There are different ways and platforms to make money online, one of them that has gained popularity recently is drop shipping through Amazon. Many people are making thousands of dollars doing this business.
Drop shipping has its advantages over the conventional online store where you have to stock the goods in your store and ship when you receive an order.
Here are 5 easy steps to get started if you have considered venturing into a drop shipping business.
1. Open account on Amazon as a Seller.
The foremost action to take when starting drop shipping business is to open an account on Amazon as a seller. There are two types of accounts that you can open: Professional and individual account. If you are starting out and not sure of selling more than 40 products in a month, it is recommended that you go for the Individual account. However, it is important you know the benefits and disadvantages of any account you are opting for.
Here are pros and cons to guide you in making decision on which account to sign up for:
For Individual Account:
-
You are not allowed to use 3rd party services like Repricers and Inventory Lab.
You are not qualified to list your product in the Buy Box.
You cannot apply to list your product in restricted categories of Amazon stores.
There is $0.99 fee per item sold.
For Professional Account:
-
You can make use of a spreadsheet to upload various items at once utilizing the seller central.
You will have access to more reports in the seller board.
You are qualified to list your product in the Buy Box.
You can apply to list your products in restricted categories.
You will pay $40 monthly fee plus the $0.99 fee per item sold.
You can build new product pages for your products.
It is important to note that you can choose to upgrade your account at any time.
2. Find the best low-cost drop ship suppliers.
Most drop shippers make good profit using the best platform- Salehoo, to find perfect drop shippers for products that they intend to sell.
To get started, sign up to paid Salehoo account in order to utilize their best tools and features. Search for drop shippers close to you that can ship faster with lesser shipping costs.
Why it is advisable to use this platform is because, most suppliers do not have budget for social media marketing, rather they carry the marketing expenses over to lowering product costs. So, they’d prefer subscribing to Salehoo than doing Google marketing.
Beside it will require more effort on the suppliers’ part to achieve success with PPC marketing so they prefer a dedicated platform for it.
3. Search for low-cost but high-selling products.
When you find a supplier that suits your specifications, look through his catalogue to locate those items that are not expensive but are also selling very well. Ensure that the price difference between what is offered for that item on Amazon and what the supplier is selling is significant enough to make you some profit.
Even if you decide to source for sellers outside the Salehoo platform, the most important thing is that there is profit enough to cover for cost in time and money.
4. Write a well-detailed and search engine optimized titles and descriptions on Amazon.
Now that you are ready with your products, proceed to list them on your Amazon store. Ensure you write SEO product descriptions to enable your products rank high on Amazon search result.
5. Go ahead and start marketing your products using different digital marketing system.
You can outsource the marketing to freelancers on platform like Fiverr.
Trust me, drop shipping is not as hard as it seems. You just need to take a step!
