Nathan Miller says dropshipping isn't dead but demands real skills now. He scaled a brand to $1M in 2025 using AI for landing pages, video ads, and customer research instead of cheap copy-paste tactics. Success now requires custom products and deep customer understanding, not just dropshipping generic items.
Dropshipping is dead. It's actually not, and let me tell you why. So, as you guys know, you guys have seen me and probably seen some of my results. I scaled that one brand to $3 million last Q4, and then this is a brand that I built this year, and this one has been a lot different. And I feel like the game has changed a lot, especially from what it used to be back in, like, 2018, in over the pandemic and whatnot. A lot of people, they think they can do the same things they did back then and have success now, which is completely, completely irrelevant now. It's a lot, lot different. And you're seeing it change even faster and faster and faster due to things like AI, you know, the image generation, scripting. Like, there's so much you can do with AI now, and it just makes the quality of, like, people's landing pages faster. It makes them be able to test things faster, and everything moves a little bit faster. And so that is why I feel like most people think it's dead. It's because they keep trying to do these things that they did in the past and expecting new things to happen, which is not the case. And so this video I just kind of want to talk about a brief overview of, you know, how I've utilized AI to build my brand, how I've really locked in and actually try to turn into something that's not, like, just shipped from China anymore. Actually got the branding on that and everything. And I don't think I have a bottle in my office right now, but I do have, like, bottles up here. I can't really show you guys because I can't leave my product. But let's get straight into it. So the biggest thing with AI that I've seen, that has really, really changed. Like, I feel like the past few years, people have been doing, like, voiceovers, like, with 11 labs, that has been something that most people know about. A lot of people using their ads. But now with AI, like with Sora AI, with Avocado AI, these different platforms, it is insane how realistic you can make a video like a video like you can literally make your own UGC just straight from AI. And it's getting better and better, like, literally every month. And so the biggest thing that people. I feel like people are struggling with now that. That they used to do or whatever is that they start these brands and they just do calo rips, right? And I've done this before. I did this for my. That last brand that's healed of 3 million and it worked well, but the game has changed and everybody and their mom knows about Kayla Data. And so every product on there is likely to be very saturated. And honestly, even if you get like a good day one, let's say you get a two row eyes on day one, like it's not going to scale because you don't know why the ads worked. One, if you're ripping ads from Caladata, you don't know how to build them, how to make them, how to script them, and you just don't have like a good understanding of your customer. You're just kind of throwing things up and hoping something sticks. And so this is something that I noticed. And so I really tried this year to figure out, you know, learn about scripting about, you know, personal or customer avatars like icps, which is like an ideal customer Persona. Which basically means, like, I do a ton of research now, all with AI, by the way, all with AI and I dig into like exactly like the exact person. My customer is down to their habits, what they wear, what they drink, what they eat, what they, you know, what they do. Like literally like the exact person. And then I'll tailor my ads to that and do. You can do that through your scripts. And like the way I like to think about it, like I'm an E commerce, right? So if I'm scrolling on Instagram and I see like, if you're an econ owner owner doing, you know, whatever, 300k plus a month in revenue, you need to hear this. Like that ad is going to draw me in because it's speaking like literally exactly to me, right? So like, imagine that, but like you're targeting, you know, obviously like a customer with like a pain point for the product that you're selling. So like something like menopause or something like that, like you need to be super, super specific now. And that's what I'm starting to see as well. And another thing, image generation is crazy. Like super, super crazy. It's really impressive. That is something that I'll probably be making a video on shortly. And there are like just everything now basically you can do with AI. There are like a lot of skills you still need to learn. And I feel like a lot of people try to take shortcuts, but it's just moved so much, much, much faster. And I've had success, you know, I've built this brand and scaled it to over a million this year and it's been super, super consistent, which is like, usually in the past I've had brands go up and down. This one has just been rock solid, improving, getting better margins every month and really just improving the business overall. And that basically just goes down to like one, like, I actually built the product out. I have my own angles, I have my own ads, I have my own, like, system, employees, everything. And then on top of that, I also have like, actually branded the product, right? So I have my custom packaging. I have USA Fulfillment now. So it gets to our house in like three to six days instead of taking like two to three weeks, which is huge. And so, like, this is kind of what you have to do now. And the barrier to entry is a little higher, I would say, for E commerce, but it is easier to do it because of AI. You don't have to do like all this busy work and all this, like manual digging and stuff. You just need to know how to utilize AI, basically. And you can literally print hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. So I just wanted to make a quick video. Have any questions, please leave them in the description. I'm going to be making another Speedrun video pretty shortly, so I'm excited for that. And you guys will be able to see some of my processes in there and hopefully I'll just be able to drop a banger and give you guys much knowledge. So peace.
