 If you always wanted to have your own dropshipping business but have no idea where to start, then do not go anywhere because in this video I'm gonna show you how you can start your own dropshipping business, no matter where you live around the world and where you wanna dropship from and to. We're gonna tap into all of the important subjects that you need to know, including the best selling channels for dropshipping, all of the do's and don'ts and the legal aspects and your tax obligations, product research, how to find the best products to sell, the best dropshipping suppliers, marketing your online business, order fulfillment, optimization, business automation, customer service, the best products and niches to sell and start off with and the top mistakes to avoid making when starting off. That's just a little bit of what we're gonna go into inside, so don't go anywhere. Quick intro and let's go. Hello everyone, I'm Liran from AutoDS and with your permission, I'd like to jump straight into the action and show you how to start your own successful dropshipping business no matter where you live and no matter what experience you have or don't have. One second before we start, if you haven't subscribed to our YouTube channel yet, this is the time to always learn about what's next in the world of dropshipping and how to go about anything and everything on the topic. That being said, let's go ahead and get started. How do we start our own dropshipping business and let's take it from the top? What is dropshipping for those who don't know? I'm gonna explain this really briefly. Dropshipping is an online fulfillment model where you can simply sell products in your online store without actually holding them in stock and once you get sales on one of those products and the customer pays you, then you go to your supplier's website, purchase that product and ship it directly to the customer. The product doesn't go through you. You don't have any physical contact with the products and you only pay after getting paid. So it is a low risk, high reward business model that you do need to learn how to start the right way in order for your business to thrive and stay here for the long term and that is what we're all about. So that is a very basic explanation of the dropshipping business model. The numbers are increasing every year and it is not expected to go anywhere. Dropshipping is all around us and if you've ever bought anything online before, even from AliExpress, you have bought from dropshippers. It is all around us whether we see it or not and you also have a good chance to tap into this business model as we see the numbers continuing to grow year by year. So what are some of the benefits of starting a dropshipping business? You probably thought about some benefits while I was talking about it a minute ago but of course we've got low startup costs because you don't have to pay for your inventory. So if you're listing a whole bunch of products on your website and none of them sell or some of them don't sell, you can easily delete and replace them with other products since you are not paying for inventory. So there is nothing on your shelf, no physical products and whatever doesn't sell on your store, you can easily replace and remove it after conducting more in-depth product research and learn more about what's selling in the market. With the dropshipping business model, you can also work anywhere, anytime. You don't have a boss telling you what to do, you are your own boss and all you need is a computer with an internet connection to get this business off the ground. You only have to pay after you're getting paid from the customers that I already mentioned and that is another great advantage of the dropshipping business model. No physical inventory required, we already talked about that which makes it easy to replace products that don't sell and it is also a very scalable business model because you're not investing in your inventory and it's easy to replace the products that aren't selling and once you do find products that are selling for you you can add more products that are similar to them while continuing to research the market on the other side. So you're always researching for new products and new trends from new categories that can sell well for you while continuing to multiply your success by adding more products similar to those that are selling for you and all of this is easily scalable once you start adding in business automation which we will also talk about later down the road in this video and it simply has a low entry barrier. There are minimal requirements for starting a dropshipping business. The hard part is learning how to succeed with it which is why I am making these videos for you. So pay attention and let's get started. So we have a basic understanding of what the dropshipping business model is. We know that we can sell products on our online stores but what are those online stores? What options do we have? These are also called selling channels and this is where we're actually going to post our products for sale and wait for people to come to our stores and buy the product. So those selling channels are where we are actually going to list those products. Some of the best dropshipping selling channels that we have at our disposal today are eBay, Shopify, Wix and Facebook Marketplace. I'm gonna briefly go over each selling channel with their pros and their cons. So you will be able to choose the right one that's suitable for your business but remember dropshipping is a very flexible business model. You can try your dropshipping business for example on Shopify and if that goes well for you then great and if it doesn't go so well for you you can always try different selling channels and you can also market to different regions around the world. So if everybody is selling on let's say for example the eBay selling channel in the US region so eBay US and the competition gets really fierce you can always sell the same product trends that are going well on eBay US on eBay UK for example or eBay Canada or Shopify Australia. So you can play around with the selling channels and you can play around with the different regions. It is a very flexible business model as I mentioned and this is one of the places where it really stands out. Now before I go on talking about these selling channels I wanna give you guys a quick reminder everything that I'm going over in this video is written in our blog article which you can read about in the link that I will leave to right below this video. I will also add in more extra tips in this video so if you're the type that likes to watch keep watching. So these four selling channels are some of our top picks of course there are more selling channels out there but right now these are definitely our top favorites. Let's start with Facebook Marketplace. Facebook Marketplace is relatively new to the dropshipping scene but we've seen huge opportunities and we also have our own Facebook Marketplace dropshipping stores and we also see what's going on with our auto DS members who are also dropshipping on Facebook Marketplace. There is a huge success rate and there is almost no competition there because there are not many dropshippers there as of today. So some of the pros of dropshipping on the Facebook Marketplace is that there is very little competition with a small number of dropshippers. This means that you can simply go to your dropshipping suppliers websites and we're gonna talk about them soon pick out the best products that are selling well there list them on your Facebook Marketplace channel and watch your store get organic sales which is another great advantage in the Facebook Marketplace. You don't have to promote your products in any way people will know that your listing exists after looking for something similar and they simply open up their Facebook Marketplace and create a search they will get to your listing and they will buy the product if they're interested in it and that is all there is to it. It is actually very, very simple. Another great advantage of the Facebook Marketplace is that they have super low selling fees some of the lowest that I've seen from any other selling channel out there today. I'm talking as low as 5% per transaction fee or 40 cents, whichever comes out higher and that is all Facebook will take from you and there are also no startup costs on the Facebook Marketplace it doesn't cost any money to create an account there are no monthly subscriptions and you can list as many products as you want from day one. Everything is easy and straightforward on the Facebook Marketplace but if something sounds too good to be true you also need to look at the other side and this is the other side of the Facebook Marketplace. If you want this to work for you you have no choice you have to be located in the United States you have to have a US IP address when you're logging into Facebook and you have to have of course a US Facebook account. If you don't have that then when you list an item on the Facebook Marketplace you will not have shipping options and if you cannot enable shipping options you will not be able to list this listing to all 50 states in the US meaning not many people are gonna know that your listing exists and you won't be able to drop ship to the US audience which is one of the biggest markets out there today you will simply be able to list to a certain location anywhere in the world and only a small number of people will be able to see that listing and you also won't be able to ship to them because you won't have shipping options. So drop shipping on the Facebook Marketplace is only relevant if you live in the US and you are a US citizen with an SSN number a social security number which is a verification that Facebook will ask once you reach $599 in sales. That's enough for the Facebook Marketplace if you live in the US I definitely definitely recommend starting off here seeing what products are selling well enjoy