It looks like I am destined to repeat the phrase – everything sells on the Internet – with every second article published here. What about dropshipping saddles online? Now when everybody tries to sell iPhones, iPods, webkinz and tons of other recent technical inventions there are smart people who find markets and demand for some old fashioned products…
I guess it is important when you are about to try to promote that sort of products to research the market and competition properly – I still believe that most niches are likely to be oversaturated. But not the saddles market…
The below case study makes me to reconsider my approach to browsing dropshