How to Set up and Drive Traffic to Your Dropshipping Store In 30 Days
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How to Set up and Drive Traffic to Your Dropshipping Store In 30 Days
Many successful product-based online stores adopt the dropshipping model.
Top eCommerce brands such as Wayfair sell some home décor items that are not owned by the store. Walling Shop is yet another eCommerce store selling tons of wall decor items owned by third-party vendors.
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Dropshipping is a viable business model with low running costs.
With the low cost of production of household items in Asia and the relatively low shipping cost to the West, the dropshipping model is thriving and is here to stay.
As predicted by Business Insider, 2022 will be the first trillion-dollar year for online sales as consumers continue to shift their spending habits online.
Thanks to Dropshipping, you can also have a share of the trillion dollars even without having to own any of the products you want to sell online.
With affordable monthly rental plans from Shopify ($29), a dropshipping store can be set up in just a few clicks. The good news is that you can test all you want with its 14-day free trial.
The setup cost for platforms like WooCommerce is relatively cheap with lesser monthly hosting fees on providers like Bluehost or SiteGround.
If you’re looking to get your eCommerce store steps ahead, go for an aged domain from domain providers like Odys Global. Buying an aged domain is expensive, but it is worth it if you can afford it. See this post on aged domain marketplaces.
The shiny object syndrome has unfortunately propelled a lot of entrepreneurs to jump at dropshipping without truly figuring out how it works especially when they choose to run their business like a hobby.
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With no feasible business plan in place, some entrepreneurs are forced to quit because they had no tangible results to motivate and push them forward.
Dropshipping should be treated as a business and not a hobby to get lasting results. You too can record success if you follow proven models and adapt the same to your own online store.
Key Highlights
🎯 Dropshipping is a viable business model.
🎯 The barrier of entry is low with very decent profit margins.
🎯 Shopify makes it easy to own your eCommerce store with little tech skills.
🎯 Think of SEO and digital marketing when setting up your store.
🎯 You can truly succeed in 30 days as a drop shipper.
SEE ALSO: How to Make Money Flipping Domains on Bluehost
SEE ALSO: 8 Income Boosting Lifestyle Gigs To Start On Fiverr
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Setting up and Driving Traffic
I will share how you can set up and drive traffic to your store in 30 days since SEO at this point may not give you faster results.
Before setting up your store, you need to decide what you want to sell. If you have already set up your store you can skip this step and move on to the next (Driving traffic).
If you have not started yet, the first thing to do is to select a niche.
1. Selecting a Product Niche
A niche dropshipping store is a store that sells very closely related items to a target audience. So, what you need to do as a beginner is choose a cluster of closely related products.
Do you wish to sell handbags, shoes, ties, sneakers, etc.?
Whatever it is, choose products that are closely related.
I recommend starting with 5 – 10 products, this keeps your category precise and you will be able to maximize your marketing efforts on them.
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As your store grows you will add more after analyzing what your target audience truly wants.
Secondly, add complementary products that you can cross-sell and upsell to your customer.
Cross-selling simply means suggesting related or complementary products to the same customer before or at the point of checkout.
Upselling means recommending a higher-level product to a customer as a means of growing your revenue.
For example. A Shopify store deciding to sell handbags can also cross-sell shoes and belts to match. A shoe eCommerce store can upsell a premium version of the same brand of shoes.
The essence is to keep your customers on your site longer and possibly upsell and cross-sell at every opportunity.
For example, Verve Coffee store implements the cross-selling and up-selling strategies well, with similar and premium versions of their coffee products.
A vital tip for selecting a niche is to research what products people are searching for online, which should give you a good head start in driving traffic to your site in 30 days.
2. How to Analyse Products to Choose
Once you have decided on the type of products you want to sell, you need to analyze the potential traffic on those products.
Head over to Google Trends input the product keyword you want to get its traffic estimate.
Assuming you want to set up an eCommerce store for kids’ Apparel, and you decide to sell Kids’ Sweaters, Kids Sneakers, Kids’ Pants.
Google Trends tool can get a traffic estimate for these products for the last 12 months or for any period you want.
12 months is ideal because you will get the data of what customers are searching for at each season of the year. This will give you a lead on what you should stock up your store with.
The analysis above shows that Kids Pants and Kids Sneakers are relatively in higher demand. And, it is also vital to narrow your search to the United States or any other location you are targeting.
