374: Inside The Crazy World Of High Ticket Dropshipping With Earnest Epps

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You’re listening to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into the strategies they use to grow their businesses. Today, I’m thrilled to have Ernest Epps on the show. And Ernest is the founder of high ticket e-commsecrets.com where he teaches high ticket drop shipping and he runs a successful drop shipping store. Now, those of you who followed me for quite a while now know that I’m not a huge fan of drop shipping as a long-term business model, but Ernest has made it work by drop shipping high ticket and expensive products online.

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So in this episode, we’re gonna learn how it is done. But before I begin, I wanna thank Postscript for sponsoring this episode. Postscript is my SMS or text messaging provider that eyes for e-commerce, and it is crushing it for me. I never thought that people would want marketing text messages, but it works. In fact, my tiny SMS list is performing on par with my email list, which is easily 10x bigger. Anyway, Postscript specializes in text message marketing for e-commerce, and you can segment your audience just like email. It’s an inexpensive solution, converts like crazy,

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and you can try it for free over at postscript.io slash Steve. That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. I also want to thank Klaviyo who is also a sponsor of the show. Now are you working around the clock to build the business you’ve always imagined and do you want to communicate with your fast growing list of customers in a personalized way but in a way that gives you time to work on the rest of your business? And do you ever wonder how the companies you admire, the ones that redefine their categories do it? Companies like Living Proof and Chubbies. Well they do it by building relationships with their customers from the very beginning

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while also evolving in real time as their customers’ needs change. These companies connect quickly with their customers, collect their info, and start creating personalized experiences and offers that inspire rapid purchase, often within minutes of uploading their customer data. Now, Klaviyo empowers you to own the most important thing for any business, the relationship between you and your customers and the experiences you deliver from the first email to the last promotion. To learn more about how Klaviyo can help you with your own growth, visit klaviyo.com slash mywife.

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That’s KLAVIO.com slash my wife. And then finally, I wanted to mention my other podcast that I released with my partner Tony. And unlike this one where I interviewed successful entrepreneurs in e-commerce, the Profitable Audience podcast covers all things related to content creation and building an audience. No topic is off the table and we tell it like how it is in a raw and entertaining way. So be sure to check out the Profitable Audience podcast on your favorite podcast app. Now on to the show.

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Welcome to the My Wife Quarter Job podcast. Today I’ve got my buddy, Ernest Epps on the show and Ernest is someone who I recently met on a panel for the Small Biz Aid virtual event where we discussed how to compete with Amazon. He’s the founder of high ticket ecomsecrets.com and ErnestEpps.com where he teaches high ticket dropshipping. Now the term dropshipping gets thrown around a lot and it actually has a negative connotation sometimes in the ecom world, but Ernest specifically focuses on higher ticket items for dropshipping.

03:00
And similar to me, he’s not a believer in dropshipping from China, Amazon dropshipping, or any of the get rich quick schemes that you see on the internet. And in this episode, you will learn what it takes to get started with high ticket dropshipping and how Ernest got started with this e-commerce business model. So Ernest, how are doing today, I am spectacular. So Ernest, before we start, give me the quick background story on how you got started with dropshipping, specifically high ticket dropshipping.

03:28
Yeah, so what ended up happening, I was climbing the corporate ladder like I think a lot of us do in our career. And, really, I went that direction because that was the process my mom kind of instilled, right, which was, you know, the traditional go to school, graduate, then go back to school and get a degree and then pray that you get a good job and work there for the next 40 plus years. I like to call that the work until you die program.

03:58
Right. So I I was brought up the same way. Yeah. Oh, OK. Gotcha. Yeah. So I mean, that was traditionally like the trajectory that was kind of going. And then, you know, I was working at a marketing firm and I was a sales district sales manager for them. And I was overseeing seventy seven locations from South Carolina to Massachusetts on a project that we were working on for a multibillion dollar company. And I was helping them crush it. And all of a sudden, the company was going through a restructure.

04:26
And I happened to be restructured out of the restructure. And that personally for me broke my soul. And I say that because I mean, it really hurt me something deep. mean, I cried like a baby. I had never done that before. Right. Yeah. And it was because it was my dream job. Right. Like it was my dream job of

04:48
you know, where I wanted to be. And anyone at that time, they would ask me, I’m like, man, I’m going to work here. I’m going to work here till I die. Like, this is it. I’m to become the CEO of this company. Like that was my game plan. And I just lost it just in an instance. Right. And so that made me aggressively start looking to do something else. And to the point you kind of made early on, I started researching dropshipping. Right. And, know, I seen that, oh my gosh, there’s so many different ways to do this.

05:14
And so that kind of made me really nervous, uh, kind of getting started. And so what I did was I bought a lot of different programs, right? And I learned about the different models of dropshipping. So drop shipping direct from China, retail arbitrage, Amazon, FBA, uh, white label and private label. And I was just like, man, you know, there’s a lot of different ways to kind of do this. But what I wanted to make sure is that whatever it was that I built,

05:40
was gonna put me in a position to be able to have a long-term sustainable success. And what I saw specifically, let’s say for example, the drop shipping direct from China was that your fulfillment times were super long, right? So in terms of products getting to customers, have no control over, there’s no quality control. There’s no enforcement of quality control. If you have to do a return, there’s no way, like no customer is gonna ship their product to China, right? So it was just like, I don’t want this anymore. Send it back to China. Like, what are you talking about?

