What Is Dropshipping?
Dropshipping is a type of fulfillment method, so you don’t have to purchase the stock. You just work closely with a supplier and they will ship the orders directly to your customers. To start your dropshipping business, you have to create an online storefront and handle the marketing and product promotions, etc.
Once you get an order for an item, you forward the details to the supplier and they will send the order to the customer.
What makes dropshipping a perfect and low-maintenance business with minimal risks for people with limited budgets is its operating model. You can start with little to no start-up capital, and re-invest your profits to grow your brand, eventually switching to a cost-effective wholesale business model.
Now, being a lucrative business model, thousands of new stores crop up each month, but not all of them make great sales and scale well. Lacking a solid strategy and poor marketing limit their sales.
So, what does it take to create a successful dropshipping business? Let’s find out.
How to Build a Successful Dropshipping Business
Right from selecting the right niche to the right products and the right eCommerce platform – there are multiple considerations when it comes to the success of a dropshipping business. However, the considerations are not limited to the ones we mentioned. Also, it is important to grow a dropshipping business in a strategic way so you can increase your earnings.
Here is a list of the key elements that are crucial for the success and revenue of a dropshipping business.
Choose a Profitable Niche
Do your homework, and spend time researching the top trending products in the dropshipping domain. Create a list of 5 to 10 options and check which one of them has the largest consumer base. Opt for a niche that has a decent customer base and mid-range price points to make selling a lot easier.
You can begin by checking the social trends on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. You can also use search tools like Google Trends to check the popularity of different products. Further, take your research to the next level by checking the monthly search volume trends, and customer interest deviations over time.
You can also check the online marketplaces to see how other established sellers are selling these products, what sort of promoting/marketing tactics they employ, and how well they have managed the range of products.
Unique Value Proposition
Once you have identified a profitable niche, you need to create a unique value proposition. Staying unique from the competition will work in your favor and will help customers identify you easily.
For example, while you might be selling affordable unique gadgets, presenting your store as a simple gadget store might not be the right way to go forward. Create a unique image by leveraging elements of storytelling, problem-solving, and unique standing in the market. For beginners, we recommend learning from comprehensive business guides for selling on different platforms, like eBay, etc.
So, instead of telling people that you sell unique gadgets, show them how they can make their everyday lives better, easier, and awesome with just a few gadgets. Add a touch of personalization via branded dropshipping, and creating an online community.
Search the Dropshipping Suppliers
Next, find a reliable dropshipping supplier, preferably local to save on shipping times and costs. Check whether they offer a large product selection or not, and what kind of minimum order requirements they have. Partnering with a supplier with a wide range of products and offering on-demand bulk purchases will make scaling easier for your business.
Another critical element to consider while choosing a dropshipping supplier is the ease of integration. Check for the platforms and third-party services they offer integrations for to ensure seamless business management. Find how well they are rated by the other sellers and third parties in terms of service/product quality.
Choose the Right Dropshipping Platform
The massive popularity of dropshipping has led to the emergence of multiple dropshipping platforms, such as SaleHoo, Shopify, Sprocket, Doba, Printify, etc. While all of these platforms are being used by drop shippers from all over the world, it is important to remember that not all platforms work for all types of products.
Selecting the right sales channel is critical to the success of your dropshipping business, as it is directly linked to your reach, sales, and overall functioning. Create a list of the best dropshipping platforms and study their core features, service portfolio, limitations, pricing, and policies.
Filter 5 to 6 platforms based on your study and then choose the one that fits the best in terms of your niche, target audience, and personal preferences.
Compile a Winning Product Portfolio
Never compile a product portfolio without doing proper research. Use tools like AliShark, Sell The Trend, and Niche Scraper that use intelligent algorithms for product analytics across different platforms and marketplaces. You can also check online tutorials, like our comprehensive selling guide for Etsy to understand the entire process.
Apart from getting insights about the best-selling products, you can easily leverage these tools to gather critical data metrics such as market trends and customer demand.
Check how the major dropshipping stores are offering an assortment of different products and what kind of narratives they have for various customer pain points.
