Dropshipping never stopped being an attractive option for fledgling entrepreneurs and their brands, it's been my observation that over time; you just need to be more serious about your brand to really take off.
Tens of thousands of businesses full of potential could fail whether it's a lack of knowledge regarding the best suppliers, mentors or apps to name a few. Between our episode with Launchers Academy and now my guest today, Martin Stoimenov and his website dropshipping.com, the conversation is just getting started.
How dropshipping.com started
Joseph: What I want to know is if you can take us back to the, the starting point for this and, you know, in the position that you're in, what was the origin of this website? You know, what problem did you see in the, in the market and in the industry and in the community that no one seemed to be solving?
Martin Stoimenov: Of course. So our main tagline, I will say is your main source of knowledge for everything related to the business of dropshipping. So a lot of people are building informational products out there, and they are willing to share their knowledge and to work with dropshippers and suppliers. But nobody out there is collecting everything in one place.
And that's why we want to just to build something that one place to go for every dropshipper. So the problem we are solving is kind of fighting those fluffy advice out there. Those fake gurus, I will say, sorry, sorry for using this word. But a lot of people are sharing knowledge from zero experience.
And of course we are living in that age of internet that when everyone has the power to share their experience, which is fine. But if you want to go somewhere and find all the information for. Starting your own line businesses, especially drop shipping or e-commerce business. This is the place to go. And the premium domain itself says it all dropshipping.com.
So that's why we wanted to put everything together, build the apps, build the future, build the tools, the supplies directory, and give it everything for free for our dedicated audience.
Joseph: Yeah, I mean, I just wanted to comment on the guru problem because you're not the first person to bring up the, the misinformation and what I think the problem was.
And, I maintain that. I try to keep my perspective as an outsider, you know, from the media arts landscape, entering this community is I think the problem is that the gurus had a lot of influence, especially during the early part of dropshipping. And so there was quite large and quite vast.
And so they had established a lot of ideas and myths about drop shipping. That since that point of all, a lot of other people, such as yourself, you know, have been working to demystify. And, and I think for the most part, I will give some credit. I assume that they have, you know, managed some success, but it's a lot of smoke and mirrors.
It's a lot of like, yeah, I earned 600,000 in revenue and it really cost me $50,000. And I didn't actually learn all that much. I got to earn more if I just worked at McDonald's and I, and I think there's a lack of evolution on their part is that the advice they had given maybe was good six years ago, but if there no adaptation to it, then there's no need for them.
And it's in, it's a beautiful business model, right? Yeah. Well sign up for my course, you know, you pay all the money. Oh, it didn't work well, maybe you just didn't have enough gusto for it. I'll throw this one. And just for the fun of it, but off the top of your head, have there been any myths or misconceptions about dropshipping that you felt you really needed to demystify and expose the truth?
Martin Stoimenov: Of course. Yeah. And the same situation is in all those emerging industries and trends like NFTs, crypto. Every industry, every industry is collected from people who are just looking for information and those who are providing information from not baked with data or real experience and some of the misconceptions and the lasting, we are looking all over the news.
Is dropshipping death. So that's one of the biggest questions people are asking because you know, the curve of learning can growing this kind of business model was 2016, 17 was the boom. Then it all went down and after the pandemic, everything is coming back again, like people are shopping more often online, and that's why we want to resolve and to get the answers to those people who are thinking, okay, is it legal?
Is it working yet? How can I make money? But the biggest misconception is that you can get rich overnight. And that's what we want to fight for, because it's not something that you put your hours working like for a day or two. And then you receive the gratification almost immediately because like everything.
Yeah, you can acquire quick success. If you have the capital, if you have the knowledge acquire and if you have something that's so trendy, like, okay, well, let's say for now the last week, if you are the first person who is selling the squid game masks, okay, you are on the right place. You can get rich overnight, but that's not the case with most of the stores and people are regretting the day they started dropshipping because of those fake misconceptions that you can get rich overnight.
And we are sharing the real knowledge, not we don't have one single article or piece of advice that says get into drop shipping, you will get reached or you can be the next winning success.
Challenges he encountered
Joseph: What I thought I was kind of taken aback by the fact that your website is called drop shipping.com, just because it's, you know, the most, I think authoritative name. I think the only name that might be a little bit more like full and encapsulating might be a drop ship.com, but you know, drop shipping is pretty, it's pretty darn good. So like, did you have any trouble acquiring this domain or was it really just sitting there waiting for someone?
Martin Stoimenov: It's kind of a funny story because you know, when you acquire this kind of domain to be your main source of work this day or main source of existential work for a project that's called drop shipping.com, it's always funny and easy. So is it to be true, but I have a friend that's in this industry for a long time ago and I was working mostly on the marketing part, working with e-commerce brands, helping them, like from the agency perspective.
And he came up, Hey, we have a guy from USA. He has one interesting idea. He is the owner of dropshipping.com and he wants to build a platform on it. So are you able to join our forces? And we can go over and build some content? It was our plan a long before we were trying to build a knowledge center with different domains.
