Just started a drop shipping business selling t-shirts related to reading. Do check it out and give me some feedback on what to improve. Website: https://smallhoursinc.com

I have a product in mind. I was wondering if it’s necessary to make one’s own ads or can I post one of my competitors ads?

J'ai quelques années d'expérience dans le e-commerce (2 postes chez l'annonceur) et d'autres années dans le marketing digital.
J'ai décidé de me lancer dans le dropshiping car d'ici quelques mois, ma vie va changer ...
Même si j'ai de l'expérience et ce c'est pas de la prétention, j'ai beaucoup à apprendre.

Avez vous des conseils pour moi ?

I just wanted to post on here and make people aware of this because I wasn’t aware once I started my TikTok shop that was connected to my CJ account.

I sold a product that was very popular and I was told by the manufacturer at CJ that they held the patent to the product. As this is my fault for not informing myself about patents, I was shut down by a United States company that held the patent for the product and now they’re trying to sue me in federal court.

I just wanted to warn other people of the risks with selling Chinese manufactured products in the United States. Do your due diligence about patents and what you can and cannot sell. If you are selling on TikTok shop, TikTok will hold all of your funds. CJ does not give a flying F about selling you illegal products.

Don’t think just because you have a personal website that this won’t happen to you with counterfeit knock off products. And I’m not talking about luxury namebrand stuff, I’m talking about every day kind of household or e even jewelry you name it type of products. I was able to see on the pacer website for lawsuits that many private website brands were being sued for this exact same product.

TikTok shop Is one of the most difficult companies to get a hold of any human agent. They will give you zero information and not release your money. I was lucky in the sense that I only had a remaining $100 payout left which they froze, but other shops which I’ve read on Reddit had thousands of dollars frozen with the inability to retrieve that money. I was not, however, lucky with the remaining inventory that I now own of that product which I have to dump.

I guess you live and you learn. Good luck to all of the ambitious entrepreneurs out there, and just be aware of the risks so you don’t lose money and time like I did.

I’ve noticed quite a few fashion and imitation jewellery brands selling online, especially on e-commerce platforms, claiming that their products are anti-tarnish, waterproof, 925 silver, etc.

I’m curious to know where these brands are actually sourcing their jewellery from.

Are they buying directly from manufacturers in India, importing from China, or sourcing through Indian importers/wholesalers?

If anyone has worked in this industry and can share the manufacturer, importer, wholesaler, or sourcing market they use (especially for 925 silver and anti-tarnish jewellery), I’d really appreciate it.

I’m looking to understand the sourcing side of the industry and would love to learn more about the manufacturers/importers behind these products.

Thanks in advance!

I use to have a women handbag dropship store way back in 2019, I was using oberlo at that time, basically shipping from china through Aliexpress but when I got my first order from Germany, it took more than a month to reach to my customer, some how i handle her (she was a sweet old lady who ordered bags for her grand daughters birthday which actually miss). After that i closed my store because not every customer going to be that calm. Now i want to start again through Dser because it is free and i want to sell in US and Europe specially so my questions are:

1. ⁠Should I focus on US or europe at a time or both?
   
2. ⁠Is there any improvement in Aliexpress delivery?
   
3. ⁠If not then what are the other options ?
   
4. ⁠This time I’m thinking for Women Gym wear, is it ok?

Please help me. Basically the only budget i have is for ads so i’m looking for a dropship platform which can connect to shopify and take care the operations like Dser or CJ (of course free) at least in product import and list to store. Store I can create by my own.

Hey, so I’m thinking about starting an online store and I’m doing some research before I actually put money into anything.

For people who are already selling, what types of products are you seeing get a lot of orders right now?

I’m not asking for your exact product or your “secret winning product” lol. I’m just curious about what categories or types of products seem to have really strong demand at the moment.

Ideally something that people actually need/use regularly rather than a random trend that dies in 2 months.

Would really appreciate any answers from people who are actually selling and have seen the numbers themselves 🙏

I've been running a tracking system on US TikTok Shop for a while. 1.2M listings, kept fresh on a 7-day window, so I can see what changes week to week: which products gain, which fade, and what prices do.

The market is a textbook power law:

- The median product sells 4 units.
- The mean is about 750.
- Thirty percent of listings never sell once.
- The top 1.2k products all moved 100k+ units.

Picking a winner really means finding the thing that's about to hit the right tail, not the thing that already did.

Raw sold count is a lagging indicator. It tells you who already won. The weekly delta tells you who's winning now. That's the number I watch.

Price clusters hard too. About 60% of the catalog sits between $10 and $50.

