Get more sales, easier and safer. Tips, tricks & details for dropshipping:

Some tips of this list are for beginners while others are for more advanced dropshippers. Also this list mostly focuses on eBay retail dropshipping.

1. We mostly sell keywords. Understanding what that means, will convert into sales.
2. It’s better not to show your account to other dropshippers. One of the reasons is for not to become undercutted.
3. Google trends, Terapeak product research and eBay Sourcing Guidance Tool can be valuable free tools for eBay resellers.
4. Shipping: Try to add more than one shipping services on eBay policies. E.g. +expedited for 7.99$. Cassini likes this and it will also provide more options for the customers and -optionally- more profit for you.
5. If you can get some few listings (e.g. 4 listings) with 1-day shipping -even if they never sell. This will show Cassini that you also offer this service and (supposedly) will increase your rank.
6. Adding promoted listings and other marketing offers and activities, will increase your sales conversion rate. Cassini likes to see high conversion rates.
7. Make sure you set “Manage promotions”, in order for your OWN products to appear below your listing when opened.
8. Customize eBay dashboard so you work faster and easier. E.g. create shortcuts in Seller Hub (e.g. policies) and notes on listings (e.g. multiple sources URL links)
9. Listings have a rank boost the first 48 hours they go live. A good strategy is to set low profit when you first list it, then increase price after the first sales come.
10. Another sales increase strategy is to increase price after some sales of a listing and reduce its price if it stops selling, until you find the sweet spot. Some DS tools have it as an automated option.
11. When you upload a listing that you “like”, you may give it a “mini boost” by adding it to your Watchlist.
12. Ctlr+Shift+V pastes the text you copied adopting the destination target text as shown here
13. If you cannot predict where your item will be shipped from, place item location in a central place of USA. eBay’s rank system also takes into consideration where the item is located.
14. You can send an automated message to -some or all of- your customers, asking for feedback AND/OR review, as eBay product reviews lately are of more and more of importance.
15. Take advantage of the fact that you have a flexible “inventory” by adding seasonal products (and just removing them after the season if you like). You can also “convert” some existing listings to “seasonal”, by changing some of the content, e.g. for all toys, add in their titles keywords “For Christmas”. There are tools that can bulk change such content.
16. Take advantage of the fact that you can be represented as “small family business” type, (in contrast with big entities e.g. Walmart) where you think this could be useful. So e.g. depending of the situation and your customer, maybe you ‘ll want to decide if it’s best to use “we” or “I” word 😉
17. Take advantage of the fact that you can work only with words and software. Automate/Outsource it and always research for using good Plugins, Tools, services and VAs. This will also help escalating.
18. “Copy yourself” by listing similar products of your already good-selling ones.
19. Make a file with all those good SEO keywords that have brought good conversions and from the hot listings that you had to delete for any reason, e.g. OOS. You can also archive there your deleted listings and re-use them when they are back in stock, or trending again (e.g. seasonal). Use this fine-keywords-pool to few of your listings and see how this works!
20. If you resell domestically, try reducing China competition by listing products that should be delivered fast, such as replacement parts, gifts etc.
21. Before listing an item, get your main keywords phrase from the title, paste it in eBay’s best match results and check if your product already exists from another seller.
22. Title is the most important part for eBay best match results. On the title, try to put the keywords in an order that will form (strong) keyword phrases between each other. E.g. Black Cookware Set For Four Non Slip instead of Black Cookware Set Non Slip For Four. Because “Set For Four” is more likely to be searched rather than “Set Non Slip”.
23. Misspell keywords on purpose! e.g. rechargeable>rechargable, decor>decore.
24. Use tools like Keepa for checking listings’ price history. This can be valuable for obvious reasons.
25. If we see many views but no sales or watchers, change item to similar but keep the keywords (on this same listing).
26. If a product has good sales history but becomes OOS, try not to “burn” it by deleting it. Instead replace it with a similar or just source it from elsewhere. (Do that after enough days of your last sale).
27. Protect your supplying source if it worth it and you can, by putting another suppliers’ images/text
28. You can have a second AMZ account and ask the 3rd party sellers that you have already purchased from them, if they let you dropship them. If they do, ask them if they can do better price for you.
29. If you have an eBay store subscription, set to automatically be sending feedbacks, so you get more customer feedbacks.
30. When you buy a store, enable Selling Preferences->Use the out-of-stock-option
31. Amazon Logistics shipping services have a good thing: You can request cancellation even after it ships. Better than telling customer to deny delivery or opening return case etc.
32. If you search the UPC of an item you are going to list and find out that it already sells good and its average listing price is higher than the price you can list it, then put the same UPC (as you want to be found also by product and not just by keywords).
33. There are 4 entities you have to consider while trying to hide your listing’s identity: 1.Your Supplier, 2.Your selling platform, 3.Your customer, 4.Your competitor. Sometimes –if possible- it is best to hide the identity from one entity while revealing to another, e.g. put a good-selling (good sell through rate) UPC in eBay so it boosts your listing rank, but hide the identity from the customers, in order not to find it cheaper (brand/title/description/images etc).
34. Set labels in your Gmail and make rules so you can distinguish easily e.g. Amazon shipments and to which tab to always appear, e.g. Primary.
35. Middle mouse button on a link, opens tabs in new window. In general, learn how to use shortcuts, develop a “shortcut mindset” whatever that means.
36. By putting “Quotes” to a word or phrase, search engines will give you exact results and not suggested. Especially useful when you seek e.g. if your product is on eBay’s results list.
37. Some more tips on to making your life easier while working as a Dropshipper.