One of them is dropshipping dropship village. This was opportunity that cannot be missed. So we get up on a call and it's a kind of collaboration because, you know, if you want, it's like real estate, if you buy a premium domain, when nobody's looking for that domain, and then you want to sell it five years later, then you're big advantage over the people who want to buy it. But luckily we have a partner that want to build a real platform. So he gives us the he's arranging as the dropshipping.com domain so we can build our dreams.
How dropshipping.com works
Joseph: So, so if somebody had their head, their hands on it and there, and they were waiting for a good opportunity.
Yeah. While you were saying that. I just out of curiosity, because I do have my window open here, I just decided to type in drop ship.com just to see what happens. And it ends up with a dsco.io it's now part of commerce up. I was like, well, this isn't the nexus of information. This is just a commerce, okay. We'll talk to commerce hub at some point, but this just in case, anybody's wondering what happens when you actually type that in that's what happens, and it's not as comprehensive. So however people type in dropshipping.com and, you know, you said that you, you want to, to cover everything and you really want it to be the go-to place for the drop ship.
And, and I, and I even know, seeing myself using it as well. Cause it's part of my life now, too. But I want you to take us through your features. I want you to take us through the, everything. You know what, so we talked about articles so far, but let's make sure that we fully cover what it is that you have in mind for this website, what we can do and what you have planned.
Martin Stoimenov: So dropshipping is the platform we are building, and most of the things like 70% of everything we plant are already called Incode and they're all to be launched for the public. And what we plan to do is to bring the information connected to the dropshipping business. And e-commerce of course, including the legal part, including the, how you can set up your store from scratch.
So basically we are dividing our platform, our medium, I will say, in two, in two basic categories. So it's directories and the know-how Bart for directories. We are giving the world's first premium supplier and product directory. So we have more than six, 700 suppliers onboard at, on our platform that we are presenting all the information for those from the suppliers for free.
And also we have more than 8,000 products on our platform that people can browse, inspire their journey and look for something to sell. And they can click immediately land on AliExpress for example, and they can work with the suppliers that are selling those products. Also, we have a wholesale directories that people can work on a large scale, and we have directories for e-commerce apps, more than 300 e-commerce apps.
Everything you need to start the launch and maintain your drop shipping store, everything here. So we have reviews, we have guides for people how to use those apps and also still not launched. I hope it will be in a week or two stores directory. So we have more than 3000 stores in our platform that people can look at really live stores that people can get inspired for their journey.
Look what works for other dropshippers, what doesn't work. And so they can choose their domains. They can choose the main branding, voice, everything else connected to the stores. And on the know-how part will building the knowledge center, which means, as you mentioned, the articles, the guides premium guides, a premium newsletter.
So we have success stories, interviews with people in the industry, but we are limited only for people that are building or have some kind of success with dropshipping store. Of course, just a disclaimer. We are not looking for people that built seven figure businesses, ordinary dropshippers that want to start or working in the industry and academy.
The academy part is our collaboration with mentors, people that are building, creating dropshipping courses for leaving. So those people want to collaborate with us and share their knowledge for our users. And basically that's it two different parts, a lot of knowledge, a lot of free directories and listings.
So people can browse, learn and get what they want so they can use in their drop shipping.
Joseph: There's a few things to unpack from that, but the one that stuck out to me the most out of all of them is when you said that you're not on the lookout for people who've entered the seven figure range because, well, you know, that's quite an accomplishment and people seem to be doing well.
But I think that actually, illustrates not everybody gets to that point, but that doesn't mean that they're not successful. Right. I mean, six figures is still pretty good. Even five figures might be adequate for some people. So, from your point of view, you know, what is the realistic average yearly revenue?
If you, if you want to say it in revenue, we can do that, but I, I would want to also have. Maybe the products they use their cultural footprint. What does the average dropshipping store run like these days?
Martin Stoimenov: Yeah, that's based on the product you're selling. If you're in high ticket, dropshipping stage or products you're choosing to sell, you can make a thousand bucks from just one product.
But if you're selling, like most of us are doing a low ticket products with like gadgets or everything, starting from clouds to fitness. And that's products, fishing products. So you are in a stage where you can, if you're making, I will leave this out. If you're making like 2000 to 3000 per year, I think you are good per month.
You are good. So th th th that's something we calculate. Okay. You're succeeding in dropshipping. 1000 is actually good number to say, okay, this is something that I should put more attention on, but two to be calculated. Like, of course this depends on the place you're living in 3000 is a lot of money in some cases.
Not that much in developed countries. So basically that's the benchmark. You want to hit to say, okay, this is my, yeah.
All about high ticket stores
Joseph: I mean, I'm in Canada and $3,000 is pretty good if your parents are . Still helping you for help.
Okay. So, I wanted to know, a follow-up on that because you also mentioned a high ticket and, you know, for the most part, when I talk to people in the drop shipping space, it is low ticket items. I mean, for one they're, you know, they're safer to send and all that, but I mean, if you don't want to like call out specific stores, that's all good can be confidential.
But, generally what a high ticket store is looking like, what is it that they're selling?
