If you’re interested in starting your own ecommerce business, one of the most successful types of businesses online is an Amazon Dropshipping Business. An Amazon dropshipping business can be run from any location – your home, office, or even your local library – as long as you have a connection to the internet. With a reliable vendor(s) and the right Amazon Drop Shipping Software, your business will bloom into an efficiently run and growing ecommerce business.
The Basics: Dropshipping
What is Dropshipping?
Dropshipping is a simple concept that essentially means “someone else ships.” Instead of your business buying, warehousing, selling, and shipping a product to your customer, the manufacturer or distributor ships directly to the customer. The process removes a lot of the complexity of ecommerce and saves you money on shipping and warehousing inventory. It also saves the time it would take to ship to your retail business from the manufacturer or distributor.
The Appeal of Dropshipping
Dropshipping is very appealing for several reasons. Different from in-house or outsourced fulfillment, you work with suppliers to sell their own products. Then you put up an ecommerce site, mark up the wholesale pricing, and sell the product. Once you receive an order, you purchase the product from your supplier, and they will ship it to the customer.
- You set up a specific supplier.
- You control the order.
- You can brand products as your own.
- No overhead costs.
- Your job is sales and marketing only.
- Work with one or many suppliers.
- You can order a sample without buying inventory.
How Does Dropshipping Work?
Amazon describes dropshipping like this:
When you work with a dropshipping supplier, you pay them to fulfill products when a customer places an order. The exact logistics of dropshipping depend on your arrangement, but typically the dropshipping process follows this general sequence:
• Your dropshipping supplier sources or produces the product.
• You make an agreement with the dropshipping supplier.
• Your dropshipping supplier stores the inventory.
• You host the ecommerce storefront or webstore.
• A customer places an order.
• You process the payment.
• You forward the order to the dropshipping service.
• The dropshipping service prepares the order.
• The dropshipping service ships the product(s).
Usually, you send customer orders to the dropshipper, then you inform customers the products are on the way, and the rest of the physical fulfillment process is out of your hands.
How to Start an Amazon Dropshipping Business
Starting an Amazon Dropshipping Business is not difficult, but you do have to take certain steps to start.
Select an Ecommerce Platform
You can upload your product listings directly to Amazon Seller Central, but it takes a lot of time and you don’t have as much control over the listings. For a small business that wants to scale up, using an outside platform with software integration will give you more flexibility.
Set Up an Amazon Seller Account
You need an Amazon Seller account to sell anything on Amazon, and to provide Amazon with your business details, tax information, and contact information.
Get Amazon Approval for Your Product Category
Some of the selling categories require further information and approval by Amazon. For instance, if you are selling jewelry, you need prior approval. Here is a list of all the categories on Amazon Central.
Select a Product to Sell and Create a Listing on Amazon
Every product you sell needs an Amazon listing which includes the title, description, price, and other details that show up on the customer-facing side, and on the backend for operation and administration.
Amazon Dropshipping Costs
Some of the costs for a dropshipping business are the same as for any retail ecommerce business. Price of the product, packaging, shipping, administration costs, computer, Amazon drop shipping software, and Amazon dropshipping fees. You may ask yourself, is Amazon dropshipping profitable? The answer is that it’s all in the margins.
The margins are the difference between your cost for products, plus any associated costs or fees, and the price you sell them for on Amazon. Margins vary widely in different product categories, and for different brands. To sell your product, you need to be priced competitively, but high enough to make money on each sale.
Your Partners
The partners you choose are big factors in the success of your business. They need to be reliable and trustworthy, have an accurate inventory count, and ship products on time. When you are looking for partners, research them thoroughly so you know you can trust the company you select. To help you find suppliers, here is a list of supplier directories:
Dropshipping Courses
It is highly recommended that you take an Amazon Dropshipping Course before you start your business. Ecommerce, like all things online, changes rapidly. Even if you used to have an ecommerce business, but stopped for a while, taking a course to catch up is a good idea. And taking an Amazon Dropshipping for Beginners course is a must for new e-retailers. There is a wide range of available courses, so the best dropshipping course is the one that’s the best for you.
Here are some places to look for dropshipping courses:
Best Dropshipping Software for Amazon
Ordoro is the best dropshipping software for Amazon. Ordoro’s Amazon drop shipping software offers a wide range of features to help run your dropshipping business. The software turns tedious, time-consuming details into a streamlined workflow. Ordoro’s features include the following:
- Setting up: Setting up your products and vendors is as simple as filling in supplier information, importing products, and assigning them to their designated vendors.
- Select your workflow: Manually select which vendor an order is emailed to or flip a switch that auto-routes each assigned product to its appropriate dropshipper. Ordoro also splits orders, giving you the option to take orders with multiple products, separate the dropshippable SKUs, and route them to vendors independently.
- Supplier interface: Activate the Vendor Portal, a feature that provides suppliers with an account, allowing them to log into Ordoro and view their active orders. Through it, they can print labels and create tracking information for those orders, which the app then relays back to your sales channels.
- Automate your process: Through Ordoro’s open API, it’s possible to build custom integrations with your vendors to completely streamline your process. Orders are automatically introduced to their system for fulfillment without the need for communication.
Are You Already an Ordoro Customer?
If you are an Ordoro customer, you can take advantage of these awesome dropshipping services right now. Ordoro has several support articles you can follow to get your dropshipping business set up and running.
How to Automate Your Dropshipping Business with Ordoro
With limited time to work in your dropshipping business, automation will allow it to grow more readily. In addition to providing the best Amazon drop shipping software, Ordoro can automate your dropshipping business.
Clear and effortless communication between merchant and supplier(s) is required to dropship effectively. Through auto-routing and order splitting, Ordoro’s dropshipping automation delivers on that, helping speed up your process by reducing the back-and-forth.
Automating Your Dropshipping Business
Ordoro can help automate your dropshipping business with:
- Auto-routing: Dropshippable orders are sent to vendors without any effort on your end.
- Order-splitting: Imported orders containing products carried by different dropshippers are split automatically, and each product is routed to its assigned vendor separately.
- Adding products: Take a single or bulk item from your supplier and place it on Amazon in a short period of time, including title, photos, product description, product specifications, etc.
- Listing optimization: Customize boilerplate and unique titles and descriptions are optimized automatically.
- Inventory management software: The inventory software will track changes and inform the automation software, and then adjust the automation software automatically.
- Order processing: Orders can be placed and processed quickly once you set up the rules.
- Customer feedback: Automate your responses after receiving a new order, and when it ships. And you can set up an auto-messaging system to encourage customer feedback.
- Shipping fees, and tracking: Set up automation to notice additional shipping fees and add them to your final price automatically. Automate tracking software so customers can track shipments.
Get the Best Amazon Dropshipping Tools to Jumpstart Your Business
We don’t mean to toot our own horn, but Ordoro is the best Amazon drop shipping software with the added plus of integrated automation software. If you would like to learn more about our Amazon drop shipping software, schedule your demo today!
