Hey, everyone. I'm Jessica with Oberlo. I'm Melvin CHEE. And Melvin's dropshipping store made $15 million in two years. Now Melvin doesn't own a Lamborghini. But he does own an e-commerce company that employs 17 people. It's safe to say that Melvin knows his stuff. And today, he's going to share five dropshipping products that you should start selling with Oberlo right now. Let's get started. [MUSIC PLAYING] OK.
So Melvin, I know that our audience wants to get right into the products you would recommend that they sell. But I can't get over the fact that at $15 million in two years, you are the highest-grossing merchant that I've ever sat beside. That's crazy. How did you even start dropshipping? Right. So my entire e-commerce journey actually started back in 2012, 2013, when I got to know about digital marketing, Facebook ads.
Back then, and just selling things online was just totally unthinkable for me. Back in-- I grew up in Malaysia, I grew up in a small town that knew nothing about online selling. I knew about e-commerce. And selling things online just make me feel-- so fascinated by the entire process of how you could sell a product from your hand to another user's hand is just totally crazy. And what was your motivation for even getting into e-commerce in the first place?
Right. So it's so clich�� and so funny at the same time because I started e-commerce purely because I just wanted to make more money off my pocket money. Because my parents-- I was still back in college, and my parents are supplying just sufficient minimum amount of money to actually live by but not enough to actually go on holidays and go and buy all these kind of gadgets I like. So I started e-commerce as a part of something that I just want to make more money.
You were thinking it would be great if you had $100, $200 extra a month or so. Yeah. At that point in time, I was just aiming for, actually, $200 a month. That was your goal. That was my goal. And just $200 of money was sufficient enough for me to just eat anything I wanted. And at that point in time, I just, you know, being the kid with more money in college. And I know that the last product we'll talk about today is a single product that actually made you, what, $4 million?
Yeah. Close to $5 million. Oh, my gosh. Close to $5 million. But would you mind sharing the dropshipping niche that you got into? I'm just this ordinary Asian dude that knows nothing about female markets. And all the products that I've been selling, actually, has always been in the female markets-- beauty products, fashion products, everything is between-- anything between 18 to 24-year-old girl's market. So yeah.
You're definitely not an 18 to 24-year-old girl. But that's exactly the market that you found success with. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, I knew nothing about female fashion, female beauty products, but that was a kind of market I actually made the most success out of it in the e-commerce industry. Why do you think that you were able to find such success with that particular market? Right. Because I started it all with Instagram.
And I started hanging around with Instagram pages that are, you know, most of the pages are actually related to girls that are 18 to 24. And from there, I could actually find out what sort of products that these girls resonate with. And from there on, I kind of, found what sort of products to sell them to you as well. Cool. So you found this marketing platform that was growing. You figured out the type of people who are hanging out there. And then from there, you started to figure out the kind of products they would want.
How did you get from someone who wanted to make $200 a month for pocket money to a 17-person business? Honestly It just came-- something that I wouldn't be able to think of. Because it just started randomly. And it just started growing. And of course, we, Asians grow up with this mindset that money makes money. And we just keep throwing it at whatever that was working. So at a point of time, the ads was working. Whatever that was working, we're just scaling in things.
And we just do, double down, on whatever that was working. And it just scaled on from that point of time to where we are today. And now where are you today? You're still in dropshipping, right? But you've, kind of, grown beyond that. Exactly. So we are still partially in, I would call it, hybrid dropshipping, so in a way that we are still dropshipping. But at the same time, we're selling our products. We are producing our own packaging. We have our own 3PL centers that run our entire processes and all.
So in a way, we are still in dropshipping. But at the same time, we are-- we have improvised the way we used to dropship like that. Without further ado, let's get to your product recommendations in the women's fashion and accessories niche. OK. Let's do it. Whoa. I speak fluent sarcasm. Wait. Is this is one of the products that you would recommend selling? Yeah. It was actually one of the products actually made a couple of $100,000 back in 2016.
You made a couple thousand dollars selling this t-shirt? This t-shirt. Exactly. I feel like I'm wearing money right now. So tell me why this t-shirt would sell? MELVIN CHEE: Exactly. I think anywhere from 18 to 24, any girls that would read this would actually be relatable to them during day-to-day conversation with their friends, actually. So this is something that your customer would actually say to someone.
Exactly. OK. How do you know that? So I hang out a lot around Instagram pages like funny pages, meme pages, all this kind of pages. And I think back then, they were using a lot of these sentences around it that I found that if you put it on a t-shirt, that will actually work really well. Some people might see a shirt like this. And because it's just text on the shirt, they think, well, they could just do this with print on demand.
