Starting a Dropshipping Business With No Money

Although it sounds hard, it is definitely possible with the proper approach and resources. Dropshipping is the retail fulfillment method where the store does not keep many products in stock. Instead, when an item sells from the store, it purchases the product from a third-party supplier and has it shipped directly to the customer. It’s a low-investment business model that can be a fantastic way to dive into the world of e-commerce. Here’s how to do it:

Choose a Niche

You want to choose a niche for your dropshipping store. Choosing the right niche can determine your success. As such, seek what really interests you with good competition/balanced demand. Utilize tools like Google Trends, Keyword Research, and Competitor Analysis to find out a profitable niche.

Conduct Market Research

Having chosen your niche, step two would be conducting market research. This will mean understanding your target audience: what their needs are and how they behave about making purchases. You could get this information about your target market from online tools and resources. This will help in making informed decisions when choosing products to sell and coming up with effective marketing strategies.

Find a Reliable Supplier

A major step in starting a dropshipping business is finding a suitable supplier. This will become the entity primarily responsible for the full procesure of fulfilling orders and dispatching products to clients on your behalf. Look for suppliers who can supply quality products at very reasonable competitive prices and provide good customer service. You can find reliable suppliers on AliExpress, Oberlo, SaleHoo, or other directories.

Create an Online Store

First, you have to set up an online store. You can use Shopify, WooCommerce, or BigCommerce. All of them offer free trials and very low-cost plans. You can start with zero dollars. Pick a nice-looking, professional theme, set it up to look a bit like your brand, and add some products.

SEO Optimization of the Store

Search Engine Optimization— This is very important for giving your store organic traffic. Optimize the content for your store, product descriptions, and meta tags for keywords relevant to your business. This will increase your store’s visibility in search results. Tools like Google Keyword Planner and Ubersuggest can also be used to find keywords relevant to your niche.

Leverage Free Marketing Channels

Marketing is very critical for driving traffic to your store and generating sales. Fortunately, there are several free marketing channels through which you can market your business:

• Social Media: Create an account on various social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. Share some really engaging content. Engage the audience by replying and promoting your products.
• Content Marketing: Make a blog on your desired niche and write useful posts that will be of value to your audience. This will create an inflow of organic traffic to your shop.
• Email Marketing: Subscribe by giving away freebies and discounts for email addresses. Send regular newsletters to keep your audience engaged and promote your products.
• Influencer Marketing: Reach out to influencers within your niche and ask for them to promote your products in exchange for commission or free products.

Provide Excellent Customer Service

Excellent customer service is an integral part of establishing a loyal customer base with repeat business. Respond promptly to customer inquiries, handle complaints professionally, and fulfill orders accurately. This will lead to positive reviews and word-of-mouth referrals.

Monitor and Understand Your Performance

Keep checking on your shop’s performance to know where improvements should be made. Utilize Google Analytics to keep tabs on your traffic, sales, and conversion rates so that this will help in knowing what is working and where change has to be made. Keep optimizing your store and marketing strategies by the data gathered.

Free services that can help you start a dropshipping business with little to no money

You can start a dropshipping business with no money if you observe the right actions and wisely use the resources available. Pick a lucrative niche, search for reliable suppliers, create an optimized online store, leverage free marketing channels, and offer customer service of best quality. With hard work and dedication, you can build a successful dropshipping business and achieve financial independence.

Are you looking to give wings to your dream of starting an online business? You’re at the right spot! 

Whether you’re trying to get away from the 9 to 5 rat-race or looking for some side cash, you can definitely run an online business right from the comfort of your home. 

According to Statista, the global online business market is insanely huge. It’s projected that the market will grow massively towards a 6.54 trillion dollar economy by 2023. 

In such a huge booming market, there’s room for grand successes. In this article, we will debunk common myths around starting an online business, outlining 8 essential starting steps and teaching you how you can avoid pitfalls along the way. So let’s begin! 

Let’s Look At Some Myths on Starting An Online Business

You will be met by a range of discouraging (and false) remarks about online businesses. Whether it’s friends with zero experience in online businesses or your colleagues, everyone will barge you with their opinions. 

To make an informed decision, let’s just first bust the common myths that surround us when we talk about starting an online business. 

Myth 1 –  You Need A Large Investor 

Gone were the days when investors had to show interest in your business idea. Be the Elon Musk of your own business. When you’ve done your initial research and believe that your business can be profitable, don’t shy away from making a small investment. 

The costs of starting an online business can be easily categorized – 

1. Logistics Costs: Hosting and building your eCommerce website
2. Marketing & Advertising Cost: Attracting visitors to your store
3. Hiring Costs: Hiring or outsourcing people

When you have a clear idea of the costs, it gets a lot easier to know what you can invest in and what should be your safety net. Business is all about having a sorted plan.

Myth 2 – Starting an Online Business is Difficult

No, starting an online business can be intimidating but it’s not difficult. Your biggest asset is Google and you can search your way through learning a lot of things that revolve around your business. 

There are so many types of online businesses that you can start with. In fact, there are many online business ideas for beginners, you will never run out of ideas. You can run your own eCommerce store, offer part-time consulting in your domain of expertise, dropship popular goods, and do much more.

Myth 3 – You Will Be Alone In Your Online Business Journey

If I had a dollar for the number of people who don’t start an online business just because it’s ‘traditional’ enough, I would be a millionaire. 

They think they will never have those inside colleague jokes, weekend parties, and whatnot. But, this is far from true. 

In fact, you can end up meeting so many like-minded people on the internet that may even become your online business partners later on. The thing is that you’ve not been looking in the right places. Check online events on Eventbrite, Meetup, and other similar platforms. 

The point here is that it’s okay to get started alone. You will definitely cross paths with like-minded people on the way. Once you find the people you can vibe with, your online business journey would become a lot more easier and progressive. 

Myth 4 – Less Work, More Income

“I make $60,000 for a year working 4 hours a week!” – Scammers!

These are typical headlines. Don’t fall for them when you’re getting started.

A simple answer to “How to start an online business for free?” or “How to start online business with no money?”  is that no business can be started for free. You will always need to invest your time and a reasonable amount of money. 

Since you will be establishing your own brand, you will need to invest more time into it. Take some time to learn things you don’t already know unless you have the capital to outsource everything. 

You should remember that starting successful online businesses is not a fairytale. you need to put efforts the way anyone would do for a real job. 

Once your online business gains momentum, your income will automatically increase. That is why the initial effort is worth the scalability and profits that come later. 

Myth 5 – You Need A Huge Advertising Budget

Without a doubt, advertising and marketing are essential. But, your online business doesn’t need a huge amount of money to spend on it. 

Remember this: low investment ≠ no investment. 

You should expect to spend a few bucks to actually leverage Facebook and Google Ads.

Don’t be afraid to execute great content creation ideas just because you don’t have enough money. In the 21st century, there are low-budget solutions to everything. Marketing and advertising are no exceptions.

8 Steps to Start An Online Business – True for Almost Every Business!  

As I previously mentioned, business is all about having a sorted plan. The question is – how do you develop a sorted plan? 

You do it by dividing a huge task into simple and actionable steps. For record, that’s what I’ll be doing while explaining how you can systematically start your own online business. 

Step 1: Find a Market that Needs A Business 

Look at the most successful business giants around you. What do Google, Amazon, and Facebook have in common? 

They all solve a need.  

Google solves the need for quickly finding what info you need from an enormous amount of content. Amazon quickly delivers you the products you need, and Facebook capitalizes on our need for staying connected with the world. 

Even when it comes to niche-specific online businesses, there are solid examples like Luxy Hair, Notebook Therapy, and PRESS London. 

Luxy Hair offers personalized hair extensions, Notebook Therapy caters to stationery lovers, and PRESS London appeals to fitness enthusiasts. They all have a targeted market. 

Here’s the crux. Most brilliant business ideas can be unsuccessful if it has no market. Here are a few questions you should ask while starting an online business: 

1. Can you spend money to solve the problem?

2. Will your product/service solve a problem large enough to gain potential customers?

3. Will your product/service provide a cost-effective solution to that problem?

4. How costly will it be for you to reach the people that want the solution you’re offering? 

The key point is that you shouldn’t blindly pick a niche. Take the time to see whether the product or service you’re launching solves the major problems of people on a wide scale. 

Step 2: Conduct Market Research for the Selected Niche

Market research is all about gathering information related to your niche audience, competition, your business, and how the 3 factors interact. Having a good idea of your market, you can easily come up with a unique selling proposition (USP) for your business. 

The first thing to do is find groups of people who are facing a certain problem but don’t have the adequate solutions. 

Here’s how you can get started:  

• Online Forums: Check what questions people ask and what problems they would love a solution for.

• Keyword Research: Find keywords that a lot of people are searching but don’t have a ton of competition with other sites.

• Assess Your Competitors: Visit your competitor’s websites and note how they’re filling the niche’s needs. 

Next, without getting into jargon, let’s see what other market research can you conduct. 

Talking To Your Potential Customers

You should know whether your ideal audience is actually looking for your product or service. Your best bet would be focus groups and survey responses. 

These can be particularly useful because you see your idea in action and also learn how people are receiving it. 

Checking Online Trend

Credible data sources related to your niche can be a great place to start. Besides, you should do a quick Google Trends search about the popularity of certain keywords related to your niche. 

Step 3: Analyze What Your Competitors are Doing

“Keep your friends close but your enemies closer” is something you might have often heard. Now of course, your competitors are not enemies. But still, they’re a threat to your business. 

Competitive analysis gives you a comprehensive insight into the market. You will learn who else is out there, how they’re pricing it, and what their unique points are.

A good competitor analysis should cover the following points and answer key questions like: 

• Pricing: See how your luxury vs budget competitors are performing. What’s the difference in their pricing and why. Check whether their customers have high disposable income or not.

• Market Demands: Is your competitor responding to market demands by offering discounts or are they maintaining a rigid price? What benefits or losses are they facing due to this strategy?

• Unique Selling Points: What makes your competitors stand out and how can you be different? What special points attract customers? 

• Marketing Campaigns: Are your competitors leveraging Facebook Ads or they’re shifting towards the Reddit audience? Do they run a blog to engage their visitors or they post TikTok videos? 

When you successfully answer all these questions, you can be assured that you know your competitors well enough. 

Step 4: Make Sure You Are All Caught Up with Legal Processes 

For operating your business, you will need to file all the legal business-formation documents and other paperwork. This legal process includes:

1. Registering your business with the appropriate county or state authorities
2. Meeting federal & state tax requirements and applying for state & federal tax IDs
3. Obtaining the required permits and licenses

Note that these requirements vary according to the state you reside in and the state you’re operating your business in. So do your research to learn whether there are any particular requirements that you need to meet.

 You can also consult an experienced legal advisor who can ensure that you’re on the right track.