those profits and then think about expanding to other selling channels. If you wanna learn about how to drop ship on the Facebook Marketplace we also have a link to that in the blog below this video and on our YouTube channel we also have a full Facebook Marketplace case study where you can see everything that I did on my Facebook Marketplace drop shipping store everything that I sold where I bought them from how much I profited everything in 100% transparency. So if you're interested in the Facebook Marketplace check that out. Now you also have Shopify and Wix and I put these two together because they're almost the same in what they can offer but each have their own sets of features and ways that they can improve your drop shipping business. But in general Shopify and Wix are fully customizable websites where you can have your own domain name so www.yourstorename.com and everything you are doing there is completely you and completely customizable. Even if you have no technical skills you can still easily create a very good looking and professional store start listing your products from day one with thousands of products even if you want because there are no selling limits on Shopify and Wix it's fully customizable and the customer will always be yours. You will get their email addresses and you can use their email addresses later on for email marketing and promoting your products promoting your store which will drive more traffic and more sales. On the other hand some of the cons to Shopify and Wix drop shipping is that there is no free organic traffic like there is on the Facebook Marketplace and also on eBay which I will talk about right after this one. This means that as soon as your store goes live and you list your products and you're sitting back and waiting to get sales most likely it's not gonna happen because nobody knows that your store exists. There is no platform like Facebook Marketplace or eBay where you can open up that platform search for something that you're looking to buy and then you'll see the results. On Shopify and Wix it doesn't really work that way. The only place that you have is Google and if you don't have a strong domain authority to begin with and you won't when you're just creating your website you're not gonna get any traffic. So you have to put a budget aside to spend on online marketing and I'm gonna talk about the best online marketing method soon. So even if you're on a tight budget you can still succeed with it and scale from there. So those are some of the advantages and disadvantages of having a Wix and Shopify drop shipping store. Then we have eBay which is an online Marketplace with thousands and thousands and thousands of sellers many of whom are drop shippers and eBay definitely supports the drop shipping business model as do the other selling channels that we talked about. Only eBay is much more sensitive to new eBay seller accounts. So if you're starting a new account on eBay you have to take it slowly. They'll only allow you to list about 10 items and up to $500 in listings and in sales and slowly and gradually they'll upgrade those limits for you when you'll start to sell or when you get them on the phone and you ask them for a selling limit increase. So this is one of the disadvantages of starting on eBay. They wanna get to know you first and they may temporarily suspend your account when you're starting off. They'll wanna get you on the phone and ask you some questions about your business like who are your suppliers and what your business intentions are, how quickly you can ship to your buyers and they simply wanna see that you are focused on customer service, that you ship your products out quickly and that you are working with wholesale private drop shipping suppliers. If they know that you're a drop shipping from retail suppliers it will be much harder for you to start off that way. They may flag your account and then you will not be able to upgrade your limits. Your account will still be active but you won't be able to upgrade your limits. So for new accounts, this is a no-no. And if you wanna learn about how to drop ship successfully on eBay you'll have a link to it right here. It's called how to drop ship on eBay for beginners that will take you step by step into how to list your first listings and how to stay out of eBay's radar when you're starting off to start off the right way, get those limited increases and start drop shipping the right way. eBay was a gold mine in the last 10 years for drop shippers. Recently it became a little bit more difficult but that definitely does not make it impossible and those who do make it those who do break those barriers are easily able to scale and automate their drop shipping businesses and then they move on to more regions and more selling channels. eBay is definitely one of the best places to start off with but you do have to take it very, very slowly and learn every step of the way before you begin. We have all the information that you need just be sure to go over it and gather the right tools and knowledge before you get started. One of the pros of eBay is that they give us free organic traffic just like the Facebook marketplace. So you don't need to spend a dime on marketing. You can if you want. They have their own promoted listings advanced feature which is a PPC feature and we also have an article on that if you wanna run PPC campaigns on eBay to promote your products even more but right from the start I do not recommend doing that only after once you start to learn what niches and what categories are selling well eBay will give you free organic traffic. So this is a great way to test the market and see what is testing. All you have to do is start listing your items of course using the explanations that we provided to do it the right way and as soon as you list your items anyone on eBay can search for your item and will be able to see your listing meaning you will get free organic traffic and free sales. It doesn't cost any money to register for an eBay account and your first 250 listings will be completely free by eBay. That's a promotion that they're giving out today. Sometimes it changes. Sometimes they give you 100, sometimes 200. Right now it's 250 free listings to get started off with. This means that you don't have to spend any money to list 250 items and start getting sales. Now of course in beginner seller accounts like I mentioned you will not have 250 items in your limits they'll only limit you to about 10 items. But once you upgrade your limits you will be able to reach 250 and more. And once you reach a few thousand listings on eBay the sales will start pouring in and they'll start pouring in much, much faster as you learn better how to conduct product research. You do not need a thousand listings to start selling on eBay. A few hundred is good enough but if you wanna start making some real substantial profits then you'll need to have a few thousand listings and learn how to import your products quickly which we will talk about later down this video. Some of the cons about eBay is that they do have relatively high selling fees. Your break even will be at least 15% and that is not including taxes and other things which we will talk about soon. But we also have an eBay selling fee calculator. So if you wanna know what your selling fees are and how much profit you're gonna make when you're buying a certain product from your suppliers and selling them on eBay we also have once again a free eBay fees calculator. So you can search Google for AutoDS eBay fees calculator get to that and learn to calculate your expenses. eBay also has fewer customization options when you compare them to Shopify and Wix since you don't have your own .com domain name and you're not getting the customer's email address neither are you getting it on Facebook Marketplace. That is one of the disadvantages of using online selling channels like eBay and Facebook Marketplace. But then again you've got the free organic traffic you're listing items without paying for anything in the beginning and on eBay only after you get 250 listings should you subscribe for a starter store and that only starts around $5 to $7 per month which you can make up for after just getting one sell. So you don't need a big budget to start a dropshipping business no matter what selling channel you are using. So now that I went on and on about the best selling channels to use choose whatever you think is good for you start with that and see how that goes for you. Remember it's all about trial and error you cannot try something only one time see that it doesn't work and then give up on it and think that it will not work for you. To succeed in dropshipping or anything else in life it's all about trial and error. Now how do we start a dropshipping business once we chose our selling channel and we're ready to go ahead and get started. These are all of the right steps in the right structure in the right timeline to take them step by step. First of all you wanna determine your starting budget. Then you wanna find out what your requirements are what you need in order to get started. Then you will choose a selling channel which you have a good idea of which ones to choose by now. Then you wanna learn about product research you wanna learn about what products should I sell on that selling channel that I chose. Then you wanna choose a dropshipping supplier once you chose what products are selling well you wanna try and test them out you wanna look for a dropshipping supplier that can offer you these items to sell on your online store on your chosen selling channel. Right after that it is the right time to connect an automation software to help you automate your business and this is the only way to do it if you wanna be able to scale and reach new heights with your dropshipping business and not limit yourself to the same tasks and the same sales and profit every day. Then you'll learn how to quickly import products to your store