By Arush Sharma
The latest statistics gives a figure that there are around 310 million active customers in Amazon and probably you may be one among them!!
We are quite acquainted with the boom of e-commerce and how massive impact it has made to our lifestyle. With the rise in ecommerce has also given a rise to the number of people who wants to start an online ecommerce business. I randomly asked my friends about what do they want to do in the future, and to my surprise, so many of them said they want to establish business of their own. Entrepreneurship is the gravitating career for most young adults. There is one constraint in starting a business all of a sudden. You need to have a good investment support. Capital is the most important investment for any business to start. What if you don’t need to spend any money for your business and still make profit?
Dropshipping is not a new term or concept in ecommerce but seldom people know how to start a dropshipping business. More than being a business, it is a service. In a dropshipping business, you don’t need to do a lot of capital expenditure and even don’t need to setup a physical store. The internet does the job! It is a retail fulfilment method where the seller doesn’t keep his products in a store or inventory. Basically, the seller sells his product from an online store and buyers simply buy them. But the main tasks of the business are actually done by a third party system. Among all the positive aspects of this model of ecommerce, the main perks of dropshipping are:
- Minimum capital investment required
- No hurdle in setting up a store
- Risk margin is lower
- You can set your own price for the products you sell
Let us look at the essential steps you need to know before setting up a dropshipping store in simple steps.
Explore your interest. This is the first thing you need to find out for starting your business. Figure out what exactly do you want your business to do for you, what are the products you want to sell. Research on your customer base and see what are the products that can give you higher profits when invested upon. Figure out who are your competitors in this run and how they are dealing with the business to make profit. The first step is all your homework that you need to do before moving to the next step in the run.
Find a suitable Drop Shipping supplier. The drop shipping supplier is basically the hero behind the scene. Because the drop shipping supplier is the one who will deal with all the physical tasks of the business such as packing, shipping and delivering. It is therefore essential to get in touch of a reliable supplier who can synchronize with the products you want to sell. Be sure to get the following things clear with the supplier.
How long it takes to ship the order. What kind of tracking systems they prefer If they offer a warranty on their products. If yes, for how long
Get a sales tax ID. We all know what sales tax means. It is the tax levied on all sales of physical goods to consumers. Though having a sales tax ID for an eBay seller is not mandatory, there are certain suppliers who prefer sellers with a sales tax ID.Well, getting a sales tax id is easy as well as cheap!Just Google your “Country name”+ “sales tax ID” and you would be sorted!
Sort your Platform. Once you are done with the prerequisites given in the above steps, you need to figure out which platforms do you want to use for selling your products.eBay is the most used and easy ecommerce platform for beginners to start off. Amazon is the world’s largest ecommerce site for selling and buying products Bonanza and Ruby Lane are also ecommerce stores that help in hoisting your product If not any of these platforms, you can even design your own ecommerce store with platforms like Shopify.
Market and Promote! Imagine you got an awesome business idea and even setup an online store but no one knows about it! Nothing can be saddening than this. You need to bring out the savvy marketing analyst and start marketing your product. Start various campaigning on social media platforms Use the power of emails and promote by sending bulk emails to target customers Create discount coupons because discount fascinate people more than chocolates and ice creams. With this basic information on how to start a dropshipping store, you are ready to fly high into the ecommerce sky!!