Step 5: Know Who Your Target Audience Is

You’re always thrown around with that ‘buyer persona’ jargon on other blogs without actually getting how it works. Don’t worry, I’m here to show you what a buyer persona is and how you can leverage it for starting your online business. 

What is Buyer Persona?

A buyer persona is a detailed description of a person who represents your target audience. Buyer personas help you understand your customers better.

Using this information and understanding it, you can create tailored content and develop specific products to meet the needs of your customers. 

How Does Your Buyer Persona Help You?

Your buyer persona guides you to answer the following questions: 

1. What are the demographics of your customers?
2. Who will use your product or service? 
3. What niches or groups of people will prefer your business? 
4. How can you reach out to them? Will they most likely engage through email, Facebook, or LinkedIn?

Now that we know how insightful buyer personas can be, let’s see how you can create one. 

Creating Buyer Persona

Having a buyer persona is one of the first things I need to start an online business with. So, I’m jotting down a list of the basic information that I expect my ideal customer to have:

• Age range
• Gender
• Location
• Income range
• Family Size/Relationship Status
• Job title
• Personal & professional interests
• Likes & dislikes
• Social media platforms

For example, if I want to run a SaaS business, one of my buyer personas would be: 

On the other hand, if I’m running a sportswear store, my ideal buyer persona would be: 

 Step 6: Drive Traffic to Your Website Organically

There are 2 main ways of driving organic traffic to your store – social media and SEO. Let’s quickly look into how you can leverage both for your online business. 

Social Media 

When I was getting started, I knew that social media is one of the most important things I need to start an online business marketing with. 

However, I found social media time-consuming. So, I decided to automate it with the help of social media management tools like Hootsuite and SproutSocial. By posting through such tools, I’ve saved a lot of hours every week. 

SEO

SEO is another one of the most important things that should be on your starting an online business checklist. This is because organic search is often the primary source of website traffic. 

We all know that almost everyone uses Google to get information at least once a day. That’s why making your website rank higher is essential to bring in that organic traffic. 

If you don’t have the time for website SEO, you can definitely outsource it to an SEO expert. Just remember, SEO is relatively cheap in the grand scheme of things and the profits you receive in terms of brand growth will be more than you can ever imagine. 

Step 7: Run Ad Campaigns for Your Online Business

You might have a huge bag of online business ideas for beginners. But, if you don’t advertise your ideas and products, you will see little to no revenue. 

Your online business shouldn’t operate in complete secrecy. You need people to know about your business so that they can purchase from you. Here’s where an ad campaign helps you put your brand out in front of your desired customers.  

Why Do We Need Ad Campaigns for Starting Your Online Business? 

• Improved Brand Loyalty: Successful ad campaigns “talk” to customers. The more your customer relates to your brand, the more they’re likely to purchase your product/service. 

• Ads Increase Website Traffic: Ads are a showcase for your business. The more audiences see your product, the more they purchase, and the more profit you gain.  

• Attracts New Customers: The market is dynamic. Customers go in and come at the speed of light. Running ad campaigns might show you the potential markets you forgot to include.  

• Gain Recurring Customers: Ads remind your consumers about why they’ve chosen your business and allows them to further interact with your brand. 

• Smash Your Competitors: A compelling ad sticks with your customer for long. This would allow your customers to remember why they should choose you over the competitor. 

How Can You Run an Ad Campaign? 

1. Select Your Goal: What are you looking for? Are you trying to increase website traffic, page follows, etc? 

2. Pick Target Audience Demographics: Apart from choosing your audience’s demographics, each ad platform offers a list of interests that you can select from.  What are their hobbies, income, habits, etc? The more personalized you can make your ad, the more successful it will be.

3. Set Your Budget: Specify the number you put in is the budget for each day. 

4. Set Your Schedule: Put in the dates you want the ad to run. Besides, you can actually put in the exact time you want the ad to stop running. 

Step 8: Scaling and Expanding Your Business

Once you have those sweet sales coming in, don’t be afraid to evaluate whether you need to scale your business. Here’s the backbone of scaling your business. 

1. Strategize: Let’s assume that your orders tripled within a week. Does your organization have the people and systems to handle those new orders? 

2. Figure the Finances: Your expansion plan might require you to hire staff, advertise more, and create reporting systems to measure results. How and where will you find the money to invest for growth?

Things can massively change during your business expansion. Be prepared for that. But, don’t be afraid of the great opportunities that come along with a business expansion.

How to Start A Dropshipping Business – Considering the Trend!  

Dropshipping is a great online business idea for beginners. It’s gaining popularity because of the flexibility it offers. In simple words, Dropshipping is an eCommerce business that allows you to sell physical products online without maintaining an inventory. 

You take the order from the customer, contact the supplier, and ask the supplier to deliver the product to the customer. You reap the profits without actually manufacturing, storing, or shipping anything. It’s one of the business ideas where you can start an online business with no or little upfront investment. 

But, in order to create a profitable dropshipping business, you need the right skills and information. 

There’s a lot of hype about how ‘easy’ dropshipping is. However, the same people who had called dropshipping easy, now complain about it all day long.

This is why you need to have a clear idea about how dropshipping works and how you can use it for your best interests. Read this blog on how to start a dropshipping business to know my 6-year journey in dropshipping.

Mistakes to Avoid While Starting An Online Business

#1 – Taking A Long Time to Launch

If you’ve got the best business opportunity, research the market, and evaluate the success metrics, then just start drilling. In business, timing is everything. 

Perfectionism is the biggest deterrent to your business’s launch. You should know that the longer you spend perfecting small elements, the longer it would take for your business to make money. 

If you’re coming up with a trendy product and you end up waiting too long, the market demand will decline already and chances are that you will be easily beaten by a competitor.

Don’t fall into analysis paralysis and miss your business opportunity by simply delaying it. 

#2 – Dismissing Negative Feedback

Turning a deaf eye to criticism is the worst thing you can have while starting your online business. As an entrepreneur, it’s important that you take criticism in a positive light.

Don’t misunderstand your critics to be your haters. Yes, I understand that negative feedbacks hurt but let’s look at the upsides of receiving them: 

• You can build a better rapport with your customers 
• Your brand can be known for its amazing customer service 
• You can tweak your product to suit market needs 

#3 – Not Being Disciplined

To be insanely successful in anything in the world, you need to build discipline, manage your time, and most importantly, manage yourself. Most people slack off thinking that “oh wow, I can earn right from my home. Lemme just sit back and reap the profits for a few months.”

Nope, things don’t work like this when it comes to starting an online business. The more you slack off, the more your competitor takes the lead. 

If you’re not working consistently, you’re stealing your own opportunity for success. While you don’t need to have an insanely productive schedule like Tim Ferris or Ali Abdaal, you can still learn to plan and decide the tasks for the day. 

Create a schedule that is right for you and stick to it. Consistency gives results! 

#4 – Picking a Super Narrow Niche 

Just because you can pick a narrow niche, doesn’t mean you should. In fact, most business experts recommend that you start broad and then niche it down. This way you will already have a list of customers who are open to doing business with your brand. 

When you pick a very narrow niche, you run the risk of not making enough sales to keep your business running. 

The primary reason why many online businesses fail is that the owner thinks that the customers are just as passionate about the product as they are. 

This is why market research is super important and allows you to check the actual demand for the product.  

When it comes to market research, Google is your best friend. Use Google Trends, Google Keyword Tool, and other extensive features that allow you to learn whether your niche is actually that profitable or not. 

#5 – Bad SEO 

Anything too less and high is BAD. Don’t fall for the trap of filling your entire storefront with keywords. Back in the days, it was easy to rig the game of SEO and make your website rank first on the search results.

But, Google has gotten a lot smarter. It uses advanced crawling mechanisms, you can’t rig the game. In addition to this, it might even flag your page for dumping a bunch of keywords. 

Google values quality content. Even if you’re blogging or running an eCommerce store, you should ensure that your website solves the problems of your customers in the most efficient way possible. 

While starting your online business, you should know that your audiences would love reading the content for them and not for the search engine. If you’re not well-versed with SEO tricks, you might hire an SEO consultant or agency to do the thing for you. 

#6 – Forgetting Website Optimization 

In a world of decreasing attention spans, your website should hold and squeeze the attention of your visitor. When you don’t optimize your website for customer navigation, it may cost you some sales. 

Google recommends that your website should load in 2 seconds or less. If your website is too slow to load, you might lose that hard-earned traffic. 

You may have the loveliest product and have developed a great copy for your website, but why aren’t you seeing those sales? It might be because you have a misleading Call to Action (CTA). Ensure that your CTAs are direct and are positioned correctly. 

#7- Abandoning Email Lists

An overwhelming majority of online marketers recommend that you leverage your email list as soon as possible because it plays a great role in generating recurring customers. 

Your subscribers would like to be updated with special offers, price drops, recommendations, and you will have a constant connection with them. 

Some Real-Life Examples of Successful Online Businesses

Luxy Hair – Hair Extensions and Much More! 

Luxy Hair is a great example of successful online businesses. It operates in a very niche market but is able to generate a great volume of sales due to its branding and popularity.

Its popularity had initially increased due to its YouTube channel filled with hairstyle tutorials, haircare videos, and everything related to maintaining those luscious locks. 

Once the business owners of Luxy Hair had a good idea about their ideal audience and buyer persona, they built a seven-figure brand around it.

Things That Worked Out for Luxy Hair 

YouTube Traction 

Luxy Hair capitalized on the value of their hair tutorials. Since women were already loving the trendy hairstyles posted every week, the exposure Luxy Hair received through their YouTube channel was massive.  

Smart Storefront Design 

Luxy Hair’s founder Alex Ikonn pointed out how hair is a ‘visual product.’ Their website reflects the same. Having multiple images of women enjoying their new hair extensions makes the visitors imagine themselves using the product. 

Celebrity Endorsement 

When their store began gaining traction and saw an increased amount of buyer attention, they tapped into the power of celebrity promotions. By showing how celebrities vouch for Luxy Hair, it created a positive and trendy brand image. 

Pretty Presets – Lightroom Photography Presets 

This business is a great example that you don’t always have to sell a product to be successful. There are literally so many online business ideas for beginners, you will never run short of them.

Pretty Presets is based upon the idea of creating professional presets for photographs. 

It was started by a mother of two toddlers, Laura Thomas, who had quit her full-time job to start a wedding photography business.

But later she realized that the business was very time-consuming (it’s natural to feel so), and she pivoted this business idea into creating photo presets that sped things up. 

Since she noticed how people loved her presets, she decided to sell them to businesses and other photographers, easily gaining revenue without letting the business take much time of hers. 

Things that Worked Out for Pretty Presets 

Targeting the Right Market 

The photography industry might be a little oversaturated, but there’s always a demand for wedding photographers. This is what gives wedding photography an edge over seasonal photography gigs. 

Pivoting the Business Model 

When Laura noticed that there’s a great demand for her photograph presets, she didn’t hesitate to capitalize on the opportunity. As I said, most business owners fall into analysis paralysis, they make the mistake of waiting too long before launching something, and end up missing the opportunity.

