The reason most people fail at DROPSHIPPING and give up.
Most of us want a convenient excuse not to start an online business after all the prospect of failure is very frightening. It is more comfortable to write off dropshipping as a scam or claim that it's saturated and go back to your 9 to 5 job. No one in your office is going to blame you after all misery loves company. But if you are the black sheep in the herd and you just want to get started and find more answers then let me help you with that.
WHAT IS DROPSHIPPING?
To clarify the first fear that almost everyone has that dropshipping is a scam we need to learn what drop shipping is. Dropshipping is just an e-commerce business model where you create a store in which you import products from suppliers and market those products by investing your own money which then you sell those products to customers only when you get orders. In other words, you go to the supplier one at a time and place the orders that customers have already placed with you on your website. The supplier then ships those products directly to your customer's address.
This is a business model that a lot of retailers use. Even big-time retailers like Walmart use this business model to make sure that they are only buying as much supply they need to meet customer demand for products. The main difference between you as a dropshipper and Walmart is that you’re an individual and get your products from Aliexpress which is an e-commerce website where other people can shop on. Dropshippers add value to the customer's experience that they don't get when they go directly to Aliexpress.
We must all know that dropshipping can never be saturated because it is not a product but merely an e-commerce business model so basically it is impossible for dropshipping to be saturated. You may believe this or not but e-commerce is booming and now is still the perfect time to jump in.
After addressing some of the main concerns many of you may ask about the budget that is required to get started with dropshipping or may even say you require a huge budget to get started. Other than your basic costs which include Shopify store and domain purchase, the biggest variable in your budget will be marketing. So marketing is something that can change your initial budget from $200 to $2000 but that depends on the marketing channel that you chose to market and promote your products. For example, Instagram influencers will be cheaper than the much-used Facebook ads.
Realistically you will need somewhere between $300 to $1000 to start dropshipping. You can definitely build a dropshipping business without spending a lot on marketing if you opt to take your own time to grow an Instagram community or a Facebook group beforehand. It’s definitely not easy and neither is it fast but it does work. What I would recommend is you should save up for this venture especially if this is the first business you are starting with as you will be making mistakes and you will probably not see an immediate return on your investment initially.
WHAT YOU REQUIRE TO BE A SUCCESSFUL DROP SHIPPER
Let me share with you the
2 most important qualities that if you do not possess then you will not succeed at dropshipping. Now these 2 key qualities are not “how to build a good website”, “not how to find winning products” and it is not “how to run successful Facebook ads”, the skills I am about to mention go much deeper than all of the above. Let get straight into the 2 main qualities you need to be a successful drop shipper;
- Creativity: Dropshipping has a very low barrier to entry which means anyone pretty much around the globe can dropship. Which in turn means a lot of people are trying to explore the possibilities of dropshipping for themselves, there is a lot more competition now than there was in previous years. This in turn leads people into levelling up their drop shipping game as marketers and as entrepreneurs. Besides the only way, you will be able to stand out in this market is by getting creative. Being more creative doesn't have to be a person who is creative using photoshop or video editing because you can very much outsource these things. Not to forget photoshop and video editing skills are a plus and if you do possess these skills then you are already ahead of the others and if you don't that is also okay. The most important thing you need to keep in mind is that you need to have a creative eye to know what looks good. Being a creative person in the market of dropshipping will help you in knowing what a good store looks like, think of different angles on how you can sell a product in today's market, designing a creative video and you will have to be creative when it comes to problem-solving.
Some people are naturally creative and some aren't and you will know yourself where you sit on the creativity scale. Regardless of where you fit on that scale, you need to find and seek inspiration in order to have creativity. Inspiration is the key to all creativity. Some actionable tips that I can provide beginners in the dropshipping market that will help them become more creative is for them to go out and depending on what store you are selling or what sort of product you are selling, go and find the biggest direct to consumer bands (D2C) that are selling in that niche and have a look at what those guys are doing. Find out more about what the bigger players in your niche are doing, how does their store look, what are their creatives and you can find many brands or store’s creatives. A big mistake that a lot of new drop shippers do is that they go out and emulate and try to copy what the other drop shippers are doing. Basically, it is a big cycle of everyone just copying each other and that is something any dropshipping expert would be against.
2. Sales Copywriting: A lot of drop shippers don’t seem to have the quality of sales copywriting and I’m afraid to say that anyone just starting out as a dropshipper would fail if you don’t get better at this skill. Copywriting is a bunch of text which persuades someone to take an action. Now that action can be for the most part to buy a product or it could be to sign up to a load or an event. The sole purpose of the copy is to persuade the person to take the action that you want them to take. A lot of new drop shippers do not understand that if you don’t capture someone’s attention then you cant sell them anything. You could literally be having the best product available to sell but it won’t matter unless you are able to create a copy that will attract people to buy your product. Like anything, you get better over time and with practice. The more ads that you run you get better, the more ad copy tests that you do, the more videos that you run, the more product descriptions that you create and in general the more tests you run on your dropshipping store the better you get. Over time you’ll generally find words that work better and attract more customers.
These two qualities and skills get very overlooked, especially by new drop shippers. But once you master these two skills and qualities everything else within your business will change a lot. Just like all the other methods of making money online, dropshipping is one such method which if not done properly and with effort then it would lead to failure. Dropshipping has always been a very effective form of e-commerce model which leads to passive income and scaling your dropshipping store is much easier after you achieve your first 1000$ in revenue.
