Dropshipping your own business: advantages and disadvantages

What is dropshipping, basic skills and tasks of a dropshipper

Many people dream of their own business, or at least wonder how easy it is to make money, how to work for yourself remotely so that you can travel the world more and spend time with your family. Surprisingly, there are professions that allow you to organize your life in this way. For example, you can become a dropshipper, that is, an intermediary seller, a dealer. With Halla systems сo. ltd, you can achieve great results in this industry.

What is dropshipping?

Dropshipping is a legal field of activity, a scheme for the online sale of goods from a supplier to a client through an intermediary. Based on the characteristics of the work of a dropshipper, he is exclusively engaged in marketing, and other issues related to production, logistics, warehouse, staff, packaging and shipping are assigned to the supplier. The dropshipper, with rare exceptions, has no goods on hand. He receives a list of goods and information about them from the supplier, displays a photo with a description in the online store, taking into account his own margin, and after concluding a deal, he transfers the order to the supplier. After that, the supplier from his warehouse sends the goods to the client and settles with the intermediary.

Dropshipping is an easily accessible way for everyone to earn money remotely, having their own online store and a constant flow of customers. This is a profession that is mastered in practice, by trial and error, and not by sitting at a desk at the university for several years. You can learn the theoretical foundations on your own using the Internet, studying educational articles and training videos on YouTube. For a deeper understanding of, for example, the intricacies of setting up advertising and running a store on Instagram, you can sign up for a webinar or online courses, fortunately, there are quite a lot of them now.

Dropshipper Tasks

selection of a niche and search for relevant products;

cooperation with suppliers;

Creation of an online store both in social networks and on other trading platforms;

Creation of advertising creatives;

promotion of goods;

· communication with customers;

Analysis of the market and competitors.

This is a list of basic tasks, but the activities of some dropshippers go beyond them. It happens that they take photos and videos on their own, ordering several units of goods for themselves, or they themselves pack and send the goods to the client. These actions help you stand out from the competition and rely less on the supplier. Based on the tasks that the dropshipper faces, he must have certain knowledge and skills.

Basic skills:

- choice of promotion channel;

- online sales and work with objections;

- search for reliable suppliers and building a scheme of work with them;

- the level of a confident computer user, for example, to create landing pages using designers or import goods to marketplaces;

- content creation: from photos and videos to product descriptions and sales texts.

To achieve success in dropshipping, it is not enough to study the theory and apply it in practice, it is important to have certain personal characteristics. The main character traits for a dropshipper are communication skills (you have to communicate a lot and negotiate with customers and suppliers), stress resistance (after all, customers are not always patient, and suppliers are not all reliable), the desire to constantly learn (quick changes in trends, new approaches to advertising) and creativity (original content).

It is also important to properly organize your work process and structure large volumes of important information for each order. Often, a dropshipper, especially at the beginning of work, puts a lot of effort into concluding a deal, but at the final stage he confuses, for example, the branch number or the size of the product. This entails customer dissatisfaction and losses. To avoid such mistakes and use your time and energy wisely, use an order tracking system .

Benefits of being a dropshipper:

- can be combined with many types of main work;

- does not require significant investments to start;

- you can easily start and stop dropshipping at any time;

- there is no binding to a specific city and office;

- no need to “join” the team, try to build and maintain friendly relations with everyone;

- the ability to independently influence their earnings;

- ease in mastering the profession, deep specific knowledge, skills and equipment are not needed;

- flexible work schedule, based on their own capabilities and needs.

The greatest advantage in this employment can be considered low risks and minimal obligations. A dropshipper, in case of failure, does not lose a huge start-up capital, he does not have a lease agreement, a warehouse where there will be a lot of unsold goods, a staff that will need to be fired, etc.

A few disadvantages:

- high competition and dumping of popular goods;

- restrictions on the placement of goods on different sites;

- difficulties associated with finding a relevant product niche;

- selection of reliable suppliers who may have limits on the number of dropshippers they cooperate with;

- a long process of building the reputation of the store;

- suppliers can use your customer base;

- resolution of conflict situations, for example, work with returns and losses on shipments with cash on delivery;

- the impossibility to remotely evaluate the quality of the goods that have been chosen for promotion;

- the need to trust the supplier for timely delivery.

In addition to the advantages and disadvantages, there are also some ambiguous factors that will be a plus for someone, and a minus for someone. A dropshipper needs to constantly look for something new, follow trends, remove obsolete products from their online stores, take new photos, videos and descriptions, come up with some kind of sweepstakes and promotions. Someone likes to follow fashion and “be in the know”, while someone is more conservative by nature, and he quickly gets tired and bothers looking for a new supplier or product.

Also, some people are simply not designed to work for themselves or at home, they need society, an office atmosphere, friendships with colleagues, personal communication, paid vacation and sick leave, a clear work schedule, and even a boss to control and direct. Others feel more comfortable away from the team, not meeting personally with partners and clients, setting priorities and managing time on their own.

Instead of a conclusion

Dropshipping is a dynamic, ambiguous and heterogeneous field of activity. You must constantly strive to be better than your competitors and never “fall out of your environment” for a long time. Some suppliers have a biased negative attitude towards such intermediaries, even though they have been cooperating with them for years. Also, both schoolchildren and young mothers on maternity leave, as marketers without higher education, and firefighters can turn out to be your colleagues.

In any case, if you are interested in this area, soberly assess for yourself all the above pluses and minuses, perhaps something will become an insurmountable obstacle for you, but something, on the contrary, will inspire you to learn a new profession. Some have failed to find their niche, develop a customer and supplier base, are tired of fighting competitors and finding an approach to picky customers. Some have tried it once by accident and now have been working as dropshippers for years, feeling happy and successful entrepreneurs.