How to Start Your Online Business With Drop-Shipping
1. How to Start Your Online Business With Drop-Shipping
2. By using drop-shipping firms to handle your orders, you
could route all your ecommerce site's orders to
wholesalers, and they will drop shipped your order
directly to customers. And you as the online retailer can
eliminate the expense of carrying inventory and the risk
of being stuck with the goods if these goods didn't
sell.
3. Before you get started, consider these seven steps
involved in starting a drop-ship e-business:
4. Step 1: Decide to sell your products with or without your
own website
5. You can start your drop-shipping e-business either with
or without having your own website. If you decide to sell
with your own domain name, then you need to get your
ecommerce site up. If you do not want the hassle of
getting your own ecommerce site, then you could build
your online store at eBay. eBay e-store site builder allow
you to build your online store easily.
7. Then, you need to decide what types of products to sell
at your online store. You could identify a group of
products such as electronic products, household
electrical appliances, cell phones & etc. It is advisable to
identify similar products or products under the same
category to sell instead of totally different category
products such as shoes and CD player. Because, by
selecting products within the same category, you can
give your customers more choice to choose from, and
you can group two or more products in a bundle for
promotion or marketing activities and you get more
sales on each transaction.
9. After identify your products to sell, you need to look for
your drop-shipping suppliers. On time delivery is
important to ensure the satisfaction of your customers;
hence, be sure you check for the drop-shipper
performance record before you sign-up an account with
them. Discussion forum, message board and blogs are
sources for you to find some hints or comment for the
drop-shippers. Or you just simply key-in the drop-
shipper name on the Google or Yahoo search box; you
should get some information of your selected drop-
shipper.
10. Step 4: Set up an account with the drop-shipper
11. Once you select a drop-shipping company, you need to
set up a reseller account with the company. This can
often be done online or by phone, but some companies
will require that you complete and return a reseller
application to open an account. Some may also require a
tax ID and a business license. Most drop-shipping
company will charge some fee to open their reseller
account.
13. Many online retailers failed in their drop-shipping e-
business because they could drive traffic or visitor to
their website and convert these visitors to the actual
paying customers. To get traffic to your product page
(either your website or your eBay e-store), you need to
advertise your products so that your products get
exposure on internet and attract targeted traffic to your
product page.
14. There are many ways to advertise your products. You
could advertise on eBay, use pay-per-click (PPC)
advertisement service such as Google Adword or Yahoo
PPC. Or you could go for the cheapest but equally
efficient way in driving traffic to your e-store: Article
Marketing. You could write a review on your products in
an article and put your e-store URL at the end of article
or at the author resource box and submit them many
article directories for maximum exposure. Many internet
visitors will drop-by to your e-store via your URL link at
the end of your article if they are interested to know
more.
15. Step 6: The Product Sold & Place Order To Drop-Shipper
16. Once your have product sold, your customer will pay you
on your selling price via your online payment system
such as PayPal. And you place the order with your drop-
shipper and pay them via their payment system at the
agreed price, which is lower than your selling price, so
that you could earn the profit.
18. Many e-business entrepreneurs will miss out after sale
follow up portion. Just because your customer has paid
you and you have placed the order with the drop-
shipper, it does not mean that this is end of the loop.
Because if there are problem occur, you are the one who
need to responsible in the eyes of your customers.
Hence, you should follow up with your drop-shipper
either via phone or email to ensure that ship out your
order to your customer.
19. You should proactively follow up with your customer to
ensure they have received their order and satisfy with it.
Offer yourself as the personal contact for any issues that
may arise. This is also a great way to sell customers
more products because if your customers are satisfied
with your service, they may give you repeat orders.
21. By integrate drop-shipper into your e-business, you can
forget about inventory handling issues and find a
shipping partner to fulfill orders for you; all will be done
by your drop-shipping partners. By following correct
steps to set up your drop-shipping e-business, you can
save your time and efforts in getting your business
started faster.
