Preface “There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.”
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Preface “There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” Colin Powell The Internet is developing at a high pace. As of 2011, there were 2.26 Billion active Internet users worldwide, or 32.7% of the total world population. Apart from communication, socializing, networking, education etc., Many of these users have at least once or regularly use the Internet for Shopping or buying things online. Many and more Internet users prefer nowadays to buy from online stores rather than the retail ones. In 2011 alone the global ecommerce market was expected to be worth $680 Billion, increasing manifold with each passing year. And looking at the future predictions, these numbers are to only go up and up touching the sky every year on year. ECommerce as an opportunity is not to be overlooked and you can benefit from it even if you have Little to Zero experience in it. Being able to live the life you’ve always dreamed of is no out of reach. You see most people struggle month to month, living paycheck to paycheck. Struggling to pay their rent or mortgage. Wishing they can put their kids in the school of their dreams. Taking out loans just to afford some necessities. Let's face reality shall we… Most people Struggle on a day to day basis. We won’t sugar coat it. We have been through a lot of struggle as well. Until we realized that there is a massive opportunity for anyone right now. Think of it as the current gold rush and guess what… Millions of people are making Millions of dollars in this modern day gold rush. The best part is most people start off with Zero skills, this opportunity isn’t dependent on age. It doesn’t matter what happened in your past. The land of opportunity is… well… a virtual land. The land of opportunity is the INTERNET… And the gold rush is people who are Selling items they don’t even own using the power of the internet. 1
Creating websites in under 30 minutes that literally sell products they don’t ever have to touch. Average 95 corporate slaves are leaving their cubicles and being turned into millionaires in under a years time. Now, it's your turn. It's your turn to start living your dreams. You’ve waited long enough. You’ve worked hard enough. You can’t afford to miss this Virtual Gold Rush and We are here to take you from literally nothing to the person who you always dreamed to be and saw yourself as… We present the New beginning to your Old life. Welcome to the ‘other side’ where money is practically printed. Where businesses thrive. Where you can go and purchase your dream car, go on that vacation you’ve always dreamed of without asking your boss for vacation days. Get started and don’t ever let yourself stop.
Let’s Get Started! 2
Introduction What is Drop Shipping?
Drop shipping is a production network administration strategy in which the retailer does not keep merchandise in stock but rather exchanges the client requests and shipment points of interest to either the maker, another retailer, or a distributor, who at that point sends the products specifically to the client. As in retail organizations, the dominant part of retailers have their benefit on the effect between the discount and retail cost, however a few retailers win a concurred level of the deals in commission, paid by the distributor to the retailer. To empower clients to survey things like those they can buy, a drop shipping retailer may keep "show things" in plain view in a physical "block and cement" store, or give an item list as either printed copy or on the web, or even some blend of every one of these strategies ("blocks and snaps"). Retailers that drop send stock from wholesalers can take measures to conceal this reality or shield the discount source from winding up generally known. This can be accomplished by "daze shipping" (shipping stock without an arrival address), or "private name shipping" (having stock sent from the distributor with an arrival deliver redid to the retailer). The distributer may incorporate a modified pressing slip, including points of interest, for example, the retailer's organization name, logo, and contact data.
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Benefits LESS CAPITAL IS REQUIRED – Probably the biggest advantage to drop shipping is that it's possible to launch an ecommerce store without having to invest thousands of dollars in inventory up front. Traditionally, retailers have had to tie up huge amounts of capital purchasing inventory. With the drop shipping model, you don't have to purchase a product unless you already made the sale and have been paid by the customer. Without major upfront inventory investments, it's possible to start a successful drop shipping business with very little money. EASY TO GET STARTED – Running an ecommerce business is much easier when you don't have to deal with physical products. With drop shipping, you don't have to worry about: • Managing or paying for a warehouse • Packing and shipping your orders • Tracking inventory for accounting reasons • Handling returns and inbound shipments ● Continually ordering products and managing stock level LOW OVERHEAD – Because you don't have to deal with purchasing inventory or managing a warehouse, your overhead expenses are quite low. In fact, many successful drop shipping businesses are run from a home office with a laptop for less than $100 per month. As you grow, these expenses will likely increase but will still be low compared to those of traditional brickandmortar businesses. FLEXIBLE LOCATION – A drop shipping business can be run from just about anywhere with an internet connection. As long as you can communicate with suppliers and customers easily, you can run and manage your business. WIDE SELECTION OF PRODUCTS – Because you don't have to prepurchase the items you sell, you can offer an array of products to your potential customers. If suppliers stock an item, you can list if for sale on your website at no additional cost. 4
EASY TO SCALE – With a traditional business, if you receive three times as much business you'll usually need to do three times as much work. By leveraging dropshipping suppliers, most of the work to process additional orders will be borne by the suppliers, allowing you to expand with fewer growing pains and less incremental work. Sales growth will always bring additional work – especially related to customer service – but business that utilize dropshipping scale particularly well relative to traditional ecommerce Businesses. All these benefits make dropshipping a very attractive model to both beginning and established merchants. Unfortunately, dropshipping isn't all roses and rainbows. All this convenience and flexibility comes at a price.
Disadvantages LOW MARGINS – Low margins are the biggest disadvantage to operating in a highly competitive drop shipping niche. Because it's so easy to get started – and the overhead costs are so minimal – many merchants will set up shop and sell items at rockbottom prices in an attempt to grow revenue. They've invested so little in getting the business started so they can afford to operate on minuscule Margins. True, these merchants often have lowquality websites and poor (if any) customer service. But that won't stop customers from comparing their prices to yours. This increase in cutthroat competition will quickly destroy the profit margin in a niche. Fortunately, you can do a lot to mitigate this problem by selecting a niche that's well suited for drop shipping. INVENTORY ISSUES – If you stock all your own items, it's relatively simple to keep track of which items are in and out of stock. But when you're sourcing from multiple warehouses, which are also fulfilling orders for other merchants, inventory changes on a daily basis. While there are ways you can better sync your store's inventory with your suppliers', these solutions don't always work seamlessly, and suppliers don't always support the technology required. SHIPPING COMPLEXITIES – If you work with multiple suppliers – as most dropshippers do – the products on your website will be sourced through a number 5
of different drop shippers. This complicates your shipping costs. Let's say a customer places an order for three items, all of which are available only from separate suppliers. You'll incur three separate shipping charges for sending each item to the customer, but it's probably not wise to pass this charge along to the customer, as they'll think you're grossly overcharging for shipping! And even if you did want to pass these charges along, automating these calculations can be difficult. SUPPLIER ERRORS – Have you ever been blamed for something that wasn't your fault, but you had to accept responsibility for the mistake anyway? Even the best drop shipping suppliers make mistakes fulfilling orders – mistakes for which you have to take responsibility and apologize. And mediocre and low quality suppliers will cause endless frustration with missing items, botched shipments and lowquality packing, which can damage your business's Reputation. 6
What’s in This Guide? The phrase “drop shipping” evokes a wide array of responses. Some believe it’s a great way to get started with e commerce. Others immediately discount it, having heard about too many drop shipping related scams and promisethemoon information products. With so many rumors and so much misinformation floating around, it’s hard to know what to believe — which is why we wrote this guide. No scams— just the honest truth, written by folks who have used drop shipping to create large, successful e commerce businesses. We won’t be telling you what we think might work, we’ll tell you what we know will work based on realworld experience. This guide will teach you everything you need to know to get your own drop shipping business off the ground while avoiding the costly mistakes that can kill new drop shipping ventures. We’ll discuss everything from dropshipping basics to operating a drop shipping business and dealing with some of the problems that arise. We guarantee you that after reading this guide and thoroughly applying it StepByStep, You will be able to open a proper profitable drop shipping business in under a week or even less if you put in the hours!
All the best! 7
The Roadmap
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Drop Shipping In Action
Now that you understand the players involved, let's take a look at how a drop shipped order gets processed. To illustrate, we'll follow an order placed with an example store say ‘ABC’. ABC drop ships all of its products directly from a wholesaler say for eg. Wholesale Accessories ‘XYZ’. Here's a sample of how the entire ordering process might look: 10
Step 1 – Customer Places Order With ABC, Mr. M needs a collar for his adopted dog and places an order via ABC's online store. Once the order is approved, a few things happen: • ABC and Mr. M get an email confirmation (likely identical) of the new order that is automatically generated by the store software. • Mr. M's payment is captured during the checkout process and will be automatically deposited into ABC’s bank account.
Step 2 – ABC Store Places the Order With Its Wholesale Supplier ‘XYZ’ This step is usually as simple as ABC forwarding the email order confirmation to a sales representative at Wholesale Accessories XYZ. They have ABC's credit card on file and will bill it for the wholesale price of the goods, including any shipping or processing fees.
NOTE: Some sophisticated drop shippers will support automatic XML (a common format for inventory files) order uploading or the ability to place the order manually online, but email is the most common way to place orders with drop shipping suppliers because it's universal and easy to use.
Step 3 – XYZ Ships the Order Assuming the item is in stock and the wholesaler was able to successfully charge ABC's card, Wholesale Accessories XYZ will box up the order and ship it directly to the customer at their doorstep without you having to even look at the product. Though the shipment comes from Wholesale Accessories XYZ, ABC's name and address will appear on the return address label and its logo will appear on the invoice and packing slip. Once the shipment has been finalized, XYZ will email an invoice and a tracking number to ABC which they can accordingly forward to their customer so as to make them able to track their package. 11
NOTE: T he turnaround time on drop shipped orders is often faster than you'd think. Most quality suppliers will be able to get an order out the door in a few hours, allowing merchants to advertise sameday shipping even when they are using a drop shipping supplier. You just need to work hard and find the best suppliers.
Step 4 – ABC Alerts the Customer of Shipment Once the tracking number is received, Phone Outlet will send the tracking information to the customer, likely using an email interface that's built in to the online store interface. With the order shipped, the payment collected and the customer notified, the order and fulfillment process is complete. ABC's profit (or loss) is the difference between what it charged Mr. M and what it paid Wholesale Accessories XYZ.
Invisibility of the Dropshippers : Despite its critical role in the ordering and fulfillment process, the drop shipper is completely invisible to the end customer. When the package is received, only ABC's return address and logo will be on the shipment. If Mr. M receives the wrong case, he would then contact ABC, which would then coordinate behind the scenes with Wholesale Accessories XYZ to get the right item sent out. The drop shipping wholesaler doesn't exist to the end customer. Its sole responsibility is to stock and ship products. Everything else – marketing, website development, customer service, etc. – is the responsibility of the merchant i.e. YOU! 12
6 Ultimate Key Steps
Basic Steps to get your business up and running and this is what is being done the most these days!
1. Selecting A Specialty The specialty you select should be lasercentered and something you are really keen on. An item go that isn't engaged will be hard to showcase. On the off chance that you aren't energetic about the specialty you select, you will be more adept to getting to be demoralized, in light of the fact that it takes a considerable measure of work to effectively scale a drop shipping business. Here are a few focuses to consider while choosing your specialty: Look for appealing benefits. When you are maintaining a drop shipping plan of action, your attention is on showcasing and client procurement, so the measure of work required to offer a $20 thing is basically the same as it is offer a $1,500 thing. Select a specialty with higherevaluated items. 13
Low delivering costs are essential. Despite the fact that your provider or producer will deal with the delivery, if the cost is too high, it will go about as client repellant. Discover something that is cheap to dispatch, as this additionally gives you the choice of offering free sending to your clients and retaining that cost as an operational expense keeping in mind the end goal to pull in more deals. Ensure your item bids to drive purchasers with extra cash. When you are centered around directing people to your site, you need to encounter the most noteworthy transformation rate conceivable on the grounds that most guests will stay away forever. The items you are offering should trigger hasty purchases and bid to those with the budgetary capacity to make a buy on the spot. Ensure individuals are currently hunting down your item. Utilize Google's Keyword Planner and Trends to check some regular hunt terms identified with your potential specialty. On the off chance that no one is scanning for what you are anticipating offering, you are dead in the water before you even start. Make your own particular image. Your drop shipping business will have more esteem on the off chance that you can rebrand whatever it is you are auctioning and pass it off as your own. Search for an item or line you can white name and offer as your own particular image with custom bundling and marking. Offer something that isn't promptly accessible locally. Pick something your client can't discover down the road. That way, you turn out to be more alluring to a potential client.
