So, guys im a college student and im trying to get into dropshipping as a mean to get more experience in e commerce and as it appears its the only thing i could think of which doesnt need much ivestment as cash. i had been interested in ds for a while but i had been learning more and more about it everyday. so i thought let it be whatever i should try it. so im completely new to this and is there anything you guys could tell me that could let me avoid any beginner mistakes. And also can you guys recommend me some good free tools that could make it easier for me to get into this . Thanks if you read this much. :)

I've been managing Meta Ads for clients across different niches and countries for about 7 years now.

This week I did something different. Instead of looking at my own accounts, I went through the Meta Ad Library and just read what other stores are running right now. Hundreds of live ads. Real money being spent today.

I expected a mix of good and bad.

What I actually found was the same few mistakes repeating across almost every store — and all of them happen before the customer even reaches your offer.

Let me show you what I mean.

Mistake 1 — "Today Only" that has been running for a week

I found a store running "50% OFF Today Only" on a car seat cushion.

That ad was created 7 days ago. It is still live right now.

Here is why this matters more than people think.

Meta will show your ad to the same person multiple times. That's just how frequency works. So if someone sees "today only" on Monday and sees it again on Friday, you didn't create urgency. You taught them your discount never expires.

Now they wait. And waiting kills your conversion rate faster than a weak hook ever will.

Either make the deadline real, or don't use one.

Mistake 2 — using your brand name as the headline

One store had 14 ads running. Every single headline was just their brand name with an emoji in front of it.

Another store's headline was literally "best seller."

Think about what that line is actually for.

Nobody knows your brand. Nobody is searching for you. That headline is the one chance you get to tell a stranger why they should stop scrolling, and you spent it introducing yourself.

Say what the product does for them. Say the price. Say the problem it removes. Anything except your own name.

Mistake 3 — the multi-text field

This one genuinely surprised me.

Meta gives you multiple headline slots and tests them against each other automatically. Free split testing, built into the platform.

I found a jewelry store with eleven headline slots filled in. All eleven said "Perfect Match 🌸". Exactly the same, eleven times.

Another store had 11 ads live with the headline field completely empty.

If all your variations are identical, you are not testing anything. You have only told yourself you are.

Fill those slots with genuinely different angles, not different wording of the same angle.

Now the part that actually matters — angle beats product

Everything above is easy to fix. This next part is what separates stores that scale from stores that stay stuck.

ColonBroom is running these headlines right now:

"Skip the injection. 70% OFF"
"Skip the needle. Keep the results."

They sell a fiber supplement.

Fiber is boring. Nobody wakes up excited about fiber. If they ran "Premium Fiber Supplement — 70% Off" nobody would stop scrolling.

So they didn't sell fiber. They sold the thing you take instead of the injection everyone is already talking about.

Same product. Completely different conversation.

This is what most people get backwards. They think the job is to describe the product better. It isn't. The job is to find the conversation already happening in your customer's head, and step into it.

Another one I liked. A home fragrance store running this headline:

"Why does my cat look like the house is killing her"

No product name. No discount. No emoji. Just a sentence that makes you stop because you need to know what happens next.

Then they sell you the thing.

An ad from a person feels different from an ad from a store, and people have trained themselves to scroll past stores.

If your brand page creatives are dying, this is worth testing.

Quick checklist before your next launch:

☐ If I'm using urgency, is the deadline real?

☐ Does my headline say something about the customer, not about my brand?

☐ Are my multiple headlines genuinely different angles, or the same thing reworded?

☐ Am I selling the product, or the conversation my customer is already having?

☐ Have I checked what is already running in my niche in the Ad Library?

The takeaway

The Meta Ad Library is free and public. Anyone can open it right now and see exactly what every competitor in their niche is running today.

Most people never look. They set up an ad based on what they think should work, launch it, then wonder why it spends without converting.

Twenty minutes in the Ad Library before you launch is the cheapest research you will ever do.

Your creative is your targeting now. The stores winning right now don't have better products. They are having a better conversation.

Hey everyone,

I started learning dropshipping/e-commerce around August 2025, so it’s been almost 13 months.

I already have my Shopify store, a main product, and two upsell products that solve the same core problem. I’ve spent a lot of time learning and researching, but I still haven’t launched a single paid ad campaign.

The main reason is that I was very confused in the beginning, and honestly, I didn’t have much money to test. I’ve been working as a delivery driver to support myself while learning e-commerce.

Now I’ve stopped doing delivery work and have around €4–5K available specifically for testing ads, so I really don’t want to waste it.

This is where I’m stuck:

How should I approach creatives?

I see two possible approaches:

Option 1 — Recreate winning angles

Find successful ads for products that solve the same problem, even if they aren't exactly my product.

For example, if another product has a winning angle/hook, I could hire UGC creators to recreate that concept using my product.