which is one of the best advantages of using automation software and this way you can grab all of the products from your supplier's website and easily add them to your online stores. Then you'll learn how to market your products the right way so that your right audiences will see them the relevant audiences who have the highest potential of purchasing from your online store and once you learn how to market correctly you'll start getting sales. So the next step is to learn how to fulfill your orders and there are multiple methods for fulfilling your orders the right way. Then we'll learn how to provide excellent customer service. Once you start getting sales the product will start reaching their customers. Some of them will reach out to us and will need to learn how to provide the right customer service to them and this way will not only gain repeated customers repeated purchases from them but they'll also refer their friends and their family to purchase from your store and this is one of the ways to help your store grow exponentially. If you wanna make it in the long term it's all about customer service. Then you'll learn all kinds of things like how to optimize your drop shipping business and how to run and manage your business the right way. So those are all of the basic steps. Now let's start going a little bit more in depth on each step and how to start our businesses the right way. So first you wanna determine your starting budget. I'm not gonna go into it too deep because this video will just take not hours but days and maybe even weeks but in general if you wanna start off drop shipping on the Facebook marketplace your starting budget needs to be anywhere from zero dollars to 200 dollars and how do we jump from zero to 200? That's because starting to list your items on Facebook marketplace doesn't cost any money but once you start getting orders from your buyers you'll need to fulfill your orders and Facebook may hold your payments for a few days until you provide tracking information. So during those few days before Facebook gives you your payout you'll need to put some budget aside and purchase the products to your buyers and ship it out to them from your suppliers to your buyers addresses while waiting for Facebook to release the funds. Once you provide tracking information Facebook will release the funds to you and then you can withdraw it to your bank account. Once you get those few orders rolling then the cash flow will start flowing in and you won't need to withdraw any more money from the bank in order to fulfill your orders. That should be anywhere between zero to 200 dollars and that is the average for people who are starting off to dropship on the Facebook marketplace. Your starting budget for Shopify or Wix can be much higher anywhere between 500 to $1,000 and can even be higher. And the reason why you cannot start anywhere below that you cannot start with zero dollars and that is from the reason that I mentioned before you need to market your products on Shopify and Wix otherwise no one will know that it exists no one will know about your store your products or your brand and the way to get people to your store is to pay traffic sources to bring traffic to your website and we're gonna talk about those methods soon. So if you got some money on the side Shopify and Wix is the way to go because once you will start to make sales and you'll run some ad campaigns that are working well it's much more scalable than any other selling channel that I mentioned. For eBay your starting budget is anywhere between 50 to 100 dollars and that's pretty much from the same reasons as the Facebook marketplace you simply wanna have some budget in order to start fulfilling your orders in the beginning true you do only have to pay once you get paid but on the other hand eBay will put some funds on hold in the beginning if it is a new seller account just to make sure that you are shipping out your products on time providing tracking information and all of that once you show them that you are shipping out your products on time providing tracking information in a short amount of time they will stop putting your funds on hold and they will send you your payouts on time. So until then you'll need to have some money on the side just a small budget to fulfill those orders until they start sending you your payouts. So as you can see whether you wanna start off with selling channels that do need online marketing in order to bring traffic to your stores or that provide free organic traffic either way the starting budget is very very low compared to starting a real brick and mortar business with inventory and everything else. The dropshipping business model is a business at the end of the day just like any other business only here it's much cheaper to get started. The next step is figuring out your dropshipping requirements. So this depends on what selling channel you wanna use and of course what suppliers you wanna work with and what policies they have but in general as I mentioned if you wanna dropship on the Facebook Marketplace you need to be a US citizen with a social security number for verification and for Shopify and Wix for example there are not much requirements you just need to be over the age of 18 have a bank account to be able to withdraw your funds and that is pretty much it sign up register and there are no additional requirements on top of that besides your own knowledge and skills which you will need to succeed. Your next step is to choose a selling channel. So now you should have a good idea of what selling channel you wanna use if not rewind a few minutes back into this video or read the blog below this video and choose which selling channel is best for you. The fourth step is product research and I talked about it this is one of the most important parts of running your dropshipping business because if you're not selling the right products that people are looking to buy then nothing else you do actually really matters. So your product research needs to be on point and be done the right way. There are multiple methods of finding great products that will sell on your store but there are so many factors here including what target audience you're targeting in what region around the world and what you're trying to sell to them. There's a lot of research to be done here and that's why I also mentioned that it's all about trial and error. So you need to keep trying to research new products to sell, see what is working well what's starting to sell and multiply your success by adding more products that are similar to that while continuing to test the market for new products and new trends. Now let's narrow that down a little bit and see how we can do it the right way. So there are multiple methods of conducting product research. Some of the most popular ways to do it is to search your supplier's website and see what is selling well on your supplier's website and once again we're gonna tap into suppliers very soon but one way of doing it is for example like going to AliExpress they have an AliExpress dropshipping center which is very, very helpful for dropshippers to analyze what products are selling well in the market and get great ideas for new product trends. Other dropshippers like to use paid tools to help them save time with their product research and simply show them what is selling well today. Platforms like Zik Analytics and others can help you if you want to dropship on eBay and you wanna learn how to research the market there. But if you don't wanna do it the paid way then once again search your suppliers for and see what is selling well on their websites and then search for those products on your selling channel. So for example, you can search to see what's selling well on Amazon and see how well those products are selling on eBay by simply copying the product's title and pasting it on eBay in the right country that you wanna sell to and see if that product is trending there. You can filter on eBay search results to see what products are selling on your search results and then you'll only see listings that actually have a sold history on them to see what is successful. That is just another way of doing it and if you're not dropshipping on eBay if you're dropshipping on Facebook marketplace you don't really need to do any competitor research just start listing products and test it from there and if you're dropshipping on Shopify or Wix then there are also ways to do it and I will talk about that in a minute. Another way of finding out what are the best product ideas to sell today to tap into is also by seeing Autodesk's product research system which is embedded into the system. So if you're an Autodesk member or you're thinking about being an Autodesk member this is one of the best tools that we implemented into our system only recently to help you guys learn and understand and think of new product ideas to sell on your stores. So here on the platform I'm gonna click on these dots right here and instead of the platform I'm gonna switch over to product research and here I can filter many things like which warehouse these products are coming out from, US suppliers, Chinese suppliers, what products are popular and selling really well and as you can see I already have some great looking products right here. We've got some great dropshipping products for gamers. We've got home decor products. We've got computer accessories. We've got pet supplies. We've got beanie hats, fashion. We're tapping into many great dropshipping niches here and if you find a good idea and you wanna import it to your store it's as simple as clicking on import product and it will import to your store automatically but we're gonna talk about all of this later. This is another way to research great products that are selling and if I click on popular products it'll show me all of the products that have a rating of over 4.5 with more than 100 reviews so these are proven products that are selling and of course