Shopify Dropshipping from Scratch: Why Your Ads Don't Sell and Hurt Growth

[00:01] your Shopify dropshipping store, don't run them until you've watched this people lose money not because the product is bad, not because Facebook is bad, complicated platform. They lose money because of simple mistakes that could have been

[00:15] avoided before they launched their ads. A novice dropshipper finds a product, quickly sets up a store, uploads one video to an advertising campaign, spends waits for sales to start rolling in. And then a day or two passes, the money burns out, there are

[00:29] no sales or they are unprofitable. And this dropshipper concludes that the product doesn't work, the advertising doesn't work, and, ultimately, dropshipping doesn't work. But very often the problem is not with the product. The problem is that the launch was done incorrectly from the

[00:41] very beginning. I've been in dropshipping and e-commerce for over six years, launching hundreds of stores and products, and I know the mistakes that aspiring entrepreneurs make time and time again. The first mistake is to launch an ad with just

[00:53] one creative. This is probably the most common and one of the most expensive mistakes at the start. A novice dropshipper finds a product, makes one promotional video, launches it, and waits. Then there are no sales, and he immediately concludes that the product is

[01:05] because one video is not a full-fledged product launch. One video is just one chance, one way to explain the value of this product to viewers. And if this particular method didn’t reach the audience, it doesn’t mean

[01:18] one thing. This particular creative, this this product, did not work. Different people buy the same product for different pain, for example, he sees the first seconds of a video where a person is holding his neck after a

[01:32] day at work and thinks: "Yes, this is about me, I have this situation too ." Another person is already reacting to the review. It is important for him to see a living person who says: “I had my doubts, but this product helped me.” The

[01:44] demonstration. He needs to see how the product works in action. It turns out that one product can be sold through different entrances. And if you only made one video, you only checked one input, you didn’t even try the rest.

[01:57] is more than just video. Creativity is a signal for the audience and for the algorithm. Based on the initial reactions of viewers, the algorithm understands which people stop, cart, and which buy. If you only have one video, only one creative,

[02:11] you give the system a very narrow, small, weak signal. And if you have three to five different creatives, you give the algorithm a choice and get more data yourself. You 'll know which video openings are most engaging, which advertising pain points are

[02:23] creative emotion drives purchases. For one product there should be at least three to five creatives - not identical videos with different music, but different creatives. That is, these are different first seconds, different angles of delivery, different emotions and different

[02:36] scenarios. One creative sells through pain, another through a demonstration of a product, start your product testing on the right foot. And if you launched one advertising video and didn’t get any sales and decided that the product is bad, the product doesn’t work, then you haven’t

[02:49] tested this product at all. You only tested one version of the presentation, so we use 3.5 creatives per product. The next mistake is wrong advertising campaign budget strategies . When you run an ad,

[03:02] you have two approaches to budget. First, you distribute the money between sets. For example, you give one set $20, the second set $20, and the third set also $20. This is manual control, it is

[03:15] called AO. The second approach is when you set a general budget for the campaign, for example, $100, and then Facebook itself decides which set to allocate how much money. This is called oneself. It turns out that the advertising algorithm itself

[03:27] already distributes money. And the problem is not that one way is bad and the other newbie dropshippers use them for completely inappropriate purposes. If you're testing different creatives, different audiences, different hypotheses, you need

[03:40] more fair conditions for each set. It's important to you that each . You have to make sure that in the end you understand which option biocompany with five acetaminophens and a shared budget, the algorithm might, within the

[03:54] that seems more promising and give it the bulk of the money. Because of this, the rest of the ad groups will receive only pennies. this ad group with these creatives won, and the rest, it

[04:07] not have gotten a fair chance because Facebook just picked one set right away and didn't give any money to the others. This method of testing a product is incorrect. To test, you need to understand what kind of

[04:20] impressions you generated, how many clicks you got, how many additions to cart you got, how many purchases you got, and how many checkouts you got. If one father received $80 and the others received because the conditions are unfair. And this does not mean at all that

[04:35] other sets are wrong. They just didn't get a proper chance from Facebook. But there is also a reverse error here. A novice dropshipper, hearing begins to split the budget into too

[04:47] only spend $30 a day on Facebook advertising. He creates eight different sets at $3-4 each and thinks he's doing a clever test. the budget so thinly that the algorithm doesn't collect a normal

