My TikTok Shop Dropshipping Setup (Can I get to $500/Month? | Doba Part 2)

SideHustle Slim Jim here. We are doing video two in my journey of becoming a dropshipper and getting to $500,000. We are doing video two of my journey of becoming a dropshipper and getting to $500 a month in dropshipping profit. Again, that's kind of the amount I use to test different side hustles. Can I grow it to $500 a month? If I can, hey, it's a side hustle. And then some of those I want to grow and turn into their own businesses. Maybe you start hiring staff. So when we are using Doba to help set up our dropshipping store. And in video one, I set up my Doba account. I also set up my TikTok shop account. I'm using Desk Relief Co. is the name of it. I remember we were gonna sell different products to help you while you sit at your desk, which I'm actually passionate about because I sit at my desk most of the day. But in this video, we're going to get everything set up so that I can start selling product. And then if you like and subscribe, comment, dropshipping, something like that, you show me that there's interest, that you guys want me to continue this journey, then video three, I'll start recording TikToks and we'll start getting sales. And I might even run some ads to see if we can grow this. I want to try using Viral Ecom Ads, ViralEcomAds.com, but they're used by 30,000 different e-commerce stores. And basically, they're a way to highlight different products using AI-generated people. So you can quickly get ads set up and they're pretty affordable. So in video three, I'll show setting up some ads also. Again, our goal, getting to $500 a month in dropshipping profit. And for those of you who don't know, everyone knows what e-commerce is, buying things online, everybody does that, pretty much. But dropshipping is where you list products directly from the supplier. You don't hold any inventory yourself, so you don't have to buy any inventory, you don't have to store any inventory. When someone buys from your store, it's shipped directly from the vendor to them and you're just kind of the in-between person. You're kind of the salesperson for it. And a lot of gurus talk about how much money you can make with dropshipping, how easy it is. From my experience, hard work brings profit, mere talk leads only to poverty. There's no such thing as easy ways to make money. But I wanna see if we put in, you know, what do they say, the old college try. Can we make a successful dropshipping store? And then if I'm able to do it, maybe you can do it as well. So when I was thinking about this journey, okay, how do I get to $500 a month, what do I do now? I've got Doba set up, I've got my TikTok shop set up, what's next? I was a little lost. It's like, okay, what do I need to do? So when I get lost, I like to go over to ChatGPT and just kind of ask for some guidance, ask for some help. And ChatGPT 5.1 just came out, which I'm really enjoying. I pretty much always switch it to thinking mode, so it thinks longer for better answers. I'm not in a rush most of the time. But another trick, if you have plus the $20 a month ChatGPT package, it's well worth it. This deep research mode, you get 40 of them per month, but this is worth it, this deep research mode. It's basically ChatGPT thinking, but on steroids. So instead of getting an answer back, normally on thinking mode, it normally takes maybe 30 seconds or something like that. This will think about it, it will go scour the internet, it will research it, it'll ask you questions to clarify what you're wanting to do. And it might take like 30 minutes. But what it brings back is very, very good, well-thought-out information. So I basically asked ChatGPT in this deep research mode to give me a roadmap to $500 a month profit on TikTok shop, dropshipping with Doba. And I wanted it to break it down into kind of weekly what I need to do, and it spat out a nice kind of to-do. Here's a roadmap of what you need to make happen to get this set up. So, and then I put this into its own Google Doc, and we're just gonna walk through it. And again, our goal for this video is to get to the point where we can actually sell products. And the next video, I'll start making the TikToks. So step one, choose a focused niche. And we already did this in video one, so I'm just gonna comment next to it, desk relief products. So that's kind of the niche that we're going after. This might be a good idea to have ChatGPT do a deep research into a niche that will be the best, the easiest to get to $500. But we'll go ahead and trust our niche we originally set out with, because I know it's easily demonstrable, and it's things that I need. I actually have severe lower back pain, and I think a lot of it is just due to me sitting at this desk constantly. So I think what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna have AI help me choose our, okay, so step two is we're gonna define our hero product. So this is gonna kind of be like our main product that we're trying to sell. Your flagship item that you build content around, it needs to be demonstration friendly, impulse buy, so in the $15 to $50 price range, broad appeal in the niche, and low risk. And by the end of week one, we need to pick one product. So what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna highlight all this. And I have been talking to you a lot about the Comet web browser, and that's because it's amazing. So you can have this assistant over here, which is basically AI, it's ChatGPT Clawed, and it's connected to your web browser. So I'm gonna ask this assistant, I want to do this. Just copy, paste. And then I can even send it other URLs. So I searched desk relief on Doba, so here's some of the products. Please help me pick my one hero product. Can look on Doba, and then I'm just gonna include the URL. And then also, these are the products I already added, so can look through those too. Can also look through products I already added. So Comet browser can actually take control of your web browser, and it can search, it can, you know, I can have it edit this Google Doc right