Why did you choose dropshipping over print on demand in this case? To be honest, back then, I didn't know what is print on demand. Because I was just-- I was just starting out dropshipping back then. And I found this product on Ali Express that has the exact same sentence that-- the text that I want. And I just started putting out one of my Shopify page. And at that point in time, I just had one product. So honestly, just one product with four different sizes, four SKUs, and just started selling it on the next day.
Really? So this was even like, the only product that you had in your store at the time. It was the only product that I had on my store. Was this the first hot seller that you had? It is. It is, actually. Oh, wow. Does it make you nostalgic just looking at it? It does, actually. Early days in e-commerce? Yeah. Now one of the reasons that I bring up print on demand is I know that a lot of people who are trying to choose between dropshipping and print on demand are thinking about pricing and margins.
And dropshipping usually lets you have better margins. Exactly. But talk to me about how you price something like this to make sure you get those margins. Sure. Most of the time, I think, especially in dropshipping where pricing is really important because of the bottom line, we always price-- pricing five times the price of the product most of the time. Four to five times, at least. So at least, you control your product cost at about 20% most of the time to ensure that you spend-- for example, if you spend 50% on marketing and 20% on product, so you are left behind maybe 20% to 30% in margins.
And that's where the-- every dropshipper aim of having 20% to 30% of margins. 20% to 30% profit margin. Net profit. That's right. OK. So 20% to 30% net profit margins is the goal. Exactly. OK. You just threw out a lot of numbers. So I'm actually going to ask if you could maybe hop into a spreadsheet to show us what you're talking about. I'll do it. So for example, if the shirt is costing about $4, I think, so we will at least sell this at about $20, and plus shipping maybe like, charge it $2 or $3 shipping.
And you end up with about $25. OK. So you do charge shipping on your products. We do. OK. So your total retail would be $25. And that would account for the shipping and other costs, perhaps. Exactly. We're going to take into account Shopify processing fees as well. If there's any returns or exchanges or lost parcel, at least, you have some margins there for you to play around with it.
OK. You just kind of rounded up there. You weren't using like fractions or percentage for returns. OK. Well, that's actually pretty simple math once you put it in the laptop like that. Talk to me about the channels that you use to market this t-shirt. Exactly. So we started off selling these products on Instagram on three influencers. So we found a lot of influencers on Instagram that has millions of followers. And we actually reached out to these influencers and asked them if they are available for shutouts and what are their rates.
And we just pushed all this content to our influencers under our network. And we actually just pushed the products out. Can we actually take a look at those ads? Sure. OK. We're on the computer now, and this is a screenshot. Because I know this business was-- it was from a couple of years ago. I'm really curious for you to break down this ad for me. Why did this work for you?
So I think the most important part of an ad is to actually provide a call to action on the ad itself. So we actually put a "tag friends you know." So that's a way to actually encourage people that had seen the ad to actually continue tagging the friends. Some of them even tag up to 4 to 5 to 10 friends on the ad. And imagine the amount of-- the amount of organic traffics that we are driving from just one person to now, you have 10 other people actually looking at the ad.
So that creates the viral within the product itself. OK. Now we're looking at another of your ads. But sarcasm only doesn't sound like an influencer. Was this-- is that the name of someone? Or what is this account? Yeah. So it's actually not an individual. It's a meme page. Someone just randomly posts funny content all the time. And this is actually one of the account that we actually reached out to promote our contents.
And they actually have about 10 million followers at a point in time. So we reached out to them, negotiated a price point to actually post it up, post the content up for a couple of hours for X amount of dollars. And we managed to get that sort of engagement on the ads. INTERVIEWER: What engagement? I mean, 74,000 likes and over 5,000 comments. That's incredible. MELVIN CHEE: Yeah.
So that was actually within three hours. So that was three hours of just pushing the ad out. In 3 hours, I think we sold at least $20,000 in just three hours. Whoa. One of the things that I love-- I think this comment here really exemplifies what you were talking about, when this person is clearly tagging a friend and saying, ha ha, I need this, as a way to kind of start a conversation or relate to their friends by way of your t-shirt.
Yeah. Exactly. I mean we get tons of content-- or we get tons of comment, actually, just tagging their friends and just telling them that they truly need this. And you know, I think the product itself speaks for itself, especially people are so relatable to the product that they start tagging their friends, they start tagging their schoolmate and everyone that's involved in their network to actually see this product. INTERVIEWER: OK. I think the viewers might be putting together the puzzle pieces, though.
