When you're on the edge of considering starting an online business in Ghana, it may be important to know that global e-commerce sales reached nearly $3.5 trillion in 2019. Therefore, if global statistics on e-commerce are any indication, launching a business online is a more profitable business than ever before.
Dropshipping is a fantastic way to get started as an entrepreneur. It is possible to sell items, set your own prices, and market yourself without really owning any of the products you are selling. As it is, you don't have to worry about shipping these items you sell to your clients in the real world.
In this article, I'll walk you through everything you need to know about how to start a dropshipping business in Ghana, step by step. If you want to establish a dropshipping business in Ghana, this is the complete tutorial on how to start dropshipping in Ghana. We will explain what a dropshipping business is, how to identify the best dropshipping business ideas, and everything else required to begin dropshipping.
What is Dropshipping Business?
A dropshipping business model allows you to set up an online store without ever having to keep any stock. In the event that you make a sale, your supplier will send your products directly to your customer's home or office from their warehouse. Never again will you be bothered by the logistics of product storage, packaging, and shipping.
How Dropshipping Works
Dropshipping is a sales method that allows sellers to make sales without having any of their own inventory. By working with a supplier, businesses avoid having to spend money on warehousing, packaging, and shipping products directly to customers; sellers also keep 100% of profits and bear zero financial risk for unsold items. One of the dropshipping’s attractive qualities is its simplicity; by creating an online store through an e-commerce platform such as Shopify or Woocommerce (using Alidropship), you will be able to purchase products from wholesalers for cheap prices and have them shipped directly to customers. This entire process is done online without any stress.
So, with a dropshipping business model, the buyer purchases the products straight from you, the retailer. If customers have any queries or concerns, they contact the retailer from which they purchased the item.
Why start dropshipping in Ghana?
A dropshipping business is a low-risk investment. You only pay for things that you sell to paying consumers when it comes to startup costs. You are not overwhelmed with the costs of manufacturing products, carrying inventory, preserving remaining stock, and paying employees to package and distribute products. It's a great way to get started in entrepreneurship because you can establish your own dropshipping business during your evenings and weekends. When it comes to processing orders, it will necessarily require a daily commitment. However, the majority of order processing stages are automated and only require the click of a button. The dropshipping business options are limitless; all you have to do is take the initial step.
Should you dropship to Ghana?
If you were born and bred in Ghana, that doesn't mean you have to limit your business to that country. Therefore, why restrict yourself to a small consumer base when you can quickly reach any client from anywhere in the world?
So there is nothing stopping you from starting a profitable business that crosses geographical limits and allows you to operate on a global basis. How do you enjoy the thought of selling goods to customers all around the world while living in the comfort of your own home?
Where to find a Dropshipping Business for Sale
If you do not wish to develop a dropshipping business from the ground up, you may easily find one for sale on AliDropship Premium Stores. AliDropship Established Stores is a marketplace for those wishing to invest in a fully-functioning business as well as those who wish to bypass the development step and begin promoting immediately. You can choose from a vast assortment of online stores, including dropshipping e-commerce businesses, with varied price points and specializations, based on your budget and interests. Therefore, if you are looking to purchase a dropshipping business, AliDropship Premium Stores has you covered.
When deciding to acquire a store, consider how much revenue it has made, the price of the website, the design, the age of the domain, the popularity of the niche, and the business niche.
How to start a dropshipping business in Ghana: 5 steps to starting a successful dropshipping business
- Choose products to sell
- Find a reliable supplier
- Choose an e-commerce platform
- Promote your dropshipping store
- Optimize your online store
1. Choose Products to Sell
The first step to starting a dropshipping business is to choose good products to sell. This can be hard work, but it's also one of your most important decisions as an entrepreneur. The products you choose will dictate your success or failure, so be sure you take some time to do research and find something that can bring profit. You'll want to look for specific product categories that are affordable, popular, and safe for dropshipping. If you're overwhelmed by all of your options, there are sites out there that already specialize in hand-picking items with solid reviews, good prices, and plenty of demand. Once you've found a few potential products, make sure to run them through Google Trends or Ubersuggest to see how they perform over time. Both tools will give you valuable insight into how well your product might sell once it hits store shelves.
Then, before you finalize anything, use social media to get feedback from friends and family members who might be interested in buying your product. Not only will their input help you improve your sales pitch, but if enough people express interest then you know it's worth pursuing further.
The best dropshipping business ideas aren't based on what's trendy. Instead, they follow certain patterns. For example, a trend in the beauty niche would be artificial eyelashes and makeup kits. There is a trend in the phone case business for marble phone cases. If you want to build a long-term business, you should have trends as products but not as the whole store. So bear that in mind as you work on your dropshipping business plan.
2. Find a reliable supplier
Choosing a dropshipping supplier is one of the most important processes of making a dropshipping business work. The best website to find suppliers for your dropshipping business is AliExpress. AliExpress is one of the biggest e-commerce website apart from Amazon. It is the leading online store in China and the best website for dropshipping stores.
