I'm the former President of Zendrop. Here's some insider tips + AMA

I recently resigned as President of Zendrop after a successful run growing both revenue and the team 10x over 3 years. It was an amicable departure and the team is still like family to me. After a successful run, I simply decided to take the win and pursue an opportunity to build a new platform to solve some serious problems I've seen with the make money online space. Because of my operating, analyst, and investment banking background + lots of exposure to dropshippers, creators, partners, and competitors, I gathered some insider info that could be useful to people in the space which I'll share with you all here. # For beginners * **Test more products.** * This sounds pretty obvious, but for whatever reason, people still don't do it. * We can see the data on how many products people linked to their store vs how many sales they made. * The reason 90%+ of dropshippers never make a sale is because 90%+ of dropshippers only connect 0 - 1 products to their Shopify store before quitting. * If you experiment with 0 products, your chances of making a sale are 0. If you experiment with 1 product, your chances of making a sale are still basically 0. * The probability curve for chances of making a sale jump exponentially for every additional product you test up to about 10, then they rapidly increase until about 25, then increase modestly until about 50. After 50 products the probability of making a sale still trends upward until you reach 100. For the few people who have linked 100 products, almost all of them have made a sale. * **You can get very high-quality courses for free.** * This might also sound obvious given how readily available information is, but let me explain a little more. * Psychology makes people believe that things that cost more are more valuable. With courses, in the past, at times, that may have been true. But affiliate marketing compensation has changed the landscape. * Before, people who made the best education would charge for their course that they put their heart and soul into. Rightfully so. * Today, by incorporating signing up for various tools into the course, creators can make MORE money by getting EVERYONE in and having them all sign up for these tools than they could by getting fewer people to pay to join a course. * Because of this, the largest creators would work hard to make their best courses ever, then give them away for free. * **AI store builders are great resources, but alone, they won't make you rich.** * These AI store builders are tools, not money printers. * Setting up a Shopify store for the first time can be very confusing and take a lot of time. These AI builders do a great job of getting you set up and ready to rock. * However, you will still need to need to test many ads, swap out products, make changes and so forth. * **You're going to start hearing Wix name a lot more.** * They're making a big push with massive affiliate commissions to try to take some market share from Shopify. * They are paying larger fees and paying faster than Shopify to make their affiliate program very appealing. * Because of this, more creators will be talking about them and incorporating them into their courses. * Frankly, I am not familiar enough with Wix to know if it's better or worse than Shopify, but I'd be very surprised if they have even a fraction of the resources for beginners in tools and education that Shopify does in their ecosystem, so just be aware of that. * **Some creators are, unfortunately, scammers. But others are truly fantastic.** * I'm going to restrain myself from naming names, but I can tell you a few patterns to look out for. *(Note, that some good creators use these tactics as well, so they're simply red flags. If someone does one of these things it doesn't mean 100% they're a bad actor. Just something to look out for.)* * **They flex their lifestyle, but not their knowledge.** * If they post a Lamborghini, then say the secret to you having one too is just behind a paywall, then they’re probably selling a dream, not a way to reach it. * Good coaches give all the value away for free, then charge to help you actually do it. * Lifestyle sells a lot because it's what everyone wants, so the good and the bad will lean into this. The red flags come when they ONLY lean into it and it's super materialistic. * Look out for leased and rented super cars. A local company here in Miami called Carrio has great deals on low-mile leases that many creators take advantage of. They basically get a good deal to access a super car for low cost and then use it as a marketing tool to build credibility. * The reality is many people rent cars they can't afford to try to market it as credibility in hopes that it will pay for itself. * **They show you their sales, but not their expenses.