Business is more than a lifestyle for Harry Coleman, aka the Beast of Ecom; it is an inborn feature. He has a unique ability to generate incredible money-making ideas.
He has always loved the life of an entrepreneur. Even as a kid, he and his friends would gather old, useless bikes, fix and coat them with new paint, and then sell them again.
Entering the university was more like a significant boost to his entrepreneurial spirit. That was when he first started his online business.
He imported snapback hats from the States and resold them on eBay to people in the UK; though not too big business, much it could cash came in quite often.
According to Beast Of Ecom, “I’ve tried everything from Forex to affiliate marketing. Doing weird and wonderful, stupid things.”
However, things started falling into place when he ventured into dropshipping, a business he had just taken as a random side hustle.
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With time, his store grew into a mega online store, earning millions in sales revenue; what started as an experiment has become a full-time job for him. So, he had to shut down other stores and concentrate on just one.
Harry has employed up to ten staff members to manage his three stores, and in 2018, he made over $5 million in sales. What a fantastic figure to behold!!
He would tell you that the journey to his success as an entrepreneur wasn’t a walk in the park. It was filled with ups and downs, rises and falls, trials and learning processes, and many years of personal determination and sacrifices.
First Approach to Dropshipping
Before 2016, Harry had no idea of the dropshipping business model. One day that year, he was browsing online resources and attempting to puzzle through ideas on online forums when he stumbled upon dropshipping.
He said, “There was a thread about some guy doing dropshipping and sourcing products from AliExpress using Shopify as a platform. He was using Facebook ads and making something like $10,000 monthly.”
Out of curiosity, he finishes the article, hoping to amass enough knowledge to get him started with dropshipping.
For him, dropshipping was the ideal type of business because there was no need to rent a warehouse for your inventory.
So, he made up his mind to give it a try.
For his first store, Harry chose nail products. They were cheap to buy from suppliers, meaning he could add a healthy markup when he resold them.
He used Oberlo to connect his Shopify store to a supplier, pulling in details like product photographs and inventory levels.
Then, he got to customize his store.
“I built a whole site; it was pink-themed. I thought it looked great,” he says.
This was it, Harry thought. The store would be his ticket to overnight success. He would sleep, dreaming of what Lambo he would buy, but it wasn’t easy.
So when his first store was launched, things turned out very different from his perception.
“Yeah, I had no sales, none at all, and I spent probably around $500 to $800 to make my first sale,” he said.
He didn’t understand why things turned out so awful, even when he had a fantastic store design and a good marketing strategy.
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He had been burning up much money on ads.
After two months of terrific and frustrating trying and failing experience, he resolved to try something different.
That was when he got the idea of a general-branded store. He had heard in Facebook groups that it was possible, so he decided to give it a trial.
He could test some products until he gets to the winning item.
The Glaring Experience of Business Growth
He had lost his full-time job as a franchise salesman. Before that, he worked during the day and continued building his business at night or on weekends.
And it was very strenuous for Harry to cope with.
So, when he became redundant, it was a relief for him to focus on growing his business. This was when his general store started gaining traction.
You can read the Shopify store types and decide which one to create.
So he started sorting more products for his store, and over time, it became easy; that was when he learned that he had reached a buttress point.
Two months after launching the general store, his product started making many sales. He was into animal and pet products. Luckily, the cat-themed rings began to sell well.
Soon, he started making over $100 – $200 in sales daily. Then, the business became very encouraged, though still tough to cope with, as he had to deal with a full-time job now and his dropshipping store.
Then, his store’s sales started climbing to over $1,000 to $2,000 daily, and he knew he had to quit and focus on his business.
He could make his annual salary comfortably from his store, and life was just as different as his boss. He made plans and could take personal days off work at will with no queries.
It was a big turnaround for him; from then on, he could travel anywhere and any time he wanted. He traveled to the Maldives and Dubai and toured New York, which is already part of 2019.
He can scale up his business to any height with his team of 10 assistants managing the workload in his three stores.
Seeing the Future from a Clear Point
It took Beast Of Ecom three hectic years of sacrifice to reach its present point of global relevance.
Since 2016, he and his team have not relented in growing his three general stores, which he is warming up to launch other niche stores as well.
For Harry, it is easier to replicate the success of an already standing store in others if you want to get more once you have an active email service system, your ads, and many loyal and recurring customers.
Most of last year was spent building his brand and his YouTube channel, where he offered a course on growing a business as an entrepreneur.
Living a comfortable life isn’t one of his long-term goals, so he is always meticulous, even though he spends money on cars and other flashy things.
His goal has always been to be independent and never work for anybody, which he still has his mind right at.
In the end, while others fear losing their job, Harry fears getting one.
4 Fundamental Reasons for Harry’s Success in Dropshipping
Choose a niche product in a General Store.
As a beginner, the first question that always comes to mind is, “What kind of store should I set up?” it is very reasonable.
Beast Of Ecom advises selling a niche product in a general store. You can add just four to five niches to the general store.
Beast Of Ecom’s answer to this is
Let’s say you have an eye on the following niches:
- Fashion
- Babies
- Pets
- Home Improvement
So Harry is trying to say that his number one secret is focusing on just one niche out of those four. Your store’s generality will still help you test as many product varieties as you want and reach your audience quickly.
He calls this a “branded general store” because you can focus on a specific niche while running a general store.
However, he further states that you need to get your branding right because a store with a collection of so many products might look odd.
So, to convey trust and professionalism, you need to arrange your store, use only high-quality images, and provide exhaustive and engaging descriptions for each product.
And for those concerned about the progress of their products on ads pixel, he has to say, “I’ve never had any problem with having just one pixel on a general store.”
Running a branded general store yields more results than running it separately for Harry. A branded general store would allow you to experiment with various products.
Sell a Product that solves the problem of your audience.
If you want to convert to sales better and thus get your winning products, He advises that you consider these necessary types of products:
Harry has a lot of experience when it comes to finding potentially winning products.
He’s refined his product research strategy down to two main types of products:
- You choose a product that solves your audience’s particular range of problems.
- A product that your target audience loves and is passionate about.
Focus on your Ads copy on the benefit.
Though most people end up making their ad copies clumsy with so many features and some call-to-action, while this works sometimes, Harry advises you to keep your customers firmly in mind what they stand to benefit from instead of the features.
He would prefer to say something like, “This will cut your cleaning time in half,” or ‘Save time, effort, and energy.”
Always keep your link click-through rate in mind while analyzing the results of your creative ads.
He says, “Link click-through rate very much comes down to how well you connect with the person looking at the advert.”
Leaving an average click-through rate of 2%,
your ads are doing okay if you get up to this percentage of link-click-through rate. And you should retarget if your ads get lower than that.
On the focus receives the grand prize.
It is effortless to get discouraged and distracted when encountering failure and frustration.
But it is not okay to give up on that at all. For Harry, perseverance alone is the key to success.
He constantly reiterated that had he given up when his store failed, he wouldn’t have gone this far, and thus, I would have missed the opportunity to address people.
Beast Of Ecom conclusion
So Beast Of Ecom advises staying focused as sales come and never comparing you with others in the business.
Never outrun your shadows; remember that it is a business, not a race.
Start your dropshipping journey today by signing up on Shopify and using Ecomhunt to research your product.
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