a challenge for drop shippers because those manufacturers can go directly to them and guys like me anytime I want to buy something I go to Amazon first? Anton: Yeah I do. And I'll say at this point I'm not like freaking out like oh my God like I … were gone but I do think that five years from now 10 years from now, if Bezos gets what he wants then Amazon will have the entire market share of everything. So I … you know I've talked about this before but I think like we'll see. Like that's definitely where they want to go. I think they're pretty upfront about it so unless someone else steps in or unless the government breaks them up from getting too big then yeah we'll see what the market looks like. Again I don't think it's coming anytime soon but maybe call it 10 years we'll see what things look like then. But I'm in no way confident that they're going to just back down and say we have enough. They're not about to stop. Joe: Yeah well I think your approach to larger ticket items that higher value, not easy to ship, not easy to store at an Amazon warehouse kind of eliminates … they can't have everything right? I mean Jeff— Anton: They're not now they haven't. I mean they've taken over pretty much every market in that call like $100 sub priced product range and even electronics; like I buy some of my electronics from them. But as far as the types of products that we sell it's been that one area that they haven't really stepped into at least not in a big way. Like they sell basically … at this point, they sell cheap versions of the stuff that we sell. So you know if you search for a lot of the brands we sell they wouldn't sell for those brands but they'll sell like an inferior type product I would say at this point. Joe: I got you. I know that I say the first place I go is Amazon and I rarely buy anywhere else but them but when I find a certain brand I will go to that website and I would certainly buy from them. And I know my wife will certainly buy from the brand manufacturer or in many cases we built our house three years ago and she was that person looking at 30 different websites for the lighting fixtures and probably brought from one of you guys at one point. Anton: Probably, but for anybody that's like thinking about that and kind of like worried like well yeah that probably is going to happen. I think one of the biggest things you could do is look at sites now that are … I don't know I would say going above and beyond like don't do the bare minimum as far as content and as far as usability and as far as like everything; the whole experience. One website that I buy from all the time is the bnh.com. They sell you photo and video equipment. And they do have a huge store and warehouse in the middle of Manhattan but most of their orders now are online. And I think that all that stuff that I buy from them I could buy from Amazon and I buy it from Amazon all the time but I like the experience there better for that type of product. So if anyone wants inspiration check out B&H and see how they do things. They do a great job. Joe: Thanks. So I think this whole podcast has been inspirational for those that are looking to build an e-commerce business in this case specifically drop shipping. It's a great alternative to the risk and cash outlay of building your own brand. Any last thoughts in terms of what the benefits are anybody should think about in terms of drop shipping versus e-commerce? Anton: Yeah I think for anybody even if you're listening to this and you're like oh that sounds good but I already have half a million dollars in the bank and I just want to build a brand. I still think you could do both simultaneously and it's a great idea to start with a drop ship model in whatever industry you want to private label or manufacture in. Start drop shipping, build a website, build an audience, get sales, see what people buy, see what they like and don't like about products. You'll have all that market data you'll be making money and then you can go ahead and start your own brand with all the information and really increase your chances of just hitting on your own bit. Joe: That's great Anton. Your website is DropShipLifestyle.com you're helping folks understand the drop ship model. What's the best way for them … anyone to reach you that want to chat? Should they just go to the website is there a—? Anton: Website, DropShipLifestyle.com click contact, and everything is linked up off there. Joe: Fantastic. I appreciate your time today. I look forward to doing business with you in the future. Anton: Definitely. Thank you, Joe. Links and Resources: DropShip Lifestyle Contact DropShip Lifestyle

In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton shares how to overcome inventory issues when drop shipping.

In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton talks about if and when you should outsource paid traffic.

In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton shares how much you should spend on ads when you’re just starting out, and when you’re scaling your eCommerce business.

In the episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton explains why being a Facebook Ad Account Manager may become a job of the past.

Anton Kraly is the founder and CEO of DropShip Lifestyle & eCommerce Lifestyle. He focuses on empowering people through eCommerce and better marketing. He and his team are constantly researching and testing to discover what works best in digital marketing and eCommerce Join the conversation and get additional content www.geoffnicholson.uk/108

In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, Anton shares how to lower your taxes before the end of year.

“If you want to be around for the long term, it's about having the best customer service. It's about building a brand and positioning, not just you personally, but your store as the expert in whatever industry you're selling in. That’s how you build something that lasts for a decade or more.”   This week on the podcast, we’re discussing eCommerce with the drop ship master. Anton Kraly, who launched the online course Drop Ship Lifestyle, is the builder of several wildly successful eCommerce stores, and creator of the podcast eCommerce Lifestyle. Find out more about the world of drop shipping, how to create success in the eCommerce world, and the possibility of a 30x sale of a business whose net profit is only $10,000 per month. What?!   “I would highly recommend everybody thinking about getting into traditional retail, think twice. There's a lot more opportunity online.”   The success of an eCommerce business doesn’t lie in your ability to provide a wide variety of products to customers, but rather, in your ability to become the expert in one area. Learn the difference between affiliate marketing and dropping shipping, the primary components of a successful eCommerce business, and how Tim Ferriss saved Anton from owning a Pita Pit Franchise.   “That's one big red flag when you're trying to get suppliers with drop shipping. Anybody that calls themselves a drop shipper, or anyone that says drop shipping on their website, they're a middleman. Their money is made through monthly fees or yearly fees and through crazy markups.”   You can connect with Anton, find out more about Drop Ship Lifestyle and how to start making money through eCommerce here. Also, check out Anton’s podcast, eCommerce Lifestyle.   If you have ever had any interest at all in drop shipping or building a company to sell, you won’t want to miss this episode. It is crammed full of useful information.   Some Topics we talk about in this episode: Introduction - 0:00 A Brief Primer on Drop Shipping The Value of “Niching Down” The Primary Components of a Successful eCommerce Business The Difference Between Drop Shipping and Affiliate Marketing   Selling eCommerce Stores Successfully Typical Success Timeline for Individuals Enrolled in Drop Ship Lifestyle Rewind: Anton’s Story of Success Wrap-up and Takeaways - 30:00 How to get involved   If you liked this episode, be sure to subscribe and leave a quick review on iTunes. It would mean the world to hear your feedback and we’d love for you to help us spread the word!

