What is Dropshipping ?

What is Dropshipping & how to start ?

Today’s blog is about Dropshipping. What it’s & how you can get started. You’ll also come to know about some actionable steps to start your own dropshipping business today. Here in this blog, I’ll give you a few personal suggestions & things to keep in mind as you’re getting started. Say, you’ve been thinking of starting up your own online business, but you don’t know where & how to start. You’ve no idea what you should sell & you don’t have the money to invest in products, & looking around & you don’t have any place to store inventory. That’s what dropshipping is all about. With dropshipping, you can sell merchandise online without the products ever being in your hands. You only need a computer, an online store & a basic understanding of how to market & sell online. Here’s how it works.

The basics of Dropshipping

1^st, you need to find what you want to sell from a supplier then list that product on your website at a price you want to set. Now, when someone places an order for that product, your customer pays you the retail price you’ve set, & you make a profit. Then you’ll place the order with your supplier at their wholesale price & have it shipped directly to the customer. So, suppose, you’ve found this guitar on a supplier’s website for $ 80. You would then list it on your website for $ 100. When the order comes in through your website, you then place your order with your supplier using your customer’s shipping information, keep the $20 profit, & have the product shipped directly to your customer. It’s that easy & simple.

A detailed analysis

Now, the question is why wouldn’t somebody just order the guitar directly from the supplier’s website ?. 1^st, it’s a very big world of internet & customers may not know about the supplier to buy from them directly. 2^nd, when people buy things, they’re not just buying products. They’re buying into the marketing, positioning, trust, brand & lifestyle those products represent. With dropshipping, you’ve to focus on marketing your products & saying the right things at the right time, & providing real value to the people because you’re not warehousing any inventory or dealing with most of the other challenges that come with running an eCommerce business, Now, a couple of big challenges that need to be taken care of with dropshipping is finding valuable suppliers with good quality products & making sure you’ve good visibility into your customer’s fulfillment process. You’ll have to find suppliers on your own.

However, when you’re dropshipping completely on your own, you can end up spending a lot of time researching & negotiating with suppliers to guarantee your customers’ satisfaction. Another good option is a tool – Oberlo, which with a few clicks gives you access to several products to sell, & has plenty of other features to make your life easier. Like monitoring inventory levels, automatically calculating profit margins, fulfilling & tracking orders, monitoring shipping status, measuring delivery performance & more. Oberlo Supply is also a part of the product, which helps you partner with vetted, trustworthy suppliers of great quality products, faster shipping times & awesome customer service with thousands of different products available for you to choose from.

Want to get started in Dropshipping ?.

All you’ve to do is start a Shopify store, install the Oberlo app, find products & start selling online. So why people will want to do dropshipping ?. Because it’s really fast & easy to get started & you can dropship with incredibly low investment costs. One doesn’t require to have an established business entity when they start but make sure you’ve one once you grow. One doesn’t have to worry about managing inventory, packing, or tracking. This means you can focus almost exclusively on marketing, promotion & merchandising. You instantly access millions of products that suppliers are constantly researching to determine what’s trendy & what will sell. You decide the retail price & so you control the margins. Virtual assistants can also be hired by you when your order volume increases & therefore Dropshipping is easy to scale.

Challenges in Dropshipping

There can be some challenges with drop shipping also. There’s a higher potential for competition because it’s easy to get started. You should start off finding a niche audience – like dog lovers or gamers or travelers, etc. So you can operate with less competition. Next, there are supplier errors. Though uncommon, a supplier may mistakenly ship the wrong product to your customer. If this happens, you don’t need to take it personally & handle the return like a professional. You can either order a brand new product from the supplier or offer a complete refund. Many dropshipping suppliers are based in China & so shipping times are a bit longer, turning some consumers off.

ePacket makes it easier, delivering some orders in as little as two weeks. But if you make your shipping times clear throughout the buying process then many visitors appreciate the clarity. When you’re selling an item or in a niche where delivery times are not crucial. So, how does anyone or you get started ?.

• Start a free 14 day trial on Shopify.com.
• Go to Shopify.com/app-store & install the Oberlo app.
• Find products from the app which you’d like to sell & add them to your store.
• You’ve to enable a payment gateway so you can start accepting money from any part of the world. Shopify Payments is a fantastic option if you’re in one of the supported countries. But, you should also enable a few other gateways like Paypal, Apple Pay, Amazon Payments, or any of the several payment gateways like Shopify. Once you’ve all that, you’ll need to create a plan for sending traffic to your store.
• Finally, try to have quality content for your store. From eye-catching photography to engaging product videos to great posts for your blog, your audience loves to know more about your products.

Here are a few additional things to keep in mind. Dropshipping is pretty easy to learn, but there is a learning curve, & you’ll experience challenges along the way. Mistakes can happen in the process & it’ll become a learning opportunity & an experience. If you can develop resilience along the way, there are plenty of people out there who’ve achieved success in dropshipping products. While there is a huge advantage in regards to capital investment over traditional eCommerce, dropshipping isn’t for free. You’ll have to invest money to drive traffic, market your products, & you’ll also need to handle returns. There is no overnight success, & this isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme. You need to work consistently & diligently for your store to achieve success in Dropshipping.

Conclusion

You’ll need to dedicate less time compared to traditional eCommerce businesses. But it’s not going to succeed without your hard work. You’ll always need to dedicate time to improve your business. Don’t source copyrighted items. This is illegal all over the globe & can land you in some serious legal trouble. Select & choose products from Oberlo Supply. It’s a network of trusted suppliers who make it a priority to avoid copyright infringements at all costs. In this way, you can be very much assured that you won’t infringe any copyright laws at any stage.

If you’re completely new to drop shipping then start small with a single product or a small handful of complimentary items from a single supplier. When you become comfortable then you can always add more inventory. But it’s better to start small & build than to start big & become overwhelmed & confused. When you’re feeling comfortable with drop shipping then you need to diversify. Also, many drop shippers don’t depend on a single store for their total income stream but operate a series of stores. They target various niches to build multiple sources of income. All right, that’s all for this blog, folks.