Dropshipping business model is a new and easy way to make money online. It is a low-cost, and low-risk online business model.
Dropshipping is a business model which you can use to run your store without ever holding any inventory. Once you’ve made a sale your supplier will ship your products from their warehouse, straight to your customer’s doorstep. You’ll never need to worry about storing, packaging, or shipping your products.
➥ Is Dropshipping profitable?
Yes, dropshipping can be a profitable business model for merchants even in 2022 because you are not responsible for shipping or manufacturing. It’s a low-risk business model that doesn’t incur huge costs like a wholesaler would normally have and you can earn a good profit margin with the right suppliers.
Simple things you need to know before starting a dropshipping business.
A niche store is always better than a general store. Let’s see it with an example
Where would you rather buy sportswear?
At a Nike store that is focused on selling it? Or at a store that sells, let’s say, light bulbs and pencil cases along with clothes?
- You get around competing with Amazon, eBay, and offline supermarkets which offer the same goods
Large-scale stores often lack flexibility and a customer-friendly attitude. You, in turn, can take the, on board and therefore, secure a huge competitive advantage!
- It’s easier to find your audience and target it
It’s hard to come up with a marketing strategy when you run a general store. For that, you need to know the websites and communities your potential client’s visit.
Does something come to your mind?
Right, it could be anything.
Narrowing down the range of products you sell lets you draw up a clear marketing plan. And marketing is vital in dropshipping business!
➥ Easy to rank
We’re sure, you want people to easily come across your online store while shopping on the Internet.
That means you should make your store and product pages SEO-friendly. This task is almost impossible in the case of the general store. At the same time, taking a niche allows you to conveniently pick the necessary keywords and make your website come up at the top of Google search results.
➥ Avoid following products to dropship
It’s true that dropshipping rids you with the tiring and complicated process of storing and shipping products. In other words, it makes running your business easy and quick.
Yet, a wrong choice of products might turn it into a pain in your neck. Dealing with angry and disappointed customers is not the most pleasing thing in the world, is it?
To avoid this letdown, we urge you not to sell the next types of products:
- Fragile products
Nobody wants to get a ruined purchase, right?
Due to a complex delivery process, there is a high risk of damaging items on their way to customers.
- Heavy products
Heavy items are not only hard to lift.
They’re going to make the delivery process more difficult and expensive. Besides, their weight makes them easy to get damage during shipping.
- Branded products
Of course, it seems tempting to sell products marked with a famous brand. People are eager to buy them.
However, it will certainly blow up in your face.
Such items are knock-offs. And that might mean serious legal problems for you. Not to mention that these actions might harm your reputation which will be difficult to claw back from.
- Technically complex products
When you’re buying a PC at an offline store, you can easily check whether everything is normal.
Your clients also expect to receive a fully functioning product. During online shopping, it is impossible to make sure the product is of perfectly fine quality. So, it’s better to avoid products that require a careful checkup before the purchase.
If you want to learn how to pick the best products to dropship, please, read this article.
Rely on Google Trends to pick your niche
Would you buy a slide projector?
Only for a museum exhibition, maybe…
Here’s the thing: your products should be in demand! Otherwise, your business doesn’t make sense.
Fortunately, there is a free tool to research the market: Google Trends.
Choose a product you’d like to sell, pick a time period, and the tool will show you how many people were googling this item or a related topic. You will be able to see all the ups and downs in product demand depending on the season, location, etc.
Then it’s up to you to decide whether or not this product is worth adding to your online store.
As you can see, slide projectors won’t bring you much money.
A research is necessary to choose a reliable supplier
Your suppliers may either ruin your dropshipping business or help it take off.
Keep it in mind!
You, not the suppliers, will be in charge of solving problems and dealing with annoyed customers if something goes wrong with the product’s quality or delivery. There could be dozens of suppliers selling the same type of items on the eCommerce platform. However, you have to find the business partners you could actually lean on.
You may be wondering how to pull it off. How to figure out whether a supplier is reliable or not?
Stay calm, there is no rocket science!
Here are the simple steps:
- Go to Beumaxafrica
- Type the title of a product you need
- Tick the “4* &Up” box
- Sort the results by the number of orders
- Look into the suppliers’ stats (time of their activity, feedback score, etc.)
- Read the customer reviews
- Make sure the suppliers offer free shipping options
Now, you’re good to go. Examine the data, put it all together, and make your choice.
The best option is to choose one supplier who is focused on a narrow range of products that matches your niche. It will make your service brilliant. Imagine customers buying various items from your store and receiving them all together at the same time. Wouldn’t they be pleased?
Don’t give up if there are little or no sales at the beginning
I know you imagine tons of money pouring in on the next day after the launch of your dropshipping store.
I hope it will be so.
But real-life examples show that some time passes before your business starts bringing you profits.
The most impatient entrepreneurs could even quit due to the delay. That’s a mistake.
First, before putting your dropshipping store into operation, you need to make sure that everything is OK. Your store design, product pages, descriptions, product images everything should be appealing, informative, and of good quality.
Second, if you have a few sales in the first several weeks, review your PPC campaigns. Maybe, you’re paying attention to markets that aren’t attractive for this business, and you should shift your focus a little.
Still, you should consider incorporating customer acquisition strategies to improve your online store’s performance. So, here are some customer acquisition strategies for you to consider
Customer acquisition is the art of persuasion. You can think of it as advertising and marketing. Sounds expensive, right? But it doesn’t have to be. You can take the fast path or the slow path to gaining new customers. Let’s take a look at both strategies in more depth.
➥ Social Media Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing has become a huge part of customer acquisition for retail brands in recent years. It could play an important part in any customer acquisition strategy in 2022. It can be particularly effective if you are in a trendy niche. The cost of influencer marketing depends on how famous the influencer is. A post from an account with millions of subscribers might cost several hundred thousand dollars, while a post from an influencer with a few thousand followers might only cost a few hundred dollars.
➥ Free advertising for slow results
Content Marketing
This most commonly takes the form of a blog on your store, a Youtube channel, trendy Instagram posts, or posts on Twitter. Content marketing is meant to involve the creation of valuable content that helps to build an audience that you can then convert into customers. It’s not as explicit as advertising and should always be more about serving your audience than your brand.
Blog or Forum Marketing
This involves finding blogs or forums that are related to your product/niche and actively participating in discussions. By positioning yourself as an authority in your niche and including a link to your store, you can increase traffic and acquire new customers.
Email Marketing
Building an email list is still one of the most effective ways of acquiring customers. You need a way of capturing email addresses, such as a request to sign-up at checkout, or an offer or competition that requires an email address. Once you have a decent list of email addresses you have a way of reaching a large group of people regularly, for free.
Social Media Marketing
Some channels to think about are Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. It’s almost a given these days that businesses and organizations are on at least one of these platforms. Pick one and be consistent and eventually, you’ll build a following, which you can then convert into customers.