Should You Buy an Existing Store?

I did it before.

I did buy an existing dropshipping store when I was just getting started.

I launched two stores, failed, and I bought one.

It was somewhat already successful, had lots of issues which I fixed and eventually, I shut the store down and transitioned it which is still making me money today.

So I’m very happy with the decision I made. It has been a financial net positive so I’ve made my investment back in many times over. And, it also really shortened my learning curve.

So I think it’s a good idea if you’ve got money to invest and it is not a complete shortcut.

It speeds up your learning process so yes it’s somewhat of a shortcut but you won’t get past learning the skill of selling. You won’t get past learning the skill of running Facebook ads, Instagram shoutouts, of hiring a team you’ll have to do all that anyway.

So the advantages that you get when you do buy a store are that you get existing customer data, you can create a lookalike audience right away, you already know products that are selling, perhaps you got an email list, perhaps you’ve got a following on Instagram, Facebook and all of that.

That’s a big advantage to buying an existing store because you skip past that initial stage where even if you’re a great marketer, it is TDS to build a store from the ground up and grow up.

The requirements I would say before you get, before you buy a store; you need to know the basics of Shopify, the admin system, you need to know how the backend stuff works just because if you buy an existing store, you’ll gonna have orders within a week and you need to know how to fulfill them.

You don’t want to be spending all your time chasing after issues in the Shopify admin just because you went from zero to a 100 right away.

When you build a store of yourself, then, you will learn these things gradually over time and you will learn as things come up and it won’t all be at once so you’re less like to be overwhelmed.

Next, you should have at least one trained VA to fulfill orders, to do customer emails and all of that.

Have a VA trained before you buy the store. buying a store, it sounds easy, it’s a lot of work, it’s TDS.

You’ve got to do research.

You got to make sure that transition is somewhat seamless so the customers don’t get spooked and they don’t see that something’s weird about this.

So this is quite about of work to do properly and make you’ll at least have a VA to help you with that.

You should also have experience with Shopify and buying ads.

So have some sort of experience with Instagram influencers and also Facebook ads before you buy a store because if you buy an existing store that has products that are selling right now, but then it takes you 2 months to figure out how to do Facebook ads, then that product may no longer be selling and you’ve kind of wasted an opportunity to step right into a profitable product that you receive bu buying.

So make sure you’ve got a decent understanding of Instagram and Facebook ads before you buy a store.

If you meet all these criteria and you have the sufficient funds to buy it, then by all means, go ahead.

I don’t recommend buying stores without solid income by the way.

So, I’m not talking about buying sites that have been built for you but have never made any money.

So just a starter website that’s someone else set up, just a complete waste of money because you never learned how to set up Shopify first of all but also, they chose the products so how would you know if they’re going to be profitable.

If that was going to be profitable, surely, they would’ve made it profitable themselves and then sold it for a far higher price.

So don’t buy stores that have just been set up.

Don’t buy starter sites.

If you’re gonna buy a website, buy one with a consistent income that you are receiving for your investment.