What is Dropshipping and How to Do It? All Questions and Answers!

For new entrepreneurs, the most important challenges are insufficient time and money. This is exactly what makes dropshipping attractive for those starting in e-commerce.

Many logistics processes such as manufacturing, warehousing, and shipping are very difficult at the beginning both in terms of cost and human resources. The dropshipping business model, on the other hand, handles all these processes with third parties, allowing you to focus solely on the marketing phase of the product.

Dropshipping is the best option for many young entrepreneurs. Therefore, we have prepared the most comprehensive dropshipping guide for you.

If you want to learn more about how dropshipping works, where you can find reliable suppliers, and how to market your business, keep reading.

What is Dropshipping?

Dropshipping is the process of shipping goods directly to your customers from a third-party supplier or vendor without any intermediary steps (such as storing goods in your physical place of business).

An example of a normal business model without a dropshipper:

• You place a wholesale order from the manufacturer or supplier for low-cost products.

• You keep the products in your warehouse until a customer orders them.

• When the order arrives, you manage the processing, packaging, and shipping of the product.

When a dropshipper is involved, the process works like this:

• A customer orders the product from you.

• You forward the order information to your dropshipper.

• After receiving the order, the dropshipper charges you a price for the sold item, usually consisting of a wholesale and dropshipping fee.

• They pack the goods and ship them directly to the customer. You don't need to store or pack the goods yourself. You only sell them.

In short, dropshipping is a product selling model where you do not deal with warehousing and shipping. Another major benefit of dropshipping is that you do not pay for the product until the customer pays.

This makes it a safer route for both those without high capital and those who do not want to take risks. It is only necessary to open an online store and market the products.

How Does the Dropshipping Business Model Work?

With the dropshipping business model, the process works exactly as follows:

• An agreement is made with the supplier.

• The customer places an order from the online store.

• The order is received.

• The order is forwarded to the dropshipper.

• The dropshipper ships the order.

• The customer receives the product.

What are the Advantages of Dropshipping?

The idea of starting your own business is always attractive and is many people's dream. Dropshipping is a very advantageous model for those who want to start their own business. So, what are these advantages?

• Low capital

• Easy to get started

• Low expenses

• Flexible location

• Wide range of products

• Easy scaling

1. Low Capital

The biggest advantage of dropshipping is that it requires very low capital to start. In this sales model, you do not have to purchase a product unless it is paid for by the customer.

2. Easy to Get Started

E-commerce is much easier when you don't have to deal with physical products. When you dropship, you don't have to worry about:

• Renting / managing a warehouse

• Packaging and shipping your orders

• Tracking inventory for accounting reasons

• Handling returns and incoming shipments

• Constantly ordering products and managing inventory levels

3. Low Expense

Since you do not have to deal with purchasing inventory or managing fulfillment centers, your overhead expenses are quite low. The biggest expense of many successful dropshipping stores is limited to platform commissions.

4. Flexible Location

A successful dropshipping store can be run from almost anywhere with an internet connection. You don't need a physical location to communicate with suppliers, check sales, and manage customer processes.

5. Wide Product Range

Since you do not have to purchase the products you sell in advance, it is possible to capitalize on seasonal trending product opportunities. In addition, since there is no bulk purchase, you can immediately replace unsuccessful products with new ones and increase the number of potential sales.

6. Easy Scaling

In a traditional retail business, if you receive three times as many orders, you usually have to do three times as much work. However, when dropshipping, even if your store reaches massive sales figures, managing the process will always be easier.

What are the Disadvantages of Dropshipping?

All the advantages we have mentioned make dropshipping a very attractive model for those starting an online store or looking to expand their existing product offerings. However, like all approaches, dropshipping has its disadvantages. We can list these disadvantages as follows:

• Low profit margin

• Inventory issues

• Shipping issues

• Supplier errors

1. Low Profit Margin

Since dropshipping is easy to start, competition increases proportionally. For this reason, there are many sellers like you in the market. Offering more attractive prices to stand out among other sellers leads to lower profit margins.

2. Inventory Issues

If you stock all your products, keeping track of which items are in stock is relatively easy. However, when you source from multiple warehouses that also ship orders for other sellers, inventory can change daily.

For this reason, sometimes you may have difficulty supplying the product ordered by the customer, which can be a negative for potential future sales as it will harm the customer experience.

3. Shipping Issues

If you work with multiple suppliers (as most dropshippers do), the products in your online store will be sourced from a number of different people. This means you have no control over the supply chain.

