If you've landed here, you're no doubt curious about Justin Woll's eCommerce University course and if it's the secret sauce to unlock the riches of your dropshipping empire.
In this eCommerce University review, we'll dive into what makes this a serious contender for the best dropshipping course on the market.
I have a background in dropshipping...I've even had a couple of 6-figure stores.
TBH, I no longer see dropshipping as the best online business model out there anymore. If you're still on the fence about whether to go all-in on dropshipping, check out my #1 recommendation for 2021, Local Lead Generation.
Let's get back to Justin Woll and find out if the Jersey Shore boy delivers?
1. What is eCommerce University?
He has a rather costly mentoring program too as an upsell but more on that later.
Here's what you'll find in return for your money for just the eCommerce University dropshipping course:
One of the strengths of eCommerce University is product research.
There's a precise step-by-step process that Woll swears by to pick those winning products.
He claims this process produces more winning products for his students than any other method on the planet, period.
In addition, Justin provides A LOT of cutting edge advertising strategies...more on that later.
There's sections on creating the right kind of content that will get people to take action.
Some of this material is going to be better suited to an experienced dropshipper but newbies can always come back to it later when they're ready.
And there's a decent section about scaling once you get your foundation in place.
2. Who is Justin Woll?
He spent his youth in New Jersey - the place is probably most well known for the Jersey Shore series and packed beaches on summer weekends.
After graduating high school, he started a business degree at Rutgers University in NJ but dropped out 12 credits shy and $15k in college debt.
It's clear that even back then he showed signs of being a mover and shaker while in college.
There's no GTL living here...he's been grinding and putting in the work.
Even though he didn't finish college, he's probably doing better than the majority of his classmates.
And has declared himself the head of the largest ecom mentoring agency.
That's a pretty bold claim.
To be fair, he's been recognized by ClickFunnel and is currently running at 5x Two-Comma Club awards.
His latest income stream is hosting eCommerce training events with some of his ecom pals in super swanky rental homes, like this one held in the Hollywood Hills area of Los Angeles.
They even brought in a private chef to prepare all the meals.
Now, looking to keep things in-house while making some extra dough, he's started building out additional products to complete his eCommerce brand.
For example, you can purchase done-for-you product videos, tailor-made sales funnels, or even 10,000 Instagram followers.
3. How Does Dropshipping Work?
Here's the skinny: dropshipping has made it possible for anyone to start a business selling goods.
You're not on the hook for renting a store, buying inventory to stock your shelves, or having to pay people to serve customers.
In fact, you pass on the majority of the risk and expense to the company that supplies the products listed on your online store.
Once an order is placed, your supplier takes care of packaging and shipping the item to your new customer.
The sales cycle looks like this:
There's still a lot of work to be done though:
Sadly, too many people have been fooled into thinking they can go into dropshipping and be an overnight success.
It doesn't help that there are so many gurus flogging courses while flaunting these extravagant lifestyles with expensive cars and laptops by the pool.
What most of these guys don't share is where they're making most of that money from; selling courses.
Sadly, the massive profits in dropshipping dried up a few years back as the marketplace became more
4. Is Dropshipping Legit or a Scam?
It's made it possible for people to enter the eCommerce world without needing a huge sum of money up front to invest in inventory.
And if that's not enough, it removes a lot of the risk if products don't sell.
But here's the deal, it's also opened the doors to the more nefarious members of society to find a way to take advantage of the system.
I'm not going to lie to you; some of those who create a bad name for dropshipping is just downright disorganized and can't get their sh*t in order to run a business.
They would fail at anything; it just so happens they've decided to have a go at dropshipping.
5. How much does Justin's Course Cost? Any Specials?
BSF eCommerce University will set you back $997.
If you decide to upgrade to the Mastermind Coaching Program, it's $5,000 for 6 months.
There's also the option to upgrade that to a full year of coaching for a total of $8,000.
eCommerce University is thrown in with either of the mentoring programs as part of the price.
Woll has the gift of the gab - heck, he could probably sell ice to an Eskimo.
His sales pitch for the upgrade can be pretty convincing, and I'm sure many are tempting to go full throttle by upgrading.
Especially once you're in the Beyond Six Figures sales funnel.
