Dropshipping 101: This is a guide to everything you’ll need to know about dropshipping. Dropshipping is a great way to start your own business when you don’t have a lot to invest. And there are a ton of great products that you can promote as well.
I’ll walk you through everything you need know about a dropshipping business, from finding products and setting up your store, to marketing your business and making sales.
What is Dropshipping?
Starting a dropshipping business is one of the easiest ways to start an ecommerce business. But what is dropshipping? Dropshipping is simply selling products without keeping them in stock. Whenever a customer orders a product from you, you will make a new order to your wholesaler and ship the item directly to your customer. Wholesalers work with a lot of dropshipping businesses so they are aware to not add any of their own marketing material in the package.
Benefits of Dropshipping
Dropshipping has a lot of benefits, including:
- Low overhead costs: When you dropship, you don’t need to worry about storing any inventory. This means that you don’t need to pay for storage of products, or to worry about unsold stock if your product doesn’t sell well.
- Increased profits: Because you don’t have to worry about stocking products, you can mark up your prices by quite a bit and still earn a profit.
- Diversification: With dropshipping, you aren’t locked into selling one type of product. Instead, you can offer a variety of products and change them often according to trends.
- Easier inventory management: When you dropship, your wholesalers deal with inventory so there’s less for you to worry about. If your wholesaler is out of a product, you can jump over to your backup wholesaler to fulfil your order.
How to be Successful at Dropshipping
First, you need to find a good supplier. The number one rule in dropshipping 101 is to find a supplier who has high-quality products and reliable shipping times. You’ll also want a supplier who is willing to work with you on pricing.
Second, you need to set up your store correctly. It’s important to create a shop that is attractive and easy to navigate. You want to deliver a good shopping experience to your customers. If you’re selling internationally, you’ll need to make sure that your shipping rates and payment options are all correct to avoid additional costs on your side. Shipping a product from China to South Africa will be considerably more expensive than shipping from China to USA.
Third, you need to market your store effectively. There’s no point in having a store if no one ever sees your products. We’ll show you how to market your products to get them noticed and start making sales.
How to Find a Product To Sell?
To be successful with dropshipping, you need a product that sells well. Just because something looks attractive to you, does not mean that it will be a bestseller. Here are some tips on how to find the right products to sell:
1) Choose a niche market. You’ll want to target a specific niche market rather than trying to sell a general product to everyone. You want something that you can focus your marketing toward. This works best for something that your customers are passionate about. Tool like FindNiche can help you to find products that could become bestsellers, as well as products that are already profitable with other dropshippers.
2) Evaluate the competition. Once you’ve chosen a niche, you’ll need to look at how stiff your competition is. How many other businesses are selling similar products? What are they charging for them? Can you offer your product at a lower price? Can you market the same product better than your competition? If you can, then it could be a good product to choose.
Once you’ve found some products to sell, it’s time to build your store. I use Shopify as my store of choice for dropshipping. I’ve had success with WooCommerce stores as well, but Shopify can be set up in a fraction of the time and you don’t need to worry about speed issues, and security vulnerabilites.
Why Choose Shopify?
Here are some reasons why I think Shopify is the best platform for dropshipping:
- Shopify is the most popular ecommerce platform in the world. Millions of customers use it because it just works straight out of the box.
- Shopify has a lot of great features. These include a built-in shopping cart, payment processing, and order management system.
- Shopify is easy to use. You won’t need to spend days trying to add additional functionality. You can create your store, add products, and start taking orders in minutes. Plus, Shopify has tons of resources to help you grow your business.
- Shopify has an enormous app store with tons of apps to choose from. If you want to add a countdown timer to your store, for example, you can simply choose an app to add this functionality. Shopify apps do usually have a monthly cost to them, but when you have a succesfful store, these small monthly fees are negligible.
- Shopify also has great customer support. If you ever run into any problems with your store, or need help setting up your shop, you can contact the Shopify support team for help.
How to Create a Shopify Store and Start Selling?
First, you’ll need to create a Shopify account. Then, you’ll need to choose a theme for your store. Shopify has many themes to choose from, or you can create your own custom theme. Next, you’ll need to add products to your store. You can add products from your computer or import them from AliExpress.
Finally, you’ll need to set up payment processing. Shopify supports many different payment processors, including PayPal and Stripe. You can also accept credit cards and debit cards directly on your Shopify store.
Marketing Your Store
There are a lot of ways that you can market your Shopify dropshipping store. One popular way is to create a Facebook Page for your business and then advertise your products on there. I’ve found that Instagram and Pinterest work a lot better these days. Facebook still makes sales but you do need to pay for ads to be effective on there. You can also use Google Ads to create advertisements that will appear when someone searches for related terms.
To find out more about how social media can help your business, check out: The Complete Guide to Social Media and Its Role in SEO
You should also create a strong online presence for your business. This includes creating a website (or blog) and social media pages for your store. Make sure to include keywords in your website’s title and description so that potential customers can find you online. You don’t need to spend a lot of time on your website articles. You could even pay for someone to write them for you. With the latest advancements in technology, you can now use AI writing tools to create content for your website in minutes.
You can find out more about that here: How AI Writing Tools can Help with 3 Amazing Use Cases
Starting a successful dropshipping business is not difficult. Finding the right product to sell and the right supplier is where you might have a little difficulty. But thanks to tools like Findniche, that’s a problem of the past. Just be sure to follow the tips listed in this article to get started on the right foot. Good luck!
