What is Dropshipping?
Dropshipping is a fairly new category that has been added on to the business market. Yet, it has been thriving its potential beyond expectations among new entrepreneurs, especially for Millennials with low capitals but great understandings of the capacity of e-commerce platforms. The concept of dropshipping; which mainly focuses on eliciting maximum efficiency with minimum resources, has been attracting substantial amount of traffic into the market.
For those of who are not familiar with dropshipping; it is a business model in which an entrepreneur utilizes the e-commerce platform to directly connect the customers and third-party suppliers (dropshipping suppliers) at the same time to draw high profit margin with the lowest cost. When an order is received through their websites, drop-shippers fulfill the order by contacting the third-party suppliers. No need for a warehouse, which means none or minimum operating costs. Everything seems oddly simple and straight-forward. Evidently, there are countless number of problems that may occur during the process considering the fact that the majority of dropshippers are new, individual entrepreneurs with limited budget who lack the market knowledge. As simple as it sounds, tremendous amount of effort needs to be made for them to succeed.
What are some apps you can use to manage your daily dropshipping tasks?
Since dropshipping business is normally operated by a single entrepreneur, the workload can be extremely overwhelming. That’s when the management services for drop-shippers come in. The dropshipping software for e-commerce business offer daily dropshipping management services to alleviate the stress of workloads and to assist them with better control over their businesses. The services they offer often include: order fulfillment automation, private labeling, shipment tracking, product import automation, inventory updates, pricing automation, and bundle sales. Following are a few examples of popular automation services in demand:
Oberlo
Dropified
Importify
Yakkyofy
OBERLO:
Oberlo, it is well-known dropshipping app which is used by millions of drop-shippers. Oberlo limits the services only to Shopify users, as they offer 3 different plans: Starter, Basic, and Pro. The offered services that are followed by each plan greatly differ by prices:
● Starter Plan, which is optimized for an entrepreneur who just launched the business, includes limited number of service availabilities. Users may automatically import 500 products and receive 50 orders per month. List of services that Starter Plan offer are following:
◽ Daily Products Sync
◽ Orders Auto-Fulfillment
◽ Automated Tracking Numbers Sync
◽ Place Bulk Orders
◽ Pricing Automation
◽ Sales Report
◽ Dispute Management
● Once you purchase the Basic Plan option for $29.90/month, the available number of product import increases to 10,000 and 500 orders per month. In addition to the listed services included among the Starter Plan, Oberlo offers shipment tracking and orders fulfillment monitoring for all Basic Plan users.
● Pro plan ($79.90/month) users may import upto 30,000 products a month and receive unlimited number of orders. On top of the services offered to Basic Plan users, Pro Plan users may utilize newly-added service called ‘Multiple Users,’ which allows the users to grant multiple users to manage their business and provide different level of access to every user granted.
There is no service plan that includes warehouse space, which means all returned products must be received by the dropshippers directly from the e-commerce platforms.
DROPIFIED:
Dropified, on the other hand, only offers premium services in 2 different levels: Builder ($47/month) and Premier Plan ($127/month). Unlike Oberlo that limits their services only to Shopify users, Dropified supports services to multiple e-commerce platform users: Shopify, CommerceHQ, WooCommerce, eBay, Alibaba, AliExpress, Banggood, Overstock, Etsy, Wish, Walmart, and many more. Although, it limits automated product imports and specifications to only 4 major platforms: AliExpress, Shopify, CommerceHQ, and WooCommerce.
IMPORTIFY:
Importify, another drop shipping service platform, offers 3 different levels of premium services: Basic ($14.95), Premium ($27.95), and Gold ($37.95). Although it supports product import from various e-commerce websites, users must manually import each product from most platforms listed. Its semi-automatic order fulfillment services are limited only for the users with Gold membership; using Aliexpress, Amazon, Dhgate, and DropshipperUS. The services they offer include: product customization, price automation, one-click drop-shipping research, and semi-automatic order fulfillment.
YAKKYOFY:
Yakkyofy, a newly service platform, is the first in the market to offer all services with free of charge. Originated from Italy, Yakkyofy offers the full service to all users using different e-commerce platforms; though, automated product import, price, and availability update services are confined only for Shopify users.
Yakkyofy’s supported services include: private labeling, product customization, customizable price margin, shipment tracking, bundle sales, pre-paid wallet, a space among their virtual warehouse and automated inventory management. A user may view the current status of the inventory by simply accessing to the virtual warehouse. Yakkyofy also proudly offer guaranteed 12-day delivery to Tier-1 countries. Fabio Nardella, a digital marketing specialist and also one of Yakkyofy’s clients, commented, “Yakkyofy has revolutionized the way I work, and now I no longer have to contact Chinese suppliers every day and handle problems with orders and shipments, now it’s like having a personal assistant always by my side: the software is very simple to use and their customer care is always ready to help you. I have gained time and reduced my stress.”
Yakkyofy has recently extended their services with an addition of the Affiliate Program; in which an existing client can profit by inviting another client to utilize Yakkyofy’s offered services for one’s drop-shipping business.
Dropshipping business has been influencing the market trend extensively with its efficiency and such a competitive cost of operation. Anyone can launch a business with this concept; at home, at work, wherever you are, with minimal financial loss in the case of failure. As it is very cost-efficient but often operates solely upon an individual entrepreneur’s labor, managing everything by oneself can be an extremely devastating experience. Always look for what is out there for you to utilize and perform an extensive market research. Choose the right option for your dropshipping business and succeed.