Martin Stoimenov: Exactly. Most of those high ticket stores are. Fashion quotes, fashion, design designer things. And that's the booming industry that never dies of course, but here you have some legal authorities. If you're selling like fashion brands from the biggest brands maybe you will have problems to clarify if you're the owner of those brands and so on.
And so on. Also another industry that you can enter for high ticket products is if you're selling electronics or video games, or you are into the industry of fitness, but fitness of course is divided on different parts. If you are selling small supplements, you're not into high ticket drop shipping business.
If you're selling fitness equipment, You are in, so depends on the product, depends on the supplier. If you're selling from China and supplying people only locally, then you should probably choose low ticket products that are for the mass market. But if you manage to build a new store with a lot of people that are a dedicated audience and you have following on all the platforms, you build that momentum and you have budget to, to advertise your store, then I will suggest go for it and build something that's worth living for.
Joseph: Actually, you know, I did it. I didn't want to ask you about video games. Cause that article stuck out to me being the enormous nerd that I am, I was actually kind of surprised to seek as a part of the article indicates that, you know, you can add, you can drop ship. The video games themselves.
Did I read that right? Or, or is it, there it's mostly just like paraphernalia and accessories, like, you know, controllers or headsets or stuff like that to be person selling or butter people actually is able to successfully, you know, drop ship and sell copies of video games. To me, that always seemed like that was kind of a line that a lot of sellers can't cross.
Martin Stoimenov: I thinkwe are mostly about to explain the heart hardware part of video games, so equipment or everything that surrounds the setup for video gamers, like consoles, hardware, health products for gamers and game related merchandise like chairs, desks, or even game-related print on demand you can sell.
So basically we are covering that part because selling video games itself is not that sustainable. I don't have data to back this up, but I think that's mostly affiliate marketing parts. If you want to enter the digital space and sell digital products, games, you should consider affiliation with the suppliers or video games, creators, instead of entering the video games and selling hard copies of all of the games itself.
Joseph: Yeah. Right. Yeah. I agree with that. I mean the main line video game retailers, they've been struggling for a long time because you have so many digital downloads now. And a lot of them have actually turned into cultural stores as well. If you walk into an EDB games these days, you could, they got the games there, but then they got toys. Nerf guns. I got clothes, I got all of that stuff. And you know, it, it is nice to see it, cause at least that way, you know, at one spot anyways, I don't want to get too far off on that. But something, this is something that came to my mind in, in our conversation and it's kind of, it's hyper-specific but I thought I'd give it a shot anyways.
So I don't know if you're familiar with some of the brands that we have here in the west, where they have a, I guess maybe a consignment program. So like Avon or Tupperware where, you know, they'll sell product to a user and then that user will then sell it to other people, that we have this thing called Tupperware parties.
It's kind of a cliche. I don't know if we still have them or not, but like somebody would invite all their friends or family or just interested people. And just sell a whole bunch of Tupperware. And the, the benefit is of course, is that you have the strength of a brand behind you. The downside is, well, you know, the, the margins aren't quite as high, but is there, is there a window of opportunity there where people actually could, or maybe they are, and I just don't know, but people are dropshipping.
Other people's brands in the same way that some people are purchasing these products and selling it on, on their behalf.
Martin Stoimenov: Yeah. I will say that that's completely into this game of dropshipping. So maybe, maybe that's not covering the whole model of drop shipping. And there are a lot of course misconceptions that the only way you can look at drop shipping is taking products from Chinese suppliers and reselling them on your store or Walmart or Amazon.
So those are different things we can consider at this point, but I think people can make money from everything. Again, I don't want to be the person who is telling you, hey, just go out there, buy some stuff and resell them for a higher price. That's the whole concept, of course. But I think if you're willing enough to spend that.
So find your niche to create content that they're engaging to and to find a good price while providing value to your customers, you can resell everything and including your T's, like what? Why not? You can take another brand. You can create a whole story around it. You can put it on internet on a basic store.
You can get your friends first or your community. Maybe you have 30 people that are following you on already. Why not? And you can sell that. That's the whole story here. Nothing is forbidden and nothing is out of the game. As soon as you put your creativity and your mind to the place where you're just willing to provide value, not those gaming scammy things that okay.
I can bite it. Everyone starting dropshipping is starting with this permission. Okay. I'm buying a product from AliExpress three times more. That's my price. Of course. That's one of the main things you can consider when drop shipping, but let's flip the ball from the other side. First. Think about. You are interesting in how you want to satisfy your existing audience or how you want to build the audience, what they are looking for and how much they are willing to pay, and then find the product, no matter if it's from China or a local supplier or your grandma knitting, I dunno, everything is into consideration. So you just need to figure out the game and to be honest with your goals and with your audience.
Pattern observations in terms of building audience
Joseph: I think that's a great take on it as well. One thing that sticks out to me is I think the difficulty of being able to acquire, you know, a large enough of an audience, and then being able to find the product that works for them, I think, and I would actually count myself among these is, you know, maybe look for the product first and then try to find the audience that.
The amenable to it or be responsive to it. I have some idea of, you know,where are the answers to this question is going, is you can, obviously, you can do a blog, you can do a website, you can start to build a community that way, and then, and then work on merge. So what has been the consistent pattern in terms of building the audience and if possible, building the audience before the product, and then scenario B, if scenario B even exists is, you know, discovering the product and then building the audience for the product.
