Dropshipping is a great business model.
It’s low risk, low cost, easy to start up, and is highly automated.
But, if you’re brand new to entrepreneurship, there’s still quite a bit to learn.
Hey what’s up world, I’m Tommy Walker with Oberlo, and today I’m going to give
you 16 different tips for when you’re brand new to dropshipping.
If you have any questions, or want to share your experiences with dropshipping, drop them
in the comments below, and I’ll be sure to get back to you.
Like I said before, I’m Tommy Walker, and if you like what we’re talking about here,
consider subscribing, so you can get new videos every week.
Alright, let’s jump right in.
1.
Focus on Mastering Marketing With so many aspects of dropshipping being
automated, you’ll have more time to focus on marketing.
Sure, tweaking your website, designing logos, and creating graphics is a lot of fun, but,
if you’re not actively working to get the right products, in front of the right people,
at the right time, all that time spent making the “perfect” website will go to waste.
A beautiful website with no visitors is like a “tree falls in the woods” scenario,
where if nobody really sees it, does it really even exist?
Don’t get me wrong, design is important, but, if you’re not also focused on getting
your beautiful website in front of people, you’re never going to get any sales.
That’s why you also need to invest in driving traffic.
That could mean through Paid Ads, SEO, Social Media, video marketing or partnering with
influencers.
Honestly, there are a ton of different marketing strategies and tactics you can drive traffic,
which is why I always advise new marketers to focus on the small handful of techniques
that come the most naturally.
Fortunately for you, we’ve got a ton of resources in the description below to help
get you on the right path.
2.
Create Compelling Offers You know what I love about online shopping?
Sales.
You know what I like even better?
Bundle deals on complementary products.
Because dropshipping can be highly competitive, really think about how you can make buying
from YOU, and building a relationship with YOU even more enticing.
This could mean anything from selectively offering “buy one, get one half off” deals,
to bundling multiple complementary items at a discounted rate, to offering a significant
discount on your visitors first purchase IF they register for an account.
Look at your offer from your visitor’s perspective, and ask, “what’s in it for me?”
If the offer isn’t objectively good or amazing, you should rethink it.
By making offers that are difficult to ignore, you stand a much better chance at converting
more of the traffic you’re driving.
3.
Avoid Underpricing Your Products
Now, I know this may sound counter to my previous tip, but avoid racing to the bottom on price
just to remain competitive.
Offering a lower overall cost on bundled products, or through “buy one get one half off”
sales is not the same as selling your entire inventory at just above cost.
This is a massive mistake I see new ecommerce entrepreneurs make all the time, where they’re
not making any sales, and suddenly everything in their store is on sale.
Offering everything at rock-bottom prices can have a massive negative impact on a new
brand, and can make the brand feel… cheap.
If you’re not making sales, don’t jump to assuming it’s your prices that are holding
you back.
Instead, reevaluate how you’re driving traffic, and the offers you’re making.
It’s better to find new ways to drive traffic than it is to slash prices, because first
it’s hard to raise them again, and second, you still have to pay the bills.
4.
Remove Bad Suppliers Quickly While most AliExpress suppliers are easy to
work with, reliable, and offer good products, sometimes a bad apple or two slip through.
With thousands of AliExpress suppliers, you can easily replace a bad supplier.
Many suppliers sell similar products, allowing you to sometimes even sell the exact same
product but from another manufacturer.
If you notice suppliers don’t use the shipping delivery method you’ve chosen or consistently
ship faulty products, then you can easily remove their products from your store.
Again, this isn’t very common.
Suppliers know that by offering quality service you’ll continue bringing them more sales.
Also, if you want to minimize your chances of partnering with a bad supplier, check out
Oberlo Supply, which is a network of pre-screened suppliers we work with that are consistent
with their quality, support, and service.
5.
Automate as much of your business as possible With dropshipping tools like Oberlo, many
aspects of your dropshipping business will already be automated, but there is always
always room to take more off your plate.
Tools like Kit can help you automate tasks like advertising, retargeting, emails and
more, while other tools like Buffer can help you schedule your social media postings.
Other tools like Zapier can help you connect your Shopify store to other tools like Quickbooks
for Bookkeeping, Google sheets for order backups, and Hubspot for customer relationship management.
For more information on ecommerce automation, check out the the link in the description
below.
6.
Make sure your website is presentable
You would be shocked to see how many entrepreneurs launch their dropshipping websites with missing
images, placeholder text, and no discernable categorization to their products.
Unfortunately, when you’re sending traffic to a website that can’t be navigated, it
reeks of unprofessionalism, and immediately diminishes the trust and credibility of your
brand.
Before launching your store, take a look at other websites in your niche.
What does their home page look like?
What’s the format of the copy on their product page?
Do their images include logos on them?
What types of pages does their website have?
Which features or apps does the store include on their website?
After taking notes about the look and layout of different stores in your niche, browse
through the Shopify app store to find apps that will mimic the most common features you’ve
found in your research.
Product reviews, ratings, and email capture are among the most common features of ecommerce
stores.
You can also add pages to feature your refund policies, FAQs, shipping information, and
more.
7.
General Store vs Niche Store
While a lot of advice out there, including our own, will tell you to start with a niche
store, the truth is, sometimes you don’t want to sell just one type of thing.