2. Do A Complete Research Keep in mind, you will you contend with other drop shipping tasks and in addition retail mammoths like Walmart and Amazon. This is the place a ton of potential drop shippers turn out badly, in light of the fact that they search for an item that has next to zero rivalry. That is a sign there isn't interest for that specific item. There are numerous reasons why an item won't not have a ton of rivalry, similar to high delivering costs, provider and assembling issues or poor overall revenues. Search for items that have rivalry, as it's an indication that there is an appeal and the plan of action is practical. 14
3. Secure A Provider Banding together with the wrong provider can destroy your business, so it's essential that you don't surge this progression. Lead legitimate due ingenuity. Most drop shipping providers are found abroad, making correspondence critical, both as far as reaction speed and the capacity to see each other. On the off chance that you are not 100 percent positive about the correspondence capacities of a potential provider, proceed onward and proceed with your pursuit. Alibaba has turned out to be one of the biggest online assets to recognize and speak with potential producers and providers. Make a point to solicit a considerable measure from questions and realize what their generation abilities are if your business develops exponentially. You need to be sure they can scale with you. Attempt to gain from different business visionaries who have strolled this way before. There are a lot of data sources accessible, from business and tech online journals to this subreddit about drop shipping. It's a prominent point that can enable you to evade exorbitant provider botches.
4. Construct Your ECommerce Website The speediest method to dispatch a site that backings a drop shipping plan of action is to utilize a basic online business stage like Shopify. You needn't bother with a tech foundation to get up and running, and it has a lot of applications to help expand deals. Regardless of whether you have a sizeable spending that would enable you to procure a website architecture and improvement organization to make a custom arrangement, it's a significantly more astute move to utilize one of the fitting andplay choices, particularly at the outset. When you are set up and the income is coming in, at that point you can investigate extra site customization.
5. Make A Client Acquisition Plan Having an incredible item and a site is awesome, however without clients hoping to get, you don't have a business. There are a few approaches to draw in potential clients, however, the best choice is to begin a Facebook advertisement battle. 15
This enables you to create deals and income appropriate from the begin, which can add to snappy scaling. Facebook enables you to put your offer straightforwardly before a very focused on the gathering of people. This enables you to contend with the biggest brands and retailers instantly. You likewise need to think long haul, so website streamlining and email promoting ought to likewise be a core interest. Gather messages from the begin and set up mechanized email groupings that offer rebates and extraordinary offers. It's a simple method to use your current client base and create income without extra publicizing and showcasing spend.
6. Optimize And Analyze You have to track the greater part of the information and measurements accessible to develop your business. This incorporates Google Analytics activity and Facebook change pixel information, if that is your primary client procurement channel. When you can track each and every change to know where the client started from and what way they went up against your site that in the long run prompted a deal it empowers you to scale what works and dispense with what doesn't. You will never have a setandoverlook publicizing or promoting arrangement. You have to continually test new openings and tweak current crusades, which enables you to know when to enhance or move battle spend. 16
Starting Your Business
STEP 1: Choose Your Niche and Decide What Products to Sell Drop shippers aren’t only competing with other drop shippers. They’re also competing with large, well established, retailers like Walmart, Best Buy, and Office Depot. While those huge retailers have many advantages over dropshippers, they also have a significant weakness. Because they sell just about every type of product under the sun, they can’t be experts in all the products they sell. That’s the drop shipper’s advantage! You’re going to focus on a very specific set of products and become an expert.
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What is a Niche? In drop shopping, a niche refers to a very focused group of products. Think of it this way: Walmart sells, well, just about everything. They don’t have a niche. Office Depot is more focused, right? They only sell stuff for the office. That’s more focused than Walmart, but still very, very broad. For a drop shipper to be successful, their niche has to be way more focussed. In this example, a Drop Shipper wouldn’t want to just narrow down to “office furniture” or even “desks.” A good niche would focus all the way in on “standing desks.”
TIP: A Niche in Time Saves Nine – Focusing on a niche will make everything easier: from finding suppliers to building your store to generating traffic.
6 Things that Make a Niche Great
Here’s some things that will help you find a great niche: 18
1. Product Price Point: $200 – $1,000 In drop shipping it often takes just as much time and energy, to sell a $10 item as it does to sell a $1,000 item. With typical margins of around 20% a drop shipper who sells hats for $10 makes $2 per sale. A drop shipper who sells hammocks for $1,000 makes $200 per sale. Potentially the same amount of work for almost 100x the reward. With this in mind, your product price point should $200 – $1,000. Keeping your products above the $200.00 mark prevents you from doing a lot of work for very little profit. And while it might seem counterintuitive, setting a ceiling of $1,000 will prevent you from serving a market that requires a lot of handholding.
2. Your Customer = Disposable Income + Internet Savvy Pennypinchers are more likely to demand discounts, refunds, and return items. Rockefellers are likely to demand boutiquelevel service. Each cuts into your margins. Your niche should resonate with customers in the Goldilocks zone – someone with money to spend but who won’t demand lots of extra attention. Think uppermiddle class. Your customer should be comfortable buying online. Customers that are suspicious of, or unfamiliar with, buying online you’ll spend all your time processing orders by phone.
3. Generic Brands are Better than Name Brands As I explained in my article What is Drop Shipping?, dropshippers typically are not selling name brand products. A drop shipper just can’t add value to name brand supplier or to a customer looking for a name brand. Think of it like this: A customer that wants to buy a PlayStation already knows they want a PlayStation. That customer is never going to search in Google “top gaming consoles of 2016.” In other words, they already know what they want and where to find it. On the other hand, can anyone name the top five standing desk brands? Probably not. So you go search on Google “best standing desks.” That’s when you find an informationpacked drop shipping site. Through product information, customer reviews, and other tailored content, they are positioning themselves as the authority on standing desks. Being an authority simultaneously adds value to their customers and their suppliers.
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4. Products with Limited Local Retailers Products that are especially good for drop shippers are those where a customer’s initial search at local retailers will yield limited options. Let’s say You want a large aquarium. Your local pet store maybe has ten options for you. It’s highly likely that You’ll want to view more options but it’s not likely that You am going to travel to see other options. What You will do is hop online and search for “best large aquariums.” Notice that You am not searching for savings – I’m searching for the perfect product. That a great customer for a drop shipper. Imagine the same person but they’re looking for a PlayStation. They do a search for a PlayStation at local retailers. They find the product they’re looking for at multiple locations but aren’t happy with the price. So they go home a search “best deal PlayStation.” This person searching for savings. They are not a good drop shipping customer.
5. Shipping: Light & Durable are Better than Heavy & Fragile Drop shippers always need to be aware of the logistics behind shipping their products. While shipping will be your supplier’s responsibility, you’re responsible for the customer service for shipping. Shipping issues are the most common customer service issue you’ll have. Would you rather handle customer shipping issues for an outdoor fireplace or for porcelain collectables? Exactly. Save yourself headaches by avoiding products that are too heavy (expensive to ship) or too fragile (where damage may frequently occur during shipping). TIP: A nother product to avoid is something that requires lots of technical support to set up.
6. Existing Search Traffic A good niche will already be generating search traffic from sites like Google. If a niche isn’t generating search traffic it probably doesn’t have many buyers. Checking search traffic is easy, just go to Google Adwords, sign in (its free to sign up), and under to “Tools” tab select “KeyWord Planner”: Next, type your niche into the search bar. Let’s search “standing desk.” As you can see, Google is showing 110,000 searches for my niche last month. That’s an indicator that there are potential buyers of products within my niche. Compare that to a search for “kneeling desk.” 20
With only 320 searches last month, it seems unlikely that kneeling desks would make a good niche. Lower search results is a warning that there are probably few potential buyers out there Taking this a step further, use Google Trends to see what search term traffic for your niche has looked like over time. Let’s look at “standing desk” again: The fact that searches for my niche are climbing is a great sign!
STEP 2: Identify Your Competition
Now that you’ve picked a great niche it’s time to check out the competition. Your Niche Should Have Competitors It might seem counterintuitive, but if you’re all alone in your niche it’s probably a bad sign. Think of it this way: A great restaurant has a line of people around the block waiting to get in. It might be tough to get a table there, but it’ll probably be worth it. On the other hand, a deserted restaurant that can seat you right away – well, beware. Sure, you may have found an undiscovered gem. 21
But more likely is that you’ve found a restaurant other diners have already learned to avoid. If your niche doesn’t have competition it’s probably because other businesses found out the hard way that there isn’t any money in it. Maybe there aren’t as many customers as you think. Maybe there aren’t any good suppliers. Maybe shipping costs and customer service demands eat away at the margins. Whatever the reason, you can’t afford to waste your time on a bad niche. Remember : Competition means people are making money and that’s what you’re trying to do.
STEP 3: Identify Top Tier Suppliers
Expert Tip: “You are completely dependent on suppliers to fulfill your orders. There are some companies that are extremely reliable: their products are generally in stock (or if they aren’t in stock, they tell you right away), they ship your products when they say they will, and they get the order right. These are the good companies. Suppliers that aren’t great do the opposite This leads to a lot of maintenance on our end. For our company, which prides itself on good service and fast shipping, issues with a bad supplier pose a big problem. They can appear as negative customer reviews.” 22
Finding Your Future Suppliers Once you’ve identified the competition in your niche you want to find their top suppliers. You’re not ready to contact the suppliers yet, but you need to know who you’re trying to impress. From you niche research, you know that your competitors have suppliers and products that are making them money. Rather than taking a big risk on unproven partners, use this information to your advantage. It’s easy to identify your competitor’s top performing products and brands. They will be featured front and center on their site because they want customers to find easily. They probably even have a “most popular products” or “most popular brands” page. Create a list of all the brands, product names, and SKU (stock keeping unit) numbers that fit your Niche. Repeat this process for all your competitors and note who which brands and products you’re seeing most often. You’ll need this information to find your future suppliers. You might be wondering if there’s an easier way to compile a list of the top tier suppliers in your niche. Unfortunately, the suppliers you are trying to work with are not great at marketing (that’s why they need your expertise!). So if I simply search in Google for “Standing Desk Drop Ship Supplier” I’m unlikely to find a drop shipping partner. That Google search will likely turn up supplier aggregators. There are several reputable aggregators, including Worldwide Brands, DOBA, and Dropship Direct.
TIP: As you’re searching your competitors’ sites for suppliers, take note of what you like and don’t like about your competitors’ websites and stores. Keep notes! You’ll use this information to help you design the perfect store. Researching Your Future Suppliers Once you have a list of your competitors’ suppliers, you want to verify that those suppliers meet two essential standards: MAP Policy Enforcement and No PaytoPlay .
Bonus: More Qualities of a Top Tier Supplier Additional qualities to look for that will mean you’ve found a top notch Supplier: • Realtime inventory (your supplier instantly updates you on their inventory levels) 23
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Comprehensive online product catalog Customizable data feeds Online searchable order history Generous return policies Anything to help you streamline, automate, and keep your customers happy
STEP 4: Build Your Drop Shipping Website
You have to have your store up before a supplier will agree to partner with you. Suppliers know that talk is cheap. They need to see you’re a partner who knows how to execute.