06:10
So I was just like, man, there’s got to be a smarter way to do this. So what I started doing was really looking at the behaviors of some of like the top retailers online, right? So for example, like the Walmart’s, the Home Depot’s, the Amazon’s, the Wayfair and Wayfair in particularly. And what I discovered was they built relationships directly with manufacturers like you traditionally do in like retail. And they set up accounts with them. And now because the concept of drop shipping is a lot

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simpler in a fulfillment process. Cause if you research the nature of dropshipping, all it is is a fulfillment method, right? Most people can, most people don’t do enough due diligence and understand what the heck it is that they’re doing. All dropshipping is, a fulfillment method that elaborates on how a product gets direct to the consumer, right? So rather than have an inventory and overhead, if you establish a relationship with the supplier, you can actually request a dropship account. So for example, with selling like electric fireplaces,

07:08
There’s a lot of brands that are here specifically in the U S domestically where you can actually give them a call. And as long as you’re an already established business, like with the website, a business entity, things of that nature, they’re really open and receptive to helping you open up an account with them to be able to, uh, to drop ship. Right. So I was just like, that sounds a lot more simpler than, you know, this all overseas China stuff. So.

07:34
That’s basically what I started to discover. And the reason why I got attracted to dropshipping, right? Because again, there’s a lot of different things that you can do from a business perspective, like real estate, stock market. You know, at this time, crypto is blowing up like crazy. You know, so there’s a lot of different models. But for me, the thing that there was, there was one thing in particular that made me specifically look at making money on the Internet and making dropshipping my vehicle was that I heard a quote from Warren Buffett where he says, if you don’t learn how to make money while you sleep,

08:03
you’re going to work until you die. Yep. I love that quote actually. Right. And so I was like, all right, Warren, how do I get this sleeping money? Right. So, and so when I started looking at the different vehicles, right. In the process, again, specifically like online, the thing that made it attractive was that there wasn’t a high inventory, right. Or there wasn’t a high overhead. And so I was just like, Oh, that’s really attractive because

08:29
You know, now there are ways in real estate per se to like, you know, be able to have success, but I didn’t understand any of those concepts. They scared the crap out of me. Uh, cause I didn’t have a lot of money to get the ball rolling. Um, after I had lost my corporate job. So I was like, I gotta find a vehicle that could like, I could be able to have really great leverage and could put me in a position to make money while I sleep. Like, so when I started to do the due diligence, I saw specifically, for example, in the state of Virginia is $12 and 50 cent to register a DBA. Right.

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And I was like, Ooh, that’s only $12 to start a business. Okay. That’s that. like that. I was like, okay, how do I build this website? And everyone’s talking about Shopify. And I was like, Oh man, that’s probably thousands of dollars. And it would have been back in 1990, but you know, we’re in the, you know, late 2000s now or mid 2000s, mid early 2000s. And was like $29. I was like, Holy smokes, $29 a month. All right, cool. So I’m at $12, 29. And then at the time Shopify was doing a promo with Google. If you spend 25 to get you a hundred.

09:25
So was like, oh yeah, so I money for advertising. So basically all in to get started, I’m at, oh, you got to get a domain name too. So that was like 10 bucks. So I’m like, I’m less than a hundred dollars to like launch a real business, right? And I was like, I like that, right? Along with the fact of like the relationships with the manufacturers, not having to purchase the inventory until you actually got a sale. And I was like, that seems like something I could really be in a good position to build some long-term success with.

09:55
Yep. So very low budget. Exactly. Very low feasible budget. mean, literally just if you have 300 to a thousand dollars, like you can start a legitimate drop shipping business and do it the right way and not have to break the bank. So Ernest, would you mind sharing your shop? Actually, I couldn’t find it on your website. And what do you sell? Yeah. So one of the main stores I’ve been running for the last seven years is a is wine stores. So

10:22
That particular site is good wine coolers.com. And so if you go to that, like you’ll see, I got over 5,000 products on it. And the funny thing is most people they’re like, Oh, you know, Ernest, your website isn’t that sexy. My response is, you’re absolutely right. But where the site wins and excels is obviously a really good done advertising in terms of getting in front of the right prospects at the right time. And then also

10:48
My specific product pages are optimized and that’s where they win. It’s because I have very unique offers that I’m able to provide to the marketplace that helps separate me from the competition. So when someone is looking for that 300 bottle dual zone wine cooler and I come up and they start kind of researching and figuring out, okay, if I’m going to go ahead and get this, let me see what other businesses and stuff are out there that I could possibly buy from. They come across for me and they see, man, I get free shipping. Oh my gosh, I get free white glove service.

11:18
And they’re going to give me a free set of wine glasses. I mean, nobody in the entire internet is doing that right now. Right. So I might not be familiar with this company, but I do see a couple of things. I do see that they offer me a money back guarantee in terms of our price matching. I do see that they are registered with the better business bureau. I do see that they have a plus rating with them. And I do see that they have over a hundred plus verified reviews. It’s like they’re pretty legit. So I could see myself spending some money with them.

11:48
And basically, that’s how I’m able to really excel with that specific business. is considered high ticket drop shipping? Yeah, so really, the concept high ticket drop shipping is essentially just focusing on finding, sourcing, and selling products that have a higher price point. So normally online, would be considered low ticket would be between $20 to maybe like

12:14
$100 mid ticket is between like 100 to $200 per transaction. Um, and then high ticket is basically items that have an average order value of, uh, $200 and up for a single item. So that’s what, uh, there’s a high ticket e-comm. So in terms of high ticket drop shipping, what are your typical margins? Yeah. So typically on average, it’s the same, uh, that you would see across the board in drop shipping. Right. So

12:40
Normally after acquisition costs, advertising, you’re usually seeing about 20 to 30 % on average. that’s just starting off. So for example, I have a supplier that I work with by the name of Zline. And with them, I have 25 % margin after everything, right? Nice. That’s shipping, the product. And normally like my acquisition costs for their products is between like 20 to $40 to get someone to convert. So yeah, it has an AOV of $700 for those particular units.