I can click on it to get more information about this product like this Squish model over here. We can read about the product's information, read about its specifications, the seller's policies. For this example we've got a 30 day return window so we can offer 30 day returns and we can read about reviews from this product and once again you can import it really quickly to your store if that's what you want or you can search your supplier for more products that are similar to this and test out the whole niche. When you're testing our products you always wanna test more than one variation in order to really test the market and see what will start to work well for you. So once again the Autodesk product research tool is another great way to get best product ideas for your store especially when you're starting off and you have no idea what products to sell and what categories and niches to tap into. You can learn more about that, we've got an help article on it, we've got a YouTube channel on it so go and learn about the best ways to find products for your store. Now for Shopify and Wix you can use tools like the Koala Inspector which is a Chrome extension and this is a great extension that will help you identify what stores are Shopify or Wix stores and what products are selling well for them where they're getting their products from who are their dropshipping suppliers what are their best selling items what Shopify themes and apps they're using and they also have a free plan. So a great way to see what's selling well for Shopify and Wix stores is by using the Koala Inspector. Now while I'm recording this video they still do not support Wix yet right now they fully support Shopify but I know that that is a feature that they're also gonna add soon. So Koala Inspector is a great way to once again know what stores are Shopify stores or Wix stores and what's selling well for them and some of their strategies and secrets to their success. So those are some of the best methods for product research remember the more you practice the better your results. Now let's talk about dropshipping suppliers. So now that we're finished with a product research phase we wanna find the right suppliers where we can get these products and the best high quality version of these products at the best prices and sell them on our stores. So dropshipping suppliers there are some things that we have to look out for when looking and searching for the right ones to work with in our business. When picking a supplier the things that you wanna look out for is their total reliability. So how long they've been here? Are they a new supplier? Have they been around here for a while? They're shipping speed so check out their items see how long it takes them to ship to your targeted country and also do they have good return policies? We wanna offer the best customer service that we can to our buyers and one of the ways to do that is to give our buyers a good return policy so that they'll have a peace of mind when purchasing something from our store and will also help them to convert and purchase from your store knowing that they have a good return policy even if they won't end up using it. Then you wanna make sure that your supplier can offer great customer service just like you need to offer good customer service to your buyers you wanna get that same level of customer service from your suppliers. So do they have an online chat to help you out? Do they have a phone number, email? How do you reach out to them? How fast do they respond to your requests? And do they provide solutions to the problems that you are having? Then you also wanna check out if they are selling high quality products. So see what products are selling on their stores and most suppliers also have customer reviews. So you can also read about reviews from customers who actually purchase that product and see that these products are made of high quality because nobody wants to put up with returns. Even though we won't have them now and then there is no problem with that but we wanna keep that to a low one to three maybe 4% return rate. Anything above that might start getting too high but if you are selling high quality products you should not have this problem as long as of course your product descriptions are on point and everything that you're describing about the item is true to the item that you're selling. So those are some of the main key points that you wanna look out for when searching for the right drop shipping suppliers to work with for your business. Some of the best suppliers that I can recommend are those that you see over at autods.com slash suppliers and here you have more than 20 drop shipping suppliers that you can start working with today from different regions around the world as you can see here you always wanna work with a supplier that has a domestic warehouse in the same country as your target audience. So for example, if you wanna drop ship to Australia to the Australian audience then here you wanna pick out suppliers who have warehouses in Australia and that is because we wanna offer fast shipping and what better way to offer fast shipping than finding domestic suppliers who have warehouses in the same country as your target audience. So for example, if I click here on Australia then I can see that I have AliExpress, Amazon, Banggood, eBay and DHgate as some options for suppliers with warehouses in Australia and that is just that example. Now you can use all of the suppliers all of the suppliers that you see here you can use them to drop ship on those selling channels that I also mentioned eBay, Shopify, Facebook and Wix and you can enjoy the drop shipping automation which I will talk about very soon using these suppliers on those selling channels. So you've got the best drop shipping suppliers the best selling channels you combine the products from those suppliers on those selling channels you sell it from here to there and this is a great way to start your drop shipping business and keep it for the long run when you have automation and scaling which we will get to soon. This is a list of the best suppliers that you wanna work with and we're always adding more and more to that list. And like I mentioned you will also enjoy drop shipping automation like price and stock monitoring product importing and automatic orders when working with those suppliers. So not only will you have a reach to tens of millions of products using those suppliers the best products out there on the best selling channels to drop ship on but you'll also get to enjoy the benefits of drop shipping automation with them meaning you'll be able to scale your businesses and reach new heights that are nowhere near possible if you are doing everything manually and without an automation software or tool. Now we talked about what selling channels we wanna use we talked about product research how we're gonna get our products what selling channel we're gonna sell them on and what suppliers we are going to use to find those products the best versions of them the highest quality with fast shipping to our target audience and now we need to open an account on our selling channel and get ready to list those items. So that is the next step you wanna go to your selling account if it's on Facebook marketplace just log into your Facebook account and head over to the marketplace if it's on Shopify or Wix just log on to those platforms and create your new account we also have a 14 day free trial you can use the link below once again in the blog below this video for a quick link to get your free trial on Shopify but do keep in mind that our basic store starts at $29 so don't start your free trial until you reach this step after you did your product research because you don't wanna spend all of your trial researching for products because this part takes a long time so do it smartly with this structure that I'm showing you here if you're on eBay simply go to eBay.com click on sell and it will direct you to register for your first account but before doing that also check out the link on how to list your first items on eBay right here in the blog below this video and of course the full tutorial on how to drop ship on eBay which is also linked above in this article like I said on eBay you wanna take it slow it's very, very sensitive but also very, very much worth your while once you'll get enough selling limits and then business automation and scaling becomes easy now after you open an account on your selling channel the next step is to connect it to an automation software and this is exactly where AutoDS comes in now to answer your question do you need AutoDS to have a drop shipping business or any other drop shipping tool for that matter the answer is no you can do everything manually and still make sales but however if you wanna really succeed if you wanna make it to high numbers high profits at the end of the month be able to withdraw profits from whatever selling channel you're using to your bank account and enjoy the profits and not just run a business just to say that you have a business you need to be able to scale your business and not just limit yourself to the same amount of tasks per day which is not helping you grow your business now for those of you who have tried manual drop shipping before you know exactly what I'm talking about you'll spend all day importing products adding them to your stores copying and pasting everything from your supplier's websites to your own store and then what happens once you have tens or hundreds or thousands of listings how are you gonna monitor the prices on your supplier's websites when they change or when your supplier starts to go out of stock how are you gonna manage that you cannot refresh all of those items every day so manual drop shippers what they do is they don't list thousands of listings they only list like 10, 20 or 30 listings and that is not even enough to test the market so you're spending a lot of time taking care of these