Having a Unique Selling Point (USP) 

Back in the days, photograph presets were a new attraction. In that case, Pretty Presets offered unique lightroom presets that eased the task of photographers and reduced the time required to beautify the images. In a way, this is something that made Pretty Presets stand out. 

Birchbox – Monthly Beauty Subscription Packages 

Birchbox attracts those customers who don’t have time to go to department beauty counters or cosmetics boutiques, and spend hours scouring through countless brands for the right foundation, cream, lip shades, etc. 

The brand wasn’t started by a makeup mogul, rather it was started by a Harvard Business School graduate Katia Beauchamp along with Hayley Barna. It has grown exponentially since its start. It operates internationally and now has over 800 brand partners with a million subscribers.

Things that Worked Out for Birchbox

Standing Out From Competitors

Birchbox’s competitors just sent subscription boxes. On the other hand, Birchbox also offered samples and complementary products to keep its customers happy. 

Referrals and Reviews 

Birchbox was very particular about ensuring that they left a positive customer experience, so referrals were something that came naturally. When you center your business around your customer, you definitely see the results.

Quick Acquisitions 

You don’t always have to ‘compete.’  Sometimes, you can ‘conquer’ your competitor’s business. This is what Birchbox did when it came across a seemingly appearing newer competitor in Europe. They were quick to acquire this competitor and immediately gained a great customer base in Europe. 

Are You All Set to Start An Online Business?

You’re now fully equipped with the ‘starting an online business checklist’ and have a great insight into how you can start an online business from home. So what’s stopping you? There will always be some initial nervousness to overcome. 

Just remember this – you’re starting an online business for a purpose. It’s fine to not know everything but it’s NOT fine to let that stop you from starting successful online businesses. 

So, take a deep breath, muster up a little bit of self-confidence, use this blog post as your guide, and get started today! 

Although thinking about how to start an eCommerce business seems like a confusing idea, it doesn’t have to be so. 

According to Statista’s analysis, eCommerce Business stores have been on the rise since 2014. Along with a rise in the no. of eCommerce business stores, we also see a huge increase in revenue as well. 

eCommerce is one of the fastest-growing industries and anyone like you can make sustained profits. But, the condition is – you need the right knowledge and training. Today, I’m gonna give both. So, follow me amigos! 

How Much Does It Cost to Start An eCommerce Business?

Okay, open your notebooks or create an Excel sheet. It’s high time to assess the total amount of startup money you need. And yes, don’t forget the calculator! 

eCommerce Website Builders & Online Tools

Depending on your business needs, the costs vary across the spectrum. A basic eCommerce store will be priced around the range of $25 and go all the way up to $299 per month. 

But listen, you don’t need all these heavily priced plans for your new store. Start small but start strategically as this would allow you to scale smartly. 

Here are some approximate monthly costs of popular eCommerce website builder: 

WordPress: $25 to $45

Shopify: $29 to $299

Wix: $17 to $35

Now you may ask me if there’s a free way out. Well, there’s one, but you will need to build your eCommerce website from scratch and then pay for hosting. But, coding and designing a website from scratch takes a huge amount of time and effort. And… As you know, time is money. So you can skip that free way  

Licensing And Permits to Start an eCommerce Business

This depends on your state laws and fees. Some states may have prices as low as $30 and some might have ultra-high fees for licensing and getting permits. 

Although most beginners don’t face a lot of fees, it doesn’t mean you should neglect it from your budget. I would recommend you keeping $100 aside for licensing and permits. 

Never let these fees discourage you as these costs are always an initial investment. 

Domain Name And Hosting

When you build your eCommerce website using the popular eCommerce website builders, you get the domain name and hosting included in the package for your first year. However, in the subsequent years, you have to pay for the hosting and domain registration separately. 

The costs can range anywhere between $25 to $100, depending upon the type of features you require. 

Beginners don’t need to worry about the higher costs on the spectrum because the features with the basic plans are very useful and are priced reasonably.

Payment And Processing

Most eCommerce payment processors like Stripe, PayPal, and others will charge you with a transaction fee. Although I hate it too, still the simple logic here is that they need the fees to run their businesses, so it makes sense. 

With that being said, a general estimate would be around 2-3% of the total transaction. 

Here’s some info from Shopify: 

Marketing And Outreach

If you’re planning to be the all-in-one person (like me), your marketing and outreach will be absolutely free. But, I keep reminding myself that time is money, so you should outsource the graphics and editing. 

If I had to put a number on how much you should ideally invest in marketing and advertising your eCommerce store, it would be 5-8% of your annual revenue. For example, if I make $10,000 sales per year, I should invest around $500 to market and advertise my store.

Your expenditure depends on what you’re financially comfortable with. So, don’t find yourself compelled to invest several grands into your eCommerce business. If you don’t have adequate funds, you can always take the route of Dropshipping and experiment your way through while building funds. 

To learn more about how you can get started with Dropshipping, click here.

Now that we have a general idea about the costs related to starting your eCommerce store, let’s see how can we start an eCommerce store. 

Let’s follow a smart sequence. 

1. Let’s pick an eCommerce business model and do some product research. 

2. Once we end up doing the first step, we will craft a proper business plan, taking care of the permits and all that legal stuff. 

Don’t get overwhelmed by the steps. I’ve made the article as detailed as possible so that you don’t get confused. 

Step 1: Research On Various eCommerce Business Models

When it comes to eCommerce, there is a huge range of business models. However, it should not stop you from trying those. Let’s see the most popular and profitable business models applied in eCommerce: 

Service-based eCommerce 

Services basically involve selling your time or expertise rather than a physical product. And what qualifies for a service? Here’s a quick list: 

1. Professional services like SEO, copywriting, designing logos, accounting, photography, videography, animation, and any hobby. 
2. Art, dance, music, yoga, online workout, and other creative classes
3. Training, consulting, workshops and seminars

There are a lot of businesses that run on this model. For example, we have Coursera, MasterClass, EssayShark, MasterPaper, and much more. (Note that this article is not affiliated with any of these websites. These examples are for illustration purposes only.) 

Digital Product Sales

Whether it’s a music playlist, ebook sales, or anything that’s non-tangible and you want it, can be classified as a digital product. 

What I like the most about these digital products is the quantity multiplication. Yes, you don’t have to invest a lot for product creation. A couple of clicks can make you a million copies in no time. 

Easy isn’t it? Well, think again. Selling these digital products requires extensive effort because people are not looking for the products you’re selling. You have to first make them aware of your product and yourself, only then you can get a sale. 

Physical Products

Physical products form a considerable portion of goods sold through eCommerce websites. You can sell anything from subscription boxes to pretty pendants fairly easily. Besides, if you’re a homemaker and are looking to earn the extra cash to support your family’s finances, you can also set up a cooking or baking business and take orders from customers online in your nearby location. 

Along with this, you can also sell handmade goods, paintings, and custom gift boxes. The possibilities are endless!

Here’s a store that sells bookmarks for a luxurious reading experience. 

Here’s a store that sells goodies and eatables! 

Did you get all the business models? That’s great if you did, let’s just move to the next section. 

Step 2: Research for Winning Niches On eCommerce

Choosing a product that you want to sell isn’t as difficult as it seems. First, lookout for trends and see what’s selling the most. But hey, don’t forget to strike the right balance between passion and profit. 

For example, if I l run an online toy store for kids, I will expect to make sales every day or every week at least. 

However, if I sell exclusive paintings in my store, I can’t expect people to make purchases every day. I can generate decent monthly revenue, selling 2-3 expensive and exotic paintings. This is the key concept that you should keep in mind before choosing your product. 

Let’s see other smart factors that would drive your decision-making. 

Solve People’s Problems

No, I am not asking you to start the next NGO. You can release products or services that solve people’s problems. For example, let’ say I would like to eat healthy food, but my job doesn’t provide me with enough time to make my own lunches. 

So what I can do is purchase a monthly subscription from a service that offers healthy meal boxes. And tada! My problem is solved. 

As long as there are problems or requirements that people need to solve or fulfill, any business can succeed, provided it knows how to solve the problem. 

Find Product Ideas in Reviews

During the pandemic, masks were easily customizable and came in all shapes and sizes, except for one. Can you guess the exception?

The reviews section on Amazon was filled with comments about how these masks are not at all useful for those who maintain long beards. 

This is how a smart seller leveraged the opportunity and provided people right with what they needed. 

The key takeaway is that you should keep an eye on comments and reviews to find products that people need. 

Although the products can be restricted to a particular niche, they would sell a lot because people are looking for something like that. 

Best Sellers

In any niche, best-selling items allow you to see what exactly customers demand. It’s easy to locate the best-selling items on most platforms. For example, Amazon has the ‘Best Sellers Rank’ and allows you to see which product performs best. 

eBay has a similar feature called ‘Trending,’ and in Etsy, it’s called Most wanted or Best Selling Item. 

Test it Before You Mess it

In the business world, the simple way to test a product is by making a prototype. Now, what is a prototype? Basically, it’s a simple water-down version of your original product and idea. 

For example, if you already have an idea but don’t want to invest heavily. You can test whether your idea will succeed by building a small landing page to promote your potential product and run a few ads or do some marketing to drive traffic to it.

This will give you a general idea about how your market will respond to your product. 

Step 3: Set up your eCommerce Business

This has to be the most exciting part of starting an eCommerce business. It brings in a range of decisions to make, like choosing what your store should look like, what should you name it, how should you connect with your audience, and much more. 

Have A Great Brand Name

There are 2 key points that you should consider for setting a name for your business: 

1. The name should reflect what you’re trying to sell. 
2. It should either make sense to the audience or it should be unique and memorable. 

Don’t get overfocused on creating a memorable name. Yes, a few brand names sound like honey to the ears but that shouldn’t stop you from naming your store on something you admire. 

Also, note that your website name is very likely to be your domain name. So, before you finalize a name, check the availability of your domain here.

Add in a name that you like in the form of a website. For example www.realisticbooks.com    

And it’s available! 

You can do the same with the name of your choice. 

Create A Logo 

Your business logo makes people feel connected with your brand. You don’t really need to spend a lot on getting your logo done professionally. Most market prices range from $15 to $50, depending on the level of expertise you require. 

Sometimes, the prices may go higher depending on which agency or graphic designer you hire. 

I personally prefer Looka because I don’t have to go through the hassle of designing the entire logo and can easily mix & match elements to make my logo. 

Looka

You can also check out: 

NameCheap’s Logo Maker

Hatchful by Shopify

Design Your Store

With so many eCommerce website builders, you can pick the one that suits your needs. Here’s a guide to picking which eCommerce website builder will be the best for you, depending upon your business needs. (Link the How to Build eCommerce Websites – Best Methods in 2021 article here) 

Prepare Promotional Content

Before you launch, try to build a social media presence that keeps your followers updated with your business’s purpose. 

