$500K in 6 Months: A High-Ticket Dropshipping Case Study

Is dropshipping dead? Not according to Holly Finnefrock, who hit $500,000 in sales within her first six months of launching a high-ticket dropshipping store.

Holly runs a successful dropshipping business in the outdoor space, specifically products for ponds and water features.

Today, she’s pulling back the curtain on Dropship Breakthru to show exactly how this business model works, from selecting the right niche to negotiating with suppliers to making those first sales.

Tune into Episode 704 of the Side Hustle Show to learn:

How to validate a profitable dropshipping niche before investing time or money
The relationship-building approach that wins over suppliers (even without inventory)
Proven Google ads strategies to target bottom-of-funnel buyers ready to purchase

Next Step: Check out the free training at Dropship Breakthru.

Table of Contents show

Why High-Ticket Dropshipping Works Differently

Holly makes an important distinction right from the start: high-ticket dropshipping and low-ticket dropshipping are completely different business models.

Low-ticket dropshipping focuses on trendy products that change every three months. You’re constantly chasing what’s hot, often dealing with Chinese suppliers, and rebuilding your site repeatedly. It’s hard to establish real relationships or create a valuable asset you could eventually sell.

High-ticket dropshipping is entirely different. You’re selling products over $1,000, working with local suppliers, and building an actual business asset worth real money.

Holly’s sweet spot? Products priced above $1,000. Anything under that falls into what she calls “no man’s land”—not cheap enough for impulse purchases but not expensive enough to justify the marketing costs.

Finding Your Niche: The Green Flags to Look For

When Holly started researching potential niches, she followed a specific framework to validate ideas before investing any time or money.

Look for 5-10 competitors. This might seem counterintuitive, but if you find zero competitors, that’s actually a red flag. It likely means people have tried and failed already. If you see 20-30 competitors, the market is probably too saturated. The sweet spot is 5-10 existing dropshipping businesses proving the model works.

Make sure competitors are dropshippers, not warehouses. The telltale sign? They carry multiple brands. If a site sells products from 3, 4, 5, or 20 different manufacturers, they’re likely dropshipping. If they have a warehouse, that’s a different business model entirely.

Find suppliers in your country. If all your potential suppliers are in Germany but you’re building a US business, that’s a yellow flag indicating potential roadblocks.

Verify search volume. Holly uses Keywords Everywhere to research how many people are actually searching for these products. She looks for a cumulative total of around 50,000 monthly searches across all product types in the niche. This includes the parent keywords (like “surfboard”) plus specific brand and model names.

Holly discovered the ponds and water features niche simply because she enjoyed spending time at her lake house with her husband. But personal interest wasn’t the deciding factor — market demand was.

At the time, there weren’t as many competitors in the space (it’s more saturated now), which was a major green flag showing clear market need for additional vendors.

Getting Suppliers to Say Yes (Without Buying Inventory)

Here’s where most people get stuck: the chicken-and-egg problem of needing suppliers to have a website, but needing a website to convince suppliers to work with you.

Holly’s solution? Build a demo site first.

Using Shopify, she created a simple site with fake products just to show suppliers her vision. It doesn’t need to be functional or have real products — just something professional enough to demonstrate what you’re building.

Then comes the scary part: calling suppliers. Holly admits this was incredibly intimidating at first. She had no real business yet and was asking companies to partner with her.

Her biggest tip is to call the suppliers you care about least first. Practice on the ones at the bottom of your list so you’re not fumbling through your first conversations with your dream partners.

Who to ask for when calling: Look for sales roles — director of sales, sales manager, or the owner if it’s a small company. Avoid the “send us an email” black hole by being persistent about getting an actual conversation scheduled.

The Relationship-First Approach That Wins Suppliers Over

Holly’s secret weapon isn’t fancy sales techniques — it’s authenticity and relationship building.

When she calls suppliers, her intention isn’t “win them over as a supplier.” It’s simply “establish a relationship.” This mindset shift takes the pressure off and helps you avoid coming across as desperate.

Her opening? Something like: “Hey Joe, this is Holly. I came across your business and I’m starting one myself. I’m looking to build relationships in this industry, and I’ve seen a lot of popularity for you guys online. I want to understand why — what makes you different? What are your values? What’s your experience?”

She positions it as an invitation rather than a request: “We’re looking for three to five partners for our launch, and we’re trying to decide if it might be a win-win.”

