There are a lot of gurus and courses out there that claim they can show you how to make $10 000 a month by dropshipping from China. Most of these courses and gurus are full of it and most of them will lead you astray.

The truth is that dropshipping is not nearly as easy to make $10,000 per month with. There’s a lot of competition and dropshipping has a very low barrier to entry.

The $10,000 per month mark is often seen as a target because that represents a very comfortable lifestyle in most developed cities and countries.

If you live in the USA, UK, Canada or Australia then $10,000 per month represents a high income – more than you would earn from most professional occupations.

Reaching the $10,000 per month mark with dropshipping is not easy and often takes a big investment of time and money to learn the ropes.

The real skill is not so much in dropshipping or technical setups but rather in marketing and advertising.

Most products that you will source from China will be blank and generic products. Your branding, marketing and advertising is what will give the products value and ultimately determine your dropshipping success.

To to make $10 000 a month by dropshipping from China requires a focussed ind, a diligent work ethic and a decent starting budget to allow yourself some initial failures.

Another important point to keep in mind is that getting to $10,000 per month is one thing. Staying at $10,000 per month is another.

Dropshipping can be very volatile. Advertising dropshipping products can be very volatile. This can cause many sleepless nights and can get very stressful.

It is a really exciting adventure though, so strap yourself in and let’s dive into how to make $10 000 a month by dropshipping.

How To Make $10 000 A Month By Dropshipping From China in 9 Steps:

To make $10,000 per month by dropshipping from China, we need to make around $330 per day. To be clear, we are talking about PROFIT, not revenue.

To make $330 profit per day, you will need to make around $1000 per day revenue. That is at a 30% profit margin. I cover the math in more detail later but we want to make a rough estimate to see if it is at least possible to hit this target.

If we sell just one product and make $10 profit per product we will need to sell 33 of that product per day to hit our goal.

If we sell 5 products on the front end then we will need to sell only 5 or 6 of each per day.

This is an oversimplification because there are a lot of variables to factor in. It does give us a rough goal to work to though.

Learning how to make $10 000 a month by dropshipping from China can be broken down in these 9 steps:

Step #1: Pick a Niche

A niche is a segment of a broader market. The cat niche can be seen as a segment of the pet market. It can even be more specific than that and I could target cat toys or apparel for cat lovers or even target specific cat breeds.

Building a niche store allows you to target a very specific audience. When you target a specific audience you are able to meet their needs much more effectively.

A niche store helps to focus your mind and allows you to build a store that is focussed around one idea. It makes branding your store easier and it makes picking products much easier.

Ultimately a niche store makes your marketing and advertising much easier.

From a marketing point of view, you are a ‘specialist store’ and people who are passionate about your niche will be much more likely to buy from a specialist store.

From an advertising point of view, a specific niche allows you to be laser targeted with your advertising which ensures that ONLY people who are very likely to be interested in your products will see your ads.

Step #2: Pick 20 Products in That Niche

Once you have your niche narrowed down, head over to Aliexpress and start looking for interesting, novel or quirky products in your niche.

Mix this with products that solve specific problems. Pick at least 10 products that solve a problem for your niche market and 10 products that are cute, quirky or attention grabbing.

You can also start your search for products by using tools like EcomHunt, Commerce Inspector or Sell The Trend.

These tools allow you to see products that are already popular and that are already selling. It will give you a head start and help you get a good idea of what people in your niche are already buying.

Step #3: Set Up Your Dropshipping Store

Now you can set up your Shopify Store and connect Oberlo to your store to import products directly from Aliexpress to your store.

If you are using Woocommerce, you can do this with the AliDropship app.

Make sure you use a great theme for your store and spend a lot of time on writing good product descriptions and editing images to make your store look professional and congruent.

Don’t just import products from Aliexpress! You WILL need to do a lot of editing to make it look great.

Step #4: Get Targeted Traffic To Your Store

Getting targeted traffic to your store is by far the most important step. There are a number of ways to do this.

SEO is very slow and it can take months to start seeing any significant amounts of traffic. Most dropshippers use Facebook Ads or Google Ads.

These two ad platforms allows you to target specific audiences and the best part is that you can start getting traffic to your store in a matter of hours.

Facebook Ads and Google ads are two very different beasts though. Facebook Ads has a LOT of traffic and you can easily burn through a few thousand dollars a day.

