ashish Sidhu
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Of all the ways to make money online, dropshipping has the biggest potential. It is highly scalable, and there will always be...
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Of all the ways to make money online, dropshipping has the biggest potential. It is highly scalable, and there will always be new products to sell. People buy stuff all the time, and your role is to supply them with what they are looking for.
This article will give you a better grasp of how dropshipping works and how much money you can make. It will help you understand why dropshipping is the best way to make money online. More importantly, you will also get to know some of the best tools you need to succeed in dropshipping.
Dropshipping is a retail business. You sell physical or tangible goods. But instead of buying the product before selling it, you sell it first, before buying it.
Confused?
Think of your dropshipping store as a product brochure. You have no product with you, yet you are selling the product to your target customer. The customer pays you for a product, and only then will you buy the item from the supplier.
What’s convenient about the whole process is that you do not need to ship the product yourself. It is the supplier who will do this. The product, whatever it is, won’t go through your hands. It goes straight from the supplier’s warehouse to your customer.
Here is a step-by-step process:
Customers will never know that you never had this product in the first place. The one big challenge here is money. After a customer pays for the order, you will not have that money right away. You have to wait days for it.
Supposing you use PayPal, you must wait three to five business days for the PayPal funds to get to your bank account. During this waiting time, you must pay your suppliers for the products so they can ship them as soon as possible.
How profitable is dropshipping? The quick answer is this: you decide. You can buy a product for $5 and sell it for $10, giving you a margin of $5. If you are good at marketing, you can sell the same product for $19.99, giving you almost $15 in profit.
Below is an image of a product that is highly popular on Amazon.
The phone case sells for $39. Did you know that it only costs $7.65 on AliExpress? Below is the source image.
Many people in the world do not know what AliExpress is. It is the Chinese equivalent of Amazon, where manufacturers sell their products in retail.
If you dropship this product, you can charge your buyer $40, yet you will pay only $8 to the AliExpress supplier. Your profit is $32. It is up to you if you want to offer free shipping or charge it separately.
Theoretically, if you sell 100 of these in one month, you have a gross margin of $3,200. What if you get to a point where you sell thousands of products?
This is why dropshipping is the best way to make money online. It is scalable, and your financial success does not depend on the time you spend on it. People will buy your products even if you are on vacation, doing house chores, or even if you are asleep!
It is easy to start a dropshipping business, but you must focus your time, money, and energy on the right things.
Here is a quick look at what you need to do step-by-step:
Rinse and repeat steps 4 to 6. Below is a more detailed explanation.
A niche is a product type or a group of products that share the same characteristics. A good example is “kitchen.” This niche means all the things you sell have something to do with the kitchen.
You can break down this niche into sub-niches, like kitchen gadgets, kitchen appliances, kitchen chemicals, and more.
Before you start building your store, you must choose a niche. You will want to think about:
It is not advisable to build a general dropshipping store where you sell all sorts of goods. Focus on one niche and become an expert on it. It makes your store look credible and trustworthy.
To illustrate, think of a store that sells kitchen gadgets and gym equipment. There is no consistency and cohesiveness. A customer who visits that store will never feel comfortable parting with his money.
Not all manufacturers want to dropship. Some do not even want to ship items to an address different from the address of the real buyer, which is you. You must find a seller who knows what dropshipping is, one who is also willing to work with you in this arrangement.
Many online tools allow you to do this. These websites are like marketplaces. But instead of functioning as a seller-to-consumer market, they function as business-to-business.
Here are some examples:
Suppliers sign up for an account on these sites, and then they upload their products. Dropshippers also create an account and then import or transfer the products to their store.
The benefits of using a tool like Tradelle are:
Tradelle also provides you, the dropshipper, with a tracking number once the item is shipped. You can give this tracking number to your customer or use it to give the buyer updates on the whereabouts of the item.
So, you have selected your niche, products, and supplier. The next step is to build your store. The most common options are Amazon, Etsy, eBay, WooCommerce, and Shopify.
There is no right or wrong choice here. All of these platforms are great for e-commerce. However, you may want to build a standalone store, so you are not at the mercy of a platform’s rules.
It is not that difficult to build a website store from scratch. Yet, there is a learning curve. If you want, you can spend as little as $49 and get a premium Shopify dropshipping store. Tradelle offers this kind of service.
One of the toughest aspects of dropshipping is marketing. You need to learn how to create an image ad, a video ad, and ad text.
You can advertise on Facebook, Google Search and Shopping, YouTube, Reddit, and many other platforms. The platform you choose depends on the product you sell.
We will not get into the details of advertising, as this is a different ball game. As a general rule, do not go all in on this, or you will lose money. Take advertising a step at a time until you become an expert.
As a beginner, the only two tools you need in dropshipping are a store builder and a dropship system. For the store builder, it is highly recommended that you use Shopify.
For the dropship system, Tradelle is the best you can find in the market today. What does Tradelle do, anyway?
With Tradelle, you can:
The product search function is the best tool inside Tradelle’s dropshipping system. Below is a sample screenshot.
At a glance, you can see how much profit you can make from this product. Below the numbers, you will find links. These links will direct you to different places. One link goes to the supplier’s site. Another link leads to the Facebook ad for the same product. The last links take you to the product pages of sellers on Amazon.
This image is not the entirety of it. If you scroll down, you will find more product details such as potential audience size, demand, competitor count, which regions or countries have the highest interest levels, and more.
Tradelle is an all-in-one dropshipping solution. As mentioned earlier, they can also build a store for you for only $49, which is a steal. Most Shopify store builders (freelancers) will charge you hundreds of dollars for the same service.
Now that you know how dropshipping works and why it is the best way to make money online, consider signing up for a trial account with Tradelle. It is free, and you will have access to all the powerful tools you need to succeed in dropshipping!
Suggested:
How to Fulfil Orders on Shopify Dropshipping?
Factors to Consider Before Initiating a Dropshipping Business.
Best Shopify Apps for Dropshipping from the Shopify App Store.
