Secrets of a Drop-Shipper with Anton Kraly
Today on Just the Tips, Dean and I have a special treat for listeners. Our guest is Anton Kraly, a man who has started a ton of businesses, who knows the world of e-commerce better than just about anyone, and a man who literally has an award-winning course on e-commerce. Just one of his many talents is finding the maximum potential of drop-shipping. If you’re in the world of e-commerce, you need to listen to this episode.
Why Anton is always thinking bigger
When Anton got started in e-commerce, he started selling boxes of cookies for $20. But then he thought: If you can sell something for $20, why not go bigger? And so he looked on eBay to see what the highest-selling items were, and began to form a plan to sell high-ticket items. And as he said, he didn’t try to create a market. He figured out what people already wanted to buy, and sold those items to them. It may seem like common sense, but it’s a critical piece of e-commerce that a lot of entrepreneurs miss when starting out.
Mistakes Anton made
When Anton started, there wasn’t a lot of competition for what he was doing. And so he was able to make mistakes and recover quickly because his competition wasn’t jumping all over him. One of the things he did early on was not pay enough attention to tracking. Part of that was the tools that were available, but part of it was his naivete about how important it is to know where your traffic is coming from. He also says he should have bought more ads early on, so he could grow much faster. But at the time, he didn’t know that was necessary.
Dealing with inventory issues
One of the biggest problems with e-commerce can be inventory. How do you deal with all of the issues that come up with inventory. Maybe the problem is storing the items in your house, maybe the problem is keeping the items in stock at all. Anton recommends looking as far ahead as possible and keeping tabs on what you’re selling. So if something is selling well and the holidays are coming up, work with your suppliers to get more product. If a product is sold out, communicate that to your customers and let them know you will notify them as soon as it’s available. Anton has seen it all, and he shares his great insights on this week’s Just the Tips.
How to gain an edge on your competition
How do you compete with all of the different people and companies selling stuff online? Anton says he doesn’t even get into a market unless there are fewer than 10 sellers offering a particular brand online. And then from there it’s all about marketing and traffic, trying to dominate the category and brand in Google and Google Ads. And because customer service is practically absent online, Anton is able to distinguish his companies by offering solid service.
Outline of This Episode
- [3:07] How Anton got started into entrepreneurship
- [6:00] How Anton started thinking big in e-commerce
- [8:40] Mistakes Anton made
- [10:12] Analytics first steps
- [11:35] How do you handle inventory?
- [16:10] Different e-commerce business models
- [20:43] Customer service makes a huge difference
- [23:50] How to offer service even if you’re not an expert
- [30:05] How to get in touch with Anton
Music for “Just The Tips” is titled, “Happy Happy Game Show” by Kevin MacLeod (http://incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
