Dropshipping – How to start a Dropshipping Business

Dropshipping is a type of retail business, where one does not need to maintain inventory. You just have to take orders on your website and carry forward that order (after deducting your cut) to the supplier. And the supplier will ship the item directly to the customer.

Sounds interesting??

Yes it is..

So let’s first understand the business model of Dropshipping.

How does Dropshipping Works ??

It is most easiest way of doing business and earning money online, if properly understood.

The dropshipping model involves “no inventory management at all“.

All you have to do is to carry forward the order you received from your customer to the supplier along with the shipping address of the customer, and the supplier will ship the item directly to the customer.

To make it more clear for you guys, let me explain it with an example.

• Suppose your customer buys an ‘X’ product on your website, listed as $200 of selling price
• What you do now is, you carry forward the shipping details to your supplier and buy that product from your supplier at (say) $100 on your customer’s behalf
• Since you have bought that product from your supplier on your customer’s behalf, your supplier will ship the product directly to your customer.

That’s it! all you have to do is to take orders and carry forward to the supplier.

And you can earn the margins around $100,000 per month depending upon your monthly sale and margin percent you are able to make.

So basically, your customer will be buying a product virtually from you, and you will be buying that product actually from the supplier on your customer’s behalf, and margin remains with you.

This is how dropshipping works..

Now that you know how does this thing actually works, you must be thinking of to how to start a dropshipping business.. aren’t you??

How to start a Dropshipping Business with almost NO Investment

Dropshipping business requires following things:

1. Product niche (specific categories works well)
2. A website (online store)
3. Payment gateway (to receive payments on website)
4. Business registration (in some countries)
5. Supplier/s (most importantly, ofcourse)

So, how will I get all those “huh” ?? (wondering)

Don’t worry I will tell you everything..

Before you start, you have to make sure what products you are willing to sell. And this is the most important part of starting a business.

Since your future earnings will depend upon the product niche you choose.

You have to do research for what kind of products do well and have higher margins in the market..

Though you can do it manually by searching on amazon and ebay with the categories you are willing to sell, there are few websites nowadays who can help you find the perfect product to sell..

1. Salehoo
2. Oberlo

Most of your hard part can be solved, if you are ready with the perfect product list.

Now comes, the crucial part.. A website.. your online store..

How to get a website for start selling dropshipping products

There are broadly 2 options:

1. Woocommerce website (wordpress)
2. Shopify (recommended for ease)

If you are freindly using wordpress and its plugins, you can create an online store with woocommerce theme and plugins on wordpress easily.

If you are not friendly with WordPress, you can go with shopify.

shopify is the most favourable option of majority of dropshippers around the world, just because it is built for the dropshippers at the first place.

Now comes the payment gateway for the website, so that you can start receiving payments on your website from your customers.

Best Payment gateways for online businesses

I have already written an article about the best payment gateways, you can refer to them as per your requirement:

• 10 Best payment gateways in UK for receiving payments
• Best payment gateways in India

You might also have to get your business registered before you start selling in some countries, do check with your tax expert friends for that.

After checking all the things above, you need to find suppliers for the product list that you have created.

What I have found people doing these days for dropshipping is.. they are using aliexpress for supplying products for their dropshipping websites.

Products on aliexpress are sold at very low cost and you can pick products from there for selling on your website.

This provides you ample opportunity to sell products at better price, and earn huge margins.

You can directly synchronize the products from aliexpress to your website using few plugins.. both on the woocommerce as well as on the shopify.

Plugins for Dropshipping

Some of the plugins that you can use are:

• EZUSY (for woocommerce stores)
• Oberlo (for Shopify stores)

Using these plugins you can directly manage prices and aliexpress products on a single dashboard and can also manage your margins.

If you are not friendly with website development, etc I advise you to don’t worry about that and sign up with shopify.

Just because the price you will be paying them can be easily adjusted among the margins you can earn through this business.

Get 14 days free Shopify trial

Start selling now.. If you are facing any difficulty throughout the process ask me in comment section or you can directly ping me on my FB profile.. I can help setting up your store for free (perks of being my subscribers 😉 )

I wish you guys good luck for your business venture.. hope you will succeed and will thank me later 😀