[jembo]

+++ Disclaimer +++

I'm not here to promote my Instagram, a course or something similar.

Hey guys - This is literally the first time that I actually contribute something to this community. 🎉

I registered like 1 year ago and was looking for some other ventures that I could be expanding. Tried couple of things to earn some money but found my success in Ecommerce, Shopify, Facebook Ads and primarily Google Ads.

Again, I'm not here to sell you anything. Just wanna give the community genuinely back. 🤩

Please keep in mind that I'm spending my precious time to answer your questions to the best that I can. Don't PM me for any questions or private mentoring. I won't answer to your PM and delete it right away just to keep everything fair. Someone else might have the same question as you, so please stick to this thread.

So if you guys are having trouble with Google Ads, Shopify, Google Shopping shoot. Even Google GDN Retargeting or Facebook Ads - shoot. I'll try to answer everything the best I can! Might even learn something new 😁

BTW: Here's a short screen recording to back up my claims from my GA account :D

Looking forward to this thread!

https://streamable.com/22dcu

[WalterE]

1. Do you recommend getting a course/mentorship, or should you learn for free?
2. how much do you recommend having before getting in the ecom business.

[LoremIpsum]

Thank you so much for doing this, I have a few questions that might help other members too. You seem to have a lot of knowledge, are already disclaiming any 'money making' at HF which boosts your creditability in my eyes. That been said. I have listed some questions here below.

1. I quote "Ecommerce, Shopify, Facebook Ads and primarily Google Ads" does that mean you have other income sources except Shopify were you sell products at? Or do you sell products with Shopify, and get extra revenues thanks to the Adsense or whatever?

2. How long did it take you to get from A till Z? So from your first domain buying up to the point where you are now?

3. What is your average profit per month and average investment per month for everything that brings you revenue?

4. Did you ever bought any e-course(s), guides or mentorships? I learned a lot by practising, investing and talking to others but I never followed a paid course. Only Youtube, forums and other free sources.

Thanks again for doing all this and I wish you happy holidays! 🤝

[iMario]

Congrats man! Very nice earnings. So I assume you are targeting only Germany?

[Tintin]

Thank for your sharing your knowledge with your AMA.

[jembo]

1. Do you recommend getting a course/mentorship, or should you learn for free?
2. how much do you recommend having before getting in the ecom business.

1. Obviously it always helps to have someone as a mentor who can guide him through everything, so you avoid their mistakes. I didn't have a mentor but learned as I go by spending ads and doing tons of courses. Not really dropshipping courses, because it's super easy to build a good looking store, but rather courses on ads. There are several courses from reputable guys that have been leaked on hosting platforms such as mega, so I wouldn't really recommend buying a course. You can literally find everything for free on the internet if you search well enough for it.

2. Good question! I used to do a case study for some of my friends who did the same and invested like $14 for everything. Domain and aged Twitter accounts. I ran the free test trial of Jarvee, put 10 Twitter bots into the account and promoted a product on there. Got the ball rolling and made 4 figure revenue within a matter of days, reinvested profits and did 5 figures within like 4 weeks. You can really start with free traffic because there are so many ways to get traffic. Let it be Facebook groups, cooperations on Instagram where you pay the Influencer a % of the profits, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, Youtube.

However, I'd recommend starting with $500-1000 at least since most of you guys will probably be spending money on Facebook Ads.

Thank you so much for doing this, I have a few questions that might help other members too. You seem to have a lot of knowledge, are already disclaiming any 'money making' at HF which boosts your creditability in my eyes. That been said. I have listed some questions here below.

1. I quote "Ecommerce, Shopify, Facebook Ads and primarily Google Ads" does that mean you have other income sources except Shopify were you sell products at? Or do you sell products with Shopify, and get extra revenues thanks to the Adsense or whatever?