Build Your Drop Shipping Website Building a good drop shipping website doesn’t require high level knowledge of site building, web design, or coding. There are a number of Ecommerce platforms that make it easy – they’re basically plugandplay. I prefer Shopify. But there are other companies, like Magento and Bigcommerce that are also good. 24
Your site will always be a work in progress. You’ll update products, add new features, optimize the layout, and more. That said, you’re about to build the foundation and framework for your future store. You’ll also hang enough on the walls that when you show Suppliers the site, they can get a clear idea of how it will look. Here are four features every drop shipping site should have before contacting suppliers:
1) Sample Product Listings and Brand Pages You need to be able to show suppliers what their products would look like in your store. It will be much easier to convince a supplier to work with you if they see their product displayed, professionally and prominently, on your site. This will also show suppliers that you’re ready for business. So build out pages for each of your potential suppliers. Also, include user reviews of your suppliers products and brands.
2) Third Party Trust & Reviews Many companies provide third party monitoring as a service. They all come with corresponding badges that you can display on your site. These badges signal to customers that your business can be trusted. They might seem like small addons but are important. They’re a small thing that makes your customer comfortable making a purchase on your site. And if customers are comfortable, suppliers are too.
3) Clearly Posted Shipping and Return Policies Your Shipping and Return Policies should be easy to locate on your site and easy to understand. Customers don’t want to feel like you’re discouraging returns or tricking them on shipping fees. Just as important, suppliers don’t want to work with drop shippers who treat customers like this because it’s bad for their brand. Shipping and return policies will vary based on your niche and the individual supplier. That said, you should have enough information from your competitors’ sites to put together a passable Shipping and Return Policies page.
4) Put Your About Us and Contact Us Page to Work Almost every website has an About Us and Contact Us page. They’re easy to neglect, but for drop shippers these pages are essential. Without a physical store, these two pages are the only 25
way to show customers what you’re about and how you’ll treat them. Suppliers are judging you by this messaging, too. Your About Us page should be brief, engaging, and tell your story. This should not read like a resume. After reading your About Us page a customer should know why the niche inspires you and what you’re bringing to the niche that no one else is. Your Contact Us page should be easy to find. It should feature an email address, phone number, hours of operation, instant chat and a physical address. After seeing your Contact Us page your customer should have no doubt that you’re there if they need you.
Step 5: Develop a Plan to Generate Traffic Next, it’s time figure out how you’ll bring customer to your store. A clear blueprint detailing how you plan to generate traffic for your site is critical to the success of your business. Suppliers need to see this blueprint, too. After all, what good is a great looking store without customers? Mastering each of these marketing strategies takes time and practice. For now, you just need to have an idea of how each of these works and which ones make most sense for your drop shipping business.
Here are the 6 most effective ways to generate traffic for your drop shipping store: 1. Google Adwords: Full training provided in the OneonOne Course. 2. Google PLA (Product Listing Ads) 3. Facebook Ads 4. Retargeting: 5. Email Offers to Past Customers 6. Niche Blogs: Find blogs related to your Niche and offer to do a guest blog post or inquire about placing banner ads on their sites. After suppliers have heard how you plan to generate traffic they might ask about your advertising and marketing budget. They might want to know that you have a dedicated budget for advertising and that you have a plan to expand your marketing efforts as you grow. 26
Step 6: Register Your Business The last step before contacting suppliers to set up drop shipping deals and get you business started might seem like a nobrainer, but it’s easy to forget. You have to form and register your business with the proper government agencies. Since the process for getting a sales taxes exemption permit is different in each state, you probably want to speak with a tax professional.
Step 7: Securing Drop Ship Agreements with Suppliers “What we find is that most sellers want to simply add our products to their store. This is not of interest to us. What we want is sellers who have a high traffic channel such as a blog, website, YouTube channel, etc. to promote our products on. Sellers have to understand that in order to be desirable to a manufacturer, they must invest the time to create a sales channel that we would want to be part of.” Mark Tyrol, President of Battic Door
Call, Email, & Repeat Suppliers won’t be knocking on your door. At this point it’s time to put on your sales hat and start working the phone. Begin reaching out to all the suppliers on the list you compiled from your competitors. Reaching a decision maker at a supplier can take time. Remember, you’ll be calling and emailing them out of the blue. Suppliers get lots of these kinds of inquiries so it might take a few tries before they realize you’re a serious business with the potential to be a great partner. The important thing is to stay positive and when you do get a decision maker on the phone be ready to make an effective pitch.
PRO TIP: B e sure to contact a lot of suppliers because many companies do not want to drop ship. They might not understand online commerce or they might have had a bad experience with it in the past. In my experience it is always best to get on the phone with them or visit them in person (if that is an option) to show them you are a real person and start to create a relationship.
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Launch Dates and Firm Timelines
Your site should have a launch date set. Launch dates conveys to the supplier that you are serious and ready to start selling. A launch date also forces the supplier to consider that if their products aren’t listed on your site by then, someone else’s will be. Wouldn’t they rather have you building their brand than their competitors’? Your launch date is one way of setting a timeline. Timelines are important because it prevents decisions from being put off indefinitely. You will do yourself a favor by setting and confirming timelines during all your conversations with the suppliers. You’ll have to be the force moving deals forward – setting clear timelines will help you with this.
Paying Upfront or Paying on Terms If all goes well, your supplier will ask you about payment options. Suppliers are used to working with drop shippers in two ways: paid up front and paid on terms. Paying upfront is exactly what is sounds like: when you place an order with the supplier you pay for that order immediately. Paying on terms means that you place an order with the supplier (which they must fill) and you 28
pay them at a later date, typically 30 days later. This is referred to as payment terms on a net30. You want to be clear that you will not need payment terms. Payment terms amount to a form of credit offered by supplier. Offering other businesses credit is risky. By paying upfront you avoid the issue of asking for credit as a yet unproven business. Without the risk, it is much easier for a supplier to approve you as a drop shipping partner. Tip : Your customer will pay you first. You’ll then pay your supplier for the same order. Knowing that they will have no problem covering cost of products with the supplier, a smart drop shipper uses a rewards credit card to make their purchases so that each sale brings both points and profit (if possible).
6 Keys to Your Supplier Pitch: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
I want your products to be featured in the launch of my new site. Here’s what inspires me about the niche. Here are the ways I will bring value to my customers and your business. Here’s how I will be generating traffic to my site. I will pay upfront, not on terms. Mention the launch date again.
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Product Research
Finding the perfect product to sell on your drop shipping store is by far the most important prerequisite required by you to succeed in this venture. You can use several tools available online to find products that will sell like hot cakes! 30
Just keep these tips in mind while searching for your winning products : 1. Never go for General Everyday use products that are available literally everywhere. 2. Do what’s already working eg. Best Selling Products on Amazon, Aliexpress, Wish etc. 3. See & Spy on your competitor’s stores Because then you’ll know and will be able to replicate what’s already working! 4. Take Action Yes, You heard it! Hours of searching for that perfect product won’t suffice and you’ll have to take action to put that product in use to your advantage.
★ Trending Products Are Perfect For a Dropshipping Business
Products which are currently trending are great options for your dropshipping business’ inventory. When you can’t decide what are the best dropshipping products try to look into which products are trending. If you manage to source trending products for your store before they hit the commercial masses, you’ll be able to take advantage of low marketing fees, and establish your store as a leader in that field. If you’re interested in finding products which are currently trending, or products which are likely to be popular in the future, you can check out the following resources: ● Kickstarter.com ● Wish.com ● Wanelo.com ● Google Trends
★ Best-Selling Product are Your Perfect Start to the Business 31
You can find the best sellers of big time Ecommerce websites like :
1. Amazon https://www.amazon.com/BestSellers/zgbs
2. AliExpress https://bestselling.aliexpress.com/en
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3. Wish https://www.wish.com/search/bestsellers
Use these links to find and research your winning products that you think will work best for you! Although you might be thinking that these are saturated but if you work cautiously and innovatively on your marketing, You’ll observe that there is still room for money to be made with these products! After All they are the best selling ones for a reason.
★ Look for Competitor’s Products and try to Sell Them Even Better! The best place to start in your niche is to look for competition and do things better that they are not doing in their stores. Here, Use this tool to find yourself some competitors for your niche and observe their winning products and see how well they are being marketed.
Commerce Inspector for Chrome https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/commerceinspector/kefmekfmfacbdefimlanc occpocmgmpb 33
★ Specific Websites That Find the Winning Products for You 1. Pexda www.pexda.com
2. Thieve www.thieve.co 3. Dropship Spy https://dropshipspy.com/ 4. DroSpy www.drospy.com Use these if you are too lazy to research on your own. These specifically curate the winning products specifically for drop shippers and also for the general public and tell you what’s selling and what’s not. Some of those even give you the FB Ads copy that is working and is successful to a product! 34
Here are the criteria I use to identify good opportunities/products: ● Solid customer reviews: Solid customer reviews are essential. Great customer reviews mean that you can effortlessly brand your product, mark it up by 10x, and people will be happy with what they bought. Be careful with AliExpress/DHGate reviews— the Chinese are notorious for faking these. Try to find the same product on Amazon (don’t worry about the price, as you will give it a totally different name/brand) ● High Order Volumes. High order volumes are a great sign the product is moving well. DHGate, AliExpress and eBay freely publish these and are available at their websites. The chinese often fake orders too, so check eBay by filtering results to completed listings. ● Good design; quality aesthetics . Good looking people get lots of breaks in life. The same goes for good looking products. People are much more likely to by good looking products, especially from a well designed website. It’s usually easy to significantly improve a products aesthetics with photos of your own. Sometimes basic editing is all you need. ● Great margin potential. Stick to products you can sell for 5x to 10x the purchase cost. If it’s the first product in the store, or the first product a customer will buy from you, keep it at a price point of $29 or less. You should be able to get it for less than $10 or it’s a nogo.
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● Virality factor. If the product is inherently funny or otherwise worthy of sharing on social media, that will make your marketing efforts a lot cheaper/easier. ● Trusted suppliers. Choosing a product from a trusted supplier is highly recommended. Trusted suppliers are likely to have your back, and create and deliver the product you are shipping on time. To see whether a supplier is trusted, look at their rating, years in business and number of transactions on AliExpress and DHGate. ● Fast Shipping. Contrary to popular belief, fast shipping isn’t make or break in most cases, but it’s nice to have. If I have to pay a little more on DHGate than AliExpress, but get free DHL shipping (7 days vs. 30 days with ePacket), I will always go that route. ● Potential for repeat business. Selling a product at a $10 profit an average of 10 times per customer creates $100 of profit, and that’s a hell of a lot better than selling a product once per customer for $49 at a $45 profit.
Let’s go ahead and build your Shopify Store in the next steps.
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Setting Up A Basic Shopify Store Here’s a stepbystep guide on how to build your own online shop with Shopify. This covers all the basics and bit more, so you could get your online store up and running ASAP.
Let’s get started… Signing up with Shopify and starting your store couldn’t be any easier and they even offer a 14 Day Free Trial to get you going. To launch your Shopify store, you must sign up for an account.
1. Sign Up with Shopify
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To start, visit Shopify.com . Use the signup form to start creating an account. Enter the required details and then click the ‘Create your store now’ button. Your store name needs to be unique or Shopify will ask you to choose something else. After this initial screen you’ll be asked for a few more details, these include your name, address, country and a contact number. You will also be asked if you have products and, if so, what you aim to sell. If you’re just trying out Shopify to see if it works for you, you can select ‘I’m just playing around’ in the ‘ Do you have products?’ dropdown, and ‘I’m not sure’ in the ‘What will you sell?’ section. Once complete, click ‘I’m done’ .
