Table of Content 

Introduction 

I. Product Research 

1. Come up with product ideas 

2. Source your winning product from AliExpress 

3. Steal the winning products from your competitors 

4. Find hot products on social media 

 

II. Conversion Rate Optimization 

5. Choose the best themes 

6. Build trust with reviews and recent sales notifications 

7. Create urgency and scarcity to boost conversion rates 

8. Facilitate order tracking 

9. Never overlook small things

 
1 
 
III. Grow Customers and Sales 

10. Acquire and convert potential customers with email marketing 

11. Leverage upselling and cross-selling 

 
12. Reduce cart and checkout abandonment 

13. Automate order fulfillment 

14. Improve customer retention 

 

IV. Facebook Advertising 

15. A/B testing formula that actually works 

16. Scale up without destroying Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) 

17. Retargeting 

V. Instagram Marketing 

18. Instagram Influencer​s 

19. Instagram Ads

Conclusion 
 
2 
 
 

Introduction 
Dropshipping model has become popular in the last half of the decade, thanks to its 
lower running costs than the traditional business model. However, dropshipping is not 
as simple as many of you might think, and could not bring success without a good 
plan. In fact, ​90%​ of dropshipping businesses fail within the first month. It’s 
intimidating, isn’t it? 

Thus, this guide comprises ​19 strategies that we find the most effective when it 
comes to dropshipping with AliExpress, being used by thousands of 6-figure 
businesses​ (including us, of course). It features tools and practical steps that any 
dropshippers can follow and get the result within a short period of time. In each of the 
sections, we will also introduce examples of successful dropshipping businesses for 
demonstration purposes.  

Below is the revenue dashboard of a dropshipping store in the last 30 days we 
ourselves have been running. 

Wanna achieve the same? Let’s do this! 

 
3 
 
 

Chapter 1 banners

 
4 
 
 For any business models, including dropshipping, products are the 
foundation that determines their overall business structure and growth 
strategy.  

 
In other words, everything you do should be based on which product(s) you sell. So, 
the first mission begins with this question: “​what product to sell to potentially yield the 
highest return?​” 

The term “​product​” is actually too broad to begin with, so intuitively browsing the 
product without a direction might make you go through lots of trial and error, taking 
away your two most valuable assets - time and money, as of a result.   

Thus, this section serves as a starting guide to your product search, giving you a 
comprehensive picture of where to start and what to look for.   

 
5 
 
1. Come up with product ideas 

Discover your areas of interest 

For whatever you do, you should do it with all your heart. Any long-lasting success will 
require persisting dedication. How can you be so devoted to something that you do 
not even like? 

That mentality applies to the business world as well. It’s always hard to market a 
product that you hate or have no knowledge of. Thus, on the white paper, you can start 
writing down about four to five categories that you have most interest. For example: 

● Technology 

● Fashion 

● Kids 

● Gardening  

 
   

 
6 
 
Key product criteria  

Now you have some of your favorite categories on the paper (hopefully, your 
customers will like them too), let’s cross out any of those that violates these the 
following primary product criteria: 

● Avoid things that require upfront quality control​ such as food, medicine, or 
skincare. This is because, in the dropshipping model, it’s difficult to verify the 
quality of the items before they are shipped to the customers, so you’d better stay 
away from anything that potentially risks your customers’ health directly from the 
consumption if you do not want to be involved in the costly lawsuit.  
 
● Do not always choose the best-sellers​. It is a common mistake that lots of 
people make as they believe that a best-seller will quickly bring them profits due to 
its high demand. The thing is, a best-seller means ​(1)​ ​it has a high competition 
that might harm your profit margin, ​(2)​ its high sales volume means​ it has reached 
the maturity stage​ in the product life cycle, so the next thing would be the 
decline.  
 
● Choose the products with good images​. A high-quality image can instantly 
catch customers’ attention and build trust at the same time. Using the right images 
possibly makes your customers believe your products are worth their money, even 
though they cannot touch or see those items in person. 
 
● Choose items that have low selling price.​ When it comes to dropshipping, 
impulse purchase is the major shopping behavior, meaning customers are not 
likely to buy something if they have to wonder about the price.  
 

For this product search particularly, we will start with other websites to screen out 
the most potential “candidates”, before we look them up on AliExpress.  

 
7 
 
 

Start with the trend  

As mentioned above, a best-seller does not necessarily come with a higher profit. 
Since running a dropshipping business does not require you to hold the inventory, it is 
easier to rotate what you are selling, meaning you can always catch up with the trend. 
Trending items allow room for growth and rising popularity for a certain period of time, 
thus if you are quick enough, you can take advantage of the trend before it reaches its 
maturity.  

There are a few different websites that you can take a look at what items are trending: 

Wish  

If you start off your dropshipping business on a tight budget, Wish should be your first 
destination of this journey because here you can find millions of items at huge 
discounts. Just type “trending” in the Search bar on the Wish homepage. Then, 
trending items will be shown with images, the original price, the discount in percent, 
etc. 

 
8 
 
  

You will also see the number of people who bought it. Needless to say, the higher, the 
better. As there are so many of them, to save your time and help you not to get lost, 
press ​Command + F​ for MacOS (​Ctrl + F​ for Windows) > Type in “​10000+​” or 
“​20000+​” > Enter. The highlighted part will indicate the products that match your 
search. Give them more of your attention.  

