“Dropshipping is easy money!”, my friend told me both her brothers are bringing in $50k and $80k per month respectively. And the best part? You don’t need to own any inventory.
Now, before you run off to start a dropshipping business, here are three things to consider before getting your hands dirty.
1. Which paid vs free courses to learn from?
Getting started is all about learning how to do it and doing it right.
There are so much information available online, most of them free. Information shared on free courses can be just as valuable, if not better than paid ones. At least that was how I felt on a paid course I took.
There are definitely benefits for paid programmes – like getting unique discount codes on web services; offer handholding and technical troubleshooting to set up your online store.
2. Do you start with a niche or general store?
It’s a huge debate within this industry, but most gurus will advise beginners to start with a general store. This way you get to sell all kinds of products until you find your ‘winning’ product – the one that brings in majority of your income.
Another perspective is to go with a niche store, preferably related to your hobby. This allows some familiarity with your target audience and the things you choose to sell will speak to this group of buyers.
3. Choose your marketing techniques – organic or paid ads?
Organic traffic is the best – because it’s free. But organic traffic takes time to grow and hustlers, like you and me, who start a business like this wants to see money fast.
So they go with paid ads. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with paid ads, in fact, paid ads allows you to target the group of audience who are most likely to become your customers.
My experience building a dropshipping business was a tedious one.
I took a paid course then a free one. Both schools shared completely different points of view listed above. I enjoyed the learning process nonetheless and deployed those knowledge on my business.
What I’ve learnt is that it doesn’t matter which of the above techniques you go with. The key is in the research and choosing the right product to sell.