Retail sales are the lifeblood of any company. No company can succeed or even survive if its sales are low. The web is on your side when you’re engaged in e-commerce and dropshipping.
There are many options for getting your product in front of customers, including selling on online auction site eBay, creating a custom e-commerce website, or opening a Facebook store.
This article will show you the five most effective strategies for launching a dropshipping business with little to no money out of pocket.
Sell on eBay
eBay is one of the most popular e-commerce websites in the world, with over 160M users. On eBay, thousands of vendors, including some recognizable names, are making a killing through the dropshipping business model.
This method of doing business is rapidly gaining popularity, especially among inexperienced eBay vendors operating with a tight budget.
The fact that one doesn’t need to know how to code in order to set up an eBay account and begin listing items for sale is arguably one of the site’s greatest selling points.
The eBay seller hub is where a seller can do everything from posting items for sale to fulfilling customer orders to coordinating returns.
Since the service supports instantaneous payments for orders, it is ideally suited to the dropshipping business model, which involves the seamless ordering of products from suppliers and their subsequent direct dispatch to customers.
Out of stock items and price fluctuations are major problems for eBay dropshippers. If you’re an eBay seller and you cancel orders because you don’t have enough stock, eBay will mark your account as underperforming. Using automation programs is the most efficient method for avoiding such problems.
With automation software, you can sit back and relax as your business is taken care of from start to finish.
Take a look at our recommended eBay dropshipping software to learn more.
Sell On Amazon
While eBay is a huge player in the online shopping market, it is not the only major player. Amazon is the largest online retailer, with over 190 million monthly users and annual sales of more than $250 billion, and is often overlooked as an alternative to selling on eBay.
Amazon has a larger share of the market than its next two closest competitors, eBay and Walmart, combined, making it an attractive option for dropshippers.
Amazon allows sellers to list an unlimited number of items for free, and those fees only apply when items are sold. However, sellers can reduce their fees on sold items by upgrading to a professional account.
Many eBay merchants have moved their operations to Amazon because of the larger customer base, smaller number of competing businesses, and more equitable policies.
When compared to eBay, listing a product for sale on Amazon takes much less time and is much simpler. Listings on eBay are created independently of one another, while sellers on Amazon frequently use the same details page if the product already exists in the Amazon catalogue.
As a result, there are some instances in which you won’t need to provide a description or images when making a new listing.
The simple truth is that you’re missing out on a lot of sales and the chance to establish your own brand by not selling on Amazon.
While dropshipping on Amazon is a good way to get your feet wet in the marketplace, expanding into Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) should be your long-term objective.
Much like with eBay, items running out of stock or raising in price is a common problem for Amazon dropshippers, particularity as they begin to scale and create hundreds of listings.
Using software to automate price/stock management is a sure-fire way to eliminate the issue. To find out more, check out our compilation of the top Amazon dropshipping software solutions.
Build Your Own Store
Dropshipping can be a great way to make a steady income, but it is more sustainable if you set up your own online store.
Marketplaces like eBay and Amazon are useful for generating quick sales, but the platform retains complete control over your business, and the platform’s policies are subject to change at any time, even if it’s to the detriment of sellers.
In particular, eBay has earned a bad reputation for being a place where policies are frequently updated and where new policies, like seller metrics and managed payments, are frequently introduced. Misery tales about vendors being banned from marketplaces for no apparent reason abound.
If the market decides to change its policies, even slightly, you could go from being a highly regarded seller to one with a poor reputation in an instant.
However, when you run your own shop, you are in charge and never have to worry about rules, listing limits, feedback, or suspensions.
With fewer rivals and no commissions to worry about, you’ll have more leeway to prioritize maximising your profit margins. Your drop shipping company can expand quickly and without hindrance.
It used to take a lot of time, money, and effort to set up an online store, making it out of reach for the average person.
The proliferation of drag-and-drop e-commerce platforms has made it possible for non-developers to open shop in no time. The majority of e-commerce site generators provide a one-stop shop for handling customer orders, payments, and refunds.
If you want to learn more, check out our comparison of the top website creation tools for creating an online store.
Although you shouldn’t spend your first few months of business on building your own website, it’s a good idea to put some of your earnings toward this goal once your business has grown and scaled.
Spending more time and energy on a website now will pay off in the long run, especially as you see it gain traffic and make sales.
In addition to having full control over the look and feel of your site, having your own domain name and hosting service gives you access to a wide variety of automation software solutions that can be easily integrated with popular e-commerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce.
The most time-consuming parts of running a dropship business are the ones that can be automated with the help of software. These include listing creation, inventory management, order processing, and tracking data uploading.
If you are interested in learning more, check out our compilation of the top dropshipping software programs available.
Create a Facebook Shop
Facebook, alongside Google and YouTube, is one of the world’s most visited websites, with billions of users every month. There are millions of companies that use Facebook to reach out to potential clients and raise brand recognition.
Advertising on Facebook, whether through a page, a group, or paid promotion, can be highly effective.
Having the ability to set up a Facebook Shop is an extremely helpful feature for online store owners. Despite being an emerging trend, Facebook Shops are expected to disrupt the online retail sector and pose serious competition to established marketplaces like Amazon and eBay.
The ability to accept orders directly from your shop is in the works, but for now you can use features like creating product collections (categories) and chatting with potential customers.
You can read more about setting up a store on Facebook here.
Try Other Selling Platforms
Etsy, Ebay, and Bonanza are just a few of the many well-known online marketplaces where your products would do well. These lesser-known marketplaces may not have the name recognition of eBay or Amazon, but they still serve as a destination for millions of buyers from around the world.
They are a better option than eBay, especially for dropshipping, because they don’t charge for listings, have lower selling fees, and have looser selling policies.
It’s at least worthwhile to test the waters by posting your wares on all available marketplaces. Adding just a few more sales per week can increase your income and popularity.
Unlike Ebid and Bonanza, which are more traditional marketplaces, Etsy is tailored to the sale of handmade and vintage goods.
Ebid and Bonanza both have bulk-import features that let you bring over all of your existing eBay listings at once, along with your feedback history.
Because of this, you won’t have to waste time making separate listings on each site or beginning with a perfect feedback score. You have nothing to lose by importing your products because there are no listing fees.
Final Word
Finally, these 5 easy steps are not only a great place to start when marketing your dropship products, but they are also highly effective. Don’t risk losing everything by only offering your wares on a single website. Spread your business’s wings to increase revenue.
You should put your items up for sale on both eBay and Amazon, as well as other sites like eBid and Bonanza. Open a shop on Facebook and advertise your wares there.
Finally, you should give some thought to creating your own website. You need to be willing to put in extra effort if you want to make a living from your dropshipping business.
