How Daniel Makes $80,000 Dropshipping In Africa

You are going to read how Daniel is Dropshipping In Africa. As we all know, I promised to post interviews and case studies to help my readers see how dropshipping works and show proof of sales plus success stories.

Today, we cross borders and take you to Uganda, where I was privileged to interview Mr. Daniel Mickoh, among the few non-US citizens successful in drop shipping.

The dropshipping business is not an easy avenue to enter if you live outside the United States or the other Big Five countries.

Dropshipping In Africa Overview

There are many challenges faced by non-US dropshippers who use Aliexpress to Shopify dropshipping business modules or other methods.

We are lucky to have a successful drop shipper who happens to be in Africa; we engaged him to get answers to some of the problematic questions any newbie would struggle to solve more if not living in the US and wanting to start dropshipping.

I pray that through the information he shared, you get to learn and put it into practice.

So, let us meet him.

1. Would you kindly introduce yourself to my readers who haven’t heard of you and bring us up to speed on your work?

I am Daniel Mickoh, an online entrepreneur, Africa’s highest-return Facebook ads strategist, and funnel architect for small and medium-sized businesses. I am also a coffee cup missionary, founder of Tenge, Experience Africa, and Fundraising and Marketing Director at Charity Pads.

2. Talking about Shopify and Dropshipping, how did you learn about it, and what was your plan for starting this type of business?

I have been making money online since 2010, I started with affiliate marketing (The first $100 day came promoting the affilotheme from Mark Ling), then went on Adsense, Amazon, and Clickbank, and in 2012, went into selling services (SEO and Social Media Marketing).

Shopify came in recently. I was seeing my friends making exorbitant amounts of money, and I told myself I had cash for ads( I could afford to lose up to $20,000 on ads and, if they failed, walk away); I knew how to run ads pretty well, so why not test it and see what happens?

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My tests here and there led me to make over a million sales from five stores in less than 15 months!

3. Still on dropshipping, what made you decide or pushed you to try it, considering that online business opportunities in Africa are not well explored since many consider them scams?

I am an entrepreneur first and foremost, so I will invest anything that I can invest $100 and give me back $20 in profits and consistently do so for at least 5-10 years. I am never after getting rich quickly, always looking at the long-term perspective.

I had made money with Amazon and eBay arbitrage methods, and having made money online, I knew there was so much money in e-commerce I only needed to tap it. Amazon had become one of the most significant companies doing nothing but e-commerce, and the industry was growing at almost 50%+ per year!

4. How did your family take your work? Having this in mind is something you’ve not gone to school for; as you know, some families only consider offline or 9-5 jobs as the only viable source of income.

Most of them always told me to get a job and a real life until I paid the bills. It’s hard to understand that I have work I do because I spend most of my time on my laptop and in my bedroom, except for the times I have to check on my offline businesses. But it’s hard for people to understand to date, to be honest.

The following questions cover the niche selection process:

5. Would you kindly take us through your strategies to choose a hot-selling niche for your Shopify store?

There are several ways to pick products, but I have two reliable ways

1-Spying on competition (When I enter a new market, I want to see what the competition is doing. I subscribe to their newsletters to see how they are marketing, spy on their best sellers, and see their top-performing ads) From here, I then decide which of their products I can take and promote in other countries outside of where they are targeting.

2-Using services (I hire a private team that finds products for me, and I pay heavily, and also software tools that cost me around $950+ a month)

3-I At times, I use the Amazon wholesale method, where I see the untapped products that people on Amazon are selling, which are not making perfect money but are proven to produce sales; I check to see if I can find suppliers in China, and then I just put them in my store and advertise.

There are many methods I use.

6. What factors were you looking for when choosing Dropshipping Suppliers on Aliexpress, and what steps did you take?

Trust is critical; I must talk to and learn much about them. Then, I can place orders based on their order count, the years they have sold on Aliexpress, reviews, etc.

7. Now that you’ve selected a niche and imported the products, which factors did you consider when pricing your product’s ad? Apart from that, is there any special treatment you have for the products, e.g., descriptions?

When doing dropshipping, it’s about the numbers. First, I don’t even look at Amazon or eBay when considering prices because people on those websites will choose to sell a product and only make $0.1 as long as they get sales.

So, I use people’s laziness, sense of urgency, and wanting to be exclusive to make sales. I target the right people using specific criteria of making sure my front end(Ads copy, product page, product descriptions, upsells, etc) is as strong as my back end (Email, repeat sales)

So, when pricing products, I usually multiply the cost by two or even 4, depending on perceived value.

8. Which platform do you use to market your products, and how do you strategically plan your product marketing? Do you have any particular tips for us?

• I mainly use Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and email.
• I could give many tips, but taking action and testing products are the difference between making money with eCommerce or not. I don’t waste too much time overthinking.
• I have a very straightforward funnel.
• Ad(Offering the Product) > Product Page(With reviews, scarcity, the activity of previous buyers, etc) > Checkout > Purchase >Up-sells > Email Follow-up Series.
• For anyone who drops at any point in the funnel, I re-target with an ad for a discount or a coupon or cross-sell them on different products in the same family. Facebook Audience insights helped me a lot in determining this and frequently brought together a section of Amazon.

9. How long did it take to make your first sale, and what was the feeling like?

Dropshipping took less than 30 days, but getting it profitable took me about 2-6 months.

9. Some gurus say you don’t need capital to invest in drop shipping; do you agree? If not, what minimum investment capital would you advise a newbie to have?

