Imagine arriving to a foreign country, trying to find a decent lodging, café to eat, etc. Aside from wasting time and energy, you might be overcharged, get food poisoning, or face other unnecessary problems.
Not the best vacation, isn’t it?
That’s why you need to sort out some things before setting out. It makes your journey pleasing and predictable. Similarly, mapping out your dropshipping journey could save your money and time, as well as ensure your success.
Today, I am going to represent you the most important things you should know about dropshipping and starting this kind of business...
1. Always pick a niche
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? The answer is pretty clear...
You get around competing with Amazon, eBay, and offline supermarkets which offer the same goods. Large-scale stores often lack the flexibility and 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 clients visit.
Narrowing down the range of products you sell lets you draw up a clear marketing plan. And marketing is vital in dropshipping business. SEO tasks become much easier. We’re sure, you want people to easily come across your online store while shopping on the Internet.
That means you should make your site and product pages SEO-friendly. This task is almost impossible in the case of general store. At the same time, taking a niche allows you to conveniently pick the necessary keywords and make your website come up on the top of Google search results.
2. There are some products you shouldn’t dropship
It’s true that dropshipping rids you of 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:
Copyrighted 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.
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.
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 a perfectly fine quality. So, it’s better to avoid the products that require a careful checkup before the purchase.
3. Use Google Trends
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 products’ 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.
4. Do a supplier research
There could be dozens of suppliers selling the same type of items on AliExpress. 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?
Here are the simple steps:
Go to AliExpress
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.
5. Payment
Your customers need to be sure that they’re safe while buying from your store. Setting a secure payment gateways is crucial for that.
But before doing so, you should consider some essential things:
Check if the gateway is accessible in your country and in the countries of your target audience residence.
Compare the transaction fees. Of course, it’s tempting to choose the option with the lowest costs. But hold on! Take your time! There is something more to consider.
Find out if the gateway has a multi-currency support. Don’t forget that you’re going to work with the international audience.
Make sure your gateways accept all the major credit and debit cards (Visa, MasterCard, AmericanExpress, etc.).
Don’t forget that your store should accept PayPal payments.
6. SEO is necessary
We’ve already mentioned SEO as an important part of building a successful online business.
Yet, many entrepreneurs underestimate the role SEO plays in their success.
Search engine optimization (SEO) remains the cheapest and the most efficient way to drive traffic to your online store. Thus, every eCommerce business’ owner should learn as much as possible about this promotional instrument.
It’s natural that nowadays people turn to the Internet in search of the necessary information.
Therefore, you need to optimize your site so that the customers could easily come across your store.
Write appealing titles and descriptions to your product pages. And don’t forget to include the keywords in these texts. Fill your site with interesting content and you will bring in more customers!
7. Be patient
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 the 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.
Before putting your dropshipping store into operation, you need to make sure that everything is OK. Your website design, product pages, descriptions, product images, everything should be appealing, informative and of a good quality.
If you have a few sales in the first several weeks, review your PPC campaigns. Maybe, you’re paying your attention to the countries that aren’t attractive for this business, and you should shift your focus a little.
Maybe, you don’t have enough experience to step back and size up your online store properly. Probably, you can’t see and identify the weak points your site has. Thus, it’s reasonable to turn to the experienced dropshipping professionals. They have been running their own online stores for a long time. So, they will easily figure out your problems and offer you the ways to fix them.
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