What Is Dropshipping, And How Can You Be Successful At It?
By Paul Wynter January 8, 2020Everyone’s out to make some money these days, many of which are turning to the online world to do so. From gig economies to eCommerce, there are many different ways to make a few quick bucks. Whether you’re looking for a side gig or you’re honestly trying to create a profitable income from online-based wok, dropshipping could be a great match for your needs and interests personally as well as professionally. However, there are many people out there that are vying for those same customers, so going about dropshipping the right way is going to be important for making sure that you are a success at it without selling your soul.
What is dropshipping?
Firstly, let’s take a look at what dropshipping really is. This is kind of eCommerce that essentially makes you the middleman. You’re the connection between the client and the product, but you don’t actually come into contact with either of them. You’re just there to talk the customer’s money and put the order through to the supplier to send the customer the specified product.
Dropshipping is really unique for those who love the idea of selling products online but don’t have a spare warehouse sitting around, or for those that don’t have the option of shipping out products regularly for whatever reason. It allows you to do the part that you love and outsource the part that you hate! It’s also much more cost-effective as you pay wholesale prices for your products (often with a built-in storage fee) and your web hosting fees, etc, but that’s it.
How to make dropshipping successful
It that sounds pretty great right now, you certainly aren’t alone with that. There are many people out there who are searching around ot see just how they, themselves, can get ahead of the saturated dropshipping market out there and make some cash. If you want to put your name in the running and make sure that you actually get your market share, here are some of the best tips that you can us to help you find success!
• Carefully select your niche and products: The reason that there is os much competition out there is because a lot of people are looking to offer the same customs the same products. When you’ve got 10 options to buy 1 product, you can’t possibly be expected to make a profit. So, before you simply just look at selling what the person next to you is selling, you’ll want to really dedicate item and energy to the nice and product to sell.
You’ll want to sell something that people are interested in, of course, but you’ll want to avoid anything that already has too many venders. Not only will it be hard to get a sale, it means that the price for you to buy those products for your dropshipping purposes is going to be higher, too. Pick a niche and series of products that are interesting to you as a shopper and still have enough originality that not everyone will be selling them.
The number one complaint that customers have with dropshipping is that the quality of the item is bad. You’ll want to be careful in selecting your dropshipper, too. Pick one that charges low prices but not so low that it’s going to be sketchy. Your customer will make it your problem if you deliver a bad product, so be very particular when hunting for an affordable but decent dropshipping supplier.
• Put effort into checking out the competition: Whatever dropshipper or product and niche you decide to go with, there will be direct competition for your product. You’ll want to spend some time checking them out and learning from them. Learn from both their advantages and positive things, as well as negative details and mistakes. These can all help you be stronger than them and you’ll be already up on the competition when the time comes for you to publish your online shop.
• Focus on branding: If you’re going with dropshipping nondescript items (as in, anyone can sell them), you need to really focus time on building your brand and making sure that you get the word out there about your brand itself. From SEO to marketing to cold calls, do whatever you can to make sure the online and offline world knows about your brand.
YouTube for social outreach
• Really do your customer research: You can’t effectively market and sell to a customer if you don’t know who you’re talking about! Do some customer research and really get a feel for how to talk to them. This is all important information to use when writing product descriptions as well as any ads that you’re going to be running, too, so it’s valuable information regardless of your role.
• Use analytics (and learn from them): WHen you start to get the analytics going and you can see what’s working and what isn’t, make sure that you look at those analytics quarterly and analyze it all. Even though it can be confusing to see the populating swinging back and forth for no clear reason, it’s valuable information that will help you to see what’s working overall and what isn’t. This will help you amend your store and marketing to make your shop even more popular. Not only should you take a look at you analytics regularly, you should also actually use them to learn from the data and better yourself.
• Keep your professional cool: Your customer service will make or break you, there’s no question about it. Keep your professional persona in check in any and all interactions with customer (no matter how much of a pain they are). At the end of the day, your customer service will determine just how successful you are. It doesn’t matter how cheap your products are or how well you market your self. If you don’t treat customers the right way, they’ll go someone who will!
Dropshipping can be a great way to earn some cash, but there is a lot effort to put into it when you want to get the right results. If you’re ready to find success out there in the world of online selling, these tricks will give you boost ahead of the competition in the best way.
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