2. Start Setting Up Your Online Shop After you’ve signed up you’ll be directed straight to your store admin screen. Now you are ready to start customizing your store’s look, uploading products and setting up payments and shipping. Your home admin screen tells you all you need to know to get you up and running.
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3. Choose a “Theme” or “Layout” Shopify has its own official theme store. These themes are all guaranteed to have full support from the designers so you know your store is in good hands. All themes come with a comprehensive list of modifications you can make without having to touch a line of code. The premium themes come with more modifications, but that’s not to say you can’t achieve a great looking site with a free one. These changes are outlined in the next section. If you want to make wholesale changes to a theme, there are very few limitations on what can be achieved by accessing the HTML and CSS. Don’t worry if you haven’t got any coding experience. Shopify has an international team of design agencies they call ‘Shopify Experts’ that you can hire to fully customize your site. To find a theme that suits your needs we recommend the following:
1. Browse the Theme Store Log into Shopify and visit the Shopify Theme Store at themes.shopify.com . Here you’ll find over 180 theme variations to choose from, including a good selection of free ones.
The Shopify Theme Store. 39
2. Check the Functionality and Reviews Once you’ve found a theme you like, click on the theme’s sample image. You’ll be given more information about the theme, such as whether the theme is responsive/mobile ready among other features. Scroll down to read some reviews to find out what retailers using the theme think of it.
3. Preview the Theme
To see the theme in action, click View Demo . You’ll see this below the green ‘Preview Theme in your Store’ button. If the theme comes in a range of styles, you can also view demos of the different styles by clicking on them. 40
4. Get the Theme Once you’ve found a theme you like, Select it and Apply it to your store. Shopify will ask you to confirm that you want to install the theme. Click Publish as my Shop’s Theme . Don’t worry if you’re not 100% sure it’s the right theme for you. You can always change your mind later. After the theme has installed, Shopify will let you know, and will give you the option to Go to your Theme Manager . Click this. Your theme manager shows published themes (the one you installed or activated most recently) and unpublished themes below (previously installed themes).
4. Edit Shopify Settings
The majority of Shopify themes allow you to make simple changes that can massively change the appearance of your store, so you can rest assured knowing you won’t end up with a website that looks like a clone of thousands of other stores. These stores are all built using the same theme. On your admin screen, select ‘Themes’ from the left hand navigation menu. On this page you will see your live theme in a box at the top, in the top right hand corner of that box will be two buttons. The first one is of three dots, which gives you some basic settings changes. One of these allows you to make a duplicate of the theme. We highly recommend you do this incase you make some changes you don’t like, then you can delete the duplicate and start again. The second button says ‘Customize Theme’ . If you click that you will be taken to a page that controls all the basic functionality of your store. This is a great time for you to have a thorough play with the settings and test out all the features so you can find out what your site is capable of. 41
Themes custom settings
Changing colors in your theme. 42
The most common features will include: • Uploading logos • Uploading slides to a homepage carousel • Adding related item functionality to product pages • Choosing how many items appear on each line of the collection pages • Color schemes • Font choices.
Some themes will also allow you to reposition elements on pages such as showing product images on the left, right or center of the page. You can also choose whether you want to display social like/tweet/pin/+1 buttons.
5. Add Your Products to The Store
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Again, navigating from the bar on the left select ‘Products’ . You will then see a blue ‘Add a product’ button in the top right hand corner of the page. Use the following screen to add as much detail as needed about your products. Especially look at those that will help with SEO such as name, description and URL. Also include as much detail about variants as possible to help inform customers about your items. This is also the screen where you upload product pictures. Once the images are uploaded you can rearrange them so don’t worry about uploading them in any particular order.
The Product screen. Make sure you fill out as much information as possible 44
Product images can make a sale so make sure you show your products off to their best and highlight any special or unique features with close up photos. To keep your store looking tidy we suggest you keep all images the same dimensions. Unless of course you plan to make your collection pages look like a Pinterest board. Once everything is filled out always remember to click the ‘Save product’ button in the top and bottom right hand corners.
Set up collections (group of products) A collection is any group of products that have some feature in common that customers might look for when visiting your store. For example, your customers might be shopping for: • Clothes specifically for men, women, or children • Items of a certain type, such as lamps, cushions, or rugs • Items on sale • Items in a certain size or color • Seasonal products such as holiday cards and decorations. Products can appear in any number of collections. Usually, you would display your collections on your homepage and in the navigation bar. This helps customers find what they’re looking for without having to click through your whole catalog. The Collection set up screen works in exactly the same way as the Product screen Manual and Automatic Collections When you add a new collection, you can select how products should be added to it. These are the two options: • Manually You add and remove products in a manual collection individually. • Automatically You can set up selection conditions to automatically include products that meet certain criteria.
Payment Gateways A payment gateway allows you to take payment from your customers via your website. The price and commission rate is important, but it’s also important to see what features they offer. Not all payment gateways are created equal. 45
You need to look at the following when choosing the right payment gateway for you.
❖ Transaction Fees When you take a payment, some gateways will keep a small percentage or flat fee (or sometimes both) for letting you use their service. Compare these based on what your anticipated sales are.
❖ Card Types You need to know what types of card are accepted by your chosen Payment Gateway. All accept VISA and Mastercard, while most accept American Express. Paypal is also becoming popular for online payments. ❖ Offsite Checkout Some gateways will take the payment on their own servers via their own form. This means the customer is taken away from your checkout and they pay on the form provided by your payment gateway. They are then redirected to your confirmation page once the customer successfully pays. This allows you to have a bit more control of the checkout process. Now you can circumvent Shopify’s limitations in that they don’t let you customize the checkout other than with CSS. Payment gateway transaction fees are added on top of Shopify’s own transaction fees. However as of November stores based in the US and UK can use Shopify Payments. Depending upon 46
your Shopify plan, you can save on these extra costs. Relative to your plan you will receive these highly appealing rates. • Basic 2.4% + 20p • Professional 2.1% + 20p • Unlimited 1.8% + 20p Depending on how many transactions you make every month it could be worth upgrading to take advantage of these savings. If you live in the US or UK your store will automatically use Shopify Payments. To complete this, click the ‘Complete Shopify Payments account setup’ button found in Settings > Payments. If you wish to use a third party gateway you can use the ‘enable payment gateways’ link on the same page. For Indian and Other Countries Feel free to drop in a message so that we can help you out on a onetoone basis.
6. Get Your Online Shop “LIVE” Before your site can go live you need to add a few more details about your company and how you plan to make deliveries and pay tax.
General
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Make sure all your business information is filled out on this page. Also make sure to make use of the Google Analytics feature. This can prove to be an invaluable source for tracking your store visitors.
Taxes
1. Go to the Products Page of your admin 2. Click on the name of a given product. 3. Scroll down to the section called “Inventory & variants” . 4. Click on the edit link next to your Product Variant to open a dialog window. 5. Make sure the checkboxes next to Charge taxes and Requires shipping are checked if you need to include these with your products. 6.Some stores won’t need to charge taxes or shipping on products like digital goods. On the other hand, a Tshirt store will likely need to charge both. 7.If you are planning to ship your product to customers, make sure to enter the product’s weight in the appropriate field 48
Shipping
If your shipping rates are too narrow, or you don’t give enough options, you may lose out on some sales. Shopify will only calculate a shipping rate for your customers based on the rules that you define in the Shipping page of the admin. To make sure you won’t lose any sales: 1.From your store admin, go to the Settings > Shipping page. 2.In the “Shipping rates” section, look to see if you have set a weightbased shipping rate and adjust it according to your product’s specifications. Test your order system To test your system you can simulate a transaction using Shopify’s Bogus Gateway. To use the Bogus Gateway: 1.From your store Admin , click Settings , then Payments to go to your Payments Settings 2.If you have a credit card gateway enabled, deactivate it before continuing. (Click Edit , then Deactivate , then confirm your deactivation.) 3.In the Accept credit cards section, click Select a Credit Card Gateway to open the dropdown menu. 4.Scroll down the list to Other , then click (for testing) Bogus Gateway . 49
5.Click Activate (or Reactivate , if you’ve used the Bogus Gateway before). 6. Go to your storefront and place an order as a customer would. At checkout, enter the following credit card details instead of genuine numbers: Testing a real payment gateway with a genuine transaction: 1. Make sure you’ve set up the payment gateway you want to test. 2. Make a purchase from your store as a customer would, and complete checkout using genuine credit card details. 3. Cancel the order immediately, to refund yourself and avoid paying transaction fees. 4. Log in to your payment gateway to make sure the funds went through.
Is this free? Yes – just be sure to cancel and refund the order soon after you place it. If your billing cycle hits after you’ve placed the test order but before you cancel it, the transaction fees will appear on your bill. You can still cancel after paying your bill to Shopify, but you’ll receive the refund as a transaction credit on your account. You can use transaction credits to pay future transaction fees. 7. Consider Buying a Domain Name To get your site live you’ll need a domain name. You have two choices for this. Firstly you can buy a domain from Shopify and it will be added to your store automatically. This saves you time, especially if you have no knowledge of hosting a website. These domains typically cost $9$14 USD per year. Your second option is to purchase a domain from a third party such as GoDaddy. These domains start from $1.99 USD a year. The downside is that you’ll have to redirect the DNS records yourself which can seem daunting at first. Here are the steps to put your new Shopify store live on a third party domain name. 1. Add the new domain in Shopify In the Shopify admin, from the left hand navigation go to Settings and then Domains and add your domain name using the ‘Add an existing domain’ button. 2. Update DNS records Login to your domain registrar and make the following changes to the DNS records: 50
• Replace the @ or main A record with the following IP address: 23.227.38.32 • Add or replace the www CNAME with storename.myshopify.com (i.e. your store Shopify link without the http bit, which you can see on the domains settings page) 3. Remove any storefront passwords Otherwise, no one will be able to access your site even once it’s live. 4. Set as primary if relevant Whilst in Settings > Domains , you can choose your main domain by using the dropdown at the top of the screen:
Ensure that you also check the ‘Redirect all traffic to this domain’ . This means that traffic to all other domains will be directed to your primary domain. This is crucial for good SEO.
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5.
Adding other domains
You can repeat steps 1 and 2 with other domain names you own. All domain names will redirect to the ‘Primary’ domain, which you can change at any time with the ‘Set as primary’ option next to each domain name.
Conclusion And that is all there is to it. In theory, you can have a great looking, unique and fullyfunctioning store in less than half an hour without having to be a web expert. This way you can spend most of your time marketing your product rather than having to maintain the site.