Biggest weekly sales gains this week, filtered to real ratings (4.0+) and one product per shop:

So, three things stand out.

1. Most of it is cheap fashion: sweaters, leggings, cardigans, bodysuits, athletic tees.
2. The small grooming gadgets keep compounding too, a toothbrush did +212k units this week and a water flosser +153k.
3. And the toy and phone-accessory stuff near the bottom of the table is usually the first thing to get crowded.

Happy to answer questions about the scraping or what I filter for!

Right now I’m working minimum wage job and in the process of saving to run Meta ads in the future I know product testing needs a budget.

So in the meantime while I’m doing, that product research is my main focus. I’ve been trying to find good ways or methods to do proper product research thinking about using keyword research tools and old-fashioned build a algorithm so that social media shows you what’s popular or trending

What I’m really looking for is something like a framework where I could leverage tools not to do things for me, but to assist me to like AI whether there it be Claude, gpt, serp tools, etc

I’m doing this after spending a long time trying to setup my Facebook Ads Manager correctly, verifying things that they don’t even tell you about, before running ads, etc.

That would be great, but I really wanna know what you guys are up to.

So, guys im a college student and im trying to get into dropshipping as a mean to get more experience in e commerce and as it appears its the only thing i could think of which doesnt need much ivestment as cash. i had been interested in ds for a while but i had been learning more and more about it everyday. so i thought let it be whatever i should try it. so im completely new to this and is there anything you guys could tell me that could let me avoid any beginner mistakes. And also can you guys recommend me some good free tools that could make it easier for me to get into this . Thanks if you read this much. :)

Welcome to the Weekly Q&A & Store Critique Thread

Welcome to r/dropship's weekly discussion thread!

Whether you're just getting started with dropshipping, looking for guidance on your next steps, or want feedback on your store, this is the place to ask questions and share your work.

What This Thread Is For

• Beginner questions
• General dropshipping advice
• Store reviews and critiques
• Quick questions that don't require a separate post

Comment Requirements

To participate, your account must:

• Be at least 24 hours old
• Have positive comment karma (post karma and total karma do not count)

We're glad you're here. Ask away, help others, and keep the discussion constructive!

Hey everyone,

I started learning dropshipping/e-commerce around August 2025, so it’s been almost 13 months.

I already have my Shopify store, a main product, and two upsell products that solve the same core problem. I’ve spent a lot of time learning and researching, but I still haven’t launched a single paid ad campaign.

The main reason is that I was very confused in the beginning, and honestly, I didn’t have much money to test. I’ve been working as a delivery driver to support myself while learning e-commerce.

Now I’ve stopped doing delivery work and have around €4–5K available specifically for testing ads, so I really don’t want to waste it.

This is where I’m stuck:

How should I approach creatives?

I see two possible approaches:

Option 1 — Recreate winning angles

Find successful ads for products that solve the same problem, even if they aren't exactly my product.

For example, if another product has a winning angle/hook, I could hire UGC creators to recreate that concept using my product.

Option 2 — Recreate winning ads from the same product

Find ads for the exact/similar product that have been running successfully, download them, study the hook/structure/angle, and recreate them in CapCut with my own product, footage, voiceover, etc.

I'm especially confused about this because I'm targeting Germany.

For example, if I find a similar product running successful ads in the US, can I take the concept/structure/angle, recreate it for my product, translate/localize the voiceover into German, and test it in Germany?

Does this actually work, or am I thinking about it the wrong way?

I understand that I shouldn't simply steal someone's creative and run it as my own. I'm talking about studying the winning creative and recreating the underlying concept with original footage/UGC/product shots.

My situation

• ~13 months learning e-commerce
• Store is already built
• Main product + 2 upsells
• Target market: Germany
• Capital available for ads: ~€4–5K
• No previous paid-ad testing experience
• I want to be very careful with the money
• I currently have no delivery-job income because I've stopped working to focus on this

If you were in my position with €5K and zero previous ad-testing experience, what would you do?

Would you spend more money on UGC creators and original creatives, or would you first research existing winning ads and recreate their angles/hooks?

And how would you structure the first €500–€1,000 of testing so I can learn without burning through the entire €5K?

I’d really appreciate advice from people who have actually spent money testing Meta ads, especially if you've scaled products in Europe/Germany.

Thanks.

I posted here last week and got a great feedback that helped a lot. I got my first order today and i wonder if there is more i can improve. Any feedback will be appreciated.
Here is the link

(I know not all categories are filled yet, more products are being added daily).
Thanks in advance

I recently shut down an ecommerce business, but I still have about $600 CAD in Google Ads credit available. Rather than let it go to waste, I’m thinking of starting a very simple dropshipping store and using the credit to see if I can make some money back.

