How I'd Make Money with AI Dropshipping in 2026 (If I Had to Start Over)

[00:01] they're using AI to speed up everything. They find a product in 20 minutes, they their ads in five. But once they've launched, the reality hits. They spent $500 on ads and made two sales. And a majority of them will have no idea what

[00:15] happened. They confused speed with direction. So, AI helped them build fast in the wrong direction just means that you're going to hit a wall faster. And that's the thing with AI. It'll do exactly what you tell it to do, but it

[00:28] actually right. So, most people right now are using AI to automate bad decisions. They're not building faster, they're just failing faster. And if decisions for you, you are already behind. But here's the thing, AI isn't

[00:42] So, in this video, here's what I'd actually do if I had to start from zero today and I wanted to be successful as quickly as possible. So, let's get into this, you need to understand something that most people completely miss. There

[00:55] is a difference between execution and strategy. And AI just made that difference way more obvious. Execution, it's the tactical stuff. So, building descriptions, generating ad copy, all the things that customers can actually

[01:08] see with their eyes. Strategy is the invisible layer behind it. That is the make money or you're going to burn through your budget. So, here's what's happening with AI right now. AI automated execution, which is great. It

[01:20] saves you weeks of work, but most people take that time and they use it to just do more execution. So, they'll launch more products, they'll test more stores, they'll run more ads. Basically, they are just gambling faster. So, you can

[01:32] build a store in 10 minutes now. That's awesome, right? But without the strategy layer, you're just broke in 10 minutes instead of two weeks. So, what I'd do instead is use AI to handle execution fast and then use the time that I'm

[01:45] saving to go deeper on the strategy. So, I'm going to show you both parts. First, the execution side, so where AI actually save you time. There are a ton of show you the right ones to use. Then, what to do with that time? All right, so

[01:58] to take 2 weeks. You'd pick a theme, you'd customize every page, write all whole thing. That would take so much time. It was really tedious, and most of dollars to developers to do it for you. Now, it takes less than 10 minutes, and

[02:14] it looks just as professional, if not better than if a developer did it. And going to show you right now. All right, so I'm going to show you the most recent AI store builder that I've been using that is a serious game changer. So,

[02:28] product right here. I really like the product page, or this is a good reference brand. So, what you want to do is copy the URL at the top, go back to link, Clone Store, and next thing that you want to do is put your best email

[02:42] and password, and now it's going to start getting the product info. It's going to be scanning the store using AI. It's going to figure out exactly what know, how they are currently marketing this product. so just like that, the

[02:55] store is now done. So, you can see that it scanned the competitor store. It took the current images that they're using, and it built out a custom store for us that looks, I mean, we didn't do anything, and within a couple minutes,

[03:09] it looks amazing. So, what we can do right here is rebrand with AI. So, you know, of course, you can change the name right here. If this was Andy's NAD, we can name it that, whatever you want to name it. You can change up the color.

[03:23] Let's just say I want to go and try and match this color of the bottle. Now, I'm just going to have it rebrand the entire thing with AI, and it's going to start generating. All right, so with that basic color adjustment, and then the

[03:35] product name change, it went ahead and did that, and also rebranded all the One thing to bear in mind, if your product has packaging on it, and it's not like, you know, a regular product, then you're going to have to go in and

[03:50] actually adjust this with AI. Your best bet is to use Nano Banana because it'll actually get the product information pasted properly onto your product. But for now, it just gives you an idea of what it can look like if you insert your

[04:04] own UGC. So, this is what it looks like with the original photos. You can go ahead and change up the color options again, use this color. So, this is what it looks like with all their images and then we can go back to the AI images.

[04:16] For the sake of this example, I'm going to use the original along with this color scheme and then I'm going to go and create store. Other than that, the entire theme itself is really good. It's a high-converting theme. You can see you

[04:29] have all the product details right here, the drop-downs, the us versus them. And line with what the product is selling because it uses AI to figure out how your reference company was marketing the product to then create your own custom

[04:43] brand new variation. All right, so the next step is creating a Shopify store. So, if we click on this link, we're going to get access to Shopify for a so the next thing that you're going to want to do is sign up for Shopify. You

[04:56] can see right here we have a 97% off discount. So, we're just going to press subscribe for $1. Next thing, you just need the basic plan. You don't need the grow or the advanced. Try basic, add this all later, skip the customization.

