Business

Dropshipping: Tips to grow a successful business

Once you know how to start your new e-commerce store, you will need to make three important decisions: Which items do you want to sell? Which supplier are you going to choose? and what is your favourite selling platform? Ebay, Amazon or your own platform.

Dropshipping has became an e-commerce revolution, and nowadays there are many people wondering how to develop a home business. This is an extraordinarily easy way to earn extra money. But, what is dropshipping and how does it work? Dropshipping is a retail fulfillment method where the merchant handles the product, the dropshipper or merchant purchases an inventory as needed from other suppliers.

Where can you buy your ecommerce products?

The first thing you need to do is choose drop shipping  wholesalers, they can sell anything you like or you think will be a market demand: video games, music, candles, health and beauty, technology and many others.

A good opportunity to have a high potential benefit is to choose importing through Chinese branded products, the rate of profit is very high and you can find many items and business options. These brands apply many offers in their products so its common to find free dropshippers, no shipping payments translate in higher earnings.

Where can you sell your ecommerce items?

Having chosen a product, wholesale suppliers and having your business legally established, it is time to start selling! Afterwards you need to decide how to place your products in front of the potential customers. Several sales options are available, but you will most likely choose a selling combination on your own ecommerce store, eBay, or Amazon.

The easy way to make profits with your ecommerce is by dropshipping on amazon. Although Amazon sells a high number of items, many of the published products are sold by third parties. The advantage of selling through Amazon is that it is easy to get started, you will also have an immediate access to a large audience and with no need to worry about marketing or SEO strategies.

With Amazon you can immediately start publishing a list of your wholesale products, create an account and add a listing to start selling. Amazon also offers its own orders (Fulfillment by Amazon), which allows you to complement your dropshipping products with your own products without having to deal with packing, shipping or storage.

Ebay is the world’s largest online physical product auction site, and a very popular site to start selling your products; dropshipping on ebay have many advantages because as Amazon, people know it very well. When you post your listing on eBay, you have access to many online shoppers. Millions of people will see your listings, and the active market will help you to ensure a decent price for your products.

As you can leverage the benefits of this huge selling platform, you don’t need to worry about marketing, SEO and paying to receive traffic. This saves you time, as marketing is one of the biggest challenges associated with launching a dropshipping business.

Dropshipping with your own virtual store

Selling through third party sites like eBay and Amazon is a good opportunity to set up your own online store and sell your products. Though by creating your own ecommerce store you can have better control and customize the appearance, layout and create custom-tailored product pages to provide the best information to your customers.

And what is better, you won’t have to pay 10% or 15% of each sale to eBay or Amazon, which will significantly improve your profit margin. In short, you will earn more money by installing your dropshipping business with your own virtual store.

By creating your own virtual store you will have the chance to build a real business: you will be able to build a long-term business with your own distinctive qualities, unique experience and returning customers. What is even more important, you will be building a business with value, because It is much easier to sell a business built on an independent website.

Which selling platform should you choose?

There is a lot to consider, and different platforms will be the most suitable for different people in different situations.

If you are looking to start an ecommerce business to explore it as a hobby and you can find items to sell with a good benefit potencial, selling on eBay and Amazon can be a viable option that will allow you to cover the rates and still have profit. Remember: there are a lot of people making sales money on eBay and Amazon so do not discard it.

However, if you decide that you want build a long-term business and you already build up a strong ecommerce strategy, you can consider to start with your own online store. This option gives you a great flexibility, customisation options, the opportunity to build a real business with value, and much more. So you can fully concentrate on your own benefits by investing in marketing and promotions, especially in the early days.

Jess Young

Jess is a writer at the UK's largest independent press agency SWNS. She runs women's real-life magazine Real-Fix.com, as well as contributing articles and features to all of the major titles and digital publications.

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