Focus on Marketing
Most leading dropshipping stores offer built-in marketing capabilities and analytics related to customers, sales, store performance, etc. So, once your store is up and running, start marketing your products and services on different channels, such as social media, paid ads, and email & influencer marketing,
You can also add a twist to your marketing and make it more interesting for your customers via engaging videos, blogs, visual content, challenges, and giveaways. Once your business becomes stable, and your customer base grows, you can invest in tools such as Omnisend, Mailchimp, Sendinblue, etc.
Top 10 Successful Dropshipping Stores
Now that we are done with the basics, let’s have a quick look at some of the most successful dropshipping stores in the world and take a dive into what worked for them.
1. Notebook Therapy
Notebook Therapy is one of the most successful niche-based dropshipping stores that sells writing supplies and journals, such as simple bags, phone cases, pencil cases, notebooks, etc.
The store has an amazing layout and aesthetic color palette that appeals to young shoppers looking for unique personalized gifting options. The overall store design incorporates hand-drawn doodles and engaging fonts that work great when it comes to a fulfilling visitor experience.
Their Instagram follower count is 1.6 million and the store leverages both paid and organic channels for marketing and promotions.
2. Blue Crate
This is another store in the personalized gifting, gadgets, and accessories niche. Just like Notebook Therapy, Blue Crate also has an aesthetic store with a storyboard giving a wholesome view of its service portfolio and products. The storefront is full of bright and engaging images, centered around personalized products.
The entire theme has been kept according to the young customers, and the store has an excellent Facebook and Pinterest integration for consistent updates on their latest offerings. The store supports multiple payment options, which works perfectly for its widespread clientele.
3. Articture
The store operates in the home improvement niche and sells anything and everything related to home accessories and generic improvement. So, you can find bath mats, crockery, fancy light fixtures, bed linens, etc. Their projected monthly visitor count sits around 95.60k visitors/month.
As they operate in the home improvement category, aesthetics are one of the major tactics they use for creating an engaging shopping experience. Their photography is high-end professional, and their social media presence is strong on both Facebook and Instagram.
They share massive content showing off products to target the customer sentiments of having a beautiful, cozy, and functional yet affordable home style. They also have private labeling to give that extra authentic touch to their store.
4. Warmly
This is another store in the home, decor, and furniture niche that is one of the most successful Shopify dropshipping stores. You can buy lighting, home furnishings, and many other amazing things to give your home a lovely vibe.
What stands out on their storefront is the trust badges, bullet point-based product descriptions, and professional photo-laden layout for an aesthetic appeal. Their branding in on point with minimal design and clutter-free graphics all over, which gives a high-end online brand appearance to the store.
Their Pinterest account is one of the major sources of sales, audience, and marketing. Warmly is expected to have more than 10 million monthly views of its pins, driving considerable sales and leads from the platform.
5. Cloudsharks
Cloudsharks operates in the apparel niche and has a very unique offering – shark-shaped slides, and accessories. It is a case study for drop shippers who want to sell quirky items and are looking for inspiration. Cloudsharks began as a one-product dropshipping store and started by selling shark-shaped slippers.
The store has mastered the art of uniform brand messaging and branding throughout its website to offer a distinct brand appeal. They have a strong online presence across a wide range of social channels, including all three major platforms, namely YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook.
Since the beginning, the brand has been consistent and focused on targeting all the social media channels and offering high-quality content around their products, which has paid off as a marketing tactic.
6. Luxy Hair
This is also one of the most successful dropshipping stores that can be a case study for drop shippers planning to sell goods in the personal care and accessories niche. They started as a premium hair extensions store and have generated a massive fan following of 595K Instagram followers, 3.9M subscribers on YouTube, and 326K followers on Facebook.
Check out our beginner’s guide to Facebook marketing for small businesses to know how to leverage your Facebook audience for your business.
Their impressive social media standing has given wings to their brand and business and has helped them carve a niche for themselves in a highly competitive segment as well. The store focuses on solving the pain points of the customers and has a value-driven approach to the business which definitely works well.
In terms of aesthetics, the overall appeal is clean, clear, and minimalistic with a focus on the audience’s pain points and how well their offerings fit in.