For example, a customer placed an order for three items, all of which are only available from separate suppliers. You would pay three separate shipping fees to send each item to the customer, but passing this cost on to the customer is probably not wise.

4. Supplier Errors

Have you ever been blamed for something that was not your fault but you still had to accept responsibility for?

Even the best dropshipping suppliers make mistakes when fulfilling orders; you need to take responsibility and apologize for these mistakes.

Additionally, mediocre and low-quality suppliers can damage your store's reputation by harming the customer experience through missing products, faulty deliveries, and packaging or product quality issues.

How to Do Dropshipping?

Now that you have learned what dropshipping is, how it works, and its pros and cons, we can move on to the main topic.

1. Choosing the Platform to Do Dropshipping

First, you must choose the platform where you plan to do dropshipping. This platform can be your own e-commerce site or a marketplace.

Marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Etsy are ideal places for those who want to do dropshipping. Platforms like Shopify and Wix are ideal for those who want to sell through their own online store.

2. Choosing the Target Region

After determining the platform, you must choose the market you will sell to. This is very critical because every market has different buyers and dynamics. For example, a product may be very popular in the US market but not in demand in the German market. Therefore, you must decide on your target market to be successful.

3. Product Research

After determining your sales region, discover the products demanded by the market. List the most demanded products and product groups in a spreadsheet.

4. Agreement with Suppliers

After identifying the products, you must make an agreement with the sellers from whom you will supply these products. The lower your cost here, the more profit you will make from the product. For this reason, contact multiple suppliers for each product.

5. Listing Products in the Store

Now that you have agreed with your supplier, you can upload your products to your store and open them for sale. At this point, we recommend entering product images and descriptions in high detail.

6. Product Marketing

To make sales, you need good marketing. Here, product images and descriptions come into play first. Upload good product images and include all details about the product in the description.

You can use marketplace advertisements or social media channels to market your product.

7. Selling and Shipping the Product

Congratulations! By the time you reach this stage, you will have already made your sale. Now, contact your supplier, provide your customer's information, and carry out the shipping processes.

How to Do Dropshipping in Turkey?

You can follow the steps below to do dropshipping in Turkey:

• First, you must establish a company.

• You must determine the channels you will sell on.

• You must select your products.

• You must agree with suppliers.

After completing the steps above, you can market your products and start dropshipping.

What is Needed for Dropshipping?

Those who want to do dropshipping must carry out the following processes. So, what are these stages?

• Establishing a company

• Finding and making agreements with suppliers

• Setting up an e-commerce site (shopify, woocommerce, etc.) or registering on a marketplace

• Listing products

• Payment method agreements

• Opening Google and Facebook ad accounts

• SEO and content marketing

Apart from these, some suppliers share their products as XML. In this case, instead of uploading products one by one, you can upload them to your site all at once via XML and open them for sale.

How to Choose Products for Dropshipping?

The success or failure of dropshipping depends on choosing the right products to sell.

It is quite common to select irrelevant, random products based on a fad. This strategy is usually successful in the short term. However, maintaining high sales over time can be difficult. Sometimes, concentrating on a good niche and sticking to it is the best strategy.

Product research is important to find products that are in demand and will generate a high volume of sales. For a healthy profit margin, you need to select dropshipping products that can be sold and have low competition.

Choosing the most popular current products might seem like a winning strategy, but in a crowded market with high competition, margins will shrink even further for smaller retailers.

What Should You Consider When Selecting Products for Dropshipping?

When thinking about the product you will sell, it is never a good idea to choose products based solely on personal preference or a "gut feeling."

The dropshipping world is competitive and fast-changing. To compete with established sellers, you need to conduct comprehensive product research and analyze available sales data.

Dropshipping products that sell well usually fall into two categories:

• Inexpensive, colorful, eye-catching, and fun items (in 2019, both slime and squishies were trending).

• Useful products that solve an everyday problem for the consumer.

Since you will most likely promote your dropshipping products through social media channels, it is also important to remember that people do not tend to buy boring, everyday household items on Facebook or Instagram.

You should look for products that people will react to and share with their friends when they see them on social media. If these products also serve a practical use, it is almost impossible not to succeed.

Unique items that are not easily found in physical stores are also very good. People often use the internet to search for items they cannot find locally.

If there is something hard to get at a hardware or home improvement store but is also in high demand, that is an ideal dropshipping product.

How to Conduct Dropshipping Product Research?