 
 

Tip​: You should only pay attention to anything that has more than 10,000 purchases 
with lots of positive reviews.  

 
9 
 
Then repeat the step above and only click on anything that has more than 10,000 
purchases. After conducting the search on Wish, we finally wrote down our top 5 
products:  
 

● Bluetooth headphones 
● Waterproof watch 
● Computer bag  
● Men wallet  
● Woven bracelets  

 
Now it is time to head over to AliExpress to sort out which one is the winner.  

2. Source your winning product from 

AliExpress  
The reason we do not suggest you first go search the trending items directly on 
AliExpress because it’s difficult to find trending products on this site: AliExpress 
doesn’t provide any options for users to filter its trending products. 

After figuring out the top 5 trending products on Wish, pick one and type the keyword 
on the search bar of AliExpress. For example:  

 
10 
 
  

As you can see, the search query “​waterproof watch​” has the highest number of 
565,020 results​, meaning this item is very popular and many people are buying it.  

 
11 
 
Sorting the search results by ​Best Match​ shows a pretty positive result of 4.8 star and 
3173 orders. But the fun does not end here. Waterproof watch only guides us on what 
to search on AliExpress, it is our job to find the most potential item in the “watch” 
category. Our next step is to sort the result by ​Orders ​and ​Rating​: 

It is not a problem if the results do not match our initial keyword because our goal is to 
find the winning dropshipping product. You can see that ​SOXY LED Digital Watch​ is 
currently our number 1 option, with 4.6-star rank and 11,750 orders. Also, it is sold by 
an AliExpress’s top-rated brand, as indicated by this symbol: 

 
12 
 
  

You should also choose a product that provides ​ePacket,​ which is the fastest yet 
affordable shipping method in the market. No one wants to order something from your 
store if they have to wait months to receive the items. For example, this SOZY LED 
Digital Watch offers ePacket at only $1.58 shipping cost, along with the tracking 
information. 

 
13 
 
  

Tip​: Do not forget to check the promotion part if you are about to order them in a 
bulk. 

Next thing to consider is the product’s description and images. In this case, if you 
continue to scroll down the product’s page, you can see that the manufacturer 
provides a detailed and comprehensive description, along with the high-quality images, 
for which you can use to make your product more attractive to buy.  

Since the customers cannot touch and try the product in person, a detailed product 
description along with good images is the only way to get your product sold.    

 
14 
 
3. Steal the winning products from 
your competitors 
 

It is always a good idea to learn from your competitors to see which items 
are sold well. We will use the “Watch” category as an example for this 
search.  

On Google Search bar, start typing in ​<your product><space>.myshopify.com​. For 

example, you can start typing “​watch .myshopify.com” 

 
15 
 
Then, click on any of the found stores to see what products they are selling. Since one 
store can sell many products, our advice to you is to discover which products are their 
top sellers. This will allow you to save time looking for winning products because these 
items are already proven to succeed by your competitors.  

Find out their bestsellers by simply placing the code 

“/collections/all?sort_by=best-selling” ​after their homepage link as below: 

Tip​: If all the prices are under $100, chances are these products are dropshipping 
ones. 

You can verify whether a product is from AliExpress or not by right-clicking on the 
product’s image to search its images on Google. If the search engine results page 
shows any AliExpress links, it’s a dropshipping item. On this AliExpress page, pay 
much attention to the price, number of orders, and reviews. If you find any product 
potential, you can import it into your store. 

 
16 
 
4. Find hot products on social media 
With more than ​2 billion users as of 2018​, Facebook is a great place to start observing 
how “hot” your product is. By that, we mean you should zero in on the number of 
views, likes, comments, reactions, and shares. The higher the engagement is, the 
better.  

Now you have an idea of how to find the winning dropshipping products, please keep 
in mind that there is no method out there guaranteeing a 100% success rate. The 
results depend on many other factors, such as your store layout, website optimization, 
and marketing. 

   

 
17 
 
Some cautions when choosing the suppliers on 
AliExpress 

A top-rated brand is not always the best choice. Hence, you have to make a lot of tests 
and check the information carefully before going with any brand. 

Let’s back to the previous example - SOXY LED Digital Watch, you can see that it is 
sold from one of AliExpress’ ​Top Brands​, which indicates high-quality items and 
features reliable service.  

Take a look at the product details - SOXY watch has the manufacturer’s information 
under its product’s description: 

As you can see, the communication and shipping speed factors are ranked below 
average. This is not essentially bad… 

 
18 
 
For instance, as depicted in the picture above, this particular top-rated brand’s 
communication and shipping speed are ranked below average. These numbers are not 
essentially bad because this supplier still has a pretty high percentage of positive 
feedback. To be sure, you would want to order some product samples in advance to 
see how accurate the estimated shipping time is and what the product looks like in 
reality.  

 
19 
 
Chapter 2 banner

 
20 
 
5. Choose the best themes 

Since Shopify and WooCommerce have been dominating dropshipping these 

days, in this part we will mainly focus on the most popular themes and 
templates for these two platforms.  

