What if I tell you that you can create a business without investing a dime in inventory, warehouse and employees. A business with the potential to replace your full-time income and be structured to run on auto pilot for months. It sounds crazy and impossible but it's not. The whole above story is possible with dropshipping business. Now you will be eager and hungry to learn, What is dropshipping business?
Then no problem, in this blog post you will learn from scratch and will be able to understand the business. Now let's start the proceedings.
What is dropshipping?
Dropshipping is a unique retail model that allows you to sell the products that others purchase and ship for you. Not understand? Ok, I will define it in detail.
Step no.1
You list the products of your supplier on your store for customers to buy but you don't buy the inventory.
Step no. 2
The customer purchases something from your store and you order the same exact product from a supplier.
Step no. 3
Your drop shipping supplier ship that item directly to your customer. So your customer receives the product which he ordered you. You receive the money for the retail price and your supplier will charge the wholesale price. So your profit will be the difference between the retail price and the wholesale price. So as simple as possible dropshipping I these 3 steps and this diagram will explain further.
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Dropshipping business doesn't cost too much as compared to other lucrative businesses.
How to start a dropshipping business?
1. Select a product
Unless you have a clear idea of the product, it will be a time-consuming and uphill task. The possibilities are very much endless and the decision you take will affect your business in years to come. So it's safe to assume that your personnel's passion and interest will lead out. Having a passion for your product is always great but wait it might not always be the right time to sell it. If your ultimate goal is to build a profitable online business then you should start by conducting objective marketing research.
Product Dont's
- Fragile or requires a complicated shipping process. Simply with this one complication are always around the corner. You can end up handling too many complaints, returns or delays and will lose clients and profit at the end of the day.
- Mechanical, huge, much weightage and high-quality standards. Avoid selling these types of products unless you are an expert in this area. It's definitely not the easy business ideology in dropshipping.
- Easily available sold by big giants. The point of successful e-commerce stores is to find unique and particular niche products.
- Trademark. This is a lawsuit waiting to happen. Simply, don't sell the products which require a license and you don't have that.
- Avoid seasonal products. Seasonal products are always tough to sell because it fluctuates big time.
Product Do's
- Specific niche products, the more specific the better to sell. As an online seller, you need to sell unique products which are not easily and widely available.
- Small and light easy to ship. The bigger the product the higher the cost of shipping and that will eat your profit. Selling heavy products quite be a hassle and it's not a good choice for a small online start-up.
- Difficult to find locally. If you need something for your home then you will go home depot. But when you required an unusual product for an unusual hobby then you will hover on the internet and will start to find it. Nevertheless, as a dropshipping store, you need to find out sufficient demand also.
- Consistent Demand. Seasonal products are likely to fall after a few months. You can end up spending too much time and resources on products that will soon be obsolete. Selling stable products will allow you more stable business and good relationships with customers.
- $50 to $150 range price. This price is fine enough to generate substantial revenue from a signal sale and also low enough so that the customer will not be nervous to make a purchase. Products with higher prices will require better customer service at your online store.
2.Study a competitor
The next thing you need to do after selecting the products is to research the competitor. Yes, you will have the competitors in drop shipping business also. You will have to find dropshipping sites that you will be competing with. Basically, you need to find your competitor before launching the store.
3. Create your store
Yes, you read that right after all the previous steps the next step is to build your store. Yes even before contacting the supplier because a good supplier won't approve you unless they see your store. So this is something you need to do even before making a phone call or e-mail to your supplier.
Get approval from the supplier
Once you build the e commerce store then you need to find the supplier and need to reach them. You need to make a phone call or e-mail to get approval from suppliers.
4.Acquire paid traffic
In the start, you will struggle to get traffic on your site or e-commerce store so you need to get paid traffic. There are tons of different ways to get traffic and you shouldn't rely on just one source. You need to have diversified traffic.
5. Outsource and automate
After that, you need to outsource and automate. The beauty of dropshipping is that it is very easy to automate and outsource different tasks. You don't want to do that 1st but with the passage of time and for the growth of your store you need to do it at some point. it’s very easy to start delegating tasks, outsourcing and using apps that automate how your business works on a day-to-day basis.
I think after reading this post the concept about will be clear in your mind. You should start this business if you are looking for a part time income and it can be full time income also.
