By Lewis Smith - Dropship Unlocked 

Starting a dropshipping business can be a fantastic way to give you complete location freedom and to escape the rat race of constantly trading your time for money at a job.

But if you’re thinking of starting a dropshipping business, there are some key pitfalls you need to watch out for to prevent your business from collapsing at the first hurdle.

1. Not Knowing Your Numbers

If you’re looking to build an online passive income business using the dropshipping model of e-commerce, it’s absolutely critical that you know the numbers of your business inside out.

This becomes even more important when you plan on using paid marketing methods, especially when operating in the UK market. The lifeblood of any business is healthy cash flow, without it, a business will very quickly cease to exist. To succeed, you will need to know exactly how to control your metrics such as the advertising cost per sale and your return on ad spend (or revenue over ad spend - ROAS).

If we add in the additional factor of VAT in the UK and how this can affect the cash flow of a dropshipping business, without proper guidance on exactly how to account for this in the early stages, it can be a dangerous game to play.

2. Using Bad Suppliers (With Poor Quality Products)

First time dropshipping entrepreneurs in the UK quickly come to realise the importance of delivering a good service to customers through high-quality products and offering fast delivery.

Unfortunately, due to the recent rise in people turning to services such as Oberlo & AliExpress, many are seeing their businesses fall apart as soon as they start making sales.

Online shoppers (especially those in the UK) have now come to expect “next day delivery” as standard due to companies such as Amazon offering this. So with deliveries from AliExpress or Oberlo taking upwards of 2, 3 or even 4 weeks to arrive from China, this can be a surefire way to destroy your reputation from the outset.

Further issues then arise if customers refuse to wait and instead demand a refund after the item has already been shipped. Chinese suppliers can be notoriously difficult to work with and are unlikely to accept returns leaving the merchant to assume the risk.

3. Picking The Wrong Niche Market.

It’s common for anyone wondering how to start a dropshipping business in the UK to consider, how to pick a good dropshipping niche?

There are many pitfalls at the niche selection stage but it’s crucial to get this part right as it forms the backbone of the rest of your business. Many e-commerce entrepreneurs will find themselves fixated on a niche that they have a “gut feeling” about. But basing a decision as important as this on a “feeling” is far from wise.

Instead, those who see fast results and quickly replace their income with their dropshipping business always follow a proven set of criteria. Following these criteria ensures that they know there is enough demand for their niche, it ensures they receive few to no returns or complaints and it also means that they have the ability to dominate their market with minimal upfront cost.

If you’re serious about starting your UK dropshipping business and you wish to learn more then watch our dropshipping training and cut down your learning time so you can get your business from zero to profitable, replace your income and free up your time as quickly as possible.