Drop-Shipping Hacks — Cut The Ship

How To Run A Successful Drop-Shipping Business from Start To Finish With Great Products, Fast Shipping, And Easy Order Fulfillment. Launch Your Business Today for Free.

If you’ve ever dabbled in drop-shipping, you’re no stranger to agonizingly tracking a package for a customer who’s not nearly patient enough for your 30–50 day shipping. It’s no accident you’ve stumbled upon my article — I’m here to solve your problem. As someone who has spent hundreds of hours searching for US-based suppliers in attempts to find faster shipping speeds, I finally found a solution.

Personally, my biggest struggle was that other drop-shipping suppliers couldn't compete with the products I was finding on Aliexpress or Oberlo. If you’re drop-shipping on Shopify, you’ve probably heard of Oberlo.

Aliexpress is the main company that supplies Oberlo as well as many other suppliers with their inventory for a widespread number of industries. However, none of these suppliers are manufacturers, rather a compilation of independent wholesale sellers all in one convenient place — this is why your items often arrive in multiple packages, with multiple shipping options, and with a variety of quality. You don’t need a website or even a store at all to purchase their wholesale items as neither of them have order minimums.

If you’re just getting started, I recommend using Shopify to create your store. If you’re already up and running, no worries — the all-inclusive drop-shipping solution you’re about to learn about easily integrates into almost any e-commerce platform for free.

Don’t have a Shopify store? Sign Up Here for FREE!!

WAIT…WHAT’S DROP-SHIPPING?

Quick side note — for those of you who’ve stumbled upon my article by chance, let me explain what drop-shipping is. Drop-shippers are essentially middle-men for retail business models. In most cases, they don’t create or own any of the products they’re selling. In fact, they don’t have the products they’re selling in their possession at all. Drop-shipping is a business model where you sell white-labeled items from other businesses or suppliers under your brand. How can this be? Well, Aliexpress and Oberlo (the suppliers I mentioned before) are websites where sellers from anywhere in the world can list wholesale items for bulk-purchase or drop-ship. This allows them a greater customer base since there are no order minimums for retailers to purchase at their wholesale prices. Don’t worry if you’re lost — I’ll break this down a bit more.

Drop-shipping works in multiple parts. First, you list an item for sale from your supplier on your website. Your supplier’s cost for said item is $3. You list it on your website for $10. Then, a customer purchases said item from your website for $10. Here’s where the drop-shipping part comes into play. You now have $10 and a pending order for an item you don’t have in front of you. What do you need to do? You take that $10 and purchase the item from the supplier yourself. You spend $3 on the supplier’s item. Your profit is $7. But wait — how does the customer get their item? The supplier ships it directly to them and will handle all tracking and returns if any. I promise it’s a lot less sketchy than it sounds: most e-commerce platforms have suppliers integrated — which means your customer’s name, address, and desired product are automatically sent to your supplier for fulfillment and payment. Also, all of these third-party suppliers I’m talking about are easily integrable for free via the Shopify app store — so you’ll want a Shopify store for this.

DOES YOUR SHIPPING TAKE TOO LONG? IT DOESN’T HAVE TO. HERE’S THE SOLUTION.

All drop-shippers know fast shipping speeds are a MUST, but using Aliexpress or Oberlo just doesn’t cut it. After months of tracking down every single order for my customers trying to figure out when it would arrive, I finally decided to seek out another supplier. That’s when I found Eprolo. Eprolo is a third-party company that collects items sold on Aliexpress/Oberlo and stores them all in one warehouse, instead of having to pull items from multiple or external warehouses for fulfillment. They have 1–2 day processing and 5–8 day US shipping. Best part? Unlike Aliexpress and Oberlo, Eprolo will ship all the items ordered by your customer in one box AND with your custom branding on the package. Is this too good to be true? Well, it’s not all great — each item is about four bucks more than you’ll find it for on Aliexpress or Oberlo, and US shipping is another six bucks on top of that, BUT, if you’re willing to shrink your margins by about ten dollars, you’ll never again have to spend weeks tracking down your customer’s packages. Plus, custom branded packages allow for better brand recognition as your business grows. Don’t worry, unlike unresponsive sellers from these other suppliers, Eprolo has a customer support chat and email that both answer within 24 hours. They also reach out to you if any issues occur with your orders and aren’t stingy if something needs to be returned or refunded.

