Smart people learn from other’s mistakes. If you are to start your own dropshipping business, here are the 10 mistakes of dropshippings sellers make.
1. Not starting at all because of fears.
Dropshipping is one of the most risk-free and promising business models in 2021 because of the low startup cost. Unlike other bricks and mortars business, dropshipping business does not require you to spend hundred of thousands into inventory. All you need to do is to have a website properly set up and do some research to get good suppliers.
However, fear always kill the future. Someone else’s negative experience is the result of someone else’s mistakes. Take them into account and do it properly.
2. It doesn’t matter where to start and will figure it out later.
A lot from new dropshiping sellers think that dropshipping is easy and do not think much about how to get it start in a proper way. Therefore, they ended up stuck in the middle of the process or screw up the starting process.
Dropshipping has a correct, proven and working sequencce of steps to get started. On this article, we will talk about using Aliexpress as the dropshipping supplier. We will use below sequence:
- A niche – This is the most important part for any business. You will need to find a niche that many people are looking for. For example, in the year 2020/2021, the whole world is in pandemic and many people are looking for things like good facial mask, health products or sanitizing products.
- Products – Once you know the niche, now you will need to decide what are the products that you want to sell on your dropshipping online store. Let’s use facial mask as an example, there are so many facial masks (surgical mask, N95 mask, KN95 mask, KF95 mask, Ionizer mask…) available on the market. Pick what mask you want to sell on your store.
- Suppliers – After knowing the products you want to sell, now you need to search for a good supplier. If you’re using Aliexpress dropshipping, you can just simply search for the products on aliexpress and sort the listed products to be showing Top Rated Seller on the top. With this, you will know which sellers are providing good service and quality products from the reviews.
- Hosting and eCommerce Website – Here come the most technical part that many people do not know. Some beginner dropshipping business owners spent alot of money getting website developer to build their eCommerce website or some call it online store so that they have a website to showcase their dropshipping products.
Some people nowadays even try to setup their own server and build their own ecommerce website from scratch using WordPress and Woocommerce. There are tons of tutorial on the internet teaching you how to do that. But keep in mind that maintaining a normal website and an eCommerce website is a totally different game. Maintaining an eCommerce website is more challenging than a normal static website.
There are some ecommerce platforms like Shopify or SmartSeller that allows you to quickly start your ecommerce website without any programming skills. - Domain and Branding – After you figure out what platform you want to use for hosting your online store, now its crucial to think of your domain name and branding that represent your dropshipping business.
For domain, you can easily purchase from some of the reputatble GoDaddy or NameCheap. - Launching and Promotion – This is a very important part for all successful dropshipping businesses. Think of a way to let many people know of your brand before and after the launching of your business. Do some promotion during festival seasons.
3. Wrong niche or suppliers of dropshipping business.
- Wrong Niche – Money is between what you like and what millions of people want to buy. Why are you creating your store? Is it for fun or for profit? Sell things that people are looking for tend to buy it. Do not think that people will definately buy what you think is good.
- Wrong Suppliers – Noobies may choose a product with an unrealistically low price and a supplier with a low rating and no reviews. Choose a supplier that have at least 90% of positive reviews; answer to customers’promptly; have a warehouse.
4. Denoting little time to the dropshipping business.
Many people start their dropshipping business as a part-time job with a mindset thinking that dropshipping business does not require a lot of time to spend on it because the fulfillment is done by the supplier.
There is no business succeed without putting effort on it.
5. Technical issue or pricy monthly commitment.
If you do not have any technical knowledge and building your own eCommerce website with some of the online tutorial, you will most likely ended up into technical issue with your website or server or even website being hacked. Like what being said ealier, maintaining an eCommerce website is challenging.
Nowadays, many people will go for some of the reputable eCommerce platform like Shopify and subcribe or buy dropshipping addon to do dropshipping business. Shopify is reputable but some may find that it is pricey. Aside from the monthly Shopify subscription, there are many hidden fee and subscription things like premium eCommerce template or eCommerce features.
All those are excessive monthly spending, while the business is not even generating any income yet. To tackle this issue, SmartSeller come out with a solution that include all the premium eCommerce templates and eCommerce features including dropshipping features in a single subcriptionn without any hidden fee at an affordable price. Try it yourself and you will be amazed by what is being provided.