Dropshipping Primer

This article is a dropshipping primer to learn how people make dropshipping websites. This primer is for those who want to want a quick understanding of how dropshipping works.

Components

Dropshippers are popping up everywhere because the resourses on the internet make dropshipping easy to set up. Setting up a dropshipping business consists of a few main part:

• Online Stores
• Supplier/Product
• Customers

There is not an order that this needs to follow.

Online Store

Starting with an online store is the easiest way to go in today’s time. There are resources on the internet to quickly build a website to sell products on. A few examples are Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace.

In addition, after setting up the online store, it is relatively easy to find products using applications within the website. For example, Oberlo and Spocket are a few well known product sourcing applications on shopify, which help find products for your store and import them directly into the store.

Supplier/Product

Starting with finding a supplier or product can be done a few different ways.

Starting with the supplier may be difficult without actually building a website. It is difficult to convince a supplier to work with a dropshipper without showing that dropshipper already has a store and is making sales.

Starting with the product may be easier because there are websites like Oberlo and Spocket. These websites can help find products to dropship and, as stated above, can be integrated with the online store to add the products on the website.

Customer

Starting with finding customers can both be easy and hard. Dropshippers can use crowd sourcing websites like GoFundMe to create a campaign and learn about potential customers and their interest in the product. This route will help to better understand the demand of a product before spending the time and money to make a store or finding a supplier.

If the dropshipper is selling a product from a dropshipping sourcing website, like alibaba.com, it may not be the best way to go because crowd sourcing takes time and competitors can easily start selling right away.

On the other hand, if a dropshipper is not selling a pre-made product but a product they have designed, it may be the better route. The dropshipper can then determine whether it is worth it to spend money and have a supplier create a large quantity of a product that has not been sold before.