You've heard of successful people or even gurus being advertised to you about them making money from dropshipping, but what is dropshipping? If you heard about these two, you're more than likely to have been researching various ways to make money online. Of course, everyone hates their 9-5. Lucky for you, I wrote an article on 200+ ways to make money online and I'm sure you won't want to miss out on that.
With more ways to make money online as new technologies developed, dropshipping became another opportunity for individuals like you to succeed.
What is Dropshipping?
So exactly what is dropshipping? Before getting into it, you need to understand that there will be a lot of testing and finding the right audience/customers. As easy as it sounds online, it's not. It'll take a lot of time, testing, and sacrifice before finding the right product for you and your audience.
Dropshipping explained in a simple way is when you're a middleman promoting products that you find online. You don't need to have the products in stock. Instead, when your store sells the item that you're promoting, you buy it from a third party and have it shipped straight to the person buying it from you.
What is Dropshipping? Example:
In response to "What is Dropshipping," here is an example to provide you a better understanding:
- You create a website and found fidget spinners for cheap on AliExpress. On your page, viewers decided to order fidget spinners from you. After they ordered and added their shipping info, you order from AliExpress for a much cheaper price and have it shipped to their address. With each fidget spinner going for $1 each on AliExpress, you can mark up the prices on your landing page and price it for the amount you feel it's worth. If you list it at $1.50, your profit would be $0.50 per fidget spinner.
Is Dropshipping Worth It?
So is dropshipping worth it? Dropshipping can be worth it depending on if it's the right project for you. If you learn and work hard, you will be rewarded. Not everything comes easy. You will fail many times targetting your audience but the reward will come after an amount of trial and error. Some people prefer affiliate marketing or even referral programs, but my advice to you is to focus on one project at a time.
People are living off of dropshipping and some are still struggling to achieve success. You have to keep in mind that the most successful people, happens to struggle the most during the beginning of their dropshipping journey. Not everything comes easy. You never see the trial and error people go through behind the scenes of successful people.
Affiliate Marketing vs Dropshipping
I'm sure you've heard of people comparing these two ways to make money online. Honestly, they are two completely different things. Each has its pros and cons. Even there is a hefty amount of search result when it comes to this keyword. Affiliate marketing is when you're promoting for a company through referral links while dropshipping is when you're marking up a product that you find online. Both have their differences.
How Do You Promote Your Dropshipping Products?
There are many ways to promote your products online. Some people use paid advertising, SEO organic traffic, or even through link referral. Some notable platforms are Facebook, Google, YouTube, and Instagram.
Let's go over some of the top ways you can get potential customers to your landing page.
- Facebook Ads: You can run promotions by using Facebook ads. The best thing about using Facebook ads is that you can target a specific audience from age to country. You can target their interests and scale it down until you find the pot of gold. Finding a winning audience may be difficult and costly. You'll have to keep testing.
- Google Organic Traffic: Organic traffic is the best kind of traffic because it's free traffic! The only investment is your time because you will have to write articles targeting certain keywords and let it rank for traffic. On average, it takes an article from 3-12 months to rank and get traffic on the search engine.
- YouTube Videos: With YouTube's algorithm nowadays, you will have a better chance of getting viewers if you provide valuable and 10-minute content. YouTube will rank you. As you can see in many popular YouTube videos, there are links in the description of people promoting their products and you can surely do the same.
What Are Some Dropshipping Tips?
Now that you know the basics of dropshipping in this article, let's jump to the tips that I can provide for you on your journey.
Tip 1. When having products on your site, make sure to have a specific niche for a better conversion rate. You don't want to promote car accessories and garden products on the same website. Customers will be confused about what they're looking for.
Tip 2. If you're focusing on free traffic (organic traffic), my recommendation to you is to make sure you do your keyword research. It's very important that you do in order to rank. If you focus on the buyer's intent keywords, you will have what the audience is looking for.
Tip 3. Not sure on what platform to use to create your website? My suggestion, as well as many others, will recommend WordPress. You will have more freedom and tools to use. Again, it's your choice but my biggest tip is to use WordPress.
What Do I Think About Dropshipping?
Overall, I think the person who came up with the idea of dropshipping is a genius. Back before dropshipping was well-known, you would think that you would need products and inventory to start a business. Imagine how many people failed businesses with tons of inventory. This is an awesome opportunity for many people that don't have funds in starting a business. If you think dropshipping is your path to success, I encourage you to start. Focus on one project at a time. If you don't think that dropshipping is for you, be sure to check out one of my articles: 200+ Ways To Make Money Online!
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