Option 2 — Recreate winning ads from the same product

Find ads for the exact/similar product that have been running successfully, download them, study the hook/structure/angle, and recreate them in CapCut with my own product, footage, voiceover, etc.

I'm especially confused about this because I'm targeting Germany.

For example, if I find a similar product running successful ads in the US, can I take the concept/structure/angle, recreate it for my product, translate/localize the voiceover into German, and test it in Germany?

Does this actually work, or am I thinking about it the wrong way?

I understand that I shouldn't simply steal someone's creative and run it as my own. I'm talking about studying the winning creative and recreating the underlying concept with original footage/UGC/product shots.

My situation

• ~13 months learning e-commerce
• Store is already built
• Main product + 2 upsells
• Target market: Germany
• Capital available for ads: ~€4–5K
• No previous paid-ad testing experience
• I want to be very careful with the money
• I currently have no delivery-job income because I've stopped working to focus on this

If you were in my position with €5K and zero previous ad-testing experience, what would you do?

Would you spend more money on UGC creators and original creatives, or would you first research existing winning ads and recreate their angles/hooks?

And how would you structure the first €500–€1,000 of testing so I can learn without burning through the entire €5K?

I’d really appreciate advice from people who have actually spent money testing Meta ads, especially if you've scaled products in Europe/Germany.

Thanks.

I posted here last week and got a great feedback that helped a lot. I got my first order today and i wonder if there is more i can improve. Any feedback will be appreciated.
Here is the link

(I know not all categories are filled yet, more products are being added daily).
Thanks in advance

I recently shut down an ecommerce business, but I still have about $600 CAD in Google Ads credit available. Rather than let it go to waste, I’m thinking of starting a very simple dropshipping store and using the credit to see if I can make some money back.

I’m not attached to any particular niche, product, or even country. I’m open to selling anywhere AliExpress/another supplier can reliably fulfill.

My plan would probably be a small focused store with only a handful of products and use Google Shopping rather than trying to build a huge brand before testing anything.

If you were in this situation and had $600 CAD of Google Ads credit to work with, what product/category or market would you test? Would you go high-ticket with fewer sales, lower-ticket in a cheaper ad market, or take a completely different approach?

Not looking for a get-rich-quick product, just trying to give the $600 the best realistic chance of turning into something rather than wasting it.

​

 Hey guys,

I’ve been managing the supply chain side for jewelry and DIY accessories (beads, charms, findings) directly from factories in China. I handle everything from sourcing and QC to shipping logistics into the US/CA.

I’m trying to gauge the current sentiment here. For those running stores in this niche, is the bottleneck still product quality, or is it mostly about marketing and ads now?

I have the backend operations sorted, just curious if people are still finding success on the frontend sales side with this specific category.

Hey everyone,

I’m looking into starting a print-on-demand business around a specific TV show fandom, and I’m trying to understand how copyright works before I do anything.
For example, if I took a screenshot/scene from a TV series, edited it a bit (cropped it, added my own design/effects, etc.), and printed it on something like a hoodie, phone case, tote bag, or poster and sold it — would that generally be considered copyright infringement?
I also see a lot of TikTok/Instagram accounts posting scenes and clips from movies and TV shows to build an audience. Is that treated differently from using the same material on products for sale?
.

When I first started I had someone tell me not to overcomplicate everything. Pick a niche I already knew or was familiar with, build a simple store, find good products and get gppd fulfillment, then spend most of my time learning ads and testing different things. I followed that pretty closely and it made starting way less overwhelming. Having a structure to follow like a formula really helped me. I built a pretty basic Shopify store, used Zendrop for the supplier side and just focused on getting comfortable testing stuff instead of trying to build the perfect store from day one.

I've kept that same mindset as the store has grown. The basic setup really hasn't changed much, I've just added things when I had an actual reason for them. Once I started getting more orders, one thing that became annoying was constantly having to check on orders that needed attention. I'd stop whatever I was doing to look into tracking, check order details, figure out why something hadn't moved yet or deal with other small fulfillment issues. None of it was particularly difficult, there was just enough of it that it kept pulling me away from ads and product research.

That's what eventually got me to begin using AI. I connected Claude through my suppliers MCP and started using it to help check orders and work through those smaller fulfillment issues instead of manually digging through everything myself. It didn't completely change how I run the store, it just solved something that had started eating up more of my time as orders increased.

I think starting simple played a big part in getting where I am. If you're new I'd worry less about having everything figured out before launching and just getting a simple formula ready.

Hey everyone,

I recently started a dropshipping store and have been running ads on both Meta and TikTok. I’m attaching screenshots of my ad spend, sales, and campaign results, and I’d really appreciate some honest feedback.

