The cost of living is consistently skyrocketing, forcing many to juggle multiple income streams just to make ends meet. Like that’s not enough, AI is also chomping its way through traditional jobs.
But even with ever-rising inflation and the world shifting to AI, one thing remains constant: people love to buy stuff. Dropshipping is your opportunity to tap into this evergreen market by selling what people want to buy.
Dropshipping can be a goldmine, but it’s also very volatile; most dropshipping businesses pack up within the first year. Before you panic and give up, this won’t be your story. In this guide, we’re going to break down the secret to dropshipping success.
Why Do Dropshipping Businesses Crash?
The dropshipping model seems like a very easy business model- open an online store, source products online, and watch the profits roll in — all without a warehouse or logistics hassle. But as tempting as it seems, the reality often paints a different picture. A staggering 90% of dropshipping businesses get swallowed by the unforgiving realities of the business before their first birthday.
So, what exactly makes these promising businesses crash and burn so fast? Let’s explore the key culprits behind the crashes:
1. Poor Product Research
Without thorough product research, you end up stocking products your target market doesn’t want. This will only lead to low sales regardless of how many ads you run.
You must understand your target audience, analyze market trends, and identify profitable niches before stocking products. This is how you win over your customers by providing them with what they want.
2. Unreliable Suppliers
The success of your drop shipping is heavily dependent on your suppliers. Unreliable suppliers can lead to delayed shipments, poor product quality, and frustrated customers. The result? Poor reviews, canceled orders, and eventually low sales because nobody buys from a store with poor reviews.
3. Low Profitability After Ads
Many dropshipping strategies rely heavily on paid advertising to drive traffic. While this can be effective in the short term, the cost of customer acquisition can quickly eat into your profit. You need to find an effective marketing strategy that strikes a sustainable balance between ads and profitability.
4. Poor Customer Expectation Management
Even the best suppliers face delayed shipping and product inconsistencies. You need to communicate these potential frictions to manage customer expectations.
If you don’t do this, you’ll get a pile of negative reviews, and that’s the easiest way to lose both current and potential customers. Think of it this way, if you saw a store with a 2/5 rating and tons of complaints, would you place an order? The answer is no.
Laying the Foundation: Your Dropshipping Roadmap
You've seen why dropshipping businesses fail, here’s how to make sure yours doesn’t:
Niche/Product Selection
There are two ways to go about choosing the products you want to dropship. First, you can choose your niche. For example, your niche could be sleeping aid products, e.g. sleep masks, ear plugs, nose plugs, chamomile tea, etc.
The alternative is to choose a specific product you want to sell and build a dropshipping store dedicated to it. These types of stores are called single-product stores, for example, a heel protector store.
Choosing your niche or product is one of the most important decisions you will make. This brings us to the next step- product research.
Product Research
After choosing your niche or products, the next step is researching products with high demand and profitability. The most effective method for dropshipping product research is the trendhijacking model.
Rather than chasing the traditional product research strategy of stocking any products and hoping they will do well, the trendhijacking product research model finds winning products.
The model helps you find the products that your target market is constantly searching for on social media and search engines and matches it with what your competitors are pushing. Then, it markets your dropshipping store as the best place to buy those products.
Using this model saves you money and time you would have spent testing products till you finally get your winning products. It takes the guesswork out of your product research, you skip the goose chase and move straight to making money.
Building an Optimized Online Store
The next step is creating your online store using an e-commerce platform that supports drop shipping or designing your website personally. The most important factor is to build an online store that makes customers’ journey from the landing page to purchase seamless.
Start by making sure your website is user-friendly and trustworthy. Choose your brand colors and stick to them when designing your website, it gives an authentic feel when customers are looking through your website.
Beyond aesthetics, craft engaging website copies and product descriptions that resonate with your target audience. Avoid aggressive copies like “Buy now or regret later,” which can be a huge turnoff. Instead, craft compelling copies that highlight the benefits and value your products offer.
Finally, add social proof like customer reviews, product ratings, and trust badges. This will help you build trust and credibility with new customers. You can use apps like Vitals on Shopify to add reviews, product ratings, and testimonials.
