Dropshipping is becoming an increasingly popular business model amongst first-time entrepreneurs as they are more able to focus on marketing their products.
1. Set up a Shopify account
Sign up to Shopify’s free dropshipping starter kit and look through the resources before launching your store. Once your Shopify account is set up, it’s time to think about what and to who you’re going to dropship.
2. Find a lucrative niche
As dropshipping is a low cost, low risk affair; you’ll find yourself facing a lot of competition from a host of established dropshippers selling the same items extremely cheaply. Hence, smaller businesses can reduce this level of competition by finding the right niche market.
The three main ways to identify a good niche is:
i) Via keyword research - helps you understand what people are searching for on the Internet.
ii) Using Google Trends - popularity of top search queries in Google Search
iii) Using data available from online ads services (Facebook and Google Ads).
3. Look for dropshipping suppliers
There are a ton of dropshipping suppliers to choose from, but most Shopify dropshippers turn to a dropshipping app to do the heavy lifting. This is because dropshipping apps simplify the whole process by:
i) Letting you choose the products you want to list on your site
ii) Importing all the relevant product details onto your site automatically
iii) Notifying your dropshipping suppliers every time there’s a sale.
You can find dropshipping apps readily available in the Shopify app store.
4. Imports products into your Shopify store
To streamline your product import process, you can directly import products along with their descriptions, and then edit them in your Shopify dashboard. When calculating your profit margin, don't forget to take shipping costs into account.
5. Market your dropshipping store
Having a good marketing strategy for your dropshipping store is crucial in getting your first sale. The biggest advantage of dropshipping is that it frees up your time to focus on marketing efforts, as order processing and shipment are mostly automated. In dropshipping, products are widely available from different online stores, so the key to growth is differentiating your brand by carefully curating products that resonate with your target audience.
A common problem faced by dropshippers is the frequent fluctuation of prices done by dropshipping apps. This is difficult for business owners to constantly stay on top and change prices manually. Hence affecting their profit margins.
This can be easily overcome with Konigle's Dynamic Pricing tool. It allows you to create rules that automatically change product prices based on incoming prices such as price from dropshipping providers.
