Dropshipping is an extremely popular business model these days. I personally know a lot of people who started the dropshipping business after COVID-19 lockdown and just in a couple of months with trial and errors, a couple of hiccups their stores are crushing it with the sales.
It almost feels unreal the kind of sales that they are doing.
Dropshipping is also very often seen as a goose chase that has also left people bankrupt and I don’t blame them. The catch in the game is so appealing that it excites people into gambling their way into this head-on.
In the very initial stages, a lot of critical factors need to be taken into account to set things the right way otherwise the results are catastrophic.
In this essential step by step dropship business setup guide, you will learn of such factors to be already accounted for
1. Select a Niche
This is a very important step and it’s understandable because your niche determines the kind of products that you will end up selling.
I see a lot of newbie dropshippers making this mistake of not thinking through niche selection.
A lot of dropshippers go ahead and open a multi-niche dropshipping store selling all sorts of products be it interiors, health products, kitchen accessories, and whatnot.
This is a very crude way of going about establishing your dropshipping store. When you instead select a single niche then your customers have a reason to revisit your dropshipping store hoping to find merchandise that they are likely to purchase.
Your niche selection should take into consideration whether you will be able to procure that commodity from a nearby supplier at the best quality and best price or not.
Some of the dropshipping niches that are killing it are Kitchen, Fitness & Home Decor.
- Think about profits
When selecting a dropshipping niche think about the profits that you would like to make. There are all sorts of expenses that you would end up enduring. Costs like taxes, shipping costs, RTO, Cancellation, and partners. When you are selecting the niche you have to factor in the worst-case scenarios of costs that you will have to bear to deliver every unit. After spending that if you are managing to make a sizeable profit in that niche then it is worth proceeding with that niche. - Product Appeal is a must
So you found a niche & it’s cost-effective so much that you can make your net profit. Another thing here to factor in is to check the product appeal for the products that are nested in your selected niche. If you are thinking long-term then season niches won’t do you any good. It is time to do some quality consumer research. Spend some time on forums and hear people’s discussions around the products that you are planning to sell.
2. Perform Competition Research
There is a treasure trove of business insights that you can gather from comprehensive competitor research. And this is something that you have ought to do before you go full game with the niche of your choice.
A simple Google search with advanced search operators like allintitle:Home Decor Stores in {country} will show you the competition that you face.
Secondly, you can search products on Google and go to the shopping tab to see how many people are running ads for the products you are planning to sell. You can perform the same exercise with Facebook Ad Library.
This will help you prepare a strategy to make yourself stand apart.
3. Get an online business license
Getting an online business license helps greatly with building credibility for your legitimate business. At the same time, you won’t have a hard time procuring a business credit card with an online business license.
Your business credit card will come in real handy with all the perks that you will get to enjoy in terms of the unfair purchase power that you will have to meet unexpected demands due to spikes or your digital ad doing overwhelmingly good.
4. Secure a supplier
Take this step super seriously. Making mistakes with choosing a supplier can wreck your business.
This is one of the greatest mistakes dropshippers make. You need to actually visit the supplier to see for yourself if the product is of good quality or not. They can easily fool you with appealing pictures on the internet. You need to read their product reviews to ascertain.
If everything seems fine then you can talk things through as in how you help him sell products and how your relationship will dwell over the course.
5. Build Your E-Commerce Website
It is best if you let the experts handle this bit, you should be willing to spend here on website design and development.
The (I’ll do it all myself) attitude will prove harmful here. This is where your business will exist and so you need to make sure of appealing aesthetics and to deliver a stunning user experience to the buyers who will come to buy from you.
6. Learn one aspect of marketing and outsource another
You can either learn SEO or Ads, to save money it’s best that you outsource one aspect and learn another to scale better.
In most cases, it is advisable to learn to do ads yourself and outsource Search Engine Optimization to the experts. They will work towards building sustainable growth for your business.