Martin Stoimenov: Yeah. So the things that I mentioned before are connected to the whole story of marketing can that's me, I'm coming from marketing perspective and that's why I am a leading most of my advice to the marketing site and building audience, community, and sharing knowledge with people first, before you ask for their money, but then answer your question.
I think building the audience. Yes. The hardest and easiest part of this game, why the hardest is because it's too saturated. People are building everything on every platform and you, if you want to enter, you gotta be unique. You gotta be consistent. Those are the main takeaways from the hard part, but the easiest part is internet is open for everyone.
As soon as you have good internet connection and things to share with your audience, you can build it in just six months. So I will say social media is the main takeaway because everything you mentioned like those inbound strategies, building a blog, content, marketing, sharing knowledge on different platforms, email outreach, everything else.
That's more for the people who are building like software, SAS companies or something that people should. Ask first or acquire knowledge to buy your product mainly for high ticket drop shipping products, but for selling physical products and that are not into the game of sharing a lot of knowledge before you make your buying decisions.
You can build your audience orange simply on different social media platforms. And I will say the game changer right now is TikTok. So if you are able and confident to sit in front of your camera and share your knowledge, describe how one product is working and maybe find a different angle from different from the people that are doing already that then you, you can win.
Of course, because the organic reach is huge on TikTok and you know, Instagram and Facebook are kind of dying from the organic reach, but the paid advertising, these here always so drop shipping. Like mostly connected with the bait advertising strategies, Facebook and TikTok ads and influencers.
If you cannot build your audience, why not using other people's audience, if that's related to your product related to your main idea, you can utilize people that already built a huge audiences or not that huge. You can go with micro or the most emerging trends nowadays nano influencers. So you can find people that are building audiences.
Around 10,000 followers or views per month. And you can reach out and for almost no cost, you can advertiseyour product.
Joseph: Yeah. So for those of you, by the way, who are following, my TikTok journey, you all be delighted or disappointed to know that tech doc has completely consumed me.
It's more or less turned into like the only social media platform that I use now is it's really hard to find. The consistency of it, how much information can actually be supplied and my algorithm. It's funny, you know, I see all these spaces now on there and be like. You just need to do her to nice to five or you just need to get into crypto.
Here's my top five crypto. And, you know, I can follow them. And now there's, there's hundreds of these guys. I'm like, oh, come on, come on. So it's in terms of supplying the information, it does it so quickly. And then if people are intrigued, one assumes that they'll dig a deeper into it.
I will say on the flip side, what I have also noticed as a user is as soon as the content creator is expecting more engagement. Like if you want to see more of this information, be sure to go onto my page. That's where I'm like, okay, I can do that. Or I can scroll up. And continue my IV drip of built means so, so there that is so far the one disadvantage that I've seen of it so far, but anyways, I don't wanna, I'll stop for now. Next episode.
Martin Stoimenov: It always will be that way. Even when the newspapers were alive, people are looking in a constant look for a dopamine flow, so we can never stop looking for news information, engaging videos. And now, nowadays, despite the pandemic that we are at home and everyone is filming their journey, no matter is funny engagement or informational, those platform will never die.
So nowadays Facebook is changing. Their name. Everything is going on. People are interesting. What's the next phase of the internet, but of course, that there's discussion for another, another podcast episode. And I think as soon as we follow the right people and we consume. It in legal terms by legal. I mean, you should, we should put boundaries.
How many times we opened the Tiktok, for example, in how many minutes we spend there, then we are good. So no, you, you are not the only one everyone can relate.
Joseph: The anarcho libertarian in me is like, I don't know about that, but then the, yeah, it's also not a bad idea whatsoever.
I want to get back to some of the, you know, some of the features that are offered on the website, one of the other ones that stuck out to me was, you know, over 300 apps available, and I could see somebody maybe getting into a little bit of analysis paralysis, seeing so many options is just trying to figure out, you know, not only what's best, but what's best for them.
So, how might somebody navigate that many apps and try to get a sense of what it is that they really need, and then really decide on which app it is, is the right fit for them.
Martin Stoimenov: That's one of the things that's still in the building process in november, I will say by the end of November, we will have a complete guides and comparison tables, pricing tables for every single app.
So people can enter the category first. They can choose from more than 15 different categories starting from fulfillment merchandising products are seeing a then marketing conversion rate optimization sale, customer support. All those categories will be displayed, described on top of the funnel, like what you need to choose right now in order to succeed in every different stage. So we will divide the apps for different stages for people, beginner, intermediate expert level. So everyone who is expert level, we'll click there and find the apps that are related to the expert level, expert level. I mean, people who are already receiving more than 200 orders per month and they know how to handle the basic things.
Also, we will do complete reviews for every single app and one versus another. So they will be able to, to look at, okay, so I want to use spark push app for marketing from Shopify. What are my alternatives? They can click on alternatives. They can see all the alternatives on that app. Okay. So I want to compare smart push app with another popup notification app.
