How To Start A Dropshipping Business In 2019
If you’re looking to start your own online business, but you just don’t know where to start, look no further. There is no better time to start your own business and jump on one of the fastest growing trends in 2019 called “dropshipping”. But “what is dropshipping” you may ask, dropshipping is a finding a supplier of a product and then reselling it on your website for a higher price.
If you want to start your own dropshipping website, then Shopify is the right platform for you. The best part is you will never have to worry about physically owning the product(s) either! When you sell a product on your website, you will purchase it from a third party vendor and the vendor will ship it directly to your customer on your behalf. Considering you are never seeing or handling the product, you are basically a middleman.
Is Shopify Dropshipping Right For You?
If I have your attention in the slightest, make sure to bookmark this post. I understand you may not be ready either financially or mentally to start your own business, but that doesn’t mean in 3 months from now or even 3 years from now you will still be in the same position. So save this link and I will walk you through everything you need to know about creating a Shopifydropshipping website from start to finish.
>>> Start A Dropshipping Business Now! <<<
How Much Do Dropshippers Make
So how much do dropshippers make? I was curious as well to see what other people were making and it certainly didn’t disappoint. Based off a few Google searches I saw some people are making a fortune. Some dropshippers are making $800 a day and some are even making millions a year just from dropshipping someone else’s product. I read a story about a guy who makes $3 million a year dropshipping cat shirts; yes shirts with cats on them made him rich. These people are doing it and who knows you could be next. Maybe you won’t make a million dollars from this but an extra $100 a week could go a long way.
Disclaimer: Please keep in mind this post is just my opinion and does not guarantee you will have a successful business. I am not a lawyer or a business consultant, you are responsible for any decisions you make after reading this post. This includes a failed business, loss of money, or any legal issues you may encounter. I will try my best to provide you with free advice to the best of my knowledge on dropshipping. Please be advised there are affiliate links in this post, as a means to earn revenue for my work.
>>> Create Your Dropshipping Business Here! <<<
Quick Overview On How To Become A Dropshipper
Here is a quick list of all the websites and information you will need to start your dropshipping business. These are my recommendations you are entitled to run your business as you wish. I will go into detail later on in the post, but this was to highlight the main speaking points. You can start a dropshipping business with just a Shopify account, the other tools and websites are just options for you.
· Join Shopify, for just $29.95 a month you can have your own online store. Shopify is the platform that you will be hosting your website on and adding your products to. There are other platforms but in my opinion Shopify is the easiest to use and is the most user friendly for a dropshipping business. (All you need to start).
· Register your business. I recommend you form a legitimate business to protect your assets but this is up to you. You can do this all online at My Company Works. This is strongly recommended but many dropshippers do not do this. (optional)
· Sign up for a business credit card, you will be making a lot of purchases for your products. Rather than using your personal credit card you should have a professional business credit card. (optional)
· I also recommend joining AliExpress this is a good site to buy your products to dropship. (optional)
· Sign up for the Burner App. This is a paid app on your phone that will give you a second phone number on your phone. For $4.99 a month you can receive calls and texts from potential customers without giving them your personal number. (optional)
· Rent a PO Box with a real address you can use the online service ipostal1.com and register online or you can go to your local UPS Store and get your own PO Box. You can use the real street address as your business address. (optional)
· Join Fiverr, this website is great because for $5 you can get people to write your content for you or even provide SEO services, such as building backlinks to your website. Make sure you read the reviews about the person you are thinking about using. (optional)
How To Start A Dropshipping Business On Shopify
In this section I will talk about how to setup your Shopify dropshipping website, how to file for a business, and all the necessary steps you will need to set up your business. Again this is a detailed summary of what I heard and read online, results will vary and I encourage you to look at other sources online to learn more running a profitable dropshipping business. I am not a lawyer so I will be linking to the appropriate resource and people you will need to get in contact with to start your business. The information I provide is just a suggestion, although many dropshippers do not register to be a legitimate business, it’s strongly recommended you do to protect your personal assets in case of a lawsuit.
