The 4 Methods of Dropshipping (E140)

08/27/20 • 15 min

Show Notes: Retail ArbitrageInternational DropshippingDomestic DropshippingHybrid Dropshipping Sponsors: Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!Spark Shipping – Dropshipping Automation Software Links: Retail ArbitrageDomestic DropshippingHybrid Dropshipping Transcript: Charles (00:00): In this episode of the Business of eCommerce I talk about the 4 methods of dropshipping. This the Business of eCommerce episode, 140. Charles (00:16): Welcome to the Business of eCommerce. The show that helps eCommerce retailers start launch and grow the eCommerce business. And I want to talk about today, the four different methods of drop shipping. What I realized is talking with different users and different online forums is drop shipping is a very, um, confusing term where a lot of folks seem to have one method in mind. When they're speaking about that method, they usually kind of push that as the, that is the method that is drop shipping. And I think it's kind of helpful to map out these different discreet types of drop shipping. I've kind of mapped out as four different types. The fourth is less common. So I think that's an interesting one to talk about. Well, it's kind of go through each one, go through a pros and cons. Why? I think, you know, each one definitely has its benefits and let's kind of talk about each. Charles (01:05): So number one, and a lot of blogs, we'll talk about this as drop shipping, but retail arbitrage is kind of a niche inside of drop shipping. Today's episode is sponsored by drip, drip. It's a world's first e-commerce CRM and a tool that I personally use for email marketing and automation. Now, if you're running an eCommerce store, you need to have drip to try. And here's why drip offers one-click integrations for both Shopify and Magento. There's robust segmentation, personalization, and revenue dashboards. To give you an overview of how your automation emails are performing. One of my favorite features of drip is the visual workflow builder. It gives you a super easy way to build out your automation world visually and see the entire process. It lets you get started quickly, but also build very complex automation rules. It's powerful, but also easy to learn. Unlike a lot of email tools that offer the same type of automation to get a demo of drip today, you can go head over to drip.com/boe that's drip.com/b O E. Charles (02:03): Now onto the show drop shipping is when you don't take physical whole of the product or for very long sort of thing, it kind of just moving the product, right? So retail as a form of that, what that is is when a product is sold in one place, more than it's being sold in another retail location, a retailer, or the retail arbitrage, or 10, essentially sell on Amazon for a hundred and buy that same product on eBay for $60 when they get that order and Amazon finally buys it for a hundred, they say, grace, they get that shipping address. They go directly to eBay buy the exact same product, put in that, use a shipping address and have it shipped directly there for a hundred, right? So they make that 40 in between minus shipping costs, minus taxes, things like that. So it's very easy to get into. Charles (02:57): And that's one of the biggest benefits, right? Well, most folks are starting off. You might not even have a LLC set up any sort of actual business entity. You could literally do it all within your, um, Amazon account. You can just use a personal account and just start listing products. Super, super, super simple to get into the issue is, well, first one issue is I believe mature the reality here of the terms rather, but I believe it's against the Amazon's terms of service. So it's something that if you start doing it, any sort of scale and people find out, you can get reported, where that happens is a lot of times somebody gets a product and they think they're buying it from XYZ store,

Previous Episode

Focus Less on Growth and More Caring about for Customers (E139)

