How Many Products Should I Start With Dropshipping?

The first option is to be very specialized and to dropship just a few products. There are some advantages to this. For one, you can become known as the supplier of a set group of products that can be really good for brand recognition. At the same time, you can base your marketing around a set of products that improves efficiency.

However, there are also some negatives to this option. The first problem is sustainability. Most stores that dropship just a few products are selling very high-ticket items, like furniture and exercise equipment. This means that customers have a very short period of time with you and will make infrequent visits to your store.

Having few retained customers can reduce your long term profits. Returning customers are more cost-effective compared to new customers and you would need to be constantly bringing in new customers to make this work.

You could dropship a few small low-ticket items, but there is a problem there that you don’t have the wide variety to collect large sales that will offer you better rewards.

Sometimes you might want to dropship lots of items from your store. This can be a great idea. When one product goes out of stock, your store won’t look suddenly empty and there are ways that you can cross-sell and upsell to get more revenue from your customers.

You can also diversify to allow you to attract a wider audience and improve revenues. However, management of larger stores can be more challenging and you can find that you miss things. Also, you have to have better control over your branding. It is easy to have lots of products and not realise that there is one product that is ruining your reputation.

Therefore, only really go for a lot of products if you’ve got the time or dedication to manage the larger stock.