daily tasks you're not able to break new barriers and reach new limits and heights because you're always stuck doing the same things every day nobody can grow their business this way and even though you can have virtual assistants to help you take care of your daily tasks there's only so much that they can do without using an automation tool so what are automation tools good for? the main points here are price and stock monitoring meaning every time prices change on your supplier's websites or the stock status changes on your supplier's websites the same changes will be implemented on your store automatically without having you intervene and you also have automatic orders so you can also automate your orders as soon as they come in the system can fulfill it purchase it from your supplier and ship it directly to your customer even while you travel, even while you sleep and this also comes with automatic tracking number updates so as soon as an order from one of your suppliers has tracking information once your supplier provides tracking the tracking information will also update automatically on your AutoDS platform and on your stores your customers will be able to track their delivery progress and even if your supplier like if you're using Amazon with AMCO tracking numbers which are not supported anywhere else and your customers won't know what's going on with their packages you'll also enjoy automatic tracking conversions so there's a lot that goes to it when it comes to automatic orders and it's another way to be able to save your time and invest that time in growing your dropshipping business by researching for more best sellers and creating more selling channels to more regions then you'll have a network of dropshipping stores the profits will be substantial and you will be able to waive your day to day job boss goodbye but of course take it slowly start with your baby steps after watching this video besides price and stock monitoring and automatic orders you'll also enjoy quick product importing which I will demonstrate with Perry soon meaning you can take a single product, multiple products or even tens to hundreds or thousands of products at once and list them all on your dropshipping stores in just a couple of seconds and that is really all there is to it the amount of time that you're gonna save here is simply unbelievable and it is not possible without dropshipping automation software that is why they exist and that is why it is helping to dominate the market when it comes to business automation and scaling to new heights so if you're serious about your business you really wanna make it, this is the way to go now there are many, many, many more features when it comes to automation software and of course here I'm talking about AutoDS the number one e-commerce dropshipping automation software that's out there simply head to autoDS.com read about all of the features see everything that it can give you like the ones that I mentioned product research, automatic orders you also have automatic price optimizations which can increase the prices of products that are selling well for you so you can profit more and decrease the prices of products that are not selling well for you so that you can have a higher chance of selling them each one to a certain limit of course according to your own configuration settings automatic tracking number updates which I mentioned products imported which I will show you in a minute price and stock monitoring which I mentioned fulfilled by AutoDS which is the better version of automatic orders meaning it won't even use your buyer accounts AutoDS has their own buyer accounts that can fulfill their orders for you so you don't have to worry about your credit line at the bank and your buyer account getting locked on your supplier's website and so forth and you'll also enjoy easy one click returns there and easy inventory management and there's more guys, there's more I'm not gonna go over all of it in this video only to what's beneficial for starting your dropshipping business the right way so simply head over to autoDS.com start your $1 trial check it out create your account create your selling channel connect between them start importing your products and see how great it is to have all of these features and all of these automation settings to help scale your business the right way even from day one automating your dropshipping business is something that's very smart to do and you will see exactly why once you get started so take my word for it go ahead and give it a try $1 is really nothing to lose compared to everything that you have to gain now the next step after you sign up to your automation software is to start importing your products so like I mentioned there are a few ways to import your products on AutoDS you can use the one click importer which is available once you download and install the AutoDS Chrome Helper extension so simply right on Google and you will get to the Chrome extension and with that when you're searching supplier's websites like let me just give you a quick example let's just head over to Amazon.com and pick something really quickly here maybe these sunglasses over here they're Ray-Ban we can sell Ray-Ban that's another subject that I wanna talk about and it has to do with product research there are products that you are not allowed to resell as a drop shipper and those are products that have owner rights trademark products, patented products and so forth so stay away from big companies that you've heard of like for example Ray-Ban or Adidas or Microsoft, Sony, Apple all of those every company that you've heard of anytime in your life you probably cannot resell those products but then again there are thousands and thousands of manufacturers and suppliers that will be more than happy for you to go ahead and drop ship their products even in market places like Amazon but not just you also have a private wholesale drop shipping suppliers who are the best to work with which we will start implementing soon in our product research system completely free for you to use if you're an Adidas member but we're not here to talk about that now let's check out the quick importing process so let's say that I wanna go for this face mask right here with the variations without the variations it doesn't matter depends on what you have configured in your Adidas settings now as you see up here I've got the AutoDS extension so what that will give me is the one click importer now as you see over here there's an import to AutoDS button that shows right above the product's title so if I click on the extension I can choose what store I wanna import it to or multiple stores as you see I've got many different stores here then now all I have to do is click on import to AutoDS and now what's happening is all of the product's information from the suppliers page is being imported to the draft section of my AutoDS store now the draft section is right here and as you can see the draft right now is being created it's in progress and once it'll be ready I'll be able to open up the item editor as you see right here and start editing the product whether it's its title, the collection, the product tags which is being automated the shipping methods, the item location price stock monitoring, automatic orders the product's description the template and you also have many free templates to use with AutoDS the variations you can add more variants you can even add variants from other suppliers so here it just took a few seconds for the product to import to my store but it's already here so let's go to the face mask as you can see the tags here were automated and I can jump to the products description and add more edit the information around a little bit see what I got there and of course the product templates as I mentioned so you can choose whatever template you want and right now in my settings I told AutoDS to not import variations but I can also do that and then all of the variations that we had here will also be added here but if I have more variations from other suppliers that I want to use like let's say like let's say this bundle pack right here I also want to add this bundle pack as a variation then all I have to do is take the URL from here copy it go back to the platform click on add variant put the URL right here and it took only the product ID from that as you can see right here in the URL this 53-HZ code so it took that code automatically from the URL and pasted that here so if you want to supply the region click on add variant and in just a few seconds I will also have that variant in this item listing the greatest advantage here is that you can do it from different suppliers and even different regions in this way your product listing will be like no other dropshippers which means you are differentiating yourself from the competition you're different from everyone which will greatly increase your chances of selling next you've got the products images so all of the images that we have on our suppliers website all got imported into our product page and of course the item specifications so here for example there aren't too many specifications we can add more we can edit what we have and once we're done we simply save and import and then it will move from the drafts to the product section of our stores meaning now it's live and anyone can see it anyone can go and purchase it and that is how easy it is to use the one-click importer now there are multiple methods to add products to your stores you can also for example copy the URL copy multiple URLs click on add products and then click on multiple products and stores and start adding the URLs right here separated by line breaks to add multiple products to your stores you can also upload a CSV file so for example all of these balaclava full face masks are selling well for you and this is a great niche that you just found so you search for that on your suppliers website and you know that you want to add all of the