[05:02] amount of data in any one group. As a result, each dad gets a couple of clicks, a few impressions, a couple of additions to cart, and zero purchases. And it is completely impossible to draw a normal conclusion from this . So the rule is this: at the start, don’t create too many different

[05:14] ad groups at the same time. It's better to do three to five different sets than 10 get normal data. If the advertising budget is small, sometimes it is better categories inside. And this is better than splitting the budget into eight weak groups with

[05:28] small budgets. If your budget allows, you can do three to five testing and scaling. Testing is your laboratory. you give hypotheses a chance. You send to the factory only what has already proven its

[05:43] you've found the best asset and the best creatives, you can already create a CBO company. The connected pixel or with an unverified pixel. And this mistake directly affects your money. In short, a Pixel is a code that

[05:58] your Shopify store. A person visited a website, Pixel saw it, the person added an item to their cart, and Pixel also received the data. Someone bought a product from you, and Pixel also receives data to optimize its advertising. It is

[06:11] who is simply clicking and who is actually buying. And he can use this data advertising so that you get a lot of sales. And if there is no pixel, then the advertising works blindly. Facebook may see that someone clicked on your ad, but it

[06:25] won't have any further insight into what happened next on your site. He will never see who bought a product from you, who added a product to the casino, who reached checkout, and who simply left. And without this data, the algorithm will not

[06:37] learn and your advertising will not be optimized at all . You will spend store, do something, but the system will not receive information. Because of this, your ad still stands in one place. It turns out that if you don't connect Pixel,

[06:49] your advertising will never pay off. Another terrible situation is when the pixel appears to be installed but isn't working properly. fine, all the data is being transmitted, the pixel is there, the store is connected, the

[07:02] working, and something is showing. However, in reality, the purchase event may not be recorded, or the product being added to the cart may be transmitted in full, and then you're making a decision based on flawed data. Facebook may also think that you

[07:15] conversely, think that you have more sales than you actually do. In both cases, this breaks your optimization and analytics. Therefore, before launching the pixel. After connecting the pixel, you should open your website, open the

[07:29] cart, begin checkout, and make a test purchase. A test you enable test mode in your payment system. This whole thing takes 10 minutes, but those 10 minutes can save you hundreds of

[07:43] turning off ads too early. This is a mistake that kills many potentially launch an ad, one day goes by, there are that day, and the person starts to

[07:56] work and turns off the ads. Then a new product is launched, again one day, again no sales and again this advertising is turned off . So he doesn't test the product, he just jumps from one hope to another hope. But advertising doesn't always

[08:09] pay off on the first day. Buyers do not always buy impulsively at first touch. He can see an advertisement today, tomorrow, go to the website, see reviews in 2 days and then buy. If you turned off the ads after the first

[08:21] happening. You yourself interrupted this buyer's path. Besides, the algorithm also needs time to optimize your ads. In the first days, he tests your tries to understand who responds best to your ad. It looks for which

[08:35] audience segments give you clicks, which give you additions to cart, which give you purchases. If you turn all this on too early, the system doesn't have time to collect a normal amount of data, and you draw conclusions not based on the test,

[08:47] but on a random short segment. But I'm not saying that you should waste signs of life at all. If there's no normal network traffic, no clicks, no additions to cart, and no normal checkout for several days, then this is already a signal that the creative is

[09:01] n't working, that your offer isn't working. But if there are clicks, there are additions to the cart, there are checkouts, then it means people are interacting. That is, you don’t need to you didn’t make any purchases on the first day. The minimum normal horizon for

[09:14] assessment is plus or minus a week. But during this week we must look at the funnel. We need to look at whether we have impressions, clicks, page views, purchases. Advertising speaks to you in numbers. If you learn to read these

[09:27] numbers calmly, you will stop killing normal advertising out of panic. The fifth mistake is blind faith in interests and too narrow an audience in advertising. A couple of interest-based Facebook ads. For example, we chose fitness, yoga, Pilates,

[09:41] healthy eating, and so on. Back then, completely different rules were in effect. The more precise our interests were, the better our advertising worked. But today, using too narrow an audience often hinders the algorithm, because

[09:54] Facebook knows much more about people's behavior than you can guess from these interests. He sees who views the ad, who clicks, who actually buys, who adds the product to the cart, and who responds to similar offers of yours. And when you