Congratulations! on setting up your store This was one of the main things required to start your business. Now that you have a fully functional Website up and running, Let us teach you how you can bring traffic to your store and finally begin with your online business. Let’s Do This! 52
How to Bring Traffic to Your Store
An e commerce store doesn’t guarantee visitors without any efforts on your part. This is also where new startups fail to get much traction and upscale their business initially. Fortunately, the internet is just the place for those who don’t have the time or the money to get things rolling. When it comes to driving traffic online, you’ve got to approach the appropriate online channels for the job like the ones mentioned in this article. But in order to make this work, you need to consider your marketing as a funnel with Three ingredients: ▪ Finding more qualified customers and then convince them to join your site. ▪ Encourage your visitors to make the first purchase. ▪ Then motivate your customers to buy more from you so they can refer you to their friends. You must also ensure that you adopt an organic approach to driving traffic as it accounts for almost half of the total revenue of all the channels. Below we are going to explain the strategy we use that showed us results explained extensively under influencer marketing, so make sure you check it out! Let’s now focus on the how with the following best e commerce traffic sources: 53
Email Marketing
One would think that emails would have thinned out by now, but in reality, it is just not as such. Truth be told, email is your goto weapon for fostering the best relationships with clients. It is a relatively lowcost option with a high return on investment. If you manage to nail this right, your sales can increase up to 3 or 5 times. Online shop owners send emails frequently and contrary to popular belief, it prompts customers into buying eventually. Be sure to work on your email list as soon as possible. Emails require just a bit more investment, which comes in the form of personalization and automated emails that then translates to more traffic and conversions. Create a Welcome email sequence for all the new or recent subscribers. You can send them emails regarding an ongoing promotion based on their behavior and preferences. Emailing to several people could be quite tiring, which is why an automation tool such as ConvertKit would suffice. It is very easy to use and consists of rich personalization features. 54
Instagram
With over 300 million active monthly users, it might soon come to a point where Instagram usurps Facebook as the face of social media. But that is to be expected when you have a platform that allows you to upload colorful pics with special filters and effects. According to HootSuite, over 70% of the world’s brands are expected to be on Instagram. Instagram has proven to be THE place for brands by announcing a 50man team in New York just to focus on the e commerce features for the app. Put simply, if there was ever a time for you to use social media for marketing, it would be now and with Instagram. By far the best way to grow your traffic and sales from Instagram is to grow your account and here’s how you can do just that: ▪ Keep posting regular quality content with three images a day, daily stories and weekly content. ▪ Start commenting and liking highlyengaged followers of your rivals. ▪ Follow and unfollow the followers of your rivals. 55
▪ Make use of influencer marketing to ride on the growth from other paid account promotion. An effective tool for this is s houtcart.com .
Events
Online companies make a grave mistake of ignoring live events. Your physical presence is required so that you can create a lot of interest within the target audience. Customers that are acquired at inperson events are said to buy even more. However live events can be costly as well as timeconsuming, so you have to plan ahead about the types of live events that you attend. If your customers aren’t there, then don’t go. Be sure to engage your audience before, during and after the event. The strength of its success depends on the lead followup process. Online events are a good alternative to live events, which works especially if you have a product that needs to be demonstrated. Customers can get a good glimpse of how your product can function in front of them through Facebook live streaming, Periscope, and more.
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Another advantage to online events is your ability to lead customers to purchase page. You may not be able to get your sales right away, but at least you will have generated considerable interest.
Search Engine Marketing (Pay Per Click)
Google AdWords used to be a big deal in the payperclick business. Once you had figured your campaign out, you only needed to sit back and let the campaign roll on its own. But now, PPC campaigns are too expensive, namely for smaller companies that are just starting out. The only upside to this method is that it can get a hold of your audience’s attention on the fly. The bad news is that people will likely have not heard of you and will bounce. So you must do something to gain their interest right away. Even though a Google AdWords campaign could burn a hole in your wallet real quick, they are a tactic to help you learn about the effectiveness of your special offers, messaging, as well as 57
holiday promotions. You can run basic A/B test campaigns to test different headlines, URLs, and landing pages. Re marketing is also a great way to get in touch with customers. Be on the lookout for tools that allow you to deliver a more polished remarketing campaign.
Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization(SEO) holds the key to giving you a more organic approach to your marketing campaign. One of the most important tasks with SEO is backlinks. Every backlink you have in your domain gives you a score out of a 100 called a domain rank. The domain rank lets you know where you are in Google’s search results for specific keywords and how much traffic you will get for your site. How you structure your URL could also have a significant impact on your SEO. Shopify and other ecommerce platforms will not give you much control of your SEO. Generally, you must avoid using unwanted categories, put in some keywords and be wary of the length of your URL. 58
Google appreciates pages with detailed information. Make it your goal to update your pages on product pages regularly and include all the necessary details as well as keywords.
Conversion Rate Optimization
If you have a mature brand and have over 600 transactions a month, then you will do right for yourself with conversion rate optimization. When you learn to collect and analyze quantitative and qualitative data, you can learn why some people leave your site without buying anything. By gathering insights from user experiences, research analytics, and qualitative data (such as surveys and interviews), you can make design changes to A/B test on your site. 59
Endorsements help create credibility in the eyes of your customers. People trust products instinctively that are recommended by other people, most specifically with a higher social status and are renowned. Let’s be honest, you’re not about to get an entire endorsement article from any major publications from the start. You need to start with smaller publications and focus on your story. You continue to pitch by yourself or hire a PR firm to do it. Understand that many publications will look to present new products in their gift guides. So try and look for opportunities to share your products with the editors of these publications. You may also want to send your product to them beforehand. Utilize the power of unboxing videos on platforms such as YouTube and Facebook. These are videos that consist of real people who are shown unboxing a certain product package one step at a time. These videos can create plenty of user excitement for your product, even more so if you get a celebrity to do it. Guest blogging can help you win a link to your site. Look for a site with better page authority than your own. 60
*Secret* Influencer + Affiliate Strategy 2018 The strategy you are now going to learn is exclusive to this book and you won’t find it anywhere else, much like the other knowledge given in this book. This secret influencer strategy is going to make all the difference in the world for you and will give you an edge over your competition and other dropshippers as well ! Winning with Influencers in 2018
We all know how everyone is going about influencers in today’s marketing scenario. You find an influencer, get him to promote your product or niche by paying him a once time free or maybe making him your affiliate. This has proven to be a real winning strategy for any E commerce business be it Drop shipping, Retail arbitrage or any Physical business. We recently talked about influencer marketing above and defined what it really is and how people are using it to make if thousands not, sometime even millions by targeting the specific niche related audience with their products. Now, what we are about to show is by the the best Gold Nugget you ‘ll ever receive regarding influencer marketing. 61
We have specifically devised a new strategy for 2018 to win using influencers that no one knows about and no one will soon as it has been developed by Ankit himself and has been kept secret until now. Read the below information and system carefully and apply it accordingly to see results almost immediately using influencer marketing.
We are calling this the ‘Influencer Affiliate’ Strategy.
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The Most Important Prerequisite
FACEBOOK PIXEL prior to doing any form
Make sure you have installed your
of marketing. Remember we are working for data in the initial days of our stores. FB Pixel is a boon and you need to use it wisely to see the desired results. You can make get your Pixel ID on the FB Ads Manager page by creating a new FB Pixel for your store specifically. Here’s how you can do it! Connecting your store and your Facebook Pixel account using the integration will automatically track data for six Standard Events: ViewContent (product and collection views), AddToCart, InitiateCheckout, AddPaymentInfo, Purchase, and Search. Each standard event tracks an action your customers will do while visiting your store. The integration passes the subtotal as the variable content_value. Here’s is a simplified depiction : 63
⚠ CAUTION To use the Facebook Pixel integration, you only need to enter your Facebook Pixel ID. You don't need to add the Facebook Pixel code to your checkout or any pages. If you have added the Facebook Pixel code to the pages of your store, then you need to remove any existing Facebook Pixel code before integrating. To create a Pixel on Facebook: Head over to the business manager and enter the required details of your business and click on the pixel tab in the settings You’ll see the below depicted page. Now just click on ‘Create a Pixel’ button and do as follows.
* Note down your Pixel ID after creation for it to be entered in the shopify console * 64
To set up Facebook Pixel for your Shopify store: . From your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Preferences .
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Find the Facebook Pixel section, and then enter your Facebook Pixel ID:
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Click Save .
Check if the Pixel is working correctly:
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Strategy In Brief : So after you have decided your niche, setup your store and are about to start with the marketing, Your first step should be to bring as much targeted traffic to your store as you can so that your initial audience gets exposed to your niche/products. This will give you the initial sales but most importantly will give your Facebook Pixel enough data to start with the ReTargeting Ads by creating LLA or Look Alike Audiences (Most crucial in facebook ads these days!). The steps listed below should be read and understood thoroughly and then applied with utmost focus to see the desired results : 1. So first of all we need to find influencers specific to the products or your niche whatever you are in. Note them down in a document or even a piece of paper as it suits you. 2. Now, when you find and have gathered around 20003000 Email of the influencers in your niche or the people related to your product (I know it sounds too much but you need to get this done. Here’s a trick to collect emails for dirt cheap prices : 1. Hire a Data Collector Find one on f iverr.com or f reelancer.com . Bangladeshi/Indian Freelancers are really cheap and will do all the tiring work for you in under very cheap budget. 2. Guide them to Collect emails Tell him a little bit about your niche/products and tell him to collect as many influencer emails they can (around 20003000) which you will use later for marketing. Tell him to collect those emails preferable in a .cvs or a spreadsheet file. 3. Download any Multi Mail/ Mail Merge Softwares (for free) There are plenty : • Microsoft Outlook Connector • Mailbird Lite 2.0.10.0 • SeaMonkey 2.29.1 • eM Client 6. free 67
• Postbox 3.0.7 • ThunderBird • The Bat! We’ll be using ThunderBird because we find it easier and the most efficient one to use.
4. Insert your influencer list into ThunderBird and let it analyze and store those for Bulk Mailing. 5. Make a Main Email Document This will contain your offer/logo details etc. This will be identical for each version of the mail recipient. 6. Sign Up on E nlistly This will help you to manage and recruit affiliates with custom urls and unique discount codes. You’ll be able to proactively push traffic to your shop and increase revenue. Enlistly is by the the most important app available in the shopify app store that you will be using to recruit your influencers/affiliates. Whenever a sale is made using a custom URL given to the influencer, He/She will get a percentage commission based on the total order value. This in 68
turn will help both the seller (i.e YOU) and the influencer to earn money by this marketing method. Advantage of Enlistly over others :
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Automatic affiliate order tracking Affiliate referral traffic reporting Shareable branded sign up page Invoice management Assign custom discount codes Custom commission rates per affiliate and transaction type Upload media for affiliate ads and banners In app messaging between you and your affiliates
7. Include the important stuff in the document Make sure you put an offer those 3000 email readers can’t refuse. You can give them a percentage of your sales using a custom URL that will track all their sales and will make the pay out regularly. Lure them into doing what you want and make sure to offer them what they deserve! 8. Put them to work All the replies you get or those who are willing to work with you as an affiliate, Make them sign up on enlistly and make an account so that both of you can begin the work. Tell your influencers to post those custom links/images/offers up on their pages (Instagram/Facebook etc) so that your product gets exposed to thousands or even millions of targeted people and you observe the traffic coming to your website. ***Make sure you have installed your FACEBOOK PIXEL. We can’t emphasize how important this step is for the future of your store’s marketing! *** 9. Observe You will initially see targeted traffic coming to your website which has a high chance of converting into sales. This is the traffic that your affiliates are sending by promoting your links to their audience and thus exposing your product to the required targeted audience. As you have installed your facebook pixel on your website, Your pixel will start doing it’s work 69
and collecting data allowing it to have enough data to make LookAlike Audiences and Custom Audiences . (Explained ahead) 10. You will make sales initially You will observe 5,10 or even more sales in your store. It’s a very good sign and you’ll know which influencer to remove and which ones to keep using this.