items that you see here on your store all you have to do is click on the AutoDS extension right down here this is another extension it's an auto express extension that's blocking me there so sorry about that click on extract now all of the item IDs that we have on this page are extracted into this extension then I'll click on export a CSV and as you see an Amazon US export CSV file was downloaded onto my computer then I'm going to drag and drop that CSV file or click on it to open up my browser window double click on that CSV file processing CSV and file is uploaded so now those 100 and something products I can add them as a draft and they will all get imported to my drafts page I can optimize it or I can even import it and optimize later whatever is good for you but here you can see exactly how much time you can save when using the AutoDS importer tool with its many many features and different forms and ways to do it so read about the different product importing methods we also have a link to the AutoDS dropshipping product importer where you can learn more about it but now you have a pretty good picture of how easy it is to save time importing products to your stores when using AutoDS next it's finally time to launch your store if you're dropshipping on Facebook Marketplace or eBay as soon as you listed your listing your store is pretty much already live and anyone can go in and buy your products but if you're dropshipping on other selling channels like Wix or Shopify, WooCommerce and so forth you'll need to launch your store but first make sure that you've got everything ready your front page, your legal pages including your shipping and payment policies terms of service and so forth your product pages, your themes your layout, your checkout settings shipping zones and so forth so there's a lot of more work to be done if you are working on fully customizable websites like Shopify and Wix and if you want to learn how to do all that we have a free A to Z Shopify course that has all of this stuff including your legal pages and how to launch your store and how to market and everything else that goes along with it which you can also use when you're dropshipping on Wix WooCommerce, BigCommerce and so forth because it's all pretty much the same strategies and similar legal pages so check out our free Shopify course you've got a link to it in the article in this video and that will definitely help you out not only launch your store but get everything else around completed the right way so that your stores will be able to convert and bring massive traffic to your stores the tenth step is to market your products now that your stores are alive it's time to market them to promote them and to reach a wide audience that's relevant to your niche that's relevant to your brand that will engage with it and proceed to the checkout process so the way to market your store depends on what selling channel you are using for example, if you are using Shopify, Wix, WooCommerce, BigCommerce and all of those website building hosting platforms then here you have a few marketing methods you can go with email marketing which is simply sending out promotion emails to your customers to your buyers and to the people who took interest in your brand and left their email addresses this is one of the biggest advantages of having a website having your own website where you can obtain the customer's email addresses which is something that's not possible on eBay and Facebook Marketplace and other marketplaces of that sort but in other places like I'm mentioning now you can definitely get all of your customers' email addresses and send them promotional campaigns this is something that the biggest to the smallest companies are doing and it is one of the most effective marketing methods available today and it also doesn't really cost any money to send emails all you need to do is get your customers' email addresses and you can use all kinds of promotion apps and things like that to get your customers' email addresses on your website and offer them a promotion or something in return some sort of value in order for the buyer or in order for the potential buyer the viewer to leave their email addresses to give you their email addresses which you can later on use for email marketing so email marketing is one of the best methods the challenging part is getting thousands of email addresses but once you get that ball rolling it will start to work and you will get their email addresses so check out the Shopify App Store check out the Wix App Store look for those apps that help get email addresses by sending up promotions and things like that you've also got Facebook ads and Google ads and YouTube ads which are PPC pay-per-click ads so for this you gotta know how to run ad campaigns and if you wanna learn that once again check out our Shopify course over there I teach how to run Facebook ads in 8 simple steps no matter what selling channel you are using and if you're dropshipping on eBay and Facebook Marketplace you're already getting free organic traffic you can still use these marketing methods to get more traffic to your stores and make more sales but it is not mandatory since on those Marketplaces they already have a large customer base and once eBay users or Facebook users search for a product and you're selling that product there's a high chance that they will get to your listing so that is free organic traffic and that's great but back to other hosting platforms like Shopify, Wix, WooCommerce, BigCommerce you can once again learn all about Facebook ads and it's 100% for free in our free Shopify course another marketing method is using influencer marketing so there's a lot of influencers out there who have a large audience base and you can find an influencer with an audience that's relevant to your niche and negotiate a deal with them to give a shout out to your product, brand or store and they will do that to their audiences and then their audiences will click on that link and get to your store this is another very effective method but you have to find the right influencers for that and for that you also have influencer marketing platforms that hold large databases of influencers with their stats and people who actually bought shout outs from them so you can also read reviews about them see what type of audiences they have and using influencer marketing platforms simply makes the whole process much easier of finding a relevant influencer for you and then you start negotiating that deal close that deal and get that massive traffic to your store those are the main marketing methods that you can use and you can also read about the 10 best influencer marketing platforms we have an article on that and it's inside the blog article that's linked right below this video now for ebay and facebook marketplace I already gave you guys a clue on this that you're getting free organic traffic but there are still more methods that you can use in order to bring more traffic to your stores you can start with the methods that I just mentioned that are relevant for Shopify weeks and so forth but you also have marketing methods inside those platforms like for ebay for example you can use promoted listing standard and promoted listings advance which is their new ppc method if you want to read about either of those methods once again the links are in the blog article below this video over there you'll have a full tutorial of what they mean and how to use them but in general promoted listing standard means you're giving ebay a set percentage only after they make a sell for your products using promoted listing standard so for example you can say hey ebay take 5% on all of my listings take 5% from the transaction fee but I want you to promote all those listings using that 5% the bigger percentage you'll give them the more they'll sponsor your listings and show it to more and more audiences but either way once only after they make a sell from that promoted listings only then will they deduct that 5% or whatever you gave them from the products price then you also have promoted listings advance which is their new ppc method so ppc once again stands for pay per click and here you can simply tell ebay hey take this much from my daily budget let's say take 5 or 10 dollars every day and promote all of these listings with ppc pay per click you'll have to pay for every click so even if ebay doesn't make any sales you'll still have to pay every time someone clicks on your ad this is still a great method everybody all of the big companies are using ppc today amazon run their own ppc campaign same for google, youtube, facebook and more and now ebay just tapped into the ppc campaigns and it actually works quite well I have a video and an article that was written and recorded just so you can learn how to run successful ebay ppc campaigns with a live example of how I run it on my stores and on the facebook marketplace there are a couple methods to promote your listings first there's the free way to do it which is list your listing and you're getting free organic traffic like ebay but there are also additional methods like sharing your listing in relevant buy and sell groups which doesn't cost you any money and you will get free organic traffic by posting your product in relevant groups the second method is a promotion feature that you have inside facebook marketplace and if you want to learn about that I have a video on the 10th day facebook marketplace dropshipping case study where I showed you how I promoted my listings and if you want to learn about facebook marketplace and how to dropship on it and actually see a real live case study on my facebook marketplace account and everything I did there I highly recommend to check out the video that we have on youtube we also have a playlist for that and of course it will be linked in the blog under this video so there's a lot of information for you out there and all that you need is the will to learn and the time