Since we need to see the number of visits or searches via Google, you need to choose “Web Search”.
Alternative resources to analyze traffic are Amazon, eBay, Walmart & Esty.
From the data above, Kids Pants is signaling a higher traffic opportunity. After this, you can then head over to Amazon to analyze the same product.
On Amazon key in “Best Kids Pants”…
Here we have 20,000 results to review, but we cannot check all.
But what we actually need to look at is the number of reviews on the product which will indicate the number of orders on that product.
Below is an example…
These two products offered on Amazon reveal that the “Boys Basic Bootcut Jeans” has over 23k orders compared to the “Boys Kids’ Baselayer” with only 55 orders.
Another fact we don’t know is that we cannot ascertain when the second product was listed on Amazon, so that reason may not give a proper perspective on the number of traffic to it.
Another factor is that the first product is priced lower compared to the second and has the potential to drive more sales.
Since we need traffic in 30 days, we most likely will go for a product with a higher-order threshold.
Another tool for product testing is the Niche Scraper tool which is a spy tool that scraps data online and recommends products to go for.
I recommend running this test across several other products and sites to arrive at a balanced estimate of your choice of products.
3. Setting Up Your Store
Now that we are done with the niche and product selection, it’s time to set up your store.
There are two broad Content Management Systems (CMS) to choose from and I will show you the difference.
1. Shopify (Paid – Free for a trial period of 14 days).
2. WooCommerce (Free to use).
There are also other eCommerce website builders, Magento, Wix, BigCommerce to try.
If you’re a beginner with no technical knowledge of website building, Shopify is your best bet.
Millions of businesses are powered on Shopify globally with over 2 million active users.
Start your 14-day free trial on Shopify.
WooCommerce is ideal for users that have worked with WordPress CMS.
WooCommerce is an add-on plugin on WordPress that powers the shopping cart and other eCommerce features on your store.
WooCommerce is completely free to use. Setting up WooCommerce on Bluehost is relatively easy. Once you purchase your hosting and domain name, WordPress is set up automatically for you.
You must use a WooCommerce compatible theme as well to make the process seamless and straightforward for your customers, that is the only way users can checkout.
To purchase a WooCommerce theme, head over to Themeforest for WordPress. Premium themes range from $39 – $99.
Whether you go for Shopify or WooCommerce, setting up your store should not be a challenge, if you don’t what to handle the setup task, head over to Fiverr to hire a freelancer ($50 – $200) to set up your store.
Setting up your store by a freelancer (depending on the complexity of your store) should take 2-5 days.
Choosing a Payment Gateway
After setting up your eCommerce storefront, you need to integrate a means of accepting payment.
You have two broad methods, (PayPal and Debit/Credit Card).
PayPal
Set up a business account with PayPal, which is easy, Go to PayPal and sign up to create one. Your personal account would work but it won’t look professional.
After creation, input your PayPal address on the payment gateway section of your Shopify account.
For WooCommerce, head over to the WooCommerce settings and click on payments and input your PayPal address and follow the prompt instructions.
After this, you can run a demo payment test to check that it works perfectly, if it doesn’t check the steps again or contact support.
Debit & Credit Card
Since PayPal is not available in all countries and you wouldn’t want a customer to get to your checkout page without having a Debit or Credit card payment option.
To fix this, head over to websites like Authorize.net, Amazon Pay, Square, Stripe. See the full list here if you are in the United States.
If you’re targeting other regions, you can use gateways supported in that region.
Best Payment Gateways in Africa.
Best Payment Gateways in Asia.
Best Payment Gateways in Europe.
Where to Source for Products
Now you have integrated your payment gateway and fully set up your store, the next task is to source for the products to sell after completing your product search analysis.
If you missed that part, check here.
Since we are dropshipping, we are to source quality products at low prices so that you can get a decent mark up after each sale.
The best places to source products are AliExpress, SaleHoo, Worldwide Brands, etc. See the full list here.
Most of these third-party vendors like AliExpress have plugins for the seamless integration of products into your store.
SEE ALSO: 5 Must-have Online Tools To Grow Your Affiliate Income
SEE ALSO: 4 Powerful Ways to Grow Your Income Through Display Ads
Driving Traffic in 30 days
At this point, you have your storefront set (with its logo and branding), your payment gateway is functional and your products fully categorized on your store.
You have also done a dry run on your store to check out its functionalities and all seems to be okay.
