After Lyara, I Tried Dropshipping: €2,000 in Sales and More Costs Than Revenue
After the Lyara project, I bought a dropshipping course, launched a one-product store, and reached roughly €2,000 in sales in two weeks. Here is why it did not become a sustainable business.
While Lyara was becoming increasingly difficult to sustain financially, I looked to dropshipping for a way out. It was a time when, in moments of difficulty, the algorithm seemed to offer one guru after another, each promising a simple method for selling online.
I followed that path, bought courses, launched stores, and spent money on advertising. I even reached roughly €2,000 in sales in two weeks with one product. But sales did not become a business: direct costs between ads and the supplier were already about €2,100, before counting everything else.
The course that seemed like the answer
At the time, I bought Project One Million, a course by Roberto Angeli, for €699 with stated lifetime access. Years later, the course was no longer available to me, so that “lifetime” access did not turn into a practical guarantee.
To be fair about the content, the course was structured and gave me useful foundations. I learned more about marketing, copywriting, storytelling, and the model of selling through dropshipping in international markets. It also taught me about lookalike audiences, which I used to try to lower CPA—the cost required to get a purchase.
The issue was not a complete lack of information. It was what was missing relative to the real complexity of the model: properly handling administrative matters, rules across different countries, and building Facebook Ads campaigns that can work reliably over time.
The €2,000 one-product store
Using what I was learning, I created a one-product store: an e-commerce site built around a single product. The product was a small plastic drawer/container supplied by CJdropshipping.
The offer was not just the single item. I created 1-, 2-, and 5-unit bundles, with increasing discounts to encourage a higher average order value. It was a practical application of a common e-commerce principle: raise the cart value without having to find a new customer for every sale.
The test generated around €2,000 in sales in two weeks. On paper, it looked like the signal I had been waiting for. But ad and supplier costs totalled about €2,100: gross sales were not profit. Other costs and operational risks were still not included.
When compliance stops the model
I closed that store because I had not set up sales to the United States and Australia correctly from an administrative and operational standpoint. It was a serious limitation: I was trying to sell globally without adequate preparation to do so compliantly.
This became a much more important lesson than advertising tactics. In dropshipping, it is easy to focus on the product, landing page, and creatives. But when you sell to different countries, requirements, consumer protection, taxes, disclosures, shipping, returns, and responsibilities enter the picture. These cannot be solved by copying a store or watching a tutorial.
The $50 store and the €500-a-month consultant
After that experiment, I also bought a ready-made store from a site that resold them, spending around $50. The idea was to save time by using an existing structure rather than building everything from scratch.
Later, I worked with an advertising consultant who cost €500 per month. I kept the engagement for one month: it had generated no sales, so I ended the collaboration.
Looking back, I was searching for different shortcuts to the same problem: a course, a ready-made store, a consultant. But none of them could create a valid offer, compliant operations, and product economics that worked in my place.
What I learned about dropshipping
This experience led me to a personal conclusion: good e-commerce requires structure. It requires capital, skills, supply-chain control, support, operations, data, and attention to compliance. Larger companies have teams and processes to sustain that complexity.
I do not think every e-commerce or dropshipping project is destined to fail. But I learned that the model is not the shortcut it is often portrayed to be. For me, at that time, it was much easier to spend money on courses, advertising, and services than to build a genuinely sustainable business.
My final provocation is this: in e-commerce marketing, people selling consulting, courses, or services can have a far more predictable model than someone trying to sell a generic product with no competitive advantage. That does not automatically make consultants or courses useless; it means you should ask clearly where value is created, who carries the risk, and who gets paid when campaigns do not work.
Dropshipping taught me marketing and gave me real experience. But it also convinced me that before chasing the next “winning product,” you must build foundations that do not depend on a viral creative or a guru's promise.