Well, you can click and find if there's a resource for. Most of the time, we will be able to provide, content and comparison tables, like from the pricing to the future, easy of use. And of course the reviews, we will populate all the reviews from Shopify and from our platform, because kind of, I forget to mention that we are building a premium forum so people can log in and discussed, engage with the same audience or the people that are ahead of the game or people that are trying to find help for a certain question or problem they have in their journey.
And it's kind of in a bit of version right now, because we want first to onboard as many as possible people on the platform. And then we can go narrow down the things that people are willing to use most of the time, so we can join our efforts and build that first. That's why I was saying, okay, this is, we are four months into the market and we were able to get to this point really quick, but to build our dream platform, that it's mean to be, we need kind of a month or two to be on that place.
And I hope that people that will listen to this episode in our recent listening right now, they, they will be able to create. All the knowledge that we are providing at the moment.
Joseph: There was one idea that came to my mind. I'm just going to pitch it just in case, but one, one route that I would think as a user would be like a questionnaire or a quiz that I could fill out.
And, you know, by answer, based on the questions and basically based on the answers I submit it was then say, okay, well here's what the apps that would probably work out for you. So it's just one thing. Yeah. My mind.
Martin Stoimenov: Nice idea. We are using that for the suppliers for all onboarding. So we will, we want to find what they are looking for and what information they can display for our users, so they can get confidential information and we can switch the bowl.
Of course, this case, and we can provide quick quiz so they can find what level dropshipping you are. And we can that way we can provide articles, premium guides for that level. For that specific level, we can provide tools, apps, and stores, so we can say, okay, you are this level. Maybe you can, you should consider these 10 successful drop shipping stores so you can get inspired.
Take the main things that are working for them and incorporate those things into your store. So the possibilities are . Endless and we are willing to get feedback from you and everyone else that are listening to your podcast next.
Joseph: And it's good too, that you mentioned the forums. Cause one of the other questions that I wanted to have too is, you know, what, how is the conversation taking place on the website and then you, and then you mentioned the forum.
So that covers that. But just out of curiosity, is there other, other ways that people are going to be able to have a dialogue with each other like chat rooms or, or even if like, like a discord call or something where people can actually join in and have a vocal.
Martin Stoimenov: For now we are just building a classic forum. So they can find the, basically one level, one level down of already, like you will find your subreddit, your topic, you will enter and you will see what's going on on the drop-shipping stage. And those topics will be strictly created interrelated to specific areas of shipping, like fulfillment, everything you want to know, ask or share on debt, a particular thing like fulfillment or there's how to process everything.
Then you're entering that topic. And, but in order to use the forum, you gotta be subscribed to our channel. It's completely free of course, but you gotta be member for on dropshipping.com.
Revenue plans and how to sustain it
Joseph: It gets to a one question, that I am wondering even, you know, so far you haven't tried to sell a product or anything like that.
For myself and anybody else who who's wondering is, is it's just an act of charity or is there a revenue plan in place to sustain your website?
Martin Stoimenov: Yeah, of course. This is a first, we are building everything freemium and then the business model is to work with partners. So one, one of the business models that we want to monetize is affiliates of course, and partners who want to be mentioned on our premium newsletter.
Premiums of supplier. So basically we're building a platform where people are getting honest opinion on every tool, every supplier, every product in every store they want to look at and get inspired. But from the other side on the B2B side, when we are working with the suppliers and the to creators.
We are going to collaborate with them in order to . Sustain this business model. So that's the first thing that we want to monetize after we acquire this amount and reach our monthly goals. And then we can think about other things, but for dropshippers for now, everything is freemium model. Everything is for free.
Joseph: Now the Shopify has upgraded to version 2.0, we needed to make sure we were up to speed. So we released the version 4.0 to ensure that we're 100% equipped to take advantage of the 2.0 revolution.
If you haven't upgraded your store, head on over. And if you haven't gotten started, now is a good time as any.
Okay. Here's the next one that I have that I'm wondering is, so I have a 3pl that I have, you know, with my website, they do have the ability to look for, for products. I can show them what I want on aliexpress, and I'll try to get a supplier and all of that. And I think it's fair to say that not everybody is going to be able to use every tool, but because there's so many tools and so many features, most people will probably find at least one or two things that are useful to them.
But anyways, what I am wondering is with your supplier database, is it possible that somebody could connected the supplier to the third party logistics company and say, hey, look, I like this product. Do you think you can get in touch with them? See if you can deliver the products on their behalf, because I don't know if the supplier is able to provide these shipping time, that might be standard to my store, which is why I have 3PL this to make sure that my shipping and branding is standardized.
So I'm just wondering about the connection. There is very specific and it's, let's just say I would not be able to answer, to ask a question like that in my first week here.
Martin Stoimenov: Yeah. Okay. The question is completely on place, so I will answer it this way. Our supplier's directory is looking. You can look up yelp of course. So you're going out there browsing the whole database and the listings you're fighting your dedicated supplier, or you can do these on reverse way. So you can go over the products directory, you can find the products you want to sell, and you can connect with that same supplier on our platform or directly on Ali experts.
