Dropshipping: The simple way to starting your own online store

With all this cryptocurrency hype, I have start to wonder if I want to continue with my online stores. With the great risk of crypto, comes great gains. So why am I still talking about dropshipping? Because as we need to diversify our portfolio, I feel that diversifying the way we make money is also a great idea! We shouldn't just put all our time into one thing. The more ways we can make extra income, the more we can invest in crypto.

What is dropshipping?

Dropshipping is a fulfillment method where a store doesn't have to fork over tons of capital to purchase the products they want to sell. Also, with dropshipping, the store does not have to stock any of their products. Instead, when a customer purchase the products, the store would purchase it from a third party and that said third party would fulfill the order. The order would be shipped directly to the customer.

What are the benefits of dropshipping?

There are many benefits when it comes to dropshipping; some being that it is very easy to start, less capital than traditional method, low overhead and you have a wide variety of products to sell.

• Easy to start: Starting a dropshipping method store is one the most easy way to start an online store. With the many tools that we have nowadays, we can open an online store within minutes. Using tools such as Shopify, which gives you a 14 days trial, you can open a functional online store in a few clicks. Once you setup the settings, then you add the many apps available in the Shopify App store. Each of these apps will help you get your store looking like you have been in business for years.


• Less Capital: Like how I pointed above, dropshipping does NOT require you to stock any product. This means that all you are spending money on initially is getting a domain name, theme (if you are using Shopify), monthly subscription fee (this could be Shopify or hosting server). Although you will not need a big capital, you will need a lot of time (especially if you are like me and every detail counts).


• Low Overhead: Since you do not have to deal with anything other than making sure you send your orders to your dropshipper to fulfill, you do not need to pay for shipping softwares, boxes, tape, printer, warehouse, etc. Being able to put these things aside, you are saving a lot money. In fact, when I started my first online store, I did it from my home office. All I needed was my handy computer and some time on my hand. Doing so saved me so much money.


• Wide Variety: Back to the fact that we do not have to stock any of the products that you sell, you can sell anything and everything; as long as your supplier/dropshipper have it available. As long as you have it listed on your website, you are golden.

There is one more benefit of dropshipping and this benefit is my most favorite one. Recently, I found a new passion of traveling. Dropshipping makes it easy for me to travel and still manage my online store. Since I do not have to actually pack my products up and ship it out, I can be anywhere; Cancún, Dubai, or Bahamas. As long as I have a working internet connection, I can spend a few hours processing the orders and then off to enjoying my day.

Roadmap of Dropshipping

1. Customer purchases a product
2. You send the information over to the supplier (product, quantity, customer's shipping address)
3. Supplier ships the product and send you the tracking
4. You update your customer with the tracking

Conclusion

Dropshipping is the most stress-free way to build a successful online business. There are a few disadvantages such as low margin and inventory issues, but when you step back and look at the bigger picture, this method is a very profitable method. You put your effort in listing the products and making your website look good. That is it.

This the most simplest explanation to dropshipping, however, if you want to get more into depth about it, drop a comment and let's discuss.