Thinking of starting a dropshipping business? Dropshipping is a fun way to own your own business if you love selling great products and the best part is that you don’t need to store any merchandise in your home or business premises!
The best way to get started with your online dropshipping business is to write an online business plan. Here is how you do it…
Decide what you want to sell.
Many dropshipping business owners make the mistake of selling a product that they, themselves, love without thinking about the popularity of the item.
If you want to make a decent income from dropshipping, you need to choose a product that has a healthy profit margin and sells well.
Consider specializing in a product that is easily obtainable from a supplier and one where there is a high demand.
Another consideration when deciding on what to sell is the shipping element. If your product is too heavy, bulky or fragile, this will push up the shipping costs, making it unattractive to customers.
A product that can be marketed easily on a wide range of platforms and is not too complicated to ship is the best way to go.
Conduct in-depth competitor analysis and market research.
Once you have decided on a product, you will need to conduct some competitor analysis and market research.
It is relatively easy to see how well sales of a specific product performs by taking a look at the Google trends for that item. Using Google’s keyword planner, you will be able to see how often users search for the product and the geographic locations where it is the most popular.
Your competitor analysis should involve research into competing dropshipping businesses. These can easily be found by a simple search engine look-up and you should be able to have a good idea of how well they are performing and how established their own businesses are.
Try and determine what your competitors’ USPs (unique selling points) are and think about your own USP. Will your USP be superior to your competitors and will you be able to add additional value for customers and offer better prices?
If the results of your competitor analysis and market research do not yield positive results and it appears that you will have difficulty becoming successful, you might want to consider re-thinking your business model and selling something else.
One the other hand, if you find that you would be one step ahead of your competitors, go for it!
Build relationships with reputable suppliers.
When it comes to having a dropshipping business, a trusting relationship with a good supplier is essential.
This is because your reputation is only as good as your supplier is. They need to provide high quality merchandise and ship them out to your customers in a timely manner.
If there are any returns, your supplier should be willing to issue a refund without any questions.
Finding a good supplier that you can easily work with is half the battle to creating a lucrative dropshipping business and we recommend taking your time with this as it is one of the most important elements.
Regardless of what you sell, you should be spoiled for choice with suppliers so make sure that you select the best one for your needs!
Create a dynamic marketing plan.
Your marketing plan is the final step in your dropshipping business plan.
The main method of marketing would be on the website on which you sell your product (ie. Amazon, eBay, etc).
Additionally, you should strongly consider marketing on social media platforms by creating exciting content and driving followers to your selling site.
More followers usually mean more sales so make sure that you give them the content that they want!