But the model that we are working on right now is just listing the suppliers, all their informations, and then people can directly contact the suppliers from our platform. So we can, we are collaborating with the suppliers in the way that we are leading them people who want to work with them. And then the fulfillment in the connection or integration parts comes in.
All of our suppliers that are on the platform right now are mostly working with different. Softwares out there that are working for the drop shippers and working as a middleman and providing those connections with the three pills. So basically the model and the whole ecosystems will work this way.
You are going finding your supplier. We can contacting the supplier here, responds, okay, you have a match. He wants to work with you. You want to work with that supplier. And then you just ask the supplier, are you working with this, or this integration or software? And if they work, probably your 3PL are also collaborating with most of the online softwares for fulfillment and they can integrate in no time.
So there's no hard things going on here. As the own this moment, I will say we are not able to provide the whole integration from the suppliers product to your dedicated.
Joseph: Right. But, but I think even so you've done a, you know, a great deal of aid already. Cause you know, the, the supplier and the 3pl, they also have to pull their way to make sure that this connection is it goes through.
Okay. So, yeah, so that, that was definitely one of the ones that was sticking out to me. And also, I just want to follow up on what we were talking about with the apps earlier about the limitation of it. I don't know if you, if you had, said that it was better if like government limits how often social media uses.
But I think if social media platforms have. You can use it for free for a certain amount of time, and then you have to pay for it, like specific to the platform. Like Facebook charges minor took that charges money. That wouldn't be so bad. Cause then people will have like a five minute limit on TikTok, and then most people would be like, all right.
All right. That's it. Yeah.
Martin Stoimenov: Interesting concept.
Joseph: Yeah. That's that's the libertarian in me is like, okay, how do we monetize this? Okay. So I imagine that you have a very unique challenge when it comes to marketing, because you have two groups of people that you want to reach out to. You want to reach out to people who are, you know, they're active and they're doing well, have it exactly hit like, you know, the seven, eight figure range, because by that point they basically become their own empire.
And then you also have people who are either interested in starting they, or maybe even possibly, I guess this is a third group. Now people who haven't even heard of drop shipping, but it could be a really good fit for them. So how are things looking on the marketing front and trying to reach out to these different groups of people at very different places in terms of not only the revenue, but really their life?
Martin Stoimenov: I will want first to correct myself. We are reaching to the seven figures people, but that's not, that's not the main point here because we want to help all those in the beginner or intermediate stage. And that's why they are our main focus. The people that reach those number are already in place. They know what apps to use. They have suppliers that are working with for many years and three PL they know what apps to use, and we are reaching to those people just to host them as a success story interview, or if they have a mentorship session, legit one, so they can share more knowledge with our audience.
So that's the one audience. The next one is, as you mentioned, the complete biggie. And the people who know finger too for drop shipping. So basically our strategy right now is inbound only, and we are creating. Like SEO, social media, email, premium newsletter. So those are our main acquisition strategy.
We are not using paid advertising to acquire new leads because the domain itself is so premium and the content we're creating is premium. So in just three, four months, we made to the first page of Google and people will recognize our name as a trusted supplier, for knowledge and directories listing for everything they need for their business.
Then everything comes down to own page experience for our users. That's why we are building a lot of different futures tools so they can stay there, engage with the content we are creating. And in the end they can become in the bottom of the funnel. What we marketers want to say, a dedicated followers and audience who can work with us in stay for a long time. So we can monetize those audiences of four on a different levels. Like as I mentioned, affiliates or a paid advertising, paid, paid subscriptions with our business partners. So right now we are working with Shopify. We are working with Oberlo. We are working with different tools.
We are kind of start working with the beautify of course, and everything we want to build on this moment is collaborations with the B2B people who are also targeting and providing value to the same audience. And on the other side are people who are desperately looking for advice on the drop shipping business, how they want to start, or how they can scale it because starting a drop shipping is mostly easy tasks. Scaling a dropshipping store is the hardest one.
Joseph: So this is something that comes up every now and then, but I don't, I honestly, I don't give it as much thought as I should, but I think one way to actually, you know, get in the game without having to commit to opening a website and, and having to do all those expenses is even selling on marketplaces like eBay, Walmart, and of course, Amazon.
And I'm wondering if that's part of the ecosystem on, on drop shipping.com and helping people understand how to maybe put their products on these markets that they don't have to be. Extra revenue to, or extra capital, sorry to have to fund a website because you know, there's a lot of testing involved and people might not necessarily get a product that hits?
Martin Stoimenov: At this moment, we are only covering like with knowledge, our knowledge know how center, how they can get into that game.
So at this moment, we are not doing anything more than sharing the knowledge, how you can sell on eBay, how you can sell on Amazon, because our suppliers are working with independent personalities who want to start dropshipping store? We are not limited just to those e-commerce platforms like Shopify or VIX or square, but we are not connecting the people to go out there and sell on the big fishing, the fishing scene in the sea, like Amazon, Walmart.
We have a few articles that are covering those bases, but we are not connecting the suppliers and our users to go there. And we are not sharing apps for Amazon eBay, Walmart Etsy. So for now we are focused on building independent businesses like owning your own store on mostly on Shopify.
Joseph: I will say I understand that.
