Have you ever bought ‘make money online’ courses and always felt like something is missing?
It’s almost as if you’re never shown the full picture?
The guy who is selling you a course on YouTube marketing doesn’t want to reveal his real YouTube channel for fear of competition.
The niche site marketer with the $497 training course on ranking niche sites will give you 40 videos telling you what to do but never actually reveals his own websites.
And it makes you wonder…
“Are they really walking the talk or feeding me a load of BS?”
“Maybe they’re making money selling courses and not actually doing what they say?”
Valid questions with very few comforting answers.
The hard truth is that the best lessons in marketing come from watching the pros in action.
To see what they’re really doing is educational, eye-opening, and inspirational.
Theory can only take you so far, but the real magic happens when you witness marketers navigate the wild terrain of business.
That’s why this case study isn’t your typical training. It’s real-world info that works!
It’s an insider’s look at a patriot who’s profiting in the survival niche by leveraging 2 proven business models: Dropshipping & Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA).
Let’s begin!
Today, while scrolling through Facebook, I came across this advertisement…
The product was interesting and when I looked at the comments below the ad, this is what I saw…
The product is of good quality because there were many satisfied customers leaving positive reviews below the post.
I clicked on the ad and it opened up the product’s sales page. I’ll get to this later, if the product seems profitable.
Back to the ad…
Now, some cynical marketers may postulate that maybe the advertiser is buying positive reviews and engagement for the ad.
While I’m not sure if this is the case here, it would be remiss to discount this possibility because such marketing shenanigans do exist.
With that in mind, I decided to check on the ‘history’ of the ad to determine its profitability.
Step #1: I went to the Facebook Ads Library
Step #2: Under the settings I chose ‘all’ countries and ‘all’ ads.
Step #3: I clicked on the ‘filters’ setting and selected the options (see image below)
Step #4: I searched for the term “4Patriots” because that’s the name of the advertiser.
Next thing you know, all the ads run by this advertiser showed up.
From here, I scrolled until I found the ad for the water boiling device.
Oh look! There are 2 versions of the ad… which tells you that the advertiser is testing different creatives to see which converts better.
A quick glance at the ads’ summaries will tell us that the ads are active and have been running since October 23, 2023.
At the time of writing this case study, the ads have been running for about 3 weeks.
Which hints that the ad has a positive return on investment.
Most advertisers won’t keep a losing ad for this long, especially an advertiser as experienced as 4Patriots who knows what they’re doing.
Assuming that the ad and product is profitable, I went to the sales page to take a good look at the copy and see what the product was about.
The product is a sun kettle (solar kettle) and is something that’s especially useful for survivalists and people who go camping.
There’s definitely a strong demand for this appliance in the prepper niche.
More importantly, the sales page looks clean and professional. The vendor knows what they’re doing.
If we clicked on the order button, we’d see this…
There are 2 options…
You could buy 1 sun kettle for $49 + $9.95 shipping… or… get 3 sun kettles for $143 and free shipping.
So you’d enjoy some cost savings by getting 3 units.
Interestingly, the ‘3 sun kettles’ option was checked off by default. You had to manually choose to just order with just 1 kettle.
Very clever, 4Patriots.
The next thing I did was to go to Amazon.com to see if these sun kettles were being sold there…
A quick search for ‘sun kettle’ brought up a sponsored ad…
Guess what?
Yes! It’s good ol’ 4Patriots advertising and selling their kettle there too!
Look at that… They’re selling ONE kettle for $99.95.
And they’ve sold 200+ units of this product. So it’s definitely profitable. This is FBA in action! (Fulfilment By Amazon)
If we clicked on the ad…
We’d see that the kettle comes in 2 sizes, large and XL… priced at $67 and $99.95 respectively.
The prices are higher than what you’d find on their official sales page. They’ve probably factored Amazon’s fees into their pricing.
Now here is where it gets interesting!
When I did a search for ‘sun kettle’, another listing showed up calling it a ‘solar kettle’ …
I clicked on the listing, and this was the description…
Who and what is this?!!
Looks like it’s another vendor selling an almost similar product!
Which means that this sun kettle is not 4Patriot’s proprietary product. They’re probably getting it from a supplier.
So I saved the image of the sun kettle and did a quick search on Google Images.
These were the results…
The image shows up on eBay, Walmart, and several other places.
Once again, this hints that the sun kettle is not unique to 4Patriots.
The only way to know for sure will be to find the supplier. So off to AliExpress I went…
And did a search for terms such as ‘sun kettle’ and ‘solar kettle’. After endless scrolling, I found this listing…
Upon first glance, it may seem that the pricing makes no sense… and it doesn’t.
But it confirms our earlier suspicions that there is a supplier for this product.
We just need to find out who’s supplying 4Patriots or someone who can supply a similar product – so let’s try Alibaba.
A search for ‘sun kettle’ brought up this listing, and it looks very similar to the kettle sold by 4Patriots.
When I clicked on the listing, this is what I saw…
It’s the SAME kettle that 4Patriots is selling!
They’re getting it for about $26-$28 and selling it for $49.95 on their store. That’s almost a 100% markup.
Even if you take ad costs into account, it’s still a significant profit margin.
While this may not be the same supplier 4Patriots is using, the fact remains that you too can set up a Shopify store or sell this product on Amazon if you wanted to.
You now have a supplier and you know the product is profitable.
If you have dropshipping or FBA knowledge, you can capitalize on this product and sell it in your survival site or store.
In conclusion…
This case study highlights how real-world experience beats dull theory.
It’s an inspiration for anyone eyeing e-commerce and wishing to turn it into an income stream.
In the end, this case study is not just about survival gear. It’s about keeping your eyes open and being curious about the offers you see.
With some investigation mixed with trial and error, you’ll discover that reverse engineering business models and learning from the trenches is the ultimate teacher.
From there, the sky’s the limit.
“Curiosity fuels the desire to learn, adapt, and evolve. In the realm of business, it’s the key to staying relevant and thriving.” – Richard Branson