You might have definitely spared a thought on starting the E-commerce site at once. But starting the E-commerce site isn’t a walk in the park and it needs proper knowledge of all the factors that counts while starting a successful E-commerce.
Also, the E-commerce might cost you dearer. It would need a proper place to keep as a warehouse. Even if you have got the inventory, you will have to bear the charges for the marketing and logistics as well.
This would end up adding a huge sum of expenses and the profit isn’t indeed guaranteed too until you spend a good sum of money in the marketing.
This is where the Dropshipping comes to the rescue. There is no owned inventory by you or no cost of logistics and all you need is to spend your sum on the Ads, marketing and SEO.
The Dropshipping is much better and cost-efficient when compared to the E-commerce. All you need is a better marketing skill for promoting your store.
How To Start A Successful Dropshipping Website December 2024: (100% Working)
What is Dropshipping?
Dropshipping is simply the online business where the manufacturer supplies the product directly to the customers using their logistics. But what do you do here?
You are the intermediate that connects the manufacturer or the supplier with the customer.
Three key players in this Dropshipping game:
1. The manufacturer who is responsible for creating the products, storing the inventory, having the logistics under them, selling the products on behalf of the retailer and finally earning money by keeping a margin over their wholesale inventory products.
2. The retailer, that is you, who creates the store and has all the information in the store about the manufacturer’s product. You can always choose the which products you want to include in your store and you can sell them with your own brand name. You keep the inquiries and customer’s complaints while asking the manufacturer for the return or exchange.
3. The customer is the most important part of this business. It contacts the retailer and also inquires and complaints the retailer regarding the product. The manufacturer and the customer are not directly linked to each other.
How Do You Make Money Here?
Indeed, the most important question is that how do we make money using the Dropshipping. Making the money in the Dropshipping is certainly quite easy when compared to the e-commerce.
All you need is to create a store that earns for you. You add the products in the store that are best for your niche and the customer chooses the product and orders them.
Now, let’s suppose you have a store which deals in sports gear and you are selling a wristwatch for $50 which costs you $30 through the manufacturer. Your profit is clearly $20 by selling a single wristwatch. Isn’t that appealing?
Below I have laid out the free Dropshipping guide of 10 minutes that can help you grow your Dropshipping store within months and reach six-figures within few months.
Quick Guide On How To Start A Dropshipping Website and Make Profit
Before starting with anything, I would recommend you to take a pen and a notebook or anything to note down. Everything I will mention below needs to be followed in steps as this is the only way to start a smooth Dropshipping website.
Step 1: Choose a Niche
This is the first and the most decisive step where you need to choose your niche first. Choosing a niche doesn’t really mean that you start up with anything that comes into your mind first. You will need the patience to choose your niche.
Also, before choosing the niche, you must first do the thorough market research. You should look at what people are looking for on the internet and what products are really selling in the online market.
Secondly, choose a niche about which you are passionate. If you are not passionate about the niche you have chosen, then you are not doing it right. You will feel dull about doing the market research on those products and even writing the reviews on it if you own a blog similar to that.
You can find the popularity and relevancy of your chosen niche by looking at some of the best ideas below:
- Google Trends: Google Trends is one of the ways to know what products people are searching for on the internet. In the Google trends, click on the top left-hand icon and click on the Explore.
You can filter your search on the basis of the location, categories, type of search and the date. Let’s take for example I have applied the following filters in my search results.
The top search in the sports was Bicycle in the sports category where I chose the relevant search query and that helped me to narrow my search further.
- Google Keyword Planner: Although it is mainly used for the SEO and Adwords purpose, you can also use the Google Keyword Planner to find if the chosen niche is profitable or not. Don’t go for the much competitive and less competitive.
- Social Media: Social media is the best way to get to know about your niche. Follow the pages or people that are in the same niche as yours and look if they have followers and notice their strategy.
Step 2: Find The Supplier
Finding the right supplier with an excellent history is vital here. You can’t just create your store and what If you haven’t got the trustworthy suppliers. It will certainly be a big minus for your business.
