What is Dropshipping?

Dropshipping is simply an ecommerce fulfilment method that allows you (the seller) to fulfill your orders by buying the product from a third-party after you’ve sold the products to your customers; the supplier will then ship the product directly to your customer.

​

In dropshipping; you (the retailer / seller) don’t need to have or keep any inventory of your own, instead you buy the products from other suppliers (third-party) when needed, and you instruct the supplier to ship the product to your customer directly; on like the usual supply chain that the product sold are own, sold and supplied by the seller (you).

 

How Dropshipping works: Detailed guide for beginners.

When your customers buy from your ecommerce store or any platform you’re selling from; you then buy the product from a wholesaler or a supplier that provides a dropshipping services.

Basically, you’ll pay the product supplier and the supplier will ship the product directly to the customer (the buyer), and without the customer knowing that the product was not shipped from you directly.

Basically, the supplier is somehow working for you, because they don’t get involved with your customers; they only ship the products on your behalf.

 

 What are the benefits of dropshipping?

• One of the most interesting part of drop shipping is the fact that it has low Capital requirements. You don’t need to invest thousands of dollars on inventory.

• You have limited risk if you choose to use drop shipping as the means of fulfilling your orders.

• Also; due to the fact that you don’t need to have inventory of your own before you can dropship; that means, you have options to varieties of products in drop shipping business.

• You have the opportunity to scale up your dropshipping business without any financial constraints.

• With dropshipping; you’re not confined to any location. Basically you can operate from anywhere in the world (in as much as you have access to the internet).

 

 How to find Dropshipping Suppliers.

One of the easiest way to find a dropshipping supplier is by using wholesale directories.

Alternatively, you have an option of contacting suppliers directly yourself; although this method will surely require lots of work from your side (such as product research and researching the product selling trends).

If you choose to find suppliers on your own; your best option will be to carry out your own research using Google.

​

Please note: most top suppliers that provides dropshipping service don’t mostly appear on the first page of Google because they somehow don’t optimize their website for maximum visibility in search engines (my opinion though)! And that may make it quite very difficult for you to find them easily.

​

From my experience; finding decent, honest and reliable dropshipping suppliers does requires lots of hard-work from your side but the opportunities are endless if you have the time for such in-depth research!

​

NOTE: If you decide to find suppliers on your own; please ensure to ask them if they can dropship their products for you and be sure there’s no hidden charges involve. In most cases, the supplier will happily give you all the information you need. Although, some of them might want to know the size of your ecommerce store before they deal with you!

 

In Conclusion

Dropshipping is surely a real business like any other business out there and it does have endless opportunities of its own.

If you truly want to make money online without having to risk much investment; then dropshipping is likely one of your best options.