We recently shared Nourdine’s perspective on his first year as a dropshipper, and we’re pleased to offer another success story from France. Our colleagues talked to Pierre-Eliott, a French entrepreneur who has found success with eBay dropshipping. But he’s also created training courses for entrepreneurs to help them improve their digital marketing strategies and regularly shares advice on his YouTube channel (in French).
If you’ve ever wondered how to dropship on eBay, scale your business, launch your YouTube channel, or start a training program, this article has all the tip tips!
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Finding his Own Path
Like many entrepreneurs, Pierre-Eliott studied business after high school. At the time, it seemed the only way to succeed in life was graduating from business school. So that’s what he did. Over five years, he learned a lot (although it was not always very practical), but no job truly appealed to him.
“I had ambition, I wanted to succeed, but I didn’t know what to do. I was already looking for a certain kind of independence, but I didn’t really know where to find it. So I started looking for a vision, a company with values to which I could adhere.”
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In the end, he took on an internship with Michel and Augustin, an innovative French cookie firm (which now makes all kinds of pastries!). He moved to New York for six months right as he turned 21, and began working in the company’s business development team. In the US, he discovered the entrepreneurial mindset and spirit he was looking for: be bold, don’t be afraid of failure, and persevere. This was exactly what he was after, and he decided to become an entrepreneur himself.
‘How to Make Money Online’
After this realization, Pierre-Eliott started reading books about entrepreneurship and watching YouTube videos to learn. But he still didn’t know where to start. Then, making the simple (and popular) Google query ‘How to make money online,’ he discovered the answer.
In response to his question, Google showed Pierre-Eliot a few dropshipping videos – it was right as the business model was starting to gain traction on YouTube. He fed off these videos and used the information gained to launch his very first project.
The First Failed Websites
Pierre-Eliott started by creating a blog, though he did so with no real idea of what to write about. He quickly realized that he needed goals, time, and a content strategy to grow his audience. His second project was creating a dropshipping store in the animal product niche. He did all of this while still an intern in New York.
“I spent a lot of time researching products and even more creating my shop. It took me two weeks to get it up and running. I fine-tuned the site as much as possible to make it look nice (I know now that this is not the most important [thing]). I said to myself, ‘Great, you now have a site with lots of products, you will be able to generate sales.’ But once the site launched, I realized I didn’t have the money to promote it and generate traffic. And I didn’t have sufficient digital marketing skills at the time to obtain free organic traffic.”
With the blog abandoned, the dropshipping store was the second failure for Pierre-Eliott. But he still believed he could launch a successful online business. He tried to find another way to do e-commerce, one that didn’t require an advertising budget to start. And that’s when he discovered that you could also do dropshipping on eBay.
eBay Dropshipping
eBay dropshipping is an excellent way to generate your first sales when you don’t have seed money. Pierre-Eliott started by sourcing products on AliExpress and Amazon. He took advantage of the free eBay listing to position his products on the marketplace.
Because the Christmas shopping period was starting, Piere-Eliott mostly listed toys on his eBay dropshipping store. And soon enough, he made his very first sale.
“I still remember, it was a Christmas toy, a spinning top for children. That first order reassured me, it confirmed that it was a good decision to pursue ecommerce. With eBay dropshipping, and without any advertising spends, I was able to generate €1,200 in sales in just one month. That motivated me to keep going.”
Pierre-Eliott then left the US and returned to France, where he began a work-study program in a recruitment agency. He continued to work on his online business in the evenings, mainly focusing on eBay dropshipping.
Scaling and Making a Consistent Income
Soon, Pierre-Eliott started looking for other business ideas. While he knew that eBay dropshipping allowed him to make some money, it couldn’t be scaled. It was a good springboard to start, but he would never make big money.
Still, he had reached a certain level of income, and so he decided to say goodbye to corporate life. He made more on his own than working in recruitment, even when the agency he worked for offered him a permanent contract and a salary raise.
So Pierre-Eliott launched a new blog and his YouTube channel. His idea was to create a community and slowly build organic traffic. He shared his knowledge, particularly around eBay dropshipping, which was not very well-known in France. eBay is considered an aging marketplace, but it remains popular with a specific type of customer, including collectors, and traffic on the website is high. By choosing the right products that appeal to this audience, it is possible to generate robust sales.
After around a year of work, Pierre-Eliott’s blog and YouTube channel took off. Several members of his community encouraged him to launch a training program. He was a little hesitant initially, so he started with a list of 200 winning products for eBay that he sold for €14. With his PDF, he made €3,000 euros in a short time. This experience confirmed the massive potential of training and infopreneurship.
His next move was to create an advanced training program on eBay dropshipping sold at a reasonable price. With this training program, he has helped hundreds of people get started and generate income or budget to set up their Shopify shop and advertise on Facebook. eBay dropshipping can help take the first step and make money to reinvest in other businesses.
From Entrepreneur to Infopreneur
Diversifying Sources of Income
With his experience of eBay dropshipping, Pierre-Eliott was able to generate a consistent income. At the height of his success, he managed to automate his orders for 10,000 products (with that reduced to a few hundred in recent months), with total sales reaching €5,000-10,000 a month. He made a 30 percent profit margin, which left him with a monthly profit of €2,000-3,000. But he also wanted to diversify his activities to minimize risks. With affiliate marketing, Pierre-Eliott made an additional €5,000-10,000 a month.
But where he really decided to focus was on creating digital products and developing content and training. He knew he could generate much higher revenue, but it was also what he is most passionate about. More and more entrepreneurs are engaging in infopreneurship, which is giving courses, creating training programs, or coaching other entrepreneurs.