5. How much does Justin Woll's Course Cost? Any Specials?
Pros of eCommerce University
6. Solid Instagram Influencer Training
Justin outsources this module to an Instagram Influence Consultant named Ben, who shares his hands-on experience of not only working with Influencers but also being one himself.
I really dig how he provides a couple of case studies showing the difference between what most people think of hiring influences (aka I can't afford that) and finding influencers that are more niche-related and budget-friendly.
Major stars are going to be out of reach but there's plenty of other options.
Ben walks through how to identify the right metric to pick Influencers for your product AND your budget.
That said, this strategy only works well if you invest time and resources to develop a long term plan and cultivate relationships.
The Instagram Influencer route is still a fairly new concept to the masses.
7. Justin's Juicy Ad Strategies
There's plenty for both beginners to start nibbling at but plenty to keep even as experience pro salivating too.
eCommerce University's automatic bidding strategies include:
Justin declares The Big Bang Method as being one of his all-time favorites.
It gets even juicier when Justin rolls through his favorite manual bidding strategies:
As you can see from the ad spend budget, this is for serious players who know they have a winning product or niche.
To be honest, let's give credit where it's due. Even some of the best eCommerce course guru's don't share their manual bidding strategies.
8. The Live Trainings & Facebook Group
Personally, I prefer to have a Facebook group or some method of networking with others in the training program.
Firstly, you can get a feel for the course by seeing what questions are being asked in the group.
It is the same kind of problem over and over or are they highly specific?
Justin hosts regular events for group members to jump on and learn new things or ask questions.
Admittedly, it can get a bit tedious during the lives with the constant stoppages to get as many likes or comments going as possible.
But hey, you're learning from the master on how to hack Facebook's algo in group rankings I guess.
Overall he gives the Facebook group plenty of value with free content, words of encouragement, and useful insights he has learned to succeed in the world of eCommerce, and even just business in general.
There are a host of admins and moderators. If a student doesn't get a response to a question, one of the admins usually has something helpful.
Justin, or whoever manages his profiles, monitors the group and is pretty active.
It's more posts than replies but he drops plenty of wisdom and ideas.
Students seem eager to post concerns and problems on the group page looking for advice.
And yes there's examples of student success which would lead you to believe student really do improve their sales metrics with BSF e-commerce methods.
9. Detailed Facebook Set Up Module
Unfortunately, Facebook is also the biggest pain in the a$$ to not only figure out but in keeping up with their constantly changing rules and algorithms.
Justin covers every step of navigating this behemoth of a platform.
Including:
Cons of eCommerce University
10. It's Expensive
It's not the most expensive course out there but it's certainly not a budget-friendly option if you're just getting started as a drop shipper.
One of the biggest learning curves as a new drop shipper is figuring out how to get traffic to your site.
Although it might seem like it will be easy because you can just copy what Justin tells you to do, you'll still need plenty of financial resources to run ads and split test before identifying which ones to scale.
Then you'll need the cash to go all in and keep going.
And keep in mind, just because you make a sale on your store doesn't mean you automatically have that cash flow to reinvest.
You need to pay the supplier before they'll ship the items to your customers and Facebook will be charging you for your ads.
If you've set a pretty low spending threshold, you'll likely be billed once a week but for what you need to spend to get your store in front of enough people, don't be surprised if Facebook is taking its cut daily.
11. There's a Lot to Digest
If you are just getting starting in eCom, jumping into eCommerce University is going to feel a tad like drinking from a firehose.
The Shopify set up is fairly straightforward and if you follow Justin’s directions, you should have a nice looking store.
The product research section, while seemingly short on the video, has a lot of moving pieces and has to be executed exactly as described. It will get easier with repetition.
Where I feel the wheels might start spinning for a newbie is all the plugins and then the advertising strategies.
Don’t get me wrong, overall I think Justin’s program is more likely to produce results than most of the alternatives but it’s going to be a learning process.
12. There's No Refund Policy
In fact, there's not a single mention of any trial or refund which is usually a good indication that there's no way to get a refund.
Now, if you love the program that's great.
13. Not a Recommended Business Model for 2021
There's a lot of talk about dropshipping being a saturated market and there’s a good reason for it.
Not surprising that the ones who deny it are also selling dropshipping programs to the masses.
With all the buzz around eCommerce growing during the pandemic, more and more people are jumping in thinking they can get a piece of the action too.
