It's Boring, But It's How Dropshippers Actually Get Rich

Summary

In 2025, the key to making money with dropshipping is to focus on building sustainable e-commerce businesses instead of chasing viral products. Andy Stauring emphasizes adopting a "farmer" mindset where systems are built for steady, predictable growth and customer relationships are prioritized over one-time transactions. Major industry shifts include rising ad costs, less effective pixel accuracy, and a savvier consumer base. Dropshippers who thrive are those who focus on consistent brand equity and implementing boring, methodical systems that result in long-term profitability.

Highlights

• Winning in dropshipping now requires a major mindset shift: Think like a farmer, not a gold miner 🌿
• Sustainable success comes from boring, methodical systems, not viral hits 📊
• Stronger customer relationships make your store immune to competition 🤖
• Modern consumers are savvy; prioritize a professional and trustworthy store setup 🏬
• Post-purchase upsells can effortlessly boost your bottom line with minimal effort 🎉

Key Takeaways

• Adopt a 'farmer' mindset for sustainable growth instead of chasing viral products 🌽
• Focus on building genuine customer relationships to ensure consistent sales 🤝
• Ignore flashy trends; prioritize methodical systems for long-term success 🕰️
• Incorporate post-purchase upsells to effortlessly increase revenue 📈
• Optimize store setup for conversions instead of burning money on ineffective ads 💻

Overview

In the ever-evolving world of dropshipping, the landscape has undergone major shifts. The days of finding the next viral product and scoring big are over. Instead, the successful dropshippers of 2025 are akin to farmers, not gold miners. They focus on cultivating sustainability, building strong customer relationships, and creating lasting growth instead of fortunes built on quicksand.

Andy Stauring, a dropshipping expert, lays down the cold hard truth: the key to success is not in flashy viral hits, but in boring, methodical systems that create consistent profits. Gone are the days of flashy product hunting and instant wealth. Today, businesses achieve success by establishing brand equity and customer loyalty through thoughtful market strategies and sound business practices.

It’s time to rethink ecommerce strategies by optimizing setups for better conversions, implementing effective post-purchase upsells, and truly understanding the key metrics that drive profit. By shifting focus from winning products to efficient systems and customer satisfaction, entrepreneurs can enjoy sustained dropshipping success that withstands the test of time.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction to Sustainable Dropshipping This chapter emphasizes the importance of moving away from the traditional drop shipping model focused on finding 'winning products' and instead concentrating on building a sustainable and profitable e-commerce business. The speaker shares their personal experience of wasting years on viral product hunting and urges new entrepreneurs to avoid falling for unrealistic claims of quick wealth. Instead, they should focus on what truly matters for long-term success, even if it lacks excitement or viral potential.
• 01:00 - 03:00: Shift in Dropshipping Industry The chapter discusses the fundamental changes in the dropshipping industry. In 2020, the focus was on finding viral products and leveraging Facebook ads, but this approach is no longer effective. Today's successful businesses prioritize serving specific markets over merely hunting for products. The author emphasizes building a sustainable business that generates consistent monthly profit, sharing insights gleaned from years of testing and optimizing their own dropshipping ventures.
• 03:00 - 07:00: The Farmer vs. Gold Miner Approach Success in drop shipping stems from implementing boring, methodical systems that most people overlook. The chapter explains the essential strategies that differentiate a small percentage of successful drop shipping businesses from the majority that fail. A key element discussed is the recent shift in the industry dynamics determining winners and losers.
• 07:00 - 11:00: Building a Professional Store The chapter 'Building a Professional Store' explores the evolution of the drop shipping industry. It highlights two divergent approaches: one where most drop shippers are akin to gold miners in pursuit of the next viral product, and another approach that emphasizes sustainability in business for the year 2025. The chapter stresses the importance of not just chasing trends but building something more enduring in the evolving industry landscape.
• 11:00 - 15:00: Importance of Post-Purchase Upsells The chapter discusses the common pitfalls of inefficient product research faced by many aspiring drop shippers. It highlights the contrast between those who spend excessive amounts of time on unorganized research versus successful drop shippers in 2025 who adopt a more systematic and strategic approach. The analogy drawn compares struggling drop shippers to aimless researchers, while successful ones are likened to farmers who meticulously select their products. The emphasis is placed on the need for strategic decision-making and organization in achieving consistent financial success.
• 15:00 - 19:00: Focusing on Key Business Metrics The chapter contrasts two approaches to business: a systematic, long-term approach versus a trend-chasing, short-term strategy. The former is likened to farming, where success comes from careful planning and consistent effort, akin to farmers who focus on sustainable yields. Conversely, the latter is compared to a gold miner's pursuit, characterized by chasing quick wins through following fleeting market trends. This approach can lead to significant short-term gains but lacks stability, as it involves starting over whenever a product fails. Insights from 2021 are referenced, possibly to illustrate market volatility or trends.
• 19:00 - 22:00: Conclusion and Mentorship Invitation The chapter discusses the initial success of big lockdown drop shippers who thrived with viral products during the pandemic, achieving impressive sales figures like 100k plus months with products such as resistance bands and phone sanitizers. However, this success did not last long as the market faced three major challenges: a sudden doubling of advertisement costs, iOS updates that disrupted pixel tracking, making efficient customer targeting difficult, and customers becoming more savvy in spotting marketing tactics.