You can use picture editors like Canva, Adobe Spark, Pablo, Snappa, and many more. Visuals attract potential customers. In that case, make sure to use them wisely and beautifully. 

Step 4: Apply for An EIN, Business Permit & Licenses

Employer Identification Number (EIN)

When you have completed the above steps, you can register for an Employer Identification Number (EIN). Every online business doesn’t need to have one. The key benefit of an EIN is that it allows you to separate your personal and professional finances. 

You can apply for an EIN for free with the IRS using online, mail, fax, or phone methods. Using the online method, you can easily receive the nine-digit EIN right from the comfort of your home. 

Obtaining Business Permits and License 

Now that you have a business permit, you can easily apply for business permits and licenses. The purpose behind obtaining permits and licenses is that you can operate legally within your state. 

Unless you’re filing a DBA to operate under a specific business name legally, you don’t actually need to register your business with the state to establish your eCommerce business as a sole proprietorship or general partnership. 

However, for the other business entity types, you will need to register with your state and receive a general operating license. 

Generally, most eCommerce businesses are home-based, they don’t require as many business licenses and permits as brick-and-mortar stores. To always be on the safer side, you should determine the specific requirements in your area. It’s pretty easy to find them using your state or local government website. The Internet saves you well from such troubles these days.

Even I had a similar question as yours when it comes to “Why on Earth should I register a business that I run in my own home?”

More than a few governments are corrupt across the globe. Anything might happen, so why give anyone a chance to say something? 

So here’s a small list of business licenses and permits that you may need depending upon your business:

• Trade and professional licenses for certain businesses
• Sales tax permits
• Signage permits
• Health, safety, and environmental permits

Step 5: Preparing to Launch Your eCommerce Business

Yay! Now you’ve done around 75% percent of the work, just a little push is required to launch your business. 

Shipping

Your Shipping Rates

Are you going to make your customers carry the full shipping cost or will you offer free or flat-rate shipping to reduce the cost? How will you get orders to your local and international customers? 

If I were you, I would increase the price and give the free shipping. 

Product Weights

Please measure and update the weight of each product you sell. This saves you from the last-minute hassle of weighing everything. You may not know this but if you don’t pay attention to this, you may end up paying an extra $$. 

Choose Your Preferred Packaging

You can order free packaging from some carriers such as USPS, UPS, or DHL or invest in branded packaging. In short, do what suits your business. 

Note: Communicating shipping speeds (as in “Arrives at your doorstep in 4 days) at checkout to your customers can help provide clarity to your clients and does wonders to increase consumer confidence.

Deal with Returns

You might offer the best, sweetest, and the loveliest product in this big wide world. Somehow, an odd customer will pop up out of nowhere, asking for a return. This isn’t to discredit the most valid reasons like damaged products, wrong shipments, and more! 

So, you should be prepared to deal with returns. 

You can do this by: 

1. Offering exact cost pricing for returns
2. FREE returns
3. Flat-rate returns

We love receiving free returns as customers but things go south when it comes to giving free returns as business owners. Well, did I say that you should offer free returns just because people like so? 

Perhaps no. If you repeatedly offer free returns, some (a few like these always exist) buyers may try to use this incentive for unfair practices and return goods that are perfectly okay.  So, always create policies that are fair to both the buyers aswell as you.

Install An Analytics Tool

Analytics are not just for highly complex operations. You should make data your best friend as that would help you draw up a nice future plan. 

Most eCommerce stores will have their own set of analytics reporting built-in so that you can easily track a lot of key metrics. 

Step 6: Post Launch Process You Should Engage In

You’ve done all the hard work in the world now. Don’t slack off at this crucial moment. Just a little consistency and a little bit of advertising and brand engagement can go a long way. 

Promote Your Store on Social Media Platforms

Let’s dive straight into my top 3 tips that can put your brand out in the spotlight for sales: 

Tip 1: Consider offering a discount code to attract people to check your store out and make purchases.

Tip 2: Put effort into the content that you post on your social media platforms. Don’t spam your social media followers with repetitive and low-quality promotional content. 

Tip 3: Every action you take online has the potential to drive traffic back to your store. Don’t forget to add your store URL to your personal online profiles, such as your Instagram stories, Twitter bio, or Facebook status update. 

Wanna Know How to Start an eCommerce Business? – Have These things in Mind!

1. A high bounce rate (visitors that come to your site and leave without buying) may mean that your page took too long to load, or maybe you had targeted the wrong audience.

2. Visitors don’t usually make purchases when they just don’t trust your store enough to buy or if you have targeted the wrong audience. 

3. Abandoned carts during checkout mean you probably need to reconsider your shipping. 

A Few More Things You Can Do to Enhance Your Sales & Get More Customers: 

1. Write and submit a guest post. Share your expertise about a topic and use the author bio box to describe & link your business.

2. Ask for product reviews using sites like TrustPilot or by adding a plugin in your own eCommerce store. 

3. Give your product to a blogger or influencers for free so that they can give a shoutout in return. 

Winning Tips on How to Start an eCommerce Business Successfully

So, let’s play a simple game. I’ll show you a few pictures related to my top tips, you guess the answer, and then I’ll reveal whether your answer is right. 

After all, why should starting an eCommerce business be boring and scary? We can always make the things we do a little bit more fun by adding our own sparkle! 

Tip 1: Hint – We Can Help You Create Brand Name

Yes, you’re right! It’s social media engagement. 

Millennials and Gen Z-ers spend most of their time tweeting, texting, and tagging. In all this social activity, you can easily slide in promotional content about your store and engage your followers. Also, make sure you increase your activity right before a festival because that is when people buy gifts for their friends and loved ones. 

Tip 2: Hint – I Am the Foundation of Any Online Business

The answer is – Building Trust.

You need to build trust between your brand and your customers to retain your business over time. People usually trust their intuition while buying something, so if your brand can generate trust (in terms of a credible-looking website and a good social presence), your sales will grow well. 

Final Tip: Here is Your Best Business Friend 

Yes! It’s data and analysis. 

Just like in any business, you must back your eCommerce store with facts and data. You need to know your customers, their demographics, what things they are buying from your store, and what things they are not. This will not only enhance your business skills but also make you capable of making decisions when the time calls for it. 

Ready to Start an eCommerce Business?

There’s a lot of planning, insight, and execution for starting your own eCommerce store. 

And that is the fun part about it! As long as you follow these tips, tricks, and insider insights listed, you can definitely set up your perfect eCommerce store. 

Your next big success might be just an eCommerce store away. Your eCommerce store can only become successful if you decide to make it a successful one. So, push your doubts aside, follow the steps and let’s get started!

If you’re wondering how to start dropshipping business this year, you’re at the right place. People often think dropshipping is a source of easy and quick money. Well, these are the same people who believe the Sun rises in the west and sets in the east.

Are you aware of the fact that 84% of dropshipping beginners find it extremely tough to get a good and dependable supplier? This makes them leave the business even before starting it. Yeah, and people say dropshipping is easy money! Doesn’t sound easy now, right!

To be a successful dropshipper, you wanna put in efforts, time, and money. Without these 3 things, having a successful dropshipping business is as tough as getting a 4 GPA in your college without even studying.

So, if you’re like Jon Snow and know nothing about dropshipping, stick with me and discover how my journey went from 0 to multiple zeroes. 

What is A Dropshipping Business? 

Put simply, dropshipping is a ninja technique of selling third-party products to customers without keeping a bunch of inventory. 

Although the supplier ships products to customers directly, the customers would still order on Your store! 

Wait a minute! Do you need to pay for the inventory before selling? 

No, that’s one of the greatest perks of dropshipping. However, it’s not as easy as you think, there are some real challenges that you will face later down the line, which we will discuss. But for now, let’s just first look at the advantages and disadvantages of dropshipping first. 

Benefits of Dropshipping

1. Low Capital Investment Business

One of the biggest benefits of starting a dropshipping business is the less requirement of investment. Unlike other online retail stores, you don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on your inventory upfront.  In dropshipping, the product you sell doesn’t have to be purchased until someone orders it – Yes, that’s the beauty, I know  

2. Easy to Begin with

When it comes to managing and setting up a dropshipping business, it’s easier than other kinds of selling business. This is mainly due to the fact that you don’t have to deal with several parameters like:

• Warehouse management
• Shipment of orders
• Inventory tracking
• Keeping an eye on inventory

3. No Specific Location or Set Up Required

You don’t need any location or an office for setting up a dropshipping business. Your website can be your office for quite a long time. From selling to hiring,  you can even scale up your business right from the garage. Think of the rent, electricity, maintenance money you can save You could probably buy an Aston Martin after some time with those savings! 

4. Numerous Choices

With dropshipping, you have innumerable choices of products. Whichever niche you choose, there’s an infinite number of products to choose from. Oftentimes, when I search for my next winning product, I always watch out for the other new and unique products. So, I am quite sure you will find yourself in this infinite loop of products time and again.

5. Easy to Scale

As compared to traditional retail businesses, dropshipping is easy to scale. Here’s the reason: In a retail business your orders double, so will your efforts, but such is not the case with dropshipping. The supplier will worry about fulfilling the order amount, all you wanna do is place the order, that’s it!

Disadvantages of Dropshipping

1. Low Margins

If you’re under the influence, you can get huge margins hiking the prices up in dropshipping; you’re under the wrong impression mate. Mostly, tough competition makes the margins drop in dropshipping. 

The reason for such a competition is motivation. Just like you, many are thinking about trying dropshipping at least once, which increases the number of stores daily.

Many people start the business and sell products at extremely low-profit margins just to grow their revenue. So just because it’s easy to start, the market is highly competitive.

2. Less Control Over the Products

Having to manage and keeping an eye on fewer things could also harm your business. In the case of dropshipping, you have minimalist control over the product shipment, order fulfillment, and stocking products. This could prove to be devastating in some cases. So make sure to have a reliable and good supplier by your side.

If you’re still here, it means you’re super interested to learn all the ins and outs of dropshipping. In other words, you’re in the pro team now. So I think it’s high time to explain all the prep work I’ve done physically and mentally to start a profitable dropshipping business. 

From now on,  you’re gonna learn how to start a dropshipping business the right way, so read everything line by line because this is the only no BS guide you need to get a career in dropshipping. 

Things to Do Before You Know How to Start A Dropshipping Business 

Okay, there are 3 parts to it. Let’s start with the things you wanna consider before starting your dropshipping business. Therefore, think of this as a mock test you give before the real one for better understanding. 

Let’s Just First Bust Out Some Myths About Dropshipping 

1. Dropshipping is easy and I’ll get rich real quick

If you watch videos on YouTube, you might relate to this point the most. Yes, I’m talking about those so-called “Dropshipping gurus” who pop-up in the middle of nowhere and make you realize that anyone can start dropshipping. 

Most of them go like, “I was broke and now I’ve a 6-figure business in no time!” 