13:10
Oh, wow. Cool. So that’s really high ticket then. Yeah. Yeah. It’s pretty decent. So what does the product research look like? Like, let’s say I’m just getting started with this and I have no idea what I want to sell. How do you find like a good what makes a good drop ship product? Yeah. So really, I like to start at the fundamentals of number one, making sure there’s enough demand for the audience it is that you want to serve. Right. Okay. So for example, like if you were to do research on like electric fireplaces right now,

13:39
you would see on average, there’s about 200,000 people a month looking for their products. Right. And you’re using what, like a keyword tool? Exactly. We’re using a keyword tool. So my favorite public tool to be able to use it only costs like 10 bucks. Uh, it’s called a keywords everywhere. Right. So with that tool, you’re now able to get that data. Like I just mentioned in terms of like search volume. Uh, cause the biggest challenge is where I think a lot of people

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mess up on building their econ business, whether it’s like drop shipping or just selling any type of physical product, as they don’t do enough research, which I’m glad it is that you brought up. Because if you do enough, if you do enough good due diligence on the front end, like by the time you get to like, you know, developing your offers, uploading your products, inputting your pricing, coming up with a unique selling proposition, you know, you will have discovered that stuff on the front end, right?

14:33
And so that’s, that’s one of my favorite tools. And then another tool is a Google trends, which will show you basically like the seasonality of a particular brand. Right. And that’s super important because you don’t want to be, you know, going into a particular, uh, you know, niche and market where, know, you’re heading into like either like the downward, uh, part of the trend or you’re already starting off at the lowest frequency of the trend. Right.

14:58
Um, so, you know, you want to be able to be in a good position. And the biggest, always tell people is that you don’t have to guess, especially when running an online business, because we have these tools that are out there that’ll give us this sort of insight. Right. And then, uh, the other thing is just going on the specific shopping network on Google, which is, uh, when you go to look for any type of physical products. So again, you type in electric fireplace, uh, you click on the shopping tab and then that specifically is its own channel with the inside of Google. Right. So that’s called the shopping network.

15:28
And you you started to do due diligence on, you know, seeing what products and stuff are already actively listed and what you’ll start to be able to see is on basically what’s going to happen is when you put in the generic keywords. So, so again, electric fireplaces, Google on the left-hand side will actually show you specifically how much money people are spending on average. They will categorize the, price points for that particular market. Right? So if you’re someone again, it says, Hey, I want to make sure that I’m selling products to have an

15:55
average order value, potentially $500 and up. So when you put in the particular product and you looked on the left-hand column, Google normally itemizes that into three to four different price points, right? And typically the second and third price structure that they have is normally what people are spending on average, right? And then you could validate that by just looking specifically on the shopping network. And usually I go through like the first three to five pages.

16:22
Because obviously Google is going to show the most relevant things that are selling when you’re putting in like a top of funnel type of keyword for that particular niche and market. So you can see, again, just a quick glance of like, okay, I see that Google is saying most people spend in between $400 to $800. Let me validate that through the actual search results. And so just go through, and you could be able to take a strong educated guess based off of that data that you just got. in terms of, so you mentioned a couple of things there.

16:50
electric fireplaces gets 200,000 searches per month. How do you know whether it’s too competitive to sell that item though? Like the demand is there clearly. Exactly. So I totally negate any type of like organic search results, right? So specifically my focus on my ability to be able to create success with that is seeing how many people on average are maximizing the shopping network, right? Because. shopping.

17:18
Exactly. So Google shopping, that’s exactly. So I’m going to stick there to love to measure the level of competitiveness, uh, because specifically that’s where you’re going to be able to get the greatest return on ad spend when it’s time to start advertising. Like, uh, just comparing apples to apples with like Facebook and Google. Cause those are the two primary places most people start like Facebook you would see typically on average, once you got pretty good, uh, three X return on ad spend. Now you can see a lot higher.

17:44
But again, starting off for the, for the new people, like if you can get a three X, like you’re doing pretty solid, right? Yep. On the shopping network, you’re able to see a five to 10 X return on ad spend with your money that you’re spending on the shopping network. Right. Yep. And that’s starting off again, basic brand new. You don’t know a ton of stuff. And also the thing that I love about Google is that you don’t have to know.

18:05
all the other fancier things in terms of marketing. So you don’t have to know how to write copy. You don’t have to know how to put together different creatives, call to actions in your ads. Google actually does all the creatives for you when your products get indexed in what’s called Merchant Center. And so they control the rotation and call to actions and things of that nature for your products as people are looking on the different assets that Google owns like YouTube, now even Gmail, where your products, when you’re running shopping ads can actually show up in people’s inboxes.

18:35
which is really cool too. So Google like tracks all that. And then obviously their goal is to, put you in front of their process, your prospects, you know, when they’re in the process of searching for your particular products, because you know, when they earn that click and get that click, you know, they get paid. So, you know, that’s, that’s what, so that’s why I started on the shopping network. So as long as there’s not more than 20 people on average, so you can determine that average by looking at the different listings. So when you go to the shopping network,

19:04
you’ll see all the different products kind of itemized. Right. And what Google does is when it has more than one person selling that particular product or brand, it will actually tell you how many stores are selling that. So specifically, I want to go into a market where there’s not more than 20 people on average already currently selling those products, because on the, on the back end, again, once you get to the advertising perspective, it’s going to be much easier to get into the rotation on the shopping network with everyone else.