Before we start working on the most amazing themes for dropshipping businesses, 
take a look at the features that a top-notch dropshipping theme should provide. 

● Easy to install:​ ​A good theme for dropshipping should be able to get installed in 
a few minutes without the hassle and difficulties. 

● High degree of customization:​ ​Before you download or buy a theme for your 
dropshipping website, double check to make sure that it provides a high degree 
of customization. Things like custom plugins or pre-built add-ons make the 
themes more powerful, easy to tailor, and cost-saving in the long run. 

● Responsive design:​ ​Shopping on mobile devices has been blooming and 

dominating eCommerce conversions​ in recent years. That being said, being able 
to work well on both desktop and mobile devices is a must for any eCommerce 
themes. Fortunately, nowadays most of the themes on Shopify and Wordpress 
are mobile-friendly. 

● Overall theme speed:​ ​How many times have you visited a slow loading website 
and stayed there? We bet the answer would be zero or at most once. Needless 
to say, maintaining a fast page load speed is crucial not only to increase 
conversion rates but also to improve your ranking on search engines. In fact, 
many dropshippers consider this criterion the first priority. 

 
21 
 
 ● Aesthetically appealing design:​ ​A well-designed and classy store will help to 
build trust and increase conversion rates as well. Thus, choose a theme that 
looks professional and matches the vibe of your online store as well as your 
product niche. 

● Updates and support: ​The Internet is constantly evolving and changing. 

Therefore, you should select the best suitable theme which has ongoing 
updates and offers instant support in case you find yourself stuck in a 
problematic situation. You can also refer to the themes’ reviews from other 
website owners on ​Themeforest​ or ​Shopify Themes Market​ to make sure you 
choose a good theme. 
 

Now let’s jump into the best themes that successful dropshipper businesses usually go 
with. 

   

 
22 
 
Shopify 

a. Brooklyn by Shopify - Free 

There is no doubt that Brooklyn is one of the most popular themes on Shopify. The 
theme is 100% free, relatively light, mobile-friendly and highly customizable. Brooklyn 
has become the favorite theme not only for merchants who just start out but also for 
many experienced dropshippers across the world. 

Folsom & Co​ has built a 6-figure dropshipping business with Brooklyn theme 

However, the disadvantage is that the theme lacks many essential features for sales 
optimization such as product recommendations or announcement bars. You can get 
such features by installing apps or plugins, but this might be costly and sometimes 
increase the loading time as well. 

View demo​ | ​Get Brooklyn 

 
23 
 
b. Booster - From $179 

Thanks to a wide range of pre-built features, minimalist design, and fast load speed, 
Booster theme has become a perfect choice for merchants who are looking for a 
template for their dropshipping websites. 

Fact​: We have witnessed many ​general dropshipping stores​ make a killing with 
Booster theme only. 

View demo​ | ​Get Booster 

 
24 
 
c. Shoptimized - From $169 

Another option for dropshippers on Shopify to get the ball rolling: ​Shoptimized​. This 
theme provides a wide range of pre-built features, from stock countdowns, trust 
badges, custom sales notifications to fake social proofs.  

We used ​gtmetrix ​to analyze the load speed of a random product page of 
thatgooddeal.com​ (using Shoptimized theme) and the result was quite great: ​5.1s ​for 
the pages​ ​to be fully loaded. 

View demo​ | ​Get Shopimized 

 
25 
 
 

d. Turbo - From $350 

Costing up to $350 for a single license, there is no denying that Turbo is one of the 
most expensive Shopify themes in the market at the moment. 

However, according to many dropshippers' opinions, it’s totally worth the price. The 
theme was built by ​Out of the sandbox​ - one of the most credible theme providers in 
the eCommerce industry. Coming with stunning looks, a high degree of customization 
and a wide range of custom features, Turbo is obviously a good option for 
dropshipping businesses to build their empire.  

Seize Your Time​ has been thriving with Turbo theme 

View demo​ | ​Get Turbo theme 

 
26 
 
WooCommerce 

a. Flatsome - $59 

If you work long enough on WooCommerce, you probably experience at least once a 
website which is built with Flatsome. In fact, this theme is one of the easiest-to-use 
themes for dropshipping businesses in particular and Woocommerce websites in 
general. 

Are you not excel at coding skills? No problem, you are still able to get the most out of 
Flatsome. 

The theme comes with a revolutionary drag and drop responsive page builder so that 
you can create any catchy layouts without writing a single line of code. Besides, 
Flatsome provides a Live customizer to help you easily customize the theme in the way 
you want. 

View demo​ | ​Get Flatsome theme 

 
27 
 
Shopkeepers - $69 

The name speaks for itself, Shopkeepers is one of the most famous WooCommerce 
templates offering sleek designs and advanced themes options. Besides, Shopkeepers 
also comes with a drag and drop page builder, reliable customer support and regular 
updates. 

View demo​ | ​Get Shopkeeper theme 

   

 
28 
 
6. Build trust with reviews and recent 
sales notifications 
 

Needless to say, building trust for websites has been considered the #1 
priority for any dropshipping businesses. 

Why is that?  

It’s because most of the dropshipping products are made by strange brand names in 
China, which makes customers feel insecure and skeptical when buying such things. 
So how can dropshippers deal with this? 
 