If you started dropshipping as early as 2012, you were really one of the first movers on Instagram to do this. If a viewer started to dropship in 2019, what marketing channels could they start to explore that maybe haven't really been as exploited as Instagram? Of course, I think, up to today, I think Facebook, Instagram is still the main platform to actually push all these products out.
But we've got to pay attention to new platforms like Snapchat, Pinterest, TikTok, especially when all these platforms are so fresh, at the same time, there's not many advertisers in it. And that's where you can get cheaper impressions, you can get cheaper clicks and cheaper, you know, just higher-- just lower cost acquisition for platforms like that. OK. So you're still using Instagram, right, for your business. Yes, of course.
So there's still a lot of power there. It's far from over. Exactly. And maybe a good strategy would be to be on both, to do more expensive ads on Facebook and then lower cost of acquisitions for some traffic and brand recognition on another platform. Exactly. Especially on new platforms when costs-- cost per click are associated. Or like, it's a lot easier to do brand awareness. So we can actually do a lot of first layer audiences from all these cheaper platforms and then we target them.
we target a warm audience on Facebook and Instagram. Yeah. Really cool. OK. Great strategy. OK. Well, I'm going to change out of your bestselling t-shirt. And let's move on to product number two. MELVIN CHEE: Sure. Let's do it. INTERVIEWER: OK. Maybe you do speak the language of female shoppers because I'm freaking out about these sparkly, glittery unicorn slippers.
These are incredible. But how on Earth did you find this product? I find this product cute. I think every girl between the age of 18 to 24 would fantasize of unicorns. Or older than 24. Sure. But OK, how do you even discover something like this? Right. So I actually came across this product on Twitter. On Twitter?
Twitter. Yeah. Someone was actually just casually posting about the product they bought from Amazon back then and just showing it-- showing the products on Twitter. So I thought it would be a product that would go off in Instagram. And so that's why we replicated the products and set up a Shopify store within the next day and just started selling it on Instagram. OK. I've got a question about Amazon versus dropshipping. Let me just put these down first.
This is about to get serious. What I want to know is you see this product because someone else said they bought it on Amazon. Why didn't you instantly go, oh, well, if you can find it on Amazon, I'm not going to dropship it. Yeah. So at that point of time, I think I looked up on Amazon. And it wasn't-- there wasn't many-- there wasn't a lot of ratings on Amazon. So that actually tells me that the product wasn't a winning product back then.
So no one actually, at that point of time, no one actually pushed the product at a scale that everyone has unicorn slippers. So that's when I noticed that there's the opportunity there. That's why we capitalized on the opportunity. Ah, really interesting. So just because someone has bought on Amazon and talks about it, you knew that's not the only proof that something is completely saturated. Exactly.
You did your research and you saw, OK, there's not a lot of reviews. So there's still opportunity here. Exactly. OK. And of course, with dropshipping, we can test any products overnight. So literally just scrape off some content on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, and then we just put it all together and just push it out on Instagram like how we push every product out. And that's when we started seeing all these signs of success that we realize that this is actually a winning product.
Yeah. OK. So just because you have a hunch maybe something is saturated, maybe it's not, you can always see for yourself. Exactly. Cool. But another thing related to seeing the product on Amazon-- if it's on Amazon, then there's probably more than one supplier of this product. One thing dropshippers are always asking us is how do you find a reliable supplier? What's your methodology? Definitely I think to be honest, even up to this point of time, I think looking for a reliable supplier is a big challenge to-- I think, any dropshippers in the world, they are not too sure about which supplier is actually reliable or honest or even not honest as well.
So I think one way we-- one of the metrics I look at is really to go on Ali Express and look up, let's say, unicorn slippers. And then I'll sort most of them by orders and just looking at-- the more reviews, the more orders that, actually, these suppliers are getting, and all the badges that they earn from Ali Express, that actually gives you an indication.
But at the same time, we actually split our orders across different suppliers as well at the same time to actually find out who has the best quality of products, who has the most reliable fulfillment processes, or who has the best shipping processes around it as well. So that tells us which supplier we'll work on to examine it as well. Wow. That's some advanced stuff. You actually test suppliers with different segments of your customers.
I think a lot of our viewers are still hoping for several customers, let alone, enough to make a test out of. But I want to dig deeper into some of what you just said. When we're looking at-- is this what you mean by badges? Exactly. So these are the badges that these suppliers earned from Ali Express, so to recognize them as a top seller on Ali Express. So that, most of the time, it gives you an indication that they are pretty OK.