19:31
when there’s not 40, 50 suppliers. So for example, our stores. So for example, if you were to put in juicers, right? And you go to the shopping network, you’ll see there’s 50 to 100 stores on some of those different listings. And on average, it’s about, I want to say between 50 to 80 stores that are selling juicers on the internet. So something like that is just like, whoa, that’s a lot of competition, which as we know, even if there is a lot of competition, that’s actually a good thing, right?

19:59
But for the new person, what I know is that from an acquisition cost to be able to get that like five to 10 X raw ads, it’s gonna be much simpler going into a niche that has less competition, because then you don’t have to work as hard and it doesn’t cost as much to acquire a customer. So even with just 20 people, presumably you guys are all selling the exact same item, right? Yep. And when it’s just a picture and a price, does it just kind of boil down to price at that point with Google shopping ads?

20:26
So it boils down to a couple of different things. So once you actually get into running the ads on the shopping network, know, price is obviously one of the things that you’re looking for, but also Google is also going to look at the relevancy of like your product title, description, the skew number, barcode, things that nature that you send into merchant center to determine how relevant you are to that particular prospect. And then they’re going to start measuring some of the other data from example, like your CTR.

20:55
to see like, if we put you in front of X amount of prospects, what’s the likelihood that you’re going to earn a click? So the better that CTR is for your ads, the more Google has a higher likelihood to put you into that better rotation. So it’s not like Amazon in a sense where Amazon like, you know, 80 % of getting the buy box is like the price, right? And then you got all these other little things. And so, you know, price is obviously going to be one of them, but they’re looking at all the other keywords, relevancy, and then tracking your data in terms of customer

21:25
customer experience once they get to your site. So they’re going to be looking at your bounce rate, how many pages of view per session are people actually adding the cart and ultimately are people converting. So when you start to have good customer experience in the backend of like running your ads, you don’t necessarily have to even spend a whole lot more to order in order to even rank well. It’ll just put you in a better, higher rotation. And then the other aspect with everyone listing products specifically, again, you go and you see 20 people listed is that.

21:52
Google gives the ability to do two things. One is to actually add reviews for your product. Most people don’t even know that you can do. And it’s actually kind of funny because a lot of like billion dollar brands out here like Walmart, they don’t even have their reviews on the shopping network for their products on their store. Okay. Yeah. Crazy, right? Yeah. So you can actually get your reviews from your store to actually show up on the shopping network. So again,

22:17
for those customers that we know that are doing real due diligence, they’re about to spend $1,500, $2,000 for a product, they’re gonna be looking at reviews on the shopping network before they put their credit card into your website. So if you have reviews there, and let’s say it’s 10 reviews and you’ve got six out of the 10, I mean, it’s like, wow, like, you know, I’m in California, this company here is registered in Virginia, but they seem pretty legit. I think I might wanna go with them, right? And then the other thing that you can do is you can actually run promotions on the shopping network, which once again,

22:45
Most people don’t know that you can do, which is a feature that you can unlock inside of your merchant center account. So now your promotions that you have also are something that’s going to help you stand out. Even if everyone has the same exact price or roughly like right around the same exact price, this will give you that extra competitive edge.

23:03
If you sell on Amazon or run any online business for that matter, the most important aspect of your long-term success will be your brand. And this is why I work with Steven Weigler and his team from Emerge Council to protect my brand over at Bumblebee Linens. Now what’s unique about Emerge Council is that Steve focuses his legal practice on e-commerce and provides strategic and legal representation to entrepreneurs to protect their IP. So for example, if you’ve ever been ripped off or knocked off on Amazon, then Steve can help you fight back and protect yourself.

23:32
Now, first and foremost, protecting our IP starts with a solid trademark and Emerge Council provides attorney-advised strategic trademark prosecution, both in the United States and abroad for a very low price. And furthermore, the students in my course have used Steve for copyrighting their designs, policing against counterfeits and knockoffs, agreements with co-founders and employees, website and social media policies, privacy policies, vendor agreements, brand registry, you name it. So if you need IP protection services, go to EmergeCouncil.com and get a free consult.

24:01
And if you tell Steve that I sent you, you’ll get a hundred dollar discount. That’s E-M-E-R-G-E-C-O-U-N-S-E-L.com. Now back to the show. I guess what you’re saying basically is a lot of these people that are bigger players, they probably don’t pay attention to these PLA ads as much. And if you focus on them and you’re niche focused, you do a better job than the big players. So the next question I have is what about Amazon? Amazon actually buys a bunch of PLAs also.

24:28
Right. And I’m pretty sure they’re doing the reviews and that sort of thing. So how do you compete with Amazon since it’s probably the same item, right? So what’s so funny, and this is going to blow you guys as minds is that Amazon does not focus on listing their high ticket products on the shopping network. Interesting. Okay. And personally, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s actually crazy because you’re the first person

24:54
I think in an interview or speaking setting that’s ever asked me about that, and I’ve been speaking for a couple of years now. So kudos to you for asking that. So there in my, in my opinion, they know they’re obviously target customer. Right. And so in my assumption in this is because again, you go look at those electric fireplaces right now, you can go see like, for example, the Amante brand is listed on Amazon. Amazon’s even doing some, you know, FBA with those, with that particular brand.