Sourcing Suppliers
You have done your product research, the task on the list is to find suppliers that can provide you with the products you need at good prices. You can use platforms like AliExpress, DHGate, Spocket, or SaleHoo to browse through thousands of suppliers and products from different countries and niches.
When choosing suppliers look out for positive ratings, fast shipping times, low prices, and good customer service. Positive ratings and fast shipping mean assured product quality and no delivery delays. Also, getting products at low prices means you have room to price your products competitively while still making significant profit.
Pro Tip — Order samples from first-time suppliers to test the quality of the products and the delivery process. This help you determine if they are good fit your for dropshipping business.
Offer Creation
You also want people to feel like your dropshipping store is the best option available. So, you give customers irresistible offers such as free shipping after spending above a specific threshold (e.g. free shipping over $100 orders), buy-one-get-one deals, discounted product bundles, sign-up bonuses, and more.
Yes, your customers are getting benefits, but they are spending way more. For example, instead of buying 1 product, they end up buying 10 to get free shipping. This increases your average order value and helps you outshine your competitors who aren’t offering free shipping.
Marketing and Customer Acquisition
Just throwing ads and content at your dropshipping business isn’t enough. You need a smart marketing strategy to attract customers and make your ad dollars work for you, not against you.
Think of an effective marketing strategy like building a bridge that allows your customers to cross over to your store, while blindly running ads is like dropping rocks in the water.
That’s where the trendhijacking strategy comes in. It allows you to maximize your return on ad spend by focusing on viral products and dropshipping trends and diverting the traffic to your store. This allows you to reach your target audience while minimizing cost effectively.
Learn More About the Trendhijacking Strategy ⏬
Additional Tools and Strategies for Dropshipping Success
You’ve laid the foundation for your dropshipping business —well done! Let’s explore more tools and strategies that will help you stay in the dropshipping game:
Embrace Dropshipping Automation
Imagine trying to build a sandcastle while constantly battling incoming waves. That’s what running a dropshipping business without automation feels like!
You’re stuck juggling everyday tasks like product sourcing, inventory, orders, marketing, and customer support, leaving little time to actually grow your business. Automating everyday tasks allows you to invest your time in making strategic decisions that will truly scale your business.
There are two major types of automation in dropshipping- standard and advanced. Standard automation outsources the time-consuming parts of your dropshipping operations- customer service, marketing, and website design.
In advanced automation, everything is outsourced from start to finish, so that you can focus your full attention on your dropshipping growth strategy at an executive level e.g. supplier partnerships, global expansion, and more.
The type of automation you go for depends on the size of your business and how fast you want to scale your business. Check out my automation guide to learn more about what’s best for your business, or book a free call with the Trendhijacking team to get personalized recommendations on the best automation for your dropshipping business.
Building Brand Identity
Your brand is more than just a logo; it’s your story, your values, and your promise to customers. Craft a unique brand identity that fits your niche and resonates with your audience.
After creating your brand identity, make sure it’s consistent across all channels and products. For example, if you decide to use blue and yellow as your brand colors, make sure you stick with them across your website and social media pages.
Customer Service and Retention
Your brand reputation heavily depends on customer reviews, so excellent customer service is a must. Make sure you respond to inquiries and complaints quickly and implement customer feedback to ensure customers don’t keep complaining about the same issue repeatedly.
You can use tools like Vitals to monitor how customers interact with your website and what you can do to improve them. You can also outsource this part of your dropshipping operations if it will consume too much of your time.
Staying Ahead of the Curve
The dropshipping landscape is constantly shifting trends. So, you have to constantly monitor and analyze what your competitors are doing, and use it to inform your product and marketing decisions.
Also, don’t just copy — study their weaknesses and make them your unique strengths.
Wrapping Up- Go Forth and Make Money With Dropshipping in 2024
Although dropshipping is an extremely profitable business model to run in 2024, it’s not the easiest. There are so many factors that build or crash your dropshipping business, and that’s why so many first-time dropshippers fail.
However, while so many dropshipping businesses shut down yearly, there’s a solution- trend hijacking. It’s a strategy that has helped many drop shippers run profitable and rapidly growing businesses. If you want to learn more about how to use this strategy for your dropshipping business, book a free call.
Before You Go, Let’s Keep in Touch⏬