They're not here to scam you, or they're not here to give you shitty products. Because they have these reviews, these badges that they earn as well. INTERVIEWER: So does the amount of orders, does that tell you anything about a product being too saturated, and not something that a dropshipper could sell? MELVIN CHEE: Not really. Because the amount of all of this actually gives you a validation that the product is actually selling pretty well. But at the same time, yes, other sellers might be already selling the products.
But the market is so huge, so big, it doesn't it mean that you can be selling these products as well if there's 10 other sellers are selling it. OK. If you want more information about researching the best suppliers on Ali Express, we actually just created a video on this topic. And you can check it out right there. While we're in Ali Express and looking at the price, let's go through your pricing math again. So if this is about $10 a pair with free shipping, I would, maybe-- so I'd multiply that by 4.
Wait. That would be like $45. MELVIN CHEE: Exactly. INTERVIEWER: What audience are you finding that will pay $45 for these slippers? Right. Because I think let's not talk about price point. I think it's all about creating. And marketing is all about creating a perception on how much a product is worth. If your contents, the contents that you're creating is not up to $45, of course, the perceived value from the other part, which is the users, will definitely not perceive it as $45.
But if you perceive that you create a value that this product is worth $45 through your packaging, through your shipping time, through all these kind of features that you have in the product itself, I think end of the day, it's all about how you make the product to perceive as a $45 item, rather than someone selling at $20. OK. And that probably all begins with the ad, having an ad that really shows the value of this product. Exactly.
Not just the ad, but up to the landing page, the product page, the entire checkout funnel as well, and all these warranties, all these exchanges, or returns that you have in place that actually create the confidence of consumers as well. That's interesting. Because a lot of dropshippers are afraid to write on their websites about shipping times or return policies. But you're saying, put it all out there.
Exactly. I think it's better to put it all out there than just to fake it. Because at end of the day, if say, for example, our consumers dispute the transactions, most of the time, you're most likely to lose it if you actually put out all this fake information. But if you are actually putting real information out there and keeping consumers actually informed all the way from them buying it to shipping it to receiving it and the reviews after that, I think that itself will enhance the entire dropshipping experience.
But to sell this at $45, I would imagine you should hire an agency to really make a really fancy ad with a lot of close-ups. So is that what you did? No. We didn't, actually. So I actually got this product in. And I got my sister-in-law, which is my business partner, to actually wearing it. And she was just dancing in front of our porch. And I was just taking video of her dancing in front of a porch.
And the video just went crazy because of the product itself. There's lights on it when you jump on it. So people get really fascinated about the product. And it just blew overnight in here. Whoa. So you basically got a relative to wear these. You took up your iPhone and you said, dance. And then you had an ad that made you lots of money. Yeah. And it's even more hilarious when you see the video of it that-- I created a video with a free video maker on app store.
And you still have that logo on the bottom that says, made with whatever it is. And it just went crazy. Holy cow. Oh, man. OK. So how much of dropshipping success do you think is about the right product versus the right advertising then? I think it's a combination of everything, to be honest. It doesn't take-- it doesn't mean that your ad has to be good, and everything else works out. So it has to be from ad to your landing pages to your product page, the entire experience.
It has to come hand in hand. It doesn't mean just one-- either one of them works, and the entire thing works. So it doesn't work that way. OK. So you were pricing that at $45, you had a great ad. How much did you make selling these unicorn slippers? I think we made about $90,000, somewhere less than $100,000 selling these products. And you say that with a disappointed voice because you're a $15 million drop shipper.
So that's low for you. Yeah, it is. Yeah. And of course, but we use this product as a traffic driver product. Because products like that attract a lot of high clickthrough rate. And a lot of consumers, a lot of traffic, actually, are coming in to just look at a product. And that's when we upsell them with lower price point products or products that actually revolve around the fantasy like unicorn on mermaid or whatever it is that we were just selling a bunch of other related categories around it to actually increase our AOV and to increase our lifetime value as well.
Really interesting. So maybe if a dropshipper is testing out products, and they find that one of their products gets a lot of traffic but not a lot of buys, that could be an argument for saying, just keep driving that traffic but add more products to your store. Exactly. It's OK. It's still OK to actually break even on your traffic driver product but improve on your funnels, improve on your upsell, on your cross-sell.
And all these funnels, actually, will increase your average order value. And that's when you actually make money off it. INTERVIEWER: OK. I think we're ready for the third product. So I'm not sure what this is. But let's just kind of unfold it, and we see it expands. And it's just a disk. What is this? It's actually a makeup travel bag. You can put all your makeup stuff in it, just wrap it up, and just pull it up and just pack and go.
