Dropshipping

The claim

“Just Hit $76K in 13 Days With My NEW Dropshipping Store”

@AuthenticDom, April 2023, 71,520 views¹

The date is our estimate. This page judges the scheme, not the people who tweeted. Of the 29 tweets we collected, none gives advert spending, product cost or the income left at the end in its text; we did not view attached images, videos or threads¹.

The sums

Dropshipping is an online shop that holds no stock: a supplier ships each order to the customer. You keep the price minus the supplier’s charge, shipping, payment fees and, usually, adverts.

Across more than 40,000 brands advertising on Meta (Facebook and Instagram), the median (middle) advert cost to win one order was $38.99, and that order was worth $73.36³. These are established brands of all kinds, not new stores and not only dropshippers. One median order, on our estimate:

So a first order breaks even at best. The table uses the kinder figure: a 35% product cost, which leaves 65% of the price, from one vendor, TrueProfit, which publishes no method². Shopify says only 20% to 50% is left after the supplier is paid, a figure from one of its programmes⁴⁵; at those margins the median advert cost is not covered (our sum)³. We found no independent measurement of either. Refunds, repeat orders and customs duty are left out. US duty-free entry for parcels of $800 or less ended on 29 August 2025¹⁹; we did not establish the duty a typical parcel from China now pays.

“$76K in 13 Days” would be $7,600 to $15,200 of profit if 10% to 20% of sales were left after every cost, which the vendor calls “a strong benchmark”, and little or nothing at its rounded average cost shares (our estimate)¹². The tweet text gives no costs, so we cannot say which¹.

What happens to most people who try

Nobody has measured it. Shopify says: “There’s no dropshipping-specific failure rate”⁴. “90% fail” traces to vendor blogs citing each other, so we do not use it²⁴²⁸.

We found no income report from 2024 to 2026 backed by payment records.

The upside

Empire Flippers, a broker that sells online businesses, listed seven dropshipping stores showing profit of $48,277 to $698,301 on sales of $111,127 to $3,844,458²⁹. The broker says it vets them and treats the figures as yearly³⁰³¹; we did not confirm twelve months for every store. It earns commission, these are not audited accounts, and owners who chose to sell are winners, not a sample.

Four of the seven run on paid adverts and keep 15% to 22% of sales^30313282. The three that do not rely on adverts keep 25% to 43%³³⁸⁰⁸¹ (both our division).

Wired in 2020 reported a full-time operator whose “Shopify records show he’ll clear about $90,000 (£69,000) in personal profit”, a figure its reporter checked³⁴.

A realistic good result for a competent person, on our estimate: the first three to six months of paid product tests bring little or no profit. If a product then works, 10% to 22% of sales is profit^23031323782. Replacing a $4,000 monthly wage then needs about $18,000 to $40,000 of monthly sales. No dataset says what share of newcomers get this far.

What it takes to compete

• Many paid failures first. One broker-checked store found its products “from hundreds of tested advertising campaigns”³¹.
• Money to put up. Our estimate: a few thousand dollars you can afford to lose on tests, and thousands more to pay suppliers and adverts before customers pay. Shopify’s payment service can hold back 10% of sales for 120 days¹².
• An edge. Only one of the seven relies mainly on Facebook adverts, and it has a subscription and about 40% repeat customers⁸². The others use Pinterest or Google adverts, adverts on a platform the listing does not name, wholesale buyers, search traffic or their own audience^303132338081.
• Time. Shopify says matching an average full-time income takes “at least a year of full-time work”⁴.
• Running it legally. You are the seller in law, though a supplier ships: honest delivery times, refunds and product safety are your job²³⁴⁶⁴⁸.

To tell early, divide the price by what is left of it after product, shipping, duty and fees. That is the sales per advert dollar you need to break even. Above about 1.9, the median Meta advertiser would lose money on your product³.

Who else makes money from it

Shopify takes a monthly fee and a share of each card payment¹⁰. It pays people who send it newcomers “up to $150 USD per qualified referral”⁶³.

Fourteen of the 29 tweets ask for a like, comment or reply in return for something free; they hold about 96% of the views we could count, and none states a price¹. We do not know what follows.