Are you considering buying eCom Elites or Drop Ship Lifestyle? Maybe you’ve watched the webinars and are looking for an alternative. Well today we’re going to be looking at both courses in detail, which one you should consider and ultimately buy.
A little bit about me, I’ve been reviewing dropship courses for well over 3 years. I own and run my own eCommerce and affiliate businesses. I was in this game when drop ship lifestyle cost less than $500 and was on version 1.0. It’s now version 7 and costs thousands of dollars.
I know the difference between revenue and profit and don’t believe the hype of those Shopify dashboard screenshots that don’t actually show any cost of goods sold.
Now you know about me, let’s get into the real reason why you’re here, a comparison and review on which is better, eCom Elites vs Drop Ship Lifestyle.
eCom Elites vs Drop Ship Lifestyle Comparison
[table id=32 /]Niche/Product Selection
Most courses start with this type of content so we’ll do the same. After looking at both courses I can confirm that eCom Elites looks at dropshipping products from Aliexpress and China primarily. There is content for using local supplier too but the main focus is using China dropshippers.
Drop Ship Lifestyle (DSL for short) focuses on using USA based dropshippers only. There is also reference to using local suppliers in your own country. The major problem with DSL is that they don’t mention anything about this on the sales page, webinars or free training.
Once you’re in, you quickly realise to work with a US business you’re going to need to get a reseller ID which is only available to US citizens or US businesses. You’re going to have to start a US based business which isn’t hard, but can easily screw with your tax and legal obligations in the US and your home country.
Anton Kraly doesn’t look at Chinese dropshippers, instead he keeps referring to it as cheap junk in his Youtube videos. That’s funny given 99% of the products he recommends you sell were probably made in China but someone else handled the importing for you. Margins are much tighter on US dropshipping.
eCom Elites is the entry level approach to niche and product selection. Anyone can start selling products with a Chinese dropshipper with no limitations, from anywhere in the world.
The benefit to using Chinese suppliers is you can find winning products that you can scale more easily.
Store Creation
Both courses recommend using Shopify to start your store. While Anton’s training hasn’t been updated in many years, Franklin’s is more recent and includes far more content. Both are over the shoulder training.
Franklin recommends using his premium theme called eCom Turbo which can be purchased as an optional extra for $97. I’ve done a review on that theme here. Anton includes a theme which is designed for more larger stores which is included for free within the course.
Both of their themes are easy to customize. Just make sure you change the text, one thing I noticed with Anton’s theme was all the sites looked the same so when you searched in Google for one site you would find them all. This makes it easy for someone to steal your winning products.
Both courses offer an extended free trial.
Facebook Ads
eCom Elites is well known to be the best course for Facebook Ads with Franklin creating over 50 different videos on the entire process. Updating these each time Facebook change their platform is a pain but he manages to do it. The course is split up into two modules which include normal Facebook Ads and Advanced.
As if 50 videos wasn’t enough, there’s real life case studies on applying what’s been taught into action.
Drop Ship Lifestyle offers no training on Facebook Ads, instead opting for Google Ads.
Google Ads, Shopping
DSL was the pioneer in this space, they were the first course to focus solely on Google Ads and Google Shopping. Now that’s great if you’ve got a product that works well with this traffic but not every product does. Low priced, impulse buys usually occur over on social media platforms as people often don’t know they need a product until they see it.
It’s a bit like a funny t-shirt. You don’t search, ‘funny t-shirt’ and pick one, you see one on an ad and buy it.
However Anton has tailored his course to focus just on these two platforms and offers a comprehensive overview. However I found there was a lot of things missing or out of date.
eCom Elites version 2 which was launched earlier this year included Google Ads and Google Shopping in great detail. There’s over 20 videos on the entire topic from setup through to execution of running ads. The content is up to date as of mid 2019 too.
Both courses offer training on this platform.
Other Paid + Free Traffic
Both courses go into detail with free traffic and other paid traffic methods with DSL offering 11 videos on generating traffic through their standard course.
To give you some perspective on this you get one video on Bing Ads, one video for search engine optimization and one video on using Facebook Ads. It’s clear you’re on your own in this course, what can you honestly expect to learn in a 13 minute video?
On the flip side eCom Elites goes into detail on topics such as Bing, Snapchat, Twitter, Pinterest as well as free traffic generation techniques for each. An example would be posting in Facebook groups or liking pages and sharing content that helps readers.
There’s over 20 videos in eCom Elites vs 11 in Drop Ship Lifestyle.
Scaling, Optimization, Automation
I think this section is a little biased towards eCom Elites because Anton’s course focuses on Google Ads which are much harder to scale. If you have a winning product on Facebook Ads you casn create lookalike audiences and use various techniques to scale fast.
Anton’s course looks more at conversion optimization and how to increase sales this way. It also looks at order fulfilment and automating your store. Similar EE looks at the same, using apps and virtual assistants to assist with scaling.
Both courses cover these three points in great detail.
Using Sales Funnels
Franklin Hatchett loves his sales funnels and has made a million dollars (twice) with Clickfunnels. You can see a photograph of him on the official website or via his social media pages. Until recently DSL didn’t include sales funnel content but now they do.
However the level of detail is vastly different in both courses. EE for example has 20 videos dedicated to creating funnels and customizing them. Also showing you how to integrate these with Shopify. There’s also done for you share funnels which you can import into your account with 1 click.