Oh. I see. OK. So you can just pile it on in there. And then you pull the cords and that actually-- OK. It becomes a bag. Wow. OK. And then that's a great way because no woman is actually that organized with her makeup. She just dumps it all on the drawer. I get it. This is brilliant. Just like my girlfriend. Does she do the same? She does the same thing. Is that how you got the idea for this particular product? I came across these products on Instagram as well.
And I think I was just browsing on Instagram. And I saw-- I saw someone posting this product as a consumer, just saying how great this product is. And I literally showed it to my girlfriend. And she was like, I totally need this. And that's when I knew that I probably could have found a new winner. Yeah. Yeah. OK. I need to know about how you research products. Let's talk a little bit about that. You were browsing Instagram, sure. But how do you find these Instagram accounts or these blogs that give you all these product ideas?
Exactly. So it's ironic that I actually follow a lot of female bloggers, a lot of makeup artists, a lot of female influencers that are just talking about products all the time. And I think most of them are talking about beauty products, fashion products. And that's when I started to have an interest on products that would sell to this group of female, anywhere from 18 to 25, to be honest. So that's where my target audience is.
And I always work off from not just from the product itself, but I always work off from the audience that I know the best. So I read it and read it, and the products I'm reading to sell them to. But I find out products from the audience itself, what do they need, what sort of products are in trend. And I bring the product to them instead of them seeing the product the other way. OK. So would you advise dropshippers to find a niche and really get to know it first and then look for a product to sell?
Because we sometimes talk about doing it the other way around. Yeah. Exactly. So I think both way works. I wouldn't say one way or the other way works better. It really depends on how well you know the product or how well you know the audience. For instance, I know-- I know the audience better than the product. So I figure out the kind of audience that I really know. And then only bring the products that will be relatable to them. And in that way, that makes my selling process a lot shorter and a lot easier for them as well.
OK. So you really know the women's fashion and accessories market. But you probably get product ideas all the time. How do you decide on trying out one product versus another? Exactly. I think validating what kind of products to sell is actually very crucial in finding the winning products. So I actually use Google, Google Trends, to actually find out how trendy is the product, if is there a lot of people tweeting about it, is there a lot of googling about it.
Let's look it up, travel makeup bag. So this is a surface of it. So we can just see that there was a hype about the product here back in November 2018. That was during the Black Friday week. So people, actually-- and this is a period of time when people are starting to travel for Christmas. And that's when you could see this, the spike, in this side of things.
And the trend just dies down here. And the projection of the next few months is going to be upward. So I think we use-- I use Google-- Google Trends to actually figure out whether the products are is it a past winner, or is it even a winner, is it a product that's going to sell, are going to make me money? INTERVIEWER: Do you use any filters here? Would you only look at the US and only in the past 12 months?
Or would you go deeper? I'll go-- of course, the past 12 months give me the most information whether someone has already scaled this product to millions of dollars or not. And I'll look at, of course, more indications like that the cities that are actually looking for these products, you know, what sort of keywords or related topics that they are actually looking at. And this actually gives you a lot of hits on whether-- where do you look for these kind of audiences.
And it actually relates you to a lot of different websites, blogs, and all these influencers that are talking about our products. OK. I look at this, and I think, OK. It probably makes sense that it's about to trend upward because you get into spring vacation, and summer vacation travel in the warmer months that are ahead. What else would tell you that this makeup bag is a winning product? There's actually, I think, there's a few-- there's a few metrics that we really look at, especially with Google Analytics.
So the bounce rate on Google Analytics, the average duration, possession, the add to cart rate, the page views, and all these indications actually gives you whether-- it tells you whether if a user is actually engaged on the product. So for example, add to cart rate on Shopify itself, it actually tells you that whether-- if people are actually adding it to their cart.
So anything that I see above 10%, I would say it's a potential winner that has a potential to be-- to scale these products up. And especially on Facebook, we look at clickthrough rate. That's a really, really important metric that we look at. So if you have a high clickthrough rate, meaning that people are actually engaged with the ad that you're pushing all the products. They're pushing. And that gives you indication, early indications, that you can actually scale on this ad.
OK. I'm going to pause you there because you mentioned three different platforms and analytics. OK. And I think those were all great. I just want to touch on a couple. So first, you talked about Google Analytics. And for viewers who don't know, you can very easily paste a Google snippet of code from Google Analytics into Shopify and then you'll have access to a lot of Google Analytics data. Exactly. So Shopify Help Center has all the information you need to do that.
