Kfir Shapira
The Multi-Method Dropshipping Scheme
If you are selling on eBay, you should know they’re openly saying that they prefer sellers to offer their own goods, and even combine several methods, while working only in the dropshipping arbitrage is considered frowned upon, yet acceptable.
Any experienced dropshipper would agree that although listing items from the major retailers such as Amazon or Walmart can produce great results in terms of selling volumes and feedback scores, acting as a middleman can only get you this far and will leave you with only about 10-20% profit from your total earnings.
Have you ever heard of classic dropshipping? If you don’t know what dropshipping is, don’t feel bad; it’s a new term. Basically, it works like this: your small business is looking to sell some product that is manufactured in a factory somewhere. Instead of keeping such goods on-hand for sale, they are designed and shipped on an as-necessary basis.
So, when performing classic dropshipping what happens is that, for example, a customer likes a t-shirt that is posted on your online print on demand store. They place an order, that order is sent to a manufacturer, and the manufacturer then prints off the shirt and ships it directly to the customer. This way you don’t have any overstock issues, and you can optimize your brand on a tiny budget.
Essentially, you may not have to pay any money for such a thing at all. What will likely happen is that whatever e-commerce solution you choose to effect such a change is going to have a percentage they scrape off the top. So, hypothetically, you may have a t-shirt available in your eBay store for $20, and with the fees from both eBay (9% – 10%) and PayPal (3.9% – 4.4% and 0.3$), About $3 of the $20 is scraped off the top, leaving you with $17, excluding costs of production and shipping, time, management, app design cost, etc.
With the development of dropshipping technology, you can start dropshipping business easier than ever, even with almost $0 investments. Learn more in our Dropshipping With No Money: How To Start Dropshipping For Free guide.
Modernity And Branding
Branding is an essential tool in the modern marketplace, but just as essential as branding is marketing to get the word out. Just like with e-commerce, you’re going to want the most return on your investment.
Once you’ve got the marketing and e-commerce designs in place for a good dropshipping paradigm, one of the wisest subsequent steps you can take is to choose a purveyor of t-shirts to design your branded wares—which will likely include some form of t-shirts. Coffee mugs (especially if you dropshipping coffee), pens, and the like are good branding merchandise, but t-shirts can be some of the most effective.
Why? Well, people are apt to put a t-shirt into their regular wardrobe circulation. The end result is that people see your brand on their t-shirt at statistically predictable intervals which expand in their frequency as more and more t-shirts are sold. This is an organic marketing trend which is effective for the same reason many SEO-related strategies are.
In the article we issued about Drop Shipping T-shirts, we already gave some great tips on how to source merchandise in this fashion, and design your own brand.
The Tee Hive can likely help you get the t-shirts you need; as the site puts it: “Our mission is to give you exactly what you want for your school, event, sport, business, or if you are just looking for that one special design.” Capitalizing on solutions like this can really help you successfully brand yourself on a budget.
Have you been running an eCommerce store for quite some time now? Do you feel like you’re simply treading water, rather than taking your business to the next level? Here are 5 Secrets To Scaling Your eCommerce Brand!
A Complicated—But Positive And Attainable—Success Reality
The truth is, a modern business can be very difficult, but as many disadvantages exist, there are also some very prime advantages which are eminently considerable. Don’t just stop at traditional marketing techniques, look into new ones and learn to capitalize accordingly. Yes, it will require some work. But with all hard work, eventually comes the profit.
If you’re smart in how you spend money and apportion your budget, the profit you seek will come about very naturally. Using dropshipping in conjunction with a fine t-shirt manufacturer and a vetted marketing plan focused on solid customer service is a trifold strategy that many are using for cost-effective success.
If you are only working with the drop-shipping arbitrage method, and you are purchasing all of your items from online retailers like Amazon and Walmart, you should be aware of the possible complications that might occur when trying to source t-shirts, like the difficulty of allowing returns, and the high probability of scanning issues caused by the multiple variations available. Nevertheless, there are many other merchandise items more suitable for this method.