25:24
But if you go to the shopping network, Amazon’s not listed for those. They’re not selling the 60 inch, $2,000 electric fireplace on the product listing ads. They’re strategically focused on the lower ticket products. So what I’ve seen is that products between, again, that low, low ticket, mid ticket item. So anything like less than $200, that’s where they’re actually maximizing the product listing ads. everything that’s like, really once you start getting into 500 to a thousand plus.

25:53
they’re not running shopping ads. That is really interesting because the higher your ticket item, the easier advertising gets. So it should actually be the opposite. You would think so. Okay, so just some other questions. There’s people that are selling on Amazon. They’re giving Amazon 15%, right? So are those people stocking the items or are they drop shipping? So you could actually see with the people on Amazon if they’re

26:21
drop shipping the product or if they’re doing, you know, or if they’re, you know, particularly leveraging Amazon to do the fulfillment for that. So really is just when you go to Amazon and you see that particular listing, it’ll say either like, you know, shipping from Amazon or shipping from that particular brand, right? So it’s shipping from the brand, that’s merchant fulfilled, which means that they’re actually drop shipping the product direct to consumer versus Amazon actually fulfilling the product. So yeah, that’s just a real simple way to determine that. Okay.

26:51
So you mentioned competing against no more than 20 other people. How do you even stand out among the 20 people? Yeah, so that’s where again, on the shopping network specifically, you can put your own unique promotions. So outside of being able to be competitive on price. So for example, there’s a brand I work with called VinoTemp and I probably shouldn’t say this, but I’m gonna say it anyways. Hopefully the CEO, India, she’s not listening. But sometimes I violate the map policy just a little bit.

27:21
uh, in order to have like lower pricing, cause I already know I have like the margin to do so. Uh, so if I know I got like, you know, 30, 40 % margin to kind of work with, I’ll, know, with the suppliers, some with mad policy, but mostly the ones that don’t have mad policy, I’ll see how aggressive I can be with the pricing. Cause again, that is a huge emphasis. And so number one, obviously like your pricing, a lot of people want to go with the person that’s the lowest, but not all in all cases, not in all cases where they always go with the lowest person. But you know, you want to try to get to be as aggressive as you can with the pricing.

27:51
while still being able to make a profit. But really the other unique way, especially for suppliers that have a map policy. So one of that I say is like Z-Line, you can’t violate their map policy. Another company, Blaze, they are on top of it. Like they are not messing around. So with them, again, everyone’s going to be selling at the same price. And also if you guys don’t know what MAP stands for, it stands for minimum advertised price. So what’s really unique about domestic suppliers here in the US,

28:18
is that a lot of brands have this policy. So what this does is it does a couple of things, right? So number one, it protects their integrity of the pricing of their brand in the marketplace. So for big companies like Amazon and Walmart that can afford to lose money on a sale, it makes it to where they can’t, right? It also helps you significantly because now when someone sees the product at Amazon and Walmart, you have the same exact price that you’re selling the product at.

28:46
So again, with MAP, it just means the lowest price that you can list a product that doesn’t mean that you can’t list it higher. And so oftentimes when the first thing people are like, man, how do I compete with the prices on Amazon? Well, you just go and work with MAP suppliers and now everyone has to sell the product at that price no matter what. And if Amazon violates, you can actually personally report them to the company because you will have a dedicated account manager. You could snitch on them if you want to.

29:15
Yep. So just a little couple of extra gems with the whole map thing. you know, really, again, with the shopping network, it’s the ability to, again, be aggressive on your pricing, but then also maximize the promotional area where you can do like free shipping. You could give like a 5 % off coupon, something of that nature. I can’t remember how many characters off the top of my head that you can utilize, but that’s where you separate yourself from everyone else too. Cause again, when you go to the shopping network right now, I mean, there’s a lot of brands. know, for example, Home Depot,

29:42
they don’t even run promotions oftentimes on their products that they’re listing on the shopping network. Yeah, no, I can totally see that because they have so many products that they have to worry about. Exactly. What about once they land on your site, how do you convert them? I mean, there’s a bunch of different places that are all selling for the same price. What are your value props for your shop? Yep, so earlier on, I kind of mentioned one unique one with like the 300 bottle dual zone wine cooler.

30:09
So what I like to do, especially on the items that I know that are going to ship LTL, which stands for less than truckloads. So that just means that, you know, a big truck is going to need to come pick it up because it’s pretty heavy or it’s like really weird and obscure. for example, like a paddleboard, it’s like not that wide in terms of like, you know, the width of it, but it’s super long. Right. So something like that would have to go on a, on a freight truck. Right. So if it’s something that goes LTL, what I would like to, what I would do is focus on my

30:38
best viewed products are currently already selling products and look at what type of additional shipping service could I add onto that to create a nice customer experience if they decided to buy from me. So there’s a couple extra tiers of shipping specifically for LTO. You have what’s called curbside delivery, which most people are familiar with. They come drop it off at the curve, keep it moving, right? The next one is a door to door where they’ll actually deliver it to the entry port or whatever door. So garage door, front door, something like that.

31:07
Then you have inside delivery where they’ll actually take it into a room of choice. That’s also another verbiage of it where they’ll bring the product into the home, know, drop it off in whatever room it is. But then like you’re stuck with like, you know, setting it up, unpackaging, all that good stuff. And then you have what I like to call the Ferrari experience of shipping, which is known as a white glove service. Okay. And most, again, consumers that are in the market looking for, you know,

31:35
a product of, you know, big stature, that’s something that’s commonly known as white glove service. So your ability to potentially either weave it into, you know, having to come out of your margin and offering that for free or, you know, being able to offer just a really aggressive pricing on that. Because remember, you’re working direct with either your carrier or the manufacturer. So you’re going to have way lower rates than like the retail. So I can beat any major retailer, whether it’s Home Depot, Walmart.