[10:06] interests, you say: "Search only here." And your best customers may be outside this little corridor of yours. Outside of these interests, you show your ads to a small segment of the audience. People

[10:19] quickly see your creatives multiple times. Your ad frequency increases, your CDR decreases, your CPM increases, your CP decreases, and ultimately this means you're wasting money. And you think the product is dead. The problem is that you yourself have squeezed the algorithms into this

[10:31] small box. Facebook's advertising algorithm requires you to be creative and reach a wide audience, not to target specific interests. This is all because creativity itself sets this context. If your promotional video shows a person holding their

[10:43] neck after a long day at work, then you're already addressing that same leaving six in a car, then you're already filtering out dog owners. That is, the audience is often embedded in the creative itself, embedded in the first frames, in

[10:56] the problem, in the hero, in the text and visuals and emotion, ultimately. So the rule is simple: don't try to guess manually who should be shown your ad. At the start, it's better to give the system more freedom and feed it with strong creative ideas, rather than

[11:09] constrain it with interests. To get sales, you need to use a wide audience, a maximum of two interests, plus clear creative. And this is much better than a narrow audience with five or six interests per cent. Of course, this does not mean that

[11:21] Interests can be tested and used in your advertising, but you Facebook's secret interest and try to make a lot of money from it. This doesn't work at all. That's because now the secret is not in interest, but in creativity, in your

[11:35] offer, in your data. I say this as someone who has been running stores through Facebook for over 6 years. A wide audience plus stylish creativity - this is not a theory, this is what is really working in my stores right now. And the same thing

[11:47] works for my students. One of them made $57,000 in one week with an average check of $140. Another one sells goods for 700-800 dollars and in a few days made more than 2,000 euros in turnover. and at the same time

[12:00] sold only four pieces of the product. They have different approaches, different stores, different niches, different average checks, but at the core it’s the same: it’s the right system. If you want to build a similar system for yourself, the link to my course is in

[12:12] is downloading a competitor's creative and running it without any changes. It's certainly tempting. You go to the ad library, see a competitor's video that's been running for months, and you think, "If I run it the same way, I'll

[12:25] get the same money." But this is a dangerous strategy, because, firstly, it if, of course, this competitor of yours complains about you. And therefore, a competitor’s video, its editing, its materials are a starting point for you, but not an

[12:39] launch it one-to-one, you risk getting complaints, rejections, and restrictions from Facebook. If you just take everything and launch it, the cost of your advertising will increase dramatically, and you won't have to worry about income or

[12:52] ROI. Secondly, the copy of the creative does not receive the history of the original. long time training this video, collecting reactions, social proof, pixel data, stories, likes, and so on. And your copy starts from scratch. The algorithm

[13:05] doesn't perceive it as the same success. For him, this is a new creative without any accumulated history, so you don’t get as much money right away as your competitor. What use your competitor's creativity as a source of ideas. That is, do not copy

[13:18] the file, but analyze the mechanics of this creative. You need to study how what stories are told and what editing elements are used in this creative. And this will be valuable information for you . With this approach, you don't

[13:31] copy a competitor's video, you copy a principle that already works, and then you create your own script, your own video, your own footage, your own editing, and your own presentation. It's legal, much safer, and much more powerful in the long run. Or you

[13:44] swap frames, change subtitles, music, add new frames, new music or new text. That is, the competitor's creative is not ready-made videos for launch, but material for your new creatives. You can do this, but once

[13:57] you've received your first sales or the first signals that people like the product, you should start creating your own creatives to get even more sales. Besides, any dependence on a competitor is not always a good thing. The seventh mistake

[14:09] is launching advertising without understanding the break-even point. And this is perhaps the most expensive mistake, because it can kill a business even when you are making sales. You've launched an ad, you 're getting orders in Shopfile, everything's great,

[14:21] goods to your customers. But in fact, every sale brings you a minus, albeit a the turnover, but you're losing money with every order because you didn't calculate in advance how much you could pay to attract one customer. The break-even point

[14:36] is the maximum cost of attracting one customer at which you still don't go into the red. This is considered to be as simple as possible. We take the selling price, subtract the cost of the product, subtract shipping, subtract commissions, payments, and

[14:48] Shopify, and include a reserve for returns, defects, disputes, and discounts. And what's left is your maximum allowed CPA. If your advertising brings in a buyer for less than this figure, then you are in profit. If it's more expensive, then you're in

[15:01] the red. Everything here is as simple as possible. For example, you sell a product for $79, the cost of delivery is, for example, $27, and the commission is approximately $4. Reserves, returns and various problems. We'll put in another 4 dollars.