here, it's pretty amazing. In fact, I think everyone, stop what you're doing right now. I'm gonna leave a link down below to download the Comet browser. It's completely free, give it a try. Ask it one question, give it one task to do, completely free, it'll change your life. It's changed my life completely. So it's looking through the desk relief search, looking through my current inventory, and what it came up with was the neck and shoulder relaxer cervical traction device. And they say it's demo friendly, impulse buy, it's 11 bucks. And it's a broad appeal, and there's hundreds in stock, so zero inventory risk. Neck and shoulder relaxer. I don't know, guys, what do you think? Is this a hero, I mean, is this gonna be what my shop is about, is this device here? I just, I don't know. Let me know in the comments what you think. What should my hero be? I don't know how I feel about this one. It had alternatives, the desk ball spinner, but that's not in the right price range. I think we might want something a little bit more expensive. Lumbar support cushions. I don't know why I'm having such a hard time with this decision, it's really not that big of a deal. What about this? I kinda like this lumbar pillow, and actually, I have lower back pain. This might feel like more than I would like. This is something I would probably use. Okay, and comment says that it should work well, so I'm gonna go ahead and do it. We're gonna call this, where'd it go? We're gonna call this lumbar pillow our hero image, our hero product, so I'm just gonna comment this on the Google Doc, our hero product, and then I'm gonna leave a link to it. Okay, so we are done with week one of our roadmap, so let's go to week two. Set up your TikTok shop and optimize your listing. Now that you have a product, let's build your TikTok shop. Optimize your TikTok profile. Let's go here. So first off, we wanna update our profile, which we actually did this in the first one. We have a pretty decent logo for this Desk Relief Co., so we're gonna say that's done. We need a bio, and I actually don't know, can you, is there even a bio for your TikTok shop? I don't know how this works, so again, I'm gonna use Comet Browser Assistant. My roadmap says to update the bio for my business. Where can I do that in TikTok shop? So you need to connect this to a actual TikTok account. Sign in with a TikTok account. Okay, and I guess if I'm gonna be making TikToks, it makes sense that I would need a TikTok account to go along with my TikTok shop account. Sometimes this gets so confusing. I'm really thankful for AI to kinda help unravel it for me. Some of it does not make sense in my head. All right, so I connected my TikTok account, which I think I downloaded TikTok one time, like when TikTok first came out, and then all it was was dancing. And so I was like, what is people going like this? Which I guess is gonna be me soon. But let's go ahead and we'll edit profile. So let's change our image to Desk Relief Co., our logo there, username Desk Relief Co., name Desk Relief Co., and then can you write a bio? 80 characters, it is for this shop. There you go, wrote a bio. Add your TikTok shop link to your profile. All right, so our profile's changed. Now how can I, the next thing is add your TikTok link. How do I do that? How do I do? So go to your TikTok profile. I think I'm there. Tap the three lines for Settings and Privacy, then Manage Account, and I need to switch it to a business account. Thank you, Comet Browser. Let's say Health and Wellness. Become a business. Yay, I'm a business now, okay. I'm a TikToker. I don't see the website field anywhere. Can you look? All right, so I put that link in there. Hopefully I'm doing this right, okay. So one thing I'm gonna do here in Doba is now I'm gonna connect this TikTok shop, and I'm a North American seller. Confirm to install. Okay, so Desk Relief Co. has been added as a store here in Doba. So then I want to, the next thing on my roadmap is to create a high-quality product listing. So I'm gonna use Doba to do that. I'm gonna go to Actions, and we're gonna do this special lumbar support sleep cushion. That's our hero product. We're gonna do list to store. I can't do this product on TikTok shop because it ships from China. It needs to ship from the U.S. So it might be good to pick a product that ships from the U.S. anyways for timing. If people buy things these days, they're used to Amazon and two-day shipping, so we might want something that ships from the U.S. anyways. We might need to pick a different hero product. See what they have in lumbar. You know what, this is a bestseller. It fits in our price range. I can demonstrate this. It looks like it would help my back. That's adjustable. That's pretty cool. Let's go ahead and do it. Well, let's list one to store, okay? All right, to successfully list products, set your TikTok shop's shipping options to seller shipping instead of TikTok shipping. So we go to orders, fulfillment settings, shipping settings, fulfillment settings. And I'm being told to, where is that? So I'm having it just take over the browser to go find it. I don't know what I'm looking for. And what Comet Browser does in the background is it takes screenshots and sends it to ChatGPT in Clawd and then goes back to the browser, you know, navigates, clicks, takes screenshots, sends it back to ChatGPT. So it can take a while, but like, I could set this up, go do this, and then I can go make a sandwich. Oh, so it's saying I need to set up a warehouse first. So these DOBA instructions are a little bit outdated because TikTok changed the way some things, where they're at and where they work. I should have just read the next step first. But we need to add this warehouse to my TikTok shop. This should be step one. So we're gonna go ahead and add this as a warehouse. Warehouse name, also the return address, contact, phone number, address, got the zip code, save. Okay, so now it's saying shipping options, TikTok shipping, but we're gonna switch that now to seller shipping. Okay, I don't know what I'm supposed to put for shipping here. Maybe they'll