I’m going to walk you through the steps of creating your own Shopify website; however, I will keep it super high level. I promise to write a more detailed blog on how to create your Shopify website from beginning to end but for the sake of this blog I will keep it broad. Once you sign up to Shopify feel free to search on YouTube and see how other people created their account.
How To Build A Shopify Store For Your Dropshipping Business
1. Sign Up With Shopify: To create your account go to Shopify.com and enter your email address, password, and store name. Your store name will have to be unique (no one else has the store name yet) or Shopify will not let you create a store. When you join using this link you will get a 14 day free trial with no obligations. If you are serious about starting a dropshipping business I would recommend starting out with a “Basic Shopify” account which is under $30 a month. If you’re seeing success with your Shopify website you can always upgrade to a better plan the next month, but be patient you may not see great results until at least 6 months.
2. Set Up Your Online Store: After you’ve signed up you’ll be directed to your account dashboard. You can start customizing your store’s theme, upload products, set up payment options, set up your shipping rates, and buy a web domain. You can buy a domain from Shopify for about $14 a year. Now there are cheaper ways to buy a domain such as GoDaddy, however you’ll have to redirect the DNS records yourself. To be honest I have no clue what that is or how hard it is to learn. Personally I would buy a domain name from Shopify, but if money is tight you can buy a domain on GoDaddy for $.99 with a promo code and then just Google about how to redirect the DNS records.
3. Choose A Theme: Make sure you choose a theme that you like and that makes sense for the products you sell. There are a lot of free themes/layouts available on Shopify but to have a unique look to your website you many want to think about purchasing a theme. When purchasing a theme keep in mind it is a one-time purchase so once you buy it, it’s yours for as long as you keep your website going. Themes can range in price but the most I’ve seen was $180, but they look awesome! Keep in mind the appearance of your website will help with your conversions.
4. Add Your Products: On the left side navigator there is a tab called “products” you’ll want to click this and the click on “add a product” to populate your merchandise. For each product you will want to give it a good name, a detailed description, and a custom URL or “slug”. This is a good way to work on optimizing your products for search engines (SEO). A slug is no more than adding a keyword at the end of your websites URL. You will also want to have a high quality picture of each product. Once all the information looks good hit the “save product” button on the top and bottom right corners.
5. Set Up Your Payment Options: One of the most important parts is to set up your payment options. It would be in your best interest to accept all major credit cards and PayPal as payment this way you won’t lose out on sales if a customer only has one credit card or only PayPal. Keep in mind that each payment gateway has fees involved, so take these fees into consideration when setting your prices. If you have the “Basic Shopify” package there is a set fee for credit card orders of 2.9% of the sale + $.30 per sale, the middle plan called “Shopify” charges 2.6% +$.30 per sale, and the “Advanced Shopify” charges 2.4% +$.30. So selling low margin items might be difficult. If you use any one of the dropshipping example products I provided above you should be profitable regardless of the credit card fees.
6. Get Your Site Live: Before you go live you’ll want to go to the “General” tab and fill out your company’s information. I would also recommend you add Google Analytics to your Shopify account to track users coming to your website and other helpful data. Make sure you fill in the tax information if you plan on collecting taxes as you should. Also make sure to fill out the shipping information even though your supplier should be shipping the product directly to your customer for free. You’ll want to tell everyone who goes to your website what the shipping windows are and possibly even offer them a faster shipping method. You can even make money of this option, if you offer express shipping to get the product sooner and say it will cost you $2 extra to do this charge your customer $3 that way you make an extra dollar profit. The shipping windows are pretty long, but that is expected since it’s free shipping and most likely the product is coming from overseas. Once all that’s done push your site live!