[15:13] Our total expenses without advertising are $35. So there are still $44 left before the ad . This is your point of no-questioning. If a customer costs you $30, you make money. If it's 44, then you break even. And

[15:27] if you spend $50 to get one client, then you lose money with every order. And without this figure, you have no idea whether your advertising is working well or not. You see yourself with dollars and you don’t know whether

[15:39] don’t know your numbers. Whether it’s good or bad depends on the economics of your product. If your maximum threshold is $44, then a CPI of $35 is still normal. If your break-even point is $20 and your CPA is $35, then this is

[15:53] killing your business, and with each order you will lose $15. Therefore, the maximum threshold for your CP is calculated before the ad is launched, and not after you have already spent money. And here the important point of sale is not profit. Profit is what's

[16:06] left over after all your expenses. If you don't think so, then that, on the contrary, takes money from you . That's why we always calculate price, cost, delivery, commissions, returns, and acceptable CPA before advertising.

[16:19] Only after this can you test your store, your products and launch advertising. But before we move on to the eighth biggest mistake, it's important for you to understand one thing. It's one thing to hear this advice. It's a different story when you apply

[16:32] your store's performance. Plus, there's a huge list of different mistakes and issues that can prevent you from launching a store and becoming profitable. That's why I created a training course where we go through this entire journey together: from

[16:45] finding a product and supplier to working advertising and first sales. There is no theory in this training . For the sake of theory, this is just what I use in my stores right students who have started earning money use. This training will walk you through step-by-step steps to

[16:58] launching a store from scratch, including an analysis of advertising strategies and a product search system. I also personally support each student throughout the learning process. To more, message me on Telegram using the link in the description or

[17:11] visit ecomprofit.ru. And now the eighth mistake. And this is where many people lose money, even when everything else is done correctly. This is an incorrect filling of the more technical error, but it also affects your result. When you

[17:26] create an ad in Weight Manager, there are fields for the main text, title, description, fill it all out incorrectly. They write only one text, one title, one video and no adaptation. And just to launch this advertisement, as

[17:39] quickly as possible. In case you didn't know, Facebook allows you to add multiple text variations and different headlines. One segment of the audience may respond better to segment of the audience responds to more detailed text. The third

[17:52] specific offer. If you add multiple options, the system can test different combinations and show different options to different people. to work with. If you put one single and possibly weak

[18:06] text, everyone sees only it, and you are already limiting this advertising. And in the end, because of one text, all your advertising does not bring you sales. So, make different variations of the main text, different variations of the headline, and different variations of

[18:18] allows you to do. It takes a maximum of 15 minutes, but it gives the system more options and you have a better chance of getting a cheap CPA. The next part of this error is adaptation to different formats. Ads are shown not only in the

[18:31] Facebook feed, but also on Instagram, in Real Stories, and in the feed. If you upload one square video and expect it to look good everywhere , you're seriously mistaken. Square videos look ugly in

[18:43] stories and reels. The same thing if you only have a vertical in the feed because the feed requires square video, and you lose money the creative is poorly adapted to different

[18:56] vertical version for reels and stories and a square version for the feed. And then you need to check how your video looks in this preview. So, there are eight things you should check before running an ad. First, you do n’t have just one creative, but at least three to five

[19:11] delivery. The second is the correct use of the company's obo and the company's CBO. You shouldn't split small amounts of money into many sets. The third thing you should do is check if your pixel is working. Fourth, you don’t

[19:24] turn on advertising every other day on impulse, but give the test time and watch the funnel. Fifth. You don't squeeze your audience into a bunch of interests, but give the algorithm more freedom and engage your audience through creatives. Sixth. You

[19:36] will not use your competitor's creatives. but make your own options. And if you better to make them unique. Then you will actually have sales. Seventh. Before launching an ad, you calculate the break-even point and know your acceptable

[19:49] CPA. And eighth, you have several texts, several headlines, and your creative is adapted to both vertical and horizontal formats. That's all from horizontal formats. That's all from me. See you in the next video.