2. How long did it take you to get from A till Z? So from your first domain buying up to the point where you are now?

3. What is your average profit per month and average investment per month for everything that brings you revenue?

4. Did you ever bought any e-course(s), guides or mentorships? I learned a lot by practising, investing and talking to others but I never followed a paid course. Only Youtube, forums and other free sources.

Thanks again for doing all this and I wish you happy holidays! 🤝

1. I have other sources of income, correct. I currently run 4 E-Commerce stores. 1 with a friend of mine which is a fashion brand and doing 40.000-50.000€ a month - sourcing through a local shop who print the shirts/sweaters/hoodies. If the local shop isn't fast enough we switch to POD. 1 store that I'm doing with 3 other business partners of mine which is a huge project and online since 3 months. Have been doing like 4 figures in total with that, because we really focus on a good branding and a long lasting store. 1 store that I have a % of the ownership which is a local business in Germany in 5 cities. Pretty much at 6 figures each month. Then I've got my own Shopify store which I do solid 5 figures with as you saw in the screenrecording. As of now, Shopify is my main source of income. I've got some tiny side projects but they aren't nameworthy.

2. Been at it since the end of December 2017 - so pretty much 2 years. My first store failed hard but I managed to flip it and actually make a tiny profit of like 100-200€. It has been a process ever since.

3. Monthly revenue is around 200.000-250.000€ - Investment is between 20.000-60.000€. My ROAS can be insane and for some campaigns on Google I have like ROAS of 15+. Income tax in Germany is 45% if you earn more than 250.730€ in a year though, lol.

4. I never bought the classic course that YouTubers praise themselves with haha. I'd rather spent my time reading case studies from legit people, joined couple of Facebook groups, other forums and tried to suck up as much information as I could. I really enjoy the YouTube channel of Oberlo to be honest because the people they are talking with are legit and make some insane numbers. Trial by error :D

Congrats man! Very nice earnings. So I assume you are targeting only Germany?

Thanks man, appreciate it! Saw you were doing some insane numbers aswell! Congratulations to you :D To answer your question - yes, I'm only targeting Germany. Dropshipping and E-commerce in general is super complicated when you're being in Germany. As soon as you sell a product to a different country you're obliged to register a business in this country and make a tax declaration there which is like impossible, unless you run a huge ass company. Germany is big enough though and people are buying like crazy, so that's no real issue :D

[LoremIpsum]

1. Obviously it always helps to have someone as a mentor who can guide him through everything, so you avoid their mistakes. I didn't have a mentor but learned as I go by spending ads and doing tons of courses. Not really dropshipping courses, because it's super easy to build a good looking store, but rather courses on ads. There are several courses from reputable guys that have been leaked on hosting platforms such as mega, so I wouldn't really recommend buying a course. You can literally find everything for free on the internet if you search well enough for it.

2. Good question! I used to do a case study for some of my friends who did the same and invested like $14 for everything. Domain and aged Twitter accounts. I ran the free test trial of Jarvee, put 10 Twitter bots into the account and promoted a product on there. Got the ball rolling and made 4 figure revenue within  a matter of days, reinvested profits and did 5 figures within like 4 weeks. You can really start with free traffic because there are so many ways to get traffic. Let it be Facebook groups, cooperations on Instagram where you pay the Influencer a % of the profits, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, Youtube.

However, I'd recommend starting with $500-1000 at least since most of you guys will probably be spending money on Facebook Ads.


1. I have other sources of income, correct. I currently run 4 E-Commerce stores. 1 with a friend of mine which is a fashion brand and doing 40.000-50.000€ a month - sourcing through a local shop who print the shirts/sweaters/hoodies. If the local shop isn't fast enough we switch to POD. 1 store that I'm doing with 3 other business partners of mine which is a huge project and online since 3 months. Have been doing like 4 figures in total with that, because we really focus on a good branding and a long lasting store. 1 store that I have a % of the ownership which is a local business in Germany in 5 cities. Pretty much at 6 figures each month. Then I've got my own Shopify store which I do solid 5 figures with as you saw in the screenrecording. As of now, Shopify is my main source of income. I've got some tiny side projects but they aren't nameworthy.

