Dropshipping is a smart way to start your own webshop at low cost. You can then fully focus on the marketing of your webshop and the sale of the products from your assortment. The entire logistics process is arranged for you by a dropshipping supplier.

Dropshipping is also a smart way to work on the moments that suit you best and from the places you want. All you need is a laptop and an internet connection.

The content of this article

What does a dropshipping supplier do?
Dropshipping benefits
Disadvantages dropshipping
Step 1: Search for a dropshipping supplier
Step 2: pay attention to the dropshipping costs
Step 3: the choice of a dropshipping supplier
Step 4: register a domain name
Step 5: ready-made webshop or not?
Step 6: The marketing
Dropshipping tip 1: Choose a niche market
Dropshipping tip 2: make repeat purchases
Dropshipping tip 3: ask for collective invoices
Dropshipping tip 4: automate as much as possible
Dropshipping tip 5: do not compete on price
Dropshipping tip 6: provide unique content
Dropshipping tip 7: buy yourself for more margin
Dropshipping tip 8: do email marketing
Dropshipping tip 9: think about product bundles
Dropshipping tip 10: personalize your orders
What does a dropshipping supplier do?
how-works-dropshipping You will receive an order from an end customer / consumer via your webshop. You pass this order on to your dropshipping supplier. This sends the order directly to the end customer.

The dropshipping supplier sends your webshop the invoice for the delivery.

You have to send the invoice to your end customer and make sure your end customer pays the order to you. This will normally be done directly when ordering the product through an online payment method such as iDeal, credit card or PayPal.

The dropping shop supplier keeps stock of the products. Packs these and offers them at the post.

At many drop shopping suppliers, you can make arrangements about packaging the products in your packaging material with your webshop name and/or logo. In addition, pick beans can also be added to the order in the name of your webshop.

It will not be possible for the end customer to receive the order when the order is received from the dropshipping supplier. The end customer will not know better than that the order comes directly from the webshop where the order was made.

Dropshipping benefits

It is clear that dropshipping has its advantages. The main advantage is that you do not have to keep your own stock. This has a number of important advantages, especially if you are just starting out.

Low investment

low-investment The advantage of not having your own stock is that you do not have to invest money in creating and maintaining a stock.

You also save time if you do not have to stock and keep stock, especially if you want to run a wide range.

And if you do not need stock, you do not need a warehouse to store the stock either. This saves you on housing costs and insurance costs.

No inventory risk

And no own stock also means no stock risk. You will never be left with unsold items.

Going on vacation

Another advantage is that you do not have to send the orders yourself, as this is the dropshipping supplier.

This means that orders just go out while you're enjoying a well-deserved holiday on the beach.

With all these advantages, drop shopping is ideal for starting webshops. You do not need much money to start.

Of course, all these benefits come at a price.

Disadvantages dropshipping

stockroom The dropshipping supplier does have the costs for a warehouse, keeping a stock, insurance and personnel costs.

These costs will be charged by the dropshipping supplier to the webshop with a surcharge for his profit. This is at the expense of your margin per product sold.

If your webshop runs smoothly, it can become financially interesting to keep stock yourself and send the products yourself.

The dropshipping supplier gives you at least the opportunity to grow to that level against a low initial investment.

No complete control over packaging

Another disadvantage is that you do not have complete control over the packaging and how the orders go out. For example, if you want to put something extra in the box for that one good customer, then that is not the case.

Dependent

Another disadvantage is that you are dependent on your dropshipping supplier. If they make mistakes then you will be addressed by your customers.

Return shipments

Most dropshipping suppliers will not accept return shipments. This is often at the risk of the webshop. This will, therefore, have to be calculated. If you make enough volume, that can not really be a problem.

We will explain the steps which will help you to start dropshipping for yourself.

Step 1: Search for a dropshipping supplier

supplier search There are hundreds of dropshipping suppliers in the Netherlands. In this overview, you will find over 600, divided into expertise areas such as personal care, home, and garden, electronics, fashion, and jewelry.

If you want to start dropshipping then you probably already have an idea as to which branch you want to sell products in.

If you do not have this yet, I would advise you to at least go for a product group that appeals to you and with which you have some affinity.

China

dropshipping-china Many dropshipping suppliers also operate from China. These are often cheap.

You will have to wonder if that is handy for your business, given the longer delivery times.

You will then have to focus on customers who are willing to wait longer for a product if the price is lower.

Step 2: pay attention to the dropshipping costs

Normally you only have to deal with the purchase price of your products. With dropshipping, your purchase price is composed of three components:

The purchase price of the articles
The shipping fees
A fee for order processing (the entire logistics)
Shipping costs
You would of course also have the shipping costs if you would send the articles to your customers yourself. Often it is even cheaper to have your articles sent by a drop shipper because they can negotiate better prices for shipping lots because of the volume they make.