7. Doggykingdom
The store is one of the most successful dropshipping stores in the pet niche and comes with a massive fan following. The overall success factor stems from various reasons – product categories, branding, variety of products, bundled offerings, and mastering the niche.
The founders have done thorough market research and analysis to emerge as a successful brand in a competitive market segment. Their ability to curate high-quality products and innovative marketing approaches like paid ads and marketing has helped them raise their sales and drive brand awareness, despite a low follower count on social media channels as compared to other successful dropshipping stores.
8. Sleepbzzz
This is another successful dropshipping store that sells sleep aids, such as Bluetooth sleep headphones, sleep bands, and other sleep accessories. The store has a decent customer base and is often touted as the world’s comfiest sleep headphones.
They have a strong focus on every product and target it to solve a very specific pain point. With this specific use case targeting coupled with amazing influencer marketing, testimonials, and press mentions for social proof, they have mastered the art of locking revenue with a targeted marketing and sales approach.
The store started as a single-product store and has now successfully branched out to many other variations and other products that help improve sleep quality.
9. Mooshe
This is one of the most successful dropshipping stores that targets a very unique segment – socks. The store sells subscriptions to a monthly pack of socks that comes in a lightweight and attractive Mooshe branded packaging.
The packaging is inexpensive to produce and adds to the brand’s uniqueness while giving a professional touch to its products. The storefront is amazing, full of quirky to useful, and designer to minimalistic sock designs against aesthetic backdrops.
The brand has a decent social media presence with thousands of followers on Instagram, which helps them reach thousands of customers. The store is an example for drop shippers who are looking to make it in a regular essentials category that is saturated with options.
10. Meowingtons
Meowingtons is a dropshipping store in the pet supplies niche selling cat accessories for cats and pet owners. The expected monthly traffic of the store is 154.1k visitors and they have a decent customer base owing to the unique supplies and wide range of variety.
The store’s traffic, sales, and popularity stem from the expert brand building via aesthetic website design and engaging social content around the products and customers. They have increased their basket value via cross-selling of cate parent products apart from cat accessories.
They are leveraging different social media channels for promotions, and also share fun cat-related memes and content for increasing their brand reach and customer engagement.
Essential Tools and Resources for Dropshippers
By now, you must have realized that building a successful dropshipping business requires a thorough understanding of the customer base and meticulous research of the market and products.
Here is a list of the essential tools and resources that you can use to build a successful dropshipping store.
Shopify Learn
Shopify is the biggest e-commerce platform in the world and is also one of the easiest and quickest ways to start your dropshipping business. Shopify Learn is a reliable and excellent dropshipping resource, where you can find free online courses related to every aspect of running a successful business.
The platform has more than 90 instructors and topics to choose from based on your needs and requirements.
Meta Blueprint
The power of social media for marketing, audience, brand awareness, and promotion is immense for drop shippers. And, all the Meta platforms form the whale’s share of social media. So, Meta Blueprint is one resource you would need to master your business’s marketing, selling, and promotion aspects.
Meta Blueprint is the collection of the best dropshipping resources for you including meta advertising, ads manager guide, strategy optimization, audience targeting, and marketing insights.
Google Trends
Google Trends is another important resource for drop shippers and offers insights into the trends across new niches or products. Here, you can search for keywords and check their performance in different regions of the world.
Thus, you can easily identify high-performing trends and craft highly targeted marketing campaigns, for different target markets. You can also forecast products that are expected to do well in specific locations and timelines.
Google Digital Garage
This is another great learning resource for building a successful dropshipping business and comes with both free and paid online courses on different topics. You can learn digital marketing, get an accredited certification, and improve your skills as a business owner.
Some of the most recommended courses come from their Google Analytics Academy, which is a powerful tool to track leads and website visitors and get insights on website traffic & page performance etc.
Reddit Communities
Reddit communities are one of the best places to learn something new, resolve doubts, get advice, and find support. You can create a powerful network, share experiences in similar knowledge domains, and seek help from the dropshipping community to manage your business or overcome common problems.
