Making some millions from dropshipping need effort, knowledge, some investment of money and time. Dropshipping is the most suitable model to earn by the peoples who are interested to learn to make money online. Many still today are not aware of what is dropshipping, how dropshipping works, or what are required to start a dropshipping business. This article is mostly for those who are not used with money-making from blog and affiliates. Although, it will help the bloggers and internet marketers who are interested to learn about dropshipping business. Dropshipping is a concept which originated in the United States and Canada, a particular dropshipping brand is almost bound within the boundaries of a nation. Dropshipping is quite closer to Amazon affiliate to the sellers. However, unlike Amazon affiliate, the responsibility and profit both are higher.
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What is Dropshipping?
Dropshipping is a system where the customer orders on the seller’s website, the order electronically forwarded to the supplier for delivery and inventory management. In one form of dropshipping, the supplier receives orders from internet users on a seller’s website and decides the action. It is quite common to compare dropshipping with affiliate marketing (like Amazon affiliate). A big difference in case of dropshipping is seller’s branding – the seller can set the product price and receives a profit, not commission, unlike Amazon affiliate.
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With dropshipping, you can buy a product which costs $1 and sell it for $19.99, a good portion is your profit. Unlike Amazon affiliate, as a seller, you are more like a real online store owner. In the case of Amazon affiliate, it is Amazon who manages the order to the delivery system. In the case of dropshipping, there are dropshipping platforms which perform the comparable action. So, it is obvious that a particular dropshipping platform can offer more advantages than the other. A dropshipping business can be run from anywhere with an internet connection as long as your chosen dropshipping platform can communicate with suppliers and customers easily. In the case of Amazon affiliate, if a person from India ordered an Amazon affiliate intended for the Americans, Amazon’s system nicely manages it. The website promoting the Amazon affiliate products is not responsible for region selection and cost adjustment. Selecting the correct dropshipping platform is quite an important factor in the success and profit of the online shop.
How Much Money Required To Start Dropshipping Business?
Any e-commerce website can be run as a self-hosted online store or on ready-to-use platforms like Shopify. The cost of setup of a self-hosted online store more or less like that of self-hosted WordPress blog (like this website). So, the basic cost and technical complexities are exactly like we mentioned in our article How to Make Money With a Blog. We will suggest going through that article.
So, starting a dropshipping business is not free in today’s world if you want a sustainable future of the online store. Adam Eleiko of SaleSource pointed the same basic thing like us – running a dropshipping business is cheaper than managing own inventory but it is not free.
SaleSource is a dropshipping platform designed to help e-commerce businesses grow. Their AI-based application can do product analyses, trend evaluations, and competitor comparisons. But, before using their free trial, one needs to set up and run an online shop.
In today’s world, around $1500 will be the initial cost of setup and you can expect $100 to $500 monthly cost to effectively run the business.
This website already has a steady “free of cost” visitors every day. If we start a dropshipping business then our cost will only be the monthly cost of dropshipping platform. But in addition to the money required to run this website, we have to design Facebook ads and run them to sell products.
How To Earn Money from Dropshipping Business?
You need some sort of own website, at least a Facebook page to show the products you’ll sell. Shopify is the easy choice as a website builder and you need some dropshipping platform as we have mentioned above. It is possible to start a dropshipping store within a few hours! Whenever you have a website, you need SEO and PPC advertisements to attract the potential customer. Facebook ads with product images and videos with nicely copy-edited text work great as a low budget PPC ad. A daily budget for Facebook and Instagram ad more than $3 rarely required for the blogs and e-commerce sites. If 200 peoples add a product to their cart, 100 peoples will complete the purchase.
You are reselling some products in the dropshipping business. Jewellery and toys are the oldest products used to resell for making money. Not everything is possible to sell in dropshipping business model. Jewellery and toy are some products whose variation of quality probably will matter lesser. A piece of costume jewelry itself a kind of fake product! It is risky to sell products worth more than $100 in this model of business.
You may need to find that virtual/part-time assistants from Asia or Eastern Europe, who will do the at a reasonable price. Upwork, Fiverr, iWriter, SEOClerk are good places to find manpower for online works. There are remote working communities (digital nomad communities) to collaborate with someone. Working textual description and high-quality images are the two biggest things to make online customers rely on the seller. There are grey methodologies like paying to get a real customer like a review with images which work.
Final Words
We will not suggest taking dropshipping business as easy as running Amazon affiliate campaign. Outside the US, starting a dropshipping business is not really “location independent”. Indeed, dropshipping can hugely help to increase your earning. But, it is more true that starting without thoroughly understanding the pros and cons of dropshipping will invite a minimum loss out of the inability to sell. Dropshipping is infamous for high shipping cost and other shipping problems. Quality control can become a total nightmare. Fraudulent orders and credit card fraud are real problems of online works. PayPal deducts quite higher amount.
Some of the physical products are better to sell via Amazon. Some of the physical products are better to sell via dropshipping. Some of the physical products perform equally when sold via an online platform or a brick-and-mortar store. Selection of dropshopping platform also matters. Dropshipping business is running a business. The profit is higher but the risk is also higher. So, you should start with a proper business plan, read various articles on dropshipping.
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