Get more reviews from AliExpress 

Research​ showed “​85.57% of the participants stated that they read reviews often or 
very often before they purchase online.​” That’s why showcasing product reviews is 
always a never-get-old tactic to reassure customers about your product quality and 
convince them to make purchases. 

If you are selling dropshipping products from ​AliExpress​, gaining more reviews for your 
products is a breeze because you can take advantage of millions of reviews left by 
other shoppers on AliExpress.  

 
29 
 
  

Millions of reviews are generated by AliExpress’ buyers 

You can either manually copy these reviews to your store, or use a review app like 
Loox​ to import them into your product pages. 

 
30 
 
  

Ring to Perfection​ is using Loox reviews to import reviews 

Notify recent successful orders 

Another great way to make customers feel confident to buy is letting them know that 
many other shoppers are trusting and buying from you.  

Below is an example of how ​Myth of Eastern​ builds trust by showcasing their recent 
orders as the sales pop-ups on the left corner of the store. These sales notifications 
are generated based on their real sales data and have been updated every day with the 
help of ​Boost Convert app​. 

 
31 
 
  

Showcasing recent orders to build more credibility 

   

 
32 
 
7. Create urgency and scarcity to 
boost conversion rates 
 

Nearly 97% of people​ who visit an online store won’t buy in the first time! 

The reason is simple: shoppers just want to look around. There is no reason for them 
to have to buy something right away. They might think: “​Oh, this product is cool, I will 
consider buying it and will be back to get it later”​. The “​later​” then becomes a “​never​” 
after all and your conversion rate sucks. 

That’s why motivating shoppers to make an instant buying decision on their first visit is 
crucial if you want to make great money. Creating a sense of urgency and scarcity will 
help to push them over the edge, urge them to purchase immediately if they don’t want 
to miss out on the products or discounts. 

One of the most popular hacks that successful dropshipping entrepreneurs usually go 
with is adding a countdown timer and a stock countdown on their product pages. 
These widgets will show when the sales will end and how many product units there are 
in stock, sending a gentle nudge to customers: “My products are on deep discount 
and selling like hot cakes. You may have no second chance to get one if you don’t buy 
it right now!”  

 
33 
 
  

Creating urgency and scarcity with ​Boost Convert app 

By triggering this human inner psychology, you can manage to motivate impulse 
buying and improve your conversion rates. 

   

 
34 
 
Another trick to bring urgency to dropshipping websites is to ​offer customers a 
time-limited discount​. This kind of discount can encourage customers to check out 
immediately in order to get the deal. 

Below is an example from ​Animeprinted​. They have been offering 15% off for buyers 
whose cart value is more than $30. By implementing this tactic with the help of 
Checkout Boost​, the store managed to urge shoppers to check out right away and 
make ​an extra $12k in revenue​. 

Boost urgency with countdown timer offers by ​Checkout Boost 

   

 
35 
 
8. Facilitate order tracking 
One of the challenges that cause a headache to dropshippers is to find a fast yet 
affordable shipping method. However, even with ePacket - the most favorite shipping 
method of most of dropshippers, the shipping time might still take months.  

In fact, many merchants confessed that ​85% of their customers’ questions​ are 
related to delivery status of their orders. As the businesses grow, this problem can 
become a real nightmare, costing the store owners a lot of money and time to resolve. 

In this situation, how can six-figure dropshipping businesses survive and scale up? The 
answer is they use tools that allow their customers to keep track of the orders by 
themselves. 

   

 
36 
 
The first solution is to let customers track orders’ delivery status right on the 
thank-you/order page with ​Reconvert app​. Whenever customers click on the link in the 
order confirmation emails (what they received after placing the orders), they can 
immediately see the order tracking number as well as its delivery status. 

Allow customers to track their order status themselves on the thank-you pages 

   

 
37 
 
Another way to empower customers to keep updated on their orders is to create a 
tracking page where they can place their tracking number to check the delivery status. 
This is also a good way to build more trust for your dropshipping store because visitors 
can see you are transparent about the shipment. 

Ring to Perfection​ created a page for customers to track their orders with ​Aftership 

   

 
38 
 
9. Never overlook small things 
We have witnessed a bunch of dropshipping stores that don’t pay much attention to 
their additional pages such as About us, Return Policy, Terms of Service, etc. This 
could be a huge mistake what is crushing their conversion rates. 

A clear pattern you might see on all of the successful dropshipping stores we listed 
above, or even on other giant eCommerce sites (Amazon, eBay): they always have the 
well-designed About us, Contact us, Return Policy, Terms of Service, and FAQs pages. 
This small yet simple tactic has been playing an important role in improving their 
conversion rates and boosting their sales. 

That totally makes sense. Who would buy from a website without knowing how long 
the shipping time will take or how they can return defective items? 

In addition, the stores which do not have such pages may be at risk of getting banned 
by some payment gateway providers for eCommerce. 

That said, the additional pages we mentioned above should never be neglected.  

   

 
39 
 
If you are using Shopify, they already pre-made some templates of these page for you. 
By going to ​Shopify Dashboard ​>> ​Setting ​>> ​Legal​, you can seamlessly create 
content for these pages. 

