For those of you internet enthusiasts who want to start an online business but lack the necessary upfront capital, what if I tell you, you can start a fully-fledged e-commerce store without any investment? Will you believe me? Is it too good to be true?
Well, it is TRUE. Even thousands of entrepreneurs are already following this business model and making millions of dollars every year by just spending a fraction of their pocket money. It is one of the best-kept secrets of the Internet that I am finally going to reveal in front of you today.
In the formal language, this concept is called Dropshipping. I know you are curious to know this business model. So, without further ado, let’s get into it.
What is Dropshipping?
Dropshipping is a kind of retail fulfillment method where a store is not required to keep the products it sells in stock. Instead, when a store gets requirements from its buyers, it purchases the item from a third party and gets it shipped directly to the customer. The major difference between dropshipping and the standard e-commerce model is that the seller does not have to stock or own any inventory. Instead, the trader can simply purchase the products based on the requirements from a third party, which normally is a wholesaler or a manufacturer.
You can start dropshipping on any web platform. Dropshipping tools, such as Alidropship or SaleSource are a must-have if you want to take your online business to the next level.
AliDropship is available for both WordPress and WooCommerce, AliDropship automates several factors from Importing products, product description, images, price updation, reviews’ imports, order fulfillment to minimize as much as 70% of your hard work in this dropshipping business that too with proper reporting, payment integration, error checking and security.
Main Advantages of Dropshipping over E-Commerce
We will get to AliDropship again later but first, let’s compare dropshipping and e-commerce to see what advantages dropshipping can give you over a regular e-commerce startup.
- Low startup costs: This is probably the biggest advantage of dropshipping. It is highly possible to launch an e-commerce business without having to invest thousands of dollars in inventory up front. Unlike in traditional retail stores where the merchant had to invest a huge chunk of capital to purchase their inventory, with the dropshipping model you are not required to keep an inventory of the product unless you already have made a sale and have been paid by the customer. This implies that without any up-front investments in inventory, you can easily start a successful dropshipping business with a very little amount of investment.
- Easy to get started: It can be said without a doubt that running an e-commerce business becomes much easier when you do not have to deal with physical products. With dropshipping model you do not have to sweat over things like managing or paying for a warehouse, packing or shipping your orders, tracking inventory for your accounts, handling returns and inbound shipments, managing your stock level.
- Low overheads: Isn’t it awesome to start a business where your overhead expenses are quite low? With dropshipping you certainly can do that. Since you do not have to deal with purchasing inventory or managing warehouse your overhead expenses are quite low. You can easily run a successful dropshipping business from your home with a laptop.
- Wide range of products: This is another advantage of dropshipping, since you don’t have to purchase the items you can offer a wide array of products if your suppliers keep it and that too without any additional cost.
- Easy to scale up: Unlike retail stores or e-commerce stores, if you intend to scale your business it will also require you to bear the burden of additional work. With dropshipping model, by simply leveraging dropshipping suppliers, you can process additional orders, without any headaches as the work to process additional orders will be borne by the suppliers. Businesses that utilize dropshipping have a better chancing of scaling up than the traditional e-commerce business.
From Where Can You Dropship?
Dropshipping is not directly supported by some of the mainstream e-commerce websites such as Amazon, Walmart, Etsy, etc. but there is an even bigger shopping website which supports dropshipping and has all the items you possibly need in order to become successful in dropshipping. The website is AliExpress.
From small to large items, dead cheap to luxury products, electronics, home decor, spare parts to apparel, AliExpress has everything in abundance. It is a properly organized website with ratings, reviews and product availability from multiple sellers to allow you to pick the one with best price. And, most importantly AliExpress sellers understand dropshipping so, you only need to attach a message telling this and they won’t send the invoice, brand name or promotional banners along with the package you have ordered for your customers, keeping your business secret safe.
AliDropship goes very smoothly with AliExpress. So, product search, product imports, price manipulation, reviews import, order fulfillment and tracking is smooth.
Why to use AliDropship plugin?
Dropshipping can be implemented independently by creating a custom web store and manually adding products on your website but AliDropship adds so much automation to your dropshipping business that you won’t ever think about going back to the manual labor once you’ve tried dropshipping. Advantages of AliDropship goes from automation, customization, marketing all the way up to managing and handling your full store.
Here are the top features of AliDropship which you surely need in your hand to have a hassle-free & fully working dropshipping store:
Automation
- Import & Search: You can use their integrated filters to find your desired products on their website AliExpress.com and then easily add those products to your website in just one click.
- Auto-updating: The auto-updating facility allows the users to keep their product information up to date and consistent with the real-time data from AliExpress.
- Pricing Automation: AliDropshop plugin provides advanced mark-up formula to quickly apply pricing rules to any items on your store.
- Fulfill Orders Automatically: With AliDropshipping plugin you can just click the order button and quickly confirm your order on AliExpress.
- Auto order tracking: The plugin tracks all your orders, updates and sends an email notification to your clients automatically.
Customization
- Built-in Themes: The Plugin provides a variety of professionally designed themes with which you can easily customize and set up your website.
- Product Customization: You can edit your product anytime including changing titles, descriptions, images, and also you can add your own items.
- Unlimited number of products: This is like the sea, there is no limit to the number of products you can offer and sell from your online store.
- WooCommerce & WordPress Support: You can enjoy a wide variety of Woocommerce and WordPress themes and extensions via the WooCommerce & WordPress version of AliDropship plugins.
Marketing
- Discount Coupons: You can run sales and promotions by offering your customers and visitors coupon codes. Choose the type of discount you wish to give.
- Product Reviews: Keep your visitors and customers engaged by allowing them to review and rate your products. Import the reviews onto your site directly from AliExpress.
- SEO product tags: Optimize your product pages on search engines with specific meta tags, titles and meta descriptions.
- Email lists: The plugin collects all the emails of your customers as well as the emails of users who left their contact information on your site but did not complete purchase to follow up on the leads.
- Abandoned Cart: AliDropship plugin sends follow up emails to recover those sales due to cart abandonment.
Managing:
- Live Statistics: It is easy to connect Google Analytics to AliDropship Plugin and get detailed data about your traffic and visitors.
- Payment gateway integration: AliDropship Plugin supports all the popular payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, PayU, etc.
- Inventory Management: You can manage your inventory without any hassle through AliDropship plugins. You can track your stock level and take necessary actions in case the stock decreases or runs out.
- All-in-one Dashboard: AliDropship provides its user an intuitive dashboard all in one place so you do not have to hunt around for modules to monitor and control your orders, sales and all other web-store activities.
- Cashback system: You can earn up to 12% commission on each purchase as an added bonus along with your main dropshopping revenue.
- Lifetime free updates: If you purchase the Dropship plugin you will be entitled to get full after sales support and free lifelong updates with continuously updating options.
With such a comprehensive list of features, it is extremely easy to run a successful dropshipping business. If you are wondering about who can use this gigantic platform here is some handy information for you:
AliDropship plugin can be used by small entrepreneurs and whosoever wants to run an e-commerce store without investing in inventory or stocks. In other word, people like you.
Customers have rated this plugin extremely well and it is easy to see why. Successful dropshippers say that this plug-in is value for money because the plugin offers almost everything you require to successfully run your dropshipping business. So, if you were holding back from your online venture waiting for the magic to happen than AliDropship is the magic you were waiting for. Give it a shot and come back to tell us your success story with dropshipping business and AliDropship.