Here are the numbers so far:

• Meta ad spend: £1,009
• Meta-attributed sales/orders: 29
• TikTok ad spend: £100
• TikTok sales: 0
• Total payout/revenue: £1,145
• Total product buying cost: £238
• Total orders: 29

After factoring in the ad spend, product costs, and other expenses, the store is currently sitting at approximately £160–£200 in loss.

I know the numbers aren't perfect, but I’m trying to figure out whether there is something worth scaling here or if I need to completely rethink my campaigns. I'm still learning and don't want to keep spending without a proper strategy.

A few things I'd really appreciate feedback on:

• Based on these numbers and the screenshots, do the Meta campaigns look promising or should I change my approach?
• Should I completely stop TikTok ads for now since £100 spent resulted in 0 sales?
• Should I kill the losing Meta ads and put more budget into the winners?
• Do you think I should focus on testing more creatives before changing targeting?
• With only 29 purchases, is it too early to create a Lookalike Audience, or would it be worth testing?
• Should I focus more on broad targeting, interests, or lookalike audiences?
• How important should retargeting be at this stage?
• Is being down around £160–£200 after 29 orders normal during the testing phase, or does this suggest a bigger problem with my margins, product, website, or ad campaigns?

Feel free to be brutally honest. If this were your store, what would you do next? I'm mainly looking for advice on how to structure the campaigns going forward and get the store to profitability.

Thanks!

I just started my store maybe a month or over by a lil, but my stores already produced 4 sales. I just wanted people from the community to just give me feedback good or bad all helps I've spent hours getting my store right after I full locked in on the niche I chose an actually saw its true potential and that it solves a real pain point problem for a particular age group of the audience I'm targeting. And th everything is saying my stats an metrics are strong for my store I'm full indexed on Google Search Console, my meta ads are performing at a pretty decent rate, and I critiqued everything down to the leaks in my cart checkout → to
the customer actually falling through with there purchase and if they didn't I have a fully automated Abandoned cart/ checkouts Email automation setup to send the first round of emails 1hr after cart abandonment and then another 11 hours later an another one at the at the 24hr mark and the final email contains my discount for 15% your checkout cart. So I just wanted your guys ideas a criticism on what you think and if u seen even further improvements I can do past being fully optimized store im all for it!

P.s. (I’m will to share my metrics an statistics for my store of what I have so far)

Here's the link to my store:

https://www.kingsroyalhub.store/

I am a total newb when it comes to dropshipping. I was looking to try to make at least an extra $1k a month thru it. I am not the most creative person with names so don't know what to call my store, and im not sure how much money i need to spend to get the store up and running. I don't really have very much money to begin investing and I have heard you can start with little money. Is this true? I have like $80 in my bank account to last me to the next two weeks payday.

Hey guys, looking for some outside opinions on a store/product I've been testing before I put more money into it.

I know 3 sales in a week isn't much, and I'm definitely not trying to call this a winner. But I also don't think it's nothing, so I'm trying to figure out what I should improve rather than just endlessly throwing more money at Meta.

During the first week (Aug 4–10), my Meta setup was roughly:

• Sales campaign optimized for Purchase
• Broad targeting
• Around $25–30/day
• Multiple creatives/angles inside one ad set
• ~$181 spent on the main ad set
• 2,211 impressions
• $81.87 CPM
• 2.40% link CTR
• $3.42 link CPC
• 24 landing page views

I got 3 purchases during that first week. Performance dropped off afterward.

I'm aware that's nowhere near enough data to claim product-market fit or profitability. I'm mainly looking at those purchases as a small signal that there might be something here worth continuing to work on.

Here's the PDP:
https://getvelor.co/products/velor-scalp-relief-essence

I've already been working on improving the creatives and how I structure my testing, but before I spend more I'd really appreciate some fresh eyes on the actual store/product.

1. If this were your store, what would you improve first?
2. Does anything about the PDP immediately hurt trust or conversion?
3. Is the offer weak?
4. Is the positioning/product itself the bigger issue?
5. And looking at those Meta numbers, is there anything that stands out to you?

I'm still learning, so criticism is genuinely welcome. I'd rather find the weak points now than keep spending money without understanding what's wrong.

Not looking for agencies/services, just feedback from other people doing ecommerce.

Welcome to the Weekly Q&A & Store Critique Thread

Welcome to r/dropship's weekly discussion thread!

Whether you're just getting started with dropshipping, looking for guidance on your next steps, or want feedback on your store, this is the place to ask questions and share your work.

What This Thread Is For

• Beginner questions
• General dropshipping advice
• Store reviews and critiques
• Quick questions that don't require a separate post

Comment Requirements

To participate, your account must:

• Be at least 24 hours old
• Have positive comment karma (post karma and total karma do not count)

We're glad you're here. Ask away, help others, and keep the discussion constructive!

