How to Start a Dropshipping Business?

Five Simple Steps of Starting a Dropshipping Business

If you search google any nomadic jobs or ways to earn money on the internet, you’re guaranteed to discover a bunch of results, suggesting to start a dropshipping company. But what exactly is this business? How does it work, and above all, how to start a dropshipping business?

Wow, you might be puzzled many questions, don’t worry; you’ll get all your answers here. Before we dive into deep, I want to share a story of mine.

A few years back, I used to work as a virtual assistant for a successful entrepreneur who wished to start a dropshipping business. I wasn’t surprised because he always had wild thoughts on how to increase the revenue sources and grow his little kingdom wider. However, he said excitedly:

What next! We launched our very own e-commerce store four weeks later. It was a completely newer experience for both of us, but we managed to get through. Ten weeks later, our first financial report said we have earned around 1600 dollars. Now with his dropshipping business, my former client earns over 95,000 USD per month.e

So, what do you think? Is he successful or not? What would you call him? I’ll definitely call him successful.

Anyway, let’s see what a dropshipping business actually is?

What is Dropshipping Business?

A drop shipping business is actually a sales model that does not carry stock or even ship products on their own but accepts orders via other websites and sales channels. By drop shipping, salesmen use suppliers, who supply the products directly to customers on their behalf. Therefore, drop shippers have no expense for equipment, storage, or warehouse, and even the staffing costs at the beginning or to continue the business in the future.

A bit confusing, right? Simply, if you prefer to open a dropshipping store, you won’t have to ensure your personal inventory of the products. When your customers place an order, you just have to forward it to a third party and let them handle the rest. Once the product is shipped, a portion of the profit will remain in your wallet.

Isn’t that great? Unlike other start-up businesses, dropshipping can be started with a little investment. All you need is a marketable concept, a proper source of product, a marketing platform, with the scheme and tactics of marketing.

So, if you get out of your 9 to 5 job schedule, nothing will be as ideal as the dropshipping business.

Benefits of Dropshipping Business

• There’s no need for huge capital to start this business as you won’t have to stock any products. In fact, dropshipping is one of the cheapest online business to start with.
• The entire business runs on the online platform, so it can be managed anywhere in the world. It’s ideal for any digital nomad!
• In this business, you won’t have to worry about things like stock level, packing, shipping, warehouse, or returns handling. That’s why it is easier than any other retail business. One can start it without any complications.
• It offers superior flexibility for switching to any of your products. If you notice that one of your products is getting sales at all, you can easily switch to another. As you aren’t buying these products or have a large stock of them, you’ll never have to worry about the losses
• Above all, starting this business doesn’t require any special training, experience, or paper works. You can start it anytime whenever you want.

Disadvantages of Dropshipping Business

Dropshipping isn’t as hard as it seems. With the perfect combination of determination and effort, you can also become successful like him, or maybe more than him. Below you’ll get an accurate overview and, of course, a step-by-step process to continue your dropshipping business. So, let’s dive in!

• Since the dropshipping business is easy to start, you’ll have numerous competitors around you. Everyone will prefer the best, so there’re hundreds like you, planning to start their own business. This can lower your business growth. But remember, all of them may not have an outstanding Business idea and a great marketing strategy like you. If you’re confident about your planning, you can finish the competition in no time and sit on the throne before anyone else.
• Your business will depend on your supplier completely. In this case, if your supplier delivers bad products or delays the delivery, you’ll be the one taking the blame from your customers. That’s why you must find a reliable partner and deal only with them.

That was the pros and cons of starting a dropshipping business. It is always better to acquire in-depth knowledge before starting a new business. Every business has its own struggle, and every successful business owner makes their way through them. The real success story will begin with your game-changing decision. So, it’s up to you what you choose, but if you’re still interested in this business, let’s see how to start a dropshipping business.

How to Start a Dropshipping Business Step-by-Step

Dropshipping isn’t as hard as it seems. With the perfect combination of determination and effort, you can also become successful like him, or maybe more than him. Below you’ll get an accurate overview and, of course, a step-by-step process to continue your dropshipping business. So, let’s dive in!

Step 1 – Select a Niche

Yes, of course, you simply go for all the niches and sell every product on your website. But honestly, that’s not going to be helpful. Every niche has different obstacles, and each of them is handled in a different way.

As you’re just starting out, all these things can become overwhelming for you, and you may not be able to achieve success with it. So, I would suggest to select a particular niche and become an expert on that. In fact, by focusing on a particular niche, you’ll be able to find out the best suppliers, which is crucial and ensure the best products for your customers.

When the customers get the best products on a particular niche they have searched for, they’ll realize that you’ve in-depth knowledge about what you’re talking about. As a result, they’ll have more trust in your store, likely to visit again with more potentiality of buying.

