Dropshipping Guide 2018: tricks and best programs
I have made a compilation of tricks and recommendations to make a store based on Dropshipping. It is a very interesting concept in which you can sell products from a third party without having to store or send them. We will discover everything about fashion online sales.
Many entrepreneurs find a big problem when it comes to creating their online store because they do not have the capital to make an initial investment that allows them to have stock. In addition, they need the necessary storage spaces for products. With the system of Dropshipping these disadvantages, to a large extent, are solved.
What is Dropshipping and why are you interested?
Using the Dropshipping technique you can set up an online store without the need to have a stock of products . On the one hand, you avoid having to have a physical space to store the material and, on the other hand, make an initial outlay to acquire those products that you do not know when you are going to sell.
The operation is very simple. The customer enters your online store and buys a product. Your order is received by your Dropshipper (supplier), you pay for the product and he directly sends it to the customer. In short, the figure of your online store is an intermediary between the end customer and the Dropshipper, having the management and control of your own business but delegating a series of services to third parties.
Seen in this way the odds of creating an online sales business can be accessible to any entrepreneur wanting to work and without the need to make a large initial investment. But be careful, do not think that everything will be easy, you have to keep in mind a series of ideas and tricks that I will be giving you throughout this article.
1. Choose a good CMS manager for your online store
The creation, design and management of the online store are your task. Remember that it is where the client lands to make the purchase and you will have to control the registration of products, payment gateways, etc. You have different content managers that can help you when setting up your online store, for example, Prestashop and Magento. I really like Woocommerce which is a WordPress plugin with which you can have a professional store in a short time.
2. Get a good SEO for your website
Getting customer traffic for your business will be another job you will have to do. At the beginning it is very likely that no one knows you and you find it difficult to appear in the top positions of search engines . It is necessary a continuous and precise work in this sense to be improving the positioning and that your target audience finds you. If you want to learn how to improve the SEO of your website, I recommend this post:
3. Know the margins on benefits in Dropshipping
Normally, the margins in Dropshipping are not very high. If we add to this the probability of facing a “fierce” competition, you will have to be very clear about the profit margins you have to determine how far you can lower prices in order to be competitive. Depending on the sector, there may be Dropshippers who mark a minimum retail price of their products to avoid “battles” among their retailers.
4. Do not forget to meet your tax obligations
Before starting your professional activity you have to make a series of formalities before different official bodies that allow you to act as retailers and sell within the law. It is important that you proceed to process your tax high (model 036) before the Tax Agency and the registration as autonomous before the General Treasury of the Social Security. In the same way and periodically, the normal thing is that each quarter, you will have to present your tax payments (VAT and IRPF).
11 tricks to start successfully in Dropshipping
1. Carry out a market study of your sector
It is very important that you know the sector in which you want to start your online store, as well as having real data on the demand that products have. In a sector with great demand you will have a lot of competition and a greater difficulty to open a hole in it. In a sector with little demand you’ll have to fine-tune to locate potential customers.
There are several tools that can give you an orientation on whether the products you are going to sell have demand and competition, for example, you can use Google Trends to find search trends on certain products and the Adwords Word Planner to know how many searches it has a term and, in addition, what competence it presents.
It would also be very interesting to analyze what competition you face and find out, among other details:
- a) If they are very powerful stores with a very high sales volume, you will have to adjust your profit margin very much in order to be able to get closer to their sales prices to the public.
- b) Find out if they do online advertisingcampaigns on different platforms, you may have to value investing some budget in these media.
- c) Detect what keywordsyour competition uses on your website to attract traffic and decide if you can use them for content development.
2. Create a good customer service
Something that will differentiate you from your competition is the personalized treatment and attention with the client. Remember that it is you who buy and any problem you should solve directly. Facilitate your client that can contact you for questions or queries, for example, through a chat on the web or with social networks that best suit your business. Offering a friendly and close customer service ensures you improve your online reputation and generate good references within the sector.
3. Create and manage your own online store
My advice is that you do not depend directly on third parties to create and manage your online store. You can make updates at any time and save on your budget by not having to hire a professional for it. Many entrepreneurs delegate the creation and maintenance of their store in others and, sometimes, they are limited to be able to have immediate changes or improvements that they want to implement. I advise you to learn to create your online store. You can see the information on our Course WordPress Online or face to create a website from scratch.
4. Choose your Dropshipper very well (suppliers)
This will be one of the important points to keep in mind since “everything that glitters is not gold”.
Run away from suppliers who ask you for a monthly fee to sell their products, they will be looking for a profit with quotas and not with sales of their stock. This for you can be a burden that prevents you from starting the business.
Choose a Dropshipper that has an infrastructure that allows you to synchronize your stock with your product catalog, you will save a lot of time and avoid offering a product that is sold out. Stock control can be done by importing a CSV file , or by using an API key that connects to the Dropshipper store. Also make sure you work with a Dropshipper that meets the delivery deadlines and have clear how to proceed in cases of return of orders by customers.
A good option is not to have only one provider but to maintain a relationship with two or three so as not to be “tied” to any incident that may occur. So you will see which of them responds better in the service.
5. Start a good Content Marketing strategy
Although your intention is to sell, for that you are going to create an online store, you have to design a Content Marketing strategy offering valuable content to help, advise and retain customers. An initial step is to create a blog within the web of the online store. Start writing articles that can provide very interesting content for users in the sector. You will get to know yourself, attract traffic to your online store and improve SEO positioning of it. So you already know, to write super interesting articles for your target audience!
6. Inform the customer of your status as a retailer
As I said, the responsibility for the sale falls on the retailer (in this case your online store), so it is advisable to inform the customer when the product is not in our possession. You can record on the web or in the purchase process about this condition.
7. Make sure the Dropshipper does not include your advertising in the shipment
Some suppliers, when sending the order, include your advertising and even the delivery note with the amounts you paid them, something that will not be very well seen by your client when you open the shipment. Luckily, many Dropshippers are improving this problem and do the shipping of the goods as if it is really your company that sends it, in this way the customer has no record that you act as an intermediary.
8. Check if your Dropshipper is abroad
In this case, you will have to take into account possible requirements by the customs that can retain the merchandise until the appropriate tariffs and taxes are settled. You must also control the delivery times . If your Dropshipper is abroad, make sure delivery times are not too high. This could cause dissatisfaction in your customers.
9. Start from less to more Dropshipping
Since you do not know how the Dropshippers work, we advise you to start by offering your customers a part of the product catalog . As you see results you can increase them. In this way you avoid receiving several orders initially without being clear how the professionalism of the supplier works: delivery times, product status, return policy, etc.
10. Take advantage of online advertising platforms
In one of the previous points I commented that at the beginning it is difficult to have a good positions in search engines, and to make known your brand and products. But you have the possibility of doing paid marketing on different platforms such as Google Adwords , Facebook Adsand Twitter Ads . Through a certain investment in advertising you can make campaigns that allow you to appear in the first results of Google when someone searches for your products. You can also create other types of campaigns that greatly improve your brand visibility and let you know. The good thing is that at all times you have control over the budget you want to allocate and real data on the results obtained.
I hope I helped you to know how to take your first steps in Dropshipping. Now let’s see what software you have in the market to help you manage your orders with the Dropshipper.
11. Manage your stock
If your Dropshipping business is growing, you can consider having several suppliers , and thus avoid inventory problems by having more than one supplier with the same items. In addition, having more than one supplier can make faster shipments by having greater geographic diversity. It is very important that you are in contact with the sales manager of your Dropshipper to indicate the availability of the items you sell.
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