tell me later, but I'm just gonna ask for this product. Can you help me fill out this shipping template? When in doubt, ask your AI browser to do it for you. Let me know in the comments, is AI making us dumb? Normally I would have researched this and figured it out, but it's just, it's a lot easier. Fill all that out, please. Even that, I'm too lazy to do. I'm too lazy to read their answer, and I'm just having the browser fill it in for me. For some reason, it's really satisfying to see AI doing things on your behalf. Like even clicking buttons. I could click the save button, but it just feels so much better when AI clicks the save button. It's like having an employee, but you don't pay them, and they don't argue. Okay, I think this is all set up correctly. I've set TikTok shipping to seller shipping. I've added Adobe's warehouse. List and add to inventory list. Okay, found the warehouse. List and add. All right, so I'm gonna use the AI optimizer for the product name. I'm gonna do adjustable. I think that's pretty cool. Then I'm gonna have a comment browser. Can you fill all this out as well? AI's picking the best options for these. Again, this is a perfect example of how this comment web browser saves time. So comment browser's being a little overaggressive here. It's going through all the tabs. It decided to list it at $29.99. I don't know, what do you guys think about that? I'm gonna do several products. I'm not totally sure I would pay 30 bucks for this. Okay, and then that category is invite only. I don't know why that is, but can you, I think that's why we had, it's in bath and body care. I don't think that's what you want. Can you select the best category for us to get the most sales on this? I was wondering why it was asking for like scent and stuff like that. So comment is looking around for what the best category. Again, I could look around, but I'm busy. My best recommendation is keep manual massage tools. We can't, it's invite only. We have to pick something else, right? Okay, it found personal care appliances, massage devices. I still can't pick it because it says it's, it still won't let me list an ad because it says couldn't select this category because it's an invite only category. I don't know why there are invite only categories. I don't like that. Okay, finally, it found a product, a category, fitness circles. Yeah, we'll go with that. So now can we list it? Yes, add to inventory list successful. This product is being listed on the store. Okay, let's see if we got added okay. So in TikTok's always having all these promotions, like $22,000 in ads credit. So maybe next video, I'll look into some of those. I do need to add a return warehouse. I thought I could just add it as the same. Can it just be the same as the return warehouse? Can you add the same warehouse as the return warehouse? Okay, so now we have a return warehouse and a pickup warehouse. Can I add products now? You can see, that's why this video is just getting set up, getting to the place where we actually can get a product listed and start selling because it's actually, it's quite a process. Yay, listing failed. Let's try this again. List to store. Select the warehouse. That's all set, that's all good. Products, select a brand, no brand. List now. Okay, it says it's active. So when I go to manage products, there's one that needs attention. Wrong products category placement. Oh, good heavens. Okay, I was rejected for picking the wrong category. Can you help select the right one? All right, since we didn't have access to, I think that what's going on is they put medical stuff that you need approval for it. They don't want just anybody selling medical stuff. So I'm actually rethinking if Desk Relief Co. is the right direction to go to get started. I did find these lumbar pillows. I think these will get accepted. So we're gonna go ahead and just use that for now just so we have something. I don't know about, you know, if people are gonna pay 20 bucks for a lumbar pillow. Let me know in the comments. Would you do that? Should I switch to a completely different category? I don't know. I guess this is why they say you should take a week to really research it and think about it. But hopefully some of the lessons I learned here today are things that can help you going forward. We did pick our niche, but we might be changing it. We did set up our shop. We got that. We did get a high quality product listing set up. So that was week one and week two. And Lord willing, if they accept this, this lumbar pillow, then we will have our first product that we can actually sell. So that's what I'll do in the next video. I'm gonna end this here because I'm tired. But in the next video, we'll actually, I'll actually start recording some TikToks, getting some content out there, kind of seeing how that product goes. Yay, it's live. Okay, so I was wondering why I couldn't find my actual shop. And the reason is you start in probation periods. I'm learning all sorts of stuff. And you guys are learning right along with me. But in order to get out, to get to the next tier, I need 10 live product listings. Pass the probation quiz. I have less than four counterfeit related violations, which I have that, and have this score. So I'll do that in the next video as well. We'll work on getting out of probation. So for next video, we'll work on getting out of probation period. I'll start doing some TikTok videos. We'll see if we can get some, what that looks like. See if we can get some traffic. Let me know in the comments if there's anything else that you guys would like to see. Are you enjoying this journey, kind of learning along with me? Would you prefer I figure it all out and then do a video with what I found? Or do you like this, me kind of learning as we go? If I'm totally honest, I'm using these videos as like accountability to make sure I do all this. I would have given up on this way before if I wasn't doing a video. This was a much more difficult process than I thought it would be. So appreciate you guys very much. God bless you all. And I hope you have a great rest of the day.