Drop Shipping Success - A great Business Venture by Mel Feller

As with any flourishing industry, there are some techniques for success that not everyone knows.

Therefore, starting your own drop shipping business can be exhilarating. There is nothing like the possibility of earning a moderate to large income from drop shipping to motivate anyone.

Nevertheless, if you fail, it can be costly in lost time, lost money and lost self-esteem.  The best thing about drop shipping if you use suppliers you are not holding any inventory.

Therefore, I have outlined some basic steps that will assist you in developing a successful and profitable business.

These are the fundamental “must-do” action items that will make or break your new endeavor. If you can successfully implement these, you will be able to get many other things wrong and still have a great chance at success.

First thing is to Add Value:

Having a solid plan for how you can add value to your customers is the most crucial success factor. This is important for all businesses, but much more so, in the world of drop shipping, where you will be competing with multitudes of other shops carrying similar products and prices.

With drop shipping, it is easy to think you are selling customers a product. However, successful small merchants understand that it is not only the product they offer, rather they are selling insights, information and solutions. You think you are an on line business but you are also in the information business.

So how are you going to add value and help solve problems for your customers? If you are unsure, spend some time brainstorming on possible benefits you are able to offer. If you are struggling to answer this question for any given niche, you may want to consider picking a different market or niche. 

If you are not able to add value through quality information and guidance, then the only thing you are able to do is to compete on price. While this has been a successful strategy for Walmart, it is not going to help you build a successful drop shipping business at all.  You must fill a void and fill a niche!

Second Thing is to Focus on Marketing and SEO:

After knowing and establishing, that adding value is a key success factor.  The next is being able to drive traffic to your new site. The number one problem and frustration new online businesses is to face a lack of traffic to their websites. Too many businesses slave away for months on the perfect site only to launch it to a world that has no idea it exists. 

That is why, marketing and driving traffic is essential to the success of your business and is difficult to outsource well, especially if you have a small budget and are bootstrapping your business. You need to take the personal initiative to develop your own SEO, marketing, outreach and guest posting skills.

This is particularly crucial during the first 6 to 12 months, when no one knows who you are. Following your site launch, you need to dedicate at least 75% of your time on marketing, SEO and traffic generation for at least 4 to 6 months that is right, 4 to 6 months! Once you have recognized and created a solid marketing foundation, you can scale back and cut back a bit on the work you are putting in. However, in the beginning phase, it is impossible to place too much emphasis on marketing.

If you are not a marketing or SEO expert yet, the following resources and blogs are a great way to get started:

SEO Resources:

SEOmoz – One of the most popular SEO communities online.  Their beginners guide to SEO is a particularly great resource for those starting out.

SeachEngineLand – Extremely prolific SEO blog, with dozens of new posts each day.

SEOBook – A popular SEO blog and the home of a paid private community for SEO professionals.

Distilled – This marketing and SEO agency has a top-notch blog and a number of quality training courses and guides, many of which are free.

Marketing Resources:

Hubspot Blog – Advice on everything inbound marketing related, from driving traffic with email to social media tips.

Seth Godin's Blog – Solid high-level advice on marketing and building an audience.

Burst Free Product Photos - High-quality product images for popular drop shipping products.

QuickSprout – A blog by well-known entrepreneur Neil Patel dedicated largely to marketing, SEO and traffic generation.

KissMetrics Blog – In-depth marketing posts with a slant toward analytics, usability and conversion.

SparringMind – How to use behavioral psychology to help influence customers and market your business.  

CopyBlogger – Content marketing tips with an emphasis on writing effective, compelling copywriting.

Mixergy – Interviews with successful entrepreneurs in the technology and online fields.  Not focused exclusively on marketing, but lots of applicable information for aspiring entrepreneurs including marketing and early-stage advice.

Ecommerce Marketing Resources:

ecommerceFuel – Tips from an active ecommerce entrepreneur on how to found, grow and market online stores.  Written specifically for individual storeowners and smaller stores.  