Logistical costs

For logistics, you usually pay an agreed price per product or order. These are the costs for the packaging material, order picking, storage, printing of receipts etc.

Sufficient margin?

You will have to compare dropshipping suppliers with each other and you will also have to calculate whether you can make sufficient margin on the products with the prices you get from the dropshipping suppliers.

Step 3: the choice of a dropshipping supplier

You will have to make a shortlist of possible dropshipping suppliers for yourself. You can then compare these to different points (in addition to price).

Reliability

reliable You will have to check whether a dropshipping supplier is reliable. If a dropshipping supplier has existed for a long time then this is a sign that it is reliable.

Of course, you want to avoid joining a dropshipping supplier that stops after half a year. You may have already arranged your entire webshop with products from this dropshipping supplier.

Logistic hero

And of course, you want your dropshipping supplier logistics to be in a good state. If you do not have the time and your time for anything, it is to answer angry messages from your customers because they do not have the products ordered yet.

Return shipments and warranty cases

return shipments You will also have to look at the arrangements that the dropshipping supplier has for return shipments and warranty cases.

As a webshop, you have the obligation to accept returns from your customers. A dropshipping supplier is not obliged to do this, it does business with you and not with the end customer. It is, of course, a plus if you want to accept dropshipping supplier returns so that you do not end up in your stomach with return shipments.

Stock size

You will also need to look at the stock size and delivery times your dropshipping supplier holds. The idea of a dropshipping supplier is of course that you can always deliver quickly from stock. Your dropshipping supplier must be able to realize this.

Step 4: register a domain name

Now that you have arranged the logistic process, it is time to focus on the sales section. The fun part!

Brand name

Of course, you need a webshop to sell your products. An important step in this is the domain name of your webshop. You can use the name of your company or brand for this. The advantage is that this domain name will still be free and that you can start building a brand.

Generic domain name

domain name The best thing is, of course, a generic domain name for your webshop such as denaamvanjeproduct.nl.

The big chance is that this domain name is already occupied.

You can, therefore, play with words such as shop, webshop, store and store. You can then make names such as productnameshop.nl, productnaamwinkel.nl etc.

Sell ​from existing website

Maybe you already have a website where you want to sell your products. For example, you have a blog about good cooking and you want to sell nice pans and plates. You can do this by adding a webshop to your blog.

If your blog runs on WordPress, then there are nice standard solutions for this.

Another option is that you organize a web shop on a separate domain so that it is separate from your blog.

Step 5: ready-made webshop or not?

You can build a webshop yourself (or have it built yourself) or you can use a ready-made webshop solution.

Advantages of ready-to-use webshop

The advantage of a ready-to-use webshop is that you are usually cheaper to start. This in addition to the following benefits:

No technical knowledge needed to start
Professional looking webshop
Your webshop can already be live in a short time
Use payment systems that are already integrated such as iDeal, PayPal, Mollie and credit cards
Standard links with large dropshipping suppliers
Standard well secured
Disadvantages of a ready-made web store
A ready-to-use webshop also has disadvantages:

Periodic costs are usually subscriptions that you are stuck with
You do not just switch to another webshop platform (you are 'embedded' in the system you choose)
Fewer possibilities to personalize things
WordPress e-commerce plugins
If you do not want to use a ready-made web store, then you have enough alternatives. So you can use WordPress as the basis for your webshop where you use plugins such as WooCommerce or Wp eCommerce.

Magento

magento logo But the most famous and most comprehensive eCommerce software is undoubtedly Magento. Magento is an open-source (free) eCommerce package where you have complete control over the design, functionality, and content.

By logging in to your Magento dashboard you can manage the entire webshop. Magento offers you extensive options for customer, order and product management and is also search engine friendly.

For the hosting of your Magento webshop, you have to look for a hosting provider which has arranged everything for hosting Magento shops.

Step 6: The marketing

Now that you have built or created a webshop, it is important that visitors come to your webshop so that the orders come.

For the marketing of your webshop, you can use various channels. The most obvious is that you will use online channels.

SEO and/or SEA

The most common is that you will do SEO and/or SEA. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEA stands for Search Engine Advertising (advertising in the search engine).

In addition, you can also use advertising options on Facebook or Marketplace, for example.

Advantage SEO

For a webshop, however, SEO will be the most lucrative. These are the visitors to your webshop that come in via the organic (free) search results of Google. Because you pay nothing for these visitors, these visitors are the most profitable.

Disadvantage SEO

The disadvantage of SEO, however, is that it will take a long time before you have a top position in Google. Depending on the competition on your keywords, it may take several months to maybe a year before you get really high in Google.

SEO for webshops

How you exactly do SEO for your webshop, we have already discussed implementation in our article SEO webshop. If you want to know more about this, then I can definitely recommend you to read this article.