It's Boring, But It's How Dropshippers Actually Get Rich Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 If you want to make real money with drop shipping in 2025, stop chasing winning products. That game is already over. I wasted years hunting for viral products and got nowhere until I discovered what actually builds sustainable, profitable e-commerce businesses. Here's the truth. It is not exciting. It won't go viral on Tik Tok, and it's definitely not what the guru selling courses will tell you. Now, if you're looking for the make 10K in your first week fantasy that seems to be plastered all over the internet, this isn't for you. Click away now. Seriously, this video won't help you get
• 00:30 - 01:00 rich quick. But if you want to build something that generates consistent profit month after month, a real business that changes your life like it did mine, I'll show you exactly how. Now, the drop shipping landscape has fundamentally changed. What worked in 2020, which was finding random viral products and blasting Facebook ads, simply doesn't work anymore. The businesses that are quietly making seven and eight figures today, aren't product hunters. They're market servers. Now, through years of testing and optimizing my own drop shipping businesses, I've
• 01:00 - 01:30 discovered something that most gurus won't tell you. And that success comes from boring, methodical systems that most people are too impatient to implement. But today, I'm breaking down the exact strategies that separate the 2% of sustainable drop shipping businesses from the 98% that fail and how you can implement them immediately even if you're starting from scratch. Now, let me break down what's really happening in drop shipping as of now. So there has been a massive shift in what separates the winners from the losers. And understanding this shift is
• 01:30 - 02:00 absolutely crucial if you want to build something sustainable in 2025. I've watched this industry evolve over the past few years. And here's what I've noticed. Drop shipping has split into two completely different approaches. Now most drop shippers, they operate like gold miners. They're constantly hunting for the next big hit, the next viral product that will make them rich overnight. They're scrolling through Tik Tok for hours, jumping from one product to the next, always chasing that dopamine hit of finding something that
• 02:00 - 02:30 might blow up. And I get it because I used to be exactly like this. My weekends would literally basically be endless product research sessions that were really just me scrolling through social media hoping to hit the jackpot. And you know, my computer was basically a mess of folders filled with potential products, most of which I never even ended up testing. But here is what is fascinating. The drop shippers who are actually making consistent money in 2025, they operate nothing like this. They're more like farmers. They select
• 02:30 - 03:00 their field carefully. They build the right crops. They build systems for irrigation and harvesting and focus on consistent yields rather than one-time strikes. The gold miner approach sounds exciting, right? You're constantly hunting for new products, following every trend, hoping to strike gold overnight. But when a product dies, and trust me, they always do, you simply start over with the next shiny object. One month you could be making $20,000 and the next month you could be making zero. Look at what actually happened in the market over the past few years. Back in 2021 when you know what happened the
• 03:00 - 03:30 big lockdown drop shippers were crushing it with viral products. Ton of stores were doing 100k plus months with products like the resistance bands, phone sanitizers, blackhead removers, you name it. But only months later everything came crashing down. What changed? Three major shifts. Ad costs doubled practically overnight. iOS updates destroyed pixel accuracy, making it basically impossible to find customers efficiently. And then customers got way smarter about spotting
• 03:30 - 04:00 drop shipping stores. And then regarding competition, once a product shows up, even the slightest sign of success, competitors swarm in immediately. Now, what used to take months now happens in days. Dozens of drop shippers copy your exact product, undercut your prices, and completely saturate the market. Now, products that were once reliable profit generators went from crushing it to absolute zero overnight. All that work, essentially wasted. That's when a clear pattern emerged about the businesses
