How to start drop­ship­ping – guide for beginners

The world of online marketing is known to be in constant flux. Countless people are on the lookout daily for products and/or ways to sell them online. One such way is called drop­ship­ping. In short, this eCommerce model is an online business whereby goods for sale are not stocked by the actual seller. Instead, the seller is merely a link between the customer and the supplier, the product man­u­fac­turer, or a whole­saler. The following explains how to become a drop­ship­per and what you need to bear in mind.

If you’re toying with the idea of starting your own drop­ship­ping business, it’s worth con­sid­er­ing the ad­vant­ages and dis­ad­vant­ages. One of the biggest ad­vant­ages of the business model is that as a drop­ship­per, you don’t have to worry about pur­chas­ing your goods or storing them. Moreover, you are not tied to a single place – the Internet opens up the entire world as your business location (so long as you have a working Wi-Fi con­nec­tion).

Aside from the countless positive aspects, take note of the risks of drop­ship­ping. As a drop­ship­per you are reliant on a supplier and take re­spons­ib­il­ity if product-related errors occur.

In the following, we compiled an overview of the main ad­vant­ages and dis­ad­vant­ages of drop­ship­ping. More details are also available in our article ‘What is drop­ship­ping?’:

If after weighing the pros and cons, you've decided to start a drop­ship­ping business there are important questions that need answering right from the get-go: What products will you offer and which are best suited to being sold through your webshop?

Choosing a prof­it­able business idea is not always easy, because many offers tend to be available across numerous other shops and demand is in­flu­enced by many factors. Trends vary, prices fluctuate, seasons come and go. For this reason, before starting a drop­ship­ping business, it’s best to thor­oughly research the right mer­chand­ise. Social networks like Pinterest, eCommerce sites and Amazon's best­seller lists, and online services like Google Trends will show you which products sell like hot cakes. From home fur­nish­ings to technical ac­cessor­ies to fashion and ac­cessor­ies – the selection of sale cat­egor­ies is huge.

The best drop­ship­ping products tend to be useful, rare, or cheap ones. Ideally, you can sell niche items (legally compliant ones) that are popular, but aren’t in heavy com­pet­i­tion with other online shops. Product groups that achieve the highest sales figures in the drop­ship­ping business include interior design items, health and beauty products, and jewellery.

In contrast, there are plenty of products that are not suited for drop­ship­ping. These include, for example, items that are large or bulky and/or fragile, items that are not allowed to be ad­vert­ised or sold and products that appeal to mass tastes and are therefore available every­where.

Once you’ve dis­covered your perfect product niche, you’ll want to find the right partner for your online business who will be re­spons­ible for the storage and delivery of your products. As already mentioned, choosing your supplier is one of the most important decisions you will make because the products ordered through your newly launched online shop will be delivered by them. A reliable and well-known supplier ensures that customers are satisfied and respond pos­it­ively to your business.

Other aspects to recognise a good provider by are a wide range of goods, high-quality products, and short shipping times. Ali­Ex­press and DHgate are among the best drop­ship­ping providers worldwide.

Launching a drop­ship­ping business requires in­vest­ment of time and money. A budding drop­ship­per should budget for the re­gis­tra­tion of a domain, a sub­scrip­tion to an eCommerce software and possibly payments for staff or ad­vert­ising measures. The latter tend to be the most expensive.

Once you’ve planned your budget, you can select from several options to start your online shop and drop­ship­ping business. If you don't want to buy an existing webshop, you can start your business from scratch. This will require con­fig­ur­a­tion of an eCommerce platform which is easy enough using one of the best Woo­Com­merce drop­ship­ping plugins, for example.

There is a reason why drop­ship­pers put most of their funds into promotion. When selling products online it is crucial that you build and con­tinu­ously promote your shop's (web) presence.

In the past, sta­tion­ary stores relied on flyers, TV adverts, and time-honoured word-of-mouth ad­vert­ising. Today, the Internet provides business owners with a wide range of options for getting their website out there. One of them is social media marketing. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. can be useful to promote your drop­ship­ping business. Apps like Instagram are par­tic­u­larly suitable for product pho­to­graphy to picture your products in the perfect light.

Another strategy to increase the exposure of your online shop involves linking it to a larger eCommerce platform. There are several good reasons why you may want to do so. First of all, it increases your chances of sales, because the majority of Internet users are drawn to mar­ket­places by popular online retailers such as Amazon and eBay when searching for a product. Fur­ther­more, Amazon provides an ad­vert­ising platform that you can use to promote items in search results. Not to mention that reviews are valuable to fine-tune the de­vel­op­ment and im­prove­ment of your shop.

The bottom line is that the (digital) exchange of in­form­a­tion with customers has always been a vital element of con­duct­ing business. The Internet enables global com­mu­nic­a­tion at a much larger and time-in­de­pend­ent scale. In addition to exchanges via social media, customer service, messenger services and chatbots, for example, offer the op­por­tun­ity for direct dialogue with customers. And those who prefer indirect contact can make use of news­let­ters, podcasts, and blogs.