>>> Get Your 14 Day Free Trial On Shopify Now! <<<
That’s all it takes to creating your website on Shopify. In just a half an hour to an hour you can have a great looking website up and running without being an expert in web developing. Shopify makes it easy and with so many free resources available online you can find the answer to anything if you find yourself stuck on some aspect of the site. If you want to become a dropshipper I highly recommend you look into Shopify for all your website needs.
Pros And Cons Of Dropshipping
As with any business there are pros and cons that you should consider before joining. You know that old saying “if it was easy everyone would be doing it”, well there is no exception with dropshipping either. The fact is most people won’t try, some will fail, and some might be the next internet millionaire, but you don’t know until you try. Also there are no guarantees you will make money, so please keep that in mind before you invest.
Pros Of Dropshipping
1. Low Cost: One of the biggest advantages to dropshipping is that it doesn’t require much money to start. Traditionally businesses would have thousands of dollars’ worth of inventory on hand at all times, but with dropshipping your supplier owns the products and warehouses them for you. The only time you will ever have to pay for inventory is after your customer makes a purchase.
2. Easy To Start: Owning an ecommerce store is relatively easy when you don’t have to count and manage inventory. Because you aren’t storing the products, you don’t have to pay for a big warehouse and you don’t have to pay workers to manage the warehouse. You also won’t have to worry about physically shipping the goods because your supplier will be shipping the products for you.
3. Work From Anywhere: You can work from anywhere in the world as long as you have an internet connection. All you’ll need is a laptop, a tablet, or even a cell phone. Basically any device that will allow you to talk to suppliers and customers is all you will need.
4. Be Your Own Boss: You hear it a lot everyone wants to be their own boss, dropshipping can help you achieve that goal. You control what products you want to sell on your website. You call the shots and it is very simple to discontinue a product or add new products. Another huge perk is that you decide what days and what time you want to work. Just make sure you are putting in the hours and are checking in from time to time. You can even run this as a side business in addition to your day job, so the possibilities are truly endless.
As you can see, there are many benefits to starting a dropshipping business and becoming your own boss. However, it’s not as easy as it looks. There are some disadvantages that I would like to mention as well.
Cons Of Dropshipping & How To Resolve Them
1. Potential Low Margins: Most businesses have around a 30% margin on their products/services. Considering the cost for a dropshipping business is extremely low, some owners will sell their products extremely low, even below this 30% margin which makes your job harder. If you sell a popular item or a product with a large amount of monthly searches online the biggest selling point is price. I would recommend finding a niche product and then undercutting the price of big suppliers such as Amazon and Walmart. If you stick around and read the whole blog I promise to share some niche products that have decent monthly traffic and high margins.
2. Out Of Stock Products: Owning zero inventory can be a gift and a curse. If you own your own inventory you know when products are out of stock, however when you outsource from a supplier you never know when they might sell out. This is something you should prepare for and always make sure you have a product that you can source from another supplier if need be. If you can’t fill a customer’s order make sure you explain that you are out of the product or tell them when they can expect their delivery if you know. This is completely up to you, but instead of refunding them maybe you can add a 10% discount if they can wait a little longer for the product. Being transparent and going above and beyond for your customers will help your business gain trust and potentially repeat orders.
3. Shipping Errors & Different Shipping Rates: When you are working with a lot of moving parts such as a supplier and then a shipping company, mistakes can happen. So you will have to handle returns, damaged products, and “lost shipments”. Make sure you get the customers contact information such as an email or phone number so you can handle the situation appropriately. Sometimes you have to eat the cost and return the customers money.
If you are using more than one supplier there is a chance the shipping rates will differ. If possible I would recommend you offer free shipping, just make sure you factor the highest shipping rate into your price so you protect your bottom line. Most suppliers’ offer free shipping options for light weight products; they just have a longer shipping window so just make sure your shipping times are displayed clearly on your website.
>>> How To Become A Dropshipper! <<<
Other Tools & Add Ons To Create a Successful Dropshipping Business
Creating your Shopify website is the first step of creating a dropshipping website. In this section I will go over a few other tools and resource you may want to consider to forming your business. As previously mentioned these are recommendations and are optional but I highly recommend you form a legitimate business to protect your personal assets.
