Introduction
The 50.5% increase in e-commerce sales since 2019 indicates that we are in a golden age for e-commerce entrepreneurs.
However, using a dropshipping model isn’t easy. Most people believe you simply add products to your online store and customers come to buy.
Dropshipping without a plan can make you feel invisible. You feel like you’re shouting in an empty room where no one is listening. Every dropshipper, big or small, knows this feeling. It’s part of the process that most entrepreneurs want to escape from as quickly as possible.
Fortunately, there are ways to become a successful dropshipper, which is why we’ve created this guide. Keep reading to learn from professional dropshippers what success looks like and how to achieve it.
How to Become a Successful Dropshipper
Here you will find six key elements you must master to become a successful dropshipper.
1. Adding Value
Having a strong plan for how to add value to your customers is the most critical factor for success. This is important for all businesses, but it’s even more crucial in the dropshipping world where you’ll be competing with many other stores selling similar products.
In dropshipping, it might be easy to think of yourself as just selling a product to customers. But successful small merchants understand that they are not only selling the product but also providing insights, information, and solutions. You may think you’re working as an e-commerce seller, but you’re also in the information business.
So how will you add value and help solve problems for your customers? If you’re not sure, read more about niche categories in dropshipping for a better understanding of them. If you’re struggling to answer this question for a specific niche, you might want to consider choosing a different market.
If you’re unable to add value by providing high-quality information and guidance, the only thing left for you to compete on is pricing. While this strategy has worked for Walmart, it won’t help you build a successful dropshipping business.
2. Focus on Marketing and SEO
Focusing on marketing and driving traffic to your new site comes in second as a key factor for success. The biggest and most frustrating problem faced by new e-commerce merchants is a lack of traffic to their sites. Many merchants spend months building the perfect site only to launch it to a world that doesn’t know it exists.
Marketing and driving traffic are absolutely crucial for the success of your business and are hard to delegate effectively, especially if you have a small budget and are self-funding your business. You need to take the personal initiative to develop your skills in marketing, SEO, communication, and promotion.
This is especially critical during the first six to twelve months when no one knows who you are. After launching your site, you should dedicate at least 75% of your time to marketing, SEO, and driving traffic for four to six months—yes, four to six months. Once you’ve established a strong marketing foundation, you can scale back your efforts a bit. But initially, it’s impossible to place a significant focus on marketing.
If you’re not yet an expert in marketing or SEO, the following resources and blogs are a great way to get started:
– Moz. One of the largest online SEO communities. The beginner’s guide to SEO is an especially great resource for beginners.
– Search Engine Land. A prolific SEO blog, with numerous new posts each day.
–
SEOBook. A famous blog for search engine optimization and home to a paid community for SEO professionals.
– Brainlabs. This marketing and SEO agency has an excellent blog and a number of high-quality training courses and educational programs, many of which are free.
– HubSpot blog. Tips on everything related to inbound marketing, from driving traffic through email to social media advice.
– Seth Godin’s blog. High-level advice on marketing and building an audience.
– Copyblogger. Content marketing tips focusing on writing effective and engaging copy.
– Shopify blog. A comprehensive e-commerce blog with frequent posts on how to effectively promote and market your online store.
3. Specialization
Almost every successful dropshipping store we encounter has one thing in common: it specializes in a particular product or category. The more specialized stores are, the higher their chances of success.
You don’t just want to sell backpacks. You want to sell backpacks designed for travelers around the world who are obsessed with lightweight gear. You don’t just want to sell surveillance camera equipment. You want to focus on security systems for gas stations.
Many believe that narrowing focus limits the potential customer base and costs them sales. But quite the opposite is true. Specialization allows you to communicate more effectively with your customers, and you can stand out more easily from the competition and compete in a smaller field. Specialization is rarely a bad move in a dropshipping venture.
If you’re launching a store in a new category, likely you won’t know which segment of your customers to focus on, and that’s okay. But over time, as you gain experience with your customers, you should identify the most profitable segment that allows you to add the most value. Then, try to orient your business to focus exclusively on the needs and problems of those customers. You’ll be amazed at your conversion rates, even if you charge a premium price.
4. Have a Long-Term Perspective
Building a dropshipping business is like building anything else of value: it requires a significant level of commitment and investment over time. However, for some reason, people believe they can build a six-figure income passively with dropshipping after just a few months of part-time effort. That’s not how it works.
It will take at least one year to build a business that generates a full-time income on average.
It’s also important to understand that the first few months are the hardest. You will face doubts, you’ll run into issues with your website, and it’s likely you’ll have a lackluster website launch that generates zero sales. Understand that this is normal. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and no successful dropshipping business was built overnight.
If you mentally prepare for a tough start and don’t expect to get rich overnight, you’ll be more likely to stick with your business until it becomes successful.
5. Provide Excellent Service
The internet has always been a somewhat transparent place, but the recent rise of social media has made your business’s reputation more important for your success online. If you don’t treat your customers well, they are likely to tell the whole world, including many potential customers.
The biggest risk in customer service for dropshipping merchants is being biased toward profit and loss in every order when fulfillment issues arise. As explained in our dropshipping guide on Amazon, it’s essential to accept that dropshipping can get messy and that you will sometimes have to pay to clean up some mess and that it’s not always necessary to try to pass that mess off to the customer. If you’re not losing money sometimes on individual orders to make customers happy, you’re probably not providing very good service.
It
Having happy customers is the best form of marketing. As is the case in all businesses, it’s much easier to make a sale to a satisfied customer than to try to convince a new customer to buy. If you treat your customers exceptionally well, they are likely to spread the word and refer others to you. With excellent customer service, you can build a business where repeat customers generate a large portion of your revenue.
6. Don’t Get Caught Up in the Details
Don’t focus too much on the details. Your company name, logo, website theme, or email marketing service will not determine your success.
What makes a business successful are the things we just talked about: adding value, marketing, excellent customer service, specialization, and long-term commitment. However, new merchants will spend weeks, sometimes months, struggling to decide between two shopping carts or service providers. This is valuable time that could be spent developing the core aspects of the business.
The Most Important Step to Success in Dropshipping
The most important step – which most people never take – is to actually start building your online business. This is the hardest thing for most people, usually due to fear and uncertainty.
It’s commonly understood that successful entrepreneurs have a strong confidence in their business from the start. When you dig a little deeper, you’ll find that most of them had fears and reservations about how things would turn out. However, they moved forward with their plans despite those doubts.
If you are serious about building your own dropshipping business, you’ll need to do the same. Do your research, evaluate your options, and then proceed with that information despite your fears and reservations. That’s what entrepreneurs do. Start now.
Frequently Asked Questions About Dropshipping Success
Is dropshipping still profitable in 2023?
Yes, the dropshipping model is still profitable in 2023. It’s a low-risk business venture because you’re not responsible for shipping or manufacturing. Dropshipping is also scalable with average profit margins ranging from 15% to 20%.
Can you get rich from dropshipping?
Dropshipping is good for earning a decent income and building a sustainable business. However, if you want to get rich quickly, dropshipping is not the right path. For a dropshipping business to work, you need to invest time and money.
How long does it take to become a successful dropshipper?
As illustrated in the above dropshipping success stories, very few dropshippers become successful overnight. Most entrepreneurs run several unsuccessful stores before finding the right one. It can take anywhere from six to twelve months to make a profit from your store and determine if it’s a good long-term investment.
What are the best dropshipping niches?
– Health and personal care
– Clothing and accessories
– Kitchen and grocery
– Home and bedroom decor
– Office products
– Tools and home improvement
– Camera and mobile phone accessories
– Toys
– Automotive accessories
Leave a Reply