There are different ways and platforms to earn money online, one of them that has gained popularity recently is direct shipping through Amazon. Many people are earning thousands of dollars doing this business.
Drop shipping has its advantages over the conventional online store where you have to store products in your store and ship them when you receive an order.
Here are 5 easy steps to get started if you’ve considered venturing into a drop shipping business.
1. Open an Amazon account as a seller.
The most important action to take when starting a dropshipping business is to open an Amazon account as a seller. There are two types of accounts you can open: professional and individual account. If you are just starting out and you are not sure about selling more than 40 products in a month, it is recommended that you go for the Individual account. However, it is important that you know the benefits and drawbacks of any account you choose.
Here are the pros and cons to guide you in making decisions on which account to sign up for:
For Individual Account:
You are not allowed to use third party services such as Repricers and Inventory Lab. You are not qualified to include your product in the Buy Box. You cannot request inclusion of your product in restricted categories of Amazon stores. There is a fee of $0.99 per item sold.
For Professional Account:
You can use a spreadsheet to upload multiple items at once using Seller Central. You will have access to more reports in the seller dashboard. You are qualified to include your product in the Buy Box. You can request inclusion of your products in restricted categories. You will pay a monthly fee of $40 plus the fee of $0.99 per item sold. You can create new product pages for your products.
It is important to note that you can choose to upgrade your account at any time.
2. Find the best low cost dropshipping suppliers.
Most of the dropshippers make good profits by using the best platform, Salehoo, to find perfect dropshippers for the products they intend to sell.
To get started, sign up for a Salehoo paid account to use its best tools and features. Find drop shippers near you that can ship faster with lower shipping costs.
The reason why it is advisable to use this platform is because most providers do not have a budget for social media marketing, but instead shift marketing expenses to reducing product costs. Therefore, they would rather subscribe to Salehoo than do Google marketing.
Also, it will require more effort from vendors to achieve success with PPC marketing, so they prefer a dedicated platform for it.
3. Look for low-cost but high-selling products.
When you find a supplier that meets your specifications, search their catalog for items that are not expensive but also sell well. Make sure the price difference between what is being offered for that item on Amazon and what the vendor is selling is significant enough to make a profit.
Even if you decide to search for sellers outside of the Salehoo platform, the most important thing is that there is enough profit to cover the cost in time and money.
4. Write well-detailed, search engine-optimized titles and descriptions on Amazon.
Now that you are ready with your products, proceed to list them on your Amazon store. Be sure to write SEO product descriptions to allow your products to rank high in Amazon search results.
5. Go ahead and start marketing your products using different digital marketing systems.
You can outsource marketing to freelancers on a platform like Fiverr.
Trust me, drop shipping is not as difficult as it seems. You just have to take one step!