How to Start a Dropshipping Business: The 6 Step Dropshipping Business Plan
Step 1: Choosing a Dropshipping Business Idea
Truth is, what you sell matters. You should take some time to find the best dropshipping business ideas. Most people tell you to pick a niche you’re passionate about. But that’s only a half truth. It’s about a combination of profit and passion, skewed towards profit. The reality is the best dropshipping business ideas are usually the profitable ones. It’s a lot easier to be passionate when you’re actually making money.
At Oberlo, we regularly save you time by creating lists of trending products. It’s true that those tend to be the ones people gravitate to but that’s because they’re proven winners. It’s illogical to enter a niche with no competition, I learned that the hard way. Fitness, fashion, jewelry, beauty, tech, purses, and backpacks are some of the evergreen niches that we keep seeing top online stores enter and succeed in. For example, Tim Kock recently created a dropshipping case study where his pineapple business failed but his watch business made nearly $7000 in only 8 weeks, showing that your niche matters. So, spend some time looking into different dropshipping business ideas.
If you’re set on coming up with your own dropshipping business ideas instead of checking out our lists, here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Google Trends is great for knowing whether a niche is on an upward or downward trend. However, on its own it’s not enough to determine whether or not a niche is viable. Some niches may be on an upward trend but don’t have enough search volume to warrant its popularity.
- Use Ubersuggest’s Keyword Tool. What’s the search volume for a keyword? Or the competitiveness of it? Using Ubersuggest’s Keyword Tool will help you understand the potential of your dropshipping business ideas, and give you addition ideas for the future.
- Browse popular websites within your niche. For example, if you check out a fashion retailers website, they’ll often organize their store into trend categories. This helps you understand what trends you should be adding to your store right now. You can also browse a store’s best-selling products to help you find the best products to sell.
- Check out the order volume for products. Inside of Oberlo, you can browse products based on their order volume to help you understand how popular a product really is. Don’t rule out dropshipping business ideas if they’re not as high as other products, because those products could be newer.
The most profitable dropshipping business ideas aren’t trends. Instead, they have trends within them. For example, denim apparel is a trend within the fashion niche. Artificial eyelashes is a trend within the beauty niche. Marble phone cases is a trend within the phone case niche. You’ll want to have the trends as products but not as the entire store, especially if you’re building a long-term business. So keep that in mind when you’re working on your dropshipping business plan.