Body
Disclaimer: Im not a ecommerce specialist, I dont sell or want to sell any course or want to acquire any clients.
Here is my story:
Im from Pakistan & a doctor by profession in my 3/4th year of uni (2019/2020) i came across a couple of videos of an online course seller regarding amazon and ecommerce, i have very intrigued that a person can earn from home by selling products online but that online course seller kind of discouraged dropshipping (to do me too on amazon listing) so my mind went towards it and he mostly advised people to make brands, anways i was a student and didnt have investment to make a brand or to sell in stock so i forgot the idea of doing ecommerce but it seemed to be always there at the back of my mind.
2022 came and I graduated and became a doctor. I had a good 5-6 months before my intership had to start, being alone in my basement and not having any money earned by myself made me depressed (Thank God for everything).
I had to do something and in 2022 Facebook marketplace dropshipping (USA) was in trend those days. Having a little knowledge i got regarding ecommerce from that online influencer, i decided to give it a shot. Made my firsy new USA based facebook acccount by paying $20 for a VPS for a month. Account went directly into suspension and appeal rejected (probably because i didn’t make any cookies and hastened to make the account, bought another vps tried to make cookies then created a facebook account, account was created but then to warm up the facebook account i commented and sent friend requests to alot of people in a very short time (again a rookie mistake i know) and my account got suspened again. I literally made around 7-8 accounts all ended up getting suspended sooner or later.
Then I approached a old school friend who was living in the US, I pitched him the idea with a 50/50 partnership. He was willing to work with me (share his ssn / bank account etc) , but he wasnt willing to share his personal fb account.
I asked him to create a facebook account for me from his laptop in US. He made it and it didn’t get suspended straight away, so i warmed the account, next step was to apply for the marketplace shop and get approved, i submitted his details but unfortunately it was never approved, repeated the process again and this time my shop got approved for marketplace. I started listing products off of amazon, never received any order and out of nowhere it got suspended again. I was heartbroken at that moment. All of my hardwork which i put in in past 2 months gave me nothing in return.
During all this time wherever i saw in videos in groups everyone used to say that USA is the biggest market, it has the strongest currency so always do business in usa market, but then i asked myself why do i not try Australia where my cousin lives. But facebook marketplace wasnt available in australia, so i thought why not try ebay? (I never thought of amazon because it is and had a lot of issues with dropshipping and i could only do dropshipping because of no money)
So i pitched the idea of ebay dropshipping to my cousin in australia.
Anyways, my cousin told me that he has an active ebay individual account on which he sold some belts a few years ago which he bought from pakistan so it had 100-150 positive feedbacks and was above standard, i was got really happy when i heard this as i wont have to build the account from start, so he told me he has planned a trip to Pakistan next month and he will discuss it further in person. He came, we discussed and decided to do a 50/50 partnership. he shared his accounts. I listed a few products off of Kmart, it was the best site for cheap products and also is integrated with onepass so free deliveries just for 4aud per month. Got my first sale after 2-3 weeks (A $10 mobile car holder). This was my first order after 3-4 months of learning, implementing and hoping that maybe dropshipping can make money. I started growing the account hired a VA as now my internship had started and couldnt give enough time to ebay.
My cousin also saw my struggles and very graciously decided to give me 100% of profits. Then we created a Business ebay account on his ABN and i started that from scratch, both accounts got top rated and i was very happy. Then i started listing amazon products without uploading any tracking ids and was receviing good amount of orders. Then i came across bluecare and it was the perfect tool for converting amazon tracking ids 12-15 months in I was making 1000-1200 aud per month. This was great for me as my housejob was unpaid and during my Housejob (Thank God for everything)
Then in 2024 suddenly ebay stopped accepting Bluecare tracking ids and I knew this was the end of ebay dropshipping as before i started using bluecare i had a few issues with customers where they received the package but scammed me and I lost the case as didnt have the trackings uploaded.
I knew i couldnt risk the accounts with dropshipping without tracking ids or getting scammed (top rated with good amount of positive feedbacks)
By now i was left with 300 AUD. i knew i had to do something else. i thought of doing shopify dropshipping, I knew very little about shopify, just knew that I will have to find a product, make a website and then make ads and then will have to run ads on facebook. Having just 300AUD I knew if it didnt work out then I will lose this last 300 in ads. So i changed my thought process, i started the shopify dropshipping with the mindset of learning. I thought that doing it will give me something new to learn in ecommerce.