It does have the potential to really blow up though and most dropshippers who make $50k/day use Facebook Ads.

Google Ads is different because it is all search based. Generally speaking, people on Google are already looking for specific products when they type in certain search terms.

Because of this, search traffic converts much better and Google Ads is a much more stable and consistent form of traffic for dropshippers.

Facebook Ads can be very volatile.

Ideally you will use both but when you first start out, pick one of these Ad Platforms and learn as much as you can as quickly as you can.

Step #5: Cut the Losers & Let The Winners Run

Now that you have 20 products in your store you need to start testing them one by one. You could even start testing once you have 5 products and then keep adding as you go along.

What you are looking for is a front-end product that is profitable from ads. If you are running a niche store and you did proper niche research then you will see sales.

Sales and profit is not the same thing though.

When you pay for traffic it is an expense that needs to be factored in. Your product pricing strategy is really important and for dropshipping products you should generally aim for 3x the cost price.

One third will be COG, one third will be ad costs and one third will be profit.

So, if you sell a product that costs you $10 then you will price it at least $30. You can make $10 profit if your ad cost per purchase is $10 (that means you will spend $10 in advertising to make one sale).

While a lot of products will make sales, not many will meet the criteria of being profitable as in the example above.

You are looking for real winners.

Do not waste your time on products that are losing you money. I would suggest you spend at least 3 to 5 times your product cost on advertising before you pull the plug on a product.

Facebook Ads in particular needs time to optimize and it could often take some money upfront to start seeing sales.

You should spend at least $100 in testing a product to see if it shows potential. As a rule of thumb, spend 3x your product price on testing.

It could take some testing to find a winning product but if you pick your 20 products carefully you will find at least one product that can be your front-end driver product.

Step #6: Create Upsells and Build Your Back-End Offers

With a niche store, I look for 3 to 5 front end products that can drive consistent sales. It can take time to build up to this and often takes a lot of testing.

The front end driver products have to be profitable via ads. They ensure that the store runs well and makes money. They also bring qualified customers through the store.

This gives you the opportunity to offer upsells and cross sells to increase your AOV. With a bit of work you can increase your AOV (average order value) by 50% to 100%.

That means that instead of making $10 profit per sale you are making $15 to $20 per sale. If you multiply this across 5 different products then it quickly adds up.

With a niche store it is much easier to offer upsells and cross sells. You know exactly what your customer is interested in and they are far more likely to make additional purchases if they have already or are busy buying something from you.

Step #7: Improve Fulfillment and Build a Brand

While starring with dropshipping from Aliexpress is quick and easy, it is rarely a good plan long term. Slow shipping, a lack of branding and general logistics issues can hurt your business.

Moving on asap is crucial. I like using dedicated dropshippers like CJ Dropshipping, Udroppy and Eprolo.

They tend to offer slightly better prices than Aliexpress but they have much faster shipping lanes and can ensure delivery within 10 to 15 days. On top of that, they allow you to brand your products and parcels.

Branding makes a big difference. It’s the difference between a customer getting a random blank product from China and a customer getting a niche box with your beautiful logo on it.

Branding and efficient fulfillment makes a huge difference in keeping customers happy and getting repeat orders.

Step #8: Expand Your Advertising

Both Facebook Ads and Google Ads have become very sophisticated. Once you start seeing success and getting some traction with your ads it is not that hard to scale.

For the most part, increasing your ad spent leads to an increase in sales. Sometimes it is disproportionate and with scale there is usually a decrease in conversion rates.

There are also options with retargeting ads which can be very lucrative and an easy way to bump your sales.

With Google Ads you also have the option to run both search ads and shopping ads. Google Shopping can be very profitable and generally if your product(s) are selling on search ads it will sell on Shopping ads.

You should also leverage both ad platforms. By properly installing your pixels you can use sales data from both platforms to advertise on both platforms.

Building lookalike audiences is a really powerful way to scale your ad campaigns.

You can take this even further and install pixels for other ad platforms like Pinterest Ads and Snapchat Ads and use your data to expound your advertising to these platforms.

Using pixel data and lookalike audiences allows you to scale with much more confidence and gives you a much more reliable way to target potential customers.

Step #9: Expand Your Products

Testing new products is a process that never ends. Products burn out. Ads burn out. You have to constantly look for new products.

Maintaining 5 or 6 winning products that you can advertise up-front is no easy task. The real benefit of a niche store however is that you start to learn what your customers respond to.