• 04:00 - 04:30 that were still thriving while everyone else was struggling. They weren't playing the gold miner game at all. They were farming. So, what does the farming approach actually look like in practice? Now, instead of relying on viral hits, you're building systems for steady, predictable growth. And then, most importantly, you're building actual relationships with your customers instead of just extracting one-time transactions. This mindset shift changes everything. You're no longer that opportunistic product seller hopping from trend to trend. You're a market focused business builder creating real solutions for real people. Now, the best
• 04:30 - 05:00 part is that this approach makes you nearly immune to competition because you're building actual brand equity and customer loyalty. So, when 10 other stores copy your products, and they probably will, your customers will still buy from you because they trust you. Now, let me just show you an example of one of our stores and what this looks like. We have customers that buy from us consistently month after month. Why? Because everything that I just mentioned, that's one customer, 15 total
• 05:00 - 05:30 orders, spent over two grand on us. Let's see another one. 10 10 orders from this customer. But yeah, I think you get the point. But you can think about it like this. In the gold miner model, you're essentially gambling. Your success depends entirely on product selection and timing. Things that are mostly out of your control. But in the farmer model, you're building an actual business, one that can survive and thrive regardless of what's trending on TikTok this week. because you've built
• 05:30 - 06:00 real relationships with customers who trust you and that will continue to come back to you because they love what they're a part of. All right, now that you understand the farmer mindset, let's talk about how to actually put this into practice. And the first step is creating a store that truly represents this approach. Here's where most drop shippers completely miss the boat. They understand the concept in theory, but they build stores that look like they were literally built 10 years ago, and the standards nowadays are higher than ever. Look, if you're going to be
• 06:00 - 06:30 spending money on ads and pushing traffic to your store, you want a setup that actually converts those visitors into customers. Otherwise, you're just burning through cash. Think about it like farming again. You wouldn't spend all of your time and resources planting seeds in poor soil, would you? No. Now, your store is the soil where your marketing efforts either grow or die. And just like a farmer wouldn't skimp on soil quality, you can't afford to cut corners on your store setup. Having a professional presence online is not optional anymore. Now, when I first started, you could get away with the basic stores that look like whatever,
• 06:30 - 07:00 but the market's way more sophisticated now. People expect way more from their shopping experience. First, you need a brandable name that people actually remember and trust. Now, most drop shippers use very generic, forgettable names like Best Gadget Store or Top Kitchen Products, Pet Supplies, Co. 101, whatever, which that immediately signals drop shipping store and people just aren't stupid anymore. So, let me show you what I use to come up with really good brand names. I'm not the most creative person, so I like to leverage
• 07:00 - 07:30 AI towards my advantage. And if you're not doing this, then I don't know what you're doing. So, I like to use this website. Uh, it's called design. And basically, I just go to this AI business name generator. Describe your business in a few words. So, let's just say I sell crochet related products. And then let's see what it comes up with. yarn haven. Let's go with creative style. Go medium. Then update not in
• 07:30 - 08:00 loop. So, I'm just going to duplicate the tab real quick cuz I do want to check and see if the name's going to be available because we do need the com domain. So, these are going to populate the names plus the potential logos that we can use and then edit for our own, which is actually so convenient. I'll just go here to website domain names and then I'll type in what we have. Notin loop. See if that's
• 08:00 - 08:30 available. Notinloop.com. Oh, okay. Or notinloops.com. That one's available. And then if I just want this domain, it's pretty simple. I'll just buy now and then I'll get it registered. For the brand name, let's just say I like this not and loop one. Take this one. Actually, the black looks clean. Not in loops slogan here. Now, literally in a few minutes
