How to Start a successful Drop Shipping Business

Many people shy away from starting an online store because of the initial startup cost, but imagine if someone offered to pay your upfront inventory costs on thousands of items and manage all your shipping and fulfillment operations for you, well it would be much easier to get started and you could run your business from anywhere in the world sound too good to be true, well it's not if you know about Drop Shipping.

In this article I'm gonna explain exactly, how Drop Shipping works, how to find dropshippers for your products and give solutions to some common problems associated with Drop Shipping.

All right let's dive in what is Drop Shipping?
Well Drop Shipping is a retail method in which you don't keep your own products in stock instead you partner with a wholesale supplier that stocks its own inventory you transfer customer orders and shipment details to them and they ship the goods directly to the customer.

The biggest benefit of Drop Shipping is you don't have to worry about fulfillment or inventory issues,
also most customers don't know your Drop Shipping since private label shipping lets you ship from the wholesaler with a return address and invoice customized to your ecommerce store.

Let's quickly go over a few other benefits of drop shipping:

1- You don't need buckets of money 
Drop Shipping makes it amazingly easy to get started selling online, you don't need to invest heavily in inventory, yet you can offer thousands of items to your customers.

2- Convenience and efficiency
Successfully launching and growing an e-commerce business takes a lot of work, especially with limited resources, not having to worry about fulfilment is incredibly convenient and frees up your time to focus on marketing customer service and operations.

3- Mobility
With all the physical fulfillment issues handled, you're free to run your business anywhere you can get an internet connection.

4- It's a trusted model
You might be thinking that this sounds like some sketchy fly-by-night model but it's not, plenty of online stores and even major retailers use Drop Shipping as a way to offer a wider variety of products to the customers, without having to deal with increased inventory hassles.


how do I find drop shipping wholesalers?

Well, first off in the United States most suppliers will ask you for your business EIN number and a copy of your state sales-tax or resale certificate, so you may want to consider having your legal documents in a row before contacting suppliers, however this isn't always the case so there's no reason why you can't start contacting drop shipping suppliers immediately.
Now if you already know what products you'd like to dropship contacting the original manufacturer is the easiest way to find qualified distributors, not all distributors will be willing to drop ship, but it will give you a list to followup with.

Unfortunately the market is litteredwith scams and low-quality information, if you do decide to invest in directory i recommend the paid director Worldwide Brands as a reputable source to find drop shipping wholesalers, however it's still very important to exercise caution. Additionally if you're
using Shopify you can access a variety of apps, which will connect you directly with reputable drop shippers.

Google can also be an effective tool to find drop shippers but you need to keep a few things in mind here are a few tips you can use to find a wholesaler through Google:

The first thing you'll want to do is search extensively wholesalers and drop shippers are notoriously bad at SEO and marketing and usually aren't going to pop up on the first page of Google for a term like handbag wholesaler, instead you'll need to dig deep into the search results often going through ten or twenty pages of listings.

Additionally you should use lots of modifiers as you hunt for suppliers don't stop with a search for wholesale, make sure to use other terms including distributor, reseller bulk warehouse and supplier.

It's also important to note that suppliers also tend to have outdated late 90s-era websites, so don't be scared away by abysmal design and layout, while a sleek modern site could signal a great supplier, a low-quality one doesn't necessarily indicate a bad one.


Now despite our glowing recommendation drop shipping is not an e-commerce nirvana, like all models it has its challenges and downsides which we'll quickly go over now:

1- There will be lots of competition and weaker margins
It's true products that can be dropship will often spawn a lot of competition, usually this leads to cutthroat pricing and diminishing profit margins making it hard to build a viable business, to be successful you typically can't compete on price, instead you'll have to offer value in a different way usually through top-notch product education, service or selection.

2- Syncing inventory is difficult and leads to out of stock items
The best way to mitigate this problem is by working with multiple suppliers with overlapping product lines.Its inherently dangerous to rely on a single supplier having two suppliers doubles the likelihood that you'll have an item in stock and available for shipment.
Many sophisticated suppliers offer real-time product feed and you can use services like eCommHub to easily sync your Shopify website with the warehouse.

Now eventually you sell a customer an out of stock item, instead of cancelling the order, offer the customer an upgraded product or discount, you might not make much if any money on the order, but you'll likely build a loyal brand advocate.

3- it's hard to sell products you never see
However in today's world is possible to become an expert in just about everything through information online. Selling products from manufacturers with detailed websites will allow you to become intimately familiar with the product line without ever having touched a physical item, and when you do need to answer a specific question about a product a quick call to your manufacturer or supplier will give you just the answer you need.

You can also buy your most popular items to get acquainted with them and then resell them as used or refurbished often recouping most of your investment.

4-Third party errors
Involving a third party will result in more fulfillment errors mistakes and logistical problems, even the best drop shippers make occasional mistakes and mediocre ones will make a lot of them. Suppliers are fairly good about paying to remedy problems, but when they're not you need to be willing to spend what's necessary to resolve the issue for your customer.

 If you try to blame your supplier for a fulfillment problem, you'll come off as amateurish and unprofessional, similarly if you're unwilling to ship out a cheap replacement part to a customer because the supplier won't cover the cost your reputation is going to suffer.

One of the costs of drop shipping convenience is the expense of remedying logistical problems. If you accept it as a cost of doing business and remember to put your customer first it shouldn't be a long-term issue.

Is drop shipping the path to overnight ecommerce success? Of course not.
Like any successful online store you'll need to invest over time and a quality website, marketing, and customer service. But Drop Shipping does provide an easy way to get started and the ability to leverage other people's capital without having to invest thousands of your own. When managed correctly, it can form the foundation of your own successful online store.

Thanks for reading and if you foun this article helpful let me know by sharing on social media or leaving a comment below.