How To Start Dropshipping Business

As you already read in one of our previous posts (here), dropshipping is a business model, where you don’t need to handle fulfillment and rent a warehouse space for your online store, as the goods are shipped directly to a customer by a wholesaler. Sounds super convenient, but where to start? Don’t worry, we got you! Keep reading and you will find out that it’s really simple.

1. Let’s start planning!

As anything business related, starting your online store requires a great deal of planning. Having a strategy will not only allow you to succeed faster, but also give you confidence and motivation to keep going. Knowing what’s your next step is crucial to stay determined. You should start with an idea and just go from there. Great! But what if you don’t have an idea?

To come up with a concept of a shop, try creating a list of categories you would like to test out. It would be the best if it’s something you like or are interested in, but it’s not necessary. For example, if you are an athlete, try to come up with different sport disciplines, or if you like to bake, think of different kinds of pastries, cookies, cakes, etc. Find related fields, you will need this later.

If you already established what are your areas of interest, you can go further and visualize your potential client. You will soon be able to learn more about customer profiling, which is a very useful while planning your marketing and product strategy.

2. How to find your niche?

Okay, now that you know, who your potential client is and what they are interested in, it’s time to test the waters and do a proper research. If you didn’t decide on specific fields yet, don’t worry, now you have the chance to establish that. Go to popular shopping platforms and see what’s trending there. Do you think you could sell similar products on your website? Will there be a place for your store with such competition? If the answer is “yes”, go for it! The best thing about dropshipping is that you can experiment, try out different things, and see what works best for you.

3. Choosing a platform for dropshipping business

There few platforms, perfect for dropshipping business, for example Shopify, WooCommerce, or Magneto (among others). Some of them are free to use, and some of them are paid services. So which one should you choose? Well, it all depends on the level of your experience, your budget, your expectations, and the type of business you want to create. For example, if you’re starting fro the scratch, without any previous experience with e-commerce, you can try Shopify. It is really easy to set up a store, and they have a wide range of store themes. Right now they offer a 14-day free trial, and after that, monthly subscription costs 29-299$ a month.

4. Pros and cons of dropshipping

As you know, there is no perfect system. Dropshipping gives you many perks and opportunities, however, it has some drawbacks.

Pros:

You can test your ideas in practice, and if you don’t succeed, you can try a different niche, without any additional costs.
As I mentioned in the beginning of this post, using dropshipping model gives you freedom from having to pay for warehouse space, and taking care of fulfillment.
The cost of starting that type of business is really low, so you don’t risk losing a lot of money.
You can work at home, or be on the move constantly, as the only thing you need to manage your business is a computer connected to the network.
After setting up a shop, it generates passive income. That means that you don’t have to constantly work on it to make money.

Cons:

You can’t control stock and shipping time.
You also can’t control quality of the product.

So now you know, what to expect at the beginning of your dropshipping e-commerce adventure. If you liked the post, please sign up for Ted&Greg Newsletter to be always up to date!