Now you’ve picked a product to sell, found a reliable supplier to start with and set up the legal part of your business, it’s time to kick off with sales. But then, you should know and understand how to put your products before your target customers. While there are many sales options, it’s good to get an online store where you can sell your products from AliExpress, or you can sell on Amazon or eBay.
Dropshipping on eBay
eBay stands out as the largest auction website for physical goods, worldwide. Many people know this site, and here are some reasons why you may or may not want to sell on eBay and launch a dropshipping business on eBay.
Why You Should Sell on eBay
Easy to kickstart – It’s easy to start listing your products even immediately after creating an account on eBay.
Wide Audience – Millions of online buyers visit eBay often, and when you list your products here, they get exposed to this audience. You also get a decent price for your listings because of the fairly robust nature of the market.
No Much Need for Marketing – Because you’re listing on eBay, – already made and known platform – you don’t need to fret about SEO, marketing strategies or driving paid traffic to your product. Since marketing appears to be one of the biggest challenges of dropshipping, and eBay comes in handy here, it’s not hard to see why many people prefer to sell on this platform.
Why You May Not Want To Sell On eBay
Listing Fees – Just in case you don’t know, eBay charges for product listing. The success fee, which often goes as high as 10% of your product price is a turn off for many. Dropshipping business doesn’t come with huge margins; imagine eBay taking a large chunk from the thin margin.
No Customization – When you list on eBay, you just follow their templates, and this cuts down the personal value a seller might want to add to their offerings.
Steady Monitoring and Re-listing – There’s the need to continually monitor and re-list the products you have on eBay for sale, this is because of the auction nature of this site. Though some tools can help automate this re-listing process, they are not as straightforward as listing products once and for all on your personal ecommerce site.
One-off connection with buyers – While there might be a handful of repeat customers on eBay, most buyers will not come back for your offerings again. eBay is a marketplace designed to serve itself and not the merchants who list on it. There are communication restrictions, as well as limits to many other things. The platform isn’t all about you but itself and the products you list.
Not an Asset –A means of selling your product that doesn’t let you have repeat customers, control your traffic and market as a whole, it’s impossible to build an asset. Selling on eBay doesn’t give you the opportunity to own a lasting web property that has a value.
Dropshipping on Amazon
Most of the stocks you see on Amazon are actually products sold by merchants. Just like eBay, Amazon allows third-party merchants to sale though they are better when it comes to resolving sales issues.
Why You Should Sell on Amazon
The benefits of selling on Amazon are just like those of selling on eBay. You can get started and reach out to a wide audience, and hey, you don’t need to worry about SEO or marketing tricks.
Additionally, Amazon provides fulfillment warehouses. With this, you can blend your dropshipped items with other products you have, without bothering about warehousing, packaging, and shipping.
Why You Should Not Want to Sell on Amazon
Listing fees – Just as eBay, Amazon lets you sell while they charge their commission. Typically, the commission ranges from 10% to 15% and may vary in special scenarios. Considering this as your dropshipping option may take off a large part of your profit.
No Long-term Customer Relationship – It’s not so common to grow a long-lasting relationship with your buyers on Amazon. They are committed to helping themselves and only do their best to favor their interest, focusing on products and their sellers. You encounter restrictions on branding, product display, and customer communication.
Sales Data Exposure – All the sales data, ranging from best-selling items to your average selling prices are displayed on Amazon. It was accused that Amazon uses this sellers’ data to find great selling opportunities and dominate more in such niches.If you want to import the products from eBay into your WooCommerce store and sync stock and prices, you can use some eBay dropshipping plugin.
Dropshipping with AliExpress
AliExpress is a leading ecommerce platform that caters to the needs of the international market. It creates a favorable marketplace for Chinese manufacturers to have have their products reach different nations.
For many dropshippers, this is a great platform, as they offer products at very competitive prices, and this allows dropshippers to sell with high profit margin.
However, there is a limitation with AliExpress. Basically all the sellers are Chinese and you can hardly sell there if you are not Chinese. But it offers a great option to dropshippers as many suppliers are ready to cater to the business needs of dropshippers.
AliExpress dropshipping plugin simplifies the whole process. Once you find a supplier as discussed in one of the previous chapters, you can easily import your products to your store with a few clicks, only if you’re using Ali2Woo. This cuts down the hassle of building your store and catalog.
Dropshipping with Your Personal Ecommerce Store
If you don’t want to sell via third-party store such as eBay or Amazon, then having your own dropshipping site is necessary. For many people who are interested in raising a successful ecommerce business, getting a personal ecommerce store is paramount.
Why You Need a Personal Ecommerce Store
Better Control Over Your Business – When you own an online store, you customize it to be a perfect place to sell your products while adding value to your buyers the way you want. Ranging from customizing layouts to optimizing product pages, you stand better chances of controlling your business.
Mobile-friendly – If you’ve ever sold your products on eBay and Amazon via mobile, you’ll understand how stressful that could be. But with your personal online store, you can choose to customize your store and make it mobile-friendly. This makes it easy to access your store both on mobile and desktop. Of course, you can’t undermine the need for this as about 30% of the online buyers, purchase on their mobile.
Easy Design – With platforms like Ali2Woo, you can set up your store without hassle. Choose your design and customize, add products with just a few clicks and include a payment gateway, you’re good to go. Depending on the complexity of your online store, you can set up everything within 24 hours.
No Charges by Third-parties – When you dropship through your online store, you stay away from third-parties stores that charge up to 15% commission on every sale you make. With this, you can enjoy a better profit margin
Real Asset and Business – having your online store gives you a long-term business, knowing that you have repeat customers and loyal customers make it worth it. Likewise, you’ll have an asset to count on any time, any day.
Why You May Not Want To Sell on Your Personal Store
When you run your own site, you cater to the traffic generation and control as well as marketing and SEO. These are the basics for making sales, and they appear to be herculean tasks to many people. You must have to invest time and money to pull these through.Next chapter: Operating a dropshipping Business (chapter 7)
Previous chapter: Kick-starting Your Business (Chapter 5)
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