In this case, you’ve to consider the following factors:

• You’re here to earn money, so you should find the quickest way to get the trophy. That’s why you should select the products with attractive profits. You have to put the maximum effort to ensure each and every sale of your store. The amount of this effort is going to be the same for a 12-dollar product and a 1,200-dollar product. So, if you ensure that effort for a higher-priced product, you’ll become more benefit.
• Another factor that plays an important role is the shipping costs. Even though the suppliers completely handle it, customers won’t buy products with higher shipping costs. But when you’re dealing with your business in the USA and have numerous Asian customers, the shipping costs will increase significantly. So, you have to select something that has low shipping costs or offering free shipping to your customers. Remember, products with free shipping tags attract more sales than regular products.
• People don’t search for those products which are easily available in their nearest shops. The product should have its importance, but at the same time, people should go online and search for it.
• Try to avoid rare products. Your products may have the utmost importance, but if they people search them rarely, you won’t be able to acquire your desired sales. Google’s Trends can help you a lot in this case
• Your selected products should attract buyers and generate impulsive buys. You can sell cars or motorbikes on your website, but customers will think long before this type of huge investment. You should focus on increasing the conversion rates because the customers with the highest conversion rates never return.
• Make sure to select the products and the niche under low competition. If you find the competition is almost nil, it’s a good sign to start with. Every weakness of your competitors will give you a positive point. So, perform in-depth research on the competitors and check if they have a horrible website design or bad reviews for their product because it will help you to improve more and make your appearance better than them.

Step 2 – Search for a Reliable Supplier

After finding your profitable niche, you have to start looking for a reliable supplier. Suppliers only focus on manufacturing their products and distributing them. But most of them aren’t good at marketing.

You can take that benefit and collaborate with them. There are thousands of suppliers out there, but you have to find out the best one. So, it’s not going to be an easy task. However, you start your searching method with google.

You can write down some simple keywords to find out the potential suppliers based on your niche. Once you find your suppliers, start contacting them and discuss everything in detail, including the shipping related questions. Be sure about their shipping capabilities and ensure if they can satisfy the customers or not.

Another way to find the suppliers is to search for different marketplaces. You can start looking from Amazon or Alibaba; they are the biggest stars in this sector, and they have thousands of suppliers. Search for the best supplier that has obtained good reviews and better interaction with the customers.

Okay, if you got them in your list, create your account and start chatting with them directly.

Step 3 – Build Your Store

Now, it’s time for the main action. You have to now build your very own e-commerce store from where you will distribute your products finally. In this case, you can use Shopify or WordPress platforms to start with.

Honestly, you won’t have to be a professional and won’t even have to spend thousands of dollars on that. These platforms are available at an affordable price, and you can add different types of plugins to get the ease of usage. But make sure to create a catchy design with the help of a developer. Don’t worry; you can hire a good freelance developer even if you have a tight budget.

Step 4 – Promote Your Page

If you have completed the previous steps, you’re now an owner of a beautiful e-commerce website containing the best products out there. But do your customers know about your business? If you haven’t given a proper address to them, how would they visit your website? Well, that’s where promoting a startup business is quite essential. There are several ways to promote your business, like:

1. Social Media Marketing: Social media are powerful platforms to promote a business. They’ve millions of users that can be driven to your website. Create your account (you might have got one) and start promoting your business accordingly. Most of the social media have their own ad campaigns, so you can use them too. But that’s going to cost you some money.

2. Paid Ads: If you made some budgets for the ads, you could promote your website through paid ads. Google Adwords and Facebook ads are two renowned paid add platforms. You can use them for outsourcing traffic to your website.

3. Content Marketing: It’s an effective and clever way to make people aware of your product’s usability. How? Well, suppose you have an e-commerce site that sells home appliances like faucets and more. Instead of writing directly by your product, you can start writing on a topic like “How to install a faucet?” and at the end of it, you can suggest some best faucets that drive traffic to your website. Interesting right? You can also publish some articles on product reviews that contain both positive and negative sides. Then put a link in every product that refers to your website. But don’t forget to put the negative points because it attracts the readers and builds trust in the information.

4. Email Marketing: Find out the emails of your customers and build an email list. Then start sending one after another who has visited your store. You can write different beneficial components of your products, or you can send them some offers. Sending offers will help you to retain the lion-share of your visited customers.

Step 5 – Optimize and Analyze

There are some tactics named SEO to give you visibility on Google. You can learn them and apply them to your store. On the contrary, you can hire someone who can optimize your website, implementing proper SEO tactics. It’ll give you a boost and make you visible in the search results.

You can also analyze and monitor your website with deeper information with Google Analytics. It’s completely free, and it’ll give you every detail about your users. Once your website is live, you can open an account on analytics by adding your domain name.

Wrapping Up

So, have you learned how to start a dropshipping business? Are you ready to start now? Or you’re still thinking? Don’t waste any time. It’s a competitive world; by the time you are thinking, others are making it happen and start their success story. If you really want to get out of your boring job and I will definitely recommend starting a dropshipping business and be the king of your own kingdom.

I have covered every detail in this article; hopefully, these are going to be way more helpful to start your own dropshipping store. But if you are still confused, don’t hesitate to let me know through the comment section below.