The virus shook the retail business and a lot of businesses are turning towards the e-commerce business. Be one of the first people that started their own dropshipping business during the COVID-19 crisis. To give us the full report on the current e-commerce waters is Yakir Starosta, a fellow remotepreneur and e-commerce expert who is currently running his dropshipping business from Bali.

Remotrepreneur’s Insights

• Set Up a Shopify Account – Yakir explains why Shopify is one of the best platforms for starting your e-commerce business and tells us what kind of features the platform offers.
  
  


• Don’t Reinvent the Wheel – The best way to find what’s really working is to dabble into your competition’s websites and groups. Go for something that it’s proven to work.
  
  


• Get a Distributer – A major part of the e-commerce business is the distributor. Often times, 80% of the work relies in them because people are waiting for the product and home, which puts a lot of accent on how fast and efficient the distributor is.
  
  


• Good Marketing – It’s needless to say that you need great marketing to get you in front of the competition.  Try running some ads to catch people’s attention but also make them trust you.

Key Podcast Milestones

06:20 – How e-commerce changed during the COVID-19 crisis

10:48 – How Yakir got into the e-commerce world

16:00 – What would be the first step to start a dropshipping business from home

23:30 – The second step of building your e-commerce business

29:16 – Importance of reviews in the e-commerce world

31:00 – How to get people to leave reviews

33:05 – Why would somebody close a successful store

37:33 – How much money do you need to automate your e-commerce business

45:36 – What would happen if Asian dropshipping businesses get penalized?

51:09 – The end goal of owning an e-commerce business

Top Key Quotes

“First, you need to understand that it’s not easy. It’s not as easy as taking $200 and turning into profit. That’s not really profitable these days. What I would really recommend is to think about it differently right now. To really think about where we are right now in the world and how consumer behavior is. Why and what kind of things would they buy?”

“The most common way of running dropshipping stores is using Shopify as a host. It’s a great platform to create websites. You don’t need to know any coding. There are built-in themes, where there are drag and drop. If you’re having a little bit of an issue, you can reach out to customer support. They have one of the best customer support there is.”

“Seeing dropshipping ads is one of the best ways to really learn and start gaining experience with what’s working and what isn’t. If you see an ad that has really good engagement, like millions of views, they are spending a lot of money on it, then there is no reason for them not to do it if they are not profitable.”

“The thing about dropshipping from AliExpress or China is that it’s mostly low-ticket items. By low-ticket, I mean between $30 - $60 USD. So, the main thing is to create an impulsive reaction in the customer and get him to buy on the spot. Most customers don’t buy on the spot but you retarget them with ads. The main thing is to create really good and engaging ads.”

Resources

Freedom Surfer – Yakir’s recommendation for a website if you’re interested in registering a company

Yakir Starosta

Remotepreneurs 🎙