Here are 3 questions for you:
- How to distinguish if an agent is a good dropshipping agent or a bad one ?
- What are the two agents in common?
- What is the difference between the two agents?
When you are hiring a dropshipping agent, you have to think the 3 questions in depth before hiring an agent, because the 3 questions will lead you to the essence and deepest part of business.
Here are the answers:
What they have in common is: All of the agents (dropshipping agent, sourcing agent, purchasing agent, etc.) are not non-profit organizations. They are also small or medium-sized, and they have to make profits to survive in the market.
The difference is: A bad agent is someone who just wants to take your money, and doesn’t care about the quality or service, but a good dropshipping agent will help you grow.
A good dropshipping supplier is not always trying to get your money but also will help you grow your business by making decent money.
When to Hire a Dropshipping Agent?
A dropshipping agent is totally different from the sellers on AliExpress. For the AliExpress sellers, they can sell at 1 pc of products, so if you have just started and have no orders yet, it’s good to start drop shipping from AliExpress.
Because dropshipping from AliExpress will help you test products, find product inspirations, and usually there is no minimum order quantity required.
After a lot of marketing and testing your products, you will have more sales, then you will see that the AliExpress sellers will not be able to reach your on-demand requirements.
As the product gradually becomes one of your winners, now, it is time to work with a dropshipping agent.
How to Find a Good Dropshipping Agent / Dropshipping Supplier?
Search from Google
With the keyword dropshipping agent, and check it out which rank on the top first page with organic search, because Google works smarter than the human mind.
Google wants to show its users the best answer that it wants them to see. If there are some dropshipping supplier ranks in the first page, it means that thousands of dropshippers have used their services.
Search from Youtube
Step 1 Search “dropshipping agent” in Youtube
Search from Youtube with keywords, like dropshipping Agent, dropshipping supplier, check their videos and see how they present their services.Step 1 Search “Dropshipping Agent” In Youtube
Step 2 Watch the content and learn if this is what you’re looking for
Watch the videos to understand if their services mentioned fit you or not. You can check the reviews and comments below, and see if there are any bad reviews about them.
Step 3 Test their dropshipping service
As you can see in the example below, NicheDropshipping presents how they arrange samples.
Details are very important for all businesses. If you want to find a good agent, the more details you understand, the clearer you will know about how they perform their business.
How to Evaluate If a Dropshipping Agent Is Suitable for Your Business?
Communication matters.
Check if they offer quick or instant support. Try to make a Skype or Zoom video call to the supplier.
Instant support is very important for dropshipping business, because your customer satisfaction and reviews are totally based on how they perform their work, especially when there is some emergency.
Full automatic integration to Shopify or App is important, rather than CSV orders.
Ask them if they have a fully automatic application to control the whole working flow for every day orders.
I understand that some of you might prefer to use CSV files, but there are many disadvantages for CSV files because it is very easy to make mistakes, and there are always orders missed or errors.
If you are small and you are just started, it is ok for you to use csv dropshipping, but if your order is more than 20 orders each day, make sure they have a fully automatic integration with your store.
Here are the advantages of automated dropshipping:
Easy to manage and track all orders in one place, you don’t have to check it again and again.
You will have total control of the product sourcing process, the whole order fulfillment process, and when there are problems you can open a dispute.
High efficiency and time-saving
No doubt that an integration will save you lots of time so that you can focus on marketing and drive more sales.
Easy to calculate and shipping fees
This means it will save your cost, because if there is no good integration with Shopify, sometimes, you may be overcharged or double charged for the shipping fee if your customer buys two or three products in one order.
If there is integration for that, the multi-order can be easily combined into one order, and they will charge the total weight, rather than two different packages.
Be aware, ask them if they have some hot products from other customers to recommend.
I know sometimes it is difficult to ask these questions, but you should. As we all know that for dropshipping businesses, it is very important to have a winning product.
When you are working with your dropshipping supplier, it means that they know your everything. If someone will recommend you the hot products from somewhere else, I believe one day, your products will also be recommended to others.
I don’t recommend you to work with someone who would like to recommend you hot selling products because most of the hot products that are recommended to you are mainly from other customers.
Just think about it, if they recommend other customers’ hot products, your winner will probably be recommended to others.
Warehouse in the USA
As we all know, the United States is the main market for most of the drop shipping business, and you need to compete with Amazon regarding the delivery time, especially when you have a big volume.
To have a USA warehouse supplier is very good for your business, in this way, you can improve the whole delivery process to improve your customer experiences.
Especially in Q4, the slow ePacket shipping from China might make customers angry, which might result in chargebacks and might influence your cash flow and put your whole business in danger.
Be aware of the upfront fee or monthly fee.
A reliable sourcing agent or dropshipping agent usually has a huge database of products and factories and all the data are easily accessed.
So usually the product sourcing part is for free, for example like NicheDropshipping, we offer our customer free product sourcing service, and there is no any upfront fees for that.
We offer free service like that because we have a professional team working behind us and we have rich factories and product resources which make it easy to get all the products you might be interested.
If you are asked for an upfront fee because they claim “it takes time to source the products”, it usually means that they might not be professional at sourcing.
Private label dropshipping is the future.
Ask the factory if they can offer private label dropshipping service, because private label dropshipping will help you build your brand, increase your band identity, and increase loyal customers.
It is good for your business in the long run. We know from the very beginning if you don’t have too many quantities, private label dropshipping might not be easy, but when you scale and have many orders each day, it is a must to build your own brand.
If the supplier cannot offer private label dropshipping, you have to change another agent which means it takes time, and it might hurt your business.
When you choose a sourcing agent or dropshipping agent, you don’t buy from them once, you are growing with them together.
From the first day that NicheDropshipping got started, we started with the mission : Help online businesses succeed by offering creative sourcing agent and dropshipping agent services that are fast, efficient, reliable and easy to use.
In Conclusion
There are many steps involved to hire a good dropshipping agent to help you take care of the supply chain management in china.
You need to search from Google and Youtube, check which is with a good reputation, make a phone call or video call to discuss details, and then move on.
