The Entrepreneur Experiment of a Nursing Girly

I'm the type of person who has many different interests. I can't be kept in a square box! I've known about drop shipping and selling products since about five years ago when Shopify and e-commerce started to get popular. I said to myself, I want to create something too! Back then Shopify was a little difficult for me to figure out, but now that I've matured and Shopify has matured, I've been able to figure this drop shipping thing out! 

In the meantime, I obtained a bachelor's degree in business with an emphasis in healthcare management. My curiosity about business topics and how many different ways money can be made really motivated me to get my bachelor's. 

After achieving my business degree I struggled with finding the path for me; more so what to do with all the knowledge I just inhaled! 

Everything I do, I do with major gung-ho and then I ask questions later. 

Every new hobby is a learning experience. Shopify has been a huge learning curve. But it's been fun figuring out how all the apps and buttons work within everything. There's so many features it's gonna take me several months to learn how to make my store better. 

I've been using Spocket this first month and it's been easy enough finding products and pushing it to my store, but I dislike that you have to pay a higher subscription fee for more product offerings. You can also filter products by fast shipping, what country the products are shipped from, and if you want products form Alibaba or Temu.

I do like how you can filter whether you want the products shipped from the U.S. or from another country. With the new tariffs taking place, I've been diligent about my product selections. I really don't want potential buyers having issues, so for now I'm only selling in the North American market. I'll eventually open to a more global market when I 1) gain much needed experience and business savviness and 2) when I get enough sales to scale up. Right now I'm okay that everything is slow, but I want things to ramp up the next year. 

Don't get me started about this whole advertising thing. I'm still figuring out how important advertising is in the context of being a successful drop shipping business. I still need to learn when to use advertising and what platforms to produce content on. Currently, I'm utilizing TikTok and Facebook Ads. I can't tell which one is more effective yet, but according to analytics it seems most of my shop sessions are from Facebook referrals. 

TikTok is more expensive if you pay for advertising and you get a lot of spammers messaging you about your shop trying "help" you get more sales. It's tiring to have to dig through all that fluff. 

Facebook does give you easy-to-decipher options when it comes to target marketing, your advertising budget, boosting a post, and turning a video into a reel (kinda like YouTube shorts). I received one rude comment on one of my facebook posts about my store that was super unwarranted, but I dealt with it. Other than that one rude comment, not much commenting has been going on on Facebook. On TikTok I receive more comments on my videos, but not much has been conducive to sales. 

I do have a Facebook business page that I have a whopping 13 followers on currently. It's better than when I first started though. I'm following other businesses and engaging with them by liking posts and commenting. I do believe I'm getting a lot of scammers and spammers messaging me on FB too. 

It's difficult to follow other businesses on TikTok because it's hard to tell if a business is legit or not. There are tons of people like me on TikTok and it's motivating to see them working hard to build their businesses as well. 

Right now I've only made sales to family and friends, but the whole process does work. Products get shipped directly to the customer. My aunt and my significant other have both received their orders! Shipping times have varied as different suppliers have different response times. Logistically, all aspects have been okay. 

Now, I need to figure out pricing. I do NOT want to be that one overpriced store that everyone knows is overpriced. I want to be affordable, but cool and spunky at the same time. I think I'm a natural at being spunky, but being cool is a different matter. Creative AI has been super helpful in helping create short videos showing off my featured products. AI is amazing, but you still have to know how to use and implement it. 

My other love is for writing. When I was a kid I loved to write short stories and make mini books by stapling sheets of paper together. It was pure joy. I would like to get back to writing again as well. This blog will help get that going. I'm literally combining all my loves into one. What a chaotic mash-up! Most of my life is controlled chaos, so I'm used to it.