Today we’re joined by Anton Kraly, an online entrepreneur and founder of Drop Ship Lifestyle, a company that teaches people how to build a legitimate online business. Through training courses, one-on-one coaching, online communities, digital software, annual retreats, and step-by-step programs, Anton has been sharing his knowledge and experiences of creating and running a 7 figure e-commerce drop shipping business. Since 2013, Drop Ship Lifestyle has helped over 5,832 students to start their own highly-profitable, semi-automated dropship stores. Anton also has a podcast called Ecommerce Lifestyle, which has a goal of providing people with the systems, tools, and support needed for growing a business. Our topics include: Anton’s journey to becoming a successful online entrepreneur. What habits have proven to be useful on the road to becoming an online entrepreneur? What is drop shipping? How to build a 7-figure drop shipping e-commerce business? Connect with Anton: Website: https://www.antonkraly.com/ Company Website: https://www.dropshiplifestyle.com/  Twitter: https://twitter.com/akraly Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/antonkraly/   What's Next? Learn skills that will make you the sharpest person in the Boardroom:  https://humanresources.teachable.com/   Like This Episode? Leave a tip! Learn More: https://www.patreon.com/blc   --- Listen: iTunes | Podbean | Spotify Connect: IG | T | FB | Website | Sponsor Music: http://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music --- This episode is powered by Jumpstart:HR, LLC HR Outsourcing for Small Businesses and Startups: http://www.jumpstart-hr.com

As Jim comes up on celebrating sixteen years of being full time online he has valuable lessons for us about the reality of what life looks like when you have an online business. From managing your time to simply feeling like you are doing what you are called to do there is one basic trait that makes it all possible and keeps the adversity at bay. Join Jim today as he reveals the most important business asset that you have inside of YOU. Details at SilentJim.com/podcast     Stay updated with us on Facebook Messenger    SilentSalesMachine.com Jim's best selling book https://amzn.to/2So0v7A   My Silent Team Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/mysilentteam/   ProvenAmazonCourse.com

Struggling to come up with ideas for "click-worthy" content? This episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast is for you. More @ https://www.ecommercelifestyle.com

Anton Kraly is a serial entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience building online businesses including, Drop Ship Lifestyle and eCommerce Lifestyle. Voted best Ecommerce Course by Shopify in 2018, Drop Ship Lifestyle was created to give students the knowledge and tools necessary to create freedom through entrepreneurship.

If you ever thought about an online business you may have thought about drop shipping but there is so much noice on how to successfully build a drop ship lifestyle.  Anton has built multiple successful drop ship businesses. His approach is to work with established brands to sell their products. His journey of entrepreneurship started at the age of 14 but he was searching for a ‘better way’ to grow and build his business. Now he teaches others how they can find freedom in their journey too. In today's episode Anton shares on:Selling Branded ProductsHow to dropshipFinding your nicheFollowing your passionWhen to turn side hustle into full time gigLifestyle of entrepreneurshipStarting a drop ship businessAnton’s Recommended ReadingThe 4 Hour Work WeekAnton Kraly is a serial entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience building online businesses, including Drop Ship Lifestyle and eCommerce Lifestyle.Voted “Best eCommerce Course” by Shopify in 2018, Drop Ship Lifestyle has empowered more than 8,000 students in 25 countries to find freedom through entrepreneurship.Interview Segments - This is where you can find each section of the interview.An Intro to Anton: 1:06 minutesGoing Deeper into the Topics: 21:19 minutesRapid Fire Questions: 47:33 minutesWebsite:  https://www.dropshiplifestyle.com/

When you find success in business, people can (and will) try to rip you off. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people in this world with no ethics. They think the only way to succeed is to capitalize on others hard work. In this episode of the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast, you'll learn how to shut them down, and how to get their money. -- If you're new to the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast with Anton Kraly, you can get all previous episodes here: https://www.ecommercelifestyle.com/episodes

In this episode of eCommerce Lifestyle, Anton shares an investment lesson from the late 19th century that still holds true today.

In this episode of eCommerce Lifestyle, Anton shares his thoughts on what to do with the "extra" cash generated by your business.

In this episode of eCommerce Lifestyle, Anton shares his thoughts on a dilemma that all entrepreneurs have to deal with.

Learn what the eCommerce Lifestyle podcast with Anton Kraly is all about, and what you can expect in future episodes! All resources that I mention will be published on https://www.ecommercelifestyle.com/ If you have any topics you'd like me to discuss, or if you'd like to be a guest on a future episode, you can contact me here: https://www.ecommercelifestyle.com/contact/