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Drop shipping has recently become one of the most effective ways to launch a successful business online, while also needing a minimal amount of funds and investment to get started. With more people trying to make money for themselves and starting a business of their own, dropshipping is now more in demand than ever before.

Much like we’ve seen in the world of content creation and blogging, it’s quite easy to get started — but there seem to be only a select few who have mastered the process and gone on to make millions of dollars from their online stores. One of the many benefits of starting a business based around dropshipping, is that you don’t need to re-invent the wheel or come up with that next million dollar idea. Instead, you just need to pick the products you want to sell, go live with an online store, and start promoting your business.

It sounds easy enough, but there is some time, work, and effort that will be involved. This is just the first of many factors that comes into play when looking at those who succeed, and those who fail to find success.

At the same time, we’ve also seen a massive influx of site owners, bloggers, content creators, affiliate marketers and brands all dive into this space as fast as possible. This also leads many top hosting and platform solutions to rethink the best business and marketing strategies. This is something CloudWays recently touched upon in their “Is Dropshipping Dead? Can You Still Earn Through It in 2019?”.

The obvious answer here is… NO. Dropshipping and ecommerce is in no way dead, it’s just a bit more saturated and competitive than it was in previous years.

The same can be said about affiliate marketing, and pretty much any other method for making money online. Hundreds of people have commented on this question through WarriorForum alone. Once word starts to spread about an effective way to make money online, everyone jumps in on it. However, most people aren’t willing to put in the time, work, and effort — so that is where real marketers and brands can have the edge.

To help with this process, today we are going to take a look at the world of dropshipping, what seems to work best, and how you can get started with your own dropshipping business — or being your existing one to that next level.

Dropshipping 101: What is dropshipping and how does it work?

The concept of dropshopping is quite simple and easy to understand. Oberlo, one of the worlds top dropshipping solutions, has created an excellent explainer video that shows not only how dropshipping works, but also why and how their platform makes it so easy and effective for anyone to start a business online.

This can also be summed up in three simple steps.

In fact, dropshipping is quite similar to affiliate marketing — in the fact that you don’t need to hold inventory. However, one would need to market their store, connect with a dropshipper, and also process orders. In short, you are running an online store the same way any product-based business is, except that you don’t need to actually hold the product, ship it out, and have a massive upfront investment to spend on inventory.

To dive into the comparisons between ecommerce, dropshipping and affiliate marketing, we can also refer to this video from Greg Preece, which highlights not only the main advantages and disadvantages of each, but also which method is better for those looking to invest money over time, and also for those who are just starting out.

To learn more about the process, be sure to check out my dropshipping 101 reference guide.

How to find the right products to sell?

As with all business ideas and concepts, you need to know what you are going to sell. It doesn’t necessarily need to be something you are familiar with, but instead something you know how to market and get in front of the right audience.

You should also consider how saturated the market is, what your profit margins are going to look like, and how competitive and pricey it will be to start running paid ad campaigns to promote your online store.

Before even looking for the best products to sell, it’s important to remember what the purpose of drop shipping is, and while it’s an ideal business to have. AppeConnect does a great job at laying out the many different pros and cons of drop shipping, which also serves as a good reminder for site owners and brands as well.

It’s not just about having the right tools and platform to power your site, it’s also about making sure you have a solid profit margin on each item and not putting in tedious work and effort to just make a dollar or two on each sale. This is also why ecommerce sites are using dropshipping as their solution for product and shipment, and trying to avoid the whole inventory and warehouse issue in the process.

There are actually several tools out there that can help with this process:

• Google Trends allows you take a look at the interest in a product, service, or keyword over time
• Amazon and eBay will give you ideas, sales numbers, and customer reviews

Using these free tools and resources will make it easier for you to find a winning product to sell — which is quite important before launching your site. To also help with this process, I recommend you take a look at this article on how to find the right products to sell, which outlines the following key points.

Most good dropshipping products share similar attributes. When researching potential dropshipping products, keep in mind these five criteria:

Assuming you can walk through this process and find a few products you might be interested in selling, how can you then find the right supplier or dropshipper to start working with?

Where and How to Find Reliable Dropshippers

As someone who has had experience with dropshipping, this process is not only the most important — it can also be the most time-consuming.

I can’t stress this enough. If you are going to build a business of your own, where someone else is fulfilling the product, they need to always be on time, reliable, and trustworthy. Back when I ran my first dropshipping site, I actually acquired an online store and got the direct information for the dropshipper. Nowadays, it’s much easier to find dropshippers online, but finding a good one is like finding a needle in a haystack.

When it comes to actually finding products and going with a solution, there are plenty of sites and solutions to choose from. Some of the most popular are:

• AliExpress
• SaleHoo
• Doba
• Worldwide Brands
• Wholesale Central
• Wholesale2B
• MegaGoods
• InventorySource
• Dropship Direct
• Sunrise Wholesale
• National Dropshippers
• Dropshipper.com

Each of these have their own pros and cons, but it’s often preferred to find a dropshipping management platform or solution that can tie into all of these seamlessly.

Once such solution again is Oberlo, as they have not only created a platform and solution that makes it easy for people to start selling online, they’ve also simplified the process of finding a high-quality dropshipper as well. As the company continues to make big waves in the online business space, they’ve recently come out with their own list of “Oberlo verified” suppliers to work with.

In short, if you want to sell a product and need a reliable dropshipper, just go through their list. In fact, you can pretty much “just pick one, we checked them already“, as they say on their site.

However, this isn’t just a simple hand-selected and verified list, there is actually a whole lot more that goes into it. Take a look at how Oberlo Suppliers stacks up against the competition, and the many factors that go into this verified decision process.

With such data and verified information readily accessible, Oberlo has quickly eliminated one of the most time-consuming and frustrating components of starting an online business.

Best Ways to Effectively Promote Your Online Store

As mentioned earlier, it’s quite easy to go live with a website, blog, or even an online store of your own. The real work and challenge is promoting your content and generating sales.

This will all come down to how you effectively promote your online store, optimize your ad campaigns, and learn to correctly price your product for the best conversions and margins possible.

Some of the best working methods for promoting your dropshipping store are:

• Using Coupons – Everyone loves to save money online. Start offering coupons through your site and not only will you see increased sales, you will also likely see free promotion and traffic coming from various coupon sites and forums as well.
• Affiliate Program – Increase sales and traffic to your site by going live with your own affiliate program. Best of all, you only need to pay out money when new sales come in!
• SEO and PPC Marketing – Online stores will always do greats with organic search rankings and using PPC to get high-quality customers to their site. Each method has their own advantages, but as a store owner, it’s up to you to see where your time and money is best spent.
• Social Media and Remarketing – With more than three-billion users on social media, how can you not take advantage of it? A great way to get started is to place a tracking pixel on your site, then delivering remarketing ads to visitors that didn’t convert on their first visit. Facebook Ads is super easy to set up for this.
• Building a Mailing List – A mailing list is one of the best ways to increase sales and grow your business at scale. Always try to collect the email address of users on your site. Offering a 10% coupon is a great way to get users to submit their email, while also possibly increasing the chance for a sale as well.

If you are still sitting on the sidelines and have always wanted to start an online business of your own, right now is the best time to get started.

Just like we’ve seen how WordPress has made the process of building a website or blog so fast and easy, we are seeing that same transformation taking place in the world of online stores as well. There are little-to-no technical or design skills needed to get started. All it takes is the willingness to put in the time, work, and effort… then follow all of the steps laid out for you above.

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