Reggie BlackCEO of Better Way Health Show Notes: Customer service is in-houseCall every new subscriptionHave a preferred customer service repAOV over the phone is double80% to 40% over the phone3.5 to 7.5 orders once they talk on the phone$1,200 LTV3 Months of training for Customer ServiceStarted in as IT guy in 2010Brooks at SpringBotBook - Customer Service Revolution Sponsors: Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!Spark Shipping – Dropshipping Automation Software Bio: Reggie Black is a Christian first, husband of 10 years to Amy, father of four (and counting), and CEO of Better Way Health. Links: https://www.betterwayhealth.com/ Transcript: Charlie (00:00): In this episode of the business. E-Commerce I talk with Reggie black about building a culture that truly cares about the customer. This is a business e-commerce episode, one 39. Welcome to the business. E-Commerce the show that helps eCommerce retailers start launch and grow the eCommerce business. I'm your host, Chelsea [inaudible] and I'm here today with Reggie black. Reggie is a CEO of better way health, a high quality supplements company that focuses on customer service. They have a very interesting approach on calling customers and talking directly to their customers have to purchase is something I don't have very often from eCommerce brands. So I think it's very interesting and everyone should have a listen. So let's get into the interview. Hey Reggie, how are you doing today? I'm wonderful. Charles, how are you? Good to, yeah, I'm doing good. Good to have you on the show. I think I'm disinteresting topic where it's not talked about very often, right on kind of focusing you here. Charlie (01:03): And we do a lot right on talking to folks in on how to talking about growth and marketing and that's how the business, but, and that's all kind of the top, right. Of getting the customer. Well, I, they, they're focusing on the customer after you actually acquire them after maybe as they made the purchase during the purchase process and what that looks like and how to kind of improve Ash. So I think it's super under under talked about topic. So definitely interested on this one. So your background, so you guys CEO of better way health, you guys sell supplements, right. But I know you have a big focus on the customer service aspect of it, right? Reggie (01:44): Absolutely. So we, we really focus in, when I took over the company, we had about 50 different skews and products and we took that down over about a year period to just four products. And now we're up to five. So we're very focused on the products that we carry. Just, we want to be true experts and knowledge of those products. And then we really focus on the customer service side, the customer experience side. I mean, that's one of our core values here at the company is creating amazing customer experiences. And our goal is to get the customer to say, wow, like I've never experienced anything like this before. So we almost backed into that. You were mentioning before about the marketing and the growth and everything because, because the product is such a high quality, we have really high margins that cost a lot of money to make products that are that quality. Reggie (02:35): So I didn't really know any different when I started, I was just thinking, Oh, like everybody pays this much money for supplements. And so there's not a lot of margins to really go out and spin, spin, spin, and like acquire all these new customers. So we really had to focus on keeping the customers that we had. And now I think everybody's playing catch up a little bit as costs of Facebook, customer acquisitions, Google ads, and everything is really rising. People are starting to realize like, Oh, it's so expensive. Now in that space is getting so crowded to acquire new customers. We've got to figure out how to keep the customers that we've acquired. Charlie (03:11): Yeah.

Next Episode

The 3 Steps to Find Dropship Suppliers (E141)

Show Notes: Nitch downResearch what others are selling to find brandsContact those brands directly to find out what are the options fora. Becoming a reseller of their productsb. If they have a list of distributors they currently work with Sponsors: Drip – Get a free demo of Drip using this coupon code!Spark Shipping – Dropshipping Automation Software Transcript: Charles (00:00): In this episode of the business. E-Commerce I talk about the three steps to find drop ship suppliers. This is a business of eCommerce episode, 141. Welcome to the business of eCommerce. They show the health eCommerce retailers start launch and grow your eCommerce business. I mean, it was [inaudible] and I'm here today to talk about the three steps of finding dropship suppliers. So we talked about buying drop ship suppliers specifically, in this context, we are talking about domestic drop-ship suppliers. So these are suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, domestic locally in your country. A lot of folks starting off want to either find that first supplier or expand the network of suppliers and have a little trouble doing so. And if you Google around, there's a lot of folks kind of recommending different things, selling a product, selling a list, providing that their base supplier, and maybe, maybe they are not. Charles (01:02): And kind of everyone wants to get a piece and a lot of middlemen. So it's kind of hard to Wade through that sometimes and figure out who's really the person you should be talking to and how you should do this process. This episode is sponsored by drip, drip it's of world's first e-commerce CRM and a tool that I personally use for email marketing and automation. Now, if you're running an eCommerce store, you need to have to portray. And here's why drip offers one click integrations for both Shopify and Magento. There's robust segmentation, personalization, and revenue dashboards. To give you an overview of how your automation emails are performing. One of my favorite features of drip is the visual workflow builder. It gives you a super easy way to build out your automation world visually and see the entire process. It lets you get started quickly, but also build very complex automation rules. Charles (01:47): It's powerful, but also easy to learn. Unlike a lot of email tools that offer the same type of automation to get a demo of drip today, you can go head over to drip.com/boe. That's drip.com/b O E now. So I want to have this quick episode talk about the three steps of actually finding the correct suppliers, correct who you should be talking to for particular products. Step one is niche down. So this is the first thing you want to do. You want identify what niche are you in? Let's say you're selling tens for camping or you're selling and kitchen. Pup away are pots and pans. That sort of thing. You need to be in a very specific vertical, because that helps you. And a lot of people skip over this. And that's why I want to mention it. That helps you kind of identify who even who's the universe of suppliers you should be talking to in these cases, there's usually only a handful, right? Charles (02:46): Most industries might have two to 10 suppliers and maybe the manufacturers, maybe these are distributors, but it's not unlimited. And as soon as you start niching down, you start getting a sense of what's the ecosystem. How many are there? Who should I be reaching out to first? And kind of, you can start building a hit list. So always step one, start with finding your niche, going into your niche and understanding that is step one, step two, find other folks or the retailers in that niche and see who they're selling this of course is if you don't already know the manufacturers in the niche, but let's say you don't, you decided, Hey, I'm going to build this new site, selling a certain product. You're not really sure what, who actually builds products in an industry.