Selling Online in 2024: Things You Should Know

Updated by March 18,2024

When you want to start selling online, the first thing you should decide is what you should sell. Then, move to the business model and feasibility of this model. For example, we personally prefer dropshipping because it has low investment requirements and better profit margins if you use it right.

Once you have made a decision about what you want to sell and how you want to sell it, read on. Here are some tips to start selling online.

Tips to Selling Online

1. Decide a Name and Domain

First things first, once you have an idea in mind, get to the name of your brand. Remember to check that it is unique and not already taken by any other big brand. Anything similar to larger brands won’t really attract any audience or attention, but only reveal you as a copy-brand. Hence, focus on finding a unique name for your brand.

After selecting the brand name, work on the domain and the website. The simplest options for selling online dropshipping store are Shopify or WooCommerce.

2. Choose the Seller

The second step for selling online is to select product sellers or manufacturers. In dropshipping, we usually source products from marketplaces, such as AliExpress. So, you can directly go to AliExpress and start searching for products on it.

Based on your search, create categories and sub-categories. Visit competitor websites and evaluate the method they have used to create categories.

3. Decide Payment Methods

The next thing to do when selling online is deciding the payment methods. These payments methods should include trusted mediators and different payment modes.

For example, many people like to pay by credit card and others use PayPal and other wallets. Many of your customers may also like paying online at the time of delivery. Take care of all these payment modes. Use only trusted ones, such as Stripe, Square, and PayPal.

4. Find Shipping Options

On AliExpress, you can get a range of free shipping and paid shipping options. You need to choose the most feasible one, and this is not necessarily the free one.

This is to say that from AliExpress, shipping of products can take up to a month to reach your customers and sometimes more than that. So, if you are getting a faster assured delivery with minimal charges, opt for that.

You can choose AliExpress Standard Shipping, DHL, China Post Air Parcel, etc.

It is necessary to understand that many times you may not be able to track the parcel, so you need to choose a trustworthy shipment provider with more positive reviews.

5. Market and Promote

Finally, you are all set to go. Start promoting your products on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other platforms. Find where your users are concentrated and focus on that platform majorly. For example, young individuals from 20 years to 35 years would be more active on Instagram than on Facebook.

Things You Should Know For Selling Online In 2024

While above we learned how you could set up your dropshipping store to start selling online, this section has some things to keep in mind. This section is more dedicated and offers insights on what you can do about challenges faced when selling online.

1. Take Your Business Where You Go

When you are selling online, you need to take your business with you everywhere. Initially, you would be managing everything in your dropshipping business, hence, you need to be available on holidays, vacations, and weekends to answer user queries. You have to put on a smile and keep working, and you will probably like it because it will make you money. Think of it like this, you are putting in all this effort so that you can earn passive income eventually.

2. Start Small

It is beautiful how you can kickstart your dropshipping business with very little investment. This is because, in dropshipping selling online concept, you are just marketing products. Once a user places an order, you place it on AliExpress and directly get the product shipped to the customer. This type of selling online helps you earn revenue and profits with minimal investment, such as website, hosting, etc.

3. Get Healthy Margins

When you are dropshipping, you need to get healthy margins. Now, you may think that you can sell a product at any rate from AliExpress. But, that’s not the case because you have to justify the quality and cost. If you keep the costs too high, why won't the user just order from AliExpress only?

The reason they are buying from you is that you are offering niche products at optimum rates. So, keep your margins healthy, not too low, not too high.

To find out a healthy margin, you have to calculate every cost of the business, website maintenance, shipping cost, hosting cost, and the cost of the management tool. Once all these expenses are removed, your remaining earnings are your profits. You should be able to make a living out of these profits in a year or two.

4. Use Tools

When you are dropshipping products from AliExpress, using appropriate tools can help you reduce hassle. Initially, you may get 10-40 orders in a month, so handling them is feasible. But, as the number of orders increases, so does the hassle. For example, you may find it hard to place dozens of orders at one time.

DSers is a dropshipping tool that helps you mitigate challenges associated with dropshipping. It automates various processes and helps you select an optimum seller for products.

Let’s explore some features of the DSers tool:

• DSers tool is equipped with an AI engine that helps you select the right seller for a product. If you go to AliExpress now and search for a product, you will find many listings for the product. These listings would contain different pricing options. Selecting the right one from these is crucial as it depends on various factors, like price, shipping time, shipping cost, etc.
• If you decide to start selling online on various platforms like WordPress, Shopify, and Wix, you can integrate it all on DSers.
• The tool smartly integrates and syncs your orders to the dashboard. This way you can check details of various orders from your DSers dashboard only without visiting AliExpress.
• If there are a series of orders pending in your list, you can place them all at once from the DSers tool. This saves your time and a lot of hassle.

5. Promote On Social Media

The last thing that you should know about selling online is marketing. There’s no selling online without promoting your products on social media.

How would your audience know that you are selling certain products?

Therefore, research Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms and start promoting. If you want to market your products really well, simply take a free short course on marketing so that you understand how to market your products.

• Sell on Facebook
• Run Facebook Ads
• Instagram Page
• Instagram Ads
• Instagram Selling
• Instagram Influencer Activity
• Pinterest posts

Conclusion

We are sure that you understand the art of selling online. Above we have explained some of the most important features of selling online any type of services and products. Carefully go through every element and don’t forget to use a dropshipping tool to support your online business. DSers is the best dropshipping software that helps you automate various activities. From selecting sellers to automatically updating order details, DSers support you at every step of the buyer’s journey. Read more about the tool on our website.