 
Tip​: You can also copy content of the additional pages from other competitors and 
tweak them with your own terms and policies. 
 

   

 
40 
 
Banner Chapter 3   

 
41 
 
10. Acquire and convert potential 
customers with email marketing 
“​The Money is in the List.​”  

If you are involved with online marketing long enough, chances are you have heard this 
proverb at least once. According to ​Campaign Monitor​, email marketing drives ​$44 for 
every $1 spent​ (~4400% in ROI). Therefore, email marketing is a strategy that should 
never be overlooked if you want to build a profitable business. 

So what are the most profitable dropshipping businesses doing to leverage email 
marketing to make a killing? Let’s find out: 
 

Grow an email list 

As you might know, one of the great ways to build up an email list is offering a small 
incentive such as a discount code or free shipping in exchange for one customer’ 
email. This strategy is now being taken to an advanced level through using 
eCommerce gamification.  

Instead of handing out a coupon right on the storefront, ​Project Yourself​, a Shopify 
Plus business, chooses to make this process more fun and interactive: Customers can 
spin a lucky wheel to win many big deals (up to 70% off!) after entering their email 
addresses to join. 

 
42 
 
  

You can gamify your email subscription as what Project Yourself is doing with a tool like 
Sitekit​. 

Thanks to this gamification technique, Project Yourself managed to exponentially scale 

up their potential customer list and improve customer experience at the same time. 

After acquiring a number of emails, now it’s time to learn how the most successful 
dropshipping entrepreneurs turn them into your customers and make more sales.    

 
43 
 
Turn email subscribers to customers 

Since dropshippers are usually busy doing product research and managing advertising 
campaigns, they tend to cut corners by sending bulk emails to all customers. This, in 
the short term, may help to save time, but in the long-run could seriously harm their 
email conversion rates and damage the brand reputation.  

In addition, marketers report a ​760% increase in email revenue​ from segmented 

campaigns. Every customer is different from each other and thus should be treated 
differently according to their interests and shopping behaviors.  

So how can the most profitable dropshipping businesses deliver targeted email 
content but still stay productive? The answer is relying on email automation.  

While there is a wide range of tools to build an email marketing automation machine for 
a dropshipping business out there, we highly recommend you try ​Mailbot​. This app has 
been helping thousands of dropshippers to fully automate all of their email campaigns 
from automatically sending product recommendations, weekly re-engaging stale 
customers to recovering abandoned carts. 

 
44 
 
11. Leverage upselling and 
cross-selling 
For those of you who have no idea what upselling and cross-selling are: they both are 
currently the most effective tactics to increase average order value (AOV), accounting 
for an average of ​10-30%​ of eCommerce revenue. 

While upselling is simply the act of offering customers a better option (more expensive 
item), cross-selling is recommending them to buy more complementary items.  

 
Source: ​Livechatinc 

For example, if you intend to buy an iPhone 6 16Gb, the store salesperson might 
suggest you buy another iPhone 6 64Gb instead (​upselling​) or purchase more portable 
chargers, cables or headphones (​cross-selling​). 

   

 
45 
 
Use Product Bundling 

The most common way to increase AOV you might have seen is to bundle up products 
and sell them in combos. For instance, when a shopper views a computer, he/she will 
also see an option of buying a bundle of the computer and a mouse. By doing this, 
merchants will not only have more chances to increase their order value but also help 
customers to save time finding other items they might also need. 

The giant ​Amazon​ has been making millions of dollars with product bundling 

If you are looking for a solution to apply upselling and cross-selling for your 
dropshipping business, you can give our ​Boost Upsell​ a try. This tool empowers you to 
either manually create your own product bundles or automatically generate product 
combos based on your historical data and customer behaviors. 

   

 
46 
 
Incentivize Wholesales 

However, with the stores that only sell a few, or even only one product, how can they 
do upselling and cross-selling? Here is the solution: encouraging shoppers to buy 
more than one product unit in order to get a discount. The more units customers 
purchase, the higher the discount tier they will get. 

Attitudetoday​ encourages wholesales to boost their AOV and revenue 

Wanna try this strategy for your dropshipping business? You can get a tool like 
Discounted Pricing​ to add this feature to your site. 

   

 
47 
 
Showcase Product Recommendations 

You might have heard this before, but we’d like to reiterate: ​35% of Amazon’s revenue 
came from its product recommendation engine. In addition, according to ​Monetate 
research​, product recommendations can increase conversion rates in eCommerce by 
70%. 

Nowadays, it’s extremely difficult to find a successful eCommerce business that does 
not have any product recommendation sections on their site. That said, product 
recommendation has been considered a must when it comes to racking up online 
sales. 

Below is an example of ​Lukalula​ ​showcasing “Who bought this also bought” and “You 
might also like” recommendations at the bottom of every product page. This helps 
motivate their store visitors to have a look at other products, thus increasing the 
chance of them finding their favorite ones and making purchases.   

 
48 
 
 

Getting product recommendations for your dropshipping website has never been 
easier with the help of tools like ​Personalized Recommendation​. Backed with the latest 
big data technology and artificial intelligence, Personalized Recommendation will 
analyze your customer’s interests and behaviors, showing them the most suitable 
products that they might be interested in. 

