General Store vs Niche Store

If you are thinking about diving into the dropshipping world, but wandering between a general store and a niche store, hope this article will help you in your decision making.  

Though there are many dropshipping gurus and specialists on Youtube and other channels teaching about the theory of opening a general store first, testing the products with it then setting up the niche store with the winning products. They may succeed with this method and it pays off their efforts very well. But honestly, after searching in depth among many forums, websites as well as my own experience, I will vote for working on the niche store directly. Here are a few reasons why niche store is the better choice: 

1). Easier to win customer's trust

After attracting potential customers to your site, all you want is having them buy your products, which relies greatly on how well do you convince the visitors that you are a specialist in the product filed they are looking for and your products worth their trust. However, can you imagine what the visitors will think when they browse your site for iphone cases but find the baby pacifiers on the hot-sale section? How likely will they buy the iphone cases? This could be why your ads bring you visitors, but no sales.

2). Easier to market and target the right audiences

We all know the old saying - "You can't please everyone." Same for the business, when you target for every customer, you will not have any customer. 

Most dropshippers will use Facebook ads for marketing their products and brand. And usually a fan page is required before creating the Facebook ads campaign. However, it would be really troublesome to advertise a general store that selling all kinds of products, since you have to create many different fan pages, in order to target and attract the specific customers. And the name of the fan pages may not be the same as the store name, which will confuse the visitors and not being effective in branding.

3). More efficient for blogging 

Blog is an efficient and effective way in supporting and branding the products. It's quite a popular strategy in providing value-added content with blogs for the potential customers and attract them to your site, then get them take out their credit cards. And such method works well with a niche store that sales products in a well-defined field. You can create an educational content, at the end of the post, you can introduce your products to the readers, and let them know that they can actually get it from your store...

4). More effective in increasing SEO ranking in search engine 

Most likely a niche store is named with the same keywords as its domain name, which increases the chances of the store being searched and exposed. Besides, the blogs content of a niche store are more likely to contain the keywords of the store title, which helps to add more links to the store. And the number of the links a page receives is an important factor for Google to determine the page ranking. 

Conclusion

To be a winner in the dropshipping world and be effective with your time and money, start with the niche store. Do necessary researches and home work first, be familiar with the niche industry that you plan to dive into. 

Right direction, comprehensive planning and hard working increase the chance of being successful.  

Things You Should Know Before Starting A Shopify / E-Commerce Business

Nowadays dropshipping with Shopfiy & Facebook has been widely discussed on Youtube and many other websites. However, before investing more of your time and money, and actually carrying out the Shopify & Facebook dropshipping buisness, you should know the following things, to avoid being unsuccessful: 

1. It takes time and needs money.

Watching those "guru" making thousand dollars per day, gives people the illusion that with shopify dropshipping, Facebook advertisement & Aliexpress, it is so easy to gain decent money really fast & effortlessly, and it will rescue them from exchanging their time with the day-job, which just enough to pay the meals, and most people are so sick of living like this.

However, they fall into this illusion way too fast. Or they're simply not willing to be aware of the reality, but want to be blind and keep on day-dreaming about their fantasy outcomes. They fail to realise that with their current skills and knowledge, making decent income with dropshipping method is like approaching the castle over the ocean, which they aren't unable to enter it at all, for it's just their imagination.  

But the truth is it does take quite a lot of efforts, both time and money. In terms of time, please be prepared to wait at least 1-3 months before getting your first sale, especially for those who doesn't have any E-commerce marketing knowledge or experience. You need to spend certain amount of time browsing around the websites, blogs & googling, to be familiar with the terms and methods. 

As for the investment money, very common, it will take at least $1,000 before you make your first sale. There are many things that costs money, such as choosing the domain name, paying shopify service fees, purchasing the shopify apps, Facebook advertising, etc. Be prepared mentally and financially and be ready to invest even more. 

Be willing to invest enough time & money to get to know the system and then you will start making money!

2. Be persistent & creative. 

It will be difficult to brand your store and even make sales, considering there are already thousands of stores out there selling the same products that your are advertising now. Why will they buy from you, which is just a general store, when they can easily find cheaper products from other well-established platforms, such as Amazon, Ebay, etc? 

Though it might be hard and difficult to compete with other stores, don't ever give up. You should avoid from hopping from one project to another. Learn from the failure, analysing why your fail to make sales, is it because of the niche, or because of the Facebook target audiences not right, or because of the store website not attractive? Improve from the mistakes and restart again. Keep trying and practising, after certain amount of time, you will find the right path, which will take you fly. 

3. Find the right advertising method. 

Even though most of the Youtube guru or courses are talking about using Facebook as the advertising method, it doesn't mean it's the only way. If you have used Facebook ads, and it didn't work for you, don't lose your heart, thinking you are done with the E-commerce. Searching about other advertising methods, such as Google Shopping, Instagram, Pinterest, Google Adwords, Email Marketing, etc, and try them out. Many people make their first sales with Google Adwords, not Facebook Ads. And there are many apps at the shopify store, that can help you create more efficient & attractive advertisements.

Every product has the potential of being the winning product. Keep looking for the right audiences and search deeper, you will find them. 

4. Make your products go viral. 

Before investing in the advertising, you should plan and develop a strategy to make your product go viral, without depending on the advertisement. The more you spend on the advertisement, the less profit you will receive, or even worse, loose money. Be creative, make some videos / photos which are highly engaged with audiences and will make people want to share with their friends. There are quite a lot of good examples about viral ads. Spend some time watching them and learning from them.

Above are the things I think you should know before setting up your shopify store, just my opinion. When you think you are in pain and you've had enough, don't ever give up! 😄