What is Dropshipping?
Let’s say you’ve been thinking of opening up your own online business, but you don’t know where to start. You don’t know what you should sell, you don’t have the money to invest in products, and looking around, you don’t have any place to store inventory.
That’s what Dropshipping is all about. You see, with Dropshipping, you can sell stuff online without the products ever being in your hands. All you need is a computer, an online store, and a basic understanding on how to market and sell online.
Dropshipping is a retail fulfillment method where a store doesn't keep the products it sells in stock. Instead, when a store sells a product, it purchases the item from a third party supplier and has it shipped directly to the customer. As a result, the merchant never sees or handles the product. This means that the seller never invests or holds the inventory upfront. They simply pay a small portion to the supplier from the payment received from the customer.
For Example:
Supplier Product Cost = $10.
You Sell it for = $30.
You Pay Your Supplier $10 to ship the product to your customer.
Your Profit = $20.
Now, I know what you’re thinking, why wouldn’t somebody just order the product directly from the supplier’s website?
Well, a couple of reasons.
First, it’s a very big internet and customers may not know about the supplier to buy from them directly.
Second, when people buy things, they’re not just buying products. They’re buying into the marketing, positioning, trust, brand, and lifestyle those products represent.
With Dropshipping, you can focus on marketing your products and saying the right things, at the right time, and on providing real value to the right people because you’re not warehousing any inventory, or dealing with most of the other challenges that come with running an ecommerce business.
Now, a couple of big challenges that need to be considered with Dropshipping are finding credible suppliers with good quality products and making sure you have visibility into your customer’s fulfillment process.
Honestly, you can find suppliers on your own -. However, when you’re Dropshipping completely on your own, you can end up spending a lot of time researching and negotiating with suppliers to guarantee your customers’ satisfaction.
Another option is a tool like Oberlo, which with a few clicks gives you access to millions of products to sell, and has dozens of other features to make your life easier... like monitoring inventory levels, automatically calculating profit margins, fulfilling and tracking orders, monitoring shipping status, measuring delivery performance and more.
So why do people get into Dropshipping?
If you're new to this let me tell you. Dropshipping is the #1 Business model that can be done with 100% automation.
- Less Capital Is Required– Probably the biggest advantage to Dropshipping is that it's possible to launch an ecommerce store without having to invest thousands of dollars in inventory up front. You also don’t need to have an established business entity when you start
- Easy to Get Started – Running an ecommerce business is much easier when you don't have to deal with physical products.
- Low Overhead – Because you don't have to deal with purchasing inventory or managing a warehouse, your overhead expenses are quite low. In fact, many successful Dropshipping businesses are run from a home office with a laptop for less than $100 per month. As you grow, these expenses will likely increase but will still be low compared to those of traditional brick-and-mortar businesses.
- Flexible Location– A Dropshipping business can be run from just about anywhere with an internet connection. As long as you can communicate with suppliers and customers easily, you can run and manage your business.
- Wide Selection of Products– Because you don't have to pre-purchase the items you sell, you can offer an array of products to your potential customers. If suppliers stock an item, you can list if for sale on your website at no additional cost.
- Easy to Scale– With a traditional business, if you receive three times as much business you'll usually need to do three times as much work. By leveraging Dropshipping suppliers, most of the work to process additional orders will be borne by the suppliers, allowing you to expand with fewer growing pains and less incremental work.
Of course, there can be some challenges with Dropshipping too:
First off, because it’s really easy to get started, there’s a higher potential for competition. That is why you’ll find a lot of advice out there recommends you start off finding a niche audience - like cat lovers, or gamers - so you can operate with less competition.
Next, there are supplier errors. Though uncommon, it is inevitable that a supplier will mistakenly ship the wrong item to your customer. If this happens, don’t take it personally and handle the return like a professional. You either order a brand new product from the supplier or offer a complete refund.
Also, since many Dropshipping suppliers are based in China, shipping times are generally longer, turning some consumers off. ePacket makes it easier, delivering some orders in as little as two weeks, but generally speaking, if you make your shipping times clear throughout the buying process, many visitors appreciate the clarity - especially if you’re selling an item or in a niche where delivery times are less crucial.
Ok, so how do I get started?
Step 1 - Start a Free 14 day trial on Shopify
Step 2 - Go to Shopify.com/app-store and install the oberlo app
Step 3 - Find products from aliexpress you’d like to sell and add them to your store.
Step 4 - Enable a payment gateway so you can start accepting money. Shopify Payments is a great default option if you’re in one of the supported countries though you may want to enable a few other gateways like Paypal, Apple Pay, Amazon Payments or any of the 100+ payment gateways that Shopify is integrated with.
Once you have all that, you’ll need to create a plan for sending traffic to your store. I won’t go into great detail about that here, but if you’re looking for course recommendation. We recommend Tristan’s Course where he teaches A-Z about Dropshipping and some great ways to market your product. The best thing we love about his course is that he updates the course very often to keep up with the changing marketing trends and also has a private Facebook group where he helps his student 1-1. You can Learn More HERE
Finally, try to produce quality content for your store. From eye-catching photography to engaging product videos to great posts for your blog, your audience loves to know more about your products, how they can be used, and the story behind them.
Now that we’ve covered all of the things you need to get started, here are a few additional things to keep in mind:.
Dropshipping is pretty easy to learn, but there is a learning curve, and you will experience challenges along the way. However, mistakes can become learning opportunities, and if you can develop resilience along the way, there are plenty of people out there finding a lot of success Dropshipping products. While there is a significant advantage in terms of capital investment over traditional Ecommerce, Dropshipping isn’t free. You’ll likely have to spend money to drive traffic, market your products, and handle returns. There is no overnight success, and this isn’t a get rich quick scheme. Dropshipping still requires you to work consistently for your store. True, you will need to dedicate less time compared to a traditional ecommerce business, but it’s not going to succeed without your hard work. You’ll always need to invest time improving your business. But once you found your first few winners you can start outsourcing the time-consuming works on your stores like product research, order fulfillment and customer support and concentrate only on the most important Marketing. At this point, a couple of hours of your time for your store is more than enough to run a six-figure Dropshipping business
Don’t source copyrighted items. This is illegal all around the world and can cause you some serious trouble If you’re completely new to dropshipping, start small with a single product or a small handful of complimentary items from a single supplier. You can always add more inventory as you become comfortable, but it’s better to start small and build than to start big and become overwhelmed.
And my final tip is once you’re feeling comfortable with dropshipping - diversify. Many drop shippers don’t rely on a single store for their entire income stream but operate a series of stores targeting various niches to build multiple sources of income. Alright, that’s all I’ve got!
If you still need help. We have some Premade Stores for sale which are 100% optimized for conversion and comes with well-researched products. You just have to start promoting your store to get sales. We also offer 14 Days Free 1-1 Mentorship to answer any of our questions and help you get your first few sales. Check out our Premade store available for sale and Learn more HERE.
If you have any questions or need any help Please Feel Free to reach out to us via our Facebook Messenger Live Chat or use our Contact Form.
Happy Sales Everyone :)