   
 
49 
 
12. Reduce cart and checkout 
abandonment 

Leverage Facebook Messenger 

With a ​4x higher open rate and an 8x higher click-through rate​ in comparison with 
other traditional marketing channels, Facebook Messenger is undoubtedly an 
untapped potential for any dropshipping websites to engage with their customers. 

Project Yourself​ managed to reduce cart abandonment via Facebook Messenger 

channel: They add a Messenger widget under Add-to-cart button on their product 
pages. Every time a store visitor opts in the checkbox and clicks on the Add to cart 
button but doesn’t complete his/her order, he/she will receive a series of 3 messages 
on his Facebook Messenger account, motivating him to come back and finish his 
purchase. 

 
50 
 
 

Suggested tool: ​Recart 

   

 
51 
 
Utilize time-limited discounts and email automation 

Another useful tip for reducing cart abandonment rates preferred by millionaire 
dropshippers is to offer discounts. Every time a customer takes a specific action on a 
store such as adding something to cart or reaching a cart threshold, he/she will receive 
a discount that encourages him/her to complete the order instantly. 

By offering 10% off to customers whose cart value is higher than $30 on the cart page, 
AnimePrinted​ managed to ​7x their conversion rate​ and boost their sales by 45%. 

Suggested tool: ​Checkout Boost 

Next, do you remember the power of email automation that we previously mentioned in 
this eBook? Yes, you get the point!  

 
52 
 
Email marketing can be of importance when it comes to fighting cart abandonment. 
Never forget to have an automated email tool in hand when building your dropshipping 
website. 

Tip​: According to the latest reports, sending a sequence of 3 abandoned cart emails 
can boost the number of orders by 68.9% compared to sending only one email.  

The first one should be sent 1 hour after customers leave their cart, re-emphasizing the 
benefit of your products. Another can be sent after 1 day, creating urgency and 
scarcity for the products and the last one is after 3 days to offer a coupon/discount 
code. 

   

 
53 
 
13. Automate Order Fulfillment 
Oberlo​ has long turned up #1 on the list of top dropshipping apps on Shopify app 
store. However, as your dropshipping business grows with hundreds of orders, the 
manual fulfillment process with Oberlo might become extremely time-consuming. 
That’s indeed a pain in the neck for those who really want to scale their dropshipping 
business. 

Fortunately, dropshippers now can totally automate their order fulfillment with tools like 
Dropship Connector.​ Built with all of the current features of Oberlo, Dropship 
Connector also allows merchants to fulfill hundreds of orders on AliExpress within one 
click. 
 

 
 
Needless to say, this is a life-saver for dropshippers who are finding ways to automate 
their dropshipping business.   
 
54 
 
14. Improve customer retention 
You might have heard it time again and again. That’s much easier and less expensive 
to get an existing customer to make a purchase than acquiring a brand new one. 
Customer retention helps not only increase the number of repeat customers but also 
boost the profitability of each existing customer. 

Focusing on improving customer retention rates is currently an efficient strategy 

implemented by the many profitable dropshipping businesses. While there are many 
ways of boosting eCommerce retention rates, not all of them will work well for the 
dropshipping industry. 

So, what are the most effective ones? 

 
55 
 
Offer a discount or credit to return 

Offering discounts to existing customers is a great way to motivate them to come back 
and buy again from your brand. According to ​Market Wired​, once a customer comes 
back for a second purchase, they have a 54% chance of doing so again. Therefore, 
giving customers a discount after their purchase can do wonders for your retention 
rates in the long term.  

As you can see in the example above, Myth of Eastern re-engages with their loyal 
customers and offer a 20% off discount for them to prepare their Valentines gifts. If 
you use our ​Mailbot​, the app will help automatically send coupon codes to your loyal 
customers without you having to lift a finger.  

 
56 
 
However, the disadvantage of re-engaging with shoppers via emails is that more than 
two-thirds of them won’t open your emails and use the discounts (according to 
Mailchimp​, the average open rate in eCommerce is only 15.66%). 

Here comes another better solution: Let customers know the discount right after they 
place an order, for example showing them the code right on the thank-you pages. By 
doing this, you can be 100% sure that your customers will be aware of your special 
treat and then redeem it on their next order. 

Displaying discount codes right on thank-you pages to improve retention rates 

Suggested tool: ​Checkout Boost 

   

 
57 
 
Improve customer support 

In addition to offering discounts, being responsive to customers questions is a good 

way to gain more credibility, make customers more satisfied and boost customer 
retention. Below is the example of Myth of Eastern using a ​Free Facebook Messenger 
Live Chat​ to respond to their customers’ inquiries instantly. Their customers can easily 
chat with the store via their Messenger account without having to create a ticket. You 
can also get this feature for your dropshipping store for free with ​Quick Facebook Chat 
app. 

 
58 
 
Banner Chapter 4

 
59 
 
In order to build a successful dropshipping business, there is no doubt that Facebook 
Ads is absolutely a must. Nowadays there are tons of Facebook Ads guides out there 
teaching dropshippers to run a profitable ad, but it’s evident that there is no 
one-size-fits-all formula that works for all dropshipping businesses.  

