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If you are like me and you routinely watch Shopify and dropshipping videos on YouTube, then sooner or later you’ll see an advert from Scott Hilse for his Simplified Shopify dropshipping course.
This is a course that claims to teach you how to build a Shopify Store that sells only one product and make a consistent “location-neutral” income online . Scott further claims that he has done exactly this, and by selling an iPhone case, has been able to live a more luxurious lifestyle and be more “location neutral” (yet this all appears to be in the USA?)
Instead of actually telling you what you are going to get in the course, the Sales Page just focuses on how much money his students have supposedly made. He uses a lot of screenshots but there is no real way we can trust that these have not been manipulated (this is a common tactic used in the online dropshipping course space).
A lot of these screenshots do not even look Simplified Shopify Course related; he could have easily have just copied them from elsewhere online. The ones that do mention Scott or the course in the text appear to be strangely aligned and altered. These are some of the most untrustworthy “screenshots” I have ever seen.
Further to this, the screenshots are all of revenue numbers and there is no mention of costs involved. How we do know how much the students spent to make this return back?
With all the costs involved (platform, apps, ads, product costs) it is likely that the actual takeaway profit is around 80% lower than it appears to be from these screenshots. Then there are refunds and returns which make the actual profit even lower.
Sure, there is a lot of profit to be made with dropshipping, but stating that you can make this kind of income straight away, or that it is all takehome profit is highly misleading. And the chances of this all happening from one product…. unlikely.
Before we take a look at the course, lets take a look at the creator.
Who is Scott Hilse?
Scott Hilse is a 22 year old dropshipping entrepreneur and YouTuber. He center’s his entire approach around selling just one product, as you can see from his YouTube Channel description above.
At time of writing, he has around 32,000 subscribers and his content ranges from dropshipping strategies all the way through to mindset, motivation and the typical inflated claims like his video “College Dropout buys BMW i8 in cash” (surely this would raise some suspicion to the bank?). You’ll typically see him shooting videos in his “Simplify” branded jumper.
Scott is closely tied (no pun) and affiliated with Tai Lopez (he was part of his 300 Group). This would explain his marketing strategy and angle, and his over-inflated and bold claims.
Simplified Shopify Review
The Simplified Shopify Course is really short and succinct; totaling only 30 lessons. Each lesson is taught via a video which you can download if you prefer and want to watch on the go. There are some presentation slides for some videos, but not all, meaning you really need to pay attention to hear what he is saying. You’ll also need to rewind frequently if you are looking to implement as you go along.
As you can see, there is not much content here, and consider the fact that Lessons 1 and 30 are not actually lessons; and that the others vary in terms of length. Some videos are under 5 minutes for example.
In the first real video (lesson 2) we are shown Scott’s store and he keeps the URL freely available for us see: everything-summer.myshopify.com. This means we can actually access the store by entering the URL into our browsers. You’ll notice that you will be quickly redirected to quirkyiphonecases.com/ where we can see the phone cases that have supposedly made him 6 figures in half a year.
The strange thing is Scott claims to be all about selling one product, but his own Shopify store has 9 products in it (4 cases and 5 upsell accessories). This is a clear contradiction from the very outset.
Beyond this, the cases are sold for around $14-$30 each. To make 6 figures ($100,000 +), you would need to sell 7142 phone cases. Possible, but with all the competition in the phone case market; this is more challenging than it originally seems; and would likely require a large ad budget.
Another contradiction I noticed was that the title of this video is: “$1600 per day template.” However, the store dashboard displays $256 in revenue for the entire day. Then when you review the status further you see that on average he doesn’t appear to be making more than $450 per day. So where does this $1600 figure come from?
The next video starts to discuss the importance of your theme and he even gives a recommendation on a premium theme that you should buy and install. The theme he mentions is not mobile responsive and it doesn’t come with any conversion-boosting apps. So I’d actually recommend you opt for eCom Turbo instead which will be far more profitable and cost-effective in the long run.
You are then taught how to build out your store using the backend interface of Shopify. This is a very basic tutorial and just shows you how to run through the store building process. Shopify is actually very intuitive and you can do this on your own without following a video. There are on screen prompts provided by Shopify so I don’t think this lesson is even necessary. Or you could get a more in-depth tutorial for free on YouTube.