DSL includes one 17 minute video on creating an hour glass funnel, that’s it. Nothing more.
Content Verdict
For a course that’s been around for 7 years, Drop Ship Lifestyle could be this monster course that offers tons and tons of value but in my opinion it’s lacking a lot of basic and advanced content to make it one of the best dropshipping courses out there. I feel there’s outdated and incomplete information at times. Some videos were missing or rushed.
The major difference is the number of video lessons you get access too, nearly 3 times more with eCom Elites. You also don’t get Facebook or Instagram Ads training with Anton’s course, whereas Franklin does cover this so it’s up to you to decide whether you go with Google or FB Ads.
It’s clear with each update the videos aren’t updated in DSL as some videos were super old while in EE the content seems to be revamped each time there’s a major update to the way things work whether that’s Facebook Ads platform.
DSL focuses on USA drop shipping which can be great if you’re American. If you’re not then it’s difficult to get started and will require $1000+ to get a business setup there. You also need to ensure your tax and legal obligations are setup correctly which may require an expensive tax adviser.
EE focuses on Aliexpress which has it’s pros and con’s too. For example shipping from China can take longer but if you find a good supplier that can be avoided. You can also get started for free as there is no legal obligations when it comes to using China based dropshippers.
Facebook & Community Masterminds
EE offers a Facebook group with over 5,500 students from around the world. You simply join the group by using your email during signup.
DSL offers their own custom forum which requires you to login to their platform each time you wish to converse with someone. They claim to have 10,000 students but it’s unclear how many joined the group or are still active on the forum, I’d say not many.
Both platforms appear to be very active. I couldn’t tell you how active DSL is as they don’t have stats like Facebook. In EE there has been 100 new posts this week.
Coaching & Support
DSL uses coaches to match you together once you sign up. That means you might receive support and coaching from another Drop Ship Lifestyle member. It’s important to bring this to your attention because the coaching isn’t done by Anton personally.
So spending all that money and you might get a coach who doesn’t even make money from their own store. Franklin doesn’t offer coaching, given the cheap nature of the course how could he possibly? Offloading students to coaches is never a smart idea either as it can cause conflicts and the coach to simply steal your ideas!
If you read into reviews on coaching with DSL you’ll see there’s a lot of negative comments. Most are from coaches not offering value for money, others are from coaches giving the hard sell to sell you the course after watching the webinar.
Given the high price of the course, Anton can afford to pay coaches to sell packages and give them an hourly rate for assisting clients.
Franklin offers email and Facebook support only.
Course Pricing
I’ve deliberately left the pricing until the end as it would be easy to say one is better than the other due to price. However DSL is nearly 10 times more expensive than the premium plan offered by EE and it’s obvious you don’t get much more value for money either.
As we’ve seen there’s 3x more content and far more traffic sources covered in eCom Elites than DSL. You do however get a premium theme and more tailored coaching with DSL but is that really worth an extra $2000? Remember eCom Turbo is only $97 plus there’s a ton of other premium themes out there.
Remember you have to spend money on ads after you’ve bought the course so would you rather have $2k to spend on ads or have to go and fork out another $2k to get started?
DSL was originally $300 when it launches 7 years ago. It then gradually went up to $500, $1000, $1500 and more recently $2,497.
EE has always been $197 with the introduction of the $297 plan which has the sales funnel training and some exclusive bonuses.
Money Back Guarantee
Both courses offer a 30 day money back guarantee, however you need to show evidence that you went through all the training, attempted to start a store, created some ads and didn’t make any money. Both courses have terms and conditions that you must agree too before purchasing the course.
I’ve seen dozens of negative reviews about DSL not honouring refunds and I guess it all comes down to the course cost. If you paid $2.5k for a course and weren’t happy I’m sure you’d be more likely to leave a negative review online vs if you bought a $197 and couldn’t get one.
Both courses are not for you to simply buy and decide if it’s for you after. Determine if this is something you want to do before taking the plunge.
Final Verdict
On price, eCom Elites wins hands down. If I was struggling for cash right now, I would never in a million years buy DSL when there is a cheaper more conclusive alternative out there.
Anton’s been in this game for years, he has a million dollar ad spend to sell you the dream of starting your own business, he funnels you into a webinar and things look amazing, the luxury holidays, the cars, his annual retreat in Thailand.
But you need to look through that and actually look at the course content and how likely you are to make that money back and more.
Most people will struggle with dropshipping. Most give up and call it a scam. Would you rather lose $197 or $2,497? I know what 99% of people would do to see if it’s for them or not. Not everyone is suited to online business.
On content, again eCom Elites wins, there’s 3x more content, more content on relevant topics.
On community it’s a tie, both offer great communities with thousands of members.
On theme it goes to Anton but remember you can buy a premium theme for not much extra.
Lastly on value for money it goes to eCom Elites.
Last Updated on August 23, 2019 by Rhys Dale
Rhys is the owner and chief editor at Im Rhys and is living in Chisinau, Moldova. With over 15 years experience in eCommerce and Affiliate Marketing he has started many successful 6 and 7 figure businesses. After successes with USA and China dropshipping, he expanded into building 70+ micro affiliate websites in 30 different niches that generate money on autopilot. He now helps his wife to run her social media agency as well as travelling the world at every opportunity.