We have tested and tried tons of new ways of running Facebook Ads, and now will be 
sharing with you which ones actually work and help us to build our own six-figure 
dropshipping businesses. 

Note​: We will only share with you advanced tips and tricks because we assume that 
you are already familiar with the basic Facebook Ads. If you are new to this 
advertising platform, refer to ​this Facebook Ads definite guide​ first. 

   

 
60 
 
15. A/B Testing formula that works 
After importing several products into your store, you now have to create some ads to 
find out which one is your profitable product. Here are a few things you should 
remember when it comes to testing products. 

Create a number of $5/day adsets (Website Conversion - Purchase) with a number of 
different interests and behaviors to test. You can come up with many useful customers’ 
interests and behaviors for your ad targeting by going to ​Ad Manager​ >> ​Audience 
Insights 

 
61 
 
Pro tip:​ We usually get better results with adsets that target people being ​Engaged 
Shoppers. ​You can find this in the behaviors field when setting up Facebook adsets. 

 
It doesn’t really matter if your adset budget to test is $5, $10 or $50/day, the higher it 
is, the sooner you get the test results. You might wonder “how do I know which is a 
profitable adset”? It depends on your breakeven Return on Ad spend (ROAS). 

Breakeven ROAS = Product Sale Price / (Product sale price - Product cost) 

For example, if an item is sold at $100, and the product cost is $40, its breakeven 
ROAS = 100/(100-40) = 1.67 

Now go to ​Facebook Ads Manager​ > ​Columns ​> select ​Purchase ROAS​ to show 
this metric. If the ROAS of an adset is below your breakeven, kill it. If it is above, keep it 
and scale up. You will find out how we actually scale up our profitable Facebook ads in 
the next part. 

The ad format that works best for us all the time is video ads. We usually create our 
video content by going to ​Fiverr​, searching for keywords such as “product video” or 
“product demo”, choose some people who are suitable for being models and then 
send them our products so they can shoot a short video for us.  

Remember to choose a relatively fast shipping method so that the models can quickly 
get the sample items. 

 
62 
 
  

Bluecrate​ has succeeded in running Facebook Ads with their own videos 

Note​: It might be much easier if you get the product videos from your suppliers or 
other competitors. However, the videos that are created on your own usually bring 
better results as well as helping you avoid copyright infringement. 

 
63 
 
16. Scale up without destroying 
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) 
When we find a profitable product, it’s time to sell it to as many people as possible and 
make big money. However, you might know that scaling up doesn’t just mean you 
raise the budget and then money flood in.  

Firstly, with a profitable 5$/day adset, we duplicate the adset in order not to affect its 
performance and wait in 2-3 days. If the new adset is still making a profit, do it over 
again and again. If it’s still profitable, try increase the budget and test the product with 
other interests or lookalike-purchased audience. 

When the adset reaches $400/day, try using manual bid. Manually bid 2-3 times the 
cost per purchase (CPP) suggested by Facebook and then carefully keep an eye on it. 
If the adset is exhausting its budget too quickly, lower the bidding price and vice versa. 

 
64 
 
  

17. Retargeting 
96% of customers​ won’t buy on their first visit. That’s why remarketing is crucial when 
it comes to selling anything online.  

According to our data, retargeting campaigns always have the best ROAS 
rate compared to all other types of Facebook Ads campaigns. 

Here are some of our best practices when running retargeting Facebook Ads: 

Audience​: Targeting these types of audience usually bring good results:  

● Website visitors within the last 30 days 

 
65 
 
 ● People who watched 75% of videos 
● People added to cart in 7 days but did not initiate checkouts 
● People initialed checkouts but did not complete their orders 

Ad format​: Dynamic ads works well for Facebook retargeting because it showcases 
exact products that customers viewed and were interested in when they were on your 
store. Refer to ​this tutorial​ if you don’t know how to set up Facebook Dynamic Ads. 

Content​: Add a discount code into your content, let’s say 15% off, to motivate 
customers to come back. 

Project Yourself​ use Dynamic ads for their retargeting campaigns 

 
66 
 
 

 
67 
 
Banner Chapter 5

   

 
68 
 
With almost ​1 billion active users per month​ as of June 2018, ​Instagram​ proves itself as 
a second vigorous platform after Facebook to build awareness, recruit followers, and 
boost sales for all the businesses.  

In fact, statistics also show that the brand engagement rates on Instagram are ​10x 
higher​ than that on Facebook, meaning people pay attention to the ads and proceed 
with some sorts of activities. Plus, as more than ​60%​ of users discover new products 
through Instagram, introducing your products on Instagram is likely to be successful.  

In this ebook, you will learn about the two major advertising tactics that 99% 
of successful dropshipping businesses often implement to drive sales: 
Instagram Influencers and Instagram Ad. 

   

 
69 
 
18. Instagram Influencers 
From the statistic above, there is no surprise that ​92% of marketers​ choose Instagram 
as the most powerful platform for influencer advertising. Now, let’s look at some useful 
tips to make a sales-driving advertising campaign on this platform. 
 

