For many wannabe eCommerce merchants, the goal is the same: Create something that’s yours so that you can generate an income, enabling you to work from anywhere.
But if you’re just starting out, you might not have the warehousing space or funds to purchase tons of inventory for your online store. This is where drop shipping comes into its own.
How Dropshipping Works
For the uninitiated, dropshipping is an order fulfillment method that doesn’t require you to warehouse the products you sell. Instead, when you make a sale on your website, you purchase the product from a third-party supplier who then delivers the order to your customer.
That said, in this article, we’ll take a look at how you can get started with dropshipping using Spocket.
Plan
‘Fail to plan and plan to fail’ – yes, it’s cliche, but it’s totally applicable to starting your own dropshipping business. To set yourself up for success, some prep work’s required, for example:
- Consider which products you want to sell. You can get some ideas by checking which products are trending.
- Settle on a niche; this makes it much easier to market your online brand.
- Identify your target audience.
- Register your business with the necessary authorities for your state/country and double-check you comply with any legal requirements.
- Create an online store using a reliable eCommerce platform. Spocket integrates with Shopify, Wix, WooCommerce, Squarespace, and many more.
Set Up Your Spocket Account
If you haven’t already, now’s the time to set up a Spocket account and integrate with your preferred eCommerce platform. Don’t worry; the registration process is easy, and you can integrate your online store with just a few clicks.
You’ll also need to choose your pricing plan; there are four to pick from:
- The Free program: Access to Spocket’s product catalog and 24/7 support
- The Starter Plan: For $24.99 per month, you can sell 25 unique products across various product categories, including beauty, jewelry, tech, and more.
- The Pro Plan: For $49.99 per month, you get access to branded invoicing and 25 premium products (i.e., products not available on the cheaper plans)
- The Empire plan: At $99.99, you can dropship up to 10,000 unique products and a further 10,000 premium products.
- The Unicorn plan: At $299, you have all the benefits of the lower plans and access to the bulk checkout feature. This plan is great for dropshippers who are scaling their businesses.
Start Browsing for Products
Once you’re set up and ready to go, use Spocket to add products to your online store. There are thousands available, organized into product categories, including:
- Toys
- Bath and beauty
- Women’s and men’s clothing
- Home and garden
- Footwear
- Automotive
- Bags and wallets
- Pets
- Accessories
- Seasonal
- Sports and outdoors
…and more!
Spocket also offers the aforementioned premium products. At this point, it’s worth noting that premium products are typically Spocket’s best-selling merch and are often highly discounted.
Pro Tip: Remember to carefully consider which products you sell – every item in your store should appeal to your target audience and compliment your niche.
Set Your Pricing and Configure Your Products
To profit from dropshipping, you need to set product prices that allow for a sustainable profit margin. Too high, and shoppers might turn away. In contrast, too low, and you probably won’t generate the revenue you want.
To determine the right price for a product, consider the base cost (i.e., what your supplier’s charging), markup, and shipping costs.
Spocket makes calculating profit margins easy with its profit margin calculator. Just log into your Spocket account and click on ‘Imports List.’ Then, once you’ve found a product, you want to calculate the profit margin of:
- Click on Variants
- Enter the sales price you’re considering selling at
- Then, Spocket automatically calculates how much profit you’ll make after paying the initial product price and shipping.
Simple, right?
Are You Ready to Start Dropshipping?
And that’s it! You now have all the basics to hit the ground running and start taking orders from customers without spending any money on inventory and warehousing.
After this, it’s imperative to plan and execute an effective marketing strategy to drive traffic to your online store and make those all-important sales. But that’s a blog post for another day.
In summary, Spocket makes drop shipping easy with its vast product catalog and four pricing plans. So it’s possible to launch your dropshipping venture without having to spend tons of money. In addition, Spocket offers 24/7 chat support on all its plans, as well as a valuable online Help Center. Here you’ll find plenty of information about dropshipping and growing your business. Enjoy!