Dropshipping is one of the most popular online business ideas because of how easy it is to set up and manage.
Do you ever wonder how long it takes to start an online dropshipping business?
Time is Money, and money is Time.
Dropshipping is a great way to save time. You should be able to manage your online business in as little as two to eight hours per week.
This post will discuss where to invest your time to maximize your chances of success. Continue reading to find out why dropshipping is a great online business to start.
This post will not be about how long it takes to set up a dropshipping shop or any other online business idea. This refers to the time spent on niche research and web design. This will be covered in detail at a later date. You can find all the details in my DropShip Blueprint.
I won’t talk about the best online businesses to start, or other ideas for online businesses.
What I am going to discuss today? is how much time it takes to Manage Dropshipping is a way to make money on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. What do you actually do with your time when running an eCommerce store?
What Time Does it Really Take to Manage a Dropshipping Company?
This thought occurred to me as I was in my hotel room on a recent trip from New York City. Although I was only there for a short time, I began to think about all the things I would do. I could take my baby to the museum or show him around the city. Enjoying life is all about enjoying it.
While I do that, I still run my businesses. Technically, I’m still at work. I’m still in business and I still manage everything. That’s what you do every day in a dropship company.
What does this actually look like? Let’s see how long it will take to manage your business.
As Soon as Your Store Starts Making Sales, You Should Hire Your First Employee
First, I want to mention that once you begin to see success (meaning sales and profits), it is time to outsource. One thing I did wrong in the beginning, was to put off hiring people.
This is not about getting an office with lots of employees. I’m talking about hiring someone that’s going to be in your email inbox all day, answering the business phone if it rings, responding to live chat tickets and Facebook comments.
This should be your first hire . Once you are established, the majority of your day-to-day tasks go into these areas. This falls under customer service and sales.
Sales and customer service are very similar in 2019. This is especially true if you are an inbound-based business. Drop Ship Lifestyle stores is an example of this. DropShip Lifestyle will make it easy for you to do the same.
Inbound businesses are those where people who are interested in buying from you found you through ads you ran. They will visit your site and contact you. It will come inbound.
It’s not your job to cold call people to try to sell them stuff. It’s not possible to have someone cold call people to try to sell you stuff.
Instead, they will search Google for the information they need. They will find your website and maybe see the number. If they do, they will call you. They might send you an email or chat live with you. It takes a lot of time to be there for them and make sure they become customers.
If your store is new, you might need to open it for eight hours per day. These interactions will only take two hours if you have a new store.
You should still have someone virtual to assist you once you make money. My recommendation is to hire someone from the Philippines. This is where the majority of our support staff are from. Good people are essential.
Once you hire someone, have them work that full shift. That way, as soon as someone contacts your business, they will get a response.
If you do this, it means you can still make sales, but you may be away from your computer during business hours.
Does this mean you should not be there every day that your business hours are online? Of course not.
In theory, you could.
When I tell people that I got started in 2007 after reading The Four-Hour Work Week, I sometimes get pushbacks. People say, “But no one works only four hours per week.”
That’s true. It’s a hobby that I enjoy more than work. If I wanted to, I could only work four hours. There have been many weeks when I worked less than four hours.
Because that’s the essence of it all, that you have that option. It’s not possible to build a business that does nothing. However, if there is a reason to, you can go anywhere you like, and you can see anyone.
When customer service and sales are off your plate you will have more time to live the life you desire.
Does that mean you don’t need to do anything? No.
Here’s what I consider a good schedule for a dropshipping business. One that has someone who is responsible for the day-today operations such as:
- Inbound sales calls
- Customer service updates for inbound customers
- Sending suppliers: Order processing
You could have someone else do it for you and they could be very efficient. It would cost you between $300-$600 USD per month to have someone do this for you. That’s a great price for amazing employees in the Philippines.
How to spend your time after setting up virtual assistants
What do you do now that everything is set up?
First, you need to ensure that everything is working properly.
Your business is the owner. If your employee fails, if an ad campaign goes down, or if a supplier releases a new product, you must update your website. These are all matters are responsible for.
I recommend that you spend at least 15 minutes per day reviewing what has happened in your business.
Live chats can be answered by your employee. Take a look at the chats to see how they went.
Are they answering the right questions? Are they responsive? Take a look at the phone logs. What number of people called you? Did the calls get answered on time? What was the outcome of those calls? You can also record them and listen.
The same goes for your email inbox. Are your customers happy? Did all orders received that day get processed?
This is where you should be spending your time if you are a manager. This is where you will be supervising the employee and making sure that everything runs smoothly throughout the day.
Side note: If they did not, it does not mean that they are a bad employee. They aren’t failing. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they are trying to make you miserable or do anything. They might need to be trained. This is where you should spend your time, auditing what occurred so that you can train the person.
Online Business Ideas and Where to Look for Growth Opportunities
Dropshipping is a time-consuming business. Your focus should be on growth.
You might only make a few thousand dollars per month, but you have a business that you can manage in 15-30 minutes each day. Dropshipping is one of my favorite online business ideas!
Look for growth opportunities. This is what it means:
- Traffic from new sources
- BETTER traffic
- New suppliers
- BETTER suppliers
- Promoting to existing customers
- Optimizing conversion rates
- Increasing your customer’s lifetime
Let’s say you decide to work two hours per day in your dropship shop. Your hour and half that you don’t spend overseeing what’s actually happening should instead be spent auditing what’s going on in your ad accounts.
These are some ideas to help you get started.
- You can learn from online courses and see how others are modeling success.
- Do your research on your competitors.
- Take surveys of people who visit your site to find out what they like and don’t like.
- You should research your competitors to find out if they are changing their marketing strategies and if any promotions they run that you could match.
This is where you should spend most of your time. If you’re serious about your research, eight to ten hours per week is enough time to get a lot done.
The Bottom Line About…
You can work on your business for two hours per day or one full week. The important thing is to spend the majority of your time looking for more opportunities to make money.
You can overdo it. This is when you start to see people who only listen podcasts and only take online courses. They never actually do anything.
In your “growth period”, you should just seek out the best and implement it. Then see what happens.
Are you seeing an improvement in your online business? Is it getting worse? What can you do to change? This is where I recommend that you place your growth time. That’s what I do.
Once you have your first employee, it should take no more than 15-30 minutes per day to manage what is already in place. You can grow and need two more employees if they are overwhelmed. If you require more, then three and four.
It makes sense. You grow as you need more hands. Don’t just hire a bunch of people because you think you should. Don’t let people stop you from doing the job You will notice that things slip if you do not allow them to take on more.
Apart from that, I also mentioned auditing advertising accounts. In , a recent episode of my podcast, I go into more detail. It explained how and why all accounts are audited every two weeks.
This is just another thing we add to the calendar. Although it takes some time, we make sure that everything is working properly.
We notice that something isn’t working or it seems broken. We find the problem and fix it so it can work again in the future.
Wrapping Up My Thoughts on Why Dropshipping is One of the Best Online Business Ideas Out There
It takes very little time to manage a dropship eCommerce shop, as you can see.
My advice is to keep your sales at 15 minutes per day for at least a year.
Take time to build your business.
You don’t need to do it all the time. It is a good idea to block time so you don’t waste hours looking for your work.
What I mean is to dedicate a block for management and then a block for growth. You’re not doing one or the other. This makes it so much easier.
So, I hope that you found this useful and can give an honest answer about how long it takes to start a dropshipping company.