Register Your Dropshipping Business
After your dropshipping website is live I would recommend you create your business and form a Limited Liability Company (LLC), a Sole Proprietorship, or a C Corporation. I am not a lawyer so you will have to decide which business structure is best for you. If you plan on forming a business I would recommend to use My Company Works, these guys are experts and you can file all of the paperwork online. Again this is optional and most dropshippers do not file for a business.
I will not steer you in choosing a business structure but most small entrepreneurs usually file either a sole proprietorship or an LLC. Personally, I believe an LLC would be best for your dropshipping businesses because it offers liability protection, autonomy from personal finances and costs.
Request An EIN Number
You will also want to request an EIN number. The IRS requires all businesses to have an “Employer Identification Number”. This acts as a social security number for your business. You’ll need this number to file your taxes, and to open a bank account. This is a free and easy process and you can apply online.
Sign Up For A Business Credit Card
If you do decide to form a legal business, you should also apply for a business credit card, another Paypal account, and a business checking account. You will be making a lot of purchases to fulfill your dropship orders, so using a business credit card will help you keep personal and business expenses separate. You will also want a business credit card in case your supplier leaves the purchase order in the package, you would want the business name to be the buyer rather than your real name.
You will want to have a PayPal account and a business checking account to keep track of your money made by the business. This way when you file your taxes, you will know exactly how much money your business made. Having a business credit card has great perks such as reward points and you can write purchases off on your taxes. I’m not an accountant but I encourage you to look into a term called “business expense”, this can save you thousands of dollars come tax season, just make sure you keep your receipts.
To save you the hassle you do not have to do this, you can use your personal PayPal account and your personal credit card as many dropshippers do.
Collect Sales Tax
You will need to collect sales tax if both of the following statements are true:
· The state your business is located in collects sales tax and
· Someone living in your states places an order
Rather than adding sales tax to the end of the order, I would factor that price into the product for anyone who orders. Just make sure you are recording the orders purchased in the same state that you operate in, so you can pay the appropriate state tax.
If someone places an order in a different state even if their state charges their own sales tax you won’t need to charge them any tax. This is as of now, these tax laws are subject to change. To find out how to register as a retailer contact your state’s Department of Commerce, and make sure to ask how often you need to submit the tax you collect and ask any other questions you may have regarding state tax.
Where To Buy Your Dropshipping Products
If you’re starting a dropship business or you have a dropshipping business, AliExpress is a great website to get the best deals. AliExpress offers thousands of products, free shipping, and low prices. Many of the top dropshippers use AliExpress to fulfill their orders just make sure you buy from trusted sellers to avoid any possible scams or mix-ups. Again this website is completely optional but I highly recommend going through them for all your orders.
Optimize Your Shipping Times
If you're looking to take your store to the next level consider dropshipping US products with Spocket so your customers can receive their orders fast. Typically, shipping from China can take anywhere from 2-4 weeks, which in most cases is fine (even though some people can be upset). The faster an order is received, the faster that person can re-order from you. Another added perk of Spocket is they offer branded invoices so the unboxing is another reminder of your bran and you can add post-sale promos on the invoices.
Get A Phone Number For Your Dropshipping Business
If you are okay with giving out your personal number for your business then you can disregard this part. However, you can use your same cell phone and have a second number and also be able to send text messages from it. By using the app Burner App, you can have a real number for your business. For just $4.99 a month, you can receive and make calls and send text messages, should a customer just has a quick question. This is optional so don’t feel like you have to sign up.
Get An Address For Your Dropshipping Business
Rent a PO Box online or at your local UPS store. That’s right; you can rent a PO Box with a real address and use it for your business. I recommend using ipostal1.com because you can do everything online and have your own business address in just a few hours. This is a great option, to avoid people from knowing your personal address. Rather than renting a costly office space, you can rent a PO Box for as little as $9.99 a month. Get your address here.