Here's the deal, the figures you are seeing on all those enticing posts aren’t anything the number that actually lands in your bank account when all is said and done.
And keep in mind that Steve Tan (first comment in the post above) is one of the kingpins of dropshipping. He and his brother have their own supply and fulfillment channels in place and are on the cutting edge of all things advertising and promotion.
Concluding Thoughts
14. Do Justin's Students Actually Make Money?
Here's the truth; I've checked out lots of online marketing courses and Woll's seems to be one of the more legit options.
There's social proof that some of his students are making money and there are more students posting success here in this Facebook group than I’ve seen in others.
It could be argued that Justin's advertising strategies make this program a worthy contender for best dropshipping course available.
15. Who's a Good Fit for Beyond Six Figures eCommerce University?
If you are die-hard certain that dropshipping is for you and you're ready to go all in, this is a program you can really get immersed in.
16. What alternatives are there to Justin's Beyond Six Figures eCommerce University?
There's a host of options on the market and it seems like someone is dropping a new course every week.
For more dropshipping course options, check out my review here.
In the meantime, here are 2 of my quick recommendations:
Anton Kraly's Dropship Lifestyle (DSL) is a premium course with a niche angle toward and higher profit version of dropshipping.
There are 2 package options:
Premium Package: $2997
Ultimate Package: $4997 (includes a ticket to next retreat)
The other popular option on the market is Franklin Hatchett's eCom Elites.
It's considered by many to be the go-to course.
With over 30 hours of content, there's a lot to work through.
Hatchett has an affiliate program for ecom elites so you'll find lots of favorable reviews with links to purchase the course.
If you want to read a totally unbiased ecom elites review, click here.
Pros and Cons of eCommerce University
The Good and Bad of Justin Woll's Course
This is a premium level course but it comes at a price too.
There's a lot to digest here and it's going to take a while to absorb.
Justin's advertising strategies are among the best offered on a dropshipping course. He goes into detail on using Instagram influencers and how to handle the communication back and forth.
The Facebook Ad strategies have their own pet names which is genius, making it much easier to know what strategy someone is talking about on the Facebook group or when asking for help.
Despite having some killer ad strategies, I have major reservations about the dropshipping industry in general.
Facebook ad accounts are notorious for being shut down and with dropshipping being considered high-risk by many merchants, it's not uncommon for them to hold your money for months as a precaution.
If you don't stay on top of your customer service and get a few complaints or chargebacks, you'll soon be in hot water.
Dropshipping is far from the passive income portrayed by most gurus who selling courses.
How Does Dropshipping Stand up to Others? Like Lead Generation?
Have you read M.J. DeMarco's The Millionaire Mindset?
If not, I highly recommend it.
One of the golden nuggets he shares is a checklist for evaluating business models.
He calls it the C.E.N.T.S. model.
Let me show you how it works in a couple of examples:
18. Control
With dropshipping - be afraid, be VERY afraid.
No seriously.
Putting all your eggs in one basket, namely Facebook advertising is scary.
Not only do they keep increasing the cost of advertising, squeezing most of the profit from stores, but their trusty algorithm loves to lock people out of their account for even the slightest infraction of their ever-changing policies.
It looks like Apple is going to create further problems for dropshippers relying on Facebook ads when they make it super-inviting for people to opt-out of Facebook tracking on all iPhones.
Why you ask?
Well, if you're trying to target dog owners, Facebook knows which people to serve up who have searched for dog-owner related content online and can plomp your ad in front of them to promote your product.
This is going to get a lot less accurate if Facebook can only rely on the data it receives through its own platform instead of someone complete search patterns.
Compare this to local lead generation...
I rank my sites using Google's organic search.
It's free traffic - I never have to pay for ads.
The best part - the customers come to me.
This is one of my sites and anytime someone searches for limo hire in this city, they find my lead gen at the top of the search.
I can build as many of these as I want and I find a hungry business owner in each city and niche to route the calls to.
19. Entry
When there are low barriers to entry, it’s going to end up being more packed than a Jersey Shore beach on a summer weekend.
Not only that but it becomes an appealing target for the scammers to move in and exploit. Just think about it, the more people involved, the more targets they have, and the tougher it is to be detected.
What does this mean for an industry like dropshipping?
