Have you been lately considering the idea of starting an e-commerce business, but you don’t know where to start? The information you were able to find online more than often can be confusing and overwhelming, but no worries, we got you covered.
Dropshipping is a great way to avoid the frustrations of renting a warehouse filled with products and packages waiting to be shipped out. It’s one of the simplest and easiest ways online to earn some money with minimum risk and capital.
Unfortunately, although choosing dropshipping sounds like the easy and the right way to go, soon enough you will run into several obstacles. The utterly vital and crucial thing in the dropshipping industry is finding a reliable supplier with quality and profitable products to sell. Trust us when we say it that there is nothing worse than choosing the wrong supplier. One problem after another will lead to unsatisfied customers, late deliveries, and unavailable products that will ultimately discourage you.
However, if you don’t want to easily give up on your idea and dream, using a platform such as Doba might be the solution that you are looking for.
What is Doba?
Doba is a platform that acts like an intermediary, meaning it will connect you with aspiring suppliers. It will provide you with access to countless products from many different suppliers that can be drop-shipped to your customers. Sounds simple, and indeed is!
On Doba, you can choose the products you plan on selling among their wide selection of more than two million products from more than 200 suppliers. Their most popular categories are health and beauty, apparel, appliances, toys, furniture, jewelry, electronics, and many more. The products can be sorted by brand, supplier, and category on top of their price and shipping option filter.
There is no option to purchase products in bulk but only one product at a time that will be directly delivered to your customer. Doba takes full responsibility about the drop-shipper supplier and about whether or not they deliver it to your customer on time meaning you don’t have the direct contact with the supplier. Additionally, Doba takes care of how reliable the suppliers are. No need for you to investigate nor be bothered with whether or not you can trust the supplier/manufacturer.
How much does it cost to register?
The Doba membership is probably one of the most expensive among the other drop shipping platforms so you should indeed carefully think about whether to purchase it or not. They are offering four different options depending on the extent of the services that you need. You can choose between basic- $29, advanced- $69, pro- $249, and enterprise. Most commonly chosen is the advanced option that offers access to products, webinars, live chat support, eBay data export, 10,000 product inventory, and elite seller report.
Another thing to consider is that Doba only drop-ships to customers in the USA, so if you have the intentions of selling internationally Doba is not the right choice for you.
If you are not sure about whether to purchase it or not, you can try out their 14-day free trial.
How to start using Doba?
- First things first you need to search Doba and find the products you intend on selling.
- The next thing is to export the details of the products to your online store.
- Once you sell your product, you can pay Doba for the product, meaning there is no need to pay upfront which makes things a lot easier.
- The supplier will ship the purchased item to your customer.
Advantages of using Doba
- Large Product Selection
We must mention that they are offering more than 2 million products from over 200 suppliers that you can start selling immediately.
- Ease of Use and Advanced Searching/ Filtering
The Doba platform takes the trophy for being packed with tools and resources that will make the entire “starting something unknown and new” process more manageable. Not only you have plenty of options and filters to choose from, but the whole interface has a simple layout that will be very easy to manage especially if you are just starting.
They have creative and practical management tools such as product feed (showing you the latest trending products), custom data export (push your products to various marketplaces), inventory lists (organizing your products and easily exporting them as such), and alerts (when a particular product is low on stock).
- Direct Integration to your Online Store
Once you start using Doba and choose the products to sell you will be amazed that there is a quite useful tool that will allow you to integrate your products into your store directly. Furthermore, you can push the product information such as description, photos, title, and price immediately too. It should be noted that the products descriptions won’t be excellently written, but at least you have something to start with.
Disadvantages of Using Doba
- Expensive Membership Price
Although the basic package is only $29 a month, if you are in it for the “big money”, the basic packet won’t probably satisfy your needs. Additionally, there are similar platforms that offer related services for a more affordable fee.
- Per Order Fee
On top of the expensive membership, Doba is also charging a $0, 99 pre-order fee. Despite being only a small amount, when you add one fee on top of another for all of the orders, it can surely add up.
- The United States Only
Doba only supplies to customers in the United States. You have to set the shipping restrictions with your store to prevent any unhappy cases. It will be a bit tricky for anyone who plan to scale and expand business to other countries.
- Doba Works as A Middleman
This means that you don’t have contact with the supplier directly, but instead, you are purchasing the products from Doba. Down the line, you will discover that using this way means that you can’t build a relationship with whom you are buying from meaning you might be missing out on discounts, promotions, and different offers. You must rely on Doba to “seal the deal”-the lowest price for you.
- Cost of Goods
Although the Doba team guarantees that they have settled the lowest possible prices on the products so that you can re-sell and earn some money, if you do a small research, you will notice that it is quite challenging to find products that are profitable for beginners.
- Out-of-dated education resources
Doba offers whitepapers, guides and infographic for dropshippers on topics from kicking off Doba to selling on Amazon. However if you take a closer look, the post on Cyber Monday was written in 2013.
Conclusion
Super practical features, easy-to-navigate interface, research tools make this platform truly helpful. Combine with the expensive monthly fee, it’d more suitable for advanced US-market sellers, who can make the most of API and research tools.
While the cost is among highest in industry and restricted selling in US, it could be long-term obstacles for business growth.