The eCommerce industry is ever-growing, and online sales in 2022 will increase drastically.
Many people are interested in online dropshipping business since you don’t need to handle stocks or inventory, and you could start your dropshipping business with limited funds.
How does Dropshipping Work?
1) You Start Your Online eCom Website
2) You partner with third-party suppliers
3) List all the products on your website
4) Promote your products
5) Customer buys from your website
6) Your supplier handled the order
7) You take care of the support for the order
8) You get the margin of the product
Let’s say you source a product for 5$, selling on your website for 20$, and your promotion cost is 4$ for sale, so you make a profit of 11$ per purchase.
In Dropshipping, you could focus on finding the product, sourcing, and marketing. You don’t need to worry about the inventory or logistics, or operation of the orders.
Are you ready to start your online dropshipping business?
Let’s get started with simple steps to build your successful online dropshipping business.
1) Be Specific With Niche
If you are going with a general store, you might compete with many brands and existing companies.
It is recommended to go with a niche-specific store. You know your audience better by having a niche, and you could aim & achieve your target more precisely than pulling an arrow without an aim.
Pick a niche you are interested in and know about, which will help you understand your target audience better.
It takes a lot of work and patience to launch and scale a drop shipping business successfully. If you are not interested in your niche, the chance of you getting discouraged and giving up is high.
Don’t go with high-ticket products or with a meager ticket. Based on your niche, identify which pricing will work better and what pricing will not be of high risk for your business.
Your product should solve your customer problem, and most dropshipping products are sold by impulse purchase behavior, so identify the pain points in your niche accordingly.
Pick products that are not readily available in local shops. Select something they can’t find locally, so your audience cannot ignore buying from your business.
2) Market & Competitor Analysis
You will be competing with huge players like Amazon, Walmart & BestBuy.
You might be thinking about finding a product with no competition, and if there is no competition, then the product may not have a demand for those products in the market.
Do a mockup or trial case before selecting scaling with such products.
It is okay to have a product with competitors. As mentioned earlier, most purchase happens based on impulse behavior, so it is all about how you position your product and market to your audience.
Use Google Keywords, Trend, and Amazon Search to see how many people search for niche keywords and how many products exist. See if you can source those products for a lesser cost and market it to your audience.
3) Find a Reliable Source
When it comes to dropshipping, you need a reliable supplier who can supply the products with good quality.
Don’t rush by randomly selecting a supplier for cheap pricing. Conduct proper due diligence, and check the supplier delivery time, response time, and quality of the products.
It is easy to find a supplier when you are starting with a minimum order. But when you are about to scale your business, you need a more reliable supplier who can deliver the volume and maintain the product quality.
4) Build your eCommerce website.
Of course, you need to have your eCommerce website to list all your products and sell them to your customer. For dropshipping, Shopify is the best platform to get started, and you could launch your eCom website in less than 30 mins.
If you are good at coding and programming, you could go with the WordPress WooCommerce Website.
Both WordPress & Shopify comes with lots of plugin & apps, which will help you launch and manage your website easily.
5) Create a Sales & Marketing Plan
Launching a website and listing all the products are good, but you are not running a business if you are not making sales.
Facebook is the most efficient platform to attract potential buyers.
As mentioned earlier, most products sold by drop shipping are bought on impulse purchases only.
Once you find the winning ad for the product, you could start scaling the sell other products.
Include content, search engine optimization, and email marketing as part of your marketing plan; all these will help you in the long term.
Offer giveaways and discounts to attract customers and generate sales.
6) Track, Analyze, and Optimize
Data is everything, and you need to track every action on your website. When you track every transaction, you know where your customers are coming from and what source gives you sales. Data will help you identify the best source on which you need to focus on and scale your business.
Analyze where you are spending and track how much sales are coming from that source and optimize those sales funnel and process.