If you are looking to save money and have the cheapest dropshipping business you can use your home address. If you are renting or live in an apartment you may want to double check with your landlord just in case.
Join Fiverr
Join the website Fiverr for any work you need done on your website. You can have someone on Fiverr write your content, build backlinks, or even design a logo. Most of the services cost as low as $5 and you can expect to get your work done in about a week or less. Make sure you read the reviews before using someone on Fiverr, you’ll want someone with experience and great reviews. Most of the people on Fiverr speak another language so you should proofread all of the content before adding it to your website, granted you used the service for that.
Again you can write your own content and chances are it will be better and free, however, if you outsource it to Fiverr it will just save you time. So you need to consider what is more valuable to you, your time or saving money.
Still Interested In Dropshipping?
I hope I didn’t scare you off, but I can’t stress how important it is to be transparent with someone. It’s extremely important to tell someone what they can expect when starting a business, both the good and the bad. As you saw many of the problems you may face can be resolved so it’s important to have good communication between your suppliers and customers.
Finding The Right Dropshipping Supplier
There are many websites to find cheap wholesalers and suppliers, when just starting out the easiest to use in my opinion is Ali Express. There are many sellers on the website as well as many products to choose from so it can be overwhelming. I would recommend a product that has fewer than 100,000 monthly searches on Google; you can use the keyword planner or install the Google Chrome extension called “keywords everywhere” to easily get the search volume for products. If you are still unsure about the product you want to sell that’s okay, I will have a handful of suggestions you can use, but ultimately the decision on what you sell is yours.
Use Ali Express For Your Dropshipping Needs
If you choose to use Ali Express for your dropshipping business, there are many filters you may use to find reliable suppliers. You can add filters for seller reviews (4 stars and up), free shipping, lowest price, and domestic returns. You can even get other information about the company such as how many years they were in business, the total orders and dollar amount they have sold, which type of payment they accept, and their shipping windows/options. The most important to me would be the seller’s rating, you want someone you can trust and who will fulfill your orders. Make sure they have more than one good review, because let’s be honest it’s very easy to have someone write a fake review for you.
Stay In Constant Contact With Your Supplier(s)
Don’t be afraid to email and or call the supplier. If you plan on being a dropshipper for a long time, you need to build a relationship with your supplier. This is a win-win situation for both parties if it works correct, meaning both of you will potentially be making money. If you don’t get a response in a reasonable amount of time usually 24–72 hours, you might want to send a follow-up email or call. Keep in mind most of the sellers on Ali Express are overseas so they may not have as much access to the internet as you and I. Reach out to more than one supplier, best case they all answer back and then you can test the quality of the product(s) out. I highly recommend you pay or request a free sample so you can evaluate the packaging of the product, the delivery time, and the quality of the product. You won’t have much of a dropshipping business if your supplier does not meet your expectations.
Picking The Best Dropshipping Products
Finding the right product to sell can be hard; fortunately we are here to help you find the best products to dropship in 2019 and beyond. This next section is going to cover a lot of information including how to find the right product to sell, how to write quality content on your website, and how to get traffic to your website. If you have stayed with me this far, I will share some ideas on products you can dropship and I will also share some free websites that you can get high authority backlinks from (one of the most important factors for ranking on Google).
Niche Products Tend To Be The Best To Dropship
Picking the right product can be challenging, this is ultimately what makes your dropshipping business. If you pick a product that you are passionate about, but no one else is than you are likely not going to be around long. If you pick a popular product with a lot of monthly searches you probably will never rank high on Google, lead to people not finding your website. You need to find a niche or in simpler terms a very specific product that’s has a very specific audience. In this section I will show you how to find products to sell online by using free tools on Google. I think it’s important to start a business you are passionate about, because then it won’t feel like a job and will be very easy and natural to write high quality content.
