Drop Shipping
Elijah The Mentor April 8, 2019
Do you want to start a drop shipping business? If you’re still wavering back-and-forth, this article will help convince you why you should—along with the most important practices to ensure you can scale your business while keeping unnecessary stress at bay. First, let’s discuss why people may waffle around the idea of starting their own online store. Many say things like “I don’t have the time, money, or resources!” However, due to the power of things like automation and ecommerce resources, the web is chock-full of tools to ensure your business can be a sustainable — and successful — venture. Another large barrier to starting an online business is fulfillment hassles. Who wants to buy stock from a distributor and manage it on their own, constantly worrying about stock-outs, packaging, and shipping? This also keeps store owners tied to a specific location, instead of being able to run a store from anywhere around the globe. Insert drop shipping… …the solution to all of these problems above. Drop shipping eliminates the need to keep products in stock yourself. Instead, you have a distributor do the managing. You simply find a wholesale supplier who stocks the inventory you need, and they do the shipping directly to your customers — even sending the product in your name, eliminating the look and feel of a middleman. This is what it looks like in real–time:
- You receive an order in your store.
- Ideally, around once per day, you report all of the orders to your drop shipping company, and pay the small percentage of the overall money you’ve received from your customer.
- Then, your drop shipper handles the order! They process it, find the product, package and ship the order, and add an invoice with your name. They also order new products when stock runs out.
Now, are you ready to run your business from The Bahamas, Bali, and Boston?
If you’re still not completely convinced, here are three reasons why you should start a drop shipping business, and why you’re leaving money on the table if you don’t.
It sets you up for scale.
Most importantly, in order to truly run a successful business, you need to prioritize the important things.Getting your store up-and-running, while manageable, does take hard work, so it’s important to try to automatetasks like adding products to your store, and to get rid of unnecessary to-do’s, like fulfilling and shipping your own orders. With drop shipping especially, having the ability to delegate fulfillment allows you to focus on what’s most important: marketing your store, talking to your customers, and strategizing how to scale your business.
Drop shipping let’s you be mobile.
Now, all you need is an Internet connection to run your store from anywhere! Not only is this a nice perk, but it allows you to work on-the-fly, especially when small emergencies or big orders come in when you’re far from home.
It’s the new norm.
Newsflash: there are 191.1 million people in the U.S. who shop online. Nowadays, many retailers—small and large alike—also use drop shipping to avoid all the hassles you’ve read so far. Here are some popular drop shipping providers to research (and don’t be alarmed by the websites, drop shipping’s presence online is known for being sub-par): Drop Ship Sites, GoGo Drop Ship Directory, and Wholesale Central. Ready to dive in? Drop shipping is often considered the foundation to a successful business. When starting your store, this is the way to avoid investing in a ton of product, staying lean, and also staying smart.
This post contains affiliate links.