What is Drop Shipping and How Can You Get Started?

Before getting started, what is dropshipping and how can you get started? If you have been seeking to create an online business opportunity through dropshipping, well, you’re in the right spot!

Why is it great for entrepreneurs? It surely has great advantages, in fact, 33% of online shops use drop shipping as a fulfillment model.

That’s right! Dropshipping is a type of retail fulfillment method, where instead of a store stocking products, it purchases the products from a third-party supplier and the products are shipped directly to the consumer.

This way, the seller doesn’t have to handle the product directly and this is where you’ll come in!

Dropshipping doesn’t demand as much as the traditional retail model and you don’t have to open a brick-and-mortar store, pay overhead, and stock products! All you’ll need is to own a computer, open an online storefront, and buy wholesale from suppliers who already have products and a warehouse space where they’ll keep the products, and you’ll be earning the commissions on each product you sell on your online storefront.

As the seller, you’ll be the middle person between the customer and the owner of the products. With dropshipping, you can really build a business that’s sustainable in the long term right from your laptop and it’s easy, to begin with!

Take a look here below to get the idea of how dropshipping works:

All you need to learn is how to market and sell online the products without having previous business experience.

Sounds easy, doesn’t it? So which are the advantages and disadvantages of Dropshipping and how can you get started?

In our article, you’ll find all the answers to your queries and which tools and resources you’d need to get started with.

Let’s delve deeper and get you equipped with all the knowledge you need to jumpstart your own dropshipping business through:

• Drop Shipping Pros;
• Drop Shipping Cons;
• Drop-Shipping Step-by-step guidance on how to begin!
• Drop-Shipping Conclusions

Drop Shipping Pros

Dropshipping Pros are just something you just can’t Ignore, let’s see why!

Dropshipping is easy to start and as you scale up, your business model doesn’t extremely have to change, but surely you’ll have to put more work into sales and marketing.

One thing is that being your own boss, your day-to-day will stay more or less the same, and if you’re going on vacation, you can automate everything to run while you’re gone.

One of the benefits of dropshipping is that the costs don’t skyrocket as you scale and you can do almost everything by yourself unless you want to assemble a small team at some point.

Starting a dropshipping business requires minimal funds without having high-level investments. Even as your business grows, your costs will be fairly low.

One of the biggest pros and benefits of Drop Shipping is that it’s totally flexible since it allows you to set your own rules. You can work from home with little more than a laptop, at the times that are most convenient, giving you plenty of room to make your own decisions that suit best for you.

Listing new products whenever you want by adjusting your strategies on the go has never been so easy.

Set everything up, seek and find suppliers and you’re ready to go, but first, let’s check the cons and see if drop shipping is the right choice for you!

Drop Shipping Cons

If you’re thinking that you’ll earn big right from the start, don’t actually count on it. Dropshipping has slim margins, especially at the beginning and this is One of the disadvantages depending on how you see it.

Earning low margins doesn’t mean it can’t be profitable, but you should be aware that the product margin in some niches might below and this is why you should pick the niches that aren’t super competitive.

The point is to find customers’ who are interested that will catch your advertisement and would involve them to click on the product you’re trying to sell. This brings us all to one thing: your target audience! If you stick with the right niche, you’ll see larger margins.

Dropshipping relies mainly on a fair amount of sales to be profitable, so you'll have to also set in mind that it's not going to be easy in finding the right products, but once you get the hang of it, it will smoothly begin to succeed.

Another big con of Dropshipping is that it could make the processing of the order a little difficult as the customer orders, you process it, and your supplier fulfills. Since you have to manage the interaction with your suppliers, this can get tricky, and this is why you should search well the suppliers you’d like to deal with.

As we previously said, you won’t have control over certain aspects of the dropshipping process such as stocking products, order fulfillment, and shipping which is amazing, but you really have to rely on your suppliers to do everything right and work smoothly to not have claimed by customers that buy from you risking in not making them come back to you.

This simply means that when something goes wrong, it's hard to manage especially if you put the client above everything!

By speaking of which, Dropshipping will make customer service extremely challenging. When orders go wrong or suppliers fail, you’re just the storefront and won’t have control over the situation, making it difficult to sort out orders and handle customer support which could cause stress.

And talking about stress, you'll need to take the blame from your customers' complaints as something goes wrong even if you’ve been doing everything right, you could still run into problems if your suppliers have issues and this is one of the most unfortunate disadvantages of Dropshipping.

Now that you got an overview, let’s see here below what it looks like!

Now that we’ve covered what dropshipping is with its pros and cons, let’s go through how it exactly works with a step-by-step overview of the entire dropshipping process.

Drop-Shipping Step-by-step guidance on how to begin

With Dropshipping you can start your first online business in just a few clicks.

Let’s unlock everything you need to open your first dropshipping store to make it simple for entrepreneurs who want to run a business wherever and whenever they want. No experience? As we previously said, that’s not a problem.

• Find worth selling dropshipping products
• Choose trustworthy suppliers
• Build a Shopify store and e-commerce brand
• Set up your first Facebook ad to drive traffic to your store
• Optimize your ads and store so you can scale and dominate

Find worth selling products

There are a whole lot of products out there and choosing which ones to sell is one of the toughest parts of running a successful online store.

You’ll need to learn the five criteria that make a winning product, then use them to brainstorm ideas and start with five products to sell.

Choose suppliers

Just like there, you will find many products, you’ll find so many suppliers! Learn how to navigate your options and you’ll understand how to tell if a supplier is reliable and who’s got quality products especially from what they sell and what best fits your niche.

Build a store

Create a new Shopify store and import products and manage orders. Choose a name, create a brand and logo, and build out your product pages (and the legal stuff, too). Focus your time and energy where it matters most.

Set up Facebook Ads

We all know that there is no point in having a store if nobody sees it, right?

Driving traffic and sales through Facebook Ads is a must to expand your brand awareness and check the ins and outs of advertising on Facebook, like how to target the right audience and set up an Ads account. You’ll reach the point where you’ll draw in customers with killer video ads and this will help you check what gets higher results than other ads adjusting and optimizing to not waste precious resources.

Optimize and scale

Keep everything running smoothly, and expect you could occur into managing returns and refunds if something goes wrong.

Once you’ll get an understanding of how to analyze Facebook Ads, you’ll start uncovering what’s working and what isn’t by testing, tweaking to start optimizing, and from there, you’ll start nailing it.

Drop-Shipping Conclusions

Start your business today and remember that Facebook Ads will get you a higher visibility reach to visitors and sales and all you’ll need is to keep optimizing until you find the right formula that suits you best.

Are you still in doubt if to drop shipping or affiliate marketing for your business, check our other article to get a better overview of which would be the best fit for you!

If Drop Shipping is the best fit, It’s time to find your niche, make your brand logo, and start searching for your products!