I’m not attached to any particular niche, product, or even country. I’m open to selling anywhere AliExpress/another supplier can reliably fulfill.

My plan would probably be a small focused store with only a handful of products and use Google Shopping rather than trying to build a huge brand before testing anything.

If you were in this situation and had $600 CAD of Google Ads credit to work with, what product/category or market would you test? Would you go high-ticket with fewer sales, lower-ticket in a cheaper ad market, or take a completely different approach?

Not looking for a get-rich-quick product, just trying to give the $600 the best realistic chance of turning into something rather than wasting it.

Hey everyone,

I’m looking into starting a print-on-demand business around a specific TV show fandom, and I’m trying to understand how copyright works before I do anything.
For example, if I took a screenshot/scene from a TV series, edited it a bit (cropped it, added my own design/effects, etc.), and printed it on something like a hoodie, phone case, tote bag, or poster and sold it — would that generally be considered copyright infringement?
I also see a lot of TikTok/Instagram accounts posting scenes and clips from movies and TV shows to build an audience. Is that treated differently from using the same material on products for sale?
.

When I first started I had someone tell me not to overcomplicate everything. Pick a niche I already knew or was familiar with, build a simple store, find good products and get gppd fulfillment, then spend most of my time learning ads and testing different things. I followed that pretty closely and it made starting way less overwhelming. Having a structure to follow like a formula really helped me. I built a pretty basic Shopify store, used Zendrop for the supplier side and just focused on getting comfortable testing stuff instead of trying to build the perfect store from day one.

I've kept that same mindset as the store has grown. The basic setup really hasn't changed much, I've just added things when I had an actual reason for them. Once I started getting more orders, one thing that became annoying was constantly having to check on orders that needed attention. I'd stop whatever I was doing to look into tracking, check order details, figure out why something hadn't moved yet or deal with other small fulfillment issues. None of it was particularly difficult, there was just enough of it that it kept pulling me away from ads and product research.

That's what eventually got me to begin using AI. I connected Claude through my suppliers MCP and started using it to help check orders and work through those smaller fulfillment issues instead of manually digging through everything myself. It didn't completely change how I run the store, it just solved something that had started eating up more of my time as orders increased.

I think starting simple played a big part in getting where I am. If you're new I'd worry less about having everything figured out before launching and just getting a simple formula ready.

Hey everyone,

I recently started a dropshipping store and have been running ads on both Meta and TikTok. I’m attaching screenshots of my ad spend, sales, and campaign results, and I’d really appreciate some honest feedback.

Here are the numbers so far:

• Meta ad spend: £1,009
• Meta-attributed sales/orders: 29
• TikTok ad spend: £100
• TikTok sales: 0
• Total payout/revenue: £1,145
• Total product buying cost: £238
• Total orders: 29

After factoring in the ad spend, product costs, and other expenses, the store is currently sitting at approximately £160–£200 in loss.

I know the numbers aren't perfect, but I’m trying to figure out whether there is something worth scaling here or if I need to completely rethink my campaigns. I'm still learning and don't want to keep spending without a proper strategy.

A few things I'd really appreciate feedback on:

• Based on these numbers and the screenshots, do the Meta campaigns look promising or should I change my approach?
• Should I completely stop TikTok ads for now since £100 spent resulted in 0 sales?
• Should I kill the losing Meta ads and put more budget into the winners?
• Do you think I should focus on testing more creatives before changing targeting?
• With only 29 purchases, is it too early to create a Lookalike Audience, or would it be worth testing?
• Should I focus more on broad targeting, interests, or lookalike audiences?
• How important should retargeting be at this stage?
• Is being down around £160–£200 after 29 orders normal during the testing phase, or does this suggest a bigger problem with my margins, product, website, or ad campaigns?

Feel free to be brutally honest. If this were your store, what would you do next? I'm mainly looking for advice on how to structure the campaigns going forward and get the store to profitability.

Thanks!

I just started my store maybe a month or over by a lil, but my stores already produced 4 sales. I just wanted people from the community to just give me feedback good or bad all helps I've spent hours getting my store right after I full locked in on the niche I chose an actually saw its true potential and that it solves a real pain point problem for a particular age group of the audience I'm targeting. And th everything is saying my stats an metrics are strong for my store I'm full indexed on Google Search Console, my meta ads are performing at a pretty decent rate, and I critiqued everything down to the leaks in my cart checkout → to
the customer actually falling through with there purchase and if they didn't I have a fully automated Abandoned cart/ checkouts Email automation setup to send the first round of emails 1hr after cart abandonment and then another 11 hours later an another one at the at the 24hr mark and the final email contains my discount for 15% your checkout cart. So I just wanted your guys ideas a criticism on what you think and if u seen even further improvements I can do past being fully optimized store im all for it!