Lesson 4 is connecting a domain – this is literally a couple of clicks of the mouse – its simple stuff. Lesson 5 is just some simple general setting changes. Again, nothing out of the ordinary here.
You then move onto building a Facebook Page which will be used for your FB Ads. Its quick and easy and again I don’t think an entire lesson for this is necessary (even if it is only 5 minutes in length).
Lesson 7 turns to creating your Facebook Ad account and installing the FB pixel on your store (again there’s a lot of free tutorials from FB themselves on this).
In the next lesson Scott discusses some apps that you should install to boost your conversions and optimize your store. These apps typically costs around $9.99 per month, each. You can save a considerable amount of $ and save a lot of time in individual app setup and management by getting a theme that has all these apps included and more. eCom Turbo is an excellent option here.
The Freedom Funnel is about setting up a Sales Funnel; an automated way of sending emails to subscribers and offering new products, discounts and incentives to purchase from you. Whilst this is an excellent and advisable marketing strategy; I don’t think Scott provided enough depth and content here. It was a very basic overview of what it does and why it can be successful. There’s not much around actually implementing it for your store or optimizing it to get the results possible. He just suggests to install a few apps.
Next up is a Scott Hilse’s recommended way to conduct product research, he uses the common tools and platform (like using AliExpress Best Sellers, Facebook search etc) so there’s nothing out of the ordinary here.
Importing products, setting prices and creating upsells is next; which is part of the building your store process. Its useful information if you are a complete beginner but if you have any experience with Shopify you can skip these three lessons.
You then learn how to test your store and making sure it works properly before you invest in ads.
Next its all about Facebook ads. Lessons 16 and 17 are just telling you what FB ads are how they work. Lesson 18 on the other hand is setting up your first Facebook ad campaign. You are provided with some general tips and things to watch out for before you start scaling. Scott teaches two methods; one of which centers on video ads. You are then taught targeting and how to advertise in front of people who have already interacted with your ads/store.
A very short short video on fulfillment follows, this is all about getting your order processed for your customers. This is really just an outline of some of the functionality of the free Oberlo app.
Lesson 25 focuses on when to set up an LLC (but this will not be applicable to all of you). This only applies if you live in the USA or want to work with US suppliers to ship inside the US.
Your then shown a video of how to scale an ad from 100-10,000 orders. This will only apply when you have a winning ad. Another inconsistency here as Scott claims to be making $1600 a day. 10,000 order would be $160k per day revenue so how can he claim that he can scale an ad to 10,000 orders when he has not done it himself.
The final videos of the course are about outsourcing, manual bidding on your FB ads, some other free traffic sources, when to convert a general store to a niche (surely if you are selling 1 product you will have a niche store already) and an “Outro” video.
Access to Scotts Facebook Mastermind
One of the bonuses that is offered is the ability to join Scott’s Facebook mastermind. This is where you can discuss the course, methods and other dropshipping topics with Scott and other students. This is not the largest community and the chances of you actually liaising with others here is ultimately up to you. It may be helpful but for the most part basic questions are raised and covered.
Refund/Money Back Guarantee?
No refunds or money back guarantees are provided for the Simplified Shopify drop ship course. If you sign up, that’s it. It’s apparently because you are learning “sensitive” information that cannot be unlearned front the very first video – what an introduction?
Final Words and Verdict
Simplified Shopify is a short and rather limited drop shipping course by Scott Hilse. There’s some useful information but nothing in terms of real actionable strategies and methods. Its more around set up so $297 seems a little steep. Especially when you can get a lot of this information for free.
There seems to be a lot of contradictions on the Sales Page and then in the course itself. Its advertised about selling one product but Scotts Store has 9?
When you compare this course with eCom Elites; that has literally 5x times the content for a cheaper price – I would say the Simplified Shopify course is one to pass on.
Hey, I’m Jeremy; a seasoned entrepreneur that has been earning his full time income online since 2005. My online business portfolio includes eCommerce stores and affiliate marketing niche sites. I also make money through Blockchain and Crypto. I created Unrivaled Review to share my knowledge, experience and recommendations for anyone looking to pursue such ventures.