After Dropshipping Tutorial for Beginners Part 1, and Part 2 of the tutorial. This is the third part of the tutorial. We are really sorry for the delay for this part. In this part we will discuss about different things. Start with choosing your inventory.
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Choosing Your Inventory
Now you’ve got a game plan, and a detailed and beautiful shop set up, but you’re missing one key aspect, an inventory. In case you don’t know, your inventory is going to be everything that you actively sell. It’s a good idea to keep track of items you’ve sold in the past before. That way if they ever become popular in the market again you already have data to launch off of.
At this point I’m sure you’ve already got a pretty good idea of what kind of items you’re wanting to sell in the shop, but unless you’ve already ordered items of these nature from Amazon you likely don’t know any specifics. So from here you’re going to have to do some research into a number of different items and compare some factors between them and ultimately decide what version of what to pick.
First off, your brand is going to play a part. Are you the high quality option? If so you’re obviously going to want high quality inventory options, but among those you still want to pick sellers with good feedback and who offer fast shipping from key locations in the Eastern US or Western Europe.
If on the other hand you’re the cheaper mid quality option, you’ll obviously want to pick the cheapest and highest quality version of the item you can find again keeping the good service and good shipping location aspects in mind.But what if you don’t have items already in mind? Well from here you’re going to want to search the general market you’re selling in on Amazon and look at the best-selling items of that category.
You’ll have to go through the same process as before, but now you’re going to have to add a new variable into the mix. A lot of the top selling items are simply trends that aren’t likely to last into the future. Furthermore, the eBay Arbitrageurs using bots target these items specifically for quick profit and as such getting your particular page noticed in the seas of others is going to be a daunting task.
It’s not necessarily a bad thing to cash in on these trends when they come, but truth be told you’ll never be as fast as a bot. Focusing on adding these to your shop should only be priority once you’ve got an extensive inventory and exhausted almost all other options. Until then, rather than focusing on trends focus on items that always have and always will sell well.
Watch the top sellers for a while and see what remains on the list, no matter how high up or far down it might fluctuate in that time. When it comes to picking items to sell on your shop, longevity and sustainability is almost always more important than making a quick buck.Something I’m going to be covering more extensively later on, but feel that I need to cover briefly here is book-keeping.
Every item you decide to sell should be put into a spreadsheet of some sort with a basic name, some sort of ID system, a link to the actual product page you’re buying from, and how much you’re getting it for. This makes keeping track of everything further down the line easier but is also going to help when creating the item page itself.You’re also going to want to decide on how much to mark the item up.
This is going to depend entirely on your brand and how much you think people are going to be willing to pay, but in general anywhere from5-10$ will work. In some rare cases you’ll only be able to get away with a couple dollar markup, but in general these will be cheaper items that sell much more frequently. So long as you pick items with free shipping on Amazon or take the shipping into account with your markup, you’re guaranteed to profit off of every sale no matter how little it is on an individual basis.
From there it will be a game of drawing in more customers to get more revenue rather than trying to squeeze as much as possible out of your current ones.A question I’m sure you’re asking is how many items should you start out with? Depending on the size of your potential customer base, you might have to do 20-30 Something I’m going to be covering more extensively later on, but feel that I need to cover briefly here is book-keeping.
Every item you decide to sell should be put into a spreadsheet of some sort with a basic name, some sort of ID system, a link to the actual product page you’re buying from, and how much you’re getting it for. This makes keeping track of everything further down the line easier but is also going to help when creating the item page itself.You’re also going to want to decide on how much to mark the item up. This is going to depend entirely on your brand and how much you think people are going to be willing to pay, but in general anywhere from5-10$ will work.
In some rare cases you’ll only be able to get away with a couple dollar markup, but in general these will be cheaper items that sell much more frequently. So long as you pick items with free shipping on Amazon or take the shipping into account with your markup, you’re guaranteed to profit off of every sale no matter how little it is on an individual basis. From there it will be a game of drawing in more customers to get more revenue rather than trying to squeeze as much as possible out of your current ones.A question I’m sure you’re asking is how many items should you start out with?
Depending on the size of your potential customer base, you might have to do 20-30 items initially, or you might just be able to get away with five to start out like I did. Whatever you decide, there’s a ratio I found that I try to stick to. In general,10% of your products should consist of trending items or items with potential to get big in the industry in the coming months. 20% should be unique items that few if any other sellers on eBay cover.
No matter how little you profit off these, it guarantees that most of the customers buying this product will get it from you and you alone.Another 20% should be items that there is always going to be a customer base for, but not necessarily a large one. This is something that you can always be sure that customers in your industry will need but once any individual gets it, it’ll be awhile until they buy a new one.
The final 50% should be the items that are always going to sell and that customers are always going to need. These will be obvious with a little research, and with some proper marketing you can make sure customers will come back to you time and time again.
That’s all that you need to know about Choosing Your Inventory for dropshipping. In our next article we will publish more about Dropshipping Tutorial for Beginners.