** * They'll say “check it out, I made $50 thousand dollars”, but they won't show you that they spent $60 thousand dollars on ads to get it. * Showing you revenue without profit is just a marketing tactic. * They can lose money on the business they teach because they actually make their money selling you courses. * One other example is a bunch of creators teamed up on a store and basically had like 15 people working on one store. They'd combine their revenue into one Shopify account and all market it as if they individually were doing super well for very little effort when really you had like 15 people all contributing small amounts of revenue. * **They don’t practice what they preach.** * If this makes so much money, why’d they stop doing it? * Because they're not making money from what they teach. They're making money from teaching it to you. * **Find out what real students actually say.** * People can fake five-star reviews and testimonials but no one fakes one-star reviews and complaints. * Check review sites and forums (like Reddit, X, and Moonlite), and look for patterns in the complaints because that's what they don’t want you to know. # For larger sellers * **Chinese suppliers will always try to screw you.** * Yes, I know it's "your boy" that you've known for years. Yes, even he will screw you if he has the opportunity. * At Zendrop, we had to be on top of China at all times. Every inch they could take, they would take. Their culture is to do what they can and get away with it. If they get caught though, they're usually pretty good about reconciling to maintain your business. But it is on you to catch them. * **Here are some hidden ways Chinese suppliers will screw you:** * **Quoting you for one shipping line, then using another without telling you.** * Shipping is the largest cost for dropshippers. More than product cost. To win deals, Chinese agents will say they're using the best shipping line like Yun Express, then use a much lower quality and cheaper one that has lower delivery rates and longer shipping times. * To be extra sneaky, sometimes they'll ship a percentage on one shipping line then ship every few on another to make it harder to detect. * **Sending you high quality samples, shipping out low quality products.** * They will send you a good sample to want to work with them. But then as you ramp up, they start shipping out lower quality products. * Similar to the shipping line issue, they will sometimes rotate between high quality and low quality to make it harder to detect. * **Switching to cheaper manufacturers without telling you.** * This is related, but after you got quoted and set up a whole operation, the Chinese agents may completely change everything on you without asking. * This could impact quality and greatly disrupt operations. * **Sending out fake tracking codes.** * This problem is actually what led to Zendrop being founded. * Jared, the founder of Zendrop, was doing high volume of sales. One day he started getting hit with complaints that people weren't receiving products. * He checked and they all had tracking codes so he didn't know what the issue was. * Eventually, he realized that his supplier was sending out fake tracking codes and then completely ghosted him. * The took all his revenue and didn't ship anything out. * People were calling him a scammer and he had to issue all these refunds himself out of his own pocket. It was a mess. * That's why he started Zendrop, so he could be the US-based trusted supplier. * **There's actually more, but Brad, the COO of Zendrop and Roman, the Lead Sales Rep are most knowledgable about this stuff.** * You can reach them by reaching out to the Zendrop sales team and I'm sure they'll hop on a call for free to chat if you're actually making sales. * **Partner with a US warehouse for returns.** * The shipping cost to send something back to China is so high that it doesn't make sense to process returns oversees. * Partner with a US warehouse to receive returns. * **PRO TIP:** Build up an inventory and use that to start selling on places like TikTok Shop and other platforms that require US tracking codes. * **Purchase safety stock as you scale.** * I know, I know, the whole point of dropshipping is to not have to buy inventory. * However, if it takes 20 days to produce a new batch of products and you get sales for 20 days, you'd much rather have 20 days of inventory stocked up while the manufacturer cranks out another batch. * The ROI on safety stock was high for our users. * You'd rather need it and not have it than have it and not need it. * **Line up backup factories.** * Similar to safety stock, some factories may just stop producing. * It's good to have backups ready to go at all times when you're at high volume. * **Brand as quickly as you can.** * This is where you can build actual equity and trust with an audience. * It's a differentiator that can keep you selling one product for a long time instead of constantly having to find a new winner. * **Look for buyers for your brand.** * Dropshipping is fun and all, but it's a very unpredictable and volatile business. * If you can find a buyer, take the W and start something new. I hope you all found this helpful! # Happy to take questions: AMA