Making money online with your own e-commerce store can be quite a challenge; especially when you’re selling physical products. Keeping inventory, making the shipments, finding the appropriate and fast delivery service for your business, and many other issues stand in the way of you succeeding and earning money in a stress-free way. But you can get rid of those issues with drop shipping.
Dropshipping, in the simplest of terms, is having a service manage your inventory and ship it out to your customers. All you have to do is sell. So sell on a popular site like eBay. It’s one of the internet’s most well- known marketplace where you can buy and sell anything. You can also use eBay for your dropshipping business. What happens is, you form a partnership with a drop ship supplier, and sell their products. When somebody makes a purchase, you contact the supplier and they ship it to your customer.
What You Need
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Seller account
Setup Steps
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Jot down a list of niche ideas.
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Do keyword research.
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Search for products related to each niche to determine demand. Choose popular marketplaces.
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Decide on a niche.
Get a seller’s account on a popular marketplace like eBay.
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Go to eBay.com > Click Sign in or register.
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Fill in the information needed > Click Register.
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On your account settings, scroll down to My PayPal > Click Link my PayPal account > Type in your eBay info, review your account information > Click continue.
Search for products and suppliers.
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Click Advanced Search > Enter a product name.
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Click on the Sort by drop down menu > Choose a sorting option.
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Select Completed listings only > Click Search.
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Keep notes of the best selling ones.
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Once you’ve picked the products, check the available suppliers.
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Connect and set dropshipping and pricing agreements with your chosen suppliers.
List your items on eBay.
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Click Sell at the top of the page.
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Enter a title. Include the brand name, manufacturer, artist, specifics, and a short description.
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For brand name products, click Find your product and have most of the basic information filled in by eBay.
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Choose a category either by browsing from their list or doing a keyword search.
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Click Add/Edit photos > Choose from your files.
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To set whether you want to have your listing in an auction or sold at a fixed price, click the Auction or Fixed Price tab > Fill in the price > Enable/disable the other given options.
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Select a payment method.
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Specify your shipping options and then the returns policy > Add additional details and instructions.
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Click Preview your listing for your review > Click Continue when you’re done.
Marketing Setup
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Upsell your products.
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Create social media accounts and add the links to your store.
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Post your product shots on Instagram.
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Launch a Facebook store.
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Have an email recovery campaign to reduce abandoned shopping carts.
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Build your email list on your website and send regular newsletters about promos and discounts for your store.
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Create an exit offer.
Timeframe
Time to do: 1 week
Time to see results: 1 month
Additional Tips
Create a thorough product description.
Encourage feedback and product reviews.
Work on customer service and satisfaction. Respond quickly and regularly. Listen to their feedback.
If you find yourself doing well, become a PowerSeller and reap benefits that could help your business grow. Also, consider making a storefront; this gives you and your products a professional and trustworthy look.
Sell products you yourself can’t live without and are passionate about. You can get these from several different dropshippers but shipping would become quite the challenge. Most dropshippers give you free shipping. If they don’t, find another one.
Use Google Trends to figure out which months to best sell a certain product.
Watch out for dropshippers who don’t ask you for your tax ID. These people, more often than not, end up being fake dropshippers.
Study the supplier’s policies on pricing, refunds, returns, guarantees, goods damaged during shipping, back orders and net30.
Match your product with the best price on eBay or within $10 of the best price. The customer will always go with the lowest price having the best feedback. Offer a better return policy than your competitor and you’ve got the upper hand.
Keep your descriptions short. Use bullet points and give it a professional appearance by making sure it has proper grammar, proper use of punctuations, and correct spelling.
Potential Results
Dropshipping makes things incredibly easy for you to earn money. But that doesn’t mean you’re going to be an overnight billionaire. You could potentially earn $250 in the first month from following the guidelines and selling your product. But you could generate an income of $24, 000 in a year if you put in the time and work into this venture.