The next step is to get your first sale.
There are two broad traffic driving methods to explore.
1. Free marketing.
2. Paid marketing
Let’s explore both methods.
To get targeted traffic to your store in 30 days, you need to explore both options.
Free Online Marketing
Since we want to drive traffic to visual products, you need to make your products visually appealing and the recommended tool to drive traffic to your store is Pinterest.
Targeted Traffic + Quality Product = Sales
Many new eCommerce owners and bloggers, unfortunately, ignore Pinterest and struggle month on month to generate traffic to their site.
Pinterest traffic is Organic.
Pinterest is known to generate millions of views daily which is then spread across lots of optimized pins on its platform.
The Pinterest algorithm is responsible for this, pins that are well optimized with the right Pinterest image size have a better potential for driving traffic.
Recommend Pinterest image sizes:
1. Pinterest Board Display image: 222 x 150 px.
2. Pinterest Standard Pin size: Vertical images 1000 x 1500 px.
To get the best from Pinterest, you need to do it the right way, many online business owners have complained that they were not able to generate decent traffic from Pinterest.
There are two possible reasons for this…
1. Not all businesses are ideal for Pinterest. Businesses that are visual like fashion, lifestyle, decor, hobbies, luxury items are perfect for Pinterest.
New niches are joining Pinterest and making an impact. An example is the Cryptocurrency NFTs.
2. Images are not done well and pining is inconsistent.
To fix the above issues, I recommend seeing Anastasia blogger for an in-depth course on Pinterest.
Anastasia is an expert on Pinterest and she has been doing this for over 4 years with amazing results.
She also runs her “Free Pinterest Masterclass” for business owners looking to drive massive, organic, online engagement through Pinterest.
While optimizing through Pinterest, also optimize your website for SEO (long-term benefits).
To get effective results, ensure you pin on Pinterest at least 2 times a day with an average of 2 – 5 pins per day, some experts recommend more.
To avoid getting your account blocked, pin moderately while you stay consistent pining daily.
Facebook and Instagram are other platforms for free traffic, but they are not as targeted compared to Pinterest unless you decide to run Ads.
Paid Online Marketing
This means deciding to pay-per-click for any visitor that lands on your eCommerce store.
Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, Pinterest, and Twitter Ads are alternatives to driving traffic.
The unique advantage of paid marketing is that you can only target the type of customers you want and get results in a shorter time.
Google Ads, Facebook, and Instagram Ads are popular with lots of successes recorded through paid advertising. You too can try this.
It’s best to combine both strategies (Free & Paid marketing) for effective results.
When running Ads, these are key points to note.
1. Set a budget and be willing to test different products.
2. Your paid ads must be visually appealing with high-resolution images.
3. Your product description must be catchy and on point.
4. The titles of your product should be short and capturing.
5. Product descriptions should include the right tags for the algorithm to capture properly.
Make Sure Ads Are Visually Appealing
Creating ads for your Dropshipping store that generate results requires a combination of powerful copy and visuals.
With so many visual ads in the digital world today, creating eye-catching visuals is key to driving traffic to your Ads.
One of the ways to craft a visual ad that pops is to keep your design simple and easy to comprehend.
You can use your existing product images on Canva to design simple, high-resolution Ads. Always retain the PNG format.
The Facebook Ad below reveals a simple Ads design from Bluehost.
The best visual ads are straight to the point and convey a clear message without overstimulating your audience.
Stay Consistent
Driving traffic that converts to your dropshipping store in 30 days is possible, but not easy.
In the first week after implementing your marketing plans, you may not see a corresponding result from efforts.
You must keep pushing, be consistent with your Pinterest efforts, join a targeted Facebook group, continue to improve and tweak your product descriptions, run polls on Facebook. Send direct messages to your friends.
Engage in something more as each day pass.
Don’t relent, read more on dropshipping, don’t do something lesser than what you do the day before.
Focus on free traffic generation with the combination of strategies mentioned in this article. Maximize efforts on Pinterest and Facebook groups.
Final Thoughts
Dropshipping is a low-risk online business model that is viable. As you grow in the dropshipping space, it makes sense to begin to create your own products later.
Also, note that dropshipping is not a get-rich-quick scheme and does not promise overnight wealth.
If there are other measures or steps I omitted, you could please share them in the comment box below.
Happy Dropshipping.
Featured Image: Online business photo created by tirachardz – www.freepik.com
