According to industry experts, In 2020, eCommerce sales hit a huge 14% of all retail sales in the United States and were forecast to rise to nearly 22 percent by 2025.
So it’s not surprising that many entrepreneurs are looking for that elusive 7 figure income with an online retail store. But with the competition ever increasing, many savvy business builders are looking to buy an existing dropshipping store.
But what are the benefits of looking at stores for sale to build your empire?
Before we hit the detail, let’s look at the mini brief so you can start straight away.
Buying an existing dropshipping store can save time, money and is also less risky than building your own store. It’s important to perform due diligence when you purchase a site and check out its growth ability and performance. After purchase, consider improvements and complete a technical audit.
Ok so with the brief in the bag, so you can better understand why you should buy an existing store, let’s find out what you should do first.
What should I do first?
For those online income seekers looking for dropshipping stores for sale, it’s worth making sure you don’t rush into anything.
Making any money online is not a quick fix and even if you buy a website that’s up and running there’s no guarantee of success, in the same way as if you started from scratch.
A good place to start is by looking through Shopify eCommerce sites to get an idea of the kinds that are available. You might find the costs start in the low hundreds of dollars through to many thousands.
The lower-priced ones will be the newer types and possibly have very little sales history, whereas the ones with high traffic footfall and multiple sales will obviously cost more.
Ok so to make your mind up a little better as to whether you should buy an existing dropshipping store, rather than build your own, let’s start by looking at the advantages.
Advantages of buying an existing dropshipping store
Time saved
It doesn’t take a genius to work out the incredible amount of time you will save if you shop for an existing dropshipping store rather than start from the ground up.
Time is one of the most valuable commodities in any kind of business, so by buying an established dropshipping store you can more easily begin to enjoy its profits.
Expected profits
Starting your own website from scratch has no guarantees and you could spend months, even years building a site that brings no income, or maybe you’ve hit the wrong niche. So by purchasing an existing dropshipping store you will give some an idea of expected profits that can be generated. provided of course, you do due diligence.
Turnkey solution
Those of you wondering whether you should look
at existing dropshipping stores for sale to expand your online venture, will be pleased to hear you will be able to hit the ground running and start selling from the moment you open your online doors!
Pro looking website
Purchasing a dropshipping site that has already been designed and is making sales means you don’t have to go through the sometimes lengthy and expensive process of creating your own website. If you have purchased well, you will be the proud owner of a professional-looking website that’s ready to go!
Skip trial and error
Online retail can be a pitfall of wasted money and energy if you choose the wrong niche as anyone who starts their own business knows!
By purchasing a ready-to-go dropshipping store you will benefit from the seller’s trial and error.
Cons of buying an existing Webstore
High-cost startup
If you decide to buy a well-performing website, it’s likely to cost around 2 to 3 times its most recent year’s profit. So this can be quite a considerable sum for novice drop shoppers or those who would need to see a rerun more quickly than 2 to 3 years.
However, this can also be a positive for more experienced dropshippers who then have the opportunity to start making their investment back much more quickly.
Risk
Similar to starting your item dropshipping website, there are risks attached when buying an existing dropshipping store.
Depending on the kind of business you inherit, you might find your traffic completely wiped out, any long-standing supplier relationships can be at risk.
Previous owner issues
When you are looking for dropshipping stores for sale, unless you have completed due diligence, you could find yourself inheriting some problems.
The blog content could be of poor quality, with bad backlinks and other errors, supplier relationships that have turned out for the worst, or even issues with customer service.
It’s crucial when buying an ongoing retail website that you check out all aspects of the business thoroughly before committing, as you might find yourself buying an online dropshipping store with
problems that are costly in time and money to fix.
Ok so now we’ve looked at the pros and cons of buying an existing dropshipping store, you might be wondering the best place to buy one from.
Read on to discover more.
Where can I buy dropshipping stores?
So once you’ve decided you would like to buy your own dropshipping store, here are a few of our recommended sites to get started.
So what should you look out for when buying an existing dropshipping store?
Even if you are looking at an outlay of a few hundred dollars for a website, make sure you have done as much homework as you can to make sure you know exactly what you are buying.
Here’s our top 5 checklist to make sure you have covered the main important criteria.
- Due diligence
- Technical performance
- Profitability
- Growth potential
- The websites history
Another crucial thing to do is check any competitors’ web traffic. This can bring up lots of helpful discoveries to help you make the most of your site.
Checking which keywords they rank for, the channels they use that drive the traffic and which pages and lists bring them the most.
This can help you to improve your marketing strategies and help with your keyword research.
How to calculate the value of a store you think about buying?
So this is one of the most important aspects to consider before you part with anyone considering buying a store for sale.
An easy calculation to work out a store’s value is by finding out its monthly revenue and then multiplying that between 24 and 36. This is known as an earnings multiplier.
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Five Things you should do after buying an online store
Add these five points to your post-purchase checklist and work through them.
1. Consider how you are going to improve your site:
Anyone looking at online stores for sale should bear in mind that you should be able to develop the store in the future.
If you want to increase sales in your store or are considering keeping the site as an investment it will be a useful exercise to think about how you can improve your recent purchase.
It could be that the previous owner didn’t do much in terms of social media selling and you can develop this for future profits.
2. Talk to suppliers:
It’s crucial when taking over an existing dropshipping site that you open up communication with any of your suppliers.
They will have built a relationship with their previous owner so in order to see further growth or even simply just make sure your store continues with sales, get in touch with any suppliers. They may even be willing to strike a deal, lower the cost of goods, or other types of discounts.
3. Do some digital housekeeping:
Getting immersed in some basic digital housekeeping means you can ensure your new site performs to the best of its ability.
For instance, try to remove any thin content from blog areas, focus on any keywords stuffing on blog pages, while using a grammar tool such as Grammarly to correct grammar, spelling errors, etc.
Also, make sure you review the pages for any plagiarism while checking for any duplicate content on product descriptions.
4. Organize some training with the previous owner:
Make sure before choosing a website, the owner has offered some time ( usually a month) to go through any of your findings when completing due diligence. Use this crucial time the best you can and make a list of any issues you’ve found during your inspection to go through with the ex-owner during your training period.
5. Complete a technical audit:
This is probably one of the most crucial tasks to perform when you have brought an existing dropshipping store. Making sure the site runs well, has properly optimized images that mean the site loads quickly enough is crucial to your profit going forward.
And finally…
Buying eCommerce businesses, and more importantly dropshipping stores, is a booming industry, and to stay ahead make sure you perform due diligence, think carefully about why the seller is offering up a site, and look at any improvements you can make.
By using suppliers who offer reliability, express shipping, and years of dropshipping experience you will have the best chance of success!
Find out more about partnering with HyperSKU here.