Now Let’s head over to Facebook Retargeting and use the full potential of advertising on Facebook to skyrocket your sales and scale your store! 70
Facebook Retargeting A Beginner’s Crash Course Once a shopper has left your store, you might think there’s no way to get them to return. Either their mind’s made up and they’re never coming back, or they’ve gotten distracted and have forgotten about you completely. All hope is lost. Or is it? Re Targeting with Facebook is one of the fastest and most costeffective ways to reclaim lost clicks and conversions. It allows eCommerce website owners to directly reach shoppers who have visited their store, viewed specific pages, or abandoned their carts. And according to research , retargeting ads sport a response rate up to 400% higher than nontargeted advertising. If you’ve long been curious about how to retarget your visitors using Facebook ads, we’re here to help you with this. This chapter itself is a crash course in setting up your first retargeting ad, from visiting Facebook’s Ads Manager for the very first time to creating an ad that will help drive shoppers back to your website. You guessed it right! You are now going to target the traffic you initially bought into your store using the Influencer Affiliate Strategy. Ready to learn how to reach those customers with FB Retargeting Ads? Let’s get started! Prerequisite: Enable Ads Manager for your Page 71
If you’ve never visited Facebook’s Ads Manager before, or set up a Facebook ad promoting your Page or website. (If you’re already familiar with Ads Manager, or have set up Facebook advertising before, feel free to skip to the next chapter.) While logged into the Facebook account you use to manage your Facebook Page, look for a link to “Ads Manager” on the left side of your Home screen, under “Apps.” You can also visit Ads Manager directly using this link. Once you’re logged in, you’ll be treated to a blank screen that will look something like this:
It’s awfully empty in here. But not for long! Feel free to spend a few minutes navigating around the options on the left to get familiar with the options and interface. This may also be a good time to enter your billing information , which may save you a few minutes later on.
Create a Custom Audience on Facebook Once you’re logged into the Ads Manager, click the “Audiences” option in the menu on your left. You’ll arrive at this new screen:
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Now you can create your Custom Audience. In this case, we want to do exactly what the first option, “Create a Custom Audience,” indicates: “connect with the people who have already shown an interest in your business or product.” Click this button, then select “Website Traffic” on the new window that appears. The image is shown below.
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You’ll be showing your ad to those who have been on your website recently. At this point, you’ll be asked to verify that you want to show ads to Facebook users who have visited your website:
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Agree to the terms to proceed. Once you’ve read the linked Terms and Conditions, select the check box and click “Create A Pixel” to proceed to the next step
. Create and add the tracking pixel to your website’s code Detailed steps shown in the above Chapter. Kindly refer to it.
Set up an audience of users for your first campaign With your tracking pixel implemented, you’ll be ready to set up the specific audience of Facebook users who will be shown your ad. On the next screen of the setup process, you’ll see this:
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Time to create your audience! What you choose here is up to you. You can show a retargeting to every single person who has visited your website in the last 30 days. But it might be wiser to show ads only to those who have visited your site without completing a purchase, or maybe the shoppers who haven’t come to your store in awhile. Clicking the dropdown menu by “Website Traffic” will give you a number of useful options:
Facebook allows for very specific targeting options. Let’s say you wanted to target customers who had added items to their shopping cart, but hadn’t completed the checkout process . Select “People visiting select web pages but not others” and you’ll be given the option to include and exclude pages. Change the fields to “URL equals,” then add your shopping cart URL to the first field and your “thank you” or confirmation page URL to the second, like this: 76
An example of how to retarget to those who abandoned their carts (without completing a purchase). This is a great way to reach shoppers who you know are interested in your products, but haven’t actually completed a purchase with you. Change the length of your campaign (180 days is the maximum) and add a descriptive name you’ll remember , like “Retargeting to Recent Visitors” or “Cart Abandonment Campaign – June.” Click “Create Audience” and you’ll be ready to create your ad! Once you see this “thank you” message, you’ll be ready to create your ad. 77
Finally, create your Retargeting ad and wait for approval ! Your tracking pixel will need to be properly implemented on your website and viewed at least once before Facebook will allow you to create any ads for this Custom Audience. If it’s not, the “Create Ad” option on the resulting screen will be grayed out. Feel free to leave this page and come back later, though — you can access it again simply by visiting Ads Manager and clicking the “Audiences” option. Facebook’s ads create tool allows you to complete this process by setting up an advertisement that your specified custom audience will see when they visit Facebook. During the setup of your ad, you can decide where it appears, how much money you want to spend, and what images and copy you want to use. Think carefully about your ad’s content and how it needs to match the custom audience you’ve created. If you’re retargeting to visitors who specifically visited your shopping cart, you might want to entice them back with a coupon code or special deal . On the other hand, if you’re simply retargeting every shopper who came to your store in the last month, you can use a broader message and graphics. You may want to become familiar with Facebook’s advertising policies before submitting your ad for approval. One of the most common issues for new advertisers is the text restriction , which states that text may not comprise more than 20% of any given image. So if you’re planning to offer a coupon code, you might want to limit it to the body of your ad text instead of in the image itself. 78
More than 20% text will result in your ad being rejected. (Image credit: Facebook ) Once you’ve created your ad, you’ll need to submit it for approval before it is activated . Facebook will review it within the next 24 hours (usually quicker) and return a response. If it’s disapproved, you’ll be told how to correct it so you can resubmit. If it’s approved, it will be made live immediately.
Congratulations — you’ve set up your very first retargeting ad! Monitor the results via Ads Manager or Google Analytics
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Once your ad is running, you’ll be able to stop by Ads Manager whenever you like to view the status, how much money you’ve spent, and how many clicks and conversions you’ve accumulated. If you use Google Analytics to track conversions from external sources like Facebook, it’s possible that your ad traffic and conversion won’t be reported accurately. To avoid this in future ads, you can build links using Google’s URL builder that are properly tagged with source, medium, and ad campaign information. You can follow this tutorial to build and track these links in Analytics.
One final tip: don’t end your campaign early just because you aren’t seeing sales. It might take several days or even weeks for shoppers to both view and act on the ad — even if they come back to your site again, that doesn’t mean they’ll complete their purchase right away. Try to wait as long as you can before making a decision to pause or delete an ad. You might even consider running a variation of your existing ad sidebyside to see if something specific, like your call to action or image, could be improved to raise conversions.
When your store should try Facebook retargeting Given the costeffectiveness of Facebook advertising, and the potential to recover otherwise lost conversions you’ve read about here, you might be pretty excited to give retargeting a try. However, it’s not necessarily the best fit for your store, especially if you’re new or targeting a highly niche audience. Facebook Retargeting is a strategy best suited for growing stores. Retargeting ads will be the most effective when you have an audience of several hundred shoppers or more. Prior to scaling your traffic to this stage, you might find that any retargeting campaigns you deploy receive very few views, clicks, or conversions. Given how many ads Facebook users are exposed to, and how easily distracted they are, you stand a much better chance at reclaiming 100 sales from an audience of 2,000 than you do from an audience of 500. Another noteworthy item is that Facebook actually won’t allow you to create an ad if the audience you’re retargeting is too small . The network requires an audience of 20 users or more; if the audience you create is smaller than this, you’ll have to wait until it grows to proceed. 80
Keep this in mind if you plan on targeting visitors to very specific pages — Facebook put this requirement in place so you don’t waste money, not just to annoy you. If you’re still in the early stages of growth in your store, focus your time and energy on growing your audience before investing in retargeting. Two good ways to attract more traffic are through search engines like Google and organic social media activity . You can also try A/B testing to identify and resolve potential issues on your website that may be contributing to lost sales in the meantime.
Reclaim lost sales with Facebook retargeting
With a few simple Facebook ads, you can invite shoppers back to your website, target messages at specific groups of visitors, and reclaim sales you might have otherwise lost. By following these instructions, you’ll be creating retargeting campaigns in just a few minutes — and you might even find the process kind of fun! 81
Conclusion Look back at all of the various best ecommerce traffic sources that can get you some potential buyers for your products and services in the best way possible. If you think We have left out any other important sources, do let us know on our website. Read carefully the secret strategy given above because that will make a difference in the success of your stores. Also don’t just read, APPLY! Else you won’t know whar works and what not. Let’s proceed onto more fundamental concepts for your store.
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ULTIMATE FAQs’ about Drop Shipping (All Your Questions Answered Extensively by Our Experts)
What kind of profit margins are there with drop shipping? This is contingent on the merchandise you find and the supplier you are willing to associate with. The wholesale pricing structures differ for all wholesale suppliers, therefore contacting the wholesale supplier you want to do business with is paramount in other to get the exact pricing plan.
What is Blind Drop shipping? Blind drop shipping is when a wholesale dealer uses a return label which displays Fulfillment Center or Shipper as the business name.
Can I use different Drop shippers? Yes, however, it makes shipping more intricate.
How To Determine a Quality Drop Shipper? A good drop shipper determines how successful your business can be. Examine a wholesaler before structuring and committing your business. Check out how realizable and experienced their sales reps are. Carry out test orders to assess how prompt they carry out fulfillment and consultation. Also, communicate with available customers for recommendations. 83
Where do I find suppliers who will dropship for me? They can be located through a drop shipping almanac service, through thorough Google searches.
What’s required to work with a drop shipping company? A legal dropshippers prefer to work with licensed business owners who are established an Employer Identification Number. Integrating your business cost below two hundred dollars. Nevertheless, it’s imperative to research which business structure suits you extensively. We advocate you seek an expert such a lawyer.
Do I have to pay a product before I sell it? You don’t have to pay for a product before drop shipping. The supplier sends the product for you to the consumer. You only pay for the merchandise when a customer buys from you.
Do I Need to Register a Business Entity to Drop ship? As soon as you start making sales, you will have to document your business. However, you don’t have to rush, you will need to establish a stable ground, and you have to be persistent in your sales. This is because payment suppliers require you to prove that your business is reliable and has a potential of excelling. Note that business permits differ in all countries. It is important to reach out to local government agents for vital information.
How do I get descriptions of the drop shipped merchandise for my website? The wholesale providers that drop ship offers all images and product narratives you need to sell the product when an account is set up with the wholesale supplier. 84
Why does Drop shipping cost more? Drop shipping wholesale prices are on the high side because a product is bought one at a time. However, when you purchase the required minimum from a wholesale supplier, you are given a fair discount. Mega stores like Walmart and Target can keep prices very low because they buy in bulk to stock their stores globally. Hence, more you buy, the higher the discount.
Where do I find suppliers who will dropship for me? You can find them through a drop shipping directory service like World Wide Brands , Ali express, DHGate etc through indepth google searches or by contacting the manufacturer.
What do I need – and much does it cost – to start a drop shipping business? To properly set up a drop shipping business in the U.S., you’ll need (Mostly for USA): ▪ To incorporate a business with your state (Approximately $150 to $300) ▪ Request an EIN number from the IRS (free) ▪ Request a salestax ID from your state (if your state charges sales tax, usually free) ▪ Find and establish a relationship / open an account with a drop shipper (free) ▪ (Recommended) Create your own eCommerce website (Approx. $10 to $50 per month) The costs will vary based on your circumstances, but in most cases you should be able to get a drop shipping business upandrunning for less than $400. For more information on finding suppliers, please see the section on finding drop shipping companies.
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Do drop shippers provide customer service and/or talk with my customers? No. As the retailer, you’re 100% responsible for dealing with customers. You’ll need to build and market your website, handle customers support issues, solve problems and deal with any issues that arise. You’ll act as the intermediary between your supplier and your customer.
How do I submit orders to suppliers? Each drop shipping wholesaler will be different. Most suppliers (but not all) will accept orders via email. Many will accept them over the phone, and those with more advanced websites will accept them online. A few sophisticated suppliers will even allow you to submit your orders in bulk via a specially formatted XML or CSV file.
What is the turnaround time for fulfilling a drop shipped order? This will vary based on the quality of the supplier, and their location. Most decent suppliers should be able to process, pack and ship out an order the sameday if it’s received by noon their local time.
How do I get tracking information for orders? This will also vary by drop shipper. A quality drop shipping wholesaler will provide tracking information via email in plain text or in a specially formatted .CSV or .XML file. Tracking information should be received immediately after the shipment is processed or by the end of the day the order was shipped. Once you receive a tracking number, it’s your responsibility to pass it along to your customer usually through your shopping cart interface. One mark of a poor drop shipper is delays in sending you order verification and tracking information and/or making you login to their website to retrieve tracking numbers.
