So I have the perfect domain name to start selling pet products and I already have an account to a drop shipper with the product details, prices and all that good stuff. 1. What platform do you recommend? I have experience in Wordpress and Woocommerce. Is that just fine to use? 2. How much should you mark up the prices? 3. Is it common to use 2-3 different drop ship companies? Maybe one drop shipper sells mostly clothes, another sells food, etc. Is that normal? 4. The drop shippers have hundreds of products. Do I have to manually add them hand by hand?
1. What platform do you recommend? I have experience in Wordpress and Woocommerce. Is that just fine to use? For my ecommerce site I have used 3dcart and Network solutions, I recommend one of those, there are others such as volusion, I personally do not like Wordpress for ecommerce, too many security issues 2. How much should you mark up the prices? I would find out what others are selling the product for and be competitive, maybe a bit lower. Also, make sure if your dropshipper also has a retail site they are not undercutting all their retailers 3. Is it common to use 2-3 different drop ship companies? Maybe one drop shipper sells mostly clothes, another sells food, etc. Is that normal? The problem with more than one dropshipper per site are the shipping costs. Each dropshipper will charge shipping. So, if a customer buys products on your site and they are from different dropshippers then you will end up with large shipping costs and you really can't pass that on to the customer unless the wholesale price from the vendor is so good you can include it into your price and still be profitable and competitive 4. The drop shippers have hundreds of products. Do I have to manually add them hand by hand? Most of the time, Yes, But some of the larger dropshippers might have data feeds available to you. But, then your shopping cart solution needs to be configured to accept them Al
Sorry that this does not answer your 4 question directly, but might save you a ton of time and make you some good money. Over the years I've learnt that the most lucrative drop shipping is finding amazing high quality niche products. The products can be available from other sellers for cheaper prices, but you have to make sure yours is the best quality possible. Now once you find this niche high quality product you can markup the prices quite a bit. Just make sure you have an amazing product description to go along with it and amazing images that help you sell. Basically you just want the potential buyer to know that yours is the real deal and that is what they pay extra for. If you think back you can probably remember many times when you were willing to pay a premium for the exact same product, if you believe it was of higher quality.
I would focus on few niches at first and go with a company that has good stocks and ships fast. This is important. If you go with many categories and mix things you will end up and having hard times advertising. Add them step by step and once you get ROI add another one. This is the best route.