How to Start Dropshipping
The Beginner's Guide
So you want to dive into the world of ecommerce but feel overwhelmed by the upfront inventory investments of traditional online retail. Well, dropshipping offers an easier way to get started by letting you sell products without having to stock your own inventory.
In this post, I’ll explain exactly what dropshipping is, how the dropshipping process works, who the players are, and tips to succeed with your own dropshipping business as a beginner e-tailer. Let’s get started!
What Exactly is Dropshipping?
With dropshipping, you set up an online storefront to market and sell products just like any ecommerce site. But you don’t actually maintain an inventory of those products. Instead, you partner with third party suppliers who handle warehousing their inventory and shipping products directly to customers on your behalf.
When a customer buys from your store, you simply forward their order details to the supplier. The supplier then packs and ships the product in plain packaging without any branding to the customer.
As the store owner, you handle all the front end stuff like marketing, customer acquisition and support. Your suppliers take care of back end logistics like stocking inventory, order fulfillment and shipping.
How Does the Dropshipping Order Process Work?
The order workflow looks like this:
- Customer adds products to cart and completes checkout on your online store.
- Your ecommerce platform captures their order info and payment.
- You forward the purchase details to your chosen supplier.
- The supplier packages up the product and directly sends it to the customer.
- You keep your profit margin from the retail versus wholesale pricing difference.
It’s a simple yet powerful order fulfillment model. With the suppliers covering product costs and shipping, your costs are kept low.
Major Benefits of Dropshipping
There are several big advantages to the dropshipping ecommerce model:
- Lower Startup Investment: You avoid high upfront product inventory costs. You also skip warehousing expenses.
- Easy Scaling: You can add more product variety simply by onboarding new suppliers, rather than stocking more items yourself.
- Focus on Marketing: Instead of logistics, you can dedicate time to branding, content marketing, SEO, ads.
- Flexibility: Run your dropshipping business from anywhere with an internet connection. No brick and mortar space needed.
- Wider Selection: Offer far more products through using multiple suppliers than you could stock yourself.
5 Tips for Dropshipping Success
If you want your dropshipping business to thrive, here are five tips to follow:
- Find a profitable, in-demand niche – Don’t get too broad. Focus on specialization.
- Vet suppliers thoroughly – Order fulfillment speed and accuracy is critical.
- Automate order processing – Use integrations to streamline workflows.
- Provide top-tier customer service – Build loyalty by delighting customers.
- Invest heavily in marketing – It will fuel your sales growth. Don’t skip it!
The keys are choosing reliable suppliers, delighting customers, and aggressively promoting your store.
Ready to Jump In?
I hope this beginner’s guide has demystified the world of dropshipping for you. It’s an amazing business model that provides the benefits of ecommerce with far lower risks and startup costs.
Find a winning product niche, research suppliers, choose a user-friendly ecommerce platform, set up your storefront, and start promoting your products. Reinvest those early profits into marketing and growth. Before you know it, your own successful dropshipping empire could be born!
What are you waiting for? Time to get started!
