First, let’s review each step required to get a drop shipping website up and running.
The first thing to do is research what type of products you want to sell online. This is important because the ideal is to 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 who can offer you good wholesale prices. Here you have the option to search for wholesale suppliers or dropshipping suppliers. Wholesale providers may offer you lower prices, however they require you to buy in bulk. This usually requires you to have a large sum of money available to stock the products, which is why I highly recommend looking for dropshipping providers. The prices of the dropshipping providers will be higher than those of the wholesale providers, however, you will still be able to make some profit without having to put up a large sum of money to buy products in advance.
Finding a good dropshipping 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 provide you with skateboards, however, you must apply some important criteria when conducting your search. For example, you should always work with dropshipping providers that only deal with real companies and not directly with the public. This will be a good indication that the supplier really reserves its wholesale prices only to people with a registered company. You can also use third party services that can provide you with a list of provider names that can offer drop shipping services. Another criterion 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, choose only suppliers that have a physical warehouse in the US This is to ensure that you get fast and affordable shipping, which is extremely important to your business reputation. You also want a vendor who can blindly ship products to your buyer. Blind direct shipping 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 don’t want your buyers to discover the source 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 with 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 vendors, so make sure you have all of your LLC license settings before applying for a new reseller account.
Once your reseller account is approved, you will need to request that the vendor send you their product details. This information should include data such as the item number, item name, item description, retail price, wholesale price, category name, large and small images, and quantity in stock. Typically, providers can provide this data via CSV or XML files or with an FTP access to their server. Please note that each provider is different and can provide you with various ways to obtain your data.
Once you have access to your product data, you will need to download this information to your computer and import it into your shopping cart. Usually, shopping carts 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 function. Remember that items can always be available or out of stock, so it is important to update your shopping cart regularly to avoid selling products that are no longer available.
The next step is to create your website. I recommend that you create your website only after you have found a suitable provider that meets your product requirements because this can have an impact on the domain name that you will choose for your site. At this point, in our example, we have chosen a skateboard supplier and have successfully gained access to their product data, so we are ready to proceed with the creation of a website dedicated to the sale of skateboards.
Your next step will be to choose a domain name for your website. I recommend that you include the name “skateboard” in your domain name, as this will help you get good results with search engines over time. For example, in this case, you could choose a name like SkateboardFactory. Once you have chosen a domain name to your liking, you can register it with any registration website.
The next step will require you to find a hosting service where you can create your website and import your product data. You can usually get hosting services from the same place where you will buy your domain name.
Now that you have a domain name and product data, it’s time to build your website, which will require shopping cart software. There are several 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 functionality provided with your chosen shopping cart.
Once you’ve uploaded your site with the products, you’ll need to choose a payment gateway to receive payments from your buyers. Typically, shopping carts can 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 the products to your buyers on your behalf. The difference between your selling price and your wholesale cost will be your profit.