That’s called psychological deception. They know where you stand and they want to connect your real story with their made-up one. 

If it’s easy, everyone would be a dropshipper, no?  Well, these gurus just wanna sell their course or affiliate courses to make a profit for themselves. 

I don’t know whether you will be able to make a 6-figure business with their course. But, all I know is they will definitely get one, getting money from people like you. 

So our main question should be: how much time would it take to earn a substantial income with dropshipping?

Earning $6000-$7000 every month, you can live a decent life almost anywhere in the world. If I talk about myself, it took me around 6 months to go from $0 to $22K. 

2. It’s easy to be successful in dropshipping, I will start it right away!

Starting a dropshipping business is a piece of cake. However, when you work with a detailed eye, consistent effort, time, and perseverance, it takes a good amount of time. Although it becomes a long process, you get the money on the table. 

Unfortunately, the sad reality is a whole different story. People want to make loads of money but they’re not ready to do the things that I’ve written in bold above. 

I’ve been focused on just one thing, making this business a success. I must say – it was a roller coaster of emotions. 

It took me months to experiment, trying various approaches. Seeing the business going down at one point and up at another. 

Imagine seeing your orders tab showing you just a few hundred bucks for months – it’s heartbreaking…  but I still think, if I gave up, you won’t be reading this at all. 

Every successful dropshipper’s experiments failed at some point. They’re successful just because they didn’t give up. The moment you give up, you lose! 

I remember watching a Bollywood movie called 3 Idiots in which I heard something quite good, it was – “Don’t run after success, run after excellence. If you have excellence, success will be yours automatically!”

You know where I’m going with all of this? Having the right mindset is as important as breathing! 

3. My store is not known; why would someone buy from me?

This is the question I come across once in a while. My brand is unknown to the people out there, why would they consider buying any product from my store. 

Most beginners ask about it and my answer to them is – Brand value doesn’t matter in dropshipping, everyone starts at some point. From my perspective, it’s about how much effort you put into crafting and marketing your store. 

I have been in dropshipping space for almost 5 years now. Trust me, I can’t even remember more than 5 shop names I’ve been buying products from recently. 

There are too many dropshipping storefronts online. Many of them are unknown to me but do I regret buying products from those stores? Absolutely no, if I find a good deal, I don’t mind grabbing it. 

Let’s now talk about the right mindset you wanna have so that you can know how to start a dropshipping business the right way!

Have the Proper Mindset for Dropshipping — Don’t IGNORE This!

My mother always used to say: 

 “Whatever you do in life, never doubt yourself, it will only pull you down. If you wanna be a cricketer, don’t doubt yourself and go crazy about it, even when no one supports you, even me” 

When I heard this, I laughed in tears of joy. It struck me so hard right to the bottom of my heart and that’s why I remember that moment. 

This saying has helped me a lot and it can surely make you successful as well.

Having the right mindset for anything you do is extremely important, especially when the process can wear you down for months. Dropshipping is one such profession that needs a powerful mindset. So have it. 

Let’s have a look at some of the mental obstacles I encountered in my 5-year journey of dropshipping.

Break that 9-5 Job Mindframe

Since school, we are told it’s best and safe to take up a high-paying job. For that, you have to study for about 20 years of your life and come up with good grades.

The reason people tend to think twice before starting a business is the risk factor. If you have the right mindset and know you are willing to put effort, nothing can stop you. And about the risk, well mate, you’ve only got 1 life – there’s no fun without risk. Don’t you love that adrenaline rush? Use it for profit-making, not watching movies after 9-5. 

Also, if grades were to define a person, then Elon Musk, Steve Jobs would’ve been just another guy sitting on a couch with a tub full of popcorn watching some Marvel movie! So come out of the bubble that your society has created, which is 9-5 is the only option you’ve got.

Ups & Downs

In dropshipping, ups and downs are normal. The ups are so great, once you start making a profit, you will have an extremely positive mindset. And at that point, you will start planning and scaling the business. 

But, when downs come, it will feel like you’ve hit the rock-bottom. Your days will be gloomy and second-guessing yourself and the business would be normal. 

So, being mentally prepared for what comes next is crucial. Having a dropshipping business can make you feel like a bi-polar person. Make sure you’re mentally strong enough to not be overconfident during ups and broken during downs. Now you get why I was talking about mindset a lot? 

No or Fewer Friends

Dropshipping is a tough business and it would require hours of effort daily. In my opinion, only a fool would leave the job to start dropshipping right away. 

So it’s better to do it as a side hustle first, and when you eventually start earning well, you can make it your full-time business. 

This means you will have to put in extra hours after your 9 to 5 job to make the dropshipping business work. In that case, you have to say no to your friends for the weekend shots. 

A true friend always understands that you’re paving your way up the ladder. If they won’t hold up with this, they’re fake ones for sure. 

Yeah, you will have a handful of friends or at times no friends at all, but this shouldn’t keep you from starting a dropshipping business. If you wanna be successful, there are some big sacrifices you have to make; sadly, fake friendship is one of them!

Keep Reading

Books can be your best friend at times like these. Make sure you develop a reading habit. 

It’s not mandatory to just read business-oriented books. I myself read Dan Brown as the action & curiosity in those books awaken my synapses and help me think better. 

So reading is a great way to feel happy, curious, or motivated. Pick your poison and start reading.

Learn & Implement

Know this well, any skill in the world is not finite. Although you’re learning how to start a dropshipping business, there’s always a chance for refinement. 

Scope of improvement will always be there and there’s no limit to scaling your dropshipping business. 

Always have that hunger to learn and keep experimenting and optimizing your dropshipping business, that’s what’s gonna bring profits. 

These are some major mental barriers I had to overcome as a beginner in dropshipping. There might be other challenges you face, but remember this – “Once you’re mentally strong, nothing will stop you from being successful as a dropshipper.”

With that being said – it’s also important to back your store with physical proofs. Let’s have a look at the documentation part of dropshipping.

Legal Requirements to Start A Dropshipping Business

First of all, I don’t think I’ve graduated from harvard with a shining law degree. But still, I can tell you all the stuff required to start a dropshipping business in the USA. Therefore, keep a check on the things I’m about to mention and you’re good to go! 

Business Structure

Decide the structure of your business. As of now, there are 3 common structures that come into play for a dropshipping business.

1. Sole Proprietorship: A sole proprietorship is the simplest of all but has no personal liability protection. This means, if someone subpoenas you, your business is also in jeopardy. There’s not much requirement and paperwork for this kind of business. You can simply add the profit you get from the business to your personal earnings and pay the required tax.

2. Limited Liability Company or LLC: Here you have protection for your personal liabilities as the business you’re establishing will be a separate legal entity. Besides, there will be additional paperwork and requirements in this case. The ongoing fees and incorporation fees – both are to be paid.

3. C Corporation: The maximum number of dropshipping businesses are set up as C corporations. Why? C corporation offers the most liability protection. Setting up a C corporation is often expensive, and you might wanna pay double the taxes, but if you have money, go for it as it’s super beneficial. 

My business is an LLC, but as mentioned earlier, I am no lawyer, so make sure to consult a lawyer before choosing a business structure. What I gave you is a basic understanding of it. 

EIN Request

According to the IRS, all businesses in the USA should have an employer identification number (EIN), which acts as a social security number for your business.

Along with this, it’s also helpful while paying your taxes, opening a bank account, and buying wholesale products. Basically, it’s your online identity. Don’t worry, you can get EIN for free without any hassles. 

Getting Your Finances Right

One mistake that I made, like several beginners, was not managing my finances properly. I kept the same tab for my personal and business finances, which made it difficult for me to track my business expenses. 

A Pro Tip: Always have different bank accounts for your personal and business money.

Keeping the same tab you can be in grave danger when an IRS audit takes place. At that time, a confusion of tax payment amount for your personal income and business income may occur.

Secondly, have a business credit card. Use it for all the business expenses and purchasing dropshipping products. Having a credit card for this process can give you numerous rewards and points, which can be redeemed later.

Get a Local Business License

Even though you’re operating online, most cities in the USA will require you to have a local permit to start a business. This license has to be renewed regularly. However, many places don’t have this law, so wherever you stay, go through the city’s rules and regulations first. 

This sums up the prerequisites for a dropshipping business. To find the real deal of how to start a dropshipping business, stick with me and know my journey, which went from opening a store to scaling, and making it a successful and profitable business over time.

The Real Deal of Dropshipping

Once all the prerequisites mentioned above are in place, you are now all clear to open a storefront. Sounds tempting, right? 

Look, I am not gonna tell you how to choose your store name, logo, and all that stuff. If you’re trying to start a business, you’re smart enough to figure that out yourself.

What I am gonna tell you is the real deal mate. So let’s begin!

Here Are Some Best Platforms That Can Help You Make A Great Dropshipping Store

Shopify – Everyone’s Choice! 

Shopify is one of the most used platforms to make a dropshipping store. Did you know there are 500K+ Shopify stores worldwide? That’s huge, right!

The reason behind such a popularity is versatility. The platform comes with many add-ons that you can use for product management, SEO, marketing, and whatnot. Also, the cart abandonment recovery feature of Shopify gives it an edge over other eCommerce website builders.

The platform takes minutes to set up and it’s highly user-friendly. In my early days, I found Shopify to be the best builder for my business and I’m still sticking with it unless I find something better. 

To know the platform well, you could just go through this – How to Set Up Shopify Store for Your Dropshipping Business in 2021

WooCommerce – A Strong Shopify Competitor! 

WooCommerce powers about 29% of the total eCommerce stores worldwide and that’s certainly a huge chunk! 

The major advantage of WooCommerce over Shopify is the price. Relatively, WooCommerce is cheaper because it’s a software stored on your server and it’s open-source. 

However, the maintenance of a WooCommerce site can be tiring as the downtimes and technical glitches will ruin your customer’s shopping experience time and again. 

Imagine a customer visiting your e-store for the first time and getting an error of payment due to some technical glitch. Do you think that person will care to come to the store again? No, he has thousands of other options to buy the same product at the same or even less price!

To understand Shopify and WooCommerce in detail, go through this Shopify vs WooCommerce article. I’ve shown which platform comes above the other in certain features and how to set both up. 

There’s another platform which I’d like to tell you about. I’ve used this platform and found it to be quite modern and amazing. Let’s have a look at it.

Ecwid – The Trojan Horse

Ecwid is a less known platform but is gaining momentum among businesses recently due to its modern features and easy-to-use interface.

With Ecwid, you can get a free platform to start off with, and you can upgrade to a paid one later when you try taking your business to the next level.

There are a lot of eCommerce website builders that can help you get that 6-figure dropshipping business. But, if you ask me to choose one, I already have, and that’s Shopify. 

Yeah, the platform has some additional fees for add-ons and stuff but these add-ons make dropshipping extremely easy. If it’s done right, it’s profitable as well. So, if you have a decent turn-over and wanna enter the Million dollar club, you should go ahead with Shopify.

