A former Centrelink worker who ditched her 9-5 to become an entrepreneur claims to be turning over millions of dollars a year – and is now helping other Aussies follow in her footsteps.
Emma Cunningham, from Melbourne, has built multiple seven-figure businesses through dropshipping in the US – an e-commerce method involving selling products without seeing any inventory.
At 19 she knew there was more to life than ‘climbing the corporate ladder’, waiting for a pay rise and having limitations due to work hours.
She shifted her focus to the e-commerce space with help from a mentor and started dropshipping products on Amazon in 2019 at the age of 24.
For the last two years the now 27-year-old told FEMAIL she’s been working hard to develop a software to make it easier for other Aussies to sell products on Amazon too.
She claims to have made $4million dropshipping and is expected to turn over between $1.5-$2million this financial year.
Emma Cunningham (pictured) used to work ‘paycheck to paycheck’ at Centrelink but now claims to turnover millions after becoming an entrepreneur
She shifted her focus to the e-commerce space with help from a mentor and started dropshipping products on Amazon in 2019 at the age of 24
Now she’s an e-commerce queen and for the last two years has been working hard to develop a software to make it easier for other Aussies to sell products on Amazon too
People start businesses for a variety of reasons – for some it’s to solve a problem, for others it’s their ‘dream job’, but for Emma it was mostly about money and the freedom it provides.
She was driven to become financially independent and set her own path.
‘I’ve always wanted to start my own brand. My dad has owned businesses my whole life so I was definitely exposed to it at a young age,’ she said.
Emma says what differentiates herself from other e-commerce entrepreneurs is her drive to succeed and lack of desire to return to a regular 9-5 job.
‘I remember working at Centrelink and wanting flexibility in my day. I wanted to be able to go to an appointment whenever I needed and couldn’t do that working as a debt collector,’ she recalled.
‘My computer would literally time me on my lunch break. I never want to go back to that.
‘So I’ve been working extremely hard to get where I need to be – albeit sometimes I’ll be working long days until 10pm but it’s all worth it.’
Now her schedule is packed with Zoom meetings, phone calls, analysing products for two hours daily, and brainstorming different ways to sell. She also tends to have meetings in the evening with the US.
Today Emma’s confident she can help others turn over as much as $10,000 in as little as eight weeks. However, you need to be willing to put in the time, effort and work to see these results
Now, Emma’s confident she can help others turn over as much as $10,000 in as little as eight weeks. However, you need to be willing to put in the time, effort and work to see these results.
‘It comes down to how much money you’re willing to spend on inventory. You can often start with as little as $1,000 – but the more money that’s invested, the better the outcome,’ she said.
‘You can do well and turnover high revenue numbers for not much time. If you were to spend 40 hours a week on a business model like this, you’d definitely see results.’
Emma added how it’s ‘easier’ hitting $10,000 in sales by selling on a platform like Amazon rather than starting a business from scratch. She also doesn’t need to do any marketing herself.
‘When the market and demand is already there and you are reselling other items, it’s very doable,’ she said.
In the beginning she invested her time and money to research everything she could about selling on Amazon. She signed up for courses, found a mentor who she paid to teach her, and finally launched her own dropshipping store selling pet products
And the young beauty is confident this is only the beginning of Amazon in Australia.
‘Amazon is are the forefront of customer’s minds in America and the UK. If a customer wants to buy something, they’ll think of Amazon first,’ she said.
‘But it’s not the same here – we’re essentially in year one – but I predict this will change in future.’
When it comes to analysing and choosing what products will sell, Emma says it comes down to a simple ‘calculation’ based on the wholesale price of the product compared to the advertised price.
‘This is the purpose of the software I’ve been developing – it will tell you the historic price point of the product, how often its old and everything you need to know,’ she said.
‘Let’s say a product has been on Amazon for four years – I can look at a graph to show the prices it sold for everyday over that period.
‘We can also look at how many other people are selling the same product – for instance, if there’s 30 people servicing 20,000 sales in a month, those are pretty decent numbers.’
However, in Australia this data doesn’t exist yet which is the whole point of developing a software for Aussie sellers.
Today she’s financially stable, is able to work from anywhere in the world and can afford luxury brands – such as a nice car, handbags and business class flights
Amazon Australia is currently in an unprecedented growth period with latest predictions from seeing it on track to reach $5.5 billion in Australian turnover next financial year.
Amazon Australia offers about 200 million items currently and over the next 24 months the business will add more postcodes to its same-day delivery service in Sydney and Melbourne.
Seeing this growth in Amazon Australia, Emma knew she needed to get in quick with a software like those she has used on the US site, that has enabled her to sell products online and build her business.
While anyone can start dropshipping and follow in her footsteps, it takes patience, dedication and perseverance.
The job involves shipping products from the manufacturer directly to the customer without the retailer ever seeing it. The business method is deemed to be controversial to some but it’s also competitive.
Emma said she was living ‘pay check to pay check’ while working at Centrelink.
At the beginning she invested her time and money to research everything she could about selling on Amazon.
She signed up for courses, found a mentor who she paid to teach her, and finally launched her own dropshipping store selling pet products.
‘My target customer was dog owners; I focused on the fact that pet owners – myself included – spend money on making sure pets have everything they need,’ Emma said.
‘I now sell a wide variety of different products, based on market demand and what has the best profit margin. My focus is selling good quality products, but also making as much money as possible from each sale.’
The astronomical growth of her dropshipping business means she’s now able to work from anywhere in the world and afford luxury brands and business class flights.
At the start Emma said she set herself daily goals – such as making $1,000 in one day, which gradually became $25,000 daily and then $500,000 monthly.
But the success didn’t happen overnight.
Most of the time Emma would work until 10pm, and at one point in the first year she lost $50,000 from ‘bad business decisions’.
Almost half of this was due to lack of communication with the manufacturer who sent out different coloured products to customers.
On another occasion Google shut down her Facebook ads, which taught her she needed another form of marketing to advertise her products to customers.
Now she invests millions into social media and email marketing to generate profit.
Emma admits that although she enjoys success and wealth, she grew lonely after working for herself.
To fill that void she started coaching clients met through Instagram on how to do business.
This eventually led her to launch My Amazon Empire at the start of 2022 – her own online educational consulting agency to assists anyone who wants to own and operate an Amazon business or already has one.
As for dropshipping itself Emma says it’s not ‘hard’ but it’s highly competitive because anyone can do it and so many people are already.
She said those looking for a ‘get rich quick’ scheme definitely shouldn’t consider dropshipping.
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