Introduction
If youre looking for a wayto make money without a huge upfront investment, and without a lotof hassles or work, drop shipping with an e-commerce platformis exactly what youve been looking for.
Its simple, inexpensive toget started, and your business can be run in your spare time orturned into a full-time business, if you wish to branch out.
With drop shipping, youdont have to worry about having money to invest in inventory, orabout dealing with finding warehouse space or shipping outpackages.
Simply add products to youronline store, place orders with the drop shipper, and have themsent directly to your customers. For the most part, its incrediblystraightforward, and hassle-free!
Obviously, like anybusiness, youll have to be ready to deal with issues occasionally,but were going to cover some easy ways you can minimize any suchissues and keep your business running like a well-oiledmachine.
This special report is allabout helping you get started with drop-shipping quickly andeasily. Not only will I show you how to find the best drop shippingsources, but Ill even show you to jumpstart your business bygenerating premium traffic to your store.
So, lets getstarted!
How Drop Shipping Works
Lets take a quick look athow the drop shipping process works, starting with how to sellusing just a single product as an example.
Lets say you decide todrop ship fidget spinners. You choose a model you believe will bepopular, and you create a simple web page for the product with aphoto, description, basic information, and a link to buy.
When someone makes apurchase from your page, they pay you at the time of purchase. Youthen order the product from the suppliers website, paying for itwith the money the customer already paid you, and enter yourcustomers shipping address instead of your own.
Its a bit like making agift purchase from a site like Amazon. You pay for the product, butyou have it shipped directly to the buyer.
Okay, you probably have awhole bunch of questions running through your mind right now. Wellget to most of them shortly. But yes, it really is thatsimple.
The first thing youreprobably asking is, Why notjust order the products from Amazon if its that simple?
Well, there are two BIG problems with that.
First, youd never makemuch of a profit doing that. Products on Amazon are being soldaround retail price, so making a profit would be pretty difficultunless you somehow manage to get into a niche market with a lot ofdemand where you can charge a premium price and still havebuyers.
Second, Amazon puts theirown promotional material all over everything they send out. Whileyou might get one order from a customer, oncethey realize the products came from Amazon, theyll go there,discover the product was much cheaper there, and never order fromyou again.
Its just not a smart wayto build your own brand.
With drop shipping, mostcompanies wont put their materials or branding on or in the boxes,and some may even put your promotional material intothe packages for you, if you ask!
Example: Ive purchased coder stickers from a popularprogrammer online and while hes transparent about the fact that hepurchases the stickers from a drop-shipper in China, when thepackage arrived every sticker package had his branding and logo onthe box! I would have never known it was a drop shipped packagefrom China.
And thats the point. Youare selling products as though they come directly from you, eventhough you never have to bother shipping anything out or trackingpackages. You simply receive payment, order the item, and let thecompany handle delivery.
Are you starting tounderstand why so many people love drop-shipping?
Drop Shipping Benefits
You dont have to use dropshipping to be successful in e-commerce. You can find success withjust one simple, inexpensive product with a relatively smallupfront investment.
You can also find successinvesting a great deal upfront in stock and offering a wide varietyof items. Its totally up to you and your circumstances.
However, if you want tohave a full e-commerce site, and you dont have a lot of money toinvest in the beginning, drop shipping is the perfect businessmodel to help you get started. You can always invest in inventorylater, once your business is profitable enough.
Keep in mind that dropshipping is not a perfect business model. There are afew issues you need to keep an eye out for, which we will addressin the next chapter. But there are some big benefits, too.
Lets take a look at someof the biggest benefits of drop shipping.
- For one thing,you dont have to invest a huge amount of money in the beginning toget started. All you need to get started is a domain, website, andthe software to run your shop. In most cases, you can get startedfor less than a hundred bucks.
- Also, youdont have to spend as long sourcing products. One of the mosttime-consuming elements of e-commerce is finding the right productsfor your shop, and when you use drop shipping, youll often be ableto source multiple products from the same supplier.
- Its also veryeasy to add inventory to your shop, because most major dropshipping suppliers either have a plugin you can use toautomatically add inventory to your shop, or they have CSV filesyou can import into your software to control your stock. This is ahuge time saver.
- Another greatthing about drop shipping is that there is much less risk involved.Since you arent investing in product upfront, you dont have toworry about getting stuck with unsold inventory if you buysomething that turns out to not be as popular as youanticipated.
- Its also verynice to not have to worry about having warehouse space, managinginventory, and sending out packages. These are all things that areexpensive and time-consuming, and they are completely avoided byusing drop shipping.
These are just a few of thebiggest benefits, and you can probably already see how great it canbe for someone whos just getting started!
Avoiding Potential Pitfalls
Lets take a look at a fewof the most common problems that might come along, and how you canminimize the potential of experiencing them.
Products Out Of Stock
One of the most commoncomplaints youll get is when certain products are out of stock,especially if they are particularly popular and hard to find. Thiscan happen to any store, even monolithic stores like Amazon. And itdefinitely upsets customers when it happens.
However, its important tokeep track of stock to minimize the potential of upsettingcustomers, because they will be a lot unhappier if they think youhave the product in stock and place an order only to find out theproduct was out of stock than they would be just being notifiedbefore they purchase that the product isnt available.
For this reason, its avery good idea to use some sort of plugin that will automaticallyupdate your site whenever products are out of stock.
Well take a look later ata nifty extension you can use to keep track of stock, and it willhelp make your job of finding and adding stock much easier,too!
Product Returns
Every single company on theplanet must deal with returns. Even if you have a strict no-returnspolicy, you will still have to deal with unhappy customers thatattempt to get a refund. And telling them no will just result invery angry customers.
I know someone whopurchased a lot of items from one very popular discount shoppingapp, found that the quality was terrible and the sizing was wayoff, and could not return them because the company had a no-returnspolicy. The customer was very upset, and left bad reviews for thecompany all over the place. And this person was far from the onlyperson complaining about not being able to return items.