Where to Buy A Domain Name?

A domain name is a crucial aspect of any dropshipping store. If you choose the right domain name, you can:

• Establish your brand successfully – The domain name will give your business the credibility

• Get more traffic – If you have a domain name that relates to your industry, it’s a positive indicator for SEO 

• Get more customers – A right and easy to remember domain would definitely imprint in your audience’s mind

There are many sources from where you can purchase the domain name. But after trying many places, I found the below 2 to be legit, easy, and affordable. 

Buy Domain Name From Shopify

Step 1: Visit https://www.shopify.in/domains 

Step 2: Type in the domain name you have in mind for your store.

A pro tip: Pick the one that’s catchy, easy to remember, relatable to your industry as well as short.

Once you’re done with typing, click on ‘Generate domains.’

Step 3: You will find a list of domains with different extensions and prices. Choose the one you want. I’d suggest you pick .com or .in domain.  These are the most widely used and recognized extensions.

Step 4: Reserve your brand name on Shopify – Put in your Email ID, password, and click on Next.

Step 5: The further steps are just filling in your business details, if you wanna fill them up later, you can just click on skip.

Step 6: Fill in all the information asked for and when done, click on Enter My Store.

There you go, your store is all set. Now all you wanna do is set up the payment for your domain and Shopify plan you choose and start setting it up!

Buy Domain Name from Namecheap

1. Visit https://www.namecheap.com/ 

2. Enter the domain name you have in mind and press the search icon.

3. There will be a large list of your domain name with different domain extensions. But, you know what to choose, right? .com, .in, or even .net is okay!

Just click that ‘Add To Cart’ button.

4. Now, it’s time to checkout.

5. Does any of these add-ons make you feel great? Go ahead and choose the ones you like. 

6. Once you’re done selecting, just click on confirm order. If you’re not logged in or don’t have an account on Namecheap, enter your mail id, and create an account.

7. Finally, put in your payment details, buy the domain, and it’s done. Yay!

I would personally prefer going with Shopify first as it’s comparatively easy and straight-forward because we’re buying domain on the same platform. Most importantly, the probability of technical glitches would be less.  

What Third Party Apps Do We Need for Our Store?

Okay, you’ve got the domain name you want for your store. Will it help if you had a list of essential apps required for a dropshipping business? 

Well, if I would have had this list, it would have spared me months of testing and analyzing. Whatever, after all I found that coming up with these 3 add-ons you can manage your dropshipping business like a pro: 

• Oberlo 
• Dsers 
• Dropified 

All these add-ons are tested and analyzed to their full potential. These are the best ones I could find. After installing these and using them, I started seeing large profits and good earnings.

Note: These add-ons are specifically made for the Shopify. Don’t search it for WooCommerce! 

Add-Ons for Shopify

Oberlo – Get the Best Suppliers Here! 

Oberlo is a dropshipping application made for Shopify. With the help of Oberlo, you can import products from AliExpress to your Shopify store. 

About 700 sites in the USA alone use Oberlo, which proves the fact that it’s quite recognized and trustworthy.

From bulk importing products to analyzing each product’s performance, Oberlo can make everything easy for you.

To know how you can make money with Oberlo, read this guide right here: What is Oberlo and How Does it Work for Dropshipping? 

Dsers – The Underdog Shopify App

Dsers is another app, pretty similar to Oberlo. It basically imports products from AliExpress to your Shopify store, as simple as that! 

This makes Dsers a tough competitor of Oberlo. So, which one to choose? See, it’s all up to you. Both of these apps have the same features, more or less. 

Oberlo is quite easy to use, has an intuitive interface, and much more popular than Dsers. However, if I were you, I would test both for myself because the suppliers that worked for me may not necessarily work for you. Not only this, the niche you’re after is another factor.  

To know more about Dsers, read this blog: Is Dsers Good for Dropshipping? 

Dropified

If you wanna make dropshipping easy and friendly, Dropified is the go-to app. You can integrate all major platforms with Dropshified like Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce etc. 

Did you know, Dropified also automates your ordering and shipping? To know more about the potential of Dropified, go through this – Is Dropified Worth it?

How to Find the Perfect A Grade Product that Sells

Finding a perfect product for selling is the key to success for your dropshipping business. If you don’t have this right, the struggle in this business is real. So while selecting any product, you should ask yourself a bunch of questions. 

It’s actually even better if you write those questions down with the best possible answers. I do it on my mobile mostly as it gives me clarity about the product I want.

Being a more than average dropshipper, I want you to ask yourself these questions while choosing a product: 

Buying to Selling Ratio

• At what price am I buying the product and for how much can I potentially sell it? 
• Can I get a good profit from the product? 
• How many products should I sell to reach the benchmark I created earlier in my head?

Shipping

• Can I ship the product easily? 
• Is the product small enough to be shipped easily? 
• Wait, do I need to pay anything extra or have any kind of money issue while shipping the product?

% Profit

• How much margin can I get just by selling 1 item? 
• Is it enough? 

Supplier

• Is my supplier trustworthy? 
• Do I have a healthy relationship with my supplier?

Marketing

• How can I market the product? 
• Is it an interesting product to the person I’m selling it to? 
• If not, how can I make it look interesting?

Develop Curiosity

• Will the product be able to develop curiosity among my target audience? 
• Or can I present my product the way it invokes curiosity?

Trigger Strong Emotion

• Can I trigger some emotion in my audience with the product so that I can connect better? 
• If not, can I do something about it?

Opportunity

• What opportunities can my product bring along for the customers? 
• Can the product make their everyday life easy?

Niche

• Is there a sufficient audience for the product I am selling?

Trend 

• Is the product trending?

Marketing Angle

• Can I market my product with some innovation, like telling a story?

Quality 

• Is the quality top-notch?
• Am I satisfied with it? 
• Are the reviews about the product good? 
• Do I need to worry about returns and refunds?

Evergreen or Seasonal

• What type of product is it? 
• How much time do I need to sell this product?

Competition Analysis

• Are my competitors selling the same product? 
• How much are they selling it at? 
• What is the approximate profit margin they get? 
• Can I do it any better than they are? 

Future Considerations

• Is the product sales scalable? 
• For how long will my product give me profits? 
• When would I reach the inflammation point with the product?

So, now you know what kind of product you want for your store. Now is the time to look for potential products you can sell. 

The question is – where to look? Alright, these are the sources that you might wanna look at while setting up your dropshipping store. 

1. Amazon Top Seller: Always visit the Top sellers section of amazon, that way you can see niche-specific bestsellers. 

2. Wish’s winning products: Wish is yet another retail store where you can visit and have a look at the top products. You can just type your niche in the top search bar and look for products that are either sold out or almost gone crazy.

3. eBay watch count: eBay watch count is one of the amazing tools to get a look at the most trending products in the USA. All you wanna do is type in the keywords, choose your liking category, and hit enter. A list of all the products will appear in front of you with the decreasing watch count.

How to Design Your Store -The Right Way!

You have your product and the store’s domain name, what’s next? Let’s finally design a high-converting dropshipping store. 

It’s super crucial to make a thoughtful eCommerce design because a good sync is important. Right from visiting to buying, all the processes should be smooth and motivate the user to take an action. 

When it comes to shopping, people don’t stick to any one site for a long time. So you should make your storefront attractive as well as time-saving. 

Once Albert Einstein said, ‘The core of beauty is simplicity.’ 

Considering Einstein’s advice, I made a simple sales funnel that could impress not every but more than some users: 

User visits the website – Homepage -> Filters product by category -> Search for product and lands on the product  page -> Adds the product to cart and proceeds -> Checkout page -> OTP page -> Conformation & Thank You

That’s it! Ideally, a person doesn’t have to click or tap more than 9 times to reach your ‘Thank You’ page that pops up after payment (Provided he knows the exact product he wanna buy).

Things you wanna take care of while designing your dropshipping store:

1. Navigation

• Menu – Use dropdowns and submenus in your site for easy navigation

• Search bar – Place a search bar on every major page so that user could search any product they want

• Cart symbol – Place it on every page and make sure to add that small numeric symbol above it so that users know the no. of items they have in their cart
  

2. Building trust and confidence

• Display trusted logos – Try showing known brand logos as they build up rapport 

• Testimonial – Social proof is another thing to have for building trust and confidence

• Contact – Have a proper working number and address at the footer of every page

Now let’s have a look at what you should specifically have on each of your major pages of the store.

Homepage – First Impression Is the Last Impression

Have you ever been on a blind date? If you have, you know how crucial those first few seconds are to create a lasting impression. For those of you who haven’t been on a blind date – well, now you know what my point was

The homepage of your eCommerce store is just like those first few seconds of a blind date. If the person doesn’t like it at first glance, sorry you’re rejected – oh, I mean your store!

The motive of your site should be clear at first glance itself. For example, if you sell shoes, a new user should be able to pick up the trail in seconds.

Here are a few things that I do on my homepage to impress new users:

• A catchy title – A title should be short and it should directly speak what your business is about

• A call-to-action – Try placing a CTA right above the fold content, my CTA is just below my title, which works great

• Pictures – Having a subtle and eye-catching image at the top of your homepage is important – a picture’s worth a thousand words, so get a graphic that can speak out loud for your brand

• Bestsellers – Featuring your best selling products are a good way to convert your users into buyers, so have a tab of best selling products on your homepage

Here’s an example I want you to look at, the homepage of the site is just marvelous!

Listing Page – Make It The Right Way!

When a person types anything on a search bar, they get a listing page with all the products they can choose from. So, you have successfully built that curiosity in your user’s mind to check your store out. 

Now is the time to build a listing page where you can tempt the customer (in a good way off course) to choose the product they wanna buy.

As long as you’re selling only 1 category of products or a few products, you don’t need to worry about this sectio. 

But, if you’re thinking of widening your choices right from the start (there’s nothing wrong about it), this is helpful. 

Just remember, when you scale and need to add multiple categories, come back here to read this section because this will be a gem for you at that point. 

Category Introduction

A small introduction about the category will make your customers know that they’re in the right place. 

Remember I said, your user’s time is of immense importance. You can’t make your users search for the product they want for even 10 minutes. 

Just imagine yourself going to a physical store and finding super unorganized things. Yes, if you don’t pay attention to categories well, that’s what your customers may feel. 

Filtering and Sort By function

You must be aware of this function. The filtering and sort by icons simply the search process for users. As every hiring process has resume screening with some set parameters, for example, a person should have 2 years of experience in the field. 

Now, think of filters and sort features as a parameter of screening, and your users are the ones who are hiring. All that your users wanna do is select the parameters from the filters and look at the end results.

Keep one thing in mind: don’t give too many filtering options, as said, too many cooks spoil the broth, hit that sweet spot between more and less. 

Also, if the users choose a series of filters yielding no choice in front of them, don’t just give them a blank page back or even worse, a 404 error, take this opportunity to link the page to another highly relevant category of products.

