As you are here reading this blog post this means you are going to start your own dropshipping business.
In this blog post you will get to know:
- what is dropshipping,
- what you need to start a dropshipping business
- how you can be successful at dropshipping even without any marketing budget in the beginning stages of your business.
Before we delve into all these 3 topics, please note that if you are looking for UK dropshipping suppliers simply click on this link – dropshipping suppliers UK.
Let’s begin by looking at what is dropshipping.
What is Dropshipping
When you don’t have budget to buy product in advance to start selling, but you do have a website, you can simply contact UK dropshipping suppliers who offer dropshipping service. You can get product information from them, such as product photos, descriptions and other information and you can then list those items into your own website. Once an end-customer buys the item from your website, the UK dropshipping supplier will send the product to your end-customer. This in essence is dropshipping.
But dropshipping has two types. One is automatic dropshipping and the other is manual dropshipping.
Manual dropshipping is essentially what was just described in the above paragraph. All functions and all steps involved are done manually by the retail eCommerce website owner. Only thing that the UK dropshipping supplier is responsible for is sending the item to the end-customer. Here are many drawbacks, especially the difficulty of maintaining stock levels and product listings up to date as no automatic feed is provided.
In contrast to manual dropshipping there is, as mentioned earlier, another method too – automatic dropshipping. We will explain more about it in the next paragraph. If you prefer you can watch a video explaining what is automatic dropshipping.
What is Automatic Dropshipping UK
In order to understand what is automatic dropshipping, please read further on this step by step explanation.
Let’s say this is your (retailer’s) eCommerce website:
Let’s say you don’t have any products to sell yet. You will need to get those from a UK dropshipping supplier. And here it is – your UK dropshipping supplier’s website (and your website – both side by side):
Because of a special dropshipping API (application programming interface) you will be able to import the products’ listings from the UK dropshipping supplier’s website into your own online shop in a one-click process which you can see in the image below:
Next, you can list these products in eBay, Facebook, Amazon and other platforms as again shown in the image below:
Once the end-customer buys your product from any of these platforms, an order will show up in your eCommerce website (you can see the arrow near the retailer website in the image below):
You can then place an order from your website to the UK dropshipping supplier’s website (pay attention to the arrow near the wholesaler website in the image below):
Then the UK dropshipping supplier will complete the sales process by sending the product to your end-customer as you can see in this final image:
And this essentially is automatic dropshipping.
Now that we know what is dropshipping and especially automatic dropshipping, let’s see what exactly we need to start a dropshipping business.
3 Things Needed to Start a UK Dropshipping Business
There are 3 main things that you need to start a dropshipping business, which are:
1) your own eCommerce website;
2) sourcing of dropshipping products to sell;
3) marketing.
Getting Your Own eCommerce Website
To get your own eCommerce website with automatic dropshipping functionalities, we recommend using Getshop Today eCommerce platform. By subscribing to any of their packages that include fast track design service, you will get an eCommerce website ready from A to Z in just 3-5 days.
Sourcing of Dropshipping Products from UK Dropshipping Suppliers
You will also be able to choose and import products from Getshop Today UK dropshipping supplier network by using automatic tools. So now we have the website and the products.
Marketing Your Dropshipping Business
Let’s talk about the 3rd important aspect – the marketing. How can we achieve business success even without any marketing budget in the beginning stages of the business?
Marketing is one of the biggest hurdles in business, especially when you are a starter – you don’t have any budget, any system or any workforce in place.
For this reason, we want to introduce you to a new system with a completely new approach. This new approach is as follows.
Let’s say, you have your dropshipping products already imported into your eCommerce website. Using Getshop Today automatic tools, you can now list your products in eBay easily.
Once you list your products, eBay is going to start promoting your products to its visitors.
What is eBay’s interest to do this? This is because eBay is taking a fee from every sale of your products (it can be up to 15%). Now you may think “I am still paying 15% from my sales. What will be my profit?”
So, here’s the math:
Let’s imagine you took a product from a Getshop Today UK dropshipping supplier for £5.
In your own website you increased the retail product price by 65%.
From this you will give eBay 15%.
Even after this fee you are left with 50% profit.
In a nutshell, although you are not spending any marketing budget or paying up-front for products, still your business is running successfully and even making a decent profit.
Conclusion
We hope this blog post gave you a good idea about how to start a UK dropshipping business.
Also here is a link to a full dropshipping course on YouTube. This YouTube playlist has 22 videos explaining everything you need to know to start a UK based dropshipping business.
