If you are working full-time or you are a student looking for extra income, online drop shipping is a great way to earn extra income. It is probably the easiest way to legitimately make money online in 2018. However, as drop shipping only requires about $20 to start it became highly competitive in most of the fields.
It requires a lot of time and effort if one wants to pursue drop shipping as a full-time career. Nevertheless, many people are doing it and you can still earn a fortune without working full-time on it. There are many people that make six-figures a month so I believe you could do the same.
Maybe you would like to start your own online marketplace but do not know where to begin. With that in mind, I created a short and simple how to start dropshipping guide for you.
What is Dropshipping?
At first, we need to understand what kind of business model drop shipping is. It is pretty easy to comprehend.
Drop Shipping is a supply chain management method in which the online retailer does not have the products in the warehouse (in other words “in stock”). Instead of keeping the goods, the retailer transfers the customer orders and shipment details to the manufacturer, supplier or a wholesaler. Who then packs the order goods and sends it directly to the customer.
Drop shippers make their profits on the difference between the retail and wholesale prices. However, there are some that earn money from sales commissions that later are paid by the wholesaler or another retailer.
Choosing a Niche
If you want to become a successful dropshipper, you store needs to have a niche. A niche product or service is such thing that serves a specific demographic group and is one of a kind item or service. Most of the time they do not have such a big market as generic products but you can potentially earn more per sale.
Most of the time the key to success in niche markets is to identify the trend early and get selling those trendy niche items as soon as possible. This allows maximizing the profits.
However, a lot of the times it is hard to identify the trend in those cases just perform a thorough research on possible niches that you would be interested to participate in. Look at your possible competition, if there are not many competitors, it might be pretty easy to enter the market. Otherwise, you can struggle a lot if the market is oversaturated. Do not forget to ensure that the niche is profitable and you can put at least a 40% price margin including the shipping costs.
Finding a Supplier for Your Dropshipping Business
It might be a hard thing to find a reliable and communicative supplier. When you are searching for a supplier you need to ensure that product suppliers should offer drop shipping services because not all wholesalers and manufacturers do that and do not charge huge order fees.
The most important rule that you must keep in mind when dealing with a supplier must be responsive to your messages. Most of the suppliers you will contact might be overseas and there are time and certain cultural differences that might create communication problems. If you not sure of the supplier’s communication abilities, you should decline it and search for a better one immediately.
You can search wholesaler and manufacturer markets on search engines. The most popular ones are AliExpress, Alibaba, eBay, and 4WholesaleUSA.
Choosing Drop Shipping Platform
When you have done all the steps below you need to create a website or choose an online marketplace where you could sell your items. You need to decide if you want to sell your products on already established platforms like eBay or Amazon, or you want to create your own platform to sell goods.
You can choose to sell on already established platforms such as Etsy, Amazon, and eBay. It might be much easier to set up one’s account and you can start selling right away. They already have a big customer base and other benefits. However, they charge fees on every sale and you do not have a big control of your brand.
Also, there is another possible way of selling your products. It is to open your own online store using such platforms like Shopify together with Oberlo which probably makes the life of dropshipper much easier. It costs about $20 to start so it is not much and you get full control of your brand and you get higher profit margins. It is a better option in my opinion if you have a little amount of money to invest and a bit more free time.
Attracting Customers
No shop can exist without customers. The only way to draw customers to your e-store is marketing. It is much easier to market your products when you have your online store build on such platforms like Shopify.
If you want fast but expensive results you can use Google Ads as well as social media such as Facebook and Instagram ads. Do not forget to use social media influencers because it plays a huge part in many e-store successes. The slower way would be to attract customer through search engines while writing a blog on your shop. Also, using content marketing and simple social media marketing like posting about your products in the social media accounts.
Final Words
I can tell you one thing, if you do not try, you will not succeed. So I encourage you to stop procrastinating in social media and YouTube and try to pursue online business idea like dropshipping because you now know how.
