Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening! This is Andy from wholesale-help.com, back
with another episode of Reader's Questions.
Today's question comes from John Jimmy right here on the YouTube channel. John is saying,
"Hey, I love your videos. I have a question for you. Would you be willing to make a video
on what not to do when dropshipping, or what to look out for, or easy mistakes that shouldn't
be made?" Yes, I'll do that for you right now, John.
I will talk about what not to do, but I think it's more important what to do and definitely
what to look out for, and also, we're going to cover some of the mistakes that shouldn't
be made. But, let's be positive here, and let's talk about all the things we definitely
should be doing, because, let's face it - there are infinite things that you shouldn't be
doing. You shouldn't be looking up dropshipping suppliers while standing in a bucket of water
during a lightning storm, for example. That's not a good thing to be doing. You shouldn't
try to make a cup of tea in a chocolate teapot whilst researching dropshipping. That's also
not a good thing to do. I could go on for quite a long time about what not to do, but
I think let's be more specific about it, John, and get into some positive ideas about what
we definitely should be doing with dropshipping, so let's get cracking.
Okay, what not to do. The first point I want to make is, don't go for the low-hanging fruit.
In other words, don't go for the first site you find, because it's not difficult to Google
"dropshipping" or "dropshippers" and come up with some results. If you can find a website
at the front of Google, so will 40,000 other people also looking to get into dropshipping.
There's a very good chance your competition is going to be massive for all those products
on those sort of sites. Competition is your main problem with dropshipping, because it's
a lot easier way to get into trading online and making money online. There are lots of
people who look to get into it, and lots of people that want to try to make money this
way. What you need to do is avoid the simple approach. Don't go for the easy option. Don't
go with the crowd, essentially.
We need to look a bit further off the beaten track for some dropshippers we may be able
to make use of. Ultimately, you don't want to find a product you like the look of, get
onto eBay, and find that there are fifty-two separate sellers selling exactly the same
item as you. They'll be competing against each other, driving down the price, and there'll
always be someone who's prepared to sell something for a 45p profit. What you end up doing is
a lot of work for not very much money, and that's not a really good technique to employ.
Now, John, I want to talk about what we should be doing. Starting at the beginning, always
a good place to start, I find - research. There's a website called Goofbid. I've featured
it in previous videos, so I'm not going to go into too much detail here. You can search
on my YouTube channel for more information about Goofbid. Essentially, it's a very handy,
free resource for eBay sellers. You can use a whole host of different tools to research
and look up, find bargains, and all sorts of really clever things. The first thing you
want to do is, use the tools Goofbid has to offer to research your market. If you've got
a rough idea about the things you want to sell, get onto eBay and search for them. Find
the suppliers that are selling a lot of them, the ones with massive feedback and massive
stores that are selling loads of stuff everyday. Take the eBay username, put it into the competitor
research of Goofbid, and you can find out all about them. You can find out what their
top-selling products are, how much they're making every month, so you can really hone
in on exactly what the best items they're selling are.
You can also click on the check box for completed listings on eBay. Once you've done your search
for that item, on the left-hand side, you can refine it for things like new, used, priced
lowest to highest, that sort of stuff. There'll also be an option there for completed listings.
You click that, and it'll show you the prices for all the items that have sold recently.
All the prices in green are the ones that sold; all the ones in red are the ones that
finished unsold. You can get a really good idea about how much these items are going
for. You want to find the items that are selling strongly, you want to find as much information
about those items - which colors, which sizes, which shapes, which brands are the ones that
are selling most - and you want to find out what prices they're selling for. Then, you
can take this information and make an educated decision on what you're going to sell based
on fact rather than a decision plucked out of thin air, which is something that happens
with a lot of people getting into eBay for the first time. Find your market first.
Find what people are looking for first, then go out and find the product. It's a much better
way of doing it. It means that, when you start your business, it'll be on much firmer footing,
and there's a much better chance you're going to make a success of your business.
Let's talk a little bit about product selection. Once you've got a few ideas for the sort of
product you think will sell well, they'll be your keywords. You want to crack open Google
and start with a simple search. Put that keyword in, plus the word "dropshipping". As before,
if it looks like a glossy dropshipping website, it makes it really easy for you to sign up
and start dropshipping, then the chances are, millions of other people will also be doing
that, so be wary of those sorts of sites. You can also put your product keyword in,
followed by "supplier" or "wholesale", and actually find a wholesaler of that product.