[05:10] Shopify dashboard, we're going to go back to Clone. It wants us to copy our URL at the top. So, we're going to go and do that and then just paste it right here. We're going to connect store, choose plan, and then we are just going

[05:23] to subscribe right here. So, we'll pay that dollar and then head back and install Blocky. So, this app is going to allow us to make modifications onto our install. All right, so there's going to be a 3-day free trial for you guys to

[05:37] use this builder and to decide whether or not you like it. So, we're just going to press approve and then now we're going to go back to Blocky and then it's then it's going to take us to our Shopify store where we can make any of

[05:51] the desired edits. So, this is what it looks like on desktop, and it's also most of your customers are going to be coming from their phones. So, you do want to do a majority of your edits on mobile. If you guys want to make any

[06:05] adjustments to the images, one thing that you have to do, you cannot do it on this page, but you'll have to go back to your product page. So, you're going to go back from online store to home, and then go to products, and then right

[06:17] here. This is where you'll make adjustments to not only the description here, but also all the images. So, you can remove these images, you can add images. If you guys want to go into Nano Banana and create AI images, you're

[06:29] going to insert them all here. And then, once you save, it's going to then reflect on that theme. If we go back to online stores, and then we can edit our theme, and you'll see that it reflects on your own product page. So, this is

[06:42] the homepage, and then as you go into the shop now, this is going to direct us earlier. Yeah, this is what the store looks like. That's pretty much it. We built it what, in 10 minutes? You guys just saved yourselves 2 weeks of work.

[06:54] But, what most people do with this time is that they take it, and they you know, they build another store, or they're like, I have more time to do that. That is the trap. You guys didn't

[07:07] faster. You saved 2 weeks so that you actually determines if you make money. And we're going to get to that in a second, but let me show you the other place where AI handles nearly

[07:19] could have the best store in the world. You could have the perfect product. no one actually sees it, none of that really matters. So, once your store is up, you need traffic. And here's what's working best right now. That's UGC,

[07:34] which stands for user-generated content. It's basically regular people that are filming themselves using your product. So, this could be unboxing videos, product reviews, all that kind of stuff. And it works because it doesn't look

[07:46] like an ad. It looks like someone genuinely recommending something that even people with a big audience, but it's just people sharing their reactions and reviews of said product. Now, the problem is that getting real UGC

[08:00] creators is very expensive, and it also takes a lot of time. You're looking at takes a lot of time. You're looking at spending anywhere from $200 to $500 per creator. And then you got to wait for days or even weeks just to get that ad.

[08:13] And if that ad doesn't work, you have to do that whole process again. So, takes a lot of time and money. But, here's where AI completely changes the game. You can create UGC-style ads in less than 10 minutes. And it looks so realistic that

[08:27] difference. I'm going to guarantee that you guys won't even be able to tell the difference when I show you what I'm about to create. All right, so this is magic happen. It's called Arc Ads. I'm going to leave a link as well to this

[08:40] one for you guys to easily access. So, once you create your ad, you log in, you to a dashboard that looks like this. So, I did a couple of variations of what show you the final product, really quick quick preview, and then I'm going to

[08:54] >> So, I started taking this because I I follow online, and he said if you're fatigued and you want more energy, you the first one. This is the second one. Okay, so I've been taking this NMN

[09:07] supplement for about 3 weeks now. And honestly, the difference is pretty afternoon anymore. Like, just listen to the cadence. It actually sounds like it's a real person. It's not It doesn't even sound like fully scripted, right?

[09:20] wanted more energy. I'm going to mute this real quick, but I want you to just look at the actual product. You're not going to tell me that that doesn't look real. Like, come on. It's actually crazy. So, I'm going to show you exactly

[09:32] how to do it. Now, first thing that you want to do is press new project like this. And then we're going to go to see more. We're going to scroll down to Sora everything for us. All right, so the next thing that you want to do is get a

[09:46] clear image of the product. So, you can go on the product page like this and use Nano Banana to get a cutout transparently just like this. So, I'm going to take it, head back into our Gan's, and we're going to add this as

[09:59] the next thing, and this is really important, is going to be this prompt write here. So, it's UGC style video of 30-year-old woman holding the product. script. So, put whatever you want. So, it's basically what she said within the