• 08:30 - 09:00 using AI, we came up with a brandable name and then we also got the logo created. And then if we want to take the dot domain, buy now. and you don't need the domain privacy, but $16 to get your.com, we did that in less than a few minutes. Now, thing is a professional brand identity, it's not just nice to have, it is a fundamental part of a high converting store that people actually trust enough to buy from. Now, for the actual store setup, this is where things
• 09:00 - 09:30 get really, really interesting. It's going to save you so much time, and we've honestly come such a long way. It took me, it used to take me so long just to put a decent looking store together and oftentimes I just hire people. So, what you do is just go to any one of my videos. Doesn't matter certainly the one that you're watching. And then you just go to the description. The first link is going to be build your store. And then from here, you just go build my free store. You put in your name, your
• 09:30 - 10:00 credentials, and uh I'm not going to go through this process. Super simple. put your name, your email, create a password, and then after that, it's going to prompt you to choose a niche. It'll say like fashion, apparel, pets, whatever. You choose what you want. If you don't know what you're going to sell, then just choose random and then it'll do that. And then from there, it'll take you to a series of steps where you choose banners and whatnot. Those are just placeholders and it'll populate a store that looks like this. So, for this one, I chose fashion and apparel. And you can see like it looks
• 10:00 - 10:30 really clean. We have a really good base here. Now, these were the random images that I chose. Now, it doesn't matter because you can just swap these out later. And then, of course, you can add in your own logo, like the logo that we created with design and add that in there. Add your brand name. And then, you'll see that first of all, let me show you what it looks like on mobile. It looks really clean and uh it adds also products in here. Although I don't recommend you sell any of these products
• 10:30 - 11:00 because generally most of the time they're kind of saturated products. But you can see like it's a really good template to work off of and everything looks very clean. This is like a a sample. You have the bundle and save uh quantity breaks, the us versus them. You can choose various colors. But what you want to remember here is that this is a good template to work off of and use. So, say for example, you want to sell your own product. Let's just say hypothetically it's this uh product
• 11:00 - 11:30 right here. All you have to do to get this product onto the store is sign up with AutoDS. And then with AutoDS, you just go to here the marketplace. And first of all, AutoDS is going to help with fulfillment. So, it's going to be like a cohesive unit working together. So, you just go to add products, add single product, copy and paste the link, and then you can publish this straight to the store. You can edit what you want to import. And then once you do that,
• 11:30 - 12:00 you'll see that it populates here, and then you should be able to see your product on screen. Here's the product. So, you'll see that it was populated. Of course, you can change and edit. You know, you're going to edit the pricing, you're going to change the the verbiage, the copy, all that good stuff. But the main thing is that the SKS are linked up to this AliExpress link with the supplier. So anytime that you get an order, you just add credits into AutoDS. And you can even set up an automation
• 12:00 - 12:30 feature. I think it's already pre-selected to which as long as you have credits in here, it'll automatically fulfill any order for you. And you don't have to do anything. You don't have to put the customer's information each and every time, which is a hassle. And I used to do that. I was I remember I was doing like 30 40 orders a day and I was still inputting customers information each and every time. Like you don't want to do that. So it'll do that automatically for you. This the SKS are linked up and that's basically it. You have a really nice template. Of course you want to edit all the verbiage. So what I would recommend
• 12:30 - 13:00 is to use chat GBT. Uh give it all the contents of the product page and tell it to come up with some really good text copy for your product page. And that's basically all that you have to do. Of course, you want to change pricing, but as you can see, really nice looking theme from the RIP. And yeah, that's it took us less than a couple minutes to do this. Now, there's one more simple strategy that I want to share with you that most beginners completely miss, and it's probably the easiest way to
