My First Dropshipping Site
I fell into online product sales quite by accident
. I was at a weekend BBQ with some friends ,where I got the chance to chat to someone who had been selling physical products both online on their own e-store site as well as Ebay. I was blown away by what they were doing, they were making well in-excess of 100K per year.
Just like everyone, I had been exposed to Ebay, a few times in the past, another friend had sold plenty of things on there, and made some money. I had also heard about Matt and Amanda Clarkson business called bidding buzz, which is a business based around helping people establish them selves online with businesses on e-bay. (NB: I havent had any exposure to this course, so I can give any opinion about it).
So after my customary research (Yep, sounds good so I jumped in). I started 2 products sites, one a physical products site, the other a Drop Ship site called Dudetronics. Now this site started of as more of an experiment then any real business idea. After nearly 4 months it generates both sales and traffic. Which means that this experiment might actually be a business yet. So I wanted to take a closer look at what I did, to get Dudetronics up and running and what I will be doing with it moving forward.
Drop shipping is a supply chain management technique in which the retailer does not keep goods in stock, but instead transfers customer orders and shipment details to either the manufacturer or a wholesaler, who then ships the goods directly to the customer. As in retail businesses, the majority of retailers make their profit on the difference between the wholesale and retail price but some retailers earn an agreed percentage of the sales in commission, paid by the wholesaler to the retailer. Wikipedia
The background
Once I started my Ebay account, I started to look for products that I could sell online. I already knew the basics about how drop shipping works, so I simply did a Google search for Dropship products and I found websites like DOBA and Dropshipaccess. I Joined them and started promoting products on Ebay, it was that easy.
My very first sale was a 15 inch Portable DVD player, for $250, that I made $40 on after fees, taxes e.t.c. I was hooked. My immediate thought was more is better. So I started to put as many products on Ebay as I could using the free listings that they give you. What goes hand in hand with Ebay, the obvious answer was to create a online store, so Dudetronics was born.
The Start up
The name I wanted to create a Brand Name more then any thing else, I was going to make this site in the Electronics Niche, so I wanted something a little funky. There is no real reason but Dudetonics was it.
The domain This part was easy, I went to Go Daddy and spent $8.99 and registered it.
The hosting I host everything with Hostgator, so I changed the domain name servers, and went to the next step.
The Platform I use WordPress for 99 % of all my sites.
The shop function For this I used Shopp plugin. To be honest I have found this plugin a little difficult to deal with, there were quite a few bugs in it, that needed fixing. Which after quite a few back and forths with their online support I managed to get it working. In saying that, I did find their Support quite good.
The Theme I have started to really focus on themes on my sites, you can have the best content in the world, but if your site looks like crap, people will leave and not come back. So I put a job up on Freelancer, to try and get a developer to theme another site. I got plenty of submissions, I picked one to do the project I posted. But I had started both products sites in parallel, I just happened to pick a late submission, from a different developer to do Dudetronics, it cost me $250 AUD.
The products There are millions of online sites out there selling millions of products, part of my original online research lead me to Saleshoo, which is a resource I highly recommend for anyone looking to start drop shipping or even selling any products on line. I spent a bit of time researching various suppliers, I would suggest picking one or 2 sites to focus on, I focused on two Chinese wholesale product sites, that specialized in Electronics. I joined them, and started to promote their products on Dudetronics.
So all up this site cost me $ 260 plus the time I have spent on the project.
Now once I got some products on there, I started to focus on getting sales and delivering traffic to the site, so heres what I did next.
Social Media
I started a Facebook page and Twitter account for Dudetronics. Everyone gets caught up with the online aspect of Social Media. I also go old school social networking, I TELL PEOPLE ABOUT IT, I email friends, talk to people because word of mouth still matters.
The first sale
The first one is always the hardest one. I got my first sale on line about 2 weeks after I started the site, so not to bad. Now where did it come from, well I go back to what I said in Social Media. I told people about it, thats where I got my first sale. $180 for a Sat Nav unit, I made $43 after fees and taxes. The best part was I didnt even touch the unit, I just spent about 2 minutes processing the order on line.
Where to from here
At this stage I have maybe 40 products on the site, I really need to put 4000 on there, to have it do any good. So I have plenty of work to do to get it to that stage. I need to continue to post reviews on the products, as well as start to build a link profile, which I have done nothing. It generates a little traffic on its own, as well as Facebook likes and interest but thats it at this stage.
by: Garry Robbins
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