to sit down get focused, concentrate and learn about the next step that you need to take for your e-commerce business those are some of the best marketing methods that are available today no matter what selling channel you are using the next step after you market your products correctly is fulfilling your orders because now you're finally going to get those orders that you were waiting so long for so how do we fulfill orders there are several methods to do this and we're going to go over them one by one the first method for fulfilling your orders is simply to go to your supplier's website and ship it to the end customer so use your buyers details when checking out on your supplier's website ship it to them, use gift packaging so there will be a fewer chance of them knowing where you bought the product from but either way it doesn't really matter because 99.9% of the buyers will simply not care where their packages came from and what logos they have on it that's another reason why the drop shipping business model is just so good and easy as long as you have the right tools and knowledge which is something that I am passing on to you right now so manual order processing is not the easy way to do it but it's one way to do it another method is using automatic order fulfillment now there are different types of order fulfillment methods like one automatic order fulfillment method is using automatic orders with your buyer accounts so for example AutoDS has an automatic orders feature where it uses your buyer account to log into your supplier's website and process the order for you automatically as soon as it comes in and you'll see that the status of the order will change to ordered and then it will change to shipped as soon as the product ships out with tracking numbers and even tracking number conversions if those tracking numbers are not supported and it will turn to delivered once it reaches the end customer now if you have any returns from your customers you simply need to go to your supplier's website and get a return label from them if your supplier offers you free returns and you will have to do it manually because once again you are using your own buyer accounts and your own credit line at the bank on the other hand you have the fulfilled by AutoDS method which is much better if you ask me this method uses AutoDS's buyer accounts meaning you don't need to have any buyer accounts at your supplier's websites and if you're dropshipping from suppliers like Amazon you know what those locked accounts mean when they start locking your accounts after you fulfill many dropshipping orders here you won't have that problem no account locks and easy one click returns if there is a return from one of your buyers everything becomes much easier with the fulfilled by AutoDS method if you don't know about it check out the link once again in the article below this video and you can read all about how fulfilled by AutoDS works and everything that's included with it this is a huge time saver just like automatic orders even though this method is better because you don't have those buyer accounts and you're not dealing with your own personal accounts but in any case your orders are being completely automated even while you travel even while you sleep even while you're taking care of your day to day tasks and you're not home and the next step after fulfilling your orders is providing excellent customer service now that your orders are on the way and the packages start to reach the destinations at all of your buyer's addresses some of them will reach out to you and they may want to ask a few questions and even a small percentage of them may want to return the product for whatever reason so here is where you come in and this is where customer service comes to play customer service that you can to your buyers even if you think that the buyer is wrong and you are right make sure that the buyer feels right about this and give them what they ask for it's better to lose a little bit of profit now but gain much more profit in the future by having returned purchases from your customers and also having them refer their friends and their family to also purchase from your store that will only come with customer service we are not looking for just one time purchases and that is also another reason for customers and you learn about that when running Facebook ads how to re-target your buyers and send them more promotions and get them to return to your store and buy again but if they had a bad experience they are not going to do that so provide the best customer service that you can to your buyers on eBay you have the customer support feature which is integrated inside the AutoDS platform which helps you answer all of your customers inquiries and requests all under one screen and you can also reply to cases and more things that will help you manage your customer service in the day to day in a much faster and easier way so use the customer support feature if you are using AutoDS and you are dropshipping on eBay on Facebook Marketplace simply check out your Facebook Messenger because your customers messages will reach you there and in selling channels like Shopify and Wix simply go to your dashboard and see what messages you have there or check out the email address that is associated with your domain so those are the ways you can see where your customers messages are and what they are saying be sure to provide once again the best customer support that you can this is a real business and you know what it's like to be a customer and feel unsatisfied with something and also learn from what your customers are saying if you have more than one return on a specific product see the reason why they are returning that product and maybe replace it with a better version of it or maybe the shipping time takes too long and you want to find another supplier that is a domestic warehouse who can ship quicker to that target audience so always check out what your buyers are saying what they are complaining about and fix it so you will avoid having those issues in the future and of course make more sales and profit now let's learn about some of the best methods to optimize your dropshipping business because the more we optimize the better it will look and the more sales we can make later on so some of the ways to optimize our business and make it look simply much much better is by having trust badges for example if you are dropshipping on Shopify in wigs and selling channels like that trust badges are a great way to gain your customers trust and make them connect with your brand even more for more information on that you can read how to gain customer trust for Shopify dropshipping once again linked in the blog article below this video and of course you want to have your legal pages up and running which is your privacy settings shipping and return policies and so forth which I mentioned is available we got free templates for you automatically all you have to do is just change some things in brackets which is custom to your own website and besides that it's actually very easy to get legal pages and the right ones for your store today if you're dropshipping on ebay you want to have the right business policies and for that we also have an article how to set ebay business policies once again linked below this video in the blog article and on ebay you also want to raise your selling limits this is the way to get more and more listings to be able to list more and more because as I mentioned earlier in this video ebay doesn't start you off with many listings they usually start you off with 10 listings and about $500 in listings and in sales which isn't much and you have to know what items to list and how to get them on the phone and tell them what they want to hear so that you'll be able to increase your listings and get more from ebay that way of course you make more sales and profit there and of course you want to have optimized product pages you want your product page to look really good you can also create videos for your product pages and also for your ads you'll learn about that in the 8 steps for running facebook ads we also have an ebook on it so you don't have to watch Shopify course if you don't want to take the step by step simply head over to autods.com slash ebooks and you've got the 8 steps to running facebook ads right there and once again it's relevant for more than one selling channel you also have an article 10 ways to boost your Shopify product page conversions once again linked in the blog article below this video and on facebook marketplace you simply want to add more and more listings because there are no limits and the more you add the higher chance you'll have to sell those products and you'll also learn about the market and see where the trends and demands are and of course you can optimize your product page as much as you can and you can also use autods's advanced image editor and this is a great way to differentiate yourself from the competition and stand out with unique product images more info in our youtube video which is once again linked in the blog below this video I've said that so many times in this video it's time to wrap it up but we still have a couple of more things to learn here are some of the best dropshipping niches don't forget to use all of the product research methods that I mentioned in this video but if you want to have a good and easy start here are some of the best niches and categories for you to check out when starting your dropshipping business and you have no idea what to sell check out pet car seat covers which looks like this this is a product that's been trending for years now and there are new versions of it coming out all the time because there are so many people that are buying this certain product and there are of course many different variations for it so check out pet car seat covers and you've also got food storage organizers another evergreen niche selling all year long so many