Dropshipping is a grand business model. It’s low risk, low cost, easy to start, and highly automated. However, if you’re brand new to entrepreneurship, there’s still quite a bit of a learning curve.

Today, I will give you different dropshipping tips for beginners.

All right, let’s jump right in.

Marketing

You need to focus on mastering marketing. With several aspects of dropshipping already automated, you’ll have plenty of time to concentrate on marketing. Indeed, tweaking your website, designing logos, and creating graphics will bring you joy.

However, if you’re not actively working on getting the right products in front of the target audience at the right time, all that time spent making the “perfect” website will go to waste.

A beautiful website with zero visitors compares to the “A tree falls in the woods” scenario where if no one sees it, does it even exist?

Don’t get it twisted; the design is imperative, but if you’re also not focused on getting your stunning website in front of the right people. You’ll never make any sales.

That’s why there’s a need to invest in driving traffic, and you can do that through paid ads in the shape of

Video Marketing
Social media
SEO
Influencers.

Honestly, there is a plethora of different marketing strategies and tactics you can employ.

Still, I often urge new marketers to focus on a few techniques that come most naturally to them. Luckily, we’ve got many resources to help them get on the right path.

Let us check the following tips for beginners that can help you launch a successful dropshipping business.

Compelling offers

It would be best if you created compelling offers. You know what’s fascinating about online shopping: sales.

Do you know what cuts even better?

The bundle deals with complementary products.

Because dropshipping can become highly competitive, consider how to make buying from you and building a relationship with you even more enticing.

It could mean anything from selectively offering, let’s say:

Buy one get one deals Bundles: Bundling multiple complementary items at a discounted rate
Discounts on registration: Offer significant rebates to your visitor’s first purchase if they register for an account

Look at your offer from your visitors’ point of view and ask, “What’s in it for me?”

If the offer isn’t objectively excellent or mesmerizing, you should rethink it.

By making offers that prove difficult to ignore, you stand a much better chance of converting more of the traffic you’re driving.

Consider having products in bundles as one of the best dropshipping tips for beginners that anyone can leverage.

Monitor your competition

Monitor your competition. Here’s a suggestion: Start a spreadsheet and enter links to your leading competition websites, social media accounts, and wherever else they sell online.

Sign up for their email list.
Buy their products

Once a week, check in on how they’re positioning their products, what they say in their emails, what kinds of sales rivals run, and how they retarget their ads.

Low-level competition monitoring will provide insight into how your competitors run their business.

The insight can help expose the loopholes in your competitors’ strategies. It may also feature some precious lessons along the way.

Presentable Website

Make sure your website is presentable. You’d be stunned by the shocking number of entrepreneurs who launch their dropshipping websites with missing images, placeholder text, and no discernible categorization of their products.

Sadly, an entrepreneur would send traffic to a website that’s unnavigable or looks terrible.

That reeks of unprofessionalism, and your brand soon sheds any trust and credibility your brand may have had.

Before you launch your store, look at other websites in your niche. Ask questions around:

Home page– what does their home page look like?
Images with logos-do their photos include logos on them?
Types of pages– What types of pages does their website have?
Features– Which features or apps does the store include on its website?

Once you’ve noted the look and layout of different stores in your niche, head over to the Shopify app store and browse to find the apps that will mimic the most common functionalities you found in your research.

Email capture, product reviews, and rating count are among the most common features of any eCommerce store. You can also add pages to feature shipping info, refund policies, FAQs, etc.

This dropshipping tip for beginners’ compilation isn’t over yet. Let’s explore it further.

Automate your Business

Automate your business as much as you possibly can. With dropshipping tools like Dsers, several aspects of your dropshipping business will already be automated; however, there is always room to take more off your plate.

Tools like Buffer can help you automate tasks like scheduling social media postings. Tools like Kit can help with advertising, emails, retargeting, and more.

In contrast, tools like Zapier can help link your Shopify store to other tools, such as HubSpot for customer relationship management, Google Sheets for order backups, and QuickBooks for bookkeeping.

For in-depth info on e-commerce automation, check out our other resource.

Be Hands-on

You must be active daily. This business model isn’t automated, and there is no overnight success. Possibly, you won’t need to put in eight hours a day.

It would help to spend at least an hour growing your online business daily.

You’ll need to process orders daily, respond to customer inquiries, ramp up traffic, and ensure that everything runs without a hiccup.

Dropshipping requires work each & every single day to ensure that the business runs well.

As part of these 16 dropshipping tips for beginners, telling your supplier the nature of your business is vital. The next step addresses it perfectly.

Dsers Custom Note

Change the Dsers custom note. As a dropshipper, you must change your custom note to your suppliers. Under Settings, hit Suppliers, and you’ll find Custom Note at the bottom of the page.

You can craft a message for all of your suppliers, and you’ll want to say something that speaks to all of them. The note can read something like “Ship with ePacket only! We drop ship, but there are no promotions or invoices.”

Because you’re only importing ePacket products, you must remind suppliers to use ePacket shipping this way and ensure customers receive their orders as soon as possible.

It’s also vital that you indicate that we’re dropshipping. As such, they don’t add invoices or marketing materials to your Packages.

Ideally, if you do this, issues of suppliers adding their invoices or promotions to your packages shouldn’t arise.

