My First Dropshipping Store That Worked: Case Study

Short answer: my first dropshipping store that really worked launched on 1 October (00:54, 00:57) and sold to Germany only (03:34). The first days brought a handful of orders (01:21). On day four (01:21) I rebuilt the store and made five collections (01:40). That day brought 49 sales (01:50). After that the store did over 1000 a day, day after day (03:00). I walk through the whole run, the store and the products in this video (in Polish).

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The first step you can copy: build collections. I don't show exactly how I build collections in this video.

This is not a promise of results. Outcomes depend on product, budget, execution, market and experience.

How long it takes before your first dropshipping store works

For me, almost 8 months (00:13). I started dropshipping almost 2 years before recording the video (00:09). Before this store I never had one that worked (03:09).

I made a lot of mistakes along the way until I found a formula that works for me (00:36). After this store, most of the next ones worked (00:45). The store launched a year before the recording (01:04), so the numbers in the dashboard have shifted a bit since (01:08).

This is not a promise of results. Outcomes depend on product, budget, execution, market and experience. Those 8 months were my own timeline. If you're just starting, the launch plan is in how to start dropshipping.

What I changed on day four and what the results were

I started the changes from Thursday into Friday (01:28). That's when I knew I finally had something.

Moment	Result in the dashboard	Timecode
First days	a handful of orders	01:21
Day 4, five collections	49 sales	01:40, 01:50
Following days	2000, then 1600	02:10, 02:16
During the week	a bit less	02:24
Friday	1000	02:32
Saturday	1600	02:37
Sunday	2000	02:43

I don't state the unit for these daily figures in the video. It was my first store to do over 1000 a day, every day (03:00, 03:05).

This is not a promise of results. Outcomes depend on product, budget, execution, market and experience. Don't read these figures as a typical result.

What the store looked like when it made its first results

Simple. Plenty of things were done wrong (03:45), but the whole thing looked very professional (04:30). Every photo and video came from the internet (04:26).

Element	What I did	Timecode
Market	Germany only, a small German flag icon	03:34, 03:41
Hero image	a photo from the internet, store logo added in Photoshop	03:54, 03:59
Staff photo	store logo on the T-shirt, in Photoshop	04:15, 04:19
Video	a short video from the internet	04:23, 04:26
Reviews	a few reviews from an external review platform	04:33
Price	blown up large, with a struck-through price next to it	04:54, 04:56
Promises	free shipping, 30-day guarantee, fast clearance sale	05:02, 05:08

That was all I put there (05:12). The product page was very simple and easy (04:50). For what a product page has to do, see the glossary entry landing page.

What to sell in dropshipping in autumn and winter

For me, sweaters, leather shoes and leather jackets worked best (05:37, 05:41). Winter is coming and people buy anything that keeps them warmer (05:45, 05:55). My best seller was a sweater (05:59, 06:03).

The store was built exactly a year before the recording (05:19). In the same season the same products keep working (05:27, 05:29). There are thousands of sweaters like that (06:12, 06:15). You can keep picking them and testing. I went through a lot of sweaters in this store and literally all of them sold (06:21, 06:26).

You'll find them on AliExpress (06:53). In the video I simply type "sweaters" (07:02) and right away see models like the ones I sold a year earlier and was still selling at the time of the video (07:17, 07:19). One rule: sell what fits the season (06:47, 06:50). More on finding products in how to find an unsaturated dropshipping product.

Why every sweater colour is a separate product

Because the data gets easier to read. For me, three colours of the same sweater are three different products (07:35, 07:39). I don't give the customer a variant picker on one page (07:44, 07:46). Each colour gets its own product page (08:02, 08:05).

Your analytics then shows what people prefer, and it's much easier to read what works (08:22, 08:27, 08:36). On top of that you get more things to test (08:39, 08:44).

Example from the video: one AliExpress listing has 20 versions of a sweater (10:33). That makes 20 separate products, and you try to sell each one (10:36, 10:39).

Which AliExpress sweaters not to sell

The ones with a stuck-on print. You can see it's a picture glued onto the sweater (09:12, 09:20). I sold those myself and had a lot of returns on them (09:28, 09:31). The quality is poor, you can feel the glued plastic, and there's a very heavy smell (09:38, 09:44).

I'd stick to sweaters that look more natural (10:11, 10:14). I like to advertise those as Norwegian (10:43, 10:47). In my experience that word sells well (10:51, 10:55), so I'd definitely go for it and test (11:00, 11:03). The quality of these sweaters isn't that bad (11:08, 11:13). Not every one is nice (11:15), which is why you test.

How to track dropshipping profit from day one

Log every product. The backend was very important for me (11:57, 12:00): whether prices line up, whether you're in profit, whether you're losing money and what returns you have (12:09, 12:18).

I built every sheet myself (12:24, 12:26). In the template I log the product name, product price, CPC and number of purchases (12:36, 12:41). That way I knew exactly what I was earning (12:46). It was a very big reason things started going well (12:49).

Before this store I struggled with it (12:59). You test a lot, money goes to ads, to products and to the supplier (13:20, 13:28). Without a log you don't know what you earn and what you lose (13:10). The number you're tracking here is in the glossary under margin.

From a sheet to an app

Once I finally had this store, I built an app for myself (13:40). I entered products, campaign costs and sale prices (14:02, 14:05) so I could see the profit on each product (14:27, 14:31). Sometime around February (14:40) I decided to build it for everyone who does dropshipping (14:53, 15:03). At the time of the video the program existed (15:11). You add your own products and the app calculates everything for you (15:19, 15:31).

I link that app in the video description: it's EcomBrain. EcomBrain is my product. I describe it in EcomBrain: AI analytics for e-commerce.

Where to see this store's ads

In the ad library, when it works. I wanted to show this store's ads in the video, but at the time of recording the library wasn't working (11:22, 11:27). The store name is visible in the video. Type it into the ad library and go through every ad I ran (11:35, 11:45). I don't show the ad budget in this video.

At the time of the video I ran a weekly call for the community where I showed what worked for me and answered questions (06:32, 06:41). You can ask your questions in the community or on Instagram (16:17).