You\’ve chosen a market niche for your store, so congrats!
Right now, all you need are dropshipping providers.
(If you haven\’t chosen your product(s) to offer yet, click
here to read our article on choosing a niche.)
Finding vendors who will \”dropship\” the products
for you means they will store and ship them instead of you, which is the next
step!
Do I need to purchase a supplier directory? Seems to be a
challenging query that simply raises more issues.
How can I verify the dropshipping providers without getting
in touch with them?
How many providers will I need to dominate a market?
These are some of the most often questions that come up, and
it can be challenging to find an appropriate response.
No longer! I\’m going to remove the mystique surrounding
supplier procurement today and show you the quick steps Drop Ship Lifestyle
takes each time we launch a new store in a certain niche.
Step-by-Step Guide for Finding
Dropshipping Suppliers
1. Competitor Analysis
Looking at the websites of your potential competitors is an
unexpected location to start looking for suppliers.
We\’ll locate the leading e-commerce sites that are now
offering the goods in your preferred niche.
Let\’s imagine, for illustration, that you have decided to
market chandeliers for foyers. Go to Google and type in your primary keyword,
\”entryway chandelier,\” to start your search for providers.
Then, on the first or second page of Google, locate as many
online retailers relevant to your specialty as you can, and copy their URLs
into a spreadsheet.
Go to Step #2 once you have a solid list of stores.
2. e-commerce vs. Brick and Mortar Only
The next step is to go through and eliminate all of the
stores that have physical locations or showrooms, leaving ONLY the ones who
sell purely online, once you have a list of online retailers that are pertinent
to your niche.
We take this action because some product suppliers only let
merchants with physical locations to sell their products.
Some of these \”physical-businesses-only\” suppliers
might accept physical stores that also sell online.
We can simply disregard the e-commerce stores that also have
physical presence since we don\’t want to become overwhelmed by the amount of
providers that may be available to us.
If we visit an e-commerce store\’s \”About Us\” page
and read about them, we can determine whether or not they also have a physical
location. They do not only conduct business online if they use phrases like
\”visit us,\” \”come see our showroom,\” \”make an
appointment,\” etc.
Take them from your list. Once you have completed this
process at each of the stores on your list, you are aware of what the remaining
ones:
·
Market the goods you wish to market.
·
Are common (high ranking on Google)
·
Have no stores that sell things
This indicates that it is safe to presume that all of the
remaining stores deal with dropshipping suppliers.
Great!
Now that we know WHO the dropship suppliers are, we can
compile a list of them, get in touch with them, and eventually gain
authorization to sell their goods online.
3. Master Supplier List
Let\’s identify the vendors that the remaining online shops
represent.
Since many websites make their suppliers explicit, it should
be rather simple.
Go to the first website on the list and search for a section
titled \”Brands\” or \”Manufacturers\” to get started.
When you do, you\’ll be rewarded because many stores will end
up listing 10, 20, or even 100 brands! You might need to hunt in the header,
footer, sidebar, or even sitemap to locate this.
Building a \”Supplier Master List,\” which you will
consult in the future for all potential dropship providers in your niche, will
require you to accomplish this for each site as you go along.
All of the supplier names you locate should be pasted into
the \”Supplier Name\” column you create in the first column of your
spreadsheet.
Repeat this for every website, and you\’ll most likely find
that you have more suppliers than you need to start making a ton of money
dropshipping in no time!
It is crucial to keep in mind that just though you have now
located X number of suppliers, it does not necessarily follow that they will
all grant you accounts on the first day.
However, it is safe to claim that you will be able to obtain
accepted for enough accounts to create a website that will generate sales if
your supplier list is 20 brands or longer (and eventually, as your store shows
success, the brands that denied you initially will eventually come around).
Using this list, you\’ll try to gain the approval of AS MANY
SUPPLIERS IN YOUR NICHE AS POSSIBLE.