• 13:00 - 13:30 increase revenue overnight. It's called a post-purchase upsell. If you guys don't know what that is, it's exactly what it sounds like. offering someone or a customer a complimentary product or even the same product at a discount right after they have already made a purchase post. So let me give you a quick example. Let's just say that you are selling a pet hair remover. Now after someone buys that product, they put in their credit card information and they've already finished the checkout
• 13:30 - 14:00 process. They go to the thank you page. What you could do is you could offer them a pet grooming brush at a special discount. I remember when I was struggling with scaling one of my early stores, I was spending more and more money on ads, but my profit margins were getting really squeezed, which is normal as you increase ad spend, your overall rorowes tends to inherently drop. Now, I was complaining about this to one of my friends who was running a sevenf figureure store at the time, expecting him to give me some advanced crazy
• 14:00 - 14:30 strategy advice and said what he did was he looked at me like I was missing something very obvious and he said, "Are you doing post purchase upselles? What are you doing to make the most out of every single customer that lands on your product page on your website? Are you squeezing as much money as you can from them?" And I was like, "I was not doing that." And then he explained that he'd been using them for years and they were responsible for almost a quarter of his total revenue and it literally required zero additional ad spend. I implemented
• 14:30 - 15:00 his advice that weekend and the results were basically immediate. I remember I was like, are you kidding me? It was that simple. And literally our average order value jumped up dramatically. And this gave me a lot more breathing room because at the time I could essentially afford to outbid competitors and still maintain healthy margins while doing so. Now, the main reason why this simple addition is so powerful is because it does not hurt your conversion rates at all. It happens after they have already
• 15:00 - 15:30 purchased. Now, it's just a simple one-click offer that doesn't require them to enter their credit card information again. So, it's literally free money that most drop shippers leave literally on the table. There are a ton of apps that make this super straightforward to implement. Apps like uh Zipify, OCU, Cart Hook. There's so many others and they all work pretty much the same. So, you could just look at them. It's so easy of a setup that I feel like I don't even need to go over it or show you guys. So, now that you've built a professional store and implemented systems that convert
• 15:30 - 16:00 visitors, it's time to focus on metrics that will actually grow your business. Now, while everyone is obsessed over finding the next viral product or creating flashy ads, successful drop shippers are quietly tracking a completely different set of metrics. They are focused on the boring numbers that actually determine whether you're building a real business or creating an illusion of one. Now, I learned this the hard way when I first started. I was completely fixated on topline revenue. I was like, "Hey, look at me. I'm doing 50k this month, 100k this month." But I
• 16:00 - 16:30 was actually losing money because I wasn't paying attention to the metrics that truly and actually matter. So here are four numbers that changed everything for my business. Number one, customer acquisition cost, aka your CPA. So what it actually cost you to get a real customer. Two, average order value, your AOV. How much people spend with you per transaction. Three, customer lifetime value LTV. How much a customer is worth
• 16:30 - 17:00 over their entire relationship with you on your website with your brand for your break even. The minimum return on ads spend. You need to be profitable. Focusing on these numbers will help prevent you from bleeding money while building something that actually lasts. And you can think about the most successful companies that you know. They're not constantly chasing viral moments. They mastered what is called the double revenue approach that most drop shippers completely overlook. First, they maximize what each transaction is worth through strategic
