Imagine making enough money without having to work every single day! This has been a big motivation for many entrepreneurs who want financial independence.
You can live life on your own time, manage finances on your terms, and spend your time doing what you want to do.
This dream can become a reality through e-commerce. More precisely, dropshipping and reselling offer viable means of building sustainable income streams. Although both dropshipping and reselling can be efficient, merging them, can maximize your profits and even speed up reaching financial freedom faster.
In this article, you will see just how complementary both are and ways you can put both to good work.
Combining Dropshipping and Reselling
Dropshipping is an e-commerce model where you sell items in your online store but do not keep any inventory of those products.
In other words, when a customer orders something from your store, they’re actually buying the product from a third-party supplier who then ships the product directly to the customer.
Key Benefits
- Low pre-investment. It takes very little capital to start off a dropshipping business since you don’t need to invest in inventories in advance.
- Ease of Entry. Many online platforms go all the way in making entry and operation relatively easy to start a dropshipping store.
- Scalability. With unlimited inventories, it’s very easy for you to scale up your business.
Reselling is when you buy items at a low price and sell them at a higher price for a profit.
This can be any items that you find at thrift stores, garage sales, or liquidation events. It can also be items you bought from a wholesale supplier.
Key Benefit
- Higher Margins. With the method of reselling, higher margins are able to be achieved, especially in cases involving vintage products or unique ones. The seller can try various categories in order to determine the most profitable so this allows you to be more flexible.
The Synergy Between the Two
By combining dropshipping with reselling, a proper strategy for success in e-commerce is established:
- Diversification of Income: Dropshipping builds regular cash flow, and reselling brings high margin opportunities.
- Scalability and Uniqueness: In as much as dropshipping takes care of scalability, reselling allows the seller to create a brand that differs in the competitive market.
The risks involved when using suppliers are, therefore, offset through the process of dropshipping and vice versa.
Maximising Exposure: The Key to Success
The importance of multichannel selling cannot be over-emphasized. E-commerce succeeds when it’s a matter of reaching your audience where they’re already shopping.
Dropshipping and reselling go very well on Shopify, eBay, and Facebook Marketplace.
All of these various platforms have their segments of customers, so by selling your products on different platforms, you can reach a broader audience.
Cross-listing is one way to ensure maximum visibility on all these platforms.
It allows you to list and sell your products on many different platforms at the same time and is a surefire way of boosting your sales.
Tools like Oneshop or Vendoo can simplify the process and make your work easier when it comes to managing your listings by saving time and reducing possible errors while building up your market reach by ensuring your products are reached by a broader audience.
You can find a detailed comparison of these two reselling platforms in the article: Oneshop vs Vendoo
Automation tools will come in handy with dropshipping/reselling to smoothen the process.
Dropshipping Tools like Oberlo and Spocket are a few of the platforms that automate product sourcing and order fulfillment.
Combining that with cross-listing can help you sell your products on reselling platforms like eBay, FaceBook Marketplace, and more, and these tools can optimize your workflows and scale your business.
Steps to Financial Independence Through Online Selling
Research products that work for both models. Success in either dropshipping or reselling starts with the art of finding a high-demand product.
You can use tools like Google Trends, eBay’s Trending page, and analytics from each respective platform to tune in items that appeal to your target audience.
Source Products Strategically
Dropshipping: Find reliable suppliers who can deliver quality products on time.
Reselling: The best resale can be done through thrift stores, clearance sales, estate auctions, and wholesalers. Items that are very rare or unique will have a very good resale value.
Branding and Marketing
Building a good brand means return patronage, with customers loyal to the brand.
Build a consistent brand that reflects your values and actually has resonance with your target audience. Drive store traffic through social media, email marketing, and search engine optimization that gives products more visibility.
Performance Monitoring and Optimization
Observe performance using analytics, notice which items do better than others, adjust pricing and listings based on the results, and make full use of all listing types.
Constantly make changes to inventory and marketing with the goal in mind of being aware of trends for maximum profitability.
Challenges – and How to Overcome Them
While dropshipping and reselling introduce fabulous ways of making money, it doesn’t come without certain challenges that may show up in different aspects. These can include:
- High Competition: Through narrowing your scope and developing a good brand, the competition may be averted.
- Product Sourcing Issues: Diversify suppliers and channels to reduce risks and give you more options.
- Restrictions on Platforms: Make sure to follow the rules of every provided platform and, in the same instance, be present on more platforms to avoid dependence on one source of income.
- Time Investment: Automate any repetitive tasks to help you save time.
Unlocked Path towards Financial Freedom
Combining dropshipping and reselling is an interesting and unique combination in scaling a path toward financial freedom.
By leveraging the strength of both tools you can develop multiple income streams, have a super solid brand, and reach ultimate sustainability in growth. Get started now and explore tools like either Vendoo or Crosslist to get going.
It’s time to take some real, actionable steps toward making your e-commerce empire a reality.
