DROPSHIPPING WHAT YOU'RE NOT AWARE OF

Whether you’re just starting your dropshipping journey, or you’ve been trying for a few years but never actually made profit. The most common question we get is “What is the hardest part of running a dropshipping business?”. Although there are a number of challenging aspects to dropshipping, there is one area that successful dropshippers have admitted they struggle with.

Tips for Starting a Dropshipping Business

1. There’s no need to rush a product – If you’ve found a product that you think is the next big thing. It’s only natural to get excited and start working franticly to get the product onto your website as well as produce ads to start making sales. This is where a lot of unsuccessful dropshippers make a mistake. Have a look at the competition selling the item. If its not over saturated, then that’s a good start.

Secondly, in order to actually sell products you need to have an ad that draws customers attention as they scroll through their newsfeed. Ensuring your ad is high quality with no spelling mistakes etc is crucial. Spend time to produce a high-quality ad, description and campaign. This will give you a great base for success.

2. Don’t over think your website design – Perfecting your website design can become addicting. This leads to you spending hours upon hours working on your website trying to fix small issues that the regular customer would not notice. Yes, it is good to have an amazing looking website but at the beginning don’t over think this. You need to concentrate on finding a marketable product, creating ads and doing market research.

You can update your website once you’ve started making money or even hire a free lancer to create an amazing design for you. Check out the image below to see a modern website design.

3. Ad Targeting – This area can mean the difference between being profitable or losing money. Ensure you really understand the market and customer you’re targeting. For example, let’s say you’ve found a new gadget for backpackers. You would be aiming at a younger market with interests in websites or Facebook pages associated with backpacking. Take some time to really understand who you want to sell to. This is often overlooked and a lot of dropshippers fail because of poor marketing campaigns.

4. Facebook Ad Accounts – This is piece of advice is vital if you don’t want to be locked out of Facebook ads for weeks. When you first open your Facebook Business account ensure you create 5 ad accounts. Facebook commonly ban ad accounts for simple things and un-ban them again in a few weeks. This can stop your ad campaign for weeks and cost you money. Instead, create multiple ad accounts from the start. If one gets banned you can instantly swap to another account.

What is the Most Difficult Aspect of Dropshipping?

Everybody has their opinion what the most difficult part of dropshipping is and the fake dropshipping “Guru’s” that tell you to follow their 5 simple steps to success don’t mention this.

The hardest part of becoming a successful dropshipper is finding the winning product. If dropshipping was easy everyone would do it. The majority of dropshippers fail within the first year because they can’t find a unique product that isn’t in stores or saturated. Finding products has become the hardest part of dropshipping and continues to get harder each year due to competition.

It only takes one successful product to make money in dropshipping. You need to know where to look for products. A good free method is watching your competitors. If you monitor their ads and watch for them scaling. You know they’ve got a winning product.

Overall, try to find for problem solving products. Do your research on how saturated the market is for a specific product before you put time and money into it. If a large dropshipping company is pushing a product and you want to try sell this product to. Think outside of the box and target different audiences that your competition may not have thought of.

Tricky Areas of Dropshipping Nobody Talks About

- Building a brand – It is common for dropshippers to make a one product store. But what happens if this product is not successful? You’ve wasted your time and money. It’s smart to create a general store in the beginning. By doing this you can easily find winning products using your general store. Then if one product is outperforming the rest and it is proven to be a good seller. Just create a one product store for it. This is a much smarter way to start out, avoiding costing yourself time and money.

- Shipping times – Dropshipping shipping times can vary from one week up to two months. Display your shipping times clearly for your customer to avoid negative reviews. Just be upfront with them about the shipping times and it will save you a lot of angry interactions with customers because they will know what to expect.

- Supplier issues – Be very careful when using suppliers on websites such as AliExpress. There are a lot of scammers on the website. To be safe follow these 4 tips:

o Pick a supplier that has been active for at least two years

o Read the reviews

o Read the shipping times and costs

o Don’t be afraid to reach out to a suppler privately and discuss a discounted price

- Customer Returns – This can be difficult because you will not actually handle the products. Some suppliers will accept returns but if they don’t, you’re stuck. Either find a company that will take the items in and store them for you. Quite often they will repost the item for you when you’re ready. If it is a one off, refund the customer and let them keep the product. This shows you’re a reliable company.

- Facebook ads/Instagram ads – Being profitable relies on a smart marketing campaign that attracts customers attention. Your ad needs to be high quality or customers will not trust your website.

Fun Fact – having trust badges on your website will dramatically increase your sales.

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