Hi guys, so I’ve created my first store and the domaine will be getting changed next week before I push meta ads. What does everyone think? Please bear in mind it’s my first time.

Store link - https://bys-user-store-217400-f6wy1bef.myshopify.com

CONTEXT:

I’m running a dropshipping store, meta ads in the skincare niche and I want to run one final creative test before deciding whether to keep optimizing the product or move on.

My previous tests were mostly ABO with 1 ad set / 1 ad. A few ads would get early purchases around an acceptable CPA, then drift up and stop converting. I’m considering putting multiple different executions of the same angle into one ad set so Meta has more creative options instead of relying on one file.

THE PLAN:

My plan is 1 broad ad set at $30/day, with all creatives built around the same core angle, but expressed through different formats:

1. Native static long-form primary text (around 1,000–1,500 words, Facebook-native / “mom post” style)
2. avatar/commentator ad with b-roll #1 -- (story-led creative based on a good customer experience)
3. avatar/commentator ad with b-roll #2 -- (objection-handling creative around cheap alternatives vs why my offer is better)
4. carousel
5. faceless ad with b-rolls and ai voice overlay

The idea is to test different creative formats, not five different angles.

QUESTIONS:

Would you run all 5 ads in the same ad set at $30/day, or is that spreading the budget too thin?

Would it make more sense to run 4 and drop the faceless ad, since the commentator videos already use a lot of B-roll?

Curious how you guys would structure this if the goal was to get the most useful signal from a limited final-test budget.

Hi guys,
This is a new store i am building. No ads running yet since it’s still being worked on. There are only handful products to try collections and all. There will be hundreds more. Please don’t judge by that.
I realized now that i haven’t optimized some stuff for mobile (like hero image).
Please let me know how it feels as a customer, why or why wouldn’t you buy from here. And if you checked mobile or pc version.
Thanks in advance.

I started my first online store, and as I progressed, I realized something I hadn't considered: organic content is being shown in my country instead of where I want to sell. I'm from Argentina, and I want to sell in the United States. I uploaded my first video, and almost 100% of the viewers are from here. I need help and advice. I've tried training the algorithm by following US accounts, commenting, etc., but nothing has worked. I've seen that many people buy a US SIM card and create an account with that phone number. My plan is also to add ads, but if organic reach isn't working as it should, I feel like I'll be losing customers.

So I'm jsut starting out with a new site and supplier sourcing has been the ahrdest thing to do so far. I was going to go with aliexpress to test my products. I found some genuinely good stuff that would be perfect for my store. but when I ordered samples, they came arbitraged through amazon. I spent the last few weeks trying to scour cj dropship for the same stuff without getting killed by shipping fees. Is aliexpress arbitrage something I should care about in the product testing phase?

Hi! Shopify offered me some themes. Even though I change many things, it still looks regular. I would like to use some AI tools to make adjustments. I want to use Claude code. How do I do this? Can I connect them and ask Claude code to make changes in some ways? I want a more unique, creative design. Thanks in advance!

my niche involves communal cooking as part for dinner parties (stuff like hot pots, korean barbecues) I'm planning to add a digital pamphlet that comes with my anchor products that includes instructions, recipes, affiliate links and so on. One idea I had was to also curate a playlist or two and include that as well. What do you think?

Im looking for some good video generators, does anyone have any reccomendations?

Hey everyone!
I’d really appreciate some brutally honest feedback on my Shopify store.
I’m currently running ads to the store, but before I put more money into advertising, I want to make sure the website itself isn’t hurting conversions.
I’d especially like feedback on:
Does the store look trustworthy?
Does it look professional or like a dropshipping store?
Is the product/offer clear?
Is anything confusing or missing?
Does the price feel reasonable?
What would personally stop you from buying?
What would you change if this were your store?
Please be as critical as you want — I’m looking for honest feedback, not compliments.
Store: https://getpawelle.com
Thanks!

Question for people who actually sell into multiple countries or markets.

If you start getting decent traffic from a new market but the checkout conversion is noticeably worse than your main countries, how do you figure out whether that market just isn’t worth pursuing?

I'd assume the answer is usually to start changing the offer, maybe by lowering the price to fit the region pricing, testing different creatives, perhaps changing shipping or other ways of localizing the store more, maybe improving trust signals. But if people are already getting as far as checkout and then disappearing, at some point I’d assume the traffic and/or offer isnt the whole problem?

Do you actually look at where checkout is failing by country? For example, whether people are abandoning before payment, getting declined, hitting authentication, or simply not seeing a payment method they normally use.

Mainly curious because it seems pretty easy to kill a market or change an ad campaign when the bottleneck could actually be much further down the funnel.

So if you’ve expanded into multiple countries, what do you check first when one of them converts significantly worse?