Dropshipping is an order fulfilment strategy that doesn’t require the store owner to keep any inventory. Whenever an order comes through, you, the store owner, direct that order to your supplier, who, in return, ships the product to your customer. It’s very similar to dropservicing business model, but here you sell product instead of a service.
A lot of new entrepreneurs love this business model because you can practically start a new dropshipping business with really low capital and no inventory at all. In this article, we are going to give you the step-by-step guide to start your own dropshipping business from scratch.
1. Choosing a Niche :
Did you know 42% of dropshipping businesses fail because they could not identify a profitable niche for their online store?
A niche is a segment of a market with similar audiences. A niche can further segmented into sub-niches and under sub-niche more sub-niches and so on. As an example,
Pet Industry -> Dog Care -> Dog Training -> Pit-bull Training.
It is key for your Dropshipping business to have a profitable niche. Niches like Beauty, Home Decor, Parenting, Adventure etc are some of the ever-green niches you can get into.
2. Choosing a Product :
The next big step in your venture is product research and finalizing a product. You product should fill in these three conditions to be successful:
- Problem Solving
- Not easily accessible from Walmart, Target etc
- Having high perceived value.
I would highly recommend sourcing your products from AliExpress. Shopify also comes with Oberlo app which integrates with AliExpress effortlessly.
3. Choosing a Business Name :
Choosing a business name is not as easy as it sounds. Your store name should be relevant to the product you are selling. Make sure you choose a brand-able name for your business.
4. Setting up Social Media Accounts :
Once you have decided the niche, product and the store name, head over to all these social media platforms and secure your username there.
- Create a Gmail account for your store (myshopifystore@gmail.com or myshopifystoreofficial@gmail.com)
- Create a Facebook Page for your store and set up the username of the page(fb.com/myshopifystore or fb.com/myshopifystoreofficical)
- Create an Instagram account and link the account to your Facebook page.
Create Pinterest and TikTok Accounts.
5. Creating Facebook Business Manager and an Ad Account:
After all your social media accounts are set up, you should be ready to set your business manager in facebook next. A business manager is not compulsory as you can run ads with just an ad account, however, business manager lets you manage multiple ad accounts under one roof. You need a facebook account to create business manager. The registration process is quite simple. Head over to business.facebook.com and fill out a basic form to create your business manager and ad account.
6. Signing up for Shopify Account :
One of the great things about Shopify is – its user friendly nature. It’s quite beginner friendly and every ecommerce feature is packed under one roof for you. The good news is Shopify also offers 14-day free trial. This is great for someone who wants to test the water before committing in. The signup process is quite simple and the best thing is you can get your hands on great themes for absolutely free of cost.
7. Registering a Domain Name :
Before you choose your business or store name, make sure the domain is still available. You can register for the domain from within the Shopify admin dashboard and it is going to cost you around $11/year.
8. Creating the creatives for Facebook Ads :
Ideally you’d want to make couple of videos and few high quality images to run your marketing campaigns. A great creatives for your ad gives you high CTR(click through rates) for your facebook ads. I would highly recommend hiring someone from Fiverr for the creatives, if you do not posses the editing skills yourself.
9. Writing Copies for Facebook Ads :
A great copy for your Facebook ads is really an icing on the cake to your Facebook ads. Try to spy on your competitors ads using Facebook Ad Library, and get some inspiration from there. If you want to go an extra mile, hiring a professional copywriter is really worth it.
10. Running your Facebook Ads :
Generally speaking, Facebook ads can be divided into two phases. Testing and Scaling.
Testing phase is all about testing as many variables as possible. Test different adsets(interests), creatives, copies, landing pages etc.
Once you find your winning Adset, the next phase is scaling it. To know more about identifying the winning Adset and scaling it, please refer to Facebook Ads for Dropshipping Business.
11. Scaling your Store :
Along with scaling your Facebook ads, you should also focus on scaling your store. When you find the perfect combination of winning product and winning adsets, the next step is branding your store.
The scaling phase of your store consists of widening you advertising platforms(Influencer Marketing, Google Ads, Snapchat Ads, TikTok Ads etc.), white labelling your products, and trying to lease a warehouse and order bulk from Alibaba.
That is it. Hopefully this step-by-step guide help you through your future endeavors. If you have any questions or recommendations, please feel free to email us : contact@moneyworths.com or contact us through this page.