I started to watch videos on youtube. Everyone there used to say that first 10 shopify dropshipping stores are a failure and you need atleast $100 to test 1 product via meta ads.
A ad of a product; very unique and helpful, came across my facebook feed in pakistan. It perfectly fitted the product for dropshipping. I called my australian cousin to ask him to order the product from aliexpress so check the quality and shipping time and to my amaze she replied she had ordered this exact product 1 day ago! I knew this was a sign from God. (Thank God for everything)
I created a shopify account on abn of my australian cousin
I saw the pakistani website of the product and tried to copy it, copied their theme, text, images etc. and did all of it by watching 100’s youtube shopify dropshipping videos. Finally website was ready.
I edited video ads from taking a lot of clips from product video on meta ad library / reddit / tiktok. And created some really good ads (I was kind of good at editing videos since my teens)
I created a facebook page, pixel, created ad account and started running ads. WITHIN 10 mins of my first ad campaign i received an order of 80 AUD, someone bought 3 qty of my product and my profit was 50 AUD. THAT DAY MAYBE I HAD PROCASTINATED MYSELF TO BEING A MILLIONAIRE SOON.
3 months in, I made 7000 AUD and now i was spending 200 aud daily making a net profit of 200 aud daily.
All this time after housejob ended i was not doing any job, just hustling in ecommerce and studying for my international exams.
A friend of mine from housejob had ky cv from 1 year ago when I thought of applying somewhere and gave him ky cv, anyways he submitted my cv to his hopsital hr after 1 year when a vacancy opened and i was called by HR that your friend has submitted you cv please come for an inviterview, I thought i was making 200 aud per day why do i need to do a job? But i went to the interview as i would have felt bad for my friend who submitted the cv for me and i didnt show up. I did the interview and was selected for the job. I was asked to join on Monday.
On monday i woke up 7am, was doing breakfast and i received an email. An email which would change my life. It was from a law firm based im australia, I was getting sued for copyright infringement because I used pictures of company which was selling same product in australia.
And they claimed that i had used their images on my website. Remember i told you guys that i copied a pakistani website? Turns out images on that website were taken from the company which threatened to sue me.
They told me to shut down the website immediately, and send the data of sales revenue and profit. If not then i will be sued for all the damages.
And by sueing me they were basically suing my cousin on whose details was the shopify store made. That was one of the most stressful day of my life.
I called my cousin told him the whole story, and he was very supportive. (Btw Im truly blessed to have such cousins in my life. I really respect and have a lot of love for him, i always in my prayers)
(Do you guys realise how God got my back? God knew that this issue will come in my life and i will lose my source of income so he made arrangments so i get a job, this turned out not to just help me financially but also helping me to cope up with the stress by getting out of my house and meeting people THANK GOD FOR EVERYTHING)
I took my website & my fb page down immediately. I used chatgpt, reddit, blogs, youtube, facebook groups for my options but everyone told me i had to comply and had no other option. I sent them every detail of revenue profit etc, after 1 week I received confirmation that they recevied it, and after 1 month they replied that they have went through everything and appreciate that i had taking the website down immediately and told me that the damages i have caused are A$650000 but they have forgiven me and only asked me to pay the legal fee which was around A$5500. THAN GOD i had that amount in my balance so i paid it and got done with it.
Meanwhile all of this issue i got an oppertunity with my old ebay VA of going for stock model on my ebay accounts in the US.
We started it and it was going fine but due to some policy violations of the products being not 100% authentic both of our accounts got permanently suspended and ebay was not even listening to our appeal (Which we were never expecting as both of them were top rated and had plenty of sales.
Now I have started my Shopify store again and THANK GOD all of it is going well. I know i will face more challenges in future but I have my faith in God that he will get me out of any problems that I face and give back to me in more abundance than before.
Today sitting infront this old laptop I thought to myself how much have I earned from this old dusty laptop which was basically disposed by an IT company which my brother worked in and he gave it to me back in 2021.
I went through all of my sheets and found out. Thank God for everything.
I learnt each and everything from Youtube, Reddit and facebook group posts. If i can do it with no background in ecommerce then i believe anyone with a laptop a phone and God by his side can do it.
My cousins played a very crucial role in everything and I will always be in their debt.
If you have similar family members in your family then good! If not then try to become one yourself.
If you have read this far, Thank you! i know it got pretty long, I hope atleast someone will get inspired by my story.
Top comments (8)