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Dropshipping Tips and Best Practices
Written by Shopster's Marketing Team
Here are a few TIPS on how you can become a profitable dropshipper:
Research before you list
The most effective way to get the most money is to know and understand your market. Research, research, research! Before you list your item, perform a quick, title-only search on eBay for items similar to yours. Then, click on Completed items (under the Display heading) and sort the results by price (highest-priced first). Keep in mind that any given item on eBay is worth only what others are willing to pay for it, so ignore any listings that never received bids. Scrutinize the most successful sales and see how the sellers have described and promoted their items in order to earn top dollar. Spend some time investigating competitive pricing for your niche. What you think customers will pay might not match what other retailers are selling for. It might take some extra time, but it'll pay off in sales.
Try to avoid common and popular products
Spend a little time and do a search in eBay to see how many others are trying to sell the same product. Remember a saturated market pushes down the price your customers are willing to pay.
Have Multiple Auctions
Save yourself some time and increase your chances of selling by listing more than one product for auction at a time. Keep track of what sells and what doesn't. Re-list the products that sell.
Search the Shopster Warehouse
Do some hunting through the warehouse. Try to find products listed well below the MSRP. With over 900,000 products in the Shopster Warehouse, there a ton of great products that can be drop shipped. You will have to dig around to find the hidden gems. As well, check the warehouse often, there are over 1000 new products added to warehouse every few days.
Add to the product descriptions
Add custom content to your auction descriptions to make them more attractive to customers. Ask yourself if you would buy the product based on the information available. Take a look at successful auctions selling that same thing you are and see what they have that you don't.
Avoid listing items that are very Low in Stock
Our goal is to always try to keep YOUR customers happy, to enable us to do this, please try not to list items that are very low in stock. If we have sold out of an item after your action has ended, we will try and offer a suitable alternative, but this might not be enough for your customer. Keep and eye on the stock levels, they are updated on a daily basis.
Be patient and don't give up
We have had some new retailers sign up for our service, listed 1 or 2 items on eBay, not make a sale and have give up. This is something we don't want to see, in fact we want all our dropshippers to make a substantial profit in their first year. Please remember, you could have just chosen the wrong product, or been unlucky that there were no customers looking for that particular product on that day. It takes time to build a solid positive feedback rating and to learn and understand the business.
Price products to sell
When you're ready to list, set your Buy-It-Now price in the neighborhood of what you expect your item is worth; raise it a little for particularly in-demand or scarce objects, or take a few dollars off if you want to move your merchandise fast. Set the starting price (the opening bid) much lower, though, anywhere from a single dollar to no more than half your item's value; this will encourage healthy bidding, thus raising the perceived value and the final price. If you've done your research, you won't have to worry about your item selling for too little.
Try to avoid the reserve price feature
If you're considering a reserve price for your listings — don't. The reserve price is a secret dollar amount below which you're under no obligation to sell, and it is useful only if you don't know the value of your item. Reserves tend to scare away bidders and accomplish nothing more than lowering the closing price unnecessarily. Even worse is the use of a Buy-It-Now price alongside a reserve price, as bidders easily confuse the two and give up any hope of getting a bargain.
Include relevant keywords in the product title
The success of any auction item relies almost entirely on the likelihood of its being found in searches. eBay searches are seeded by the words you place in your auction titles, so include as many relevant keywords as possible without wasting space with unnecessary punctuation, nonsense such as "@@ Look! @@," or any other terms for which your customers won't be searching. Since eBay uses exact-match (as opposed to fuzzy) searches, the words in your titles must be spelled correctly in order to show up in search results.
With only a scant 45 characters in which to work, there's rarely room to spare in an auction title. If you're inclined to highlight the condition, scarcity, or other special aspects of your item, do so in the subtitle. Although subtitles are indexed only in title-and-description searches (not the more common title-only searches), they do appear in all search results and category listings and are effective in getting extra attention. A subtitle costs 50 cents, so don't bother for any item worth less than about $25.
Make your Auctions Attractive
A little color and spice in your auction will not only make it more inviting and more professional-looking, it will help emphasize important details in the auction description. Among the most vital are the payment and shipping details, both of which are unfortunately buried far beneath the photos in eBay's new auction page design. The clearer, simpler, and easier to find your terms are, the less likely you are to be hassled by confused or disappointed customers or deadbeat bidders.
Accept PayPal
The easier you make payment for customers, the more likely they'll be to give you their business. The most popular payment method these days on eBay is PayPal, which lets members send money to anyone with an e-mail address. The only cost is assessed to sellers, on the order of about 3 percent of the amount a seller receives. But don't be put off; the extra bids you'll get with that PayPal logo in your auction will more than make up for the measly 3 percent fee. Although PayPal goes to some lengths to safeguard its members, you'll want to take a few extra steps to protect yourself.
As a seller, refuse any payments from buyers who don't provide confirmed addresses (meaning that PayPal has verified them through their credit card records). Otherwise, you'll be forced to forfeit any money later found to be from a stolen credit card. And as a buyer, always fund your payments with a credit card for an extra layer of protection from your credit card company's charge-dispute department.
If the buyer pays you with a check or money order, for your safety, make sure the bank successfully clears it before you order it.
Check out other auction sites
Have a look around various auction sites. You're not stuck to selling only on eBay. Other auction sites may not be as competitive and may bring a higher profit.
