What is Dropshipping and How to Get Started? | SimplyTrends
As a dropshipper, you may be looking for an all-in-one tool that can help you streamline your business process on product sourcing, competitor analysis, and supplier screening, three of the most important things in your dropshipping life.
Based on an in-depth study on what dropshippers actually need to improve efficiency and scale business, SimplyTrends worked out an all-featured analysis tool with an array of functions that can meet dropshippers’ demands.
In this article, we will go over the benefits and drawbacks of dropshipping with SimplyTrends and offer advice on how to get started.
What is Dropshipping?
As part of the dropshipping business model, a manufacturer makes, stores, packages, and ships goods to a customer on behalf of an enterprise.
Manufacturers have traditionally sold goods to businesses in bulk at wholesale prices, and while that arrangement worked out pretty well for manufacturers, it frequently resulted in catastrophe for business owners.
Here comes dropshipping.
I’ll be back to buy another pair of sunglasses when my customers do, and you can leave the logistics headaches to the manufacturer while working on marketing to expand your business. So goodbye boxes of unsold inventory. You can buy products from manufacturers individually with dropshipping, which means that if a customer purchases a pair of sunglasses from your store, you can buy that one pair of sunglasses from the manufacturer instead of a shipment of them, and you pay a little bit more than wholesale prices.
What SimplyTrends Can Do for Dropshipping?
The most difficult aspect of creating an online store is deciding what to sell.
Simply download SimplyTrends from the Chrome Web Store to find products in well-known niches like women’s and men’s fashion, beauty, jewelry, home and garden, sports, and more. SimplyTrends is a useful tool with which you can find millions of products that you can start selling right away.
In a nutshell, SimplyTrends’ comprehensive functions are summarized to four aspects:
Find Winning Products in just One Click:
Stop wasting time on a series of tedious test work to determine a product. Use SimplyTrends and find winning products straight away by searching for products that are actually selling across 1 million Shopify stores, and get inspiration with profitable ads across social media platforms.
Discover Competitors with Detailed Data Displayed in One Place:
Don’t drag yourself behind your competitors just because you spend a lot of time looking for them. Focus on marketing strategy instead of data collection. Using SimplyTrends hunt stores and products you are competing with, and review their performance, marketing, and product strategy to sharpen your competitive edge.
Track Competitors in a Twitter-like Feed:
To understand what your competitors are doing, you may need to spend energy and time hanging around competitors’ websites and social platforms. Save your time with this easy way — — click the button “Track” on SimplyTrends’ store finder page, then you can keep track of competitors’ every move effortlessly — from product launch to Facebook ads.
Sort out the Exact Supplier You Want
Suppliers are essential to almost every business. Are you still seeking suppliers aimlessly and struggling in picking out the one that can provide the exact product you want. With SimplyTrends, drop an image and you can instantly find the right suppliers direct from factory AliExpress.
How Dropshipping Works?
Here are some factors that have contributed to the rise in popularity of dropshipping in recent years:
Low risk
You can test products via Facebook, Instagram, or Google Ads without feeling under pressure to sell inventory (since you won’t have any), and you only buy products from a manufacturer after a customer has placed an order on your store.
Sell winning products faster
Even if your supplier runs out of stock, you typically have backup from other suppliers who are selling the same high-potential product. If you purchase bulk inventory, you risk running out of it and not being able to meet demand quickly enough, but if you dropship, you can sell a higher volume.
Low costs
Instead of hiring a full-time employee, the majority of the work can be delegated to a freelancer. Additionally, you save money on the number of hires you’d have to make to run your business as it grows because manufacturers have negotiated better shipping rates than the average entrepreneur can. We’re not saying starting a business is cheap; we’re just saying dropshipping has lower startup costs than other business models. First, you save a ton of money by not purchasing bulk inventory: storing fees and unsold inventory.
Save Time
By concentrating on your customers and marketing, you increase your chances of success with your online store.
Automate your business
Store owners can browse and add products to their store with good profit potential with a click of a button, and when placing customer orders for manufacturers, a simple click of a button fills in the product details so you don’t have to. Additionally, you have one less worry because manufacturers handle the labor-intensive tasks of product storage and delivery.
Sell More
It’s essentially a volume game, and dropshipping gives you the competitive edge top brands have. Take a look at the product collections of some of the biggest brands, like Amazon or Walmart: the reason they make so much money is because they sell so much stuff. As your business takes off and your team expands, you’ll be able to sell a higher volume of products.
How to Start a Dropshipping Business
You need to take a few steps in order to create a prosperous dropshipping empire. Here are some ideas to get you going:
Pick a Niche
If you’re unsure, you can start an online general store that sells a bit of everything, but keep in mind that you’ll still need to choose a niche for that as well. There are thousands of niches that you can start a store in, from fashion to beauty to home decor to sports. If you’re unsure, you can also create an online general store that sells a little bit of everything.
To choose the right dropshipping niche, you need to have a clear cut audience in mind to improve your marketing efforts. For instance, you might choose to create an impulse buy product general store or a general store that focuses on products for women.
- Women’s fashion
- Men’s fashion
- Beauty
- Home decor
- Jewelry
- Watches
- General Store
- Sports
- Home Improvement
- Novelty
- Maternity
- Babies and Kids
- Lighting
Sign Up for Your Store
The next step is to choose a company name for your online store now that you’ve chosen a niche. It’s best to choose a name that already has a.com domain name available. The key is to pick something memorable, catchy, and easy to spell. Feel free to bounce back ideas with a friend or compile a list of random ideas. You can choose a name that describes what you sell (FashionNova.com) or a unique name (SimplyTrends).
Once you’ve decided on a name for your company, the next step is to familiarize yourself with Shopify, the platform that houses your website and offers a wealth of tools and resources to assist you in creating a successful, long-lasting business.
You can install SimplyTrends after creating an account to help you launch your dropshipping business, and on the platform, you’ll find products that you can start selling right away.
Find Products to Sell
Find millions of products and sort out winning products with SimplyTrends, you can download CSV file compatible with your store and sell them the same day. You can choose to sort products by order volume and customer reviews to help you gauge their popularity. Here are a few for you to check out:
How to Market Your Dropshipping Business
Here are the top three strategies for using dropshipping to make your first sale.
Work with Instagram influencers
If you’re in the bridal niche, for example, you can use hashtags like #engaged to find potential customers, and you can send them a DM asking them to check out your store to help them prepare for their big day.
Promote Products via Facebook
A simple trick to get around this is to write a blog post on your topic.
When I was in the yoga niche, I made separate blog posts for yoga quotes from various niche influencers, posted them on Twitter (free traffic), tagged the influencer, and some of them retweeted it or shared it on other social media.
Facebook now had information from those initial sales, and it knew who my ideal client was as a result. I was able to retarget the free traffic I received from influencers because I had installed a Facebook Pixel on my store and made a retargeting ad just before posting on Twitter.
Leverage Google to Drive Traffic to Your Store
If you’re trying to get free SEO traffic to your store, your best bet is to build out your blog and concentrate on creating relevant, niche-focused content on your blog to help you bring the right type of traffic to your website.
When using Google Ads, be sure to adhere to the industry-recognized best practices, such as creating captivating headlines, matching the copy in the ad to the copy on your product page, and using sitelink extensions to direct users to pertinent pages on your website.