And at the same time, providing the knowledge for it is certainly a great deal of up. So here's one article that, that stuck out to me as well, or it was about, you know, selling in Canada and starting up a business and registering and getting a bank. And, and I wanted to, I mean, I've had other opinions on this, so this might be like my sixth opinion on it, but I do want to get another one on it, just for good measure.
So registering a business, it does cost some money. If you do sole proprietorship, it doesn't cost a lot of money, but it could cost you a lot of money to get in trouble. So moving, you know, there's a lot of risks there anyways. Have you seen an average for when people register their business? Do people have like a window of grace where say like, things are going well and they're starting to generate revenue and they say, okay, this is working.
I can register this. Or have you seen that? It's consistently look now you got, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work, but you still have to sign up what has been the consensus from your point of view?
Martin Stoimenov: Absolute numbers in months or days or years even. Sure. But I will say it depends. So to, to be precise and answer your question,I will say if you are into industry, as I mentioned before, that's hard regulated from the local authorities like skincare or something you are putting on your face or products that you can be sued for.
So I think go on and registrate LLC or whatever, open bank accounts. So you will be. In some way protected from those misunderstandings with your customers or the government? I don't know. And then the other one category on how to decide when to sign up for LSC is to look at your products. If you're selling high ticket products that can generate a lot of value and revenue right away, and you have dedicated audiences, why not?
You, you can't be scared from pain access or because that's a business and every country is living contexts. You can register your business and build it empire around it. But if you're selling small gadgets or something, that's, you are not sure, or it's one product store. And you're not sure if that's going to work, I will say, test it and try to get like a hundred or 200 sales per month on a constant basis.
And after your third month, you can start thinking or going for legal advice on how and when to register your business.
His backstory
Joseph: Excellent. Well that, I think that's a that's fair and balanced. All right. Well, we're closing in, on our, on our hour and had I haven't, I don't know if I've budgeted enough time to ask you about NFTs, but anyways, one question that I love to ask people is, you know, what's been, what's been your journey through e-commerce like, what were you doing before e-commerce and what was your skillset that came with you as you, as you entered into the e-commerce space.
And then on top of that, what's been your e-commerce experience. I understand that you've run stores as well, but if I remember correctly, yep.
Martin Stoimenov: Yeah, my, I will say three words, marketing agency e-commerce those ecosystem never leaves me. So I am in the marketing space for more than four years. And most of the time I was working for agencies at this moment, I am building in running an agency.
So we are working with a lot of e-commerce stores, e-commerce suppliers and huge. Huge businesses around the us and Canada and Europe. And that's how I find my passion around selling products, building businesses on something that you're passionate about because I was working in color. I was working with clients in the service base, digital product, SAS products.
Of course I have experience with those areas, but the one thing that sticks to me all the time is e-commerce. And that's when I decided to start creating my simple stores, selling something locally, building commercial print on demand. That was my first e-commerce try to get into the industry. And then I switched to the most basic, or I will say first business model that comes to our mind drop shipping.
And that's how I started working with drop shipper as a consult. And as an agency owner with different businesses operating as a drop shippers or classic e-commerce stores, working with their own products. And that way during that journey, I acquired a lot of knowledge on how to build scale. Or even launch on the first day, how to prepare for a launch your business and all that knowledge, I was kind of one is to share with a large scale audience on different platforms.
And that's how I entered the whole ecosystem of building something, launching it marketed, and then share all your experience like building key public, you know, all the people on Twitter that are building their SAS products in public. And that's our journey with dropshipping.com. We are a bunch of people that are passionate about drop shipping e-commerce and we want to share everything we learned from different perspectives.
So my first thing, my main job is the marketing part. So I'm mostly working on those kind of res knowledge for marketing. Know how premium guides for marketing, how to advertise your product. We have people that are dedicated to work with the suppliers, the fulfillment part fuming, or working with our mentors in the forum, engaging the people and basically that's it.
So from the marketing perspective, working with agencies of seven figures brands that we built and managed to get to that point. And then I ended up with my friend to start drop shipping.com as I explained my story. And now this is my main focus to build dropshipping.Com to launch everything we planned to launch and to share our knowledge with our audience.
Dropshipping now and its future
Joseph: And given that it is such a big dry for you. And this is a such a main area of focus. My other question for you is, you know, how would you describe the state of dropshipping shipping right now? And what do you feel it needs in order to advance and continue to be relevant in six months from now in a year from now and five years from now?
Martin Stoimenov: Yeah. I think dropshipping case on it's high level. All right. Now we are in a phase where e-commerce as a business model is top of top of his game because of the pandemic and the lock downs, and people are buying all the time. But for the drop shipping, for those who are concerned about, is it going to work in the next year, in the next six months?
Is it worth to start? I will say drop shipping as a concept. When people stop buying things. And when, when there is no supply for things, when we switch our society into something on a different level, into different reality, then we can say, okay, drop shipping e-commerce or whatever is that. But. If I'm on a place to make prediction what's going on, I will say, let's see what Facebook is going to do next with all those plannings to connect the reality and the virtual reality.
