Hi hivers,
Usually to sell something you need to manufacture that product or get it in bulk from manufacturer, store it in your warehouse/shop and then acquire customers to sell it to them. Cost of manufacturing or getting it from manufacturers, cost of warehouse/shop are absolute upfront costs in the process other than many more.
These days the trend of online shopping has changed the ecosystem quite a lot. Now you can create your own e-commerce store and start selling products over it a lot more easily. And on top of it cost of manufacturing or acquiring a product also gets zero if you follow drop shipping.
Its not actually a new way of selling something but its getting more and more relevant with increasing online shopping trend and reach of smartphones/internet to all. You can literally start your own drop shipping business just using a laptop with internet access working from any corner of the world. You can sell your products to a wide range of customers, just working online.
It sounds amazing and super easy, selling something online just working on laptop, without any investment. Ahh.. wait! No my friend, though its relatively easy and requires less capital but its not absolutely 'no investment'. There are expenses you have to consider to be successful in drop shipping. It still requires hardwork (even if its working online only) but you will have to do research, planning, designing, editing you can do all by yourself or you can outsource some of these. You should ideally have a website to sell your products, spend on marketing and do all whatever is possible to reach out to your customers and market your product to them.
Lets talk about steps to get your drop shipping business started.
Finding a product or category:
A product or product category is your first and foremost requirement. What you want to sell is the first question and how you answer it, decides how far you can go with it. Look for a product that has demand, margin, availability. Or you can look for something for which you can create demand by your own marketing strategy. Look for a product that can be trusted on, that serves it purpose, that has decent quality to retain your customers and getting good brand value for your business.Finding suppliers: As you are not manufacturing the product you need to find a supplier for that product. Specially in drop shipping case a supplier who can drop ship the product on your name. There are many drop shipping platforms/suppliers that gives you a wide range of product options and when you place order to them they can ship that product to customer on your behalf (that means customer gets the product with your business name).
Getting an identity: For a business to run or operate, it must have an identity. As in case of drop shipping its totally online you should get a website. A website or a e-commerce store to be specific. It requires to get a hosting subscription, a domain name, and then designing your website. You won't actually need to have that website designing skill for it, thanks to numerous tools available and the growing AI integration, you can get your website ready in a few clicks (using readymade templates). Many drop shipping platforms provide seamless integration, so you can have their products on your website easily.
Marketing: Now that you have selected products, found suppliers, made your website and listed your products on it. It seems all done here.. just need to wait for customers to come and buy products. Naaah.. its not that you have opened a showroom in busy street, market or a crowd catchy mall, its all online, it can stay there for years and no one will ever visit your page. So, learn about ads, find your target audience, design catchy ads and place your ads on google and facebook. Get your presence on every social media, create content to post on social media.
Marketing may have the largest chunk of your investment in drop shipping. As this gets you customers its worth spending on it.
A well planned and thoughtfully executed drop shipping business can get you a decent earning. It can be a source of passive income. It has potential to become a full grown business with its own brand value and then who knows to what extent you can increase it. Its a boon in times of technology and the era that we live in, that we have so many avenues of income, drop shipping is just one of them.
Hope you will find the information useful!
Thanks for reading all through it.
Keep reading, keep writing, keep growing.