2. Been at it since the end of December 2017 - so pretty much 2 years. My first store failed hard but I managed to flip it and actually make a tiny profit of like 100-200€. It has been a process ever since.

3. Monthly revenue is around 200.000-250.000€ - Investment is between 20.000-60.000€. My ROAS can be insane and for some campaigns on Google I have like ROAS of 15+. Income tax in Germany is 45% if you earn more than 250.730€ in a year though, lol.

4. I never bought the classic course that YouTubers praise themselves with haha. I'd rather spent my time reading case studies from legit people, joined couple of Facebook groups, other forums and tried to suck up as much information as I could. I really enjoy the YouTube channel of Oberlo to be honest because the people they are talking with are legit and make some insane numbers. Trial byerror :D

Thank you so much for the detailed reply. I'm from Europe myself too (can PM you the country if you like) and I had my own Shopify store for several months until I had to stop it. Long story. Either way, I'm always motivated and excited to see other people succeed and try to copy their behaviour, like attitude, point of view, thoughts, reading materials and more. I think everybody can succeed in life (financially) by copying other high-earnings in their routines, attitude and learning process rather than 'copying' a business.

Amazing to see that you're earning well on your stores. The taxes are a theft in my opinion, but a lot of that is withdrawal / refundable not sure how to name such claim. Amazing. Simply amazing! I bet your book keeper is jealous of the revenues you make monthly 🤝

[Chief]

Nice earnings OP. I've begun my Shopify journey and can't wait to put up some numbers like you have!

[jembo]

Thank you so much for the detailed reply. I'm from Europe myself too (can PM you the country if you like) and I had my own Shopify store for several months until I had to stop it. Long story. Either way, I'm always motivated and excited to see other people succeed and try to copy their behaviour, like attitude, point of view, thoughts, reading materials and more. I think everybody can succeed in life (financially) by copying other high-earnings in their routines, attitude and learning process rather than 'copying' a business.

Amazing to see that you're earning well on your stores. The taxes are a theft in my opinion, but a lot of that is withdrawal / refundable not sure how to name such claim. Amazing. Simply amazing! I bet your book keeper is jealous of the revenues you make monthly 🤝

Thanks for the kind words! I somewhat can relate to what you're saying even though I would disagree with the word copying. It's not that you're copying someone else but rather deliberate on your choices, not only in life but rather business. Deliberating has helped me so much with everything, not only business but also my personal life, friends, university (which I haven't finished yet but will in 2 years lol) and everything. It's good to get a cause of thought by a thread like this but don't try to copy others 1:1. If you will do so, you will fail. Trust me - I did that. Rather try to understand why the other person did certain things that made him or her succeed. You guys might think that it all has something to do with skill. I agree to some point, but there's always luck playing along. I didn't succeed for some times and wasn't lucky. But this one time where I got lucky, everything skyrocketed. Not quite sure if I could explain my point but I hope you got the idea of what I was trying to say :D If you got any more questions be sure to shoot them here in the thread! Always happy to help you guys out.

Nice earnings OP. I've begun my Shopify journey and can't wait to put up some numbers like you have!

Thank you so much! Really appreciate the kind words. If you need any help be sure to drop your questions in this thread :)

BTW: Merry Christmas to you guys! Hope you're having a great time with your family and wishing you the best of health and time rn.

[LoremIpsum]

Thanks for the kind words! I somewhat can relate to what you're saying even though I would disagree with the word copying. It's not that you're copying someone else but rather deliberate on your choices, not only in life but rather business. Deliberating has helped me so much with everything, not only business but also my personal life, friends, university (which I haven't finished yet but will in 2 years lol) and everything. It's good to get a cause of thought by a thread like this but don't try to copy others 1:1. If you will do so, you will fail. Trust me - I did that. Rather try to understand why the other person did certain things that made him or her succeed. You guys might think that it all has something to do with skill. I agree to some point, but there's always luck playing along. I didn't succeed for some times and wasn't lucky. But this one time where I got lucky, everything skyrocketed. Not quite sure if I could explain my point but I hope you got the idea of what I was trying to say :D If you got any more questions be sure to shoot them here in the thread! Always happy to help you guys out.