Make Sure Your Bestsellers and Best Reviews Stand Out

Your best-selling products are automatically the best products you’ve got, so why not show them on top to make your users pick those? 

If you can display great reviews about the product, that would be awesome because having social proof is a strong parameter to drive user’s decision-making capabilities.

Product Availability

Creating an urgency or scarcity feeling in your customer’s mind is a great way to up your conversion game. 

Put a tag of “Only X left” at the bottom of every product’s thumbnail. This will make your customers hurry up the process of buying.

Below is the best example for a great product listing page:

Product Page – Page That Matters!

As you can see, right from the homepage, your customer’s journey has been full of curiosity and interest so far. 

If you can copy the exact same strategy, you can bring potential customers to the product page. The buy button is right there, looks like the sale is made, right? No, it’s one of those cases where the mountain peaks look so close but far in reality!

The product page faces the greatest psychological barrier – the urge to spend. Is your product page tempting for any customer to hit that buy button and pay for the product?

If not, don’t you worry, here are the tips you wanna follow to make your product page work:

Add to Cart Button

You must be thinking – “Add to cart button, I could make one in my sleep, kids work!” actually, it’s way more than that. A Call to Action is the most important button on which the conversion rate depends.

Here’s how a CTA should be:

1. Displayed Predominantly

Yeah, this is quite obvious, still beginners don’t quite understand it and often mess up the ‘Add to Cart’ button placement that leads to significantly fewer clicks and less conversion. 

Add to cart button should be placed in such a position where the eyeballs of users can grab it automatically. 

Also, the button has a place to breathe. Don’t clutter the nearby area with unnecessary images, texts, or worse, another CTA.

2. Take Advantage of Contrast

The contrast will play an important role and make your add to cart button stand out. Use a colour that would be different to the primary colour of your website. In fact, it should be the complete opposite but still look good as well. 

For example, the classic combo of Black & White or the modern combo of Orange and White are just perfect!

3. Have a Good Size for Your Button

BeFoRe…  you make any assumptions, you should know that a good size doesn’t always look titanic, it should be soothing, professional, and catchy. And remember, if a user gets to the product page or any other page that has a CTA in general, the first thing they must see is the CTA. If a user takes time to find any CTA on your page, I’m sorry you’re not on the path of success, it’s the exact opposite of it.

High-Quality Images on Your Product Page

An image speaks a thousand words, don’t you think you will get more conversion when you have great images on your product page? 

See, the thing is people wanna see what they are gonna buy. If you sell them a laptop and show them a desktop, it means your business is in grave danger. So make sure to follow the tips below before choosing an image for your product page:

• High quality images – People often zoom in on the images and have a closer look at stuff, so if your image is of low quality, it will be pixelated when zoomed, and that’s not gonna end well for you.

• Number of images – Don’t just put 1 image and leave the product page, make a proper slideshow covering all the product features in the image or at least the top 5.

Leverage videos – Video demonstration of the product or a person using a product can be a game-changer for your conversion rates. 

World-Class Product Description

A product description is like a guide for your product. It should answer every question your customer could potentially stumble upon while using the product. 

I leverage this best practice for displaying the product features and specifications in a table first and then using the text button “show more” for the rest of the description. This helps the page look neat and tidy.

Here’s one of the best product pages I found:

The Checkout Process

Now that we have done hardwork, it’s time to bank some money selling good-quality products. Just see here, the checkout process should be highly systematic and crystal clear. Here’s a sequence that you should follow up with for a dropshipping checkout process. 

Must Have Pages in Any Dropshipping Store

About Us

The about us page is an essential asset which you can leverage to gain trust. You can show your experience, expertise, and whatnot via the About page. 

One great thing to do is putting up a form for sign up or query at the bottom of your About page so that you can get in touch with your customers and make them feel welcomed.

A map with your headquarter’s location and phone number at its side also servers as a great trust builder.

Shipping Policy

Now the shipping policy page will include everything around shipping and essential rules & regulations like shipping cost, timing, import and export duty, etc.

Track My Order

As the name suggests, your customers should be able to track the orders via this page. It would be great if you can put the live tracking feature on this page.

Contact Us

A subscription form with your contact, Email ID, and address are the 3 things you should have on your contact us page.

Post Dropshipping To-Do Things

Okay, now a number of customers have bought from you. What should be your next step? Don’t you think being in touch with them and solving any problem they have with the product will make them trust you? 

So with this, let’s see the importance of post-purchase customer interaction.

Support and Customer Interactions

When you talk to your customers and ask them if the product they bought is good, they know you’re putting effort and happily reply to you even though the feedback might be bad sometimes. 

Believe it or not, customer interactions brings your customers back to the store to buy the same or some other product again. 

Did you know a mere increase of 5% in customer retention might increase your profits by 25%?

Another thing you might not know about it is the word of mouth phenomenon. With good customer service, your customers will be happy, and they will obviously refer you to their friends and relatives. In fact, 77% of customers share a brand if they are happy with it. 

Lastly, people are willing to pay more to brands that have good customer service for the same product they might find elsewhere.

So you know the power of customer retention now? Okay then, let’s find out other ways to increase dropshipping revenue. 

Tools That Can Help You Monetize the Store

Wheelio

Tell me one thing, how many of you play spin games loaded with offers on Amazon or any other eCommerce platform at least once. I bet there would hardly be any of you who didn’t spin the wheel! 

But what does it have to do with your store? Well, the answer is – user engagement. 

These games increase user engagement and give your customers coupons to buy products at discounted prices. When they get an offer they like why won’t they buy from you? So to make your audience’s journey fun install Wheelio.

To know more about Wheelio, read this: Wheelio – Turn Your Visitors Into Leads!

Increase Your Revenue with ReConvert Cart Shopify App

The Stilyo group’s ReConvert cart is a great way to increase your revenue just after purchase. With ReConvert Cart, you can show related products or “people also bought” products to your buyer. This technique is called an upsell process, which can increase your revenue to a great extent. 

Leverage this technique as 60-70% of existing customers show interest in those upsell products.

To know all the features, plans, and the worth of ReConvert Cart, don’t forget to read this:  ReConvert Post Purchase Upsell App Review

Add Reviews with Loox Shopify App

Having reviews on your dropshipping store will give your store a human touch and male it trustworthy. 

Tell me this, when you surf through any eCommerce website and stumble upon an interesting product, don’t you check the reviews of the product? You do right. 

Just like you, almost everyone who shops online checks the reviews. So why don’t you put up great reviews and represent them beautifully? 

To do so, Loox should be your go-through solution. 

To read more about Loox, you can read – Loox Shopify App Review – Updated 2021 Info! 

Optimizing Your Product Page for Better Conversion

When you run ads or do SEO for your dropshipping storefront, it’s essential to have an optimized product page. In dropshipping, the product page, in most cases, is the landing page for your ads. So, optimizing the page to its best becomes a really important thing. 

Let me tell you some tips about product page optimization:

• Optimize your product copy – Write a juicy and punchy product description with a short and keyword-rich title. 

• Product images – High quality images covering every feature of your product with some text for feature description are the kind of images you wanna put on your landing page. 

• Review – Display reviews of the product on your landing page to show the product’s credibility. 

• Wish List – Create the feature of ‘Add to wish list’ or ‘bookmark product’ so that people can create a list of products they plan on buying. 

• Leverage Cross-selling and Upselling – Both of these techniques can increase your ROI drastically. 

• Live chat – Add a live chatbox to your store so that customers could ask you doubts regarding any product, shipment, or fees, etc.

• Image zoom feature – Leverage the image zooming feature so that your customers can have a better look at the product’s design. 

• Product videos – Have a proper video guide for your product to help your customers out with its setup and usage. 

• Shipping information – Let your buyers know the estimated shipping date of the product. 

Sell Your Dropshipping Business

When you have enough traffic and a good dropshipping business that generate profits, you can sell it online. There are sites like Flippa where you can post your store, put up a cost you want, and sell it online. Currently, people are selling their online dropshipping store for as high as $60,000. 

Apart from Flippa, you can head over to Exchange Marketplace, which seems to be owned by Shopify itself. It works pretty much like Flippa and specifically made for dropshipping store owners.

Marketing Your Dropshipping Store

You have your store in place, you are testing and optimizing the store regularly, all-in-all, you have decent sales. But, what’s that one thing that will take you a step closer to your No 9-5 dream? 

It’s marketing my friends. 

Marketing, if done right, can open 100 doors of opportunity to scale your business.

I’ve been trying several marketing methods for my dropshipping business and have found 4 great methods that you can leverage to market your eCommerce store. Let me show you how it’s done the right way!

Market Your Store with Facebook Ads

Facebook ads are a great way to promote your products worldwide, the fact that it is a globally recognized platform gives it an edge over any other advertising platform. 

According to statistica, Facebook has about 2.8 billion monthly active users. So you have 2.8 billion potential buyers to impress, don’t be overwhelmed as you won’t be showing your ads to everyone who uses Facebook.

Let me give you some tips I found out after running hundreds of campaigns on Facebook.

Know the basic functioning of Facebook Ads

Before learning about Facebook Ads, you should know that you don’t necessarily want a Facebook blueprint certified person to get into it. However, you should know the working and basics of Facebook ads. You could just google it and read basic stuff about Facebook ads. Here’s a guide I referred to when I wanted to market my dropshipping business – Facebook Ads Guide for Beginners.

Assuming you have an idea about the parameters in basic Facebook ads, let’s move on! 

The things I learned when running my ad campaigns:

Make Sure to Experiment with International Markets

When people start off, they often target 1st tier countries like the USA, UK, Canada, etc, thinking they will make a great profit, which is not bad but have you thought of the possibility of getting sales from smaller countries? I bet it doesn’t sound that promising, it didn’t sound a success to me too back then. Later on, my perception changed. 

When I ran an experiment to remove the top-tier countries and aim for small countries like Monaco, Vatican City, etc. I saw a tremendous increase in my CTR and sales going up day by day. Some of these small countries even outperformed the 1st tier countries. 

So make sure you experiment with these small countries to know where you can get the maximum ROI.

Before you target low tier countries, I’ll recommend you working on your marketing methods because people in these countries won’t spend as much as 1st tier ones. 

Keep Optimizing Your Marketing Funnel, It’s Important

Right from seeing your ad to becoming a buyer, funnels play a major role in your target audience’s journey. The whole funnel is important, not just the ad or the landing page. 

You might be the best Facebook ads expert but if your landing page isn’t good, you can see your bounce rate sky-rocketing through the roof, and you won’t get any sales. So for starters, you can optimize your landing page, giving it a stunning design, a scarcity touch with countdown times, and high-quality images.

To increase your ROI, giving an option of upselling and cross-sell can be a game-changer. 

I hope now you’re aware of the fact that the success of your Facebook ads is not just dependent on the ad copy you create, it’s about the whole funnel.

