The dropshipping market is a goldmine for any e-commerce entrepreneur, with a predicted annual growth rate of 20.7%. For many, seizing that opportunity means expanding into new sectors. If that’s your plan, but you’re not clear how to start dropshipping in multiple niches, this guide is for you!
The safest way to make money from dropshipping
Growing into different niches is – done correctly – a far easier way to make money from dropshipping than to drill down endlessly into one single market. If you do the latter, then you will eventually find yourself competing for customers who are really at the very start of their purchase journey – whereas by spreading your efforts, you can grab a wider range of figurative ‘low-hanging fruit’ and still continue to drill further in each of these areas, but without the singularity of aim.
Entering into multiple markets doesn’t just help to grow your revenue, but also crucially helps to spread the risk. If one particular brand or type of product sees a drop in demand, you’ll be far better placed to ride that out with other niches.
Here are our top tips on how to start dropshipping in several different sectors at once:
Research and validate your niche
First up is to decide what sectors you want to be dropshipping in. Start by narrowing down market segments you know you can dropship in, in terms of product availability, shipping and your own financial resources. This is your absolute baseline: then move into identifying areas of demand within this based on buyer trends. You can also perform further research to validate your hypotheses, even as simply as using tools like Google Trends to see if your product category is on the up or becalmed in the doldrums.
Decide on your brand structure
When you’re working out how to start dropshipping in different niches, don’t forget to protect your original brand – and any new ones.
If you’re selling in similar product ranges, such as kitchenware and now introducing other types of homeware, you may find it beneficial to use the same branding and possibly even stores for both.
If you’re selling in different sectors, as is very common, best practice among dropshipping models is to keep these as separate brands. For example, imagine that you’re selling athleisure clothing on the one hand and health supplements on the other. Perhaps later you then also add beauty products, children’s toys, and electronics.
For any customer browsing these kinds of stores, it would be very confusing. You risk your customers abandoning their cart, or being unable to even find what they were looking for in the first place. In a crowded marketplace of entrepreneurs looking to make money from dropshipping, you also risk not being seen as an authoritative, trusted brand, but rather as one that’s spreading itself too thin.
Decide, therefore, how you will structure your dropshipping business as it expands.
Open your storefronts
With your plan in place for how to start dropshipping in multiple markets in place from a branding point of view, it’s time to turn to the practicalities – and it is just as crucial to get it right here.
A common beginner’s mistake is to attempt to open multiple different storefronts on platforms like Amazon by using simply different email addresses for each seller account.
This will highly likely lead to your Amazon account being suspended. It’s a case of ‘when’ over ‘if’!
The next step some will do is to use different browsers or trying to hide basic things like their IP.
Unfortunately, as you will know if you’ve read our article on browser fingerprinting, platforms like Amazon and eBay use extremely sophisticated ways of detecting whether you are who you say you are. Do you behave like a normal user? Are your settings in agreement with who you say you are – down to, for example, having the right fonts for your region and language? All of this information is collected into what’s called your browser fingerprint, and the slightest chink in your armor can lead to a suspension or ban.
That’s why so many dropshippers use a business stealth browser like Multilogin when setting up and managing these accounts. You have the opportunity to set up your seller accounts in individual virtual browser profiles – segregated profiles, stored in the Cloud, which each have their own unique browser fingerprint and appear as completely native devices. Unlike the example above, we don’t block your fingerprint from being read, as this instantly raises suspicions. Rather, with a full fingerprint that, as we said, appears as a real device, we allow it to be read and interact as a normal device.
This way, you know that you are protecting yourself against and reducing the chances of account bans.
Not only that, but with the possibility to sync across computers and team members, you can easily manage your business from anywhere, without compromising on efficiency or security.
To find out more about Multilogin and its features, visit our pricing page.
