Dropship with Spocket for FREE

Just 6 months ago, Bhanu Chimbili was just another entrepreneur trying his hand at e-commerce. He did not know any suppliers. He did not know when the first sale would come. He was taking a risk.

6 months ago, Bhanu Chimbili was ready to put all of his energy into his online store, without knowing where it would take him.

Today, he’s glad he took that chance.

He started out from zero: he’d been a software developer in a past life. He’d started a brick-and-mortar retail store on his own in 2006. He’d even worked in affiliate marketing for a while. None of them worked out.

Bhanu had seen failure. Thrice.

But he did not let failure stop him. He knew he had to try again. And he was prepared to work for it.

Since then, he hasn’t looked back.

This is the story of a serial entrepreneur, who tried and failed, but never gave up. This is the story of a hustler, just like you—who made ecommerce work for them.

This is how he got his first sale, and then many more.

Bhanu’s Introduction to the Dropshipping Universe

It was the early month of February in 2019, and I knew that I wanted to go back to commerce and business. I had been working in affiliate marketing for a while, but I was itching for more.

Back in 2006, I had a retail store—one that I immensely enjoyed working on. This was my calling. This was what I wanted to do.

But unfortunately, the store did not work out. We had no suppliers. The store was running at a loss.

It had to be shut down.

Right after that, I started working as a software developer, using PHP to develop web applications. The work was interesting—I was creating student forums and had quite a large user base at that.

Things were smooth.

But I knew something was missing. I shifted streams to affiliate marketing. But still, I knew I could be doing more. I could be running my very own business online and getting successful on my own terms. I was just waiting for the right opportunity.

And then, lightning struck. I came across a few e-commerce stores that were doing something called dropshipping. It was a completely new field, and I was immediately drawn to it.

It was the perfect fit! The only problem I had running a retail store—the lack of reliable suppliers, was easily resolved by dropshipping, but I had to find a way to automate orders. I needed a way to control processes and predictably and consistently discover the right kind of products.

I dove into research. I went through YouTube videos and did courses that helped me understand dropshipping. I looked up stores and how other people were managing suppliers. I wanted to be fully equipped before I started building and know what it’d take. 

Why I Chose Dropshipping Over Other Alternatives

It just made sense: I did not want to spend time worrying about the logistics of the business. Stock was a major pain point for my retail business—I was often left with too little or too much of a product.

Dropshipping eliminated a lot of problems for me: I could easily stock my online store, and fully focus on marketing and building my customer base instead of worrying about inventory and storage.

It removed the bigger risks and allowed me to experiment with the marketing and sales aspect of business, which was super important if I wanted to be successful.

But dropshipping had its own risks.

I had to find suppliers that were trustworthy. I had to make sure products would ship on time. I had to create a system that made order-processing and tracking easy.

You will see later in the article, that my research led me to a solution to all these problems. (Hint: It was Spocket!)

Making the Big Decisions

I thought edeals would be a catchy store name, and easy to type in. I did not want to choose fancy names that could be forgotten: E-deals captured what I wanted to convey. 

I already possessed this domain from my business venture back in 2006, and I thought a revamp of this website would do great for my new store.

The second thing to decide was the niche.

Now, there’s a lot of advice on the internet about the specific niche you ought to select. However, with single product stores, you always run the risk of trends fading out. 

I wanted to create a complete all-you-need store that encompassed products ranging from clothing to home decor, iPhone cases to bath products. I wanted a one-stop shop that included a little something for everyone.

A lot of people advise against it, but I believed I could make it work with the right advertising and strategy.

So I decided to start a general store, but before I could build anything, I had to take one crucial step: budgeting.

This is one part of the process that I believe entrepreneurs simply do not pay enough attention to. I think that without proper management and distribution of your initial funds for different arenas of the business, it is impossible to succeed in creating a high-income store for the long term.

I kept a good chunk of funds aside for the store—because no matter what people say, you need at least $1000 to start, in my opinion. The hosting for our domain cost $30/month, I allocated a about $200/month for applications, $15/day for advertisements and another $200-500 for different marketing channels.

I knew this venture would require patience. A lot of entrepreneurs claim to have made success in a day, in this field. But it takes hard work, and resilience.

I saved enough funds to give myself the required runway to make my store successful, and try different things.

Building the Store 

I had done enough research to know that Shopify would be the platform best suited to me: it was pretty straightforward, no coding or heavy-handed processes, just a simple sign-up.

I hired freelancers from Fiverr to touch up the website, and we were good to go. A lot of e-commerce store owners spend huge periods of time on perfecting their store and making it look pretty.

I decided that I wanted a store that visitors could easily navigate, filter out products and make a purchase with the least amount of friction. My store may not be the prettiest, but it did what it was supposed to do: convince visitors to purchase a product.

I made sure visitors could easily move from one product to the next, find all the necessary information about a product and check-out smoothly.

Now came the product selection:

I wanted to start off with products that were amazing, but inexpensive. Products that customers did not have to think twice before purchasing.

As our relationship with our customers and our trust value grew, we would expand to products in the higher range.

Right then, I needed interesting products of good quality, that cost less than 15 dollars.

My audience was limited to the US, as it was easier to control the custom duties and shipping durations with a smaller region than globally.

And so, I needed suppliers based in and around the United States. Most dropshipping solutions I found shipped products from China, which meant a long processing and delivery time frame.

This would simply not do, and so my hunt continued.