[10:15] press create, and it's going to start doing the render. So, this is going to fully render, and then you're going to have your video. I also went ahead and created this step-by-step guide with a bunch of different prompts and templates

[10:29] totally free. You can see like it's pretty detailed, and it pertains to, you watching. If you want it, I'll leave it below. So, at this point, you guys got pretty much everything. You got your store, you got your ads, almost all of

[10:42] to be perfect for what we are doing right now, which is testing fast and for a fraction of the cost to figure out what actually works. Then, once you know that whatever you have is working, you can start looking to hire real creators

[10:56] because that's reality. Real people, real reactions, it creates real trust, to make more money, more sales. So, for now, what you should do is you should use AI to validate the concepts, and then once you find a winner, you can

[11:11] Now, most people, they get to this point, everything, pretty much everything set up, but here's where it gets really tricky. When it's time to actually launch and start spending money, that is when questions start to

[11:23] appear. So, is this product worth testing? Do I kill an ad, or do I give people freeze up because they they have anyone confirming they're making the either quit on something that could have worked or they keep burning money on

[11:36] something that was already dead and never had a chance. That is exactly and my team, we work with you one-on-one. You show us your product, we tell you if it's worth testing. You show us your numbers, we make the call on

[11:49] what to kill versus what to scale. So, we're basically in there running it with and you're like, you know what, I want to get this done right now. I want to possible and I want to do it the right way. We are still screening people for

[12:02] below for you guys to apply and we will see if you're a good fit. But either what I was talking about earlier. So, you just use AI to handle all the execution stuff and you saved a ton of time. But that time isn't necessarily so

[12:17] can focus on the stuff that's actually going to give you an edge. And let me explain what I mean. So, if you are sourcing from AliExpress, you've got the same exact margins as everybody else, which means the only way to win is to

[12:31] here's what the people who make this work are doing differently. They're going direct to wholesale platforms and building relationships with not only agents, but also manufacturers, which

[12:43] gives them better pricing, faster shipping, and access to stuff like custom packaging that AliExpress sellers, they will never get you. So, I want to show you the easiest way to do this if you guys are, you know, a

[12:55] complete beginner and you don't know how to directly work with manufacturers or find these wholesale websites that are going to service you properly. It's this website right here. It's called Team Drop, which gives you guys direct access

[13:08] to, as you can see right here, 1688, which is the wholesale version of AliExpress. There's also Taobao right here. But, I'm going to show you guys extremely dramatic. Regular product on

[13:21] extremely dramatic. Regular product on AliExpress, the product price is 25.73. is for like welcome, like your welcome offer. If you continue to buy the product, it's going to be $25 or around there. Now, that same exact product,

[13:35] there. Now, that same exact product, right? That same exact product is on Teespring for a fraction of that price, anywhere from 336 to 996, depending on that's one thing. It's already going to be a lot cheaper. You are not going

[13:50] through another person in between that's really just up charging you. Now, that is one thing. Another thing is the shipping time. So, if we go over here, we can see the various shipping methods. You get access to some of the fastest,

[14:03] most reliable lines, like YunExpress. Right here, we can get the shipping times down with YunFast Electro, 5 to 8 days for $10. So, you can get your product quicker to customer. The product itself is going to be cheaper on here.

[14:15] And then, if you guys want to work with direct with your agent, you just have to hit that WhatsApp icon, and every single account gets access to their own dedicated agent. that knows everything about your store,

[14:27] someone that can easily answer any questions, something going wrong with a agent, and they're going to be able to assist you. It's like having someone questions answered. So, look, AI just gave you guys something powerful. You

[14:41] can build a store and create ads that look extremely realistic in less than like 30 minutes. But, what most people ignore is that they still have to make the important decisions, which products to test, where to source, when to scale,

[14:53] what to kill. So, what actually works is using AI for the execution. Yes, what we just did. Then, spending this extra time that we have for better economics, for better validation, for better decisions, more time on what's actually going to

[15:07] move the needle. Okay, so in summary, AI it gives you speed. You guys need to bring the direction. Other than that, I hope you guys enjoyed. I hope this was helpful. I appreciate you guys for watching, as always, and I'll see you in

[15:19] watching, as always, and I'll see you in the next video. Peace.