Platforms like AliExpress, Alibaba, and Wish are very effective for getting inspiration and discovering products. But for a more professional product research, you need data. There are many third-party product analysis software tools for this. Utilizing them will prove highly useful.

Such software uses a simple search function to analyze millions of products across different marketplaces on the web. It looks at a product's current order volumes along with its sales history to predict future sales potential.

In addition, you can make clearer predictions by using Google Trends to check the popularity of the products you find on a country, regional, and city basis.

Some software tools you can use during product research include:

• Nichescraper

• Google Trends

• Camelcamelcamel.com

• Dscomparison

What Dropshipping Products Should You Avoid?

First, stay away from any product that might make advertising difficult. For instance, Facebook bans advertisements for adult toys and e-cigarettes.

The lack of marketing opportunities for your dropshipping products will obviously lead to fewer sales. Therefore, stick to family-friendly products!

When identifying various products to sell on Amazon, there are some points you need to pay attention to. Some products and categories on Amazon require approval before being listed.

eBay has similar restrictions. Make sure to check these before choosing products for dropshipping.

Best Selling Products with Dropshipping

Some dropshipping products are in higher demand than others for many reasons. Examining these product groups and choosing a niche accordingly will minimize the risk. There's no need to reinvent the wheel, right? The best-selling product groups with dropshipping are:

• Clothing and shoes

• Beauty and personal care

• Kitchen aids

• Baby products

• Pet supplies

• Decoration products

• Office products

• Phone accessories

• Car accessories

Is Dropshipping Legal?

Dropshipping is a legal e-commerce sales model. It is also legal in Turkey. Only the elements that need to be considered in other sales models also apply to dropshipping.

To avoid having issues while dropshipping, as long as you carefully read the rules of the platform you are selling on, you will not experience any problems.

In addition to these, if you sell products with fake licenses that compromise intellectual property, of course, this is a crime, regardless of the business model.

Is It Necessary to Establish a Company for Dropshipping?

It is necessary to establish a company for dropshipping. Although many marketplaces do not directly require a company, you must tax your money to legally bring it into Turkey. If you do not tax your earnings, you might face many problems in the future.

How Much Can You Earn with Dropshipping?

The amounts you can earn with dropshipping are completely proportional to strategy and product selection. Typically, dropshippers achieve a profit of around 10% to 30% per product. These margins can go higher if you are lucky, but they can also go lower.

Successful dropshipping stores generate up to USD 100,000 in revenue per year. The average monthly income with dropshipping is between 1,000 and 3,000 dollars.

How Can You Receive Your Dropshipping Payments?

You can receive the money you earn with dropshipping through many different methods. At this point, the platform you sell on and its features come into play. If you are selling on one of the marketplaces, you can usually receive your payments directly to your bank account on certain days of the month.

If you are using your own e-commerce site, you can receive your money within the period committed by the virtual POS company you agreed with, using the agreed payment method.

How Long Does It Take to Be Successful in Dropshipping?

Although dropshipping is a low-risk business model, you need to invest a lot of time before making your first sale.

• Starting an e-commerce store

• Sourcing new products

• Evaluating suppliers

• Marketing your products

• Creating a brand

To generate up to USD 2,000 per month through your dropshipping business, you should spend at least 10 to 15 hours a week. Like other small businesses, the time you invest increases your chances of generating significant income.

How to Find a Supplier for Dropshipping?

There are many worldwide platforms that bring together dropshipping suppliers and sellers. You can negotiate with suppliers through these platforms.

Supplier selection is a critical step that every dropshipping business must take. However, there are many factors to consider when looking for a supplier.

If you have a bad supplier, you won't be able to continuously sell even a very successful product. When your service quality is criticized by users, the next sale will be harder than ever. Therefore, you should consider these elements when choosing a supplier:

• Quality production

• Good packaging

• On-time shipping

These elements should be among the conditions you must look for in the suppliers you find. So, how can you reach suppliers? There are many websites for this. Now let's take a look at these websites.

Best Dropshipping Supplier Sites

There are many websites where suppliers for dropshipping are listed. These websites vary according to the niche, product group, and purchasing quantity. Using these websites, you can find and contact suppliers who manufacture the products you want to sell.

1. AliExpress

AliExpress is an international wholesale and/or dropshipping platform that connects e-commerce platforms to dropshipping providers and their products.

Most of the sellers selling on AliExpress are located in China and source their products from this region.

Locations and shipping information: AliExpress ships to 254 countries worldwide, including the US. Packages sent with standard shipping can take between 15 and 45 business days to arrive. If you pay for premium shipping, the estimated delivery time is between seven and 15 business days.