But dropshipping is a different beast, you need to find a niche maybe boring product that you can buy from a supplier at a low cost and then sell in the US for a higher price. When it comes to dropshipping you need to be passionate about making money and you can even have someone write your content for as cheap as $5 on Fiverr. I personally write all my own content, because I’m cheap and practical but for $5 it might be worth it to have someone on Fiverr write for you, especially if it’s a dull topic. Just a warning be prepared to proofread any work that you outsource, some of these people are from overseas where English is not their first language.
How To Build A Successful Shopify Store
Selling at the lowest prices: Selling your products at a lower cost than the competition is a very common strategy. Unfortunately, this won’t always work with every product. Price is very important, so I encourage you to keep your prices reasonable but you need to offer more than low prices to build trust with someone. Getting a pricing war will not go over too well, especially for a small dropshipping business. Amazon and Walmart can easily talk to their wholesalers to get a lower price if you steal too much of their business away and heck they might even lower their price and sell the product at a loss just to get people to their website or physical stores. Yes, billion dollar companies can destroy you easily.
Add Value: I cannot stress this enough, adding value should be just as important to you as getting a sale. Once you start selling online, you’ll be amazed that some people will buy from you even if your prices are higher. Why because you provided them something the rest of the competition didn’t. One of the easiest ways to add value is by writing long content that describes the product and all the benefits your product can offer that customer. I recommend you even make a short video on YouTube for each product you sell, people love engaging in content, before making a purchase.
People tend to go to Google or other search engines when they have a question or a problem they need to solve. So building your content to solve their question or need is going to lead to sales. To further explain, let’s say I’m looking for a cool keychain your content should explain what a cool keychain is, its benefits, the price, and the options I can chose from (design, why it’s cool, color, size, logo, etc). You want to make the customer’s decision and choice as easy as possible. Sometimes adding value is as easy as selling every possible color keychain available, and by doing this price may not be as important.
Customer Service: Having great customer service is a great skill to have. It’s very refreshing to be able to call someone or email a business if and when I should have a question or concern about a product. If you are a small dropshipping company with one or two employees it will be hard to have 24 hour customer service, but being responsive and answering every inquiry will help your business excel. Excellent customer service will help you sell more even if you have a higher price than the competition. Being there for your customers really matters. I will go into more detail later on how you can have a number on your website without giving your personal number. If you’re curious here is the link to the app I am referring to.
Quality Images & Videos: You’ll want to have high quality product images on your site, that truly represent what the product looks like, trust me no one likes being lied to. As a consumer it’s very annoying when a seller uses stock images and then you get a product and it looks nothing like the product in the image. I recommend you buy the product and take your own pictures with a good camera. When and if you record a video demonstrating the product, make sure you have crystal clear video and that it’s easy to hear. You’ll want to differentiate yourself from the competition so make sure the pictures of your dropshipping products stand out!
Educate your customers: Let’s say you are dropshipping a product such as a “door draft stopper”. Some people may not know what that is, but it’s a piece of plastic and fiber that you attach under your door to prevent a draft your house. Talk about a great niche product to dropship “wink wink”. Now this is a great way for you to purchase the product and record yourself putting together and installing under your door. This will help educate your customer, build your reputation, and create value. If videos aren’t your thing, you can take picture of each step on how to install a door draft stopper and then write a short paragraph under each image to really help your end user.
Upsell Products: Upselling products is one of the easiest ways to make more money. Let’s say you are selling “microfiber car towels” (cough cough). These are extremely soft towels used to dry after you wash your car, here is your chance to sell car wax or another product to help with the car washing process. This is how you build a name for yourself and eventually you can scale your business to becoming the one stop shop for all your car wash needs. But everything takes time, so give yourself a chance; success doesn’t happen overnight.
