First, let’s review each step involved in getting a dropshipping website up and running.
The first thing you’ll need to do is research what kind of products you want to sell online. This is important because ideally you should choose a type of product that you are already familiar with. For example, if you are passionate about skateboards and have a good understanding of these products, this might be a good product line to focus on.
Once you have chosen a product line, in this example we have chosen skateboards, you will need to start looking for a supplier that can offer you good wholesale prices. Here you have the option to search for wholesale providers or dropship providers. Wholesale suppliers may offer you lower prices, however they require you to buy in bulk. This usually requires you to have a large sum of money on hand to store the products, therefore I recommend looking into drop shipping providers. Prices from direct providers will be higher than those from wholesale providers, however, you will still be able to make some profit without having to scrape together a large sum of money to buy products up front.
Finding a good dropship provider is easy as long as you know what to look for. Of course, you can use any search engine to find a supplier that can supply you with skateboards, however, you must apply some important criteria when conducting your search. For example, you should always work with drop shipping providers that only deal with real companies and not directly with the public. This will be a good indication that the supplier is really reserving their wholesale prices only for people with a registered business. You may also use third party services that may provide you with a list of names of vendors that may offer you drop shipping services. Another criteria is to choose providers that are physically located in the same country where you want to advertise your website. For example, if you are located in the US, only choose suppliers that have a physical warehouse in the US. This is to ensure that you get fast and cheap shipping, which is extremely important to your business reputation. . You also want a supplier that can blindly ship products to your buyer. Blind dropship means that the supplier will not reveal their name on the packing slip and will not include any reference to their wholesale cost. This is very important because you do not want your buyers to discover the origin of your products.
Once you have found a supplier that can offer you the type of products you want to sell, you need to establish yourself in a company. Most online entrepreneurs opt for an LLC as it is very affordable and easy to set up. You will need a tax ID when applying for a reseller account with your chosen providers, so make sure you have all of your LLC license setup before applying for a new reseller account.
Upon approval of your reseller account, you will need to request that the vendor send you their product data. This information should include items such as item number, item name, item description, retail price, wholesale price, category name, large and small images, and quantity in stock. Providers can usually provide this data via CSV files or XML files or with FTP access to their server. Please note that each provider is different and may provide you with various ways to obtain your data.
Once you gain access to your product data, you will need to download this information to your computer and import it into your shopping cart. Shopping carts usually offer an import function that can read a CSV file in a specific format. You may need to edit the file with Microsoft Excel to make changes that meet the requirements of your shopping cart import feature. Remember that items can always go in or out of stock, so it’s important to update your shopping cart regularly to avoid selling products that are no longer available.
The next step is to build your website. I recommend that you build your website only after you have found a suitable provider that meets your product requirements because this may have an impact on the domain name you choose for your site. At this point, in our example, we have chosen a skateboard vendor and have successfully gained access to their product data, so we are ready to move on to creating a website dedicated to selling skateboards.
Your next step will be choosing a domain name for your website. I recommend that you include the name “skateboard” in your domain name, as this will help you rank well with search engines over time. For example, in this case you could choose a name like SkateboardFactory. Once you have chosen a domain name that you like, you can register it at any registrar website.
Your next step will require you to find a hosting service where you can build your website and import your product data. You can usually get hosting services from the same place where you’ll buy your domain name.
Now that you have a domain name and product details, it’s time to create your website, which will require shopping cart software. There are various shopping cart programs available and you can find many on any search engine.
Once you have installed the shopping cart of your choice on your hosting service, you will need to import the product data provided by the provider. This will require you to take some time to understand the import feature provided with your chosen shopping cart.
Once you’ve loaded your site with products, you’ll need to choose a payment gateway to receive payments from your buyers. Shopping carts can usually support many types of payment gateways, so it’s a simple matter of choosing which one you want and completing the appropriate settings through your shopping cart management section.
You are now ready to start advertising your website and taking orders. In this business model, you will collect payments from your buyers through your website and then pay your supplier the wholesale cost to ship products to your buyers on your behalf. The difference between your selling price and your wholesale cost will be your profit.