Want to know how to set up a dropshipping store automatically? Then you’ve come to the right place.
There was a time when shopkeepers could only set up shop in brick and mortar locations.
Young businesspeople in today’s world can open up shop online without worrying about rent or inventory. The dropshipping business model is largely responsible.
Through the use of automated dropshipping, you can make your business more flexible, cost-effective, and manageable. You only need to learn the proper configuration steps. Here’s the lowdown on dropshipping, why it’s so challenging to manage manually, and how our model can help you succeed
The Basics of Dropshipping
You need a firm grasp on how dropshipping functions in order to set up a successful dropshipping enterprise.
When you sell goods via dropshipping, you don’t need to maintain a physical storefront, and you can still take advantage of wholesale pricing without having to make large initial purchases.
Imagine a business that has been streamlined to its absolute maximum efficiency.
If you go to a store like Target or Home Depot, you’ll see actual products and browse actual shelves. They need to buy in bulk from a supplier at a wholesale price if they plan to sell a lot of the same thing. They turn a profit by charging more for those items than they cost to produce.
The concept of drop shipping is essentially the same. The main differences are not having a storefront and not having to stock up on inventory. When a customer makes a purchase on your website, you then ship the product directly to them. When a customer places an order with you, you immediately have that order placed with your supplier so that the product can be shipped to the customer.
By doing so, you can avoid the overhead associated with producing products, storing unsold stock, and paying employees to handle inventory. All of that is handled by the vendor themselves.
The Difficulty of Managing Dropshipping
If you’re trying to manage your inventory the old-fashioned way, dropshipping may not be the best option for you.
You see, even though you avoid dealing with an internal stockpile, you still need to coordinate an inventory in order to get your goods to your customers on time.
Every unexpected sale slows you down when your stock is online and managed by a third-party supplier. And as a dropshipper, your competitive edge over other retailers will come from your ability to move quickly and efficiently.
Dropshipping was initially a terrible idea for entrepreneurs. You had to devote all of your time to inventory management. The next paragraph will detail the system’s history and the steps taken to achieve full automation.
Traditional Dropshipping
We’ll refer to this as the “classic” dropshipping model. There is a set procedure that it adheres to.
The first step was identifying reliable dropshipping vendors. Everything you need to know about a product, from its price to its description and even a picture, is right there. After gathering the necessary data, you can publish a product page on your website and begin taking orders. When you start receiving orders through your online shop, you’ll want to compile a separate Excel sheet for each of your suppliers, detailing the orders for the goods they’ve provided.
Once the order has been shipped, you will receive a list of completed orders and tracking numbers in an excel file, which you will need to manually check at various points.
Picture yourself doing that for a hundred customers simultaneously. Even if you order in bulk, the majority of your time will still be taken up with fulfilling individual customer orders and overseeing your relationship with your supplier.
Oberlo and Dropified
Oberlo and Dropified mark a turning point. These apps help you connect your store directly to AliExpress (an online store like Amazon, owned by Alibaba) and use it as a marketplace for dropshippers like you. You could automatically import the products on your store and they make it easier to pay orders.
However, there is a couple of problems also with this system.
First, purchasing on Aliexpress, you have to buy at business-to-consumer prices, rather than wholesale prices, which shrinks your profit margins considerably. In addition, getting your products requires dealing with several different AliExpress vendors. Each supplier has its own quality standards and shipping rules. Plus you can’t sell private labeled products, so this means that you can’t really build a brand.
Even if these apps help you to simplify dropshipping business management and, in part, automate some business daily tasks, they still leave your online store in a state of flux. You’re spending a little less time babysitting your inventory, but not much.