Dropshipping Ideas
As promised here a few niche products that you can start your dropshipping business with. If you noticed a few were mentioned above. These all sell for pretty cheap on Ali Express and most offer great margins of over 100% and even leave room to upsell other products down the line. All of these products have fewer than 50,000 monthly searches on Google, which make them perfect to try to rank for on search engines. Ranking on Google and getting traffic to your website is not guaranteed so that part is solely on you and your marketing efforts; these are just some dropshipping ideas to help you get started. Again this is just my opinion on the best items to dropship.
· Cool keychains
· Door draft stopper
· Microfiber car towels
· Dust pans with/without brooms
· Snoring chin straps
· Eye masks
Finding The Right Customer For Your Dropshipping Business
Finding the right customer can be hard at first, but in the digital marketing era we have now, there are many ways to get customers. There are paid options and free options available, if you chose paid make sure your product is priced correctly to factor in the extra expense. The best way is SEO, this is writing detailed content that fully explains and helps potentially customers find your website. This is writing content that has your keywords that are focused on sprinkled through your information.
You do not want to over use that keyword because you will be penalized by Google for “keyword stuffing”. Large orders are great, but if you are running an ecommerce site most people only will buy one maybe two products, so this market really will make the bulk of your business. Repeat orders are a beautiful thing so adding value and have great customer service will definitely make someone feel comfortable buying from you again.
How To Get Traffic To Your Dropshipping Website
There is a lot to cover in these topics, so I will keep it super high level and not go into too much detail. I want to keep this post on the topic of dropshipping, but I want to share some light on how to get traffic to your website. If you want to learn more about anyone of these topics I recommend you check out moz.com, searchengineland.com, or use Google and search “SEO” or “how to run Facebook ads”. I am not an expert, so I won’t lie to you and misguide you.
1. SEO/Blogging: Search engine optimization is optimizing your webpage or blog posts to rank on search engines. This means you write content about certain keywords you wish to rank for. Writing detailed and organized content that is. Then you want to create backlinks to your website. But if you just created a new website on Shopify, for this example you will want to create backlinks in moderation, you don’t want to throw a ton of backlinks to your website and get a penalty by Google. Backlinks or referring domains simply means other websites that link back to yours. Generally higher quality backlinks will give your website more authority and more “SEO juice”. Below are a few high authority website that you can get an easy backlink from. I encourage you to find an expert in SEO on Fiverr or to do some research on Google to learn more.
2. Posting on social media: Here is one of my favorite ways to get traffic to your website. Simply post your link on Facebook, in Facebook groups, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, and any other social media accounts. This is a great way to promote your website and it’s free. Provide a small paragraph of what your website is about add your link and post it to your friends and followers. I also recommend you add the link to your bio on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and as a “job” on your LinkedIn account.
3. Creating YouTube videos: If you are serious about making this dropshipping business a success making a YouTube video every day is ideal. However, this can get tedious and you may run out of information but at least one video a week is a good start. When you post a YouTube video make sure you assign a title with the keyword or phrase you want to rank for and then write a nice description and add the link to your website. This is a great way to get traffic and views to your website and YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world, so being on there matters.
4. Facebook Ads: Facebook is the largest social media platform in the world. I recommend you create a Facebook business page for your website. Most successful dropshipping businesses run Facebook ads because they work, results may vary and these ads may not work for everybody. Once you create a “business page” you can set up and run paid ads on Facebook. The best part is you can cater your ads to a very specific audience. You can custom your audience by age, interests, and other demographics. From what I read online most costs per click on Facebook can be as low as $.35 a click which is extremely cost effective. But I am not an expert; this is just from what I read online.
5. Google Adwords: Running pay per click ads are a great way to get traffic to your website. Google lets you bid on keywords that you want to show up for. You enter a budget and the maximum amount of money you are willing to pay for a click. When someone clicks on your ad they will be sent to your website and you “pay per click”. This is a bit more expensive than Facebook ads, but can be very profitable if done correctly. You can also cater your ads to serve to a specific market such as location, time of day, and keywords/phrases they are searching for online. You can learn more about AdWords from my other blog here.