It's free. And then you've got all the metrics that you were just talking about. The Google Analytics bounce rate, what is that? Right. Exactly. So bounce rate it's when someone lands on your landing page, and they bounce off right away. So that means that if, let's say, you have a 50% bounce rate, 1 in 2 person that comes to your website, actually, without browsing on your website, bounces off to another-- to some other websites. So that actually tells you that you need some work to be done on your landing pages to lower down your bounce rate.
The lower bounce rate it is, the better it is for your website. OK. And then you also talked about Shopify add to cart percentages. And you said anything over 10% is good. You're saying if 10% of visitors add a product to their cart, you're in a good place. Exactly. I mean, that's the baseline. But of course, if you got into 20%, 30%, that will be the most ideal, you know.
That's when you realize that you actually found a winning, winner, product. But if you see anything above 10%, it's workable. So you just got to fix your product page. You've got to-- you can put in all this kind of urgency on your product page to actually increase the add to cart rate. And then the last thing that you mentioned was Facebook clickthrough rates. Is there a ballpark figure that you look for when it comes to clickthrough rates? Exactly.
I think the industry average is about 1%. But if you can see anything with 3% to 4%, which is 3 to four times of the industry rate, that tells you a lot of information that people are actually very interested or engaged with your ad. Yeah. So your ad is definitely working. Exactly. But I guess the whole puzzle for dropshippers is you might have an ad with a 4% clickthrough rate and then a 50% bounce rate and a low add to cart ratio. So it's all a matter of, OK what's the problem to solve here?
Is it the landing page or the ad or what, right? Exactly. So I think finding a winning product, it's not easy or not tough at the same time as well. But I think figuring out which funnel to actually look into, which pockets to actually look into, it's really important. So let's say, you have no problems on Facebook site, then there's problems on your Shopify funnels, then figure out where is the problem and fix the problem. OK.
This is really cool. I'm definitely taking that makeup bag with me. I'm dying to know what you're $4 million product is. But before we do that, let's move on to product number four. MELVIN CHEE: Sure. INTERVIEWER: So this next product is an LED makeup mirror. And this is actually a product that we've talked about in our blog and in some of our videos as being a trending product. But walk me through why you think this would be a great dropshipping product?
Exactly. I think for any female that will look at this product, they would think that this is a huge problem solver for them, especially if you are in a room that has dim lights or a room that is having no sunlight even for your makeup. So this product actually enhances your entire makeup experience to make those, of course, makeup to look better for themselves. So, of course, these products solve the big problems for them.
This is interesting because the products that we've talked about so far, they haven't all been problem solvers. The makeup bag, yes. But the unicorn slippers, it's not solving a problem. So what's your philosophy? Some dropshippers only want problem solvers. But you, kind of, mix it up. Right. Like I said previously, I literally sell any products that would work according to my audience. So I figure out that I know my audience really well, that whatever products that we can fit into the market, that will literally work for them, I would do it.
I will sell it. So this is one of our products that's actually selling to the audience I was selling to. So that's why we have a mixture of products. We have problems solver, we have products that are novelty, and we have a combination of both as well. So one thing that's clear to me and that sets you apart from other dropshippers is you're not so focused on the product, but you're so focused on your target market. And you just study women between the ages of 18 and 24 and their buying habits and what they want.
And then from there, you start to decide on the products to sell. Exactly. But I want to know then how do you get to know this target market really well? What are the pages that you look at? Exactly. So for example, one of them is Beauty Insider. So this page actually recommends a lot of beauty products to female. I imagine all of them stands anywhere from 18 to 24, even 18 to 30. So all these products that you see them posting every day, you can actually get some ideas of these products.
But you can sell not exactly the same products, but the products that are evolving around the products that we're recommending. So that gives you a more-- a bigger, a broader, brainstorming ideas on what sort of products, everything that should go into, what's our products that-- what kind of problems they are actually solving. And that's a way to actually find out the products. INTERVIEWER: And if we go up and say we follow them, then we see a lot of suggested accounts, right?
MELVIN CHEE: Exactly. INTERVIEWER: Would you follow those accounts just to get deeper into the rabbit hole with this audience? MELVIN CHEE: Yeah. So this feature by Instagram is actually really, really powerful. So it tells you all these pages that are relatable-- related to this page. And you can-- if you have the time, go through each of these pages. And you can actually have a dropdown even on the next page. And that gives you a bigger group of pages to look at or to follow and to get inspirations from.