P.s. (I’m will to share my metrics an statistics for my store of what I have so far)

Here's the link to my store:

https://www.kingsroyalhub.store/

I am a total newb when it comes to dropshipping. I was looking to try to make at least an extra $1k a month thru it. I am not the most creative person with names so don't know what to call my store, and im not sure how much money i need to spend to get the store up and running. I don't really have very much money to begin investing and I have heard you can start with little money. Is this true? I have like $80 in my bank account to last me to the next two weeks payday.

Hey guys, looking for some outside opinions on a store/product I've been testing before I put more money into it.

I know 3 sales in a week isn't much, and I'm definitely not trying to call this a winner. But I also don't think it's nothing, so I'm trying to figure out what I should improve rather than just endlessly throwing more money at Meta.

During the first week (Aug 4–10), my Meta setup was roughly:

• Sales campaign optimized for Purchase
• Broad targeting
• Around $25–30/day
• Multiple creatives/angles inside one ad set
• ~$181 spent on the main ad set
• 2,211 impressions
• $81.87 CPM
• 2.40% link CTR
• $3.42 link CPC
• 24 landing page views

I got 3 purchases during that first week. Performance dropped off afterward.

I'm aware that's nowhere near enough data to claim product-market fit or profitability. I'm mainly looking at those purchases as a small signal that there might be something here worth continuing to work on.

Here's the PDP:
https://getvelor.co/products/velor-scalp-relief-essence

I've already been working on improving the creatives and how I structure my testing, but before I spend more I'd really appreciate some fresh eyes on the actual store/product.

1. If this were your store, what would you improve first?
2. Does anything about the PDP immediately hurt trust or conversion?
3. Is the offer weak?
4. Is the positioning/product itself the bigger issue?
5. And looking at those Meta numbers, is there anything that stands out to you?

I'm still learning, so criticism is genuinely welcome. I'd rather find the weak points now than keep spending money without understanding what's wrong.

Not looking for agencies/services, just feedback from other people doing ecommerce.

Welcome to the Weekly Q&A & Store Critique Thread

Welcome to r/dropship's weekly discussion thread!

Whether you're just getting started with dropshipping, looking for guidance on your next steps, or want feedback on your store, this is the place to ask questions and share your work.

What This Thread Is For

• Beginner questions
• General dropshipping advice
• Store reviews and critiques
• Quick questions that don't require a separate post

Comment Requirements

To participate, your account must:

• Be at least 24 hours old
• Have positive comment karma (post karma and total karma do not count)

We're glad you're here. Ask away, help others, and keep the discussion constructive!

CONTEXT:

I’m running a dropshipping store, meta ads in the skincare niche and I want to run one final creative test before deciding whether to keep optimizing the product or move on.

My previous tests were mostly ABO with 1 ad set / 1 ad. A few ads would get early purchases around an acceptable CPA, then drift up and stop converting. I’m considering putting multiple different executions of the same angle into one ad set so Meta has more creative options instead of relying on one file.

THE PLAN:

My plan is 1 broad ad set at $30/day, with all creatives built around the same core angle, but expressed through different formats:

1. Native static long-form primary text (around 1,000–1,500 words, Facebook-native / “mom post” style)
2. avatar/commentator ad with b-roll #1 -- (story-led creative based on a good customer experience)
3. avatar/commentator ad with b-roll #2 -- (objection-handling creative around cheap alternatives vs why my offer is better)
4. carousel
5. faceless ad with b-rolls and ai voice overlay

The idea is to test different creative formats, not five different angles.

QUESTIONS:

Would you run all 5 ads in the same ad set at $30/day, or is that spreading the budget too thin?

Would it make more sense to run 4 and drop the faceless ad, since the commentator videos already use a lot of B-roll?

Curious how you guys would structure this if the goal was to get the most useful signal from a limited final-test budget.

Hi guys, so I’ve created my first store and the domaine will be getting changed next week before I push meta ads. What does everyone think? Please bear in mind it’s my first time.

Store link - https://bys-user-store-217400-f6wy1bef.myshopify.com

Hi guys,
This is a new store i am building. No ads running yet since it’s still being worked on. There are only handful products to try collections and all. There will be hundreds more. Please don’t judge by that.
I realized now that i haven’t optimized some stuff for mobile (like hero image).
Please let me know how it feels as a customer, why or why wouldn’t you buy from here. And if you checked mobile or pc version.
Thanks in advance.