32:03
overstock, Wayfair, I’m going to beat them like crazy on offering white glove service because I have really good wholesale rates on that. my goal is again, it’s to weave into one or more of these services that I offer, especially for my top view to top selling products to create that unique experience. So if someone sees that I have it, and again, they go to Walmart, they go to Amazon. And the beautiful thing is that we’re small businesses and I want you guys to really remember that.

32:31
Like that’s where the leverage comes in. We can do stuff that corporate is not going to do. Again, I’ve, I’ve worked with like Walmart, like I worked with Walmart corporate, right? If you want to do something unique for a customer, you got to talk to the store manager, district manager, regional manager. They got to run it up to the VP. Like it’s a whole week to get a yes or no. Right. Where when you’re a small business, it stops with you, right? It’s yes or no from you. So if I say, Hey, you know, I want to.

33:01
provide you with a white glove service on this 300 bottle, $2,500 unit, I can do so at the flick of a switch. Yeah. So those are the, that’s one of the unique things. And then also I have a concept of the value of gift giving, right? So there’s a really unique thing that happens when obviously you give people stuff for free, especially a physical

33:27
a tangible, uh, you know, element that they can hold in their hand, right. Along with being able to give something, someone about something of value. So I have a promo on that particular store where if you spend anything over $400, you get a free set of wine glasses. Right. Nice. So now that can’t be combined or used with other promotions, but again, it’s another thing that helps separate me from everyone else. And the wine glasses I give away are super nice, high-end, uh, glasses that actually have a 10 year warranty on them. So.

33:57
It’s like, wow. Like again, Amazon’s not doing that. Walmart’s not doing that. They’re not going to get, that from anywhere else. And so I, I stack multiple type of incentives that I know are still going to be within the scope of my margins and profitability and do that in order to again, give myself that competitive edge. Cause personally for me, my goal actually on the shopping network is never to really be number one, unless I can get there just through like a natural rotation.

34:26
Because the number one spot we all know anyone has done advertising and marketing is expensive, right? That’s the most expensive click is to get to be number one. So my goal is only to be in the top 10. Like I just want to be in the top 10 listings on the shopping network because I want to gain those people that are already ready to make a decision and they’re just going through and trying to find those different businesses that they feel are going to give them the best deal. And so by the time they land on my site, it’s like,

34:55
Holy smokes, like this is amazing. best. Yeah. got this off of basically exactly. I’m, all for driven. So let me ask you this. So with high ticket items, it seems like you need to have like a phone line, right? Oh, absolutely. I think really with any business on the internet, the funny thing is like everyone, again, we want to make the money while we sleep and things of that nature, but having a phone number on your specific website, your funnel,

35:25
anything that is that you’re selling online will give consumers such a huge peace of mind because no, just think about yourself as a consumer. No one wants to spend money, especially with someone that they’ve never bought anything from and not know how to get in contact with. No, absolutely. But I think in your case though, you almost need people who are experts at your items, right? Which are more expensive because there’s gonna be a lot of questions I would imagine. It’s so funny because again, you think that

35:55
but it really, you really don’t. Okay. All right. Really the, the customer service people. So again, when I train people to do customer service for me, again, we’re focused on making sure that we can answer the questions and closing the sale, right? This hell is super important. But most importantly though is just taking the time to just really answer the question. in most instances, again, cause we’re getting a lot of people

36:20
that from a business perspective that are coming through that know what they want already. So remember like the intention, specifically with the shopping network, Google’s only gonna display you for one or two reasons. Either A, someone’s looking for exactly what you sell or B, they’re looking for something extremely similar. So from a education perspective, they’re probably, they’re already somewhat familiarized with the products already, right? And so when someone calls in, usually it’s just a couple basic questions. And oftentimes it’s stuff that’s already on the landing page.

36:50
Like, is it, see that this electric fireplace is freestanding. Is it also built in? And, you know, just scroll through the product description and say, absolutely. Yep. There is it right here. Right. So, um, a lot of the times I want to say there’s a strong 90 % of the time where your question can be answered based off the landing page. And then there’s that 10 % of like, well, what’s the voltage? I’m like, man, what’s the voltage? Like, what is he talking about?

37:15
So, so how we educate or how I’ve educated my customer service people is the response is that’s a great question. What I’m gonna do is I’m gonna actually get ready to call my warehouse supervisor and have him answer that for me directly. That way I can make sure I’m giving you the exact information that that you need. Is there any other questions before I give them a call or just place you on a brief hold? Nice. Okay.

37:41
And yeah, most man consumers love, they love stuff like that, right? That you’re gonna take out your time to really make sure that you’re getting a direct answer. And we say warehouse supervisor, in essence, it’s just your account manager at the supplier. Yeah. One thing I also want to touch on is how do you find a supplier? Like if you’re brand new, how can you get like a name brand to drop ship for you? Yep. So really I touched based on this real briefly, but to elaborate on it.

38:10
Um, you know, we’re looking to contact the manufacturer first and foremost, they’re going to want to make sure again, that you are a real business because you’re going to have to fill out paperwork is going to have to go over to the accounting team, most likely to set up your account and put you on file, assign you an account number, things of that nature. So when you’ve decided on that particular niche of market that you want to go to, now what you want to do is you want to brand yourself around that particular market, right? So if I’m selling electric fireplaces, I’m now going to establish an entity.