And I think that's the next stage of drop shipping, buying from products from your phone, or from your mind directly, you will project your room and you will say, okay, I want to find a store that's working in home decor space and how I will approach that. Okay. We're literally, you will see a hologram of a picture of something that you want to put on your desk.
You will just click on it, see the price and you will buy it. So maybe I'm too far, I'm going to futuristic, but everything that's related to engage with people on that level making the experience and the access to buying your product more easily. That's the main thing that you should consider if you want to enter this space.
And of course from the marketing perspective, as I said, build and maintain your audience, the paid advertising is first of course, you should start and get traction. When you are working with your new product to test everything, Facebook ads and TikTok ads, I will say are top of the game first on that stage, when you want to build something around one product, but then you should think building audience that will stay with you and you can sell whatever you want.
Joseph: You definitely got my imagination going when you're talking about the virtual reality, there's a part of me that thinks like, oh, I want this.
And then they press the buy button. And then it materializes in front of them by way of like a drone that flies into the window 3d prints and then goes, so it's a, there's the, yeah, it's going to take some time, but, I do think we're going to live to see at least some major paradigm shift.
And because I've alluded to it multiple times, I'm going to get you to give me a hot take on NFTs and crypto before I let you go. So have they entered your peripheries or they have any interest to you, or are you still waiting to see them continued to evolve before dipping your toes into it?
Or maybe you own like a bunch of crypto?
Martin Stoimenov: I don't know, not yet. I kind of skipped the crypto bus itself, so I jumped directly into the NFTs. So it's a crypto based blockchain based model, but at this moment, hundred percent of my time is to live and breathe with drop shipping, to see what this journey will take us, where it will take us in how we can help those people that want to start small on the online business first.
And then I want to jump into the trend of NFTs. In this age, in this stage of internet, we should learn about everything. And I think the generalist who learned a lot of things from every industry will win in this game. That's why I have a lot of interest into the NFTs and how you can monetize that part, how you can be the creator who is paid from audience and how you can get rid of the big players in the game.
So you can be monetized from what you like to do and how you like to do that. So my stage at this moment is still not into. Into the NFTs or crypto, but I'm learning a lot. So I want to get you on the trend.
Joseph: I'll make a recommendation to you and to my audience, if anybody wants to get like a little bit of crypto going, I use brave as a web browser and it actually generates crypto just for using it.
They sell you ads and then you earn VAT, which I've converted into Bitcoin. And then if you sign up for Coinbasethings.com, they actually have these little, it takes like 10 seconds to fill out these little guides, I guess. And they'll give you a total based off of it. So I, after like an hours worth of looking at these different cryptos, I ended up with like $40 worth of like 12 different crypto.
So it's an easy way to just start getting things and holding onto them. In both of that and an NFT, the beauty of it is it allows you to take what you're doing and crystallize it. So with NFTs, for those of you will have to look into it. You can set, if somebody say like makes a song or draws a picture and they can put the on an NFT place, like open C.
And then they'll get royalties every time somebody else buys it. So it's much better for like an artist and somebody who sells a painting once never sees that, you know, any continuing money afterwards. So it is a great thing to get into. I would say that it's the beauty of it is you can start passing.
You don't have to start actively. It's something that will continue to enhance our, our day-to-day activity. So that's my, that's my take on it. I am those about it, but that is we've said before now I just say, this is why I've been trying to save my off topic stuff for the end, because at least that way we did everything else.
Okay. So Martin, that is everything that we're going to do today. It has been a blast talking to, I'm looking forward to seeing where dropshipping.com is going. It is, I just haven't checked it out myself. It is a great database so far, and I, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what you pull off in the coming months and years.
So doors open more than happy to have you back. The parting question for you is as always, if you have any last bits of wisdom, like a Chinese proverb or something, you'd like sharing, you're welcome to, and then not that I just said the, the address, but whatever, we'll do it again. Let the audience know how they can make contact.
Martin Stoimenov: Yeah. Perfect. I was so honored to be here and to share my knowledge and how the dropshipping will help all those dropshippers or people that are looking to enter this business model. And I will say, just try, test and adjust. That's my main, main line of how you can succeed in every online business or offline, maybe business, but here you don't have barriers to enter and you don't have any kind of thing that can stop you.
As you said. Entering into the NFT dropshipping, affiliate, marketing, whatever you want just started passively at first, learn everything that needs to build, learn, work on your full-time job or your full-time project. And then if you sought traction, if you learn how to use all the tools, all the supplier connection with 3PLs, all the marketing stuff, and you find your winning products, because we don't, we didn't spend all the time to talk about the importance of finding the winning product.
That's the main and the first thing that can break or make the things after you did everything else. Right? So if you find a winning product and if you find your audience, if you know a thing or two, how to manage and reach a broader audience, go for it, nothing is stopping you. And if you want to learn.
The whole topic we are talking about is drop shipping. So you just type, drop shipping.com. What there, whenever you want, you can enter and learn, I think, or to our app reviews. Our supplier directory is our two stores and everything that we mentioned on this podcast episode. So you can open social media and just type drop shipping.com and you will find us on every major, major platform or our main platform, our main medium, and source of knowledge. It's dropshipping.com.