SEA

To be able to earn money with your dropshipping webshop until then, you can use the opportunity to advertise in Google. Because of the costs, you make here you will earn less per customer, you are at least equal in business. By advertising in Google, you can welcome your first customers to your webshop within an hour.

SEO vs SEA

You can read more about the differences between SEO and SEA in our article SEO vs SEA.

Fast in business

fast-in-business And that is also the beauty of dropshipping and ready-made webshops. You can get an idea during your breakfast after which you can do your first sales in the evening. It can go as fast as you can quickly find a suitable dropshipping supplier.

You have now completed the 6 steps to get started with your own dropshipping webshop. We will give you some tips below to take your business to a higher level.

Dropshipping tip 1: Choose a niche market

Choose a niche market or at least not a market where 'everyone' is already active.

Lots of competition

compete Dropshipping is not only a low-threshold way for you to start a webshop but for everyone who wants it. Because of this, you run the risk that you have a lot of competition if you put yourself in a market where there are already many active.

You can certainly avoid the markets for electronics (televisions, smartphones). There is a lot of competition here, which means that the margins are low. Even big players with all their purchasing advantages have trouble keeping their heads above water in this market.

Dropshipping tip 2: make repeat purchases

repeat purchases You can ask your dropshipping supplier to place flyers from your webshop with the orders.

On these flyers, your customers will find a discount code which can be used with a next order.

This way you are as good as guaranteed by follow-up orders, which are the most profitable orders because they have not cost you any extra advertising or marketing money.

Dropshipping tip 3: ask for collective invoices

If you are a new customer of a dropshipping supplier then it will probably want you to pay every order immediately and it will, therefore, send you a separate invoice for every order.

Avoid red tape

Agree that you can go to collective invoices as quickly as possible so that you only have to pay a collective invoice once a week or (preferably) per month. This saves you a lot of red tape and time. A time that you can invest better in marketing.

Dropshipping tip 4: automate as much as possible

automate Automate as many processes as possible. Ideally, your webshop will continue as long as you are on vacation for two weeks, far away from an internet connection.

You can automatically include product feeds from your dropshipping supplier in your webshop. You can automatically forward the orders to your dropshipping supplier and you can automate your administration.

You can also automate that your customers are automatically informed by email regarding the status of their order. This prevents customers from calling or e-mailing when the order is delivered.

Dropshipping tip 5: do not compete on price

compete on price You have to seriously ask yourself whether you want to compete on price with other web shops.

If you have to purchase your products through dropshipping, you can never be as cheap as a webshop that purchases its products directly from the factory.

They can probably always pass under your prizes if you unleash a price war.

You will, therefore, have to think about the added value you want to deliver with your webshop or with which you want to distinguish yourself from others.

Dropshipping tip 6: provide unique content

Your products will have to be provided with a product description. Now it is, of course, easy to use the product descriptions of your supplier. For your findability in Google, however, this is not so convenient.

Duplicate content

google panda You create duplicate (double) content and Google will always include only one version of the same content in its search engine. And since your supplier's product description was online earlier than your copy, Google will include your supplier's product description in its index.

You will, therefore, have to rewrite the product descriptions for your products. Now that is not such an issue when you sell 10 products. If you want to sell 10,000, that is, of course, a different story. You could then focus on the most important products which are sold the most.

Dropshipping tip 7: buy yourself for more margin

Over time, you gain insight into the products that are running the fastest. To increase your margin, you may want to consider purchasing these runners yourself from the manufacturer. This way you can make more margin.

Do you think that you yourself will have to take care of the logistics of these products?

Dropshipping tip 8: do email marketing

In the Netherlands, you can not just send people an email. This is seen as SPAM and is punishable. Exceptions are your customers. You can send an email.

Increase repeat purchases

You can use this commercially conveniently. If people, for example, buy something from you, you can send them an offer at the moment you have calculated that this is almost finished. This increases your repeat purchases.

Dropshipping tip 9: think about product bundles

With your dropshipping supplier, you usually pay a fee per order. Also in the field of marketing, you have costs per order. This is especially the case with search engine advertising where you pay per click.

More value per customer

value-per-customer It is therefore important to get as much turnover as possible from one customer. You can do this by offering product bundles that tempt customers to order something extra.

An example: someone who orders sports drinks offers you to order the sports drink in combination with a handy bottle.

Dropshipping tip 10: personalize your orders

personalize If you work with a dropshipping supplier you have to make good agreements about sending the orders. You do not want under any circumstances that your end customers can see where the orders come from and certainly not what purchase prices you pay.

You want the packaging, stickers, and coupons to be provided with your company name. You can check this by placing an order at the address of for example a friend. You can then see exactly how your dropshipping supplier sends the orders.