Thirdly Specialize:

Almost every successful drop-shipping store we all look at has one thing in common: It specializes in a certain product or niche. The more those stores specialize, the more successful they tend to be.

You do not want to just sell backpacks. You want to sell backpacks designed for around-the-world travelers obsessed with lightweight gear. In other words, look at the largest segment possible. In addition, you do not want to just sell security camera systems and equipment. Rather, you want to focus on security systems for gas stations.

Many think narrowing their focus limits their potential customer base and will cost sales. However, the opposite is true! Specializing allows you to communicate more effectively with your customers, stand out more easily from the competition and compete against, and for, a smaller field. Focusing on a specialized niche is rarely a bad move to become successful in a drop-shipping endeavor.

If you are launching a store in a new niche, you probably will not know what segment of your customers to focus on and that is OK. Nevertheless, as you gain experience with your customers you should identify the segment that is the most profitable and that which allows you to add the most value. Then, begin to focus your business to position exclusively on those customers' needs and problems. You will be astonished at how your conversion rates skyrocket even if you are charging a premium price.

Remember: If everyone is your customer, then no one is. Specialization makes it easier to differentiate yourself, charge a premium price and concentrate your marketing efforts more effectively.  Therefore becoming a Walmart is out of the question!

Fourth is to Have a Long Term Outlook:

Building a drop shipping business is like building anything else of value, it takes a substantial level of commitment and investment over time. Nonetheless, for some reason people adopt the understanding that they can build a passive six-figure income with drop shipping after a few months of part-time work. That is just not the way business works; in other words, it will realistically take at least a year to build a business that generates an average full-time income.

It is also important to understand that the first few months are the most difficult. You will struggle with uncertainties, run into concerns with your website and will likely have an underwhelming website launch that generates zero sales. Understand that this is perfectly a normal occurrence! Rome was not built in a day, nor were any successful drop shipping businesses.

If you mentally prepare for a challenging beginning and do not expect to get rich overnight, you will be much more likely to stick with your business until it becomes a success.  You must remember that anything worthwhile takes time and care, much like a garden.

Fifth, You Must Offer Excellence Customer Service:

The world of the internet has always been a transparent place, but the increase of social media has made your business reputation even more important to your success online. If you do not treat your customers well, they will often let the entire world know, which unfortunately, includes many potential customers.

The biggest customer service risk for drop shipping merchants is having tunnel vision on per-order profits and losses when fulfillment issues go askew. In other words, it is critical to accept that drop shipping can get chaotic, that you will be paying to clean up some messes, and that you should not always try to pass these costs on to your customer. If you are not occasionally losing money on individual orders to make customers happy, you are unlikely, providing very good customer service.

Having happy customers is some of the best marketing you can do. As is true in all businesses, it is much easier to make a sale to a satisfied customer than to try to convince a new prospect to buy. If you treat your customers exceptionally well, they are likely to spread the word and refer others to you. With top-notch service, you can build a business where repeat customers generate much of your revenue.

Making customer service a priority sets your drop shipping business up for success, so ensure it is a priority from the inception. 

Sixth, Do Not Sweat the Details:

Do not concentrate too much on the details. Your company name, logo, theme or email marketing service are not going to determine your success. 

What makes a business successful are the things above: adding value, marketing, outstanding customer service, specializing and a long-term commitment. Still, new merchants will spend weeks, if not months, struggling to make a decision between two shopping carts or providers. That is valuable time better spent developing the core aspects of the business.

Do your research and make an informed decision, but do not let the small decisions paralyze you.

Finally, The Most Important Step Is To Start:

The most important step, the one that most people never take, is to start building their business! This is the hardest thing for most people and it is usually a result of fear and uncertainty. 

It is a common mistaken belief that successful entrepreneurs have a rock-solid foregone conclusion about their business at the outset. When you dig a little deeper, you will find that most beginning drop shippers had several fears and reservations about how things would turn out. Yet they moved forward with their plan despite these doubts.

If you are serious about building your own drop shipping business, you will need to do the same. Do your research, evaluate your options and then move forward with that information in spite of your fears and reservations. It is what successful entrepreneurs always do!