



In the December of 2017, Marc Chapon was just like any other entrepreneur starting out on the journey to a successful online business. He had studied Hospitality/Restaurant management in Paris and Switzerland and the most he knew about marketing were the basics the course had covered- and now, he had quit his full time job and ventured into ecommerce, with no shortage of determination and enthusiasm.





In less than a year, he was making sales worth 60 thousand dollars per month- with purely marketing and testing on his side. He now has a course on Spocket Academy detailing how to grow your business from zero to selling thousands per month.





In one single day, he made over $10,000 in sales:

We wanted to map out his journey, right from square 1 to the successful businessman he is now. Here’s his story, tips and tactics of how exactly he built the store- in his own words.





How to build a successful dropshipping store that is sustainable and scalable:





When I entered ecommerce, there was a huge amount of information on the internet: loads of scammers and get-rich-quick courses out there. But everything you need to learn about this market is out there on the internet as well- there are legitimate courses and blogs that can push a new entrepreneur towards success.





There is everything you need to know on the Internet. If you look for it, you are going to find it.





There are Facebook groups, YouTube videos, courses- all to help you build your e-commerce business:





I am going to spell out how I created a business that I made a living out of, step by step.





Step 1: What was the budget for your store? How much does one need to build a successful store?





When I quit my full-time job to try my own business, I did not venture into it blindly.



Now, a lot of supposed ‘ecommerce gurus’ will tell you that you can start a successful business with a zero dollar investment- but any rational entrepreneur will be able to tell that you need funds to start any business: with ecommerce, you do not needs tens of thousands to get started, but you will still need about $1000 to make it through.





I had set aside about $5000 just for my store, but about $1000 was enough before I started making sales to cut even. You will need money to get yourself a Shopify store, and run ads on Facebook: zero investment is a stretch.





Trust me, building a business from ground up is going to require basic funds: anyone who says otherwise is oversimplifying the business.





However, I did not spend funds on acquiring products and holding inventory. If I had to sell online, I would be using the dropshipping model. I had heard about Spocket- through which I could find products and kick off my store at no upfront cost: but first I had to select a niche.





Step 2: How did you select a niche for your store?





I have often heard people say ‘This is a good niche’, which always confuses me because there is no good niche or bad niche.





There are no saturated marketspaces, and not even the most in-demand niche would work for a retailer who is not putting in effort into marketing and building a reliable store.





My rule of thumb while selecting a niche is that I had to be interested in the niche to start a store in it: a lot of people do not think this is an important criterion when choosing a category for their store, but I have found that passion precedes any successful business, so if you choose a niche that you do not know anything about, you’ll probably not be as invested as you should be.





Plus, when you start with something you already like, you’ve covered the A-B-Cs and have an advantage over entrepreneurs that are starting from scratch.





With all this in mind, I still had a few niches that I could take on- art was a major interest of mine, so that niche was on the table. I also loved animals and had a dog and cat of my own, which was another category that I could dive into. I was (and am) "living in the niche" and knew everything about it- especially the needs and problems that dog owners experience on a daily basis.





Products for dog lovers were trending and so, after some research, I chose dog-focussed products as the theme of my store.





Google Trends strengthened my conviction:





Another thing to note is, you might be tempted to kick off your store with a current passing trend, but with that, you must be content to make a lot of money and then drop off the face of the Earth.





A sustainable business is possible if you choose a niche that is consistently doing well.





I did considerable research into the field: right from checking out Amazon and other popular sites to see how popular the niche was, to going over revenues generated by the niche over the past years.





To research a niche, I usually do the following:

Google the main keywords, check out major companies that sell the products

Check the amount of traffic they generate

View the global searches for the keyboards

Review the amount of revenue the niche creates per year online

Check the profitability of the niche





The traffic was great, and it seemed like a reasonable profit could be made with the category. Once I had thoroughly researched the niche, I settled on all things dog related.





Step 3: How did you hone in on your target audience?





This step actually went hand in hand with the first step.



Simple Google searches led me to competitor stores, where I could check the reviews left by audiences, and find out who was majorly attracted to the dog niche. Further competitor research showed exactly who my competitors were targeting, and what they were doing successfully.





Being a pet-owner myself, I had a fair inkling of who required and was interested in the products I planned on selling. With a heady combination of Google Trends and common sense, I figured the lifestyles, personality traits and attitudes of the people that were likely to buy my product.





The thing is, you do not need tonnes of data to hit the right audience. But without the right audience, dropshipping success is impossible. My audience was based in the US or Europe, aged 21-65, often followed dog accounts on instagram and shopped at PetSmart. This was great for a start- I kept testing and diving deeper as time went on.







Step 4: How did you choose the right, winning products?

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If you have a bad product, not even the most gorgeous looking store can sell it.





This problem, again, was resolved by Google. Though I started looking at products on AliExpress, I did not want the generic low quality AliExpress products that were available in 500 different stores. Owing to the choppy product descriptions and bad images- not to mention the uncertain shipping times, I decided to not to have any of those products on my store.





I needed manufacturers based in the US and Europe, with great products and low shipping times. A simple Shopify app store search led me to Spocket. One of the things I was going to be selling was dog tags, and Spocket had an interesting collection of dog bracelets, tags and necklaces- all shipping from the US. They also allowed me a fair profit range, which was important.

Plus, I found customizable products.





I immediately set out importing products to my store.

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I also had a look at other apps on Shopify such as Oberlo, but they did not meet the criteria I had set for my products. Between Spocket and Oberlo, I found Spocket to be a better fit for my needs.

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I hunted for local suppliers and Etsy artisans on Spocket to fill my store. I checked the trending products on Amazon, and found suppliers selling them within the US at different rates. Again, you do not actually need 20,000 products to be a successful store. A good number, such as 25-50 amazing products worked perfect for me.

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The best part about Spocket products was that I did not have to worry about product images or supplier reliability.

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I sought reviews and researched competitors and chose products that always led to happy customers. Dropshipping is all about the product, so I made sure to choose suppliers I trusted entirely. Winning products are a mixture of the right product, the right audience and the right marketing, and I did not want to get even one of these wrong.





I spoke to the suppliers to ensure that they were someone I was comfortable working with, and collected products that were special and unique. Of course, I also occasionally chose products that did not sell well, but that is all part of the learning curve.







Step 5: What went into building the store?



Shopify was the obvious choice as a website builder. Easy to use, and quick. I picked up the theme- Brooklyn and set about designing the store. People often spend a lot of time designing and perfecting how their store looks. But the truth is that as an ecommerce business, your store needs to look professional and trustworthy, but you don’t need to go overboard.





Your site needs to load within 3 seconds, that’s really important!



So I spent some time constructing a site that had all the essentials, minus the fluff. These are the steps I followed:





1. Create a homepage:





A homepage is the first impression people have about your store, so this part is quite important! I was always interested in design so this was the exciting part.





A lot of people just list products on their ecommerce store: that is not a store, that is just an accumulation of products.





This is how I created a homepage:





I first inserted a high definition picture from a free stock photo website such as Unsplash at the top of the main page- this was the first thing people would see when they landed on the site, so it had to be related to my niche, and attractive.

I then added a small tagline and a CTA button on that image that would take the visitors straight to the products.





This is what your store’s homepage should look like, right above the fold:

I put up collections with equally attractive pictures on the homepage, under the main image that took the visitors directly to the respective collections.

I made the navigation bar sticky with the primary sections accessible easily to all visitors.





As added value, I created a dog owner’s guide that any visitor could download for free.





