Drop shipping has recently made its mark in the business world today, with it’s simple characteristics and easy to set up pattern.
Easy to set up in the sense that you do not need to have a product or a shop(unlike mortar and bricks business) for you to start, all you need is an internet, audience, supplier and a social media platform.
There are so many good things about drop shipping, without further ado let me go straight to the business of the day.
What is dropshipping and how does it work?
The concept of dropshipping is quite simple and easy to understand. So many explainer has been created that explains dropshipping; not just on how it works but also how their platform can help make it quick, easy and effective for any one to start a business online.
This can be summed into 3 simple steps.
- Find Products to Sell
We offer thousands of products from trusted suppliers. you can easily the products into your shopify store and start selling. - Fulfill Orders Automatically
When you receive an order you can pay with some few clicks. The Supplier ship orders directly to customers - Focus on Growth
With access to thousands of products and automatic fulfillment, you can and should focus on growing your business.
Drop-shipping is quite similar to affiliate marketing, in the relative fact that you don’t need to hold inventory. However,one these three scene can not be avoided; one will need to market their store, connect with a drop-shipper, and also process orders. In simplicity, you are running an online store the same way any product based business is, except that you don’t need to actually hold the product, ship it out, and have a massive upfront investment to spend on inventory.
Finding the right products to sell?
You need to be specific and intentional as to knowing what you are going to sell. It doesn’t have to be something you are familiar with, but something you know how to market and get in front of the right audience.
You should also consider how saturated the market is, what your profit margins are going to look like and also it is of utmost importance that you check how competitive and expensive it will be to start running paid ads campaigns to promote your online store.
There are several tools that can help with the research process:
- Google trends: this tool enables you to search for products, look for the interest in the products, service, or keyword over time
- Amazon and eBay: this will give you ideas, sales numbers and customer reviews
Using these free tools and resources will enable you find fast selling and winning product to sell, which is quite important before launching your site. For more clarification on this process, i recommend you take a quick look at this article on how to find the right product to sell, which outlines the following key points.
Most dropshipping products share similar or the same attribute.When researching potential dropshipping products, keep in mind these five criteria:
- Product Cost:The cost of products allows for a healthy markup.
- Product Quality:The product is unique, intriguing, or attractive.
- Product Accessibility: The product is difficult to find elsewhere.
- Product Consumers: Consumers find it difficult to determine the original cost of your product.
- Product Utility: Consumers are happy to buy your products without too much research.
Assuming you can get all this process worked out and you have found you desired products, how can you find the right supplier or dropshipper to start working with?
Where and How to Find Reliable Dropshippers.
Haven’t had loads of experience with Dropshipping, this process is not just the most important of all, but it’s also can be me most time consuming.
This can not be emphasised. If you are going to build a business of your own, where someone else will be delivering the products,they need to be trustworthy, reliable and always on time. Back in time when i first built and ran my first dropshipping site, i had to acquire an online store and i got a direct information for the drop shipper. Nowadays, it’s much easier and stress less to find a dropshipper online, However finding a good one is like finding water in a desert, difficult but sure.
Oberlo has not only created a platform and provided solution for people to start sell online, they have simplified and streamlined the stress in looking for a reliable and high-quality dropshipper to work with. As the company continues to take great steps in making constant big waves in the online business space, they have recently come up with a secured list of “Oberlo Verified” suppliers to work with.
No need for explanations and exclamations, if you want to sell a product and need a reliable, timely and trustworthy dropshipper, just go through their list. Interestingly, you can just “just pick one, we checked them already”, as they say on their site.
How ever, this list is not just a simple hand picked and selected list, it goes way more than that, not to elaborate much,take a look at how Oberlo Suppliers stack up the competition, and the many factors that go into this verified decision process.
With such data and verified information readily accessible, Oberlo has eliminated one of the time consuming and frustrating process in starting an online business, i.e looking for a dropshipper.
Best Ways to Effectively Promote Your Online Business
As earlier mentioned, it is pretty easier to go live with a blog, website or even an online store your own. The only problem is promoting your own content and generating sales.
This will all come down to the level of effectiveness you use in promoting your online store, Optimize your ad campaigns, and learn to correctly price your products for the best conversion and margin possible.
Some of the best working methods you can use in promoting your dropshipping stores are:
- Using Coupons – Every person enjoys saving money online. Using this technique helps, offering coupons does not only bring increase in sales, it also brings free promotion and traffic coming from different coupon sites and forums.
- Affiliate Program – Going live on your site with your own affiliate program increases sales on your site. The best part is you only get to pay out money when new sales come in!
- SEO and PPC Marketing – Online store will always do great with organic search ranking and using PPC to get high – quality customers to their site. Each method has its singular and unique advantage, but it is up to you to as the store owner to determine where your resources (time and money) is best spent.
- Social Media and Remarketing – With the social media as the largest community on earth, hosting about three – billion Users, how can you not take advantage of this huge market? Placing a tracking pixel on your site is a real great way to get started, then delivering remarketing ads to visitors that didn’t convert on their first visit. A super easy way to set this up is with Facebook Ads.
- Building a Mailing List – A mailing list is one of the best ways to grow your business at scale and increase sales. It is very important that you always collect email address of users on your site. Offering 10% coupons is a great way to get users to submit their emails, and interestingly also increasing the possible chance for a sale as well.
No need sitting on the wall wondering when am i ever going to start my own online business or dropshipping business, you have the keys now. Get on and Win all the way.
Just as we have seen over the years WordPress has been able to simplify the building of website and blog, we are seeing the same transformation taking place in the world of online stores as well. There are little – to – no technical or design skills needed to get started. All it takes to get started is the willingness to put in the time, work, and effort. Then follow all of the above steps laid out for you.