INTERVIEWER: Let's go back to Beauty Insider. Because say, if I was browsing Beauty Insider, and I thought maybe this is like a lip gloss or something. Transforming glitter lips. OK. Well, that is really intense. [VIDEO PLAYBACK] [END PLAYBACK] OK. So this lipstick gets more glittery as people pucker their lips together.
Exactly. Where do you go from there? Do you just start selling it because you saw it in Beauty Insider? Or what more research do you do? So I look at the comments, of course, look at engagement, look at the views, look at-- I'm sure that if they post on Instagram, they would be posting on Facebook, they'll be posting on YouTube as well. Look through all the comments, look through what people are talking about. And I'm sure there will be some people that put up some brands or some products that they actually have seen, similar products like that.
And from then on, you can actually have your deeper research on what other products that will be similar to this product. INTERVIEWER: OK. Looking at the comments, I see-- I see some that say, terrible product. So we've got some feedback there. And we see this kind of dialogue that goes on. MELVIN CHEE: Exactly. INTERVIEWER: But then we also have how can I buy, where do they sell them. So if you were a brand, would you jump in there and comment?
Or would you just use this as intelligence? Oh, use this as intelligence. I normally don't give out a lot of our information on any of the posts that I see. But I actually use all this kind of information that all these consumers are putting out there to actually put a puzzle together to find out what kind of products that people will actually love or will actually want to use end of the day. INTERVIEWER: OK. So you might go through an account like this and take note that this has 74k views.
And then you'll compare that with this and see how many views does this have and start to narrow down your product ideas. MELVIN CHEE: Exactly. Do you use any sites besides Instagram to do this, or is this your main portal? So Instagram always be the channel that actually funnels all these ideas. And then, I'll look up on YouTube, I'll look up on Facebook, I'll look up on Twitter, and see what people are talking about. If you have a product in mind that it'll make things a lot easier for you to just go and figure out if people are actually talking about a product on all these platforms and see what kind of feedback they are getting on the products.
OK. Before we move on to your $4 million product, let's talk price with this product. So this is priced-- there's quite a range, I guess, depending on how many pieces that you buy. But let's say it's about $5 with free shipping to the US via USPS. Actually, this is great because it seems like it has a US factory here. Would you price this at, I bet I can get this, $25?
MELVIN CHEE: Exactly. INTERVIEWER: All right. MELVIN CHEE: I'll put it anywhere from $25 to $30. And you would never offer free shipping on something like that. Yeah, exactly. Because I think a lot of shippers offer free shipping. Yeah. And I try to do the opposite of doing free shipping. Because I think that it creates an entire perception that we are using a more reliable services. And of course, that gives us a room to actually use a different alternative of shipping method that every other dropshippers are actually doing it.
Because another $5 extra of $3 extra, you can actually use a lot of different, special line, shipping services in China not just the one they are actually offering on Ali Express. OK. So there is room to go outside of ePacket. I guess the important thing would be to test that yourself, order your product from different shipping options, and see what happens. Exactly. And if you build a relationship with the suppliers on that, I'm sure they have a different alternative of shipping methods as well.
And that creates a competitive edge over any other dropshippers out there. Yeah. Definitely. Really cool. OK. I think we've waited long enough. Let's talk about your multi-million dollar product. MELVIN CHEE: Sure. INTERVIEWER: Well, Melvin, you've turned me into a $4 million mermaid. This is the product that made you $4 million? Exactly. Wow. I'm going to try to give it a little flap.
Flap. So I'm actually wearing the product that made you not six, but seven, figures in sales. Exactly. INTERVIEWER: Let's take a look at this product in Ali Express because I want to talk about the price point of this product. MELVIN CHEE: Sure. INTERVIEWER: I see that it's actually not the cheapest product. Walk me through how you priced this? MELVIN CHEE: Exactly. I think, so we have two versions, the adult version and a kid's version.
So for the adult version, I think it costs about, let's see, I think that's about $12 to $13 US. And to price these mermaid blankets, I think we were selling about $60 US. $60 US. $60 US. Exactly. That's a high price point. It is. And of course, in the beginning, we did not customize anything on our mermaid blankets. But when we found out it was a winning product, actually, the first customization that we did was actually to customize the packaging.
So it will include our branding and the entire mermaid experience that we have around the packaging. And that increased the value of the product. INTERVIEWER: OK. I get that the packaging would help with the brand perception. But when someone is seeing this product for the first time, how do you convince them that it's worth $60? Sure. So one thing on our site, also is because of the size of the product, so the product is not-- it's not a small, tiny product.
