I recently discovered why dropshipping is one of the most successful online internet business models. I realised that dropshipping, as an online internet business model has many advantages that can work in your favour.
With dropshipping, as an online marketer you only do what you enjoy most – selling online. You can focus all your time and energy on selling products online while your suppliers take responsibility for manufacturing, inventory and shipping. Well, that takes lots of load off your shoulders.
Imagine you having to do everything like planning, manufacturing, quality control, inventory, shipment etc. How tedious would it be to do all these? You do not have to do any of these with dropshipping. With dropshipping, you just market the products that you chose to sell and get your suppliers to ship them on your name.
How dropshipping works is it starts with you advertising to sell products. As a result of the adverts, your buyers place orders with you. Once you have orders from buyers, you direct your dropshipping supplier to deliver the products you sold to your buyers usually on your name. Your dropshipping supplier takes the responsibility of more tedious tasks and this is why dropshipping is very advantageous for you.
Why dropshipping is great?
Many advantages that dropshipping brings make it a great online internet business model. Advantages of dropshipping include the below:
Easy to start
The basic concept of dropshipping business takes away the need for many tedious tasks from you. As per dropshipping business model, you can easily start dropshipping business in three simple steps.
1.
Identify what products you want to sell,
2. Build websites, social media, email campaigns etc. around your products and
3. Drive traffic to your online product offerings.
As you can see, there are no complicated or tedious tasks involved in starting a dropshipping business. The ease of getting started is one of the main advantages of dropshipping. You can easily start your dropshipping business even if you have never had any business experience online or otherwise. It is also very easy to run a dropshipping business.
Low investment to start
Drop shipping business model offers you the opportunity to start online marketing business with minimal investment. The only investments you need would be into developing your eCommerce website, social media campaigns and any advertisement campaigns.
Thus the investment involved in starting a dropshipping business is very low compared to that for a traditional marketing business. Dropshipping does not involve any investment into product design, manufacture or inventory unlike traditional businesses. You just need to find dropshipping suppliers that can manufacture and ship the products you sell online. So you can start dropshipping business with very low investment.
Low operational overhead costs
As you do not need any physical space, or products to store, your operational costs would be very low. You do not need to pay rent for a warehouse space or pay for staff to maintain your inventory or insurance for warehouse and stock. You will not have to pay for warehouse license or warehouse utilities as you never need a warehouse in dropshipping.
Your only operational overhead would be maintaining your website which actually works out lot cheaper than you think. If you want to invest more money into advertisement etc. you can pay for advertisement and email marketing which works out very reasonable.
Wide range of products to choose from
In dropshipping, you need not manufacture any products of your own no matter what niche you choose. You just select few products from dropshipping wholesalers or dropshipping suppliers and market them on the internet.
SaleHoo offers you an online directory of trusted dropshipping suppliers and wholesalers. We also have a review on SaleHoo on this website to help you connect with trustworthy dropshipping suppliers and wholesalers. Please find our review of SaleHoo here.
As you have the option to choose from any dropshipping suppliers you wish, your range of products can be as wide as you want. This gives great amount of freedom to choose products to sell online. You can also switch from one product to another depending market trends and shifts in customer behaviour .
Virtually no risk
In dropshipping, you do not need to invest much money into starting and running your business which means you do not risk your money.
The fact that you never have an inventory means you never have a risk in your business. In the unlikely possibility that you do not sell, you have nothing to worry about. You can always go for another product or adapt a different marketing strategy.
Work from anywhere
Just like many other online internet business models, you can start and run your dropshipping business from any where as long as you are online.
You can start and run your online dropshipping business with a smart phone and a laptop as long as you have access to internet. This gives you enormous independence of location. You can be sitting at home or a coffee shop or even travelling internationally to all your dream locations while your dropshipping business makes money for you.
Flexible working hours
Dropshipping business does not need you to be working strict hours every day. You can enjoy the flexibility that dropshipping business offers you and choose which hours you would work for. Some days you can work long hours and some other days you can just take it easy.
Such flexibility of working hours can help tremendously with your work life balance. Your dropshipping business can take orders even when you are asleep. You may need to manually check the orders and direct your suppliers to ship the products to your customers every time you have an order. In some cases, it may be possible to automate this too.
Easier scalability
If you want to scale a traditional marketing business where you manufacture, store and ship your products, it may be extremely difficult and complicated. You may need to increase your production capacity, inventory and shipment logistics to meet the new higher sales.
In dropshipping, you can scale your marketing business as you wish as long as you are able to get enough orders. To scale your dropshipping business, you just need to do some research to find more suppliers or products to meet your new sales numbers. The production and shipment arrangements for the higher sales would be taken care of by suppliers and you do not need to worry about them.