different types of food storage organizers so many different variations so many different bundle packs and there are new versions always coming out and more and more people willing to buy them another great trending dropshipping product are camping hammocks people are finally leaving their houses again they're going out camping this is a very trendy item a very trendy category to dropship then you've also got insect traps this is something that pretty much every household needs and there are many different versions of this type of unit but one thing that is relevant for me to say right now is stay away from trademark copyrighted and patented products don't sell products and I mentioned this in the product research section but do not sell products from big brands big companies that you've heard of before and you've also got that extra layer of protection on autoDS so if you're trying to import a listing and you're not allowed to resell it autoDS's database will tell you hey you're not allowed to resell this item are you sure you want to add it to your stores and then you can decide if you want or if you don't want it the 5th best selling category are essential oil diffusers that's exactly what it is search for that on your suppliers websites and see all of the different types of variations and forms that you can get this product another evergreen niche that's selling all year long so check out the essential oil diffusers those are some of the best dropshipping items that you can sell today but of course the market is vast and much much bigger than this so don't stop researching for products don't stop testing the market and like I mentioned once a product starts to sell add more products that are similar to that with different features different variations and at the end of the day when you're working with this method your sales will always increase more and more in time while always checking out new product trends new product categories new niches to test the market with since it's very easy with the dropshipping business model since we're not investing in our inventory now let's talk about some of the tools that will help you along your journey for your dropshipping business and I'm not just going to talk about AutoDS I talked about it enough all of the automation settings and everything that it can do to help you run, manage and scale your dropshipping business to new heights but there are more tools that can help you along the way like the profit calculator for eBay stores so you've got the eBay fees calculator which helps you calculate your fees all you have to do is fill in the right information how much the product is costing you how much you want to sell it for what type of account you have what type of payment processor you're using and with that you can get a good overview of how much you will profit if for example you're buying the product for $10 and selling it for $20 your profit is not going to be the $10 difference between them because there are more fees in the way so once you choose the right configuration for your store you will get the total profit that you will make and this is a great tool to help you manage your finances and know exactly what your expenses and profits are another great tool is the AutoDS e-commerce calendar and this is simply a calendar that will remind you when you have holidays coming up it's free to use of course and what products you should be selling and how to prepare your stores for that specific holiday event now holidays have huge spike in sales and right after the holidays finish the sales start to decrease so you have a great advantage of holidays but also have your ongoing evergreen products that will continue selling even when the holidays end and the AutoDS e-commerce calendar will help you prepare your stores accordingly and break in those profits from those holidays instead of leaving it for the rest of the dropshippers and you've also got a great mentorship program if you want to learn every step of the way if you want to get one-on-one tutoring and help and really skyrocket your business we've got a mentorship program that will really recommend you to try out you've also got a 7-day trial so what if you got to lose check it out and see how it can help you scale your dropshipping business or start your dropshipping business if you haven't done so yet and you're still not sure what are the first steps to take so those are some great tools to help you get started and maintain your business and profit more along the way now regarding taxes this is another question that many people are asking do I have to pay taxes when running a dropshipping business of course you have to pay taxes you are running a business and every business needs to pay taxes what taxes do you have to pay depends on where you reside in the world so for example most likely you're going to have to pay an income tax which is a tax that you're paying to your local government every time you're making income so whether it's your day job you're paying income tax whether it's your own business you're paying income tax this is a tax that pretty much everyone has to pay and there are more taxes on top of that like customs duty if you're importing and exporting goods for that how does all of that work we've got a full article on dropshipping taxes a beginner's guide once again linked in the article below this video how many times have I said that in this video but that will definitely help you understand what taxes you have to pay what your tax obligations are and how all of that works now let's go over some mistakes that you should avoid when starting your dropshipping business because this video is about to get wrapped up and these are some things that you need to know some of the most common mistakes is failing to plan correctly people simply do not have a plan when they're starting out they're just taking it step by step seeing what comes next and kind of shooting arrows in the dark you have to have a plan you have to know what you are doing and one of the ways to do that is to learn from these videos and our articles and get the right plan of your step by step of what you need to do the mentorship program will also help you out with that the second mistake that many people are making is not knowing what products to sell that is why I talked many times about product research and how many hours non-stop hours we have to put into that if you're just going to work on a hunch thinking you know what products are going to sell because you just think you know it or you're taking an educated guess you're most likely not going to make the sales that you were expecting if at all and you won't be making those sales and profit that you were looking for you don't know the market if you haven't tried it out yet so use product research and don't stop working on product research this is something that can be semi-automated for you but you'll always want to have a human being that's helping you or you doing your product research and the Autodesk product research tool is one great way to do that the third mistake that people are making is choosing undependable platforms there are many platforms for you to use today to run and host your dropshipping business and to help automate it make sure that you're using a platform that's been around for years that has a proven record of happy and satisfied customers with many people who have been able to manage being businesses and I'm sure that you know what platform I'm referring to but not only to that so make sure that you are not making the mistake of choosing a platform that is not good for your business the fourth common mistake that people are making is not being prepared for the amount of work that you have ahead of you so if you fail to plan correctly you also won't know how much work you'll have ahead of you and it may become overwhelming at some point because you didn't plan correctly so those two go together you need to be prepared for the amount of work that you have ahead of you you're creating a business and it may be a great low-risk high-reward business model but you still need to know how to do it the right way and prepare for everything accordingly and the fifth mistake that many, many people make is simply losing focus they try one thing they see that it doesn't work and they think that that's it this thing is just not working so let's just leave it on the side and then later, overall losing your focus or putting too much focus on tasks that are not important like importing products manually and spending days and days just adding products to your store only to find out later on that you didn't have price for stock monitoring so the products price raised and you didn't raise it on your store and somebody bought that product and now you have to lose money fulfilling it or the product went out of stock and people are putting in orders to wait to fulfill it that is a great formula to getting mad customers on your store and risking the long-term survivability of your business so do not lose focus don't spend time on tasks that are not important to growing your business and make sure once again that you know what you are doing every step of the way that pretty much wraps up this video good job on your patience by making it this far I can see that you are serious about your business now is the time to act, sign up to the mentorship program if you want to have a one-on-one twitter to help you on every step of the way or just go ahead, dive deep in check out our content on autoDS.com slash blog to help you with any subject that you need along the way and of course subscribe to our youtube channel at youtube.com slash autoDS to always stay updated on everything that is going on in the dropshipping world thank you for watching, good luck with your dropshipping business and do not forget to leave comments below if you have any questions or comments of course I will personally answer them once again good luck and thank you for watching