The number of people who have already made up their minds about launching a drop shipping store is going up dramatically. And there is nothing extraordinary about their desire because of many success stories from people who have earned a fortune from this online business.
Obviously, this type of ecommerce business seems to be easy to start – all you need is a website, a couple of reliable suppliers and the right marketing strategy. In addition, when running a drop shipping business, you don’t need to buy goods in advance and keep them in stocks – your supplier will take care of this.
Those stories and the seeming simplicity of this type of ecommerce business make people eager to follow the example of drop shipping entrepreneurs.
What stops people from trying to open a drop shipping store is a lack of knowledge about this area. They just have no clue how to go about it.
So, let’s discuss the most common and efficient ways to launch this business in a really short period of time.
Three ways to create a drop shipping store
- Design a drop shipping store by yourself
Nowadays, the process of building your own ecommerce store has become accessible to almost everyone. There are some ways to create a drop shipping website that don’t require a deep technical knowledge.
The first one is Shopify. This is a platform which lets you design your shop by yourself without any special preparation. The creation of your business will be easy and enjoyable if you choose this way. You can add products to your store with Oberlo app.
However, some difficulties might get in your way. The fact that you must pay monthly for both Shopify and Oberlo (about $60 per month, $720 per year) puts a quite considerable price on the maintenance of your site. Not to mention the fact that you are not a 100% owner of your shop when using Shopify. Also, the company has the right to put some limits on the volume of processed orders, and to control your product policy along with marketing strategy. Plus, if you decide to change a hosting provider, you will lose your website and will have to start everything from scratch.
The second way is WordPress. This is an absolutely free platform for site-building. Designing a drop shipping store this way requires some knowledge of content management systems (CMS). In order to turn your WordPress website into a drop shipping store, you will need to set up some plugin such as AliDropship plugin.
For a one-time payment of $89, you get a user-friendly solution that quickly imports any AliExpress products to your store, automatically updates stock info, transfers your clients’ orders to the relevant AliExpress sellers in a couple of clicks, and in general, lets you get a good-looking website with well-managed routine daily operations. Even if you decide to change a hosting provider, there will not be anything painful to your business when you have created the store with WordPress.
- Find someone to build a drop shipping store
If creating a web store is too difficult for you, or you are not sure in your competence to design it, there is a path for you which is going to set you free from that burden – you can place an order for making a store. You can hire professional freelancers to do all the work for you. There are a lot of sites that provide that sort of service (Upwork, Fiverr, etc.).To make it easier, you can turn to the previously mentioned AliDropship where you get a lifelong support as icing on the cake.
- Buy a drop shipping business
The easiest option is to buy a website which has been working for a while. The most famous platforms where you may purchase a drop shipping store are Exchange, AliDropship forum and Flippa. You might find various sites there – from just-launched to well-known and successful companies. Their prices range from 20 dollars to millions. Even though it is tempting to buy a site with a big revenue, you should approach it carefully considering many aspects and putting it into perspective.
Promotion of a drop shipping store
One of the most essential parts of your success in drop shipping business is a marketing strategy. There are more than ten millions online stores running on the Internet, but less than a million have an annual turnover going beyond 1000 dollars. The reason is a wrong marketing strategy. You have to put money and efforts into your store promotion, otherwise you will find yourself among those millions of companies who cannot overcome 1000 dollars’ barrier. Entrepreneurs should use different marketing tools to foster confidential relations with their customers.
Here is a list of the most effective ones:
- Content marketing,
- Social media marketing (SMM),
- SEO-promotion,
- Contextual advertising,
- YouTube promotion
To sum up, in spite of the widespread opinion that drop shipping is an opportunity to make money easily, it is a highly competitive field that requires your full involvement in the process. On the other hand, this industry is still growing and you can step into it with a small budget. Your success depends on a level of competence with the aid of which your drop shipping store will be built and the marketing strategy that will be chosen.
Keyword – drop shipping store