Product types: There are over 100 million products on AliExpress in categories such as fashion, toys, consumer electronics, skincare products, jewelry, furniture, and even cars and motorcycles.

Recommended for: Both beginners and experienced sellers can use AliExpress to find trending products, conduct market research, build relationships with sellers, and place wholesale orders.

2. Alibaba

Alibaba is a B2B marketplace that connects buyers and sellers. The platform is geared toward wholesalers rather than single sellers and facilitates direct communication with manufacturers. Suppliers provide bulk products and can fulfill orders for your dropshipping store.

Locations and shipping information: Delivery on Alibaba can take time depending on where you live. You can expect up to six weeks for deliveries. You can choose to ship by cargo or air to reduce costs. However, you should do your research and plan accordingly.

Product types: Alibaba has over 2.8 million suppliers and more than 5,900 categories.

Recommended for: Recommended for advanced dropshippers who prefer private label manufacturing and want to buy bulk products at the distribution level to sell as consumer products.

3. SaleHoo

The SaleHoo supplier directory lists over 8,000 suppliers offering dropshipping and is frequently used by dropshippers on eBay and Amazon. Unlike AliExpress and Alibaba, you can reach suppliers by paying USD 67 annually.

Locations and shipping information: SaleHoo serves the US, UK, and Australian markets.

Product types: SaleHoo’s inventory source is AliExpress.

Recommended for: If you are comfortable paying an annual membership or only need to use a directory and research tool temporarily, SaleHoo is worth checking out.

4. Worldwide Brands

Founded in 1999, Worldwide Brands is one of the oldest and best-known supplier sites. It offers services claiming to host legitimate, high-quality suppliers that meet a set of guidelines.

Location and shipping options: Worldwide Brands serves retailers worldwide. The company is a supplier directory, so shipping costs and locations depend on the supplier you find through the platform.

Product types: The directory contains a large list of wholesale dropshippers consisting of entirely legitimate options. There are over 16 million certified products to choose from in niches such as pet supplies, jewelry and watches, consumer electronics, home decor, clothing, and more.

Recommended for: If you want lifetime access to a quality wholesale supplier directory and are comfortable with a larger, one-time payment, Worldwide Brands is safe for you.

5. Sunrise Wholesale

Sunrise Wholesale offers more than 15,000 dropships and ships directly to your customers. Additionally, Sunrise offers sales reporting tools, product data, inventory updates sent via email, and automatic price adjustments to ensure your margin remains consistent even if suppliers change their prices.

Location and shipping info: Sunrise Wholesale ships to customers in the US and Canada, with average shipping times ranging from one to two days.

Product types: Sunrise Wholesale offers a wide range of products such as bath products, candles, electronics, garden supplies, home decor, kitchen appliances, toys and games, jewelry, and other accessories.

Recommended for: Sellers looking for fast shipping times in the US and Canada.

Conclusion

Dropshipping is a business model that is very easy to start and carries low risks. It is one of the best options for new entrepreneurs. Currently, global e-commerce is bigger than ever and succeeding today is much easier than it was yesterday.

Above, we have answered almost every question related to dropshipping. We hope this article has cleared up all the question marks in your mind regarding dropshipping.

In the video below, you can watch a YouTuber attempting dropshipping with 0 capital and see the processes live.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxlpMAHZz3U

Frequently Asked Questions About Dropshipping

There are many questions that new entrepreneurs starting dropshipping wonder about. You can find the answers to these questions below.

Is Dropshipping Still Feasible?

Yes, dropshipping is still feasible. Dropshipping is still a highly logical business model today. E-commerce is spreading more and more every day around the world, and there are more potential customers.

Is an Invoice Issued When Dropshipping?

An invoice must be issued when dropshipping. You must tax the money you earn to be able to use it in Turkey.

On Which Sites is Dropshipping Available?

Dropshipping can be done on Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Shopify, and WooCommerce platforms.

Does Amazon Allow Dropshipping?

Amazon allows dropshipping. It is possible to obtain more detailed information by reading the dropshipping guidelines prepared by Amazon.

Can You Do Dropshipping Without Capital?

Dropshipping cannot be done without capital. You will have minimum-level costs. An example of this is the cost of establishing a company.

What is Sold with Dropshipping?

It is possible to sell almost anything with dropshipping. However, it is a crime to sell sensitive products banned by governments.

Who Can Do Dropshipping?

Anyone over the age of 18 can do dropshipping. There is no lower or upper age limit or status requirement.