A drop shipping business is an easy and best way to make money online with minimal investment from you by using a drop shipper. You act as a middleman reselling another company’s products this means that you don’t need to keep any products in stock can only purchase the product once you’ve sold it with the drop shipping method, you list the product for sale when someone buys it, you contact the supplier place your order and have it sent directly to your customer, it couldn’t be easier can avoid any investment in stock and you don’t buy any products until the customer is made a purchase from you know.
Few tips will guide you through this process so you can start selling online today and reap the benefits of drop shipping.
Step 1: what should I sell?
The first step is to decide what products you want to sell of course it’s always easier to sell a product you’re familiar with the you must make sure there is enough demand as well.
Check online and find what products are selling well in your country or city is there a local demand for some goods that aren’t being met for example unlock cheap phones or media players and easy way to check demand is the visit eBay doing advanced search on the product you want to sell sort by price with the highest first and select completed listings only now you can see what the best selling item was you can also do a similar search on Amazon you should not the quantity sold as well as prices.
To check out competition as well and make sure the products you offer will be a better quality and better value for money.
Step 2: Where to source products, once you have decided what product you want to sell you need to research dropship companies, these will be your suppliers check their product range in prices check they can ship to your country easily and how long items take to arrive, see if they have any discounts or rewards programs for frequent customers.
Step 3: Where to sell products.
Before you can start selling online you’ll need to find a platform to sell on perhaps the simplest way to sell online is to use one of the online sales sites such as eBay or at see this is because they already have an audience that you can easily tap into alternatively you could list products for sale on Facebook or on all other social media sites and save listing fees if you’re active online and part of seller communities then this is a terrific way to sell if you have a little bit of money you could set up your own online webstore with a service like shop a free Magento.
These platforms make it easy to set up and manage your own web store and are fairly simple to use with online documentation to help you through each step. Usually they have a free trial so you can test them out before you commit to buy.
Step 4: setting up my cellar platform.
After you have your seller account on eBay or you set up your store you need to list the products you have for sale remember on eBay there will be a listing fee but check to see if you can take advantage of free listing deals if you set up your own website with something like eBay magenta or Shopify you can check to see if your supplier has an API, you may even be able to find a plug in for some eShop sites opencart, Magento and Woo-commerce.
An API is an application programming interface it let’s two systems talk to each other automatically an API allows you to use a private data feed to automatically update your site with all the information from another page, this means that when your supplier adds new products to their store they can be automatically populated into your online store as well.
Step 5: promotion.
Once the items are listed on your account or website you need to wait for the orders to come, in this, it is a good time to start promoting the products are selling you can post messages on social media, join relevant forums or spend money on ads to persuade more customer to buy from you.
Understanding your market and selling locally brings a big advantage is you can change your product range to meet local goods needs and demands.
Step 6: placing the orders when you receive an order you will need to confirm receipt of payment and then place your own order with your supplier.
You should have email alerts to inform you each time a sale is made so you can ensure the products are dispatched without delay of course, if you are using an A.P.I. I’ve done a lot of this can be done for you but its still wise to manually check payments on a regular basis.
Step 7: import tax from other countries has some form of import tax this is to prevent foreign companies from flooding the market with cheap alternatives. Importing a big order of goods such as stock for a store would typically be subject to the payment of these taxes, however most countries allow for the importing of a small number of items such as samples are gifts under a set value by drop shipping direct to the end buyer you and the customer are likely to avoid these taxes, because most orders will be under the threshold that requires any import or customs tax.