You can also find tons of informative subreddits that can be powerful dropshipping resources where you can learn and grow as a dropshipper.
Dropshipping Apps
Dropshipping apps automate multiple business processes and help you unlock seamless management across different platforms. Recommended picks include Oberlo, Dropified, and Spocket, that come with amazing functionalities to help you manage multiple business processes efficiently.
You can import products from different suppliers, manage and monitor the inventory levels, and automate the order fulfillment process. These apps also provide advanced features such as order tracking, automated updates, etc., that elevate the overall shopping experience.
Payment Gateways
As an online business, you must offer multiple safe and secure payment options to your customers to offer a delightful shopping experience. Hence, payment gateways are crucial tools for every dropshipping business owner. Commonly used platforms include Square, PayPal, Stripe, etc.
These payment gateways offer different payment methods, such as credit/debit cards, digital wallets, and excellent finance operations management solutions. When you integrate with good quality and reliable payment gateways, your customers can place orders without any trust issues, and you can increase your brand reach.
Future Trends in Dropshipping
Dropshipping as an industry is picking up and if you plan to join the ecosystem, you need to be well aware of the emerging trends to stay relevant and up to date.
Below, we are sharing some of the emerging trends in dropshipping that you should be aware of before starting your dropshipping business.
AI Chatbots and Virtual Assistants
The modern shoppers are tech savvy, especially the Gen Z and millennial ones. They seek quick, reliable, and expert assistance as and when required, and don’t shy away from AI-powered support as well.
As a drop shipper offering human-based customer service is challenging and next to impossible. However, many eCommerce platforms offer built-in AI chatbots and virtual assistants at affordable prices. You can integrate them with your store and automate your query resolution process.
Beauty Products
The world of beauty and fashion has changed forever. Beauty essentials are no longer limited to cosmetics, and consumers are prioritizing clean, nature-based, and skin-friendly formulations that are safe and free of harmful chemicals.
Further, the demand for international beauty products is rising across the globe. Hence, if you are looking for inspiration to start your dropshipping business, beauty products are a promising and profitable category.
Sustainable and Ethical Goods
Another strongly emerging trend in the dropshipping industry is sustainable and ethical goods. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way people shop. They are willing to pay extra for sustainable products and prioritize ethical goods.
Hence, this can also be a profitable category for starting your business. Also, you can keep your marketing and promotional themes around sustainability and ethical sourcing, which will be a huge distinction point among the crowd of drop shippers.
Innovative Brand Storytelling
Consumers have become savvy in terms of brand storytelling and relating to the inspiration behind a business. So, traditional branding practices are giving way to innovative themes, like influencer-led marketing, engaging content targeting pain points instead of product features, and consistency across multiple channels for uniform messaging.
This is another emerging trend in the dropshipping business that is changing the way business owners market and promote their products. Further, the distinction between content creation and marketing is fading as numerous successful drop shippers are excellent content creators as well, such as Sebastian Ghiorghiu, Harry Coleman, etc.
Pet Supplies
Pet supplies are another emerging trend in the dropshipping sector as more and more people are becoming pet parents across the globe. Hence, the category is booming with profits and popularity.
You can easily find wholesale suppliers, different types and styles of pet supplies and grooming products and if you keep the quality awesome, you can make a decent regular income.
Building a Successful Dropshipping Business – How Can doola Help?
Establishing a dropshipping business comes with multiple business considerations, like having a business account, managing tax filings, compliance regulations, and international money transfers. You also have to decide whether you want to form an LLC for your dropshipping business or you want to go with any other entity.
Managing all these yourself without expert assistance can lead to ad-hoc pressure and errors as well, leading to potential penalties. This can also shift your focus from building your business. This is where doola steps in.
doola is a comprehensive business-in-a-box solution that offers multiple business management, incorporation, and tax management services for all types of businesses. Right from opening a business bank account in the US to filing taxes, and regulatory compliance management to international money transfers – doola can be your one-stop solution for all such needs as a drop shipper.
To catch our products in action or to learn which solutions are perfect for a beginner, medium-sized, and large dropshipping business owner, grab a free consultation with our tax experts today!