Tons of people throwing the same stuff on their store which means competing on price and, in some cases, using dirty tricks like hijacking your ad feed and redirecting your customers to their store.
Or stealing your creatives, which has happened to one of my stores.
More fraudulent payment and people looking to rip off customers to make a quick dime. All that does is lead to more security hurdles and companies shutting down anyone with even a whiff of wrongdoing - even if it was just an honest mistake.
At the end of the day, there are so many hundreds of thousand involved that you don’t mean a thing to these giant companies like Facebook or Shopify. The only things they care about are their companies reputation with buyers and merchants, staying out of legal trouble, and serving the kinds of clients who spend millions upon millions with them.
On the other hand, Lead Generation is on a totally different level.
You are building your own company and once you know how to rank on Google, you’re in charge.
There's a process to learn and it's about building a real business for long-term passive income.
And I've learned what tools to use to streamline my business - like this one that tracks all the calls coming into my lead gen site and routes them directly to a local business owner.
Learning the process and putting in the upfront work to get set up is already going to turn away a good percentage of folk who are looking for a get-rich-quick solution to their problems.
Justin Woll's Course works, but Generating Leads is Better, Here's Why:
I really like what Justin Woll has created with not only the course but a sense of community. He puts a ton of effort and energy into his Facebook group and the live trainings.
Sure, he's looking for people to buy the course and especially upgrade to the mentoring program but it seems to come from a place of genuinely wanting to help people too.
Yes, this is a detailed dropshipping course and some of the best ad strategy training on the market.
The question is how long it will take to learn all the steps and what the ROI on your store?
Even the best dropshippers are making maybe 10-20% profit margins.
How much is that in your bank after taxes?
And the cold, hard truth:
The time to get into dropshipping has been and gone.
Sure, there are people making money but they also have the experience and financial means to invest several grand in testing a niche before going all-in with branding and creating their own fulfillment channels.
They're certainly not using AliExpress and the odds are stacked against you without major coin to invest.
The moment you find a winner, everyone else copycats it too.
Talk about frustrating...
Once I found Local Lead Generation, I got out of dropshipping, sold off my stores, and I haven't regretted it one bit.
Conclusion
Hey, I hope you got some good wisdom from my Justin Woll review.
There is no doubt this guy knows his stuff when it comes to Facebook ads.
The bigger question is whether Facebooks ads is the best way to do business?
Everyone is bidding on the same audience and Facebook is known to provide just enough nibbles to keep you hooked.
The new IOS14 update looks like it's going to send FB ads crashing to the ground too.
You're going to have to figure out an alternative...and then another one...and another one.
You know what?
When I switched to Local Lead Generation....NO PAID ads.
Man, was that a relief.
Not only did it mean MUCH more money stayed in my bank account but I didn't have to keep making ads and monitoring them every damn day.
Oh, and let's talk about SCALE-ABILITY here.
It's just rinse and repeat.
Keep building these lead gen assets...1, 2, 3, 4...27, 28, and so on.
I have over 40 of these properties that pay my EVERY month.
You can do it too.
Check it out for yourself.
Literally anyone can get into dropshipping with hardly any effort or upfront cash. Regardless of what you're selling, you'll likely be competing with millions of other sellers in an extremely saturated market.
Plagiarism is rampant in dropshipping. It's far too easy for your competitors to copy your ads, your sales funnels, and even your Shopify store. Be assured that if you find a successful product, you will be copied and then undercut by your competition.
Advertisements have no guarantee of being profitable - and one should expect to occasionally have campaigns that fall short of expectations (which can cost thousands of dollars).
Facebook's ad prices have doubled this last year. Successful dropshippers can expect to profit roughly 8-15%, which only really works if you're selling major volumes of product.
The key to long term wealth is in building and owning valuable assets, but with dropshipping, you own nothing. You're an enslaved middleman to Shopify, Facebook, and Google. Their ad and metrics systems are unreliable and ever changing - and account deactivations are a way of life in eCommerce.
Ads must be developed and then monitored - and failing to do so could mean unprofitable ads or, even worse, ad account suspension.
Trending items are most often the only products that have a profitable ROI. Many businesses meet their ends on the fall of whatever trend they were capitalizing on.
Shipping from China takes six weeks, so expect lots of customer complaints and chargebacks (which are deducted from your bank account).
Local Lead Generation
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