Underpricing your products

You should avoid underpricing your products. Now, I appreciate that this might sound counter to the tip on creating compelling offers, but avoid racing to the bottom on price to remain competitive.

Offering a lower overall cost on bundled products or through “Buy one get one half off” sales is not the same as selling your entire inventory at just above cost. It is a huge mistake. I see new eCommerce entrants all the time.

They are not making any sales, and then precipitously, everything in their store is on sale, severely discounted.

Offering everything at rock-bottom prices can severely harm your store, and your brand risks looking cheap.

If you’re not making sales, please don’t assume that your prices are holding you back. Instead, reevaluate how you’re driving traffic and the offers you’re making.

It’s better to find new ways to drive traffic than to slash prices because it’s hard to raise them again, and you still have to pay the bills.

Remove Bad Suppliers

Remove the bad suppliers as soon as possible. Although most AliExpress suppliers are reliable, easy to work with, and offer quality products, sometimes a bad apple or two slip through.

Since there are thousands of AliExpress suppliers, you can easily replace an awful supplier.

Many suppliers carry similar products, sometimes allowing them to sell identical products from another manufacturer.

If you notice suppliers, don’t use your shipping delivery method of choice, or consistently ship faulty products, you can easily remove their products from your store.

Again, this rarely happens. Suppliers know you’ll continue bringing them more business by offering outstanding service.

To minimize your chances of partnering with the wrong supplier, check out Dsers Supply, a network of pre-screened suppliers with proven consistency in their quality support and service.

Dsers Supply

Use Dsers Supply. When launching your first dropshipping store, consider using Dsers Supply.

Dsers Supply helps you dropship quality products from trusted suppliers, including various products from popular and hidden niches.

The best part about Dsers Supply is that incoming orders are quickly sent to your supplier, which is excellent if you work around a busy schedule.

You’ll have much time to focus on marketing to increase revenue. If you’d like to learn more about DsersSupply, check out our resource on the subject.

General Store vs. Niche Store

Many advice, including ours, will tell you to start with a niche store. The fact is, sometimes you don’t want to sell just one type of thing.

Generally, general stores are superb starter stores as they force you to think more broadly. However, they can also do a lot more work in marketing to different demographics and keeping products organized and categorized.

Conversely, if you want to put more work into researching and validating a niche, a niche lets you narrow in on finding and marketing to the target audience.

The “Running” niche would be a fitting example of a niche within the fitness vertical.

Whereas there’s still intensified competition for running gear and accessories, it’s not nearly as broad as if you were to sell a wide variety of Fitness Gear.

It all boils down to one question: “What do you have the tolerance for?” You should be good if you can give an upfront answer and feel confident enough to drive traffic.

Dynamics

It would help if you were prepared to adjust and pivot fast. You will encounter all sorts of unanticipated dynamics and adversity because, at the end of it all, you’re running a business.

Suppliers may stop carrying a product, a new trend may emerge precipitously, your customers may hate an item you’ve added to your store, or perhaps one of your ads scales well.

You’ll need a loan facility to continue financing that growth.

Pivots are mostly neither good nor bad. But they do require an element of flexibility and decisiveness on your part when a moment calls for it.

Leverage Data

Use data to inform your inventory. It would be best to be selective about the products you add to your store.

Please don’t add products simply because they look beautiful or because you’d like them for yourself. Instead, look at the data.

Are the products getting sales and positive feedback?

When evaluating products from your supplier, you must check the order volume, reviews, customer photos, and seller ratings to ensure you are partnering with authentic suppliers.

Import Limited Items

It would be best if you worked to start importing a limited number of items, say 10 to 25 items. Here’s a problem for you.

You’ve started a dropshipping business to your delight and imported 500 items to your store.

That’s a fantastic selection you have now, right? But then, once you look at your store, it hits you that you have 500 product descriptions to write, 500 titles to rewrite, infinite tags to add, and thousands of photos to comb through to see which ones you’ll have to crop supplier logos out of.

What do you do? Most folks, myself included, will give up. Never mind the “This wasn’t for me, this is too much work.” cliche, I quit!

It’s much easier to start with a small collection of 10-25 products; this way, you efficiently manage the workload, especially if you do this after your 9-5 day job.

Choose ePacket Delivery

Always choose ePacket. As a dropshipper, you get to sort products based on ePacket shipping.

Because ePacket shipping is the fastest, most affordable method, you can ensure quick delivery to your customers without spending a lot.

ePacket shipping costs under $5 for most products, and it ensures your customers get the merchandise within 7-20 business days and often much faster.

To learn more about ePacket, check out our other resource.

I hope you are learning from the 15 dropshipping tips for beginners I have already shared with you.

Customer service

You must offer exceptional customer service. There are myriad ways to stand out when selling similar products to other companies.

At the same time, it’s common to think that providing refunds and responding to inquiries is the role of customer service.

But if you look it, that’s where the real job begins. I mean, tell jokes, write thank you cards, send surprises, and go the extra mile to make clients feel special.

Dropshipping tips for beginners Conclusion

Take a cue from the poetic adage: “People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did, but never forget how you made them feel.” Maya Angelou.

All right, that’s all we’ve got for now. If you have any questions about dropshipping tips for beginners or want to share your experiences with them, drop them in the comments below, and I’ll be sure to get back to you.

If you like this post, consider hitting the share button. Thanks so much for reading and your support. Until next time, learn often, market better, and sell more. Adios.

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