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How do I pay my supplier? Starting out, a drop shipper requires you to have a credit card on file to pay for orders. When getting a business credit card, make sure you get a Visa or Mastercard as many suppliers won’t accept Discover or American Express. Once you’ve built up a relationship and track record, you may be given the option of ‘Net 15’ or ‘Net 30’ terms. This means that the supplier will extend you credit, and simply keep track of what you owe. Then, you’ll need to pay them by check within 15 or 30 days.
Who pays for the shipping costs on orders? While a drop shipper will usually use their own UPS/FedEx/USPS account to pay for shipping, they’ll pass along the cost to you when billing you for the order. It’s up to you how much to charge your end customer for shipping.
Do orders appear like they came directly from my company? Yes! This is one of the great things about the drop shipping model. Most drop shippers will put your company’s name and logo on packing slips and invoices, as well as your return address. So it appears like the package was shipped directly from you.
How do returns from customers work? Most drop shipping companies will have restrictions on what can and can’t be returned. So you’ll need to make sure you clearly communicate (both before the purchase AND before accepting the return from the customer) that it meets these criteria. Most suppliers will issue you a RA (Return Authorization) number. This unique number will identify the return in their system. Once received, simply pass along this RA number along with the address of the warehouse to your customer.
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Once the supplier receives the return, they should send you a notification along with a credit invoice showing that they’ve credited you for the item. Then, you in turn refund the customer who purchased from your store.
Who pays for return shipping on returns? This will vary from retailer to retailer, but here are the policies I have in place and highly recommend: For Defective Items: If a customer received a defective item, We feel it’s our business’ responsibility to pay all the associated costs to get them a working product! Some store owners will argue: “ We didn’t make the product! It’s not our fault! A defective item is the risk a customer takes for purchasing.” …but We think that’s a poor way to do business, and provides a very bad experience for your customer. We recommend paying for the return shipping costs incurred by the customer to send back the item, as well as the costs involved with shipping out a new replacement. In the event the product is very lowvalue (costs $20 or less), We’ll often ship the customer a free replacement without requiring them to return the old product. This is often easier, faster and cheaper than paying to have a customer return a cheap defective product. On the bright side, if a product is genuinely defective, most drop shipping wholesalers will pay for the shipping cost of sending out a new item, which means you’ll only need to cover the cost of shipping from the customer to the warehouse. For NonDefective Items: If the customer decides to return an item due to incorrect selection – or because they simply changed their mind – they will usually be responsible for paying for return shipping fees. However, if the product was incorrectly advertised or presented on the website, the business should cover return fees if this was the cause of the problem or incompatibility.
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Do drop shippers ship internationally? This varies widely by drop shipper, so you’ll need to check. We would say approximately most of the drop shippers We work with will ship internationally. 88
International shipments can quickly get expensive, and getting accurate quotes regarding shipping fees, customs and duties for hundreds of countries is complex. It also takes a drop shipper significantly more time to process an international order as there is more paperwork involved. Some will charge an additional fee while others simply won’t bother. Also, issues with returns and fraud get a bit more complicated with international shipments. If an international customer receives a defective product, getting them a replacement will be significantly more expensive. And the likelihood of fraud and abuse increase with international shipments.
How Much Money Do I Need to Start a Dropshipping Business? One of the best things about starting a dropshipping business with Oberlo is that it requires minimal initial funding. However, it’s important that you take into consideration all the expenses which you will incur: Shopify subscription, your marketing budget, and any additional funds you’ll need for your first orders. If you want to purchase a custom domain this will also cost a small fee. It’s important to note that it’s considerably less expensive to start a dropshipping business than it is to start a standard ecommerce store. You won’t need to source products in bulk, or worry about delivery, so it’s still one of the best ways to run your own online store.
How Can I Change Currency in My Store? Oberlo imports all products in USD, but you can simply change your currency. The easiest way to do it is to download a currency converter application from Shopify App store. Then, the only thing to do is to change currency sign in your Shopify Settings. Another way to change your currency is to do it manually without any application.
Should I Start With a General Store or a Niche Store? One of the great things about Oberlo is that you can dropship practically everything, however, we do recommend that beginner entrepreneurs try out a niche store first. There are several advantages to starting out with a niche store: less competition, easier to find your audience, more flexibility, and marketing is much simpler.
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What Profit Margins Can I Expect? The answer to this question highly depends on the types of products which you decent to sell. If you’re sourcing cheaper products for around $5, you may find success by marking them up 45 times, which means that you’d be selling them for $20$25. However, we don’t recommend this for more expensive products. If, for example, you source a product for $30, we’d suggest that $60 is an appropriate price point. In general, we recommend that you set your prices at least $10.00 more than the price that you paid to source it — this will help you to generate profit whilst covering marketing expenses, your Shopify subscription, transaction fees, and any other fees that you encounter. Another rule of thumb is to check out the prices that your competitors have set for similar products. You can use this as your benchmark. You should always monitor your product prices, and amend them if you think that they’ll improve your conversion rate.
How Many Products Should I Import to My Store? We recommend that you import 10200 products to your store. This way the customer’s focus will not be scattered, and they can find what they’re interested in. However, you can import up to 30,000 products with Oberlo’s Pro plan, so the maximum number of products you have available in your store is up to you.
Can I Use Product Pictures From My Supplier? Yes — it’s actually common for dropshipping entrepreneurs to use their supplier’s pictures in their own store. However, most dropshippers remove any logos, watermarks, or branded names from their product images. You can also ask for supplier’s permission to be on the safe side. We always recommend that you take your own product photography.
How Can I Get My First Sale? Getting your first sale with a new ecommerce store is a real challenge, no matter how much experience you have as an entrepreneur. Once your store is setup and you’ve launched it, it’s essential that you drive a large amount of traffic to it. There are multiple different ways that you can achieve this. First, we recommend using free social media services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to post valuable content which encourages viewers to visit your ecommerce store. You can 90
share links to your store on relevant forums, Facebook groups, and other online communities which your target customers use, but do so sparingly — you don’t want to get a bad reputation for your store. Another great way to attract traffic to your store is with influencer marketing. Influencers are individuals who hold the power to persuade the buying and engagement decisions of certain groups of people (see our post on social proof for more info). If you use influencer marketing, we recommend that you ask influencers who have a similar audience to yours. You can also use paid marketing channels to drive huge amounts of traffic to your store, like Facebook Advertising, or Google AdWords. We recommend that you read up on these platforms before you dive in — you don’t want to waste valuable business funds. Once you’ve started to draw traffic to your store, the sales will eventually start to happen! After all, every person who visits your store is a potential customer.
How Long Does It Take to Make the First Sale? The length of time that it takes to make a first sale mostly depends on you. You can get your first sale on your first day, after a month, or after a year. It mostly boils down to the level of success that you find with your marketing activities, the amount of work that you put into your store, and the audience that you target.
Can I Use My Address on the Package Instead of the Supplier’s Address? Unfortunately, suppliers don’t currently offer this service. It’s necessary that the supplier’s return address is added onto the package for customs purposes.
Do Customers Mind About Longer Delivery Times When Dropshipping? Yes! If you clearly manage your customers’ expectations for shipping times, your customers won’t mind waiting a couple of extra days for their products to arrive. Make sure that you define your shipping policy, and communicate it clearly in your online store.
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In addition, we recommend offering free shipping — this will help you to convince customers to make a purchase and they’ll be much more flexible with delivery times. We always recommend that you use ePacket delivery, so your products will be shipped promptly.
If a Customer Orders More than One Product, Will it Come in Separate Packages at Different Times? If one of your customers places an order for several products which come from multiple suppliers, the items will be shipped in separate packages. However, it’s unlikely that your customers will mind this – some of the largest ecommerce businesses in the world also ship several packages for the same order. If a customer does complain about this, let them know that your distribution centers are located worldwide, so this is the fastest way to deliver their products
Why Should Somebody Buy from My Store Instead of Buying from the Manufacturer Directly? Because you’re better! As a store owner, you’re providing your audience with an outlet to easily purchase products that they’re interested in – this alone distinguishes you from a manufacturer. You’re also building a trustworthy brand with awesome products, great design, and compelling content, all of which make potential customers feel comfortable enough to make a purchase from your store.
Can I Customize My Products? No, at the moment Oberlo does not support any customization options neither for products nor packages. However, this option might be available in the near future.
Can I Participate in AliExpress Affiliate Programs? Yes, this option is available but only for Oberlo Pro users. Check our explanation.
Why Can’t I See My Shipping Fees? Shipping costs aren’t imported by default with the product since it’s just for you. That being said, you should set up your shipping settings in Shopify. Keep in mind, that each product has different shipping price. So it’s easier to select a couple target countries and calculate an average shipping cost so that you can charge your customers reasonably. 92
Can I Use USPS, DHL or Canada Post Shipping That is in My Shipping Settings? No, you shouldn’t use carrier shipping methods since they aren’t compatible with Oberlo. Shipping methods, prices and time are provided by suppliers and you can’t offer any other shipping methods.
Can I Sell Everywhere? Yes. However, it’s better to select a couple target countries and focus more on them. This way it’s easier to calculate shipping costs, to do your marketing and reach customers more efficiently.
Can I Return Items or Get a Refund? Yes, but each case is individual and there are no general rules. Your very first step is to reach supplier and explain the problem. 93
TRAIN WITH US 1-ON-1 We really hope that after reading this guide, understanding & carefully applying it stepbystep you’ll be able to start your very own dropshipping business and not commit the mistakes that usual beginners do with their stores. Remember that you need to treat dropshipping like a proper business like your life depends on it, Doing so will give you an edge over 99% of the other dropshippers who mostly are not that serious in their businesses as they should be We wish you all the success in life and this endeavour. However, if anytime you feel stuck, worried or face issues while on your journey and are looking not only for business guidance but also to create a proper business mindset, remember you can enroll in our 1ON1 Training where Ankit & his team of experts will themselves take your store from the Beginning roots and help you scale it StepbyStep. We’ll mentor you professionally and create a winning mindset in you and take your business to new heights and success. Right from the beginning of your store creation, niche research, marketing and all other problems you’ll face will be rectified at the earliest by Ankit himself! Remember, We only and only wish you success and would love to see you rise and shine in all your endeavours.
JOIN NOW AT A DISCOUNTED PRICE OF $1000 ONLY! (Offer Valid For First 100 Subscribers Only!)
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Three Very Profitable Niche Ideas for FREE!
Religion : Religion is a good niche to get into simply because of how passionate believers are in their religion. Now there’s nothing wrong with religion but as dropshippers we must leverage that to make more sales! Its very easy to give someone a product that correlates with their religion. In return they feel good wearing it and you get money!
Fitness : Impulse buys are easy in this niche because people always buy gym attire to show off that they go to the gym!
Fashion: People are obsessed with the way they look and selling them a product that can make them look better is not hard! Just let them know how exclusive your brand is and they will basically beg you to take their money! 95
$0 to $1000 Real Quick Technique
Step 1: DESIGN PHASE ●
Creating your store:
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Choose something in between general and niche, so that you won’t be limited to the amount and types of products you can test. Create a logo Fiver, Up work, Canva, etc etc. Make sure site looks clean (Color Scheme is really important, FAQ, Contact Us Page) Download apps: ■ Oberlo for importing products and order fulfillment ■ Email collector (Wheelio, Privy) ■ Currency converter (BEST currency converter, coin app) ■ Hurrify ■ Loox or Ali reviews for picture reviews ■ Frequently bought together app (for small easy up sells) ■ Re cart (for messenger abandoned cart messages and Abandoned cart emails) ■ If Re cart is too expensive, Abandonment Protector Plus or Mailchimp.
