Dropshipping business is basically advertising products that you don’t own or have on ground to interested buyers. There are broadly two types of dropshipping business:
- Product reselling
- Business/market extension
Product reselling is when your customer pays to you and you use the money to buy from your supplier and then you ship to your customer. So, the goods go through you to your customer
Business/Market extension is when you have your supplier ship the product to your customers when your customers place and order. So, here, your suppliers ship directly to your customers and you don’t have any contact with the goods whatsoever.
Your supplier is just going to ship like you did it such that your customer does not know that someone else but you did the shipping of the item to them. They will just think that you are the one shipping the product.
So, why would you choose this second method over Product selling?
It could be that you’re in a location that’s not convenient for you to ship at the same time. It could also be that you don’t just want to go through logistics and the stress that comes with it. Another reason could be that the cost of shipping by you is higher. So, you may want to relieve yourself of that cost and allow your supplier to handle that.
How to Start Lucrative Dropshipping Business in Nigeria
Now, let me breakdown how to run these two successful dropshipping business types in Nigeria
How To Start And Manage A Successful Dropshipping Business In Nigeria
1. Do Your Research
Market research is key in every business, not just dropshipping.
For dropshipping business, your market research should focus on these 5 key things:
- product availability
- competitors
- suppliers availability
- marketing strategy
- pricing
2. Inform Your Supplier that You Want to Drop-ship With Them.
After your market research, the next thing that you would do is to contact your supplier and inform them that you want to drop-ship with them.
You may go ahead and negotiable the prices with them to get some discounts.
Also, find out from them their modes of delivery and the availability of the products.
3. Get Product Pictures and Videos from Your Suppliers
This is a very obvious point because you need the product pictures and videos to advertise to your customers. Of course, people need to see what you are selling and what they are paying for.
Make sure you obtain top quality pictures and videos from your suppliers because that is what is going to appeal to your customers that you’re selling something that is good.
So, even if it is a bag that is as low as 3,000 Naira tell them to send you a good quality bag that looks like 20 000 naira in worth.
Good product pictures and videos go a long way in boosting your sales as a drop-shipper.
4. Create Custom Graphics for the Product(s)
Before you ship out anybody’s item, take good pictures and make good videos about it. I know that you already have pictures and videos from your suppliers.
That aside you need to create your own custom graphics – image and videos – from what you obtained from your product suppliers.
This is what you would post on your webpages and social media handles. The reason for this is that the one you got from your supplier might contain the brand information like the phone contact details of your supplier. You want to remove that and make the product graphics unique to you.
Besides, it is the same pictures that your supplier is going to send to every other person that comes to them intending to do dropshipping with them. So, you need to create custom own pictures and videos to reflect your own business. This point is very important coming from someone who has been doing dropshipping for the past 5 years.
Once people notice that you are selling the products with unique pictures and videos they’ll begin to build trust in your business and it would be easier for you to sell to them. Listen, these days people are very smart. They can easily detect internet downloaded pictures and videos. If they notice this in your adverts, they know at a glance that you’re doing dropshipping to them and that you may not have the product on ground.
People generally hate to be sold things at a higher price – which is what dropshipping is. Besides, dropshipping comes with delay in delivery time. So, when people begin to sense that you are dropshipping to them, they might shun you and would rather contact the direct sellers or distributors for the product at a lesser price and delivery time.
5. Choose Where and How You Want to Sell
Now, let me lay emphasis on how to sell online as regards to setting up an e-commerce website for your business.
You see, there are two ways to go about it.
First, you can drop-ship your products to and sell on e-commerce website like Konga, Jumia, Amazon, eBay, etc. This works for both Nigeria dropshipping business and dropshipping overseas.
If you don’t want to do that, you can simply sell your dropshipping business on social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and any other platform that you use.
What you do is this…
On your online platform, you simply place a launch date and tell your family and friends that you’d be launching a particular product on that date. Ask them to kindly inform their friends and even the friends of the friends of your friends about it and to follow you on social media.
Also, ask people to follow you on your page, whatever platform that you use and want to sell your product on. This way, you would be able to make people to anticipate the arrival of your product in earnest. You can post a few pictures and videos of what you’re going to sell so that people can see what they would be getting on the product launch date.
6. Create Massive Awareness and Sell.
Create anticipation for what you’re about to sell because after all you’re doing dropshipping; you don’t have the product. So, you have to create anticipation about the product so that people would know what you have to sell.
Next, select the platform that you want to sell on. I do not advise that once you’re starting a business that you want to sell on all platforms at once. Doing so can be really overwhelming and trying to manage everything at once would be quite tasking.
One of the popular places that you can sell is the social media and I recommend Instagram. To be successful selling on Instagram you need to grow your Instagram page. One of the things that you want to do to grow your Instagram page is to create a brand for yourself and your business on Instagram. This way, you would be able to build thousands of followers to whom you would sell your products to.
As a dropshipper, you have to do strong advertising for your products. You want people to trust you and come to you rather than other people including those that even have the product in stock. So, you have to do strong advertising to make good sales in this business.
Don’t just sit back and be lazy with posting your products on social media; you have to be consistent about it. Don’t just post once a week or just put it on your status alone. No! You’re going to do massive advertisement on all the social media of your choice and extend the same to other social media.
If you really want to sell, you have to do more than your competitors and build a strong advertising network so that people can know you and what you sell. The more you advertise, the more you create awareness and build trust in the mind of people about your business.
Conclusion
Dropshipping is not hard. You just have to put in the work needed for you to sell. If you followed all that I discussed here, you should be ready to drop-ship any time from now.
Now, if you have any questions or contributions to make to this, let me know in the comment box below. Thank you and have a lovely day.
