Getting Into Dropshipping? How To Manage Your Expectations And Set The Right Mindset

We all have heard that dropshipping can get you rich in only a couple of days or weeks. That’s completely false. Most of the self-proclaimed “gurus” are saying this just to sell their dropshipping courses.

Understandably, after you read all this incorrect information, it is quite easy to get a wrong impression about how dropshipping works, and what’s real and what’s not.

This is also one of the main reasons beginners and newcomers fail at dropshipping. They set up unrealistic expectations about what can and cannot be achieved doing dropshipping.

Yes, as many Shopify screenshots on Reddit can show you, there are people who make easily 5-6 figures in revenue every month. What they don’t really tell you is what’s the real cost of dropshipping, how much time it really takes them to get there, how much is the shipping cost or how much is their advertising cost per order.

As such, many newcomers think that once they have a store, add a few products and launch a couple of ads on Facebook, the orders will start flowing right away. Well, things are not quite so easy.

So, why is this way of thinking wrong? What’s real and what’s not about dropshipping?

What should be the real expectations when you start dropshipping? And what is the right mindset?

These are the questions we hope to answer with this article and especially within the lessons from our dropshipping course.

So, here are our five tips to help you set some realistic expectations about dropshipping.

Mindset Tip 1 – Control your emotions

Like most businesses or projects, dropshipping should also start with a plan and a clear set of rules you need to repeat every single day, even if your product is a best seller or not.

This means that no matter what happens, you need to stop making emotional decisions just because you don’t like to lose. You need to control your emotions and base all your decisions on rules and data only.

To help you get started, and give you an idea of how dropshipping works and set some realistic expectations, here are some hard facts.

Only around 1 in 20 products is going to be a real winner and pay for the rest of your failed tested products.

5 in 20 products are going to break even, meaning you won’t make or lose money with them.

And the rest of the products are going to be what you would call a “fail test” and you are very probably going to lose money with them as they won’t be producing any sales.

This data comes from what most of the dropshippers are getting and it’s based on the dropshipping style of the last few years, and that’s the ones that imply dropshipping items from China and websites like AliExpress. By the way, we don’t recommend this style of dropshipping.

But, here’s what we recommend and what you will learn in our dropshipping course.

Your focus should be on building a store around evergreen niches and groups of products instead of finding only one winning product. And another thing, even if you have 10 losing products in a row, this doesn’t mean that you need to stop and give up. But it does mean that you should stop wasting money on those products when the math is telling you to stop. This is how you stop making emotional decisions and you start using the data and numbers in your favor.

If you decide to enroll in our dropshipping course, we will set up a plan and some dropshipping rules that you need to follow when you make decisions about your store and your business.

Mindset Tip 2 – Patience is essential

Well, we’re sure you’ve heard this before, but we’re still going to repeat it: this is not a get-rich-quick scheme. So, patience is the keyword for this second mindset tip.

Among the reasons most newcomers fail or believe that dropshipping is dead is their lack of patience. For example, most dropshippers start seeing actual results only after the 2nd month of selling. So, if you stop and give up sooner than 3 months after you launched your store then you didn’t try enough.

That’s why we recommend having a budget that will cover at least six months of activity. This way you can test at least 2 new products per week which can mean at least 50 up to 100 tested products in total.

Now, with a budget for 6 months, you should be able to find and build a group of products that will generate enough profits in the long term and also cover all your other losses.

Mindset Tip 3 – Always think long-term

Another important mindset is to always think long-term. Why? Well, many beginners dream of finding that one special product that all these “gurus” say will bring them success. Well, that’s not how things work, from our experience.

We recommend building a long-term and scalable business. Don’t try and hunt that one life-changing product, instead, find a niche and a group of evergreen products and build a store around them. Your goal should be on the long-term growth of your store and business as a whole, rather than trying to find that one winning product.

And you can only do this if you follow a plan with a very strict set of rules and stick to that plan no matter what. Keep your focus and ignore all the background noise and flashy screenshots from social media.

Mindset Tip 4 – Set realistic goals and act accordingly

You need to set strong realistic goals and act accordingly. What does that mean? Well, before starting any type of business you have to set your goals and performance indicators for the next 3 to 6 and up to 12 months. This is a must.

Now, what is a realistic goal in dropshipping? Well, first, you need to think about why you want to do this and what are you trying to achieve.

Here is an example. Let’s say that you want to make an additional income of $3000 every month. How much money do you think you need to invest and achieve this goal? Can you make $3000 in profit every month with let’s say only a $500 initial investment? Also, can you achieve these in just 1-2 months?

Now, considering what we just said, that only 1 in 20 products are on average profitable and that this is not a get-rich-quick scheme, that can’t be possible with only a $500 investment.

Of course, it’s also not impossible, you can get very lucky and your first tested product could also become a best seller. But, if we are being realistic, this is just very unlikely.

And again, this is also why so many beginners give up so easily. They are expecting to see fast results and if they don’t reach their desired goal in 3-4 weeks, they just think dropshipping is a scam or not profitable.

That’s why, you need to start by setting some realistic goals for the next 3 to 6 months, be patient, stay consistent, and then slowly grow your store until you reach the point where you can do this full-time if you want it.

Mindset Tip 5 – Set a minimum budget

Now, if you are a beginner and you are just starting, and you probably don’t even have a store yet, this is one of the first questions you will be asking yourself: What is the minimum budget I need?

This question is so important because it’s also why beginners start with the wrong expectations and mindset about dropshipping. They believe it’s possible to start a dropshipping business with almost no money at all.

Well, if you want to be successful, you need to prepare a budget and cover at least 3 to 6 months of activity as we mentioned above. You need to set a minimum viable budget.

This budget needs to cover the entire backend and store setup plus all the other costs to get your store started and then you need to still have money for at least one to two months of advertising.

So let’s find out what is a realistic minimum budget to set. Well, it really depends on so many things like the type of store, niche size, type of products, audience, competition and many other things.

But for the sake of this article, let’s say that setting up a proper store with everything that’s needed, all the features and the tools included, and also keeping some budget for advertising, would mean you need around 1000 to $3000 to start with.

This budget also depends on the goal you set for yourself. For example, if your goal is to make $10,000 / month in profit 6 months from now, then you need much more than just $3000 to cover the entire advertising budget that you need to spend every month.

But if your goal is not that ambitious and you are just looking to generate 2000 to $5000 a month, then a budget of around 1000 to $3000 should be enough to get started.

Now, we have seen people having success at dropshipping with less money than this, but as we want to help you set up a realistic budget, and be completely honest, this is the budget you should start with. This amount will help you be prepared for what could happen and let you test at least 10 to 15 products a month and also improve your chances of success.

Learn more about the true cost of dropshipping

Let’s sum up

Now, let’s go through all the 5 tips that will help you have the right mindset and better chances to succeed at dropshipping once again.

You need to stop making emotional decisions just because you don’t want to lose; you need to base your decisions on data numbers and specific dropshipping rules.
This is not a get-rich-quick scheme. So, you need to have patience and follow the plan and rules you set up.
This is a long-term project. The goal is to create a scalable business and to grow a store and not find winning products after winning products.
Set your first goals before you start. Where do you want to be 3, 6 and 12 months from now?
Set the right budget for your new business. Remember, you are building a new business from scratch, one that you can scale up and expand as much as you like it. So you definitely need to set up a proper budget for it.