Only about 3-4 months ago…it was STUPIDLY simple to make money dropshipping on Facebook Marketplace.
All you had to do was copy products from sites like amazon, ebay or Walmart….(or really any other website) and list them on facebook marketplace at a higher price…and they’d sell! Simply because the demand was so high and there was next to no competition on platform.
It was literally easier than stealing candy from a baby.
Lately, everyone’s facebook sales have been down dramatically across the board. This goes for both shops and marketplace.
So in this article I want to talk about whether or not you can STILL make a full time income selling on facebook marketplace.
I have several shops and a 2 marketplace accounts currently. And the reality is…yes sales are down across the board. That’s true.
1 of my shops is still doing pretty well and the other ones have kind of tapered down to about $1,000 profit per month. Both of my marketplace accounts are down overall too. Last month the 1 did a little over 5K profit…and the other one only did almost 3K.
So to answer the question of can you still make a full time income dropshipping on facebook marketplace….the answer is unequivocally yes. I’m still doing it. BUT…it’s not a STUPID simple as it was 4 months ago (and before that).
If you’re still SOLELY listing saturated products from popular websites on to marketplace, your sales are going to suffer. It’s that simple.
It’s NOT enough to continue banging your head against the wall with the same exact strategies that worked in the beginning. So, here are some updates I’ve noticed…and strategies I’ve implemented that I attribute to keeping my sales afloat. I hope they help you.
The first thing I’ve noticed is that there’s a different way to search now.
They’ve really developed the search function on both desktop and mobile for buyers.
It used to be a hodge-podge of weird filters that didn’t even work half the time when you tried to sort with them.
But now (whether you search for something specific…or just browse in a category) it’s really easy to sort through important information to find products in different ways.
you can set the minimum and maximum price
whether you’re looking to pickup locally or you’re open to ordering on marketplace and getting the product shipped to you
the date listed
whether it’s available or sold
what the condition of the item you’re looking for is
and even the brand
This is all great for prospective buyers. AND it’s great for product research to see what the competition is like for products you’re about to list as a seller.
You can search for a specific type of product, sort the condition as new with shipping, and literally see what other competitors are offering and for what price.
This will tell you right off the bat whether the product you’re about to list is saturated or not….AND whether your price is probably too high.
Don’t get me wrong…price isn’t the be all end all on marketplace….BUT this is certainly relevant information. If there’s 100 other sellers listing the same relative product for $40 cheaper….the chance you’re going to sell yours is next to 0.
Plus, you can use these filters to search through and snipe even easier than ever. Remember, list what’s ALREADY working on marketplace. And you can sort through "sold listings" and then list products very similar to those. That will give you a higher likelihood of success FOR SURE.
The next tip is one I’ve talked about for a while and that’s that using suppliers like Amazon, ebay, and Walmart are NOT ENOUGH anymore.
I’m not saying DON’T list from them at all…I’m simply saying they’re more competitive than ever and if you want to build a sustainable business you need to differentiate your suppliers.
I’ve tried dozens of other suppliers. Some are duds and some are hidden gems. Try a bunch and see what works for you.
If you’d like to get a few recommendations of other suppliers to list from, check out this video here: Forget Amazon and eBay. Use These Suppliers Instead.
You also can't solely rely on organic traffic alone. Ads can work great! And they do…if you use them properly. If a product never gets any views or clicks…chance are facebook doesn’t think there’s much demand for that currently…or at least they haven’t identified the right audience fit for it YET.
So those are products you definitely don’t want to waste time running ads to. BUT, the ones that are getting lots of link clicks, but no sales….are DEFINITELY ones you want to run ads to.
Go to that listing and use the “boost listing feature”….then select to pay per sale (NOT pay per traffic). By selecting pay per sale….facebook will blast your listing out to more people like those initially interested in it…and ONLY charge you if it sells.
Then all it comes down to is making sure you know your profit and break even point on that product….and bidding as much as you can under that #.
Simple? Yes. But super effective! And this works on both marketplace and shops.
Think about it…when Instagram was brand new you could get lots of organic reach on your posts. Now…it’s next to impossible b/c the feed is saturated with ads and other organic posts (not to mention ads).
The same thing happened with facebook pages over the past few years too. My main facebook page has upwards of 25K followers….and I can remember when I would make a post and get hundreds of likes on it. Now, that same post is lucky to get a dozen.
And this is happening slowly to tiktok right now too. Yes, you can still get crazy organic reach…but that reach is dwindling, as more and more people are creating for the platform….AND ads are now running every few posts too.
And guess what?….marketplace is no different.
It’s not 100% pay to play yet…BUT the pay wall is still super cheap and you can use that to your advantage to profitably buy sales.
Another thing I’ve picked up on is that buyers are starting to price check listings more.
So don’t make it so easy for them to check. Don’t use the same exact title and same exact description word for word from your supplier’s website.
Change it up……move words around……delete brand names…..that way they can’t literally copy your title into google (or amazon) and find that same exact listing for $20 cheaper.
I’ve also noticed they’re starting to push shop owners to list in new ways too. And they're also making you jump through a lot more hoops to verify new shops….AND re-verify shops that have been selling for a while.
This is a GOOD sign in my opinion. It’ll weed out the sellers that aren’t serious…and help the serious sellers make more money.
You can still find the old way of manually listing if you go into list manually and find where it says “take me back to the old way of listing." But they’re clearly pushing people to list via website pixel integration….or a data feed spreadsheet (which a lot of serious companies have – also known as a product catalog to you wholesale sellers out there).
I’ve moved away from the spreadsheets temporarily b/c they seemed to have a lot of errors when uploading with them….but they’re hopefully working on fixing that. The pixel has been a gamechanger lately though!
Instead of listing directly on a shop….I built a shopify website that houses all my products.
I can then add thousands of products to that website super quickly…….I can open up multiple shops and connect those thousands of products to them EASILY…..AND….if a shop goes down, I didn’t invest hundreds of VA hours listing to it. I can just create a new shop, and connect my pixel it….and BAM! Instantly thousands of products on that new shop.
It’s been great!
You also don’t need to rely solely on facebook shop restrictions and metrics to maintain checkout on facebook so you can make sales. Instead of the blue “buy button” that is “checkout on facebook” …..your shop listings will still be available on marketplace, but the button will instead take them to checkout on your website.
This gives MAJOR advantages in my opinion.
Not only do you avoid the 5% selling fee that’s coming in 2023 (so you’ll net more money), but you can also add shopify apps to your store so EVERY SINGLE listing has things like product reviews and timed sales….or bundle options.
That means your conversion rate will be drastically higher….and YOU CONTROL the site and your customer. NOT facebook.
I don’t have this down to a science yet…but I have seen some success with it…and I think this is the future of shops…and where they’re moving it to.
Think about it. What big company is going to list all there products to facebook??? Uhhh, try none of them. Instead, they’re going to connect their website pixel, send customers to their site, and control the traffic…and customer relationships going forward.
You should be doing the same thing.
Perhaps one of the easiest ways to differentiate your listings (besides using other suppliers) is to use videos on your listings too….not just pictures.
You can either create them yourself or download videos from places like tiktok…or even amazon listings or amazon reviews.
I can safely say, after split testing this for the past month or so….that a higher % of my listings with videos on them seem to convert more customers than the ones with just pictures.
And finally, a simple way to make more money on facebook is to just raise your prices.
This might sound counterintuitive, but with less sales….you can still compensate by making MORE MONEY on those sales.
I’ve honestly made less sales recently…BUT I’ve made up for it by marking my prices up more and netting more profit on each sale.
If you'd like to watch the complete video explanation of this, check it out below.