Starting my Dropship Business: Shopify or Wordpress(In 5 easy steps)

Dropshipping is a tool for achieving freedom for the people who want to live life on their own rules. It's the future of e-commerce and a boon for next gen entrepreneurs. With the ease of business setup and a very little knowledge about how e-commerce works, now you can setup your own dropshipping business.

Why Dropshipping:

Nomadic Lifestyle: Have you ever wondered about working from a exotic beach or scenic mountains. This (dropshipping) gives you such a great lifestyle that you won't even have imagined earlier.
Lean Business Model: You can literally list thousands of items in your website without actually owing even one of those. It follows lean startup model which is the easiest way of starting business online or offline. It is a business model followed by the greatest of the entrepreneurs as Steve Jobs.
Image ref: https://www.slideshare.net/RodKing/steve-jobs-lean-startup-project-management

Scalability: You can reach most of the countries with the advent of digital marketing. Although you start with targeting a small region yet you can scale up to as many countries as you want.

Freedom of choosing a Niche: Its an advantage of drop-shipping that no other business lets you choose. You can literally choose any niche. Moreover you can change your niche as you go if you aren't satisfied with the current one.

How to Start Your Dropshipping Business:


Step 1: Selecting a niche: You can choose any of the below ways to choose your own niche:
  • Use amazon or ebay to find a niche for yourself that you like. While you can choose any of the best selling niche, its advisable to narrow down your niche as much as possible in order to get the most of the customers looking for that particular product. Such as rear brake lights for late model Honda Civics
  • Use Google Trends to find out the latest trend of the niche that you're choosing. A general trend is that if its constant or increasing then you can continue with it. Otherwise you need to change your chosen product.
  • Use below link and choose any domain of your interest:                             https://alidropship.com/best-dropshipping-niches-ultimate-list
Step 2: Naming your website: Look for a domain name that suits your niche and is 2-3 words in length. Its preferable if one of the words define your domain like iphone, tshirts or something else. For ex: Recently I started a domain with the name 7dollarstore.com. Its easier to create a niche this way and users can easily choose any product without caring much about the price.

Step 3: Host your website: Choose a domain on wordpress or shopify depending on your skills and requirements(look below for which to choose). Its better to assign it to someone if you don't have much technical experience. To host your website you can use godaddy or bigrock hosting. I personally prefer bigrock.in as it has smaller downtime and maintenance.

Step 4: Create your store: Its the most important step as user experience is the thing that separates your website from thousand other websites.
  • Look for a theme that is simple yet attractive.
  • Import your products using the underlying importing methods.
  • Use Alidropship if you're using wordpress for efficient automated dropshipping.
  • Do proper SEO of your website if at all you want customers to visit your page.
Step 5: Start Marketing: Marketing gives life to your store. It basically consists of organic and paid marketing techniques. Use below link to get some basic marketing techniques. In general, email marketing and social media marketing are 2 effective techniques.                  http://mikekawula.com/marketing-a-drop-shipping-business/

Do's and Dont's of Dropshipping Business:


  • Its advisable to do a sufficient research of existing dropshipping websites and how they generated traffic.
  • Never rely fully on dropshipping as it may take sufficient time to find a suitable niche.
  • Don't spend too much time in finding a niche. What you can do is find a broad niche and narrow it down as you go.
  • Never do everything on your own as you need to speed it up in the early days. Also, hire a consultant if you feel so.

Common Selling Strategies for Dropshipping:

  • Create a shopping package: sell a pack of 5 products at the profit of two or three products => It will give you an edge over the other shops.
  • Subscription => For example: 10% off on key products every month.
  • Contests => content writing etc.
  • Affiliate websites: make affiliates through the common affiliate websites/ plugins.

Common Marketing Strategies for Dropshipping:

  •  Use Social Rabbit plugin for online marketing, It'll really offload you in quite a great manner. Better buy it from Alidropship once for lifetime and enjoy unlimited free services for lifetime.
  • Create a email list for marketing. Its really costly to do paid marketing on facebook and other social media. Use my below link to download thousands of email address for *free*:
            Mail me on sagarbhatia.iiitm@gmail.com if you want more *free* email addresses.


How to Make a brand for Your Store

  • Connect with your customers via a story. The idea here is that the customer doesn't remember the store but he remembers the story.  The customer must be able to remember you in order to buy something from you. Why and how you started your online store can be a good example for an story.
         Also you can write, how your researched item helps save time and money for customers and. Add some images if possible.
  • Always provide "Chat support" on your website. As it makes your user communication almost flawless and user can give you an honest feedback about your store.
  • In order to create a trust over your store's brand, provide free consultation/ expert advice in regards to how to use your products. 
    •  For example: provide expert advice for your how to stay fit if you provide nutrition related products.


      Common Top Selling Dropshipping Store Ideas
  •  Store for yoga items
  • Yummy tummy soup company => Localized organic nutritious food delivery. => tie up with local gym => Also promote in nearby cities.
  • Painter kits: A one stop shop for the painters
  • Passion related stores: Sports, Music band, Book lovers, Follower of a particular personality(like Obama or Narendra Modi).
  • Seasoned store: Coming football world cup, olympic games
  • Targeted store: like New York T-shirts, custom t-shirts for specific events/ colleges.

  Note: If someone missed the link for email- address for initial mailing list: 
Comment below if any other help regarding dropshipping is required. I'll be more than happy to help. Also mail me on sagarbhatia.iiitm@gmail.com if you want more *free* email addresses.
















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