Before making calls, Holly recommends defining your three core business values (like honesty, integrity, relationships). When you naturally bring these up during supplier conversations, you stand out because nobody else is doing that. Suppliers see you actually care about your business and customers, not just making a quick dollar.

Handling the “Drop Shipping” Question

Inevitably, suppliers will ask about your setup. They want to know you’re not some random person in a basement looking to make a quick buck.

Holly’s approach? Be honest, but frame it strategically.

“Yes, because we’re new, we’re starting with drop shipping to figure out exactly what our customers are looking for. Within the next five years, we plan to open a warehouse where we’ll be stocking products from the brands we have the closest relationships with. This launch is about exploring customer needs and determining which relationships will take us through the next five years.”

This answer acknowledges the drop shipping model while positioning it as strategic market research. It also flips the script—now you’re testing suppliers to see who deserves your future warehouse investment.

Holly emphasizes that relationships trump policies every time. There are no hard rules in this business. If you can get in with the right person and show you genuinely care, people will go above and beyond their stated policies for you.

Building Your Initial Product Catalog

Once Holly secured three to five suppliers willing to work with her, she loaded their products onto her Shopify site, turned on the payment processor, and prepared to go live.

But first, she needed to set up advertising. For high-ticket dropshipping, Holly strongly recommends starting with Google Shopping ads—specifically NOT Performance Max.

Performance Max gives Google full control over your budget with no strategic input from you. Instead, Holly uses what’s called the inverted tier funnel: three individual campaigns that target buyers at different stages of the buying journey.

The key insight? Don’t waste money on people who just want “a surfboard.” Focus your budget on people who know exactly which brand, model, and color they want. These bottom-of-funnel buyers are ready to purchase.

Making That First Sale

After going live with ads, Holly spent about a week refining her campaigns at $20-30 per day. Three days after reaching that consistent spend level, she made her first sale while making breakfast in her kitchen.

The Shopify “cha-ching” notification went off. She looked at her phone: a $2,000 sale.

“I just freaked out,” Holly remembers. “I was crying. It was the best feeling ever. Someone just paid me that out of their bank account.”

That moment made everything real. All those scary supplier calls, the demo site building, the ad learning curve—it all paid off in one transaction.

The Reality of Customer Service in High-Ticket Drop Shipping

Here’s something important Holly learned: at $2,000+ price points, customers often want to talk to someone.

Her products are highly technical with specific electrical requirements, voltage needs, and installation considerations. People aren’t scrolling social media at night and impulsively buying a $2,000 pond filter.

These are longer buying cycles with multiple touchpoints. Holly found herself fielding calls from customers who were months away from being ready to buy—they didn’t even have electricity run to their pond location yet.

At first, Holly answered all the calls herself while working her full-time corporate job. She’d call people back during breaks or in the evenings. And she’ll admit it: “I had no idea what I was talking about. Like, no idea.”

With electricians calling with 30 years of experience using technical jargon, Holly felt completely lost. She’d frantically scribble notes while saying “yeah, definitely, that makes sense.”

Her saving strategy? Lead the conversation instead of reacting to it.

“Okay, this is really good information. I have a few ideas for you. Is it okay if I do a little research and call you back with some recommendations?”

This bought her time to learn without admitting ignorance. It also demonstrated confidence that she’d figure it out and get it handled. If customers asked something she didn’t know, she’d respond: “That’s a really good question. This is a newer product for us, so I don’t know everything about it yet, but let me find that out and add it to our agenda for our next call.”

After about six months of taking every call and learning the business inside and out, Holly hired an assistant specifically to handle phone calls. Now, three years in, she has two full-time employees managing day-to-day customer interactions. Holly only gets involved for escalations or deals over $10,000.

She manages follow-ups using HubSpot (though she started with just a spreadsheet). Every call generates a deal record with a next task attached. The system automatically reminds her team to follow up, preventing deals from falling through the cracks.

Understanding the Profit Margins

Holly’s typical margins range from 10-40%, with 10-30% being most common upfront. As you prove yourself with suppliers and build the relationship, those margins improve.

That 10-30% is gross margin—before ad costs. After advertising expenses, net profit typically lands around 15-20%.

At a $100,000 revenue milestone, that’s $15,000-$20,000 in profit. Because these are $1,000+ products, there’s enough margin to cover ad spend, customer service, and still maintain healthy profitability.

