Dropshipping is a word that people link to a scam. Don’t know why but a lot of people failed in dropshipping and they declared it a scam. Actually, it’s a complicated task to do and hence many people thought it a scam.
So, today in this article we will be clearing all the doubts and bursting all the myths regarding dropshipping. Also, we will be telling you the exact 5-step process to launch your dropshipping business with ease. Before getting into it, we have to make sure you have a clear understanding of dropshipping.
Let’s start by telling you what dropshipping actually is. It will help you to build a good understanding of it and many people also get confused between Affiliate Marketing & Dropshipping. We’ll be clearing that in this article as well.
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What’s Actually Dropshipping?
In the simplest language, dropshipping is just promoting a product and getting sales on it. You just have to bring sales to a product, you don’t have to keep any product in stock at all. If elaborated, you just have to find a product then you have to create a store using any store builder or CMS like WordPress. Then you have to push a product to the store and start promoting it at the price you want to sell it.
After promoting, if you got any sales then the seller will fulfill the order and give you, your profit.
Now, you might be thinking that it sounds similar to affiliate marketing. Let me just clear you in this and make you understand the difference between them.
Dropshipping vs Affiliate Marketing
So, here’s to make you understand what exactly is the difference between dropshipping and affiliate marketing.
In affiliate marketing what you actually do is, join any product or website’s affiliate program and then you started promoting it. Once you get the lead, you get the commission and in this case, the commission is fixed.
But in drop shipping, you’ll have control of your profit margins. You have to choose a product first then add it to your store, and set your profit margin. After launching your product and running ads, you’ll start getting leads. After the product is delivered to the customer, your profit margin will be credited to your wallet.
If said in short, the only difference between dropshipping and affiliate marketing is control of profit margins.
Enough Explanation, let’s tell you how you actually start your dropshipping business. Sounds pretty exciting. Right? Here’s the way.
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5 Steps to Launch Your Dropshipping Business
Let’s start by telling you the easy 5-step ways to start dropshipping in 2023. The very first thing you have to choose between Shopify and Woocommerce. These are just the platform on which you’ll be starting out your dropshipping business. So, choose wisely. If you want to go with our recommendation then choose Shopify. It’s very well optimized for dropshipping and also they have really good customer support.
After choosing the desired store then you have to find suppliers, from where you’ll get the products. There are some platforms to start like Meesho, glow road, Alibaba, and roposo clout. There are many a lot others as well but these are really valued in today’s time.
So till now, you’re done with Shopify and the supplier. Now, let’s jump to the first step.
Step 1: Choose a Winning Product
Now, after finalizing your supplier. You have to find a winning product. Actually, your product is everything in this business. If you choose the right product then you’ll definitely gonna be successful.
But the opposite, if you choose the wrong product. You’ll just end up wasting all your money and efforts. You can check the market trends and the market size to know about the winning products.
Let me make it easier, if you just not getting the correct product idea then simply go to your supplier’s website and randomly go through the products. Just click and research the product which you really like and make sure the product is solving some kind of problem.
If the product is just for fun and not solving any kind of problems then there’s a high chance that definitely it will not going to boom and makes you even a single sale. Sometimes, there are few products that do not solve problems but still bring a hell lot of sales. It’s due to the market trends.
If the product is trending then there’s probability of a product bringing more sales is high regards it’s not even solving a single problem. But, also these types of products can bring sales for a limited period of time. Once the trend is over, getting sales is almost impossible doesn’t matter how much money you’re spending on the ads & marketing.
Make sure you’re spending time and effort on finding a winning product because it’s everything in your dropshipping business. With this, let’s head to the second step.
Step 2: Set up your Shopify Store
After choosing and finalizing your product, start setting up your store on Shopify. You can go through some youtube tutorials and it’s really easy to set up your store. You just have to design it a little bit the way you want or you can use the existing template and make it yours by doing some changes.
After designing your store, add your products to the store and add the description and all. Make sure the description is catchy and worth converting. We’ll be talking about the optimization and all in the very next step.
Make sure the website you set up is looking professional and easy to explore. Make sure to give it a color theme for your product or brand. So it can represent your brand actually.
After adding all the products, make sure your website is running properly and every action/button is working. If its downtime is high then there’s a high chance you’ll end up losing your customers. So, let’s move to the third point where I’ll be telling you about the optimization.
Step 3: Optimise your Store Properly
Let me tell you a thing, even your website is good looking and your product is also worth buying. You still may not get the sales. It’s because of optimization.
If you have chosen an absolute winning product then it might get some sales even with poor optimization but as a beginner, you’ll not be able to identify such products. So, make sure you have optimized your page in the best way. I’ll be guiding you on the optimization in this step. Don’t worry.
The very first thing is that your product image should be clear and visible. And if the product is absolutely new or not a really common product then there should also be a video of the product that how will it going to be used.
Adding a product video can actually increase sales as it shows the customer, how to use the product and also build trust around the product.
The second and most important thing is, you must have the Cash on Delivery (COD) option. Actually, there’s a lots & lots of scams happening online and majority of the people are aware of it. So, to gain their trust and to increase the chances to buy, your store must have the COD option.
As people really trust COD because in this model they will receive the parcel first and then they pay the money. And almost every reseller is providing the COD option.
The third and last one is to optimize your description and title. The product title and description should be catchy and worth retaining. I know you’re absolutely new in this field and writing such professional titles and description are really hectic and problematic.
For that, you can use the Chat GPT. Just enter the product as a prompt and give the commands to write a professional title and description. It will give you the exact thing you want. That’s how you can generate copies using AI without hiring any copywriter,
Step 4: Run Ads or Promote your Product
Running ads in Dropshipping business is actually fuel. Without this, your business can’t really grow for a long time. You might get some organic sales at first but in order to get constant sales, you would definitely need to run some ads. This is actually a hard truth every drop shipper should accept.
You can start running ads with a small amount as well. You don’t require 50K or a lac to run ads. You can also start with 500 or 1000 INR. Once you start selling, you can increase your budget to get more sales and ultimately more profit.
If you don’t know, how to run FB ads then learn it from Google or youtube. It will take just an hour or two to complete the theory part and then as you start running ads you will also start getting the practical knowledge and hence you start gaining more experiences.
At last, in this step, you have to be a little careful because it can cost you money and also you have to be patient. You may not get the sale in the very first ad you run but you’ll start getting sales once you learn to target the right audience and market.
Step 5: Make your Ad live
Now, after doing everything just make your ad live and relax! After a few hours, you’ll start getting sales only if you really target the right set of audiences. You have to be a little bit more careful here because if your ads are not bringing you sales then start finding the problem and implementing it as soon you get it.
You have to keep improving your ads depending on their status so they can get you regular sales. Also, make different ad sets for targeting different kinds of audiences. Don’t be dependent on a single set. It may happen that you don’t get any sales in only one set.
Here’s the end actually. These are all the theory parts you need to know actually before getting started, You’ll get to know a lot of things like RTO, taxes, and all when you start your business. Also, you’ll be learning a lot of things along with your practical journey.
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Conclusion
See, everything seems easy from the outside but you’ll get to know the real problems when you are into the business. But, here’s everything you need to know before getting started. There are a lot of people who are running their successful dropshipping business and they actually got into it without any prior knowledge. So, it’s on you how you learn and execute the things you’re learning along the way.