For this purpose, I would recommend the Alibaba. Alibaba is a great platform for communicating with the right supplier. You can communicate with them, ask questions, fix rates and have all the required conversations easily.
You can also find the right suppliers by using searching few queries on Google such as:
- Keyword+ suppliers + online
- Keyword+ distributor + online
- Keyword+ dropshippers
- Keyword+ dropshipping
- Keyword + warehouse/ reseller
If you are only 100% sure about the supplier, take the next step then.
Step 3: Create Your Store
After you have completed the gruelling task of finding the niche and the supplier for you, then comes creating an elegant store for your customer. The store must be in tune with your niche. It should have all the necessary tools and plugins that are required to run a store.
Above all, it must be easy to design and launch!! The best platform that I would recommend for the Dropshippers, as well as the E-commerce businesses, is Shopify.
You must be wondering that why I chose Shopify over other E-commerce tools. The simple answer is that it requires no labour. You can create your customized store, choose your themes, add or remove widgets from your store quickly. Moreover, all the tools are easily available in the Shopify.
Let’s Know Shopify:
Shopify isn’t free to use, though it has a 14-day free trial but you definitely need to purchase the plan for you. Even the E-commerce and Dropshipping pundits realize that the Shopify is one of the best platforms to kick off your online business.
Start Your 14 Days Free Trial With Shopify Now
I will give you a short detail on launching your Dropshipping store here.
You can read more about it on my review on Shopify.
Recommended & Helpful :
1. Choose Your Template:
There are almost 100+ templates to choose for your Shopify store. Some of them might be free while some may be paid too. For a person with zero knowledge on coding, designing a complete website seems like building castles in the air.
Maybe you are entering the e-commerce field by finding this as a profitable business, not by realizing your talent for coding. So you are a businessman and clearly, not a designer and this is where the templates are used. Use the theme that is closer to your niche.
- Design Your Store
After choosing the relevant theme or template, you will need to add colours, heading, elements and pictures to your store to make it more attractive. Spend an ample amount of time on designing your store. Do not overdo the colours or do not stuff the page with irrelevant texts.
Fix a logo of your site first. After setting the logo, make sure the menu is setup and at last add a home page, product page all other relevant pages to your store.
2. Choose Your Products To Sell:
The next step after creating your store is to add the products to your store. Now, most of us are sceptical about where to get these products to dropship from.
For the purpose of choosing the store as well as the supplier, I would suggest using the Aliexpress
Aliexpress is the biggest retail store and it is made up of a number of small businesses in China. It is equivalent to the Amazon.com in Asia. It has a number of suppliers that need the drop shippers to sell their products. I have explained in detail the Dropshipping with Aliexpress in my next article.
After choosing the products, you will need to import it into your store. But how would you pull out the products from the Aliexpress to your store? This can be done using another tool- ‘Oberlo
What Is Oberlo?
Oberlo is highly regarded on the Shopify app market with over three hundred positive reviews and the services are currently being used by around 6500 Shopify stores which all in all generate around 36 million dollars in sales.
Oberlo deals exclusively with AliExpress and rightly so, considering how much of a titanic eCommerce site it is. It is specifically made for the Shopify.
All you have to do is just import the product to your shop using the Oberlo. After importing, the customer chooses and orders the product. Oberlo automatically orders it from the Aliexpress making your task easier. Also, Oberlo comes free with the Shopify account.
Atleast, you can add 500 products for free if you have paid for the Shopify. Know more about the Oberlo here.
3. Add Products To Your Store:
Below, I have explained step by step to how to add the products to your store using Oberlo and Aliexpress.
- Search the products in Aliexpress
Searching for the product on Aliexpress is not a rocket science. You can easily find your desired and best selling product using the Uduala tool which can be used to find the best selling products for you. After you have selected the product, click on the Oberlo icon on the bottom right-hand corner.
- Editing with Oberlo
The reason why I recommended Oberlo is because it lets you edit your products, add images, add your price and you can also see the profit that you will make up. I have edited the description well and also removed the unnecessary details.
