Lets talk about how to dropship on Amazon!
What is dropshipping?
Here is an illustration of the dropshipping business model; You own an ecommerce website, you figure out the product you want to sell then you negotiate with a supplier who can supply that product.
You don’t buy the product from the supplier, you just take pictures of the product and list the product pictures, description and prices (A price higher than your supplier have agreed to deliver the products for) and when a customer purchases the product on your ecommerce store, your supplier delivers the product to the customer.
The hard truth about dropshipping on Amazon
Dropshipping from on Amazon is not a get-rich quick scheme. You should have some money for this business.
Well, that’s the hard truth and I am not going to try to sugarcoat it, if you’re broke, looking for a zero investment get rich quick scheme. This isn’t the business model for you.
Now that we have clarified that money is needed for this business model, let’s talk about dropshipping on Amazon, what it takes and how much it really cost to succeed as an Amazon dropshipper.
Read till the end of this article, I promise you every paragraph in this article is very important if you are serious about dropshipping on Amazon. Sounds cool? Let’s dive into it with this easy steps.
Steps to starting an Amazon dropshipping business.
Time needed: 1 hour and 30 minutes
let’s look at the key steps you have to take to launch your AliExpress to Amazon dropshipping business;
- Product research;
You have to research what products you will be selling on Amazon. The key on Amazon is to sell a product with high demand and low competition. Amazon is the world biggest ecommerce platform so there are millions of serious buyers searching to buy on Amazon everyday!
Amazon is a long established ecommerce business.
It takes work and rarely pure luck to stand out from a sea of advanced Amazon sellers who have been in the business for long with high sellers ratings and reviews.
This is why selling products that has high competition is not the best way to go on Amazon especially as a newbie seller.
How do you find products with low competition and high demand on Amazon?
You can use an Amazon product research software.
Examples of Product research softwares for Amazon sellers are;
(a) Heluim10; Heluim10 have a simple to use interface and it gives a report of the volume of demand and competition for a specific product, niche, category etc.
(b) Junglescout; This is a software you can use in automating your Amazon product research. It gives you a clean report of the competition and demand of products sold on Amazon, amongst other helpful metrics.
You can use either Heluim10 or Junglescout. They both do the same job of providing reports that helps you to research hot selling Amazon products.
The key to succeeding or failing on Amazon is products research. Get your product research right and you could be smiling at the bank. - Find a reliable AliExpress seller;
you’ll need to head over to AliExpress and find a seller who will supply the product you want to dropship.
Negotiate a dropshipping patnership with the seller.
To check the seller’s reliability, you can order a product from them to ascertain the quality of their service.
However the problem here is that most AliExpress sellers are located abroad in China and shipping may take up to 30 days.
You really don’t want your customers waiting that long. You can read my article on how to get fast shipping times. - Open an Amazon seller central account;
Here are the links to selling on different Amazon market places;
Amazon.com Amazon North America market place with buyers in North America (United states, Canada, Mexica..)
Amazon.co.uk Amazon market place with buyers in the United Kingdom.
Amazon.in Amazon market place with buyers in India.
Sign up to your preferred Amazon market place and start dropshipping from AliExpress to Amazon.
You can either sign up for an individual seller account with $0 monthly subscription fee or a professional seller account with $39 dollar monthly subscription.
You can only open an Amazon seller central account if you’re resident in the approved list of countries that can sell on Amazon.
Nigeria in 2021 became among the approved list of countries accepted for seller registration on Amazon. - Choose the FBM (Fulfillment by merchant) seller program;
Amazon has two seller programs cross their marketplace platforms.
FBA meaning fulfilled by Amazon and FBM meaning fulfilled by merchant.
FBM is the recommended method for dropshippers.
This is because on the FBM program, sellers are allowed to ship products by themselves directly to their customers.
Whereas, Amazon FBA sellers have to purchase products in bulk and ship them to Amazon fulfillment center and when they get product orders, Amazon picks, packages and delivers the product to the customer.
You can check out our article on Dropshipping vs Amazon FBA
To dropship on Amazon, you should be selling under the FBM (fulfilled by Merchant) program, in which Amazon lets you fulfill your orders by sending the products directly to your customer.
This way, you can have your supplier ship the product orders to your customers. - Promote your Amazon store;
to promote your store, you can set up Amazon PPC advertising. This means that you pay Amazon to boost your listings and prioritize them on Amazon search results and your competitors listings. You can easily do this from the dashboard of your Amazon seller central account.
You can also promote your Amazon store on Facebook. Here is a a guide on Facebook advertising. - Have business funds;
Amazon payouts sellers every 2 weeks. This means that when a customer orders a product from your store, the money is initially paid to Amazon and not you. Amazon only pays you after 14 days days of orders that were successfully delivery 7 days ago.
Your Aliexpress supplier will rarely send product to your customers without receiving payment from you. So you need to have business funds to be able order products from your supplier while you wait for Amazon payout.
Amazon is the biggest ecommerce platform in the world and everyday millions of people around the world are looking to buy on Amazon you should already start dropshipping your products in front of them!