But it's actually pretty big. It fits up entire adult. So that itself speaks volume. And that is how it speaks the value of the product itself as well. So that creates even more value towards the product. Did you just create an e-commerce joke that, in itself, speaks volumes? Because you talk about volume sales and the actual size of the product. Yeah.
Because-- yeah. I mean, end of the day, everything is about creating perception, right? It's really interesting. Marketing is about perception. And then tell me about those ads that you used. Was this something that you made a video ad for? Or how did you get this flying off the shelves? Right. So we started contacting a lot of small, little influencers on Instagram, actually, just sending products out to them. And in return, we got all this contents from all this small-time influencers that we got from them.
And from there, we actually make them into videos or slideshows to actually push out on Instagram or Facebook. So you weren't working with big meme accounts this time but rather micro-influencers. We were working on micro-influencers to produce content and then from content, we actually use all these big meme account to actually scale it up on a bigger scale. OK. So you didn't really care whether the micro-influencer got you a couple of sales or not.
You were in it for the photos. Exactly. The content was the one that's actually more valuable to us. Because we know, with the scale of the network influencers or the meme pages, that's a lot bigger scale than all these micro-influencers. I see. How much would you pay, or how much would you pay today for that? We pay nothing for all these micro-influencers. Only on these meme pages that we're shipping them. OK.
Because I guess you send them the product for free. And you just ask for photos. Exactly. And we tell them what sort of content we want, how we want them to pose it, and all this kind of instructions that come with it. OK. So can I actually see some of the ads that you used for this? Sure. Let's go into the computer. MELVIN CHEE: So this, this is one of our winning ad. We actually shot this in a studio. So these two actually are our models.
INTERVIEWER: OK. MELVIN CHEE: And so we found out that a lot of our consumers are actually buying them for their bestie, so during Christmas season, during their birthdays, and all this comment. And that's when-- that's why we have a call to action of "tag your bestie" on Instagram. And it just went-- it just went viral. Wait. How did you figure out that your shoppers were buying this product for their besties? Because we have emails from our consumers, customers, saying that they want them in two different colors or even same colors.
And that tells us that they're actually buying that off for the other half, or whatever it is. And we have people e-mailing us and telling them-- telling us that they're actually buying it for another bestie that is crazy about mermaid. So that gives us a lot of information about what kind of audience that we are targeting as well. Did you ever try discounts like, buy 2 get 50% off? Yes, we do. So we do a lot of tier pricing or volume discounts.
So the more you buy, the cheaper you get per item, price per item. INTERVIEWER: OK. And then there's this other ad that you created. Now, this is back on that meme account, right? MELVIN CHI: Exactly. So you were still working with some meme accounts. But you just weren't working with these meme accounts for content. You had already gotten a picture like this, I'm assuming, from a micro-influencer. MELVIN CHI: Yes. All these photos are from customers or micro-influencers. OK.
So you're really working with two sets of people on Instagram. You're working with micro influencers for original content. And then once you have really original great photos, then you reach out to meme accounts and pay to promote those great photos. Exactly. That is a really cool advertising model. And it's not one that I've heard about before on the show. I think it's one of the way to actually have the shortest time possible to actually create the most content.
I think what we had lack of was really the people to go and instruct all this video shooting, or photo shooting, to produce all this other content. So we figured out, why don't we just do everything online? And getting in touch with all these micro-influencers and all these meme pages are all done through online. So that was the easiest way to actually do it. OK. And when you start running the ads on Facebook, who are you targeting for something like this?
Right. So we-- so especially the girls that are already interested in mermaid or even just-- even with unicorns, they are pretty related in a way that we were targeting people that are interested in Ariel, the mermaid. Ah, Ariel, the Disney mermaid. Exactly. Oh, of course. Yeah. So from there, we get to expand a lot of interest on Facebook. And of course, Facebook provides a lot of information on who to target to, what sort of audience, and it connects to Google Analytics.
And that tells us what kind of age group or people are buying our products. And from then on, we got pretty much information on how do we target these products. OK. Melvin, these product suggestions have been absolutely incredible. Before you leave though, I want to ask you for one piece of advice that you would give new dropshippers who are starting out in 2019. Just do it.
I think dropshipping is about finding the right product to sell. There's never a right product to sell. But there's always-- it's all about how you sell it, how you market it. At end of day, you're just going to know how to make money off it. That's awesome. Thanks so much for joining us today. Pleasure. And for those of you who have any questions for Melvin, make sure to leave them in the comments. And he'll respond with his thoughts. Thanks so much for watching.
And until next time. Learn often, market better. And sell more.