Choose micro-influencers over macro influencers and 

mega influencers 

Influicity​ defines those terms as below:  

● Micro influencers: their followers range between 1k - 10k  

● Macro influencers: their followers range between 10k - 999k 
● Mega influences: their followers must be over 1 million 

Why you should prioritize micro-influencers?  

Having millions of followers does not necessarily mean a good thing. Macro-influencers 
have too much of the exposure to massive body of general audiences, thus they tend 
not to focus on a niche market and unlikely to reply to people’s messages.  

Besides, the cost of getting macro or mega influencers featured your products can be 
incredibly expensive, and definitely not a good idea if you plan to minimize the costs.   

In contrast, ​84% of micro-influencers charge less than $250​ for a branded Instagram 
post. Even though they have fewer followers, their page features significantly higher 
engagement. Their Instagram page focuses on specific areas of interests, thus have 
quite a niche body of followers.  

 
70 
 
For example, Sam Bella - the owner of ​the travel crush​ page, defines herself as a 
traveler so she has a niche here. If you are selling something that is related to travel, 
you can contact her for a promotion purpose.  

@​thetravelcrush 

Another reason to choose micro-influencers like Bella is that she spends time replying 
to people’s comments, so it is easier for her to build trust, gain credibility, and educate 
audiences about your product if needed. Doing so can reduce the bias when it comes 
to sponsored products as her thoughtful reviews can help them understand more 
about your product’s usage as well as its pros and cons.  

  

 
71 
 
  

@​thetravelcrush 

   

 
72 
 
Where to find micro-influencers?  

The easiest method to find them on social media. Start typing something like “​travel​” 
and you will see the volume of posts for each hashtag: 

Be careful when you opt for a hashtag that has the highest volume of posts, because it 
takes lots of time to screen out the influencers whose styles, and interests, closely 
align with your brand. Ideally, hashtags that have an average of 21-24 characters 
appear likely to be more successful, as they usually target the niche market. 

 
73 
 
If you have already known some influencers, you can expand the search by first 
looking at the hashtags they commonly use. Other bloggers who are similar to them 
might use those hashtags. 

@​thetravelcrush 

Or you can click on the drop-down button to see some suggested Instagram pages: 

 
74 
 
Influencer Marketing Ideas 
 

We only give you the ideas which are the best matches for a dropshipping 
model.  

Sponsored Post 

This is certainly the most typical marketing idea out of them all. For the fact that it 
works, in terms of increasing brand awareness, building trust, and ultimately driving 
sales, many businesses have invested seriously into this advertising idea. There are 
two ways you can do it: 

(1) Quick introduction​:​ Simply send them some samples and give them a brief 
overview of your brand and the product itself, then ask the influencer to write a 
short post with a link to your site and include a hashtag that you wish to use. 

 
Appolowear​ sponsored a post on Instagram page of @​menslaw 

 
75 
 
 (2) In-depth review​: Still send them a sample but this time, you ask them to use 
the product for a certain amount of time, then carefully write a longer-than-usual 
post to review the product. The content should be somewhat neutral as you do 
not want the audience to feel the post is biased. By that, we mean it can have 
the majority of information to be positive, while still mixed with a little bit of 
drawback.

Giveaways  

We all know what it is - another very popular marketing idea in which you sponsor the 
content and give some products to the influencers. Their jobs are to write a post about 
the products, describe the conditions of the giveaways, and include some hashtags for 
references.  

Usually, consumers who enter the giveaways and want to win, have to perform some 
specific activities requested by the influencer, such as following your page and liking 
the post.  

   

 
76 
 
19. Instagram Ads 

Let personalization and scalability increase the reach 

It can be unlikely for a French person to click an ad that is written in English, especially 
when the product on the ad is not a widely known product, like a pair of Nike shoes. 
Thus, if you are aiming for those countries whose language is not English, we highly 
recommend you create your ad in different languages accordingly.  

Doing so not only helps catch customers’ attention more easily but also makes them 
feel like they are not seeing just random, spammy ads on social media, which in turn 
increases the chance for higher click rate.  

One of the outstanding examples is Ross Madden whose sales increased by almost 
42% in just a month, simply by ​changing the language on the ad ​and target it to 
different countries.  

Use Instagram stories to receive full attention  

According to ​Ross ​who was successful with his dropshipping business selling charcoal 
beauty products, advertising on Instagram is brilliant because an ad appears “​in 
between Stories. It covered the entire screen. All I had to do was to swipe up if I 
wanted to buy it.​”  

 
77 
 
  

Source:​ Rove Hotels 

Isn’t it one of the most convenient ways to boost sales? Your job is to tailor the ad to 
match the preferences of your target market. With ​400 millions​ watching Instagram 
stories every day, this is for sure one of the most robust advertising platforms.  

   

 
78 
 
Conclusion 
If you read the guide till now, congrats! You now already know the best-performing 
strategies, from product research, conversion optimization to marketing, that most of 
the six-figure dropshipping businesses out there implement for their own websites. Try 
applying them yourself right now to take your dropshipping businesses to the next 
level. 

Since each business model varies from one to another, performing careful research 
and testing to see which strategy fits yours is highly recommended. 

If you have any questions or feedback on this ebook, don’t hesitate to shoot us an 
email to ​support@boostflow.com​. We are always here for you. 

Thank you for your support! 

 
79