This makes it much easier to spot winning products.

As you build your brand you can also start expanding your products and your sourcing. With a proper branded store and a proven sales history you can approach other brands more easily to hook up dropshipping deals with them.

Ultimately, everybody wants to make more sales. Brands are much more likely to dropship for you if you will make them an extra 500 to 1000 sales per month.

Using your email list of customers can also go a long way towards expanding your product catalog.

You can run surveys, ask your customers for feedback or just see what sells through your email list to get instant ideas for new products.

Maintaining a large product catalog can be a big challenge if you dropship. I like to run a tight ship and try to maintain no more than 20 to 30 products in a niche store.

I also like to keep all the products with the same supplier. With CJ Dropshipping or Udroppy you have the benefit of all your products shipping from the same warehouse.

If you do branding, you also ship everything in your own branded boxes/packaging.

Making $10,000 Per Month With Dropshipping – The Math

The 9 steps above on how to make $10 000 a month by dropshipping from China is only a very broad and basic overview.

There are a lot of steps in between but it should give you an overview of what it takes.

Making $10,000 per month with dropshipping is not easy. I know there are dozens of gurus on Youtube flashing Shopify screenshots of making $50k a day.

Those are the exceptions rather than the rule. Most of those screenshots are fabricated or do not reflect profit.

There is a big difference between making $10,000 and making $10,000 PROFIT. Running a profitable dropshipping store takes hard work and extreme dedication.

Let’s look at the math and see what it really takes and what it looks like to create a $10,000 per month dropshipping store.

As an example I have chosen this cat bed as a product. We can get it from Aliexpress for about $10 and it has a proven sales record on Aliexpress.

The reviews are good and I have double checked that similar products on Amazon get good reviews as well.

We can easily sell this bed for $29.95 or $34.95 and still offer free shipping.

• $29.95 – $10 COG = $20 profit.

• Running ads that targets the cat niche is quite expensive but we should be able to make sales at $7 to $10 CPP (cost per purchase).

• That leaves us with around $10 Net profit per sale.

To make $10,000 PROFIT per month we will need to sell 1000 units per month.

That is around 30 sales per day.

Breaking it down like this before you even go after a product puts things in perspective. It almost never works out exactly like this but it shows us that it is possible and doable.

The reality is that there will be fees, refunds and days where our ads perform poorly. There will also be some huge gains because customers often buy multiple products and/or upsells.

We can also have retargeting ads with much lower CPP’s and upsells via email.

With proper upsells in place you could double your sales which means you really only need 15 sales per day.

This takes time though because there is testing involved and it takes time to build your email list of customers (who will keep buying from you).

If we know what our targets are which is to get a max of $9 CPP and around 30 sales per day then it becomes easy to measure our progress as we start driving traffic and testing the product.

Can You Get Rich Off Dropshipping?

Can you get rich off dropshipping? Yes, you most certainly can but then again there are a lot of businesses that can make your rich online.

Dropshipping in and off itself will not make you rich. There are a lot of moving parts in a dropshipping business and when any part breaks down your business can be in trouble.

Dropshipping has a low barrier to entry because you can effectively start an ecommerce business for a few hundred dollars.

Most businesses take thousands of dollars just to get started. This makes dropshipping a low risk business. While you certainly can lose money with dropshipping, you are not tied to large capital expenses.

You do not have to invest in buying inventory upfront. You do not have to pay for renting a storefront and you do not have to wait months to start trading.

Dropshipping is fast, low risk and makes you very nimble.

Because of the low barrier to entry, the competition is fierce. Being successful with dropshipping often exposes the problems with dropshipping.

Slow shipping, product quality and copycats usually become serious issues when your dropshipping store is successful.

While you certainly can get rich off dropshipping it should never be the goal.

Huh?

Dropshipping is a great way to start with selling products online but it is rarely a long term and sustainable way to build and grow an ecommerce business.

As soon as you start seeing success with dropshipping from Aliexpress you should start looking towards better fulfillment options.

The ultimate goal should be to warehouse your own products, brand them and focus on creating something that can not be copied that easily.

The next issue we need to address is what you consider ‘getting rich’ means?

For some it’s a million dollars a year. For others it’s 10 million dollars. There certainly are dropshippers who have achieved both these goals and more.

Like any business, if you can’t make $100 then you can’t make $1000.