You can download Eprolo right from the Shopify app store — and it’s 100% free. Don’t have a Shopify store? No problem! Eprolo integrates with almost any eCommerce platform.

Use Invitation Code: 658347 for bonus rewards when you sign up for Eprolo. Sign Up for Free: https://www.eprolo.com/

DROP-SHIPPING DOs & DON’Ts

Now, if this is all new to you and you want to succeed as a drop-shipper, allow me to share my biggest dos and don’ts based on all of my personal triumphs and failures. The first thing you need as a drop-shipper is kind of obvious: products people want to buy. This decision is a lot harder than you might think as this will shape your store’s aesthetic, social media content, and target audience. If your products don’t line up with all of those things, you’re going to have a hard time really owning the products you sell. Remember, just because you’re drop-shipping doesn't make the products any less yours. Try to choose items you can proudly promote, as growing your business is not easy and you need any marketing vantage you can find. Look at who’s buying what, what products you would buy, and where your products would fall in the categories of age, genre, location, etc. Don’t just hop on a trend because someone on youtube told you it would be a fast money maker. No part of starting your own business is going to be a fast money maker. Yes, drop-shipping is more cost-effective and a less upfront risk, but it doesn't make sales any easier to obtain.

So what does it take to run a successful drop-shipping store? You have products, a supplier, good profit margins, your target audience, and a brand to match. What’s left? Now it’s time to make sales and fulfill orders. First off, don’t expect to make your first sale within the first week — or even the first month. It’s great if you do — and it’s definitely doable, but not selling your items right away does not mean your business failed or can’t be successful. Remember, growing your business will take time and relentless consistency with marketing. Eventually, you’ll make a sale and need to fulfill your first order using Eprolo. So how do you do that?

Stuck In A Rut? Check Out 8 FREE Marketing Tips for Small Businesses.

ORDER FULFILLMENT

Fulfilling orders in Eprolo is super simple. Once you receive an order, you don’t even need to do anything on Shopify’s order page. Just open Eprolo’s app directly through Shopify and your order will be in “Order Pending” under the “Eprolo Orders” tab waiting for fulfillment. Don’t get this tab confused with the “Ali Orders” tab, which is for orders imported using Aliexpress — we’ll cover that in a minute. Once you open up your pending orders, you’ll be able to fulfill them either one by one or in bulk, as well as choose individual shipping methods for each item on every order. Eprolo lets you check out securely and easily through PayPal, and then will automatically update your order on Shopify’s order page to “fulfilled”. It will also automatically update your order’s status to “shipped” once Eprolo ships your order, AND your customer will receive a confirmation email as well as their tracking number all via Eprolo. Don’t worry, your customer won’t see anything branded as Eprolo — only your brand is present on emails, updates, and packaging. Once you pay for the item and the order gets marked as “fulfilled”, there’s really nothing else you need to do. Their customer support team will notify you of any delays or issues with the order, so you never have to stay on top of the processing or shipping for each item or order.

ALIEXPRESS IMPORTS

What if something you want to sell isn’t available on Eprolo, or you like the profit margins better on Aliexpress? Great news, Eprolo created a feature that allows you to import any product from Aliexpress and fulfill it through Eprolo. The “Ali Orders” tab I referred to above is where you would paste any product link from Aliexpress and Eprolo would import it for you. When any of these items get ordered, you can request that Eprolo fulfills the order for you. So long as the product is in stock, they should be able to ship it out for you with your custom packaging and with any other items ordered from Eprolo in that same order. In cases where they can’t fulfill the order for you — no big deal, they link you directly to fulfillment with Aliexpress and still take care of syncing all of your customer’s information for shipping as well as forwarding them the confirmation email and tracking number.

I find that Eprolo has been a lifesaver for me and many drop-shippers around the world. I probably wouldn’t still be running a drop-shipping business if it weren’t for Eprolo. So hey, go check them out and see for yourself.