€2,000 in dropshipping sales. And I lost money.
A €699 course, a $50 store, a €500-a-month consultant. I did €2,000 in sales in two weeks. Too bad I'd already spent €2,100 on ads and supplier alone.
While Lyara was sinking, I looked for a way out in dropshipping.
It was the time when, in your worst moments, the algorithm offers one guru after another promising the simple method to sell online. And I, idiot that I am, listened.
I bought courses. I launched stores. I spent on ads.
I also did about €2,000 in sales in two weeks with a single product.
Sounds cool? Direct costs between ads and supplier were already €2,100. Before everything else.
So no. It wasn't a business.
The course that seemed like the answer
I bought Project One Million, Roberto Angeli's course. €699, with "lifetime" access.
Years later, the course was no longer available to me. So was that a lifetime for me or a lifetime for them? No idea. Never clarified.
On the content, I'll be honest: it was structured. It gave me useful foundations. Marketing, copywriting, storytelling, dropshipping in international markets. It also explained lookalike audiences, which I used to try to lower CPA (the cost to get a purchase).
The problem wasn't lack of information. It was what was missing: how to handle bureaucracy, foreign country rules, and how to build Facebook Ads campaigns that hold up over time. Stuff a course doesn't tell you. Or mentions for 30 seconds at the end, when everyone has already closed the video.
The €2,000 one-product store
With what I was learning I built a one-product store. An e-commerce site built around one product. In this case: a plastic drawer, supplied by CJdropshipping.
Why a plastic drawer? No idea. Probably because it was the cheapest thing I found.
The offer wasn't just the single item. I made 1, 2 and 5-unit bundles, with increasing discounts to raise the average cart. Sound logic: raise the value without finding a new customer for every sale.
The test pulled about €2,000 in sales in two weeks. On paper, the signal I was waiting for.
Then I did the math: €2,100 between ads and supplier. Plus other costs and operational risks I hadn't even calculated.
Gross sales. Not profit.
When compliance stops the model
I closed that store because I hadn't set up sales to the US and Australia properly. Administrative and operational side.
Basically I was trying to sell halfway around the world with zero clue how to do it compliantly. Classic genius move.
This was the most important lesson of the whole period. More important than any ad tactic. In dropshipping you focus on product, landing page, creatives. But when you sell to different countries, obligations, consumer protection, taxes, disclosures, shipping, returns kick in. Things you don't solve by copying a store or watching a YouTube tutorial.
The $50 store and the €500-a-month consultant
After that experiment I also bought a ready-made store. About $50. The idea was saving time by using an existing structure.
Too bad the problem wasn't time. If it were, that would've been enough.
Then I hired an advertising consultant: €500 a month. Kept him for a month. Zero sales. Ended it. That too, luckily, fast.
Looking back, I was chasing different shortcuts for the same problem: a course, a ready store, a consultant. But none of them could create in my place a valid offer, compliant operations, and product economics that actually work.
None. Ever.
What I learned about dropshipping
Personal conclusion: good e-commerce requires structure. Capital, skills, supply chain control, support, operations, data, compliance. Big companies have teams and processes precisely for this.
I'm not saying every dropshipping project is doomed. I'm saying the model isn't the shortcut they sell you. For me, back then, it was far easier to spend money on courses, ads and services than to build something genuinely sustainable.
And here's the uncomfortable part.
In the e-commerce marketing world, people selling consulting, courses and services have a far more predictable model than someone trying to sell a generic product with no competitive advantage. That doesn't mean consultants and courses are useless. It means you have to ask clearly where value is created, who carries the risk, and who gets paid when campaigns don't work.
Spoiler: it's not the one selling the product.
Dropshipping taught me marketing and gave me real experience. But it also convinced me that before chasing the next "winning product", you have to build foundations that don't depend on a viral creative or some guy's promise on YouTube.
Because the winning product is always the one the guru sells after you've already paid for the course.