I agree with you about the word copying, I just find words inside my head and type then instead of thinking about a better suiting word like taking an example of those who are succeeded in life by being influenced by their ways of living, routines in life and healthy habits.
I agree that you must be skilled and lucky in order to succeed. I had my skills, but the lack of luck killed my store eventually. Due to tax-related bullsh*t. Either way, I rather stay positive and learn out of my mistakes.

For those, who are interested in making a new store. This question should be helpful.
How much, do you personally think, is needed in order to 'start' an e-commerce including everything?
So including store, your first 'test ads', domain name, etc. I spent about $350 - $400 to 'try out' everything including a few months of Shopify. Test products came from China and I had strong connections with a Chinese business man there.

I feel really motivated when I hear other members talk about business or such, but I often feel drained after typing a lot each day without working on my 'things' which I should. Do you have some kind of routine or 'habit' you're practising in order to stay motivated without procrastinating? Without offense or hate towards HF, but typing here your story in 2-3 minutes is 2-3 minutes less investing, learning and working. How do you manage that?

[jembo]

I agree with you about the word copying, I just find words inside my head and type then instead of thinking about a better suiting word like taking an example of those who are succeeded in life by being influenced by their ways of living, routines in life and healthy habits.
I agree that you must be skilled and lucky in order to succeed. I had my skills, but the lack of luck killed my store eventually. Due to tax-related bullsh*t. Either way, I rather stay positive and learn out of my mistakes.

For those, who are interested in making a new store. This question should be helpful.
How much, do you personally think, is needed in order to 'start' an e-commerce including everything?
So including store, your first 'test ads', domain name, etc. I spent about $350 - $400 to 'try out' everything including a few months of Shopify. Test products came from China and I had strong connections with a Chinese business man there.

I feel really motivated when I hear other members talk about business or such, but I often feel drained after typing a lot each day without working on my 'things' which I should. Do you have some kind of routine or 'habit' you're practising in order to stay motivated without procrastinating? Without offense or hate towards HF, but typing here your story in 2-3 minutes is 2-3 minutes less investing, learning and working. How do you manage that?

Good attitude! If you don't succeed the firs time you will eventually at some point.

$500-1000 is plenty in my opinion, assumed you know what you're doing, how to set-up a clean looking store, test products etc.

Honestly I don't have a habit or something like it. I used to procrastinate a lot and still do, but not as much as I do now. I'm not the guy who wakes up at 6am to hustle 16 hours straight. What really helped me with that is keeping a journal or a planner. I used to write stuff into there like washing my clothes, getting groceries, cleaning my bathroom etc. Just really tiny things, nothing special. This way I just realized that I still had sort of a to-do list for this day and wanted to simply get some shit done. If you actually manage to be productive and can look it up somewhere in a journal you're actually starting to begin to be really proud of yourself. Atleast that's how I felt lol. I've got 2 journals though. The first is for just daily planning, progressing and everything while the second one is just for summaries of courses that may have some kind of valuable information for me, important things that I read on some blog post or somewhere else.

This is really my only habit that I practice daily which keeps me motivated. Not every day can be a successful or productive day - there will always be days that are shit where you just can't get anything done and are somewhere else with your head. Just accept it, take a day or two days off and then get back to work. And yes, indeed, I could rather do some work, spend my time reading or something else but taking my time to try and answer your questions but when I look back to me 2 years back when I was 19 years old, I wish that there was someone actually doing what I'm doing right now. So even if I will only be able to help one member here in this thread I'm happy.