38:38
Called like electric fireplaces, USA calm, right? So that’s going to be the entity that I’m gonna set up I’m gonna get an EIN number for that. I’m gonna get the business domain Obviously, I’m gonna get a business email and I’m gonna get a dedicated business phone number business email You guys can get from like Google workspace. It’s like five dollars Which is formerly known as Google G suite So but it’s now Google workspace then also for your domain name you can get from like namecheap They also give you free who is protection

39:06
And then for your business phone number, you guys can check out Grasshopper. But there’s tons of business, you know, VoIP numbers that you can get. That’s a dedicated number specifically for that business. Right. So now once you got that stuff taken care of, it’s going to be building out what I like to refer to as a demo store. Right. So basically you’re going to get your logo done. You’re going to build out just a couple of simple collections. Right. So, I mean, about us pays contact us page and just whatever the main two categories is for that particular.

39:35
market that you’re going into. So because we’ve been talking about let your fireplaces, it’ll be, you know, freestanding and built in. Right. So those are your two primary collections. And then you’re just going to upload a few just sample products on there. It doesn’t have to be a whole lot. I mean, like really 10. So when you do have that conversation with your, uh, with the new manufacturer that you’re reaching out to, you can let them know like, Hey, uh, we’re, know, just now entering into this marketplace and you know, we’ve put together a demo store so you can get a good look and feel of how your products are going to look when we decide to work together.

40:05
And that’s how the conversation piece will go. Now, if we kind of backtrack a little bit before that, which I think was your original question is how do you find the suppliers? This just comes through competitive research, right? So is going out and identifying who is already selling these products specifically online and not big box stores, right? So we don’t want to use them as our examples. So not the Walmarts, the Home Depots, the Amazons. We want to go and find other ideally niche specific websites

40:34
that already have those products, right? So for example, there’s a website called Home Square, right? So if you go to Home Square and start to do some research on the website, like seeing, hey, do they have a physical location? Do they mention, hey, come to our warehouse or showroom? Or do they just mention that they’re an online store, right? And so doing your due diligence on that specific site, you’ll see that they’re just an online store.

41:00
So now what that tells you is that any brand that they have listed on their website, guess what? Their drop ship indirect to consumer, because if they don’t have any physical location where someone could pick up their product in person and any business that has a physical location, they’re going to brag about it and they’ll say, Hey, come to our store. And indirectly in my mind, it’s just like, yeah, cause you got all that overhead. Right. But those of us that are just selling online, we, we, you can’t say that. Right. Right.

41:28
So that’s how you can identify who’s already got relationships with brands that are already going to drop ship for you. So there’s a website called electric fireplaces direct. So if you go to their site, you can actually click on their brand section and they actually have all their brands listed. All the work is already done for you. So now, know, like, man, so all these brands that are here, the Amante, Duraframe, Dimplex, all those different brands. If you decide to go into that particular market and niche that you have a high likelihood to get approved with them.

41:58
if you reached out to them to set up a drop ship account. So do you end up buying any of the items that you drop ship? So for me, yes. Man, you ask all the good questions, man. I can’t keep any secrets from you. So I actually do have a warehouse in Virginia. That’s actually where we’re, you know, doing this interview at. And so when I noticed that there’s some. So two things, right. So we just are on the tail end of the covid season with the whole global pandemic. So what I did

42:26
because again, we all have these direct relationships with the manufacturer. So in order to really take control of certain products that we’re selling really hot, I would notice that the inventory quantities are my best selling products. I would buy them in bulk and put them here in the warehouse. And now no one in the entire country could access them except for me. I see. So you bought out all the inventory. Exactly.

42:51
So, but I only focused on, again, my top selling products or products that I knew that was moving at a high volume because with the whole global pandemic, was short staffed, just manufacturing was severely backed up, so forth and so on. So I did that to give myself a competitive edge. And then also sometimes your suppliers and manufacturers, they’ll be, for whatever reason, wanting to move additional SKUs in their product lines. So they’ll say, hey,

43:16
We’re going to discount all the, you know, freestanding electric fireplaces this month. Here’s an extra, you know, 20 % off, but we’re only going to do it if you buy 10 at a time. Right. Right. So in order to maximize things at that capacity, that’s also why I got the warehouse space. So do you ever take your own photos or do you use the stock photos that they give you?

43:38
No, I get all the photos and stuff specifically from the manufacturer. And then oftentimes, again, once you really start establishing like a good relationship, if there’s something unique that you want to have done with the particular product, like, you know, for example, Rich at VinoTemp, he’s the sales manager, you know, I could ask him, hey, Rich, you know, we’re getting a lot of inquiries on this product. Is there a way for us to be able to get photos of it in the warehouse before it gets packaged up just to have some unique things that we can

44:07
ask all for the people as they’re asking these different questions. And again, as long as that relationship is pretty good, which once you start, you know, establishing yourself and stuff, you can ask for certain little things like that. So did 99 % of the time I’m not. And then also another unique thing that you can do is ask the manufacturer from when they do like their trade shows and things of that nature, to send you photos in from their trade show. So, Yeah. What about returns? I would imagine it’s kind of a pain for these high ticket items, right?

44:36
Woo, man. This is one of my favorite subjects about Hightly Beauty Comm, right? So because we work direct with the manufacturer, right? Same thing. Like, again, if you were to get a product from like, you you ordered something from, let’s just say Best Buy, right? You don’t like it. Now, in most instances, they’re usually bringing it back to their warehouse. But when you have the dropship account set up with your manufacturer, they will actually already have it prearranged for returns to go back to their warehouse.

