When it comes to ecommerce, Earnest Epps knows what’s what. At Affiliate World Europe 2019, he sat down with Philipp Schoeffmann to talk about selling high-ticket dropshipping products. Watch Earnest’s full AWE19 presentation here.

This post, “Earnest Epps On Selling High-Ticket Dropshipping Products” was first seen on the AWC Facebook page.

AWeurope Interview with Earnest Epps of High Ticket Ecommerce Secrets

High-Ticket Dropshipping Products

Phil:
🎙️ So I’m here with the man, Earnest. Bro, I’ve seen you onstage, your energy is electrifying. It’s absolutely amazing. Pleasure having you here.
Earnest:
Hey man, glad to be here.
Phil:
🎙️ That’s fantastic. Well, let’s speak about ecommerce and high-ticket dropshipping, your style. So a lot of people, they sell “junk” right?
Earnest:
Yeah.
Phil:
🎙️ You sell the big stuff.
Earnest:
Yeah, more expensive, definitely.
Phil:
🎙️ Alright.
Earnest:
Yeah more expensive, you know, more like, what I think is a real business, real brands that you’re working with, real companies. Not just sending random high-ticket dropshipping products to customers.
Phil:
🎙️ Alright, yeah that’s true. Okay. So what would be a typical client that you work with or a typical product that you work with?
Earnest:
Yeah, so one of the best-known examples I have, if you guys have watched the other video in the channel —
Phil:
🎙️ Oh yeah, you’re a YouTube star by now right? You’re like the most viewed video of one of the conferences that we’ve done right.
Earnest:
On the Affiliate World channel.
Phil:
🎙️ Yeah, alright.
Earnest:
Yeah so like electric fireplaces, you know. It’s something most people don’t think about but it’s like a higher-end luxury product or high-ticket dropshipping product. Average order value is like $800 to $1,200 but people will spend all the way up to $3,000 for one product.
Phil:
🎙️ And some buy more.
Earnest:
Yeah, oh absolutely. A lot of people that actually buy one, typically, they’ll have like a room upstairs or somewhere in the basement or something like that. The ideal customer that’s looking for one of those, makes an average of $150,000 a year. So they’ve got a nice home and they like to take care of it.
Phil:
🎙️ That’s cool.

High-Ticket Dropshipping: Driving Traffic Through Shopping Networks

Phil:
🎙️ Okay so if you sell more expensive, high-ticket dropshipping items online, things look a bit different in your marketing journey right? What do you do different than most other people?
Earnest:
Man so, I mainly focus on driving traffic through shopping networks ’cause the amazing thing about search engines is the fact that they only trigger high-ticket dropshipping products when people are actively looking for them. So for example, when’s the last time you’ve gone to Google and put in, let’s say, “a swimming pool” and you see a horse saddle.
Phil:
🎙️ I shop for swimming pools all the time.
Earnest:
You know? It just never happens. Verus like, when you’re on Facebook, you kind of have to give them an idea of who your ideal customer is and then they actively go and find them, which is the reverse through ecommerce shopping networks specifically like Google as well as Bing, Yahoo!, and AOL.

High-Ticket Dropshipping: Game-Changing Policy With US Suppliers

Phil:
🎙️ Alright. That makes a lot of sense, okay. So just to get this straight. You work with the little like ads that Google displays, when you click on that shopping part of things right? Or the dash display like the image, you have all the prices, and so forth. So what I figure is that for many high-ticket dropshipping products, the prices are all the same there.
Earnest:
Yeah, a lot of times. Especially you know the great thing about the US, when you work with US suppliers is we have this thing called a MAP policy, which stands for Minimum Advertising Price. Which means that if you’re working with a supplier that has that policy, everybody is selling at the same price.
Phil:
🎙️ But how do you do it then? I mean, wouldn’t people then rather go to a household name? Like a big chain store that they know? Instead of going to your page?
Earnest:
You see, that’s the amazing part right. So everyone’s selling at the same price, alright. There’s ways to kind of outrank. So here’s the thing, you can outrank, Wayfair, Walmart, Amazon, and it’s not that hard to outrank them on the shopping network, number one. Then number two is the fact that if everyone has the same price, most people would be willing to go with the person who’s giving more value right? So for example, Amazon, they’re not running high-ticket dropshipping promotions. They’re not creating amazing landing pages with deals and offers.
Phil:
🎙️ Yeah, well they can’t.
Earnest:
And that’s what we have the ability to do in ecommerce and high-ticket dropshipping.