Why not get in touch with that supplier, and say, "If I pay for this product, will you
send it directly to my customer and send me the paperwork?" Basically, you're asking for
a dropshipping arrangement. You can only ask, and you'll either get a "yes" or you'll get
a "no". It's very worthwhile asking, because what you'll actually find is, if they say,
"yes", you'll have your own exclusive dropshipping arrangement. You'll have no other dropshipping
competitors in that market. You'll only be competing with people selling wholesale, which
means you're on a level playing field, which makes a big difference. That's well worth
doing.
You'll probably get more "no-s" than "yes-es", but that one "yes" could make your whole business,
so it's well worth finding a supplier and asking the question. To tempt the supplier
even more, you can suggest you'll pay up-front. "I'll buy fifty units of this from you, as
long as you keep hold of it, and as I sell them, I'll give you the customer names, and
you can ship it for me". That might just be enough to sweeten the deal. A lot of high-volume
wholesalers won't be interested in the slightest. They sell pallet-loads of stock. They sell
container-loads of stock. They're essentially all about volume, and they have no interest
in selling individual items, but some smaller wholesalers or smaller suppliers that offer
wholesale deals, they may be prepared to operate in this sort of way. As I said, you can only
ask, and they can only say "no".
All right, what's next? Choose wisely! This part of the process is well worth taking your
time on, because, essentially, this supplier is going to have your reputation in their
hands. If you find a dropshipper that isn't reliable, it's your reputation on eBay that's
going to suffer. You could cause yourself some real problems by choosing the wrong supplier,
so take a bit of time at this point. It's easy to get excited and want to rush on and
start listing some things and making some money - after all, that's the fun part - but
you're just wasting your time if you just jump on board with the wrong supplier. Take
a bit more time. Find the right supplier for you in your niche, and it'll pay off tenfold
in the future.
Ask your supplier about returns. If my customer doesn't want this, how are we going to go
about getting it back to you? If they're already a dropshipper, they'll have a process for
this, but you need to know exactly how it works. You don't want to get stuck paying
for something that gets lost, because, once again, you're going to be the one that's missing
out, not the dropshipper. Figuring these sorts of things out now will save you a lot of time
and hassle in the future.
Lastly, create compelling listings. The amount of times I still see sellers who are supposedly
selling for profit and not selling their own things around the home created a listing with
three lines of plain text and nothing else. Seriously, people, here, if you're going to
try to create a business that makes you money, spend a bit of time. I mean, this should be
obvious! You want to try to make your listing look attractive. You want people to stop at
your listing and read it properly and make a decision about buying from you and not the
other guy. If you've got three lines of text, you're not saying much about yourself, apart
from, "I couldn't be bothered to spend any more time on this". Even if you can't afford
to buy a really flashy-looking listing template, that's okay. It doesn't take much to make
a nice title at the top of the page, to format the text nicely, maybe embed an image in your
listing. Just take your time to format the listing nicely. Make it look professional,
make it look neat and tidy, and make them want to stay and read more about your item.
As always, take a good picture. If you're not happy with the stock picture you get from
the supplier, order one and take the picture yourself. There are even professional photographers
that you can send your item to that will take a really nice, professional picture of your
item. I've definitely seen a few of them on Fiverr, so for $5, you can ship your product
to that person, they'll take some really nice, well-lit, professional product photos for
you, and email you the results. This is well worth investing a small amount of money to
create great pictures, because they make a big difference in selling your product. And,
of course, you'll have an edge over your competition because you'll have something they won't.
You won't have identical images to them, and these are the things that make all the difference.
It says up here, "use related keywords". It should stand to reason, people, if you want
to sell something on eBay, people are going to search using the search box. You need to
put all the relevant keywords in that title. Don't put keywords that aren't related to
the item, because that's not allowed, and eBay will take your listing down, but make
sure you're as descriptive as possible in that title, because that's how people are
going to find your listing. This also applies if you're selling wholesale products on eBay,
as well as dropshipping.
Okay, Jonathan, that's all the bases covered. Don't forget - spend a bit of time researching
it, make sure you choose the right product, choose the right supplier, and create good-looking
listings. If you found this video useful, I'd appreciate it if you hit the thumbs-up
button for me and "like" the video. It'd also be very cool if you hit the "share" tab and
tweeted this or Facebook-ed it. If you haven't got yourself a Wholesale Help membership,
I'm still offering free access to the Wholesale Help member's club. You can click up here
on the top left, and that'll take you through to the sign-up form. If you haven't subscribed
to the Wholesale Help YouTube channel, you can do that by clicking in the top right-hand
corner around about here.
That's it for today's video! I hope this has been useful to you, John, and has given you
a bit more information about what you need to do. As usual, people, thank you very much
for watching. My name's Andy Lawrence, and I'll catch you on the very next video.