Drop Shipping Journey

Dropshipping

As my first blog on here, I wanted to share my drop shipping journey with everyone. I will begin with a small introduction to explain what drop shipping is and how it all works.

So we will begin by asking; what is drop shipping?

Drop shipping is a fulfillment model that allows you to buy products individually from a wholesaler and ship them directly to your customer.

Instead of purchasing a large amount of inventory, you simply partner with a drop shipping supplier and list their merchandise for sale. Then, once you receive an order you forward it to the supplier for fulfillment. The supplier will ship the product directly from their warehouse to your customer, and charge you only for the price of the shipped item.

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What are the benefits of drop shipping?

Here we will cover a range of advantages:

Much lower Capital Requirement: With drop shipping, you don't need to purchase until the customer has ordered a product with you and from there you will order it with the supplier.

Wider Product Selection: Not needing to purchase stock from the supplier, you are able to significantly provide a large number of products to your customers.

Reduced Risk: Without the need to purchase and invest in inventory, there is hardly any risk involved.

Location: As you don't need to purchase a store or run a warehouse, you can provide a geographic shipping advantage. You can run the business anywhere in the world.

Is drop shipping a profitable business model?

Like with every business, making a business successful relies on a number variables. When done correctly, it is very much possible to create a highly profitable drop shipping business. As with every online business, it's not a magical fix and the next day you get instant results- it takes a lot of hard work and time, but it's a viable online business model with very low risk.

How much can I make with drop shipping?

Again, as with all businesses, profits and success range widely based on a number of factors – the biggest being the hard work and commitment of the drop shipping owner and the niche selected. But with providing that hard work, long-term commitment and the right approach, it is possible to create a drop shipping business that can provide you with a six -figure income . Of course this will take time to build; most likely years; but it's definitely possible.

Can you give me an idea of what kind of profit margin I can be expecting?

Your profit margin might decrease after including some premium offers for your customers; free shipping worldwide for example. But you will have to check with your supplier, they might even include shipping in the cost.

On what platforms can you sell drop shipping products?

You will be able to find drop shipped products just about everywhere. There are many drop shippers on amazon and eBay and you will find thousands of people having their own eCommerce sites.

While it may be easier in some ways to start drop shipping on platforms such as amazon and eBay, creating your own eCommerce site offers the best chance of building a scalable, profitable business in the long run.
Now that the introductory has been laid out for you, I will talk more about my own side of setting up an e-commerce store.

When starting out, either affiliating or drop shipping, you may struggle with your first hurdle and probably the most important one: what niche should I do?? After a lot of thinking and researching (definitely use the WA keyword tool- a great help), I came down to the idea of Wooden Watches. I found that there were a few sites selling 1 or 2 different brands on their website but that was all. Because of the lack of choice of wooden watch suppliers as with any other niche ideas, this proved much harder than initially planned to find quality range wooden watches. Success is just around the corner- just keep moving forward! I was so happy when I heard back from the first supplier to have their products stored in my website, then came the second set of good news and then the third.

Try to always go that extra mile with your customers! See what other competitors are not doing and try to implement that in your store. eg. provide worldwide free shipping. It might take a cut from that profit margin of yours but it will definitely be worth while if you want to provide something more than of your competitors and provide quality customer support.

How to find drop shipping suppliers/wholesalers?

There are a few options here; the first one being: contact the manufacturer. If you know exactly which products you want to sell, you can contact the manufacturers and they will be able to tell you which distributors will be willing to drop ship. Another option is to search on google. This may take a while, as there might be some suppliers who aren't hugely marketed, so even if you have to keep scrolling through page 5-10, then that's totally fine too. This is the reason being that a lot of suppliers don't pay huge a lot of money on marketing.

Or thirdly you can sign up to a directory where they help you find suppliers. You may need to compare and read reviews before deciding which will give you the best quality service. I had signed up to a suppliers directory, but found the niche of my choice was proving difficult to find, so I went back to search Google instead.

Now that my products are up on my website and everything is up and running, it's time to get marketing! This is where I am up to so far on my journey. What has everyone's biggest hurdle been when setting up a website or an e-commerce site? I would love to hear back from everyone!