45:03
Nice. So let’s say, for example, is buyer’s remorse, right? Like, oh, you know, I don’t really like this product that changed my mind. Now your policy needs to be clear and really direct in terms of how that’ll be handled. But in most instances and again, it’s the same way from most retailers with, you know, the one different thing is like, you Amazon. the customer will have to pay to return it. Right. They got to get a shipping label in order to get a ship back or contact the carrier in order to get a ship back. Right.

45:31
Especially for anything that’s LTL, like that is more so like a universal policy with like LTL. Most, even with Amazon, they don’t cover the shipping a lot of times with LTL products, if it’s coming direct from Amazon. Like if it’s buyer’s remorse specifically. So, and then with small parcel, small parcel is really easy. Like in most instances, your supplier will even give you a shipping label because it doesn’t cost that much in order to get the product returned. But that’s what buyer’s remorse. Now let’s say for example, the product shows up defective. There’s

45:59
You know, again, you’re selling like a wine storage unit and the glass is broken. As long as the customer just takes the photos of it and you send that into your supplier, again, as soon as the product comes in, they’ll replace the product for you without any hassle. Right. And that’s the other beauty why I tell people to establish domestic relationships with suppliers. So that way you can have all these other things in place and even with like the warranty of a product. Right. So what if the product dies out or the compressor

46:29
you know, malfunctions in nine months down the road. Again, with domestic relationships with manufacturers, they have warranty policies in place for peace of mind for consumers. So all you would do is in this instance, you would just give them their order details and information from which you sent into the supplier and say, hey, when you call them, have them look up this particular order number. So when you send in your orders to your supplier, they’re going to refer to those as purchase orders. So whatever that number was that you assigned from

46:58
your brand for that particular customer. You could just tell them to call up and then they’ll look up the information in their system and then they’ll be able to handle any warranty defects, returns, so forth and so on. Yeah. And then is your website electronically linked to their websites too? So the inventory tracking is accurate or is that necessary? Personally, I don’t have what’s more commonly known as EDI.

47:21
right? The electronic, you know, communication between their systems and ours. And the reason is, is because some suppliers is really hit miss, right? So like some of them are set up to be effective and efficient with having some system of that caliber. And oftentimes, more often than not, they usually don’t. So, but the beauty of it is you can actually get inventory reports from your actual supplier on a regular frequency. So some of your suppliers, it’ll be like,

47:49
Once a month, some might be once a week, some might be every couple of days. So for example, there’s a supplier I work with called SPT. So they’re in California. They send theirs once a week. Our relationship with VinoTemp, they send them once a month. Zline, we have a portal so we can log into our portal and at any point in time we can export all the inventory. then, man, I’m trying to think of the app off the top of my head. I can’t remember it. I might have to log into Shopify to tell you guys. But there’s an app that you can actually take whatever

48:19
the spreadsheet is from your supplier and you can upload it to your store and it’ll modify all the inventory for that particular brand. Nice. Yep. And I’m going look that app up while we’re chatting here so I can give it to you guys. Cause it’s super helpful. You know, obviously cause like my wine store store, got over 5,000 products in that store. So as you can imagine, it’d be really challenging managing all that inventory. I think like they have to format the spreadsheet in the right way, right? There’s actually a number of plugins that do that. think.

48:48
Exactly. My favorite one is one called Stocksync. There we go. Stocksync. Nice. Yeah. So Stocksync. And yes, to your point. And that’s what’s really great about Stocksync because you literally just tell it what columns because again, every supplier is going to be different. Like, know, column A for one supplier might be pricing and then for another supplier, it might be the skew number. Right. Right. So you just tell Stocksync which column reads what for each brand and then you can create

49:14
basically like a little collection of each individual brand on how to read that. And then when you populate it, automatically identifies everything you need to.

49:23
Ernest, this is amazing. You gave a pretty good overview of high ticket drop shipping. If anyone’s interested in this business model, where can they find you? They could just go to my personal site, which is ErnestEpps.com. So it’s E-A-R-N-E-S-T-E-P-P-S.com. I also have a free Facebook group which is Ecom Drop Shipping for Entrepreneurs. And my first and last name Ernest Epps is, it’s the same on every major channel, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, IG, all that good stuff. Cool, man. Well, hey, I really appreciate you coming on the show.

49:53
Absolutely, man. And also before we end really quick, too, I wanted to tell you that I actually studied you guys in the beginning of my journey. You know, I went to like, you know, my wife could have job.com and I studied a lot of you guys as content and material that you’ve been putting out for years, you know, before I actually like, you know, started to really get some success for myself. So thank you so much. And it’s been a huge honor to even be on here because I would have never thought like reading articles.

50:20
and just picking up tips on marketing and strategies one day, I’d be literally talking to like the founders. So this is really awesome. Dude, thank you so much, man. That really means a lot.

50:33
Hope you enjoyed that episode and I did want to say a couple of words about dropshipping. The most successful dropshippers that I know with long-term businesses generally dropship more expensive items online and because the margins are lower it is the best way to make it work. For more information about this episode go to mywifecoderjob.com slash episode 374. And once again I want to thank Klaviyo which is my email marketing platform of choice for e-commerce merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned card sequence, a post purchase flow, a win back campaign.

51:01
Basically all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So head on over to mywifecoderjob.com slash KLAVIYO. Once again, that’s mywifecoderjob.com slash KLAVIYO. I also want to thank Postscript, which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for e-commerce. With a few clicks of a button, you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base. SMS is the next big own marketing platform, and you can sign up for free over at postscript.io slash Steve.

51:28
That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. Now I talk about how I use these tools in my blog, and if you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store, head on over to mywifecoderjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and it’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.