“I didn’t want to be considered as just the eBay dropshipping expert. I wanted to show my skills in digital marketing and not limit myself to a single category as is often done in e-commerce and especially dropshipping.”
Pierre-Eliott began offering high-end coaching and training courses on topics such as email, Facebook, and Pinterest. From the start, he decided to make his programs affordable to all, charging just €7. He offers new programs every month, on a wide variety of topics. Thanks to infopreneurship, he generates €30,000 in sales every month.
With all his activities, Pierre-Eliott has total sales of around €50,000 a month. Of course, this is before accounting for expenses (approximately €10,000 a month) and tax to the French government.
Pierre-Eliott also works with freelancers to help him develop his business. His team includes an assistant to help with customer service, a video editor for his YouTube content, an Ads advertising manager, a blog content creator, and someone to manage the whole team.
“I prefer to spend time on content creation, on my long-term vision, and on creating new offers. I delegate the rest.”
His objective is to increase his advertising budget in the coming months to boost his visibility and help as many people as possible.
Supporting Diversity and Inclusion
Pierre-Eliott plans to continue developing his training courses.
“We noticed that most of the training courses on the market today help entrepreneurs get from point A to point B. But there isn’t much to take the next step from point B and keep scaling. That’s what we’re developing – to help get to point C, or even to point D. We want to help entrepreneurs break the glass ceiling and achieve better sources of income, allowing them to make up to €50,000 in sales a month. And this is regardless of the entrepreneur’s activity. It’s not only for e-commerce. For example, a guitar player may not have the marketing skills to know how to make money from online courses. The idea is to give people tools to make money from their product or their passion.
The French infopreneurship and e-commerce ecosystems are a bit closed. We tend to give advice to each other, but we don’t always think of sharing with other types of businesses. So the idea is really to make this available to all and to expand our community so that everyone can develop their passion and their business online”.
Pierre-Eliott has defined his mission as follows: to support all types of entrepreneurs looking for a certain form of independence, an alternative to employment, and/or financial freedom.
Not all entrepreneurs who follow his training take action. Some just copy/paste Pierre-Eliott’s advice and give up if it doesn’t work immediately. It is those who persevere, test many things, and have the right mindset that eventually succeeds. Some entrepreneurs even ended up making more money than Pierre-Eliott, for example, by focusing solely on eBay dropshipping.
A Look Back at His Career as an Entrepreneur
Pierre-Eliott is now 24-years-old and has been an ecommerce entrepreneur for three years. We asked him what he was most proud of looking back at his experience.
“The first thing I’m proud of is that I didn’t give up, and I persevered! I’m also super proud of not waiting too long and launching my YouTube channel. I managed to build a channel with quality content achieving high engagement and creating a real community. And I’m proud that I found my own path and didn’t follow the ecommerce mainstream way of doing things. I started in eBay dropshipping with a generalist shop and sold training courses at a low price when many entrepreneurs were selling their courses for €1,000. I’m really proud to have helped people who couldn’t have afforded training if not for me.”
Pierre-Eliott has always offered free tutorials on his YouTube channel and low-cost training programs. He doesn’t like to show off with videos of race cars or luxury watches.
“Some dropshippers do that, and it certainly makes you want to succeed. And so for some, it’s a way to sell more training programs, but people attracted by this dream don’t necessarily realize how much work there is behind it to achieve this kind of result. In the end, they want the race car right away, not the training. I prefer to create practical content and produce some lifestyle videos but promoting a different kind of dream, which is more tangible. Because not everyone can become a billionaire, even if you can be very successful in your business.”
Reinvesting in His Business and Traveling
Pierre-Eliott prefers to reinvest everything he earns in his business. He has also invested in crypto-currencies and in himself to continue developing his skills.
From time to time, Pierre-Eliott also likes to travel and work abroad, adopting the digital nomad lifestyle. In the first three months of 2020, he went to Portugal, Malta, Spain, and Miami before returning to Sweden, where his parents live, as the Covid-19 pandemic unfolded.
Unlike other dropshippers, coronavirus didn’t hurt his business. His eBay dropshipping sales increased during that period, and his training sales exploded as well, with many aspiring entrepreneurs stuck at home.
What’s Next?
We asked Pierre-Eliott how he sees the future of his business. He says he would like to continue developing his training offerings and maybe even launch his own brand, including a new Shopify store, with a compelling and impactful message, branding, and product.
His Advice for Infopreneurs and Entrepreneurs
We all have the ability to become an infopreneur and make money from our skills. Every one of us has expertise, whether it’s in marketing, cooking, or sports. But entrepreneurs need to train to excel in their area of knowledge and share that information.
Pierre-Eliott’s advice for those wanting to start is to improve your skills and find ways to differentiate yourself, especially if there are other entrepreneurs offering training in the same field. Don’t hesitate to start small, selling products such as eBooks, a list of products or influencers, or other types of snackable content.
But his most important piece of advice is to get started as quickly as possible. Some people never get started or start too late.
“My recommendation is to adopt the lean startup methodology, no matter what your business is. You need to launch your product as quickly as possible, with a kind of MVP that you will test and repeat. Because as the saying goes, when you’re happy with your product at launch, it means you launched it too late.”
In any case, at only 24, Pierre-Eliott didn’t wait to launch and grow successful businesses in eBay dropshipping, affiliate marketing, and infopreneurship. And all of this in just three years! We wish him all the best for the three years to come.