The flipside is that if you can make a $100 then making $1000 or $100,000 is just a matter of scaling.

Dropshipping is a great way to scale because you do not have to invest in inventory and expanding to an international market is relatively easy since you are shipping from China.

It often takes just one product that really hits it off. Most of the big dropshipping successes came from single products that were marketed really well and struck a cord with its audience.

Selling 100 products a day with an average profit of $15 to $20 per product already gets you to $50k/month. That is $600k per year.

The reality is that it is not that easy and most products do not last more than a year anyway.

As you gain experience, selling higher ticket products with bigger profit margins makes it easier to hit bigger financial goals.

The risk are much higher though which is why it is not a great strategy for beginner or intermediate dropshippers.

How Much Can You Make A Month Dropshipping?

The reason why I prefer building niche stores is because of stability. So-called one products stores became really popular mainly because of Gabrielle St. Germain who is one of the most famous dropshippers.

He posted several Youtube videos in 2019 followed by a course where he builds Shopify stores around a single product. This allows him to brand the product and create a higher perceived value around generic Chinese products.

This has since become a very popular strategy with many dropshippers ‘chasing’ those illusive products that will make them millions.

The challenge with the one product store strategy is this:

• It takes a lot of work upfront to build and brand an entire store around just one product
• It gives you just one chance for success. If your product bombs, your entire store bombs
• Selling just one product severely limits your upsell and cross sell options
• Selling just one product is rarely a long term solution
• Its very easy for copycats to copy your entire store/product

With a niche store you can solve a lot of these issues. On top of that, when I do find one particular product in my niche store that really sells like crazy, I can easily break it out into a one product store and create a brand around that product.

Niche stores are much more effective – especially if you are not that experienced. It allows you to identify a niche and build a speciality store around that niche.

A speciality store is how you set yourself apart from Amazon and other run-of-the-mill dropshippers who just pile a load of products into a general store.

With a niche store you can still have a level of branding and it gives you the option to test a lot of products in that niche. This greatly improves your chances of success.

Giving customers more options to buy more products generally leads to more sales. Even if products failed during testing, the will still continue to make sales as upsells or cross sells.

With a niche store you get more stability.

How much can you make a month dropshipping with a niche store? I know you will hate the answer, but it depends and there are no hard and fast numbers.

Making $10,000 a month with a niche store certainly is very possible. If you have 3 to 5 products that sell consistently then much easier.

With 5 products and an average of $15 profit per product then you only need around 5 to 6 sales per product per day to hit your $10,000 per month target.

• 1 Product @ $15 profit per sale x 5 sales = $75
• 5 Product @ $15 profit per sale x 5 sales = $375 (per day)
• $375 per day = $11,250 per month

The perpetual growth of a niche store is what interests me most. If my cat store starts making 1000 sales per month then after 6 months I have 6000 customers.

With 6000 customers and half decent email strategy you could see an extra 500 sales per month just from email alone.

If you take that over the course of a year or even 5 years then you can quickly see how you can build a big business.

How Much Should You Aim To Make With Dropshipping?

While $10,000 a month is a very achievable goal, it tends to be too high for most newbies. If you have some experience under your belt it gets easier but I would encourage you to set a much lower goal.

The first step would be to make enough from dropshipping to cover your basic living expenses. This depends heavily on where you live and what your family situation is.

Setting yourself a $3000/month goal is a great start. That means you only have to make $100 per day which is not hard at all with dropshipping.

Making $100 per day @ $10 profit per product is only 10 sales.

Once you get to $100 per day you can easily double that with numerous strategies. If you can sell 10 products per day then you can most likely sell 20 or even 100. It’s just a matter of scale.

One of the biggest problems I see with dropshipping newbies is that they are all chasing ‘the dream’ of making $50k/day, having a Lambo and lounging on a 5-star yacht doing nothing but sipping cocktails.

That is a pipe dream.

Abandon that goal immediately.

Dropshippers who make $50k per day usually work at least 10 hours a day, 7 days a week. They often also have a team and a dedicated agent in China.

I am all for having big goals but you have to learn to crawl before you can walk.

Aiming too high too soon most often leads to you crashing and burning.

While there is a lot of money to be made in dropshipping, there is also a lot of money to be lost. Advertising on Google and Facebook can quickly burn through your budget and leave you in the red if you are not focussed.