To get a good supplier, visit AliExpress for a wide range of suppliers, it can be easy to find good suppliers. Once you're on the website, you can search for products and choose a supplier from the list of results. You can look at each supplier's reviews, ratings, and how long they've been on the website. This should help you decide which supplier to choose.
Even though AliExpress comes with a few concerns like long shipping times which is one of the most important factors to consider when dropshipping from China. If you want to dropship to Ghana, I suggest you go in for a mini importation business which is different from dropshipping. However, if you still want to dropship to Ghana, I suggest you let customers know the right date of product arrival on your website to avoid any confusion. But, dropshipping shouldn't be in Ghana only, to make more money with dropshipping, you should sell worldwide. That gives you more opportunities for many buyers online.
3. Choose an e-commerce platform
If you want to start a dropshipping business in Ghana, it's time to choose the platform that will work best for your business (Shopify or Woocommerce). Both are great e-commerce platforms with a lot of resources and support, but depending on what kind of store you want to run, one might be a better fit for you than the other.
Whether you choose WooCommerce or Shopify, setting up an e-commerce site involves going through some of the same steps. But some things will be different depending on which platform you use.
WordPress and AliDropship
If you are going for WordPress, you'll need to buy a domain name and a reliable web hosting platform to sell your products online. If you want to import AliExpress products directly to your website without adding the products manually, then you need Alidropship (optional but very helpful to upload without too much work).
Domain Name
You should choose your domain name very carefully because it is going to represent your store forever. Try to choose a professional and relevant domain name that represents your business name. It is better to avoid very long domains and domains with numbers and hyphens, and it is also preferable to select “.com” domains as they are widely considered to be more trustworthy for an online store.
Web Hosting
WordPress platform runs on a lightweight script that's compatible with all web hosting companies – and there are literally tens of thousands of web hosting companies to choose from. These web hosting providers below offer one-click WordPress installation, and reasonably priced plans with good customer support.
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Shopify
Shopify is a full-featured e-commerce platform that is available on the market. Since new features, tools, resources, and apps are added all the time, you'll find it easy to use the platform and run your business on it. Also, if you get stuck, you can contact a Shopify expert who will show you how to do any step for free.
Shopify is a self-hosted platform and website builder that helps you create a website quickly and easily. The good news is that they provide a 14-day trial period. You may set up your store in a day and begin marketing within the first week, however, Shopify charges $79 per month per addon extra with their basic $29 monthly fee.
Shopify is comprehensive and simple for those who have no experience with WordPress, as it is simpler than WordPress but more expensive.
4. Promote your dropshipping store
You might be wondering how you can market your new dropshipping business. Thankfully, there are plenty of offline channels you can use. If you're just starting out you'll need to build out your online presence. After all, if no one can find your store online, they won't be able to buy anything.
You could market your online store through Google Shopping campaigns, paid search ads on Google, search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing, social media, and many other ways. You can even work with influencers who will recommend their followers about your store and direct traffic to your website. Each of these channels has a different way to measure ROI, and their effectiveness varies from channel to channel. When deciding where to spend your time and money, it's important to figure out which ones will work best for you.
Once you've chosen a few important channels, make sure you have a good plan for each one. Your strategy should include how much money you want to invest each month and what kind of results you hope to get after a certain amount of time. For example, if you plan to spend GHS 1,000 per month on ads on Facebook or Instagram, your goal might be to get 100 leads per month for three months. If only 5% of those leads turn into sales orders worth GHS100 each, your income would be GHS30,000 after three months (100 x 100 x 3). Now that you've set goals for each channel and for your business as a whole, you can start making content based on those goals.
Use your social media accounts as a tool for engagement—ask customers questions that let them get to know your business better or show off behind-the-scenes photos that build trust with potential customers who haven’t seen your website yet. If you have any kind of budget available, search engine optimization (SEO) is an excellent way to drive organic traffic from Google. However, keep in mind that SEO takes time and isn’t an instant fix—if it were easy, everyone would do it! Even if you don’t have any money available right now, simply setting up a profile on Google My Business can help give your site some exposure. Once you have more cash flow coming in from sales (and if getting organic traffic is important), then consider spending money on SEO services such as pay-per-click advertising or SEO software that helps boost search rankings.
5. Optimize your online store
After you've worked on your website, products and marketing for a while, you can start to look at the results of your hard work. You might find that some marketing activities do very well and others don't do so well. Or, you can compare your prices to those of your competitors and see what you could change to be more competitive.
You can check your online traffic with tools like Google Search Console or Analytics to make sure that it is going up and not down. Set up automatic weekly or monthly reports if you use third-party tools for email marketing or social media reporting. This will remind you to look at this information regularly. Even a quick look at some data from a tool can be enough to tell if a campaign is working or not.
Overall, testing and optimizing is the most important part of a successful online store if you want to make more money online. This keeps your website on the cutting edge of best practices and keeps you ahead of your competitors.
Conclusion
Glad you made it to the end of this article. You can start an online empire of your own by implementing some of the recommendations in this article into your dropshipping business in Ghana. The greatest way to learn how to start a dropshipping business in Ghana is by taking that first step to building it.