**You must also create a FB business manager account (To install your pixel) and an Instagram account**
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Step 2: TESTING PHASE ● ● ● ● ●
Do some product research: FB, Amazon, Ebay, Thieve.co, Shopify Exchange, Commerce Inspector. Gather 3 or 5 of the best products to start with (The more the better but don’t overwhelm yourself, its much better to just get started) Make some AWESOME product descriptions (Get inspiration from Amazon, Big retailers, competitors, etc etc.) DON’T SKIMP OUT ON THE ABOVE STEP Create Videos for these products (Simple slideshow videos work fine, Fiverr, Adobe Premiere, Animoto, Etc etc)
*We recommend starting with Instagram Influencers if you have a lower budget, but Facebook ads is a much better long term strategy it just costs a lot more to get started with*
Step 3: SCALING ● ● ● ●
Continuously Improve Buy bigger shoutouts, stack shoutouts (Controversial) On fb – Duplicate winning ad sets and narrow down by country/age/platform and more. On FB – Duplicate duplicate duplicate and create Lookalike Audiences when you have enough data as well as Retargeting ad sets.
**you can always join the ONEONONE Course if you feel stuck or message Us on our Website to ask and we ‘ll be happy to help! ** For now, Focus on the beginning stages of the business, you won’t be scaling for at least another month realistically & when you find your winning products with the winning ad sets, Don’t stop at anything just scale very carefully! *Get all the insider secrets and information only on our ONEONONE Course!**
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OFFICIAL SHOPIFY STORE LAUNCH CHECKLIST Print This Page & Check Off As You Go ——————————————————————————————————————— PRELAUNCH REQUIREMENTS TO DO: ——————————————————————————————————————— ●
Buy A Custom Domain ○ hover.com ○ godaddy.com ○ namecheap.com ○ bigrock.com Use any of those and get yourself a domain at a great price! ● Create Custom Gmail AND PayPal For Your Store ○ Example: [email protected]. Make sure you add this Gmail to ALL pages on your website. ● Make Sure All Payment Gateways Are Turned ON ○ Shopify, PayPal, Amazon pay etc. Make sure the PayPal gateway is connected to your BUSINESS PayPal. 98
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Create The Standard Business Pages
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Contact us About us Privacy policy Terms of Service, Shipping Page
(You can generate most of these on Shopify) Make sure your BUSINESS email is on all of these pages and also go through them and adjust what they say based on your store. ● INSTALL FACEBOOK PIXEL AND GOOGLE ANALYTICS ○ This is highlighted for a reason…. Make sure you install these so that you know EXACTLY who is buying off your website so you can target them!!! ○ Google Tutorial: https://help.shopify.com/manual/reportsandanalytics/googleanalytics ○ Facebook Tutorial: https://help.shopify.com/manual/promotingmarketing/facebookpixel/facebookpi xelforshopify ● Install Important & Money Saving Apps 1. Oberlo /Any Other Fulfillment App To fulfill your orders. 2. MailChimp for Shopify EMail Marketing is the Core to your business and using this you can automate everything and collect emails as well. 3. Order Printer Order Printer lets you quickly and easily print invoices, labels, receipts, packing slips, and more. You can customize and create templates to suit any need or print in bulk to speed up your shipping process. (OPTIONAL if using Online Supplier and Hold No Inventory)
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4. Product Reviews Shopify Product reviews allows you to add a customer review feature to your products. This provides a way for your customers to engage with you, as well as each other to encourage sales. 5. Google Shopping Google Shopping allows you to sync your Shopify store with Google Merchant Center , simply and easily using a direct, automatic API feed to keep your listings up to date. 6. Plug In SEO Plug in SEO tells you if your store has any issues with search engine performance that will be worthwhile to fix. Once you install it, the app checks your store's homepage, determines the verdict and displays details. SEO is really really important for exposure of your store to potential organic customers! 7. AfterShip AfterShip allows you to track all your shipments in one place and send delivery updates to customers automatically. It supports FedEx, USPS, DHL, UPS, and 350+ carriers. Most people won’t add tracking on their drop shipping website hence this will give you an edge over others. 8. Hurrify Countdown timer to create urgency for your deals. Drive customers' actions and urge them to buy before time runs out. 9. Sales Pop Boost sales by providing social proof of recent sales on your store to create buying confidence 10. Upsell/Cross Sell Apps You’ll find plenty of those on the Shopify store. These will help you increase the average order value of a customer by displaying them things they might like to buy. 11. Quick Facebook Chat Customers can get support by chatting as Facebook friends with you anytime they want, right on your store. Your customer service will feel so much more natural and friendlier! 12. Recovery Cart Abandonment Abandoned carts can cause a shocking amount of damage to your business, so it's imperative that you recover those carts through a clean and elegant manner, while respecting your customer and inviting them with counteroffers through structured email. This app will do it for you ! (Rest all apps depend on you and your requirements but make sure you have most of these set up according to you. It’s not necessary to install all of these but you can try and experiment with these and other apps as well!) 100
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Create A Marketing Plan
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Do this before you start on a calendar just so that you’re not a mess when you lunch. Include influencers and prices.
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Template Example for Instagram Influencer Marketing
“Hello, My name is (Name) and I own (name of store). I was looking through your feed and I really like what you are posting. I have a brand that promotes products that I think your followers would like and I also think we can both make a lot of money together. On top of that since my products are similar to your page, your followers wouldn’t get annoyed with the posts and unfollow, and they would love my store. I'm very interested in doing a promotion on your page. Please get back to me with some rates as soon as you can! Thank you. Best regards.” ● Remove “Powered by Shopify” At The Bottom ○ This not only makes you look even more professional but it makes you stand out! ○ Google it and it takes only a few minutes to do so. ● Remove The Logos Off Your Product Pictures ○ If ANY of your pictures have a logo in the top left corner that’s not yours… REMOVE IT. It’s your product so make it seem like it! ● Audit Everything On Your Site ○ Go over EVERYTHING. Have mom or a sibling proof read the entire site. Make sure all words are spelled right and make everything is proper. 101
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CREATE Your Own Custom Descriptions
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I pray to god you all do this so help me…. This is so important please for the love of god almighty remove aliexpress descriptions. Do not use them. Get serious about your business and put the effort in for the reward you are gonna get!
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Create Shipping Page
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Customize your shipping page to your store. Also do a test purchase. (You can cancel once everything goes through).
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ALL IMAGES MUST BE SUPERB QUALITY
(This will separate you from all the other drop shipping competitors) ○ This is so vitally important that we can’t even condemn. If You ever went to a website and it had low quality images Would you buy their products? NEVER Right? Get Ideas from giants and your competitors. ○ Triple check that all your images are as good as they can get. ○ Also make sure your images are congruent to your products. 102
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STORE LAUNCH DAY CHECKLIST ——————————————————————————————————————
❏ 1 . Add Any Available Sales Channels
❏ 2. Connect Your Custom Domain
❏ 3. Double Check Your Payment Gateway Settings
❏ 4. Have Your Standard Pages Ready
❏ 5. Review Your Email Notification Settings
❏ 6. Do a Content Audit for Spelling and Grammar Mistakes
❏ 7. ReOptimize All Images on Your Website
❏ 8. Install an Analytics Tool
❏ 9. Have a Prelaunch Marketing Plan
❏ 10. Adjust Your Tax and Shipping Settings
❏ 11. Make it Easy for Potential Customers to Contact You
❏ 12. Install Only Essential Apps (Suggested Above)
❏ 13. Set up Your Billing Information on Shopify Console 103
❏ 14. *MOST IMPORTANT*
BELIEVE IN YOURSELF 104
$ 327,000,000,000 Spend in USA With Online Sales You simply cannot get anything like this anywhere else. No other business has this big of upside potential for little work output on your end. I want to sum this all up for you in a few sentences so you can completely understand what is happening here… We are apart of a online revolution where normal everyday people are being turned into overnight successes. They are going from poverty type circumstances, to over 6 and 7 figures per year utilizing the power of the Internet. I am inviting YOU to become someone whose life is going to be changed forever because of one little miniscule decision you are making. Ever heard of the butterfly effect? Here is what it means for those that do not Know:
This means that your decision that you make in this point in time has multiple different outcomes. Let me tell you exactly what your outcomes may be: 105
#1 You take what you learn here and throw it away. Leading you down a path you are currently on and never being able to live the life and have the freedom you’ve always dreamed of. Spending endless time with family and have the money to do whatever you want whenever you want will become a distant memory to you. You will ask yourself WHY didn’t you do this. Why didn’t you get involved. The same people that are reading this with you today are the ones that are going to be living this life. You OWE it to yourself to do this, if not for you, then for your family and those that look up to you. Or road #2 you TAKE action and start to see the changes occur in your Life The first small step to achieving everything you’ve always wanted it by joining me live one my OneOnOne Training I am hosting SPECIALLY for you! If you want to have the bank account to allow you to do whatever you want, whenever you want… this is your chance to do so. If you are LOOKING for a way to escape your 95 or maybe just pay off some bills… this is your chance to do so. I am handing you this opportunity on a silver platter . It DOES NOT get any easier than this. Here is what you have to do right now in order to get your life started on the right track and for the others… RESTARTED on the right track. Your chance to finally make a big impact has come and now I am super excited to get this going with you. At this point I want you to take a deep breath and realize that everything you’ve learned in the past is very difficult to succeed and I am going to show you how to live the RIGHT WAY. With an automated business that gives you the time 106
freedom, the location freedom and fin FINANCIAL freedom you’ve been Seeking. It's your time to shine. #1 Register for the OneOnOne Training Trial I am hosting for you LIVE on www.iamankitsrivastava.com #2 Make sure you Reply to the mails my team will send you providing you with knowledge about the Training. #3 Get ready to take notes and be excited to get this GOING! I know you are smart and you will make the right decision. I cannot WAIT to see and hear from you when you see what's in store for you. See you on the other side, Ankit Srivastava Karan Singh Chhabra
THANK YOU Hey Hope you have gone thoroughly through this book and received some value regarding your hustle or business. I would personally like to Thank You for taking the time and purchasing this book. You reading this book not only gave you enough pleasure, but it gave me immense satisfaction and a feeling of pride that i was able to help someone who required my guidance. 107
I would also like to invite you again to my personal oneonone coaching where I personally take you StepByStep through the creation of your business all from starting to getting those sales and then scaling the store and finally automation which really will help you spend your valuable time for the people and experiences you were always meant to feel. Thank You and I hope that you gain immense success in your endeavours and make me feel proud and complete a part of the mission I am on Making You Rise!
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About the Authors Ankit Srivastava An Online Entrepreneur who debuted by building his own android application at the age of 22 which currently garners more than 5M+ Downloads. He started with his entrepreneurial journey when he was fed up with the statusquo and decided he has to do something innovative for the better good. Currently he owns a firm that specialises in android development, Ecommerce, Marketing, Designing and take clients projects. He owns one successful Ecommerce store with revenues as high as $9000/Day . He is working on more stores and more future projects & He can guide you as well! He wishes you all success in all your endeavours. Karanvir Singh Chhabra A medical student at present having thorough knowledge about Ecommerce and specialises in DropShipping and guiding people ahead in life. He is pursuing his Undergraduate from Mumbai at present. He read about Ankit on a Q/A website called Quora and is following him ever since. He is well versed in Designing, Technicalities & Medicine of course. He is also into mindset shaping and business consultancy to create a winning mindset for entrepreneurs along with having sustainable long term businesses. Together He & Ankit wrote this book to help out people that are struggling with sales and Ecommerce businesses right now. He wishes you all the success in the future. Contact: [email protected] | [email protected] 109
Major Courtesy of www.freepik.com for providing the graphics for the book. All text and graphics used above are rightful properties of their respective owners and cannot be copied or reproduced without their permission.
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