Dropship businesses are innovative ways of doing business online. They allow you to sell your products without having any physical stores. You only order products from suppliers and then ship them directly to customers.
The supplier ships the items directly to the customer who ordered them. Therefore, you don’t have to worry about storing the inventory yourself.
Also, dropship businesses can help you save money because you won’t have to pay expensive rent costs. But, they will charge fees to process payments and handle returns.
Dropshippers are among the most profitable eCommerce platforms and they require a minimum initial investment. You can start an online store from anywhere in the world using drop shippers.
What is Drop Shipping Business?
To start off, you need to create an online shop. Once a customer has placed an order, they pay for it through their credit card. After the payment has been processed, your bank transfers the funds into your account.
You then send the package to the drop shippers who take the products from their warehouses and pack them up neatly before sending them out to the customers.
The customer receives the products a few days later. In fact, your business information appears as the senders. Furthermore, if the quality of your products is good, the buyers should be happy with the products. And, the most pleasant part of the sales process would be that you’re happy because you’ve earned a commission. Without ever needing to stock or even handle these products during the whole transaction.
With a good drop shipper, there is no need for an upfront investment on your part. You’re also making a healthy return on each and every item you sell.
Is Drop Shipping Business Profitable?
Industry experts predict that the drop shipping business is poised for huge growth in the coming years. In the year 2020, the total market size of the drop shipping industry was valued at 149. 4 Billion US Dollars.
As per this report, the dropshipping industry will grow by 28.8% and is expected to reach 557.9 billion US Dollars by the year 2025.
Here are the 9 Steps to Start a Drop Shipping Business
There are certainly many critical factors of this venture. You need to take them into consideration seriously if you want to succeed.
1. Find a Niche Product
One of the most important aspects of the dropshipping business is choosing the right products for your store. There are big companies that have already entered the dropshipping market.
If you are a beginner and have a limited budget, it is strongly advised to choose a product that is not too competitive and sufficient profit margin. In order to be successful as a drop shipper, you must concentrate on a focused product or group of products.
When selecting a niche product, consider these factors:
- Select high-profit margin products.
- Shipping is cheap.
- The product must satisfy the upper-middle class who are impulse buyers with sufficient disposable income.
- Check whether the product has a considerable amount of searches online. If there is less or no search, it does not make any sense in starting the dropshipping business. Take help from  Google Trends or Amazon marketplace and find the products that are trending and having good demand.
- Don’t buy anything from local markets unless they’re hard to get elsewhere.
2. Find a supplier
The second most important thing is to pick the right product provider. You can either do your own research or ask around for recommendations. An example of an online resource is Alibaba.com.
Alibaba.com is a website that sells goods worldwide. They provide a platform for buyers and sellers to connect. Alibaba.com provides a platform where one can buy cheap clothes, cosmetics, electronics, and much more.
However, keep in mind, it is extremely important to find trusted suppliers in a dropshipping business. If the supplier turns out to be not responsible, your business can go for a toss. So, check customer ratings, and customer feedback before finalizing a supplier.
You can also find suppliers using the Oblerlo mobile application. To access this application, however, you must be an owner of a Shopify store.
3. Create a Business Plan
It is essential to write a business plan for your dropshipping business. Some of the key topics that must be addressed are the following:
- Startup and recurring costs
- Target customers
- Pricing strategies
- Logistic plan
- How do you plan to promote products to prospective customers?
4. Name your Dropshipping Store
Another important factor for a successful dropshipped business is choosing a catchy domain for your dropshipping site.
If you want to start selling one specific type of item, then you should consider using a similar-sounding business. But if you plan to sell several types of items, then you need to come up with a unique business. To learn more about naming a business, read our post here.
5. Register your Business
You have to register your business as per government rules. Most suppliers will ask for necessary documents before cutting dropshipping deals.
You should always consult a local lawyer when choosing the right type of company for your needs.
6. Get Licenses
Additionally, you will need to obtain specific licenses for conducting business activities. Contact the relevant authorities and get them.
7. Cost of Starting a Dropshipping Business
On a small-to-medium size, you can launch a dropshipped store for around $500.
Setting up a basic dropshipping business involves the following major costs:
- If you want to create a dropshipping store website (Shopify charges $29 per moÂnth for its basic plan), you’ll need to pay for at least
- A.com address costs anything from $9 to $15 each year.
- Sample product costs ($200 minimum)
- Promotional Costs – ( Minimum of $200)
8. Build your Drop Shipping Site
You must have an online store. Unless you have it, reputed suppliers will not feel confident to deal with you. If you are good at coding and have technical knowledge try Magento or Woocommerce.
We recommend Shopify because it’s easy to use and has lots of features. It’s perfect for people who don’t know anything about coding but just want to get started selling their products online.
Finding the right products and vendors can be a pain if you’re not experienced in drop shifting. But with Oberlo, you’ll find everything you need to get started. Not only does it integrate with Shopify, but it also comes with a ton of features. Whether you’re new to drop-shifting or just starting out, you won’t regret buying Oberlo!
When building your dropshipped site, don’t forget to create product listing pages. Add and edit relevant products as often as possible.
You should try to collect as many reviews for your products as possible. Stores like TrustPilot can be helpful in doing so.
9. Promote your Online Drop Shipping Site
Create a marketing plan to generate traffic to your site. Take help from Google Ads and Facebook Ads. Try to have a blog and write articles relevant to the product. Find sites related to your product and contact them for writing a guest post for them.
To be successful in the dropshipping business, you must concentrate on marketing and customer acquisition. You have to be constantly innovative in finding new opportunities, recent trends, etc.
You must use tools like Google Analytics, and Facebook conversion pixel data in gathering information about where your customer is buying, what is their age group, etc.
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