In reality, general stores, while they can be a lot more work, between keeping products
organized and categorized, and marketing to different demographics, are great starter
stores as they force you to think more broadly.
On the other hand, if you want to put the work into researching and validating a niche,
a niche store can allow you to narrow in on finding, and marketing to, the right audience.
The running niche would be an example of a niche within the fitness vertical.
While there’s still a ton of competition for running gear and accessories, it’s not
nearly as broad as if you were to sell a wide variety of fitness gear.
This really all boils down to one question, “what do you have the tolerance for?”
If you can answer that honestly, and are confident you can drive traffic, you’ll be all set.
8.
Be prepared to pivot… fast There are all sorts of unexpected challenges
and adversity that will come up, because at the end of the day, you’re running a business.
A supplier may stop carrying a product, a new trend may emerge suddenly, your customers
may hate a product you’ve added to your store, or one of your ads may be scaling really
well and you’ll need to take a loan to continue supporting the growth.
Pivots aren’t good or bad, really, but they do require you to be flexible and decisive
when the moment is necessary.
9.
Offer exceptional customer service
There are ways to stand out when you’re selling similar products to other companies.
While you may think that offering refunds and responding to inquiries is the role of
customer service, that’s just where the job starts.
Tell jokes, write thank you cards, send surprises, and go out of your way to make them feel special.
Like the poet Maya Angelou said, “People will forget what you said.
People will forget what you did.
But people will never forget how you made them feel.”
10.
Use Data to Inform Your Inventory Be picky about the products you add to your
store.
Don’t just add products because they look nice and you’d like it for yourself.
Look at the data – are these products getting sales and positive feedback?
When evaluating products from your supplier, check to see the order volume, reviews, and
customer photos, and seller ratings to ensure you’re partnering with a trustworthy supplier.
11.
Always choose ePacket As a dropshipper, you’re free to sort products
based on ePacket shipping.
Since ePacket shipping is the fastest affordable shipping method, you’ll be able to ensure
quick delivery to customers without breaking the bank.
On average, ePacket shipping costs under $5 for most products, and will make sure your
customers will get your products between 7 and 20 business days, and often much faster.
If you want to learn more about ePacket, click on the link in the description below.
12.
Be Active Daily Dropshipping isn’t an automated business,
and there is no overnight success.
While you likely won’t need to put in 8 hours a day, you do need to spend at least
an hour every day to grow your store.
Each day you’ll need to process orders, respond to customer inquiries promptly, drive
traffic, and generally just make sure everything's running smoothly.
This is not a “build it and they will come” scenario, and it requires work every single
day to make sure the business is running well.
13.
Import 10-25 items to start
Here’s a problem for you - In your excitement to start your dropshipping business, you’ve
just imported 600 items to your store.
What a great selection you have now, right!?
But then, once you look at your store, you realize, that’s 600 product descriptions
you need to edit, 600 titles you need to rewrite, a billion tags you need to come
up with, and 3,000 photos you need to comb to to see which ones you’ll have to crop
supplier logos out of.
What do you do?
Most people, myself included, just give up.
Nevermind, this wasn’t for me, this is too much work, I quit!
It’s much easier to start with a small collection of 10-25 products, that way you can more easily
manage the workload, especially if you’re doing this on your own, and after day at your
9-5.
14.
Monitor your competition
Here’s a suggestion for you, start a spreadsheet, and include links to all of your primary competitors
websites, social media accounts, and wherever else they’re selling online.
Sign up to their email lists, and heck, maybe even buy some of their products.
Once a week, check in on how they’re positioning their products, what they’re saying in their
emails, what kinds of sales they’re running, and how they’re retargeting their ads.
This kind of low-level competition monitoring will provide you some insight with how they’re
running their business, and can help expose holes in their strategies and may also teach
you some very valuable lessons along the way.
15.
Change the Oberlo Custom Note As a dropshipper, you should change your custom
note to your supplier.
Under Settings, click Suppliers, you’ll find Custom Note on the bottom of the page.
Here you can leave a message for all your suppliers.
You’ll want something that’s relevant to all your suppliers.
Something along the lines of, ‘Ship with EPACKET only!
We’re dropshipping.
Please no invoices or promotions!’
Since you’re only importing ePacket products, it’s good to remind suppliers to use ePacket
shipping to ensure customers receive their goods quickly.
It’s also important to tell them that we’re dropshipping so that they don’t add their invoices or
marketing materials in packages.
If you do this, you shouldn’t have an issue with suppliers adding their own invoices or
promotions in your packages.
16.
Use Oberlo Supply If you’re launching your first dropshipping
store, consider using Oberlo Supply.
Oberlo Supply helps you dropship quality products from trusted suppliers with a wide variety
of products from popular and hidden niches.
The best part about Oberlo Supply is that incoming orders are immediately sent to suppliers
making it great if you’re working around a busy schedule.
You’ll have more time to focus on marketing so you can make more money.
If you’d like to learn more about Oberlo Supply, click on the card, or follow the link
in the description below.
Alright, that’s all we’ve got this week.
If you have any questions, be sure to leave them in the comments and hit that subscribe
button and ring that bell to know when new videos on running a dropshipping are released.
Thanks so much for watching, and until next time LEARN OFTEN,
MARKET BETTER and SELL MORE