- Go Live
After the product is ready, it is taken live to the shop by clicking on ‘Import to store’ button. And once you have clicked on this, your product will be up for sale and ready to be sell. Now, all you need is the traffic.
4. Promote Your Store:
Even though your store looks elegant and designed, it still can’t furnish the profits for you. You can’t get a better ROI until you spend some more funds on marketing too. However, you can’t just stick to one type of marketing.
You need to promote your store through different platforms. Neither Facebook alone nor the Google alone would give you the better ROI at once. The first strategy I would use for promoting my store would be getting it through the organic traffic.
- SEO
I chose organic traffic because I know that the paid traffic wouldn’t boost my ranking or improve the PR of my website. SEO or ‘Search Engine Optimization’ is an organic way of getting traffic to your website. You can rank higher on Google only if you have an SEO optimized page. Higher rankings mean higher traffic to your site and more chances of conversion.
You need to focus on three things for an SEO optimized site:
- Choose your keywords
- Page optimization
- Backlinks for your site
I would suggest you read more on SEO in our article:
Read Quick Guide on SEO for Dropshipping: How To Start A Successful Dropshipping Website
You can work on getting the backlinks for your store by writing the guest post. Read our quick guide on best backlinking methods. After you have got the backlinks, you can keep a check if the link is a do follow or not. There are a number of backlink checker tools that might help you keep a count and each of your backlinks.
- SEM Rush
- RavenTools
- KwFinder
- Moz
- Facebook Marketing
The organic traffic wouldn’t be enough if you need a huge conversion from your store. For this purpose, Facebook is one of the best platforms to sell your products. There are almost 1.2bn Facebook users in the world with different interests. But even if 10% of it is interested in your niche and you have the best products, then you can grow with Facebook immensely.
Choose the audience wisely.
Do not exhaust your budget at once in the beginning. Start your Ads with a low budget. Experiment with your audience. If you can’t see any conversions, definitely something is wrong with your Ads. Re-target and spend the same amount of money until you get zero to few conversions.
Once you have created the ad, make sure you have added the image, description and the CTA to it. You can watch and keep an eye on your Ads and conversions using the Facebook Analytics. Also, you can look over your competitor’s data and analytics to get an idea of what strategy they are using.
The best tools to spy on your competitors through Facebook are:
- PowerAd Spy (Read Review here)
- SemRush (Read Review here)
- AdPlexity (Read Review here)
FAQs
👉Do I need a business license for dropshipping?
It depends on your location and business scale. Check local regulations, but generally, it's advisable to have a business license for legitimacy and tax purposes.
👀How much capital do I need to start a dropshipping website?
The capital required can vary, but typically, it's relatively low. Costs include setting up a website, purchasing a domain, subscribing to a dropshipping platform, and marketing expenses.
👍Is dropshipping a profitable business model?
Yes, dropshipping can be profitable if done correctly. It requires minimal upfront investment and has low operating costs. However, success depends on your niche selection, supplier reliability, marketing strategies, and ability to manage customer relations effectively.
🚀How can I make my dropshipping business stand out?
Focus on building a strong brand, providing excellent customer service, and curating high-quality products. Use digital marketing strategies like SEO, content marketing, and social media engagement to reach a wider audience.
✔What are the best dropshipping suppliers?
Popular dropshipping suppliers include AliExpress, SaleHoo, Doba, and Wholesale2B. Choose suppliers based on product quality, delivery times, and reliability.
Final Words: How To Start A Successful Dropshipping Website December 2024
Here was the most detailed and quick 10-minute guide on How to start a Dropshipping website of your own and get the steps closer to the six-figures. I have tried to cover all the important points that are necessarily required to kick-off your store.
This topic is too immense to cover and I have explained all the points at a basic level of your business. And at the end, I would suggest you be patient. It might take days or even months to get your first sale. But when you get the first sale, it’s the best feeling in the world.
Still, need the motivation to start? Read here: The Guy Who Made Six-Figure With Dropshipping!!
If you feel that I have left out some important point here, please let me know in the comments section.