One advantage of high-ticket products: Holly often operates under MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) policies. She can’t publicly advertise lower prices than competitors, which means she doesn’t compete solely on price.

Instead, she competes on service. She tells customers directly: “We can’t advertise lower prices, but what we can do is give you an experience you’ve never had anywhere else. Nobody can beat us on price—call us and we’ll give you a lower price—but we don’t want to win on price. We want to win because you’re so impressed with us as a business.”

This allows her to offer discounts during calls (like “$100 off if you move forward right now”) without publicly undercutting MAP pricing.

The Moment Everything Changed

After running the dropshipping business as a side hustle for about a year while working a secure corporate sales job with benefits, 401k matching, and all the traditional perks, Holly faced a decision.

Her family advised against quitting. Especially her dad. This felt risky. Unstable. Potentially foolish.

But Holly reached a point where the math made sense. She was actually earning more from the business than her corporate salary. More importantly, she was missing phone calls by being stuck at her day job—losing potential sales because she couldn’t answer when customers called.

She realized she could make more money and serve customers better by going all-in.

The call to her boss came while sitting in a parking garage. Holly describes herself as non-confrontational and introverted—not someone who likes making waves. She hadn’t told anyone at work about starting a business, so this would be a complete surprise.

After she hung up from giving her two weeks’ notice, Holly had what she describes as a spiritual moment. All those memories flashed through her mind: running to tell her husband about finding the niche, being scared to call suppliers, making that first $2,000 sale.

“I really did this,” she thought. “I really did it.”

That’s when she knew she wanted to help others experience that same moment—to become a coach for Dropship Breakthrough and help as many people as possible make that call to quit their job and experience “pure gratitude and joy.”

A Typical Day Now (Three Years In)

Holly’s initial goal was freedom—not freedom from work, but freedom to choose. She’s fine working hard, as long as it’s because she wants to, not because someone’s telling her she has to.

With a team of three full-time people now (two handling customer-facing work, one doing administrative tasks), plus a bookkeeper and SEO team, Holly’s no longer in the day-to-day operations.

But she fights against her performance-based conditioning. If she wakes up and doesn’t work during the day, she feels guilty. She has to remind herself that she built this business specifically to avoid an eight-hour workday.

Her productivity secret? She doesn’t keep a to-do list.

Every Sunday, Holly takes her entire to-do list and schedules it throughout the week. The most important tasks go on Monday—those must get done. She spreads the rest across Tuesday and Wednesday, then keeps Thursday and Friday as light as possible.

The most important things get scheduled first: her Pilates workouts twice a week, coaching calls, meetings. Then she fills in around those priorities.

This system gives her brain permission to relax. She’s not constantly thinking about an endless to-do list because everything is already scheduled. When Thursday and Friday roll around, she has breathing room and unrushed time.

What’s Next: Private Labeling and Amazon

Holly’s working on two major expansions for the business.

First, private labeling—creating her own branded products instead of just reselling supplier products. This is a big mindset shift from the low-risk dropshipping model where you don’t buy inventory until it sells. Private labeling means buying inventory upfront and hoping there’s demand. But the trade-off is much better margins and transitioning from “just a dropshipper” to a true brand.

Second, Amazon. Holly’s not on Amazon yet, which surprises even her. But she’s working on it.

For Amazon, she’ll likely need to use FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) to win the Buy Box, even for high-ticket items. That means sending inventory to Amazon warehouses, which requires either convincing suppliers to ship there or fronting the cost herself—another big investment. But the potential sales volume on Amazon makes the risk worth exploring.

Beyond business expansion, Holly’s biggest goal is starting a family without being consumed by work. She wants to raise kids and continue growing the business, but without the constant pressure of needing an office job.

Every year that passes, that fear diminishes. “We’re still okay,” she thinks. The lifestyle she built becomes more secure and real.

Tech & Tools

Holly’s dropshipping business runs on:

Shopify – E-commerce platform
Google Shopping Ads – Primary traffic source
Keywords Everywhere – For search volume research during niche validation
Hubspot – CRM for managing deals and follow-up tasks
Spreadsheets – Started here before upgrading to HubSpot

Holly’s #1 Tip for Side Hustle Nation

“Don’t let the fear of judgement from others stop you from pursuing your dreams.”

Episode Links

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