Dropshipping can be a great way to start an online business with little upfront investment. It is a business model that allows you to sell products without having to carry any inventory. However, there are a number of traps that beginners often fall into. In this article, we will discuss five of the most common traps that dropshipping beginners must avoid in order to be successful.
The 5 Traps Every Beginner Must Avoid.
Insufficient Planning and Financial Management:
Supplier Reliability:
Poor Product Selection:
Inadequate Marketing:
Lack of Customer Service:
As a beginner dropshipper, it’s essential you survey the business landscape wisely and avoid the pitfalls that will crash your plans.
Dropshipping is not a get-rich-quick scheme.
If you can avoid the five traps above, you will be well on your way to mastering the dropshipping game.
1. Insufficient Planning and Financial Management.
Everyone dreams of having a passive income, listening to waves crashing on the beach..🌊 while having a cold beer.🍺
But, unfortunately there is work involved before that can become a reality.
So, it is important to have all your ducks lined up before signing up to anything.
Through research is sometimes said to overcomplicate things, and while coming up with a great product isn’t that difficult you need to do it right.
If you have an idea… then take it for a spin through the 4Ws. The Who, the What, the Where and the Why.
Those 4 steps will help you get started. Then if it looks good…
Create a comprehensive business plan. The demographic, their age, where are they, how much do they earn.
Set realistic goals.
Manage your finances wisely, including accounting for expenses, profit margins, and potential seasonal fluctuations in demand.
Develop a clear brand identity, including a unique name, logo, and website design.
It may sound like a lot of work, but you are way better off starting with a plan than not having one at all.
2. Supplier Reliability:
After 20 odd years of e-commerce, believe it or not this is still a problem.
If you are intending to do physical products, then you need to up to speed as to what goes on behind the scenes.
It’s crucial to thoroughly research and vet dropship suppliers to ensure they are trustworthy, provide quality products, and have a track record of fulfilling orders promptly.
There are numerous resources on this site that can help with sourcing reliable suppliers. One here. More here.
Of course not every drop shipped product is a physical one.
Digital products, Print on demand are all popular.
If you are intending to be a supplier of digital products, don’t be an unreliable supplier.
You will not be impressed if you see a review with a one star rating beside your name.
3. Poor Product Selection:
There is so much happening online these days it is easy to carried away with all the hype.
With so much content out there, what you thought was a good idea yesterday, is today in your mental dustbin.
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These eleven popular niches whether they be on Pinterest, Instagram, or any other social media are still the top 11 niches online and will be probably forever.
They are in no particular order.
Travel
Health and Fitness
Beauty
Fashion.
Animals (pets).
Music
Photography
Parenting
Food
Business
Lifestyle.
Each of those in the list are broad terms, and each has dozens of parts that make up a whole.
Say, for instance travel, there are hundreds of things you could dropship, from sunglasses to backpacks to hiking boots.
The options are nearly infinite.
Google trends is a good source of information for finding products that have a stable demand.
You could set up a full on travel store and list hundreds of items ( the scatter gun approach), or, a better option would be to narrow the travel niche down to maybe 3 or 4 specific things and concentrate your efforts on those.
Travel also has great digital and social media potential as well.
E-books for instance; “Top 10 places to visit in Vietnam,”“50 travel budget hacks. would offer money making potential.
Each of those eleven in the list above can be broken down further to a specific part of the broader niche.
4. Inadequate Marketing:
Let’s stick with Travel.
If you drilled down a little to say 3 or 4 specific products, then combining those with e-books, and perhaps photography and promoted them on social media, including U-tube, you are consolidating your efforts into one small part of a very large niche.
You will be keeping your marketing overheads low and, you are potentially reaching a bigger audience than if you were paying for PPC ads on Google or Facebook ads.
Your marketing all comes back to planning and financial management.
The who, what and why.
What are you selling, who will buy it, and why.
The most important part of your marketing is getting peoples attention and holding it.
The average visitor arrives on your page with a dozen other tabs open, their phone buzzing, and maybe even Netflix or a podcast playing in the background.
Attention spans are at an all-time low.
People are constantly bombarded with information, messages, alerts, and notifications – all vying for their limited attention.
Your web page or ad has to grab your visitor’s attention instantly.
If it doesn’t quickly demonstrate its value, they’re gone.
They’re back to Google, back to social media, onto the next thing.
Targeting only a specific part of a niche will make your marketing efforts easier.
5. Lack of Customer Service:
If you have done everything right don’t fall over at this hurdle.
If you have done the hard yards building trust and credibility, this is the place where it can all go down the toilet.
If people have questions give them straight answers.
If they get even a whiff of BS, or anything that makes them uncomfortable, they’re out.
Not only will your potential customers be out, they will head over to Trust Pilot, or Redditt, and they will not be saying anything complimentary about you.
If they have ordered something send it to them. Promptly.
Which are the Best Dropship Platforms.
Without going too deeply into this…The better known ones like Shopify, Big Commerce, Magento etc, generally have good reputations.
They are big, sometimes predatory, have lots of apps you can use, and all offer good start up deals for new entrants to drop shipping.
I have used Shopify, but these days I will look at the less well known, innovate platforms without the clutter and information overload, and a couple of basic tools such as the ability to send out emails.
I am not saying Shopify etel; are not innovative but, they can be almost bureaucratically slow to implement new ideas, and can be a little restrictive when it comes to digital products, such as PDFs, music, short films etc.
If you go with one of the big platforms you can become tied down fiddling with the design of your website, instead of concentrating on selling stuff.
Platforms such as Sellfy which are not used to create a full on drop shipping store in the style of Shopify, Big Commerce or even Wix, are a lot easier to have up and running quickly.
You can build a store on Sellfy and start selling instantly on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or any other social network.
You will still need a domain name though, and Sellfy, like the other platforms has help sheets to guide you through the process.
Go Daddy is probably the biggest seller of domain names.
If you already have a website, you can embed the “buy now” buttons, product widgets or the full Sellfy store anywhere on your website.
A little Background on Sellfy.
Without doing a full on review on Sellfy here, I have included some basic facts below.
Established in 2011, Sellfy has successfully grown from being an innovative platform for selling digital items to an all-in-one eCommerce solution for every creator.
It is now one of the leading online platforms for selling every product imaginable: eBooks, music, videos, courses, merch, home decor, graphics, and much more.
In other words, Sellfy works for any type of business.
Sell digital products, subscriptions and merch
Unlimited hosting, products and bandwidth
Excellent 24/7 customer support
Possibility to connect your domain or embed your store anywhere
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