Drive Traffic to Your Product Page and Not Your HomePage

As a beginner, I made the mistake of making my homepage the landing page and investing money in ad campaigns by testing and optimizing the homepage only. 

Soon, when I noticed that my sales were not that great, I thought it would be great to drive traffic to my product page rather than the homepage. And voila! The sales just went up. This is because when you target a product, you can filter your audience even more.

Let me give you an example: 

Let’s say you have a store that sells clothes. So if you wanna drive traffic to your homepage, you will target everyone who is in styling, fashion, from both genders and all age categories. Now get this, if you have a men’s leather jacket as one of your products, you can just target Male leather jacket lovers in the age category of maybe 18-45. 

So what happened here is – Instead of targeting people from 1st tier countries of all ages and both male & female, you’ve super-targeted an individual group of males who have an interest in leather jackets. 

What do you think, which one of the above will yield better results? Driving traffic to your homepage or product page? I am damn sure it will be the latter, provided you sell multiple products in any niche.

Facebook Ads Is All About Testing And Optimizing

Here’s the thing: Every penny you invest will go down the drain if you don’t experiment with Facebook Ads. So what do I mean by experimenting and optimizing?

Taking the earlier example of a clothing dropshipping business, let’s say you have 10 products in your store. Now, what you’re doing is just making the ad copies, optimizing your landing page, and waiting for sales to pop in exponentially. Would it happen? No, it won’t!

What you wanna do is make the ad copy, run it, look at the CTR, CTC, and other essential parameters time and again to know what’s going wrong. 

For example, if you see you have millions of impressions but just a hundred clicks on the ad, your ad copy is terrible or maybe your ad image isn’t that good. Try experimenting with a different text or image. 

Note: If your CTR is extremely low, your ad copy, target audience, or the product must not be great.

So what I am trying to say is – if you have 10 products, test each of them, running multiple ads for multiple target audiences and keep optimizing unless you find your winning ad copy and a product.

Run Google Ads and Drive Traffic

Google ads are no different than Facebook ads. The only thing is it’s more technical. And when it comes to ad copy, you need to optimize on a much deeper level. 

Let’s look at some tips that will help you run Google Ads for your dropshipping business.

Bid On High-Value Items

When you just start off, one essential parameter for Google ads is the return on ad spend (ROAS). You might want more returns with less expenditure, right? The best way to do this is to target and bid on high-value items.

With items, I mean products, so try finding such keywords on Google keyword planner that have low CTC and more traffic. Along with this, don’t forget to keep an eye on the brands that sell the same product.

Have a look at their store, see how they designed it, what have they done to optimize the product page, and try making an upgraded version of the already existing store in the same niche.

Leverage Seasonal Keywords to Perform Better

If your dropshipping business is in a seasonal niche, this tip is for you – The user sentiment is driven by seasons.  For example, if you have a clothing store, you might wanna sell sweaters in winters and cotton t-shirts in summer.

Selling raincoats to a place where it rains once a year is quite foolish. So keep an eye on such seasonal trends and target the right audience with high-value items.

Find these seasonal keywords with large traffic and less CTC, use these in your ad copy as well as in the tags of your landing page and increase your sales.

Run Ads on Discount Deals, Sales, etc

Running ads on discount deals, sales, or offers you create on your store could prove to be a winner. Here it’s not about a winning product, it’s about the winning offer. 

Think of this, if you have an offer giving a product at 40% off, which no one else is giving, why would people hesitate in buying from you? 

They will rush to your store to buy it, even if you get half the margin you might get without the offer. 

Search Engine Optimization for Your Dropshipping Business

If you wanna rank on Google and get traffic organically for your store, SEO is the way for it. Search engine optimization takes time to give your traffic. When done right, it also increases the visitors to your site gradually.

So let’s look at a few tips that’ll help you with your SEO.

Start SEO with Keyword Research

Keywords research is quite an easy thing you can start off with. But, which keywords to target. Experts say, “target such keywords that have more traffic and less competition.”

Let’s take my favorite example of a clothing niche dropshipping store. Just assume, you wanna sell men’s sweaters to your target audience. So you might wanna look up the term sweater for men and terms related to sweaters on any keyword research tool. Once you do so, look at the search volume and keyword difficulty of it.

Let me show you how it’s done.

Start with typing the word you have in mind.

Now when you hit that “Search” button, you will see a list of keywords relevant to the “sweaters for men.”

You wanna look at a keyword with moderate traffic, high CPC (cost per click),  and low SEO Difficulty (SD).

So, the term sweater for men online is a good one to start with.

There you go, you have your keyword.

Competitor Research 

Keeping an eye on your competitors, their products, and optimization activities is essential. You can do this just by typing your keyword on platforms like Moz, Semrush, or Ubersuggest.

In case your competitors are big brands like Shopify, Alibaba etc, you might wanna stay away from those keywords for the time being; when you have good domain authority, you can optimize around those keywords as well.

By the way, if you have a budget for a pro tool, I’d reckon on Semrush as its database is awesome. 

Your Site Should Load Fast

Let’s say you visit a site and it’s taking ages to load. Would you wait more than 10 seconds for the site to load? I don’t think you will. Just like that, your customers won’t either. So having a good site loading speed is of immense importance. Slow loading sites will often have high bounce rates and less sales.

Ideally, your site should load in 3 to 4 seconds.

Here are some tips to optimize your site speed:

• Check for errors in your site with GTMetrix and Google Pagespeed Insights 

• Use AMP (Accelerated mobile pages) as that decreases the page loading time 

• Compress images and combine CSS & Javascripts

• Use an SEO friendly and mobile responsive theme

Website Architecture

When it comes to website design, you wanna make sure your customers don’t struggle to navigate and find the products they want. 

If the user is switching between pages like crazy, it means they’re not getting the product they want. This will make them exit the site and never visit the store again.

Use good and clear menus with submenus & categories inside them to help users navigate your store easily. 

Put a search bar on every page so that a user can put in the product name or niche to have a look at the results that pop up.

Here’s an example of a store that you can navigate smoothly:

On-Page SEO Techniques

On-page SEO is mainly the optimization of user experience on-site. So let’s look at what you can do to make your users experience memorable to them:

• Make sure your keywords are in the title, sub-headings, Meta descriptions, Images, Alt tags, and URLs

• Product description should be at least be 1000 words with keywords

• Provide shipping information, taxes, terms, and conditions to your product page

• Keep your images of high-quality throughout the store

Other SEO Techniques

• Create a blog page and write content on your products to help in SEO
• Make high-quality backlinks and build domain authority for your brand

SEO is one of the cheapest and best ways to get quality and hungry traffic for your store. I did SEO right from the beginning and do it now as well because it gives me traffic that converts. 

Future Plans for Scaling and Expansion

Let’s make a promise here. Once you start making good money from Dropshipping, you have to come here again to read this part because I want you to make more money. 

Now you must be wondering – why do I want that? What’s the catch, right? Well, if you make money, you’re gonna tell 10 other people about Conversionskitchen. 

So basically, my business is growing with you. If you make more money, so do I and it’s a win-win, nothing wrong about it. I’m your teacher and I would love to see you kick some ass. 

So after you have everything in place and at least a year of consistent income from your store, you can plan on scaling the store and expanding your business.

Here are a few things you might wanna consider when you scale your dropshipping business.

Ensure that Your Suppliers Can Also Scale with You

When you wanna expand, see if your supplier has the potential to deliver more products with efficient shipping time and management. 

Beginners often forget this parameter of business and assume their supplier has thousands of products in their inventory. 

It might not be the case. If your supplier falls short of products, you might fall into grave danger until you find some other high-quality suppliers.

“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” – Booker T. Washington

Make Sure PayPal is Your Friend and Not An Enemy

Just like me, most dropshippers use PayPal as a means of receiving their payments. Now when you try expanding, you start marketing your product more, this leads to a spike in your expenditure and profits. Imagine spending 100 dollars in marketing in the month of June, and it suddenly goes up to $6000.

PayPal will most probably block your account, seeing this spike in transactions, and freeze your account until you show them the documents required. PayPal does it to protect you from any kind of fraud.

The best solution for this problem is to inform your bank and PayPal that the turnover will increase, and you will be spending and earning more as you’re scaling the business. Ask if there are any documents that they might want before scaling. 

Time to Take Your Ads to Another Level

If you’re one of those who rely on ads for getting traffic, this part will give you great profits with less expenditure. 

To get your revenue through the roofs, there are two things you can do while running Facebook ads. Let’s see each of them one by one.

Start Running Retargeting Ads

When you have built a proper audience for your dropshipping business, the best way to get recurring sales is by retargeting the same set of people via Facebook Ads. There are 3  main benefits of retargeting:

• If you target customers who’ve had a positive experience with your store earlier, they’re more likely to convert rather than that user who just landed on your store for the first time

• Retargeting creates a memory for your brand and that brings awareness

• ROI increases and we get the money left on the table 

Dropshipping Success Stories

Now that you’re clear with how to start a dropshipping business and take it to new heights in 2021, here’s some motivation for you. I came across these great personalities making millions with dropshipping. Like all of us, these people also hustled, worked hard for years, and are now the kings and queens of dropshipping.

Irwin Dominguez – A Million Dollar Dropshipper in a Month

Irwin here is one extraordinary dropshipper; he made $1,000,000 in profit in just 8 months. Quite extraordinary, right? So what did he do right that led him to where he is today?

Nothing extraordinary, it was just sticking to the basics and scaling right away. He learned how to start a dropshipping business from Google, opened a Shopify store, and used Oberlo to find the right product and supplier.

The first sale Irwin made was from Facebook Ads. Now he uses Facebook Ads as the primary source of getting his traffic and converting them into sales.

Kate – The Queen Who Makes $32,000+  Every Month

Kate doesn’t earn millions but the strategy and ideation behind her dropshipping store is quite amazing.

She has a store based on Anime and sells print-on-demand products with famous figures. She has a huge advantage of never-ending designs and choices she could offer to her customers. 

In an interview, she said that even 100s of products in her store were not enough for her customers, they wanted more. She said the key to success for her was coming up with new designs and products daily for a very long time.

Kate, like Irwin, relies on Facebook Ads for her customers. She also has an Instagram page that’s quite active and actually helping her create a brand for her store.

Is Dropshipping Worth Trying in 2021?

If you think you’re too old to start a dropshipping business, hear this out: KFC was founded in the year 1952 by Harland David Sanders at 65. Look at the brand now, isn’t it one of the most popular ones for fried chicken?

Starting a dropshipping business is never too late. You just need the right mindset and the willingness to be successful in life.

Yeah, you will have to work hard, devote your free time you get after your job, and do it as a side hustle for some time. You might even lose friends and upset some family members as well. But, the will of being successful is something that would drive you through the journey. 

Always remember, people don’t get successful because they don’t see results. In the beginning, positive results are happening but are too small to be seen. So keep working and the universe will give the return for your efforts, nothing goes waste.

So this was my journey, hope you enjoyed it