Today I will show you income report of drop shipping e-commerce website making around $1,612/month. The website is just few months old but it is making significant income for its owner. I think that the website is managed by just one person, and probably this is the owner.
The website is doing drop shipping of foosball tables from USA based foosstball tables manufacturers. The dropshipping model is working this way: after order is received through the web site, it has to be send to the drop shipper (in this case the foosball table manufacturer). There is no physical contact between the product and the website owner. So if you want to start similar business you have to keep in mind that there is no inventory needed, you buy the item after it is already ordered and paid in your web site.
Basic information
| Business Type | Niche | Platform | Age of the business |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drop Shipping | Foosball tables | Shopify | 8 months |
I like the drop shipping business model because there is no upfront big investments and it is risk free, but there are some negative sides too like customer support, returns and etc.
The niche is pretty small but as we always say “Riches are in the niches”. There is one big plus here, that there are not so many products and it is easy to maintain the stock availability. I had many problems with stock availability in my old drop shipping websites, where I had a lot of products, because it is hard to keep in touch all the time with the drop shipper about the in and out of stock items.
Other plus of this website is that it is build with Shopify, which is complete online solution, that allows you to setup online store in few minutes.
I can say that this is a starter website, because it is just 8 months old. Although its young age the website is performing fantastic and it is good example how with the right model, niche and platform you can do a lot in short period of time.
Traffic[wpdatachart id=7]
The chart up is showing that the website is too young to speak about constant traffic. I have to notice that you don’t need much traffic to earn good income from this type of website. From 1,185 visitors the website made $1,279 in March 2015 which means that every visit to the website brought to the website owner about a dollar profit.
Traffic Channels
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From the Traffic Channels report we see that most of the visitors come from other websites (Referral). Referral traffic is formed from visitors who came to the website from another website through hyperlink. Building natural Referral traffic is pretty hard, because it is not easy to make other websites owners to link to your website without reason.
Most of Referral traffic comes from:
- Internet Forums with close subject to soccer, board games
- Blog comments
The website owner did some guest posts too, trying to get referral traffic and optimize the website for search engines.
Direct traffic is on second place from traffic channels and this traffic contains all the visits to the website where people arrived at the site directly by typing its domain name in the address bar.
The Direct traffic is so high because the total traffic is not much. Usually direct traffic in this type of websites is about 10-15%. Another reason can be that the website owner probably made a lot direct visits by himself, and probably he showed the website to friends and family who directly typed the website address in the address bar.
I have to notice that in this case the Direct traffic is high due to the good website domain name too. It contains two words and it perfectly says what the website is about. In your project you have to be careful with choosing website domain name, it should be easy to pronounce, write and remember.
Organic search traffic comes from search engines (google.com, yahoo.com etc.). The website is too young to have free organic traffic from search engines, but it has unique product descriptions which makes it search engines friendly.
It is obvious here that the website owner has some paid Adwords campaigns to bring target customers to the website. A lot of people practice that when they have new website and no visitors, they push forward their website by setting up paid pay per click campaigns so they will make couple of sales. I recommend that because making some sales will stimulate you and will prove you that your website is working and there is perspective to work on it.
The reviewed website has some blog posts and all the content is made good so the engines can recognise that the website is about foosball tables. It is really important when you make drop shipping website to have unique products description so people who are searching in search engines will find you easier. It is important to make extra content like blog posts, videos, info graphics about the products you are selling and give more information to the customers. Most of people look for information about product before buying it so you can become the person offering this information for free and selling a product for revenue.
There is just 11% Social traffic to this website, which means that it is done just a little work about optimizing the website for social networks.
I strongly recommend to put some more effort in doing social media optimization, at least put social buttons in blog posts and items pages.
Financials
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| Month | Revenue | Costs | Profit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 15 | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Mar 15 | $1,529 | $250 | $1,279 |
| Apr 15 | $1,529 | $130 | $1,399 |
| May 15 | $1,779 | $30 | $1,749 |
The revenue is showing that the website has a lot of potential to grow. It hasn’t been done a lot and as you see from the revenue chart the website is making pretty good income to the owner.
Costs are not much, and primary costs are the advertising pay per click campaigns in Google Adwords. If a person or company is hired to maintain the website I doubt that there will be any profit, but as I said before the website can be managed by one person in his spare time.
Final Words
In my eyes this website is going good and it has a huge growth potential to expand suppliers, products and most of all profit. The niche is fine but if you decide to go in another niche with the same tactics I think you can be even more successful.
I have made a tutorial how to setup ecommerce website with Shopify and it will be easy for you to do that. The hard part is making the product descriptions and adding site content.
Another part is finding the right drop shipper (the place where you will get products). I personally don’t recommend any drop shipper lists or directories. Just choose your niche/product and find the product manufacturer (do google search for example), the best way is if it is local. You can start with just one brand product and after that find more drop shippers and expand your website, but I recommend to not go for more than 50 products.
Maybe it will be hard for you as newbie to understand every part of building stable traffic and keep the orders coming. But you have to be patient, make quality content, learn new stuff and grow your new business.