[LoremIpsum]

Good attitude! If you don't succeed the firs time you will eventually at some point.

$500-1000 is plenty in my opinion, assumed you know what you're doing, how to set-up a clean looking store, test products etc.

Honestly I don't have a habit or something like it. I used to procrastinate a lot and still do, but not as much as I do now. I'm not the guy who wakes up at 6am to hustle 16 hours straight. What really helped me with that is keeping a journal or a planner. I used to write stuff into there like washing my clothes, getting groceries, cleaning my bathroom etc. Just really tiny things, nothing special. This way I just realized that I still had sort of a to-do list for this day and wanted to simply get some Clay Davis done. If you actually manage to be productive and can look it up somewhere in a journal you're actually starting to begin to be really proud of yourself. Atleast that's how I felt lol. I've got 2 journals though. The first is for just daily planning, progressing and everything while the second one is just for summaries of courses that may have some kind of valuable information for me, important things that I read on some blog post or somewhere else.

This is really my only habit that I practice daily which keeps me motivated. Not every day can be a successful or productive day - there will always be days that are Clay Davis where you just can't get anything done and are somewhere else with your head. Just accept it, take a day or two days off and then get back to work. And yes, indeed, I could rather do some work, spend my time reading or something else but taking my time to try and answer your questions but when I look back to me 2 years back when I was 19 years old, I wish that there was someone actually doing what I'm doing right now. So even if I will only be able to help one member here in this thread I'm happy.

Thank you for the detailed explain. I always kept a short list (mobile or paper) with me with the most important tasks of that day. I start with them and slowly work my way up to having spare time. This often results in 'chilling' without doing really anything, because I have done enough for the day that my mind does need some rest.
I love to study, not for college in the good old days but study and learn each day something new, which triggers my happiness (endrofine?) chemical in my brain which feels rewarding. The habit I had was getting up around 10, doing what I had to do, including personal hygiene and such and at the time I was done (around 8-9) I started working on my Shopify store. Everything set, everything worked, the niche was 'booming' was tax-related matters killed my store and my motivation at once.

I learned from this, started my own business again (about a year later) and decided to give it my all. Now I notice that I need my 'time off' to think and recharge. I can't keep working, tweaking, promoting, testing and resting all at once combining with my business. I love to help out others who need it, but I forget my own priority. I need to rest. I need to be happy. I need to be healthy. Once I have that, I can help others achieve the same, but I often put my own 'misery' aside to help someone else, noticing it costs me more energy than I became happy or grateful for doing so.
I love motivational posts, videos, threads, people in my surroundings rather than complainers, abusers and selfish people with a big attitude.

You are really kind, young of age and having already a great business mindset which inspires me to keep growing and working on my things until I feel satisfied with the results again 🤝 Thanks a lot!

[Cyam]

Do you think beautifully designed store rather than bad looking one has a big role in success?

[jembo]

Do you think beautifully designed store rather than bad looking one has a big role in success?

Just ask yourself this question from a consumer perspective. Provided you had no idea about dropshipping, would you buy something from a scammy looking shop with trash design or rather a nice and clean looking store? It plays a huge role. It's not necessarily only about getting sales but getting your conversion rate high. Besides, you'd rather want someone to purchase more than 1.0 UPT (units per transaction) with upselling to increase your AOV (average order value) than just barely getting any conversions on your store :D

[iMario]

Thanks man, appreciate it! Saw you were doing some insane numbers aswell! Congratulations to you :D To answer your question - yes, I'm only targeting Germany. Dropshipping and E-commerce in general is super complicated when you're being in Germany. As soon as you sell a product to a different country you're obliged to register a business in this country and make a tax declaration there which is like impossible, unless you run a huge ass company. Germany is big enough though and people are buying like crazy, so that's no real issue :D

Hell yeah, I've just posted a fraction of my numbers. Thank you to you as well. Let's network, I DM'ed you.