6. Other paid ads: There are other paid advertisements you can run on Bing, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn. I haven’t had much experience with those ads so if you are interested in those channels I would look it up on Google.
7. Other Free Sources: I also recommend you post your content on Medium.com, this is the only website online to my knowledge that allows you to copy your content word for word without getting a penalty for duplicate content. Medium is a great website to use because it has a high domain authority that you can leverage when creating a blog. At the end of each Medium post, add a link back to your website. Another great source to get traffic to your website is by answering questions on Quora.com. This is a site where users can ask and answer questions. Take the time to provide quality answers to other user’s questions and link to your website when applicable.
Free Backlinks For Your Dropshipping Website
As promised here is a list of high authority backlinks that you can use, to improve your SEO rankings. Add a few sentences about your website and then add your link and there you go, you will get a backlink back to your website. For SEO ranking the more backlinks the better, but aim for quality websites not just quantity. I encourage you to read other websites to find out how to get high quality backlinks. I want to keep this post focused on dropshipping but I want to add as much value to your business for free as possible. Remember when you create your website on Shopify, your website will be brand new so add backlinks gradually so you don’t risk getting a penalty. SEO is an ongoing battle so to rank higher on Google you will always need to find quality backlink opportunities and to write great content.
List Of Free Backlinks
· https://www.emoneyspace.com/
· http://www.apsense.com/start
Keyword Research Tools
Now I know I mentioned keywords and keyword research often in this post so I wanted to explain that a bit further here. To find the right keywords to try to rank for you can use a few different tools to get the monthly search volume of keywords or phrases. Every successful dropshipping business needs to focus on their niche keywords, so I recommend this website to find keyword ideas.
You can download the chrome extension called “Keywords Everywhere”, once installed any keyword or phrase you enter on Google the extension will tell you the monthly search volume.
I would also recommend Google keyword planner and keyword.io to find the search volume of a larger list of keywords and you can also get recommendations of other related keywords.
Identify Other Dropshippers Or Competitor Websites
Doing keyword research is the first step, the next step would be to go to Google and type in the keyword you would like to rank for. The first 3–5 websites that show up organically are the websites you want to do your research on. You will want to see what products are on these pages, their price point and more important how long the content is. When writing content I really like the “skyscraper method”, this is using the content from other websites but completely rewriting it so you aren’t plagiarizing any content. You will also want to make your content longer than theirs to potentially rank higher. Simply copy all the words on that page and paste it into a word document to get the word count, then you will know how long you need to make your content.
Become A Dropshipper And Go For It
It might sound pretty easy now that I gave you a good start, but building a business is a lot harder than writing content and linking to other websites. Everything is a learning process and the only way to find out if you will be successful is to try. Everyone doubts themselves in the beginning but if a dropshipping business is what you truly want to do, you will find a way. I encourage you to look online to learn new tips and tricks use Google and YouTube and you can find the answers to almost anything. If being an entrepreneur is your dream then you will also want to learn and further grow your business, even if you think you hit rock bottom there is always a way, but be prepared to put in the work.
Do your homework on your competition, research your keywords/products, and find as much information online as possible on running your business. Once you think you are ready, make your best decision and go for it. If you put off starting your dropshipping business waiting for the perfect product and the perfect market you’ll probably never get started.
Conclusion
So this concludes my guide on how to start a dropshipping business. I hope you found it useful. If you have read up to here you know how to setup a Shopify store, select a product to dropship, and how to market your website. With an endeavor in life, it takes hard work, effort and passion to make it work. Creating the business is the first step, but you will need to bring it every day to make this work.
If you always wanted to start a website or an online business, dropshipping might be the right fit for you. You can launch a Shopify dropshipping storewith minimal financial risk and get your feet wet with an ecommerce site. If you use the tools mentioned in this post, research other dropshipping methods, and put in the work you can be successful.
I know there was a lot of information in this post so if you need something explained further or have a tip please share below! Leave a comment or if you have a dropshipping business drop your link below and ask us how I can help you grow your business.