High-Ticket Dropshipping: Provide Better Value Over Big Name Brands

Phil:
🎙️ Alright, okay. So how can I imagine that? Let’s say I’m shopping for what? A swimming pool?
Earnest:
Yeah! Let’s say a swimming pool.
Phil:
🎙️ I need a new pool, alright. So I’m shopping for a swimming pool okay. I go online, I go on Google, search for “purchase swimming pool” right? And I see a couple of high-ticket dropshipping product shops. I click through all of them because I want to see.
Earnest:
Exactly.
Phil:
🎙️ I want to see, what’s the difference right? I don’t get it. So I start with, I don’t know, maybe Walmart has a nice one, let’s check it out okay. I’m clicking around, and then I get to your high-ticket dropshipping product page as well. What’s different?
Earnest:
Yeah, so what’s different is that immediately I’m coming with an offer that’s in the header of the actual high-ticket dropshipping website. So it can be like a percentage off the swimming pool, that’s going to be better than Walmart’s deal because the thing is, I know we talk about it a lot, but we don’t have a lot of time to research what your competitors offers are. In either A, number one, model what they’re doing, or B, what’s going to win more long-term is to create a better offer than what they have. Walmart is giving 5% off, I’ll give 7% off.

So I’m going to meet them with that immediate offer at the top of the actual high-ticket dropshipping site and then as they kind of scroll through the page, I’m going to incentivise them with other things like maybe expedited process, maybe we install the pool, Walmart is not going to do that. Maybe we come up with some incentive that, if you buy one pool we’re going to give you the floaties for free. And they’re like, “Wow I get the pool and the floaties?”

Phil:
🎙️ And the floaties are like a five buck item.
Earnest:
Exactly.
Phil:
🎙️ Off of Alibaba or AliExpress, but yeah.
Earnest:
In high-ticket dropshipping, it’s those little things you know.
Phil:
🎙️ I agree, I would go with you too.

High-Ticket Dropshipping: Research The Competition

Phil:
🎙️ Alright, okay cool. And how do you come up with ideas in high-ticket dropshipping? I guess you brainstorm a lot and he’s just been around for a while, just so you understand. But also, I think you do a lot of, let’s call it funnel-hacking. It’s basically researching right?
Earnest:
Exactly yeah, in high-ticket dropshipping it’s researching the competition, figuring out what it is that they’re offering but the great thing is no matter what it is you want to sell – because I’m not the guy who says, “Hey, you have to sell stuff that you’re passionate about or that you like” – you can just do research like you just mentioned. Go out and research and see what people are actively buying in their customer journey of owning a swimming pool.

So it’d be like, okay they want to buy a swimming pool, what do they need with the swimming pool? Clorox tabs, the thing to measure the bleach level in the pool and all that stuff. So even if I didn’t know anything about pools, we can get that information just through research.

High-Ticket Dropshipping And Purchase Intent

Phil:
🎙️ Alright, so then how do you ship the pool?
Earnest:
Well that’s where dropshipping comes into play right? So the great thing is even working with a lot of US manufacturers, high-ticket dropshipping has become a more well-known thing to do. So when I contact the suppliers and manufacturers, I ask them to set up a dropship account, which means that they’ll just send it directly to the consumer for me so I don’t have to worry about the overhead or the inventory.
Phil:
🎙️ Okay alright. Well that’s fascinating, okay and why do you not run any typical Google search ads?
Earnest:
Well no, I’ve run search ads. I don’t run Facebook ads.
Phil:
🎙️ Alright, I got you. I’m a Facebook kind of guy, but I dig what you’re saying. It makes me rethink.
Earnest:
Well cause you’re getting people to have intent. The only time your high-ticket dropshipping products get triggered is either A, they’re looking for exactly what you sell or B, they’re looking for something extremely similar to what you sell. So even if let’s say you go to launch your store and you only have outdoor swimming pools, you don’t have indoor swimming pools, that person will still be in the same market for an indoor or outdoor right. And so that’s the main thing versus when you’re running Facebook ads, you have to give Facebook the information and data to go out and find that person.
Phil:
🎙️ Absolutely, purchase intent, of course, rocks the way that you do it with your kind of high-ticket dropshipping product.
Earnest:
Especially high-ticket dropshipping, no one is going through Facebook thinking, “You know what, I’m going to drop three grand on a fireplace today.”
Phil:
🎙️ I like your way of doing things. Thank you so much for sharing that.