YES and NO.

1 What is your goal? If your goal is to make just $100-500 a month, then you are okay; you could start with even no money, and in 30-60days of consistent effort and work, you’ll have made money; you have seen that in the FREE group, Shopify Dropshipping Mastery Group

2-If your goal is to make $2k+ a month, starting with $2-3k is the best (For Ads), and that’s if you know what you are doing. If you are a total newbie and want to make serious money, you will need almost $3-5k in ad money.

10. What are some of the challenges you faced at first times when you started this business?

1. Payment processing! This is a big one if you are in a country not supported by Stripe; it’s a severe pain, I had to navigate a lot to get it working.
2. Knowing what to focus on (Dropshipping is 90% product selection and only 10% everything else)
3. It’s a lie that this is a push-button solution to one’s money problems. Don’t waste time if you are not ready to work.
4. Dropshipping needs one to have the right plan and strategy upfront. Without which, you will sink!
5. Becoming successful too fast without understanding the business side of things and how to scale when needed caused me to lose a lot.
6. Handling customer care. After the products are delivered, the heart of a dropshipping business depends on communication with customers. They can make or break you.

11. If you could start again, what would you do differently that you wished you had known when you first started dropshipping?

1-Spend more time researching products
2-Invest in masterminds
3-learn copywriting for ecommerce.

12. Considering you are a non-US citizen, how did you overcome the payment gateway limitation and ban (PayPal) and others that require SSNs to be used?

I opened an LLC in the US and Used Payoneer to handle the banking side. It’s the only white way; all the other ways are black.

13. How many stores do you own, and on average, how much do you make monthly?

I have about five stores and plan to create three more this year. On average, the five stores each produce about $15k—$30k a month.

14. How do you handle disputes and chargebacks?

I have a perfect relationship with my customers; at times, we even call them physically; our relationship with them has meant that I rarely get chargebacks, except this one time I did a case study and posted it on Blackhatworld, and people went and ordered for products using stolen cards and the store was even closed.

15. How do you handle taxes and exchange rates when getting paid?

I have hired an accountant to help with all that. Whatever I can avoid, I avoid.

15. Why do you think aspiring dropshippers, more so from Africa, tend to fail in this business, and what advice can you give them?

People are so harmful that they never try hard enough and always discourage others. This bad mindset has ensured we always say it’s impossible.

I always say where there is a will, there is a way. Imagine, because of the payment issues I had given up, would I have proven to all the Africans and people worldwide that this was possible? NEVER!

So, I never gave up and tried different methods until I hit the jackpot.

[clickToTweet tweet “People are so negative; they never try hard enough and always discourage others. This mindset has ensured that we always say it’s impossible. I always say, where there is a will, there is a way.” quote=” People are so negative; they never try hard enough and always discourage others.

This very bad mindset has ensured that we always say it’s impossible. I always say, where there is a will, there is a way.”

My advice is NEVER to let people determine your future based on their failures. Find out why they failed and try something different. And never give up until you have succeeded. Resilience, patience, and courage are needed.

16. Do you think drop shippers targeting their own country can succeed? Suppose you are targeting fellow Ugandans instead of international customers.

In Africa, the biggest problem is that not many countries have embraced e-commerce. Even with my offline business, when I run ads, people still want to pay physically or visit a physical location. So yes, you can succeed, but it’s more tiring and requires more effort.

The price people pay is much less than what an international client would pay, so I prefer international clients.

17. If you were the owner or shareholder with a vote, what would you change to ensure Shopify accommodates all walks of life?

Open up payment methods for 2^nd and 3^rd world countries. That’s the only thing holding back African entrepreneurs. Starting a shopify shop when going the US route is expensive. And not many people can afford that.

18. List five things you wish anyone not to do or try when starting.

-Don’t assume it’s going to be easy as many so-called Gurus tell you
-Don’t spend money on ads unless you know what you are doing
-Know who you are following and make sure they genuinely want to help you succeed
-Don’t run your store based on someone else’s business. Just because someone posts that they are making $10k doesn’t mean you should feel the pressure to do something..be patient with yourself, follow your strategy, and do what moves you closer to your dreams
-Avoid joining groups and listening to too many people; you will fail.

19. What’s your take on the million gurus out there claiming to have success key to drop shippers?

Many Gurus have had some success but not severe success. Many of them hide the truth of what it will take you to succeed.

Imagine if I had a lot of money to test ads, and I would test and fail several times until I found the winning ads and products and made a killing.

They don’t tell you that you must spend a lot of time testing; they only show you the winning ads, and you think, boy, this is easy.

Not it’s not; I always tell people: if you are hustling and that’s the only money you have left, don’t shopify, lest you go hungry or fail to pay rent. Shopify and any other business is a long-term project, not a get-rich-quick scheme.

Nonetheless, find a genuine person and follow everything they tell you until you succeed. If possible, genuinely talk to them personally and see results from their other students.

20. Your parting shots?

Like Brendon Burchard says,

Live fully, Love openly and make a difference in someone’s life today. Everything I do is to change someone else’s life. Because that’s the only way I get fulfillment, and it’s the reason for the FREE Facebook group. Take time to do the things that matter like spending time with your loved ones. I failed here and it almost cost me my relationship. Learn from me….

Now you know that dropshipping from Africa, specifically Uganda, is possible. You can also dropship from any other country, whether in Asia or Africa, as long as you have a solution for the payment process you will be using in your shop.

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