• 17:00 - 17:30 upsells and bundling. Then, they transform one-time buyers into repeat customers who purchase again and again and again. This creates predictable, consistent revenue that builds real wealth. Now, why do you think software companies charge you a monthly basis? Notion charges you x amount per month. Netflix charges you x amount per month. Why? Because it's predictable revenue. And the thing is you can apply these exact same principles to your drop shipping business right now as of this
• 17:30 - 18:00 moment. So after you set up your store with the right foundation, don't just focus on scaling ads. Take the time to optimize your funnel and understand your metrics. That's where the real profit begins. So, just like a smart farmer doesn't just plant more seeds when crops aren't yielding enough, they improve the soil, they optimize irrigation, and they use better farming techniques. Your drop business works essentially the same way. So, you want to cultivate what you've already planted and you'll harvest profits season after season without constantly starting over. So, if you
• 18:00 - 18:30 guys have the attention span to let me show you how this works in practice, uh, listen up. Let's say you're selling a product for $40. Your cost is $15 and your ad cost to acquire a customer is $12. This gives you a profit of $13 per order or 32.5% margin. Now, what happens if you can increase your average order value by just 20% through upselles and bundles and you reduce your ad cost by 15%
• 18:30 - 19:00 through better content and creative optimization, your profit jumps up to $22 per order. a 69% increase in profit without finding any new products or selling any new revolutionary products. This is what I mean when I talk about focusing on boring fundamentals. Most drop shippers constantly hunt for the next winning product when they could easily be doubling their profits by simply optimizing what they already have. So the idea is that when you understand these metrics, you can afford to spend more on customer acquisition or
• 19:00 - 19:30 getting that customer, paying to get that customer than other competitors can. So you can essentially outbid them. So let me show you what I mean with another example on how this plays out. Hopefully you guys aren't getting too bored. So store A sells a product for $30 with no upsells. Their average order value is about $35. Then you have store B who sells the same product for $30 but has a proper funnel with upselles. Their average order value is $50. So, if both
• 19:30 - 20:00 stores have the same conversion rate and acquisition costs, store B can create better content, research more customers, and still be more profitable. So, a super powerful lover in this business isn't finding cheaper products or cutting costs. It's increasing your average order value through proper funnel building. So, after you find that product, don't just focus on scaling the ads. Take the time to optimize the funnel and understand your metrics. That is where the real profit happens. All right. All right. So, from an overview,
• 20:00 - 20:30 I guess the real takeaway here is success in drop shipping isn't about finding magical products or secret hacks. As I've been trying to illustrate this whole entire time, I've been very repetitive on purpose. It is more about the farmer mindset, serving specific markets instead of chasing trends, focusing on the metrics that drive profit, and then building a professional store that converts. Now, I wish I had time to cover content creation strategies and paid ads. They are
• 20:30 - 21:00 drivers of eyeballs, which is necessary to make money at all if you don't have eyeballs and you don't have anything. But I'll cover those in depth in another video that's going to be dedicated to that topic since they deserve their own spotlight. But regardless, this is a really good starting point. These fundamentals will set you up for success from day one instead of learning the hard way like I did, hopefully. Now, if you're one of those people who's serious about building a sustainable drop shipping business using everything that I just showed you, I'd like to announce that I just opened a few spots, my
• 21:00 - 21:30 10-week mentorship program, where I work directly one-on-one with you to implement these exact systems. Now, the whole point of this program is to help you build something so solid that by the end of our time working together, I can actually invest and put my own money into growing your business. Now, I can only work with around three to five students per quarter because I'm personally involved in every single step of the way. So, hit that link in the description, apply now, and I am looking forward to speaking to you about your
• 21:30 - 22:00 application. I hope you guys got something valuable from this video. Thank you for watching. And I will see