Clothing is a really competitive market, and margins can be challenging (I used to sell clothing + accessories, clothing helped us with traffic but the accessories were the money maker).
For the prices you're mentioning, I don't believe those people were experts. Here are some low cost ideas I would explore:
1) Referral marketing. You get free traffic and a guaranteed positive ROI because you only pay on sales gained. Here's a strategy I've employed successfully:
- Create an affiliate program (I like Referral Candy and Refersion for Shopify stores)
- Reach out to influencers in your niche that you think vibe with your products
- Invite them to your program
- Commissions I like tiers, for example 10% when you join the program, 15% after you reach 10 sales, etc.
2) Experiment with pay per performance marketing. Example is Klickly. They make ads for you and drive traffic via their network, and you set the commission and pay only when sales are made.
3) Google Shopping / Google Ads. These are typically the highest converting for paid traffic (compared to social media, for example, which is typically low). This will also show you evidence on whether your product and offer / website are appealing or not. If people don't buy from Google Ads, it means the product, price, or website, doesn't feel like a good value for them.
4) Talk to your prospective customers. What do they want, what do they think about your website, what do they think about your prices, why wouldn't they buy a certain item, etc. You can manually do this by polling people, or you can use an app like HotJar to have a poll widget on your site.
About mixing dropshipping products in with your other products, that's a potential path. I have a friend who started a shop where he had a couple of his own branded products, and included dropshipped products to round out the catalogue, then as the business grew and he added products, he eventually eliminated all dropshipped products and sold only his branded items.
In your case, if your brand name is [person] Creations, I would focus on your creations and finding your audience, working towards finding "1000 true fans" (google that concept if you're not familiar with it). Maybe you add a couple dropshipped products if they can accompany your own products, like accessories that pair well, but I would avoid having an "everything store" where you just list a bunch of products. Amazon already dominates that model and you won't be able to compete with them.
The way you compete and be successful is build a legit brand, be different, make an emotional connection with your audience, show your personality in your brand (rather than general marketing speak like "we curate great products at a fair value, etc"), and find customers that vibe with your brand.
I know it's frustrating. I've owned 4 Shopify stores in my career. 1 was successful, 1 generated a profit but was just ok, 2 failed. The successful one had excellent branding and well researched product market fit with products that we produced for our audience. Having a brand with a story helped us immensely with our marketing efforts, word of mouth, and people writing stories about us.
Another way to look at it: don't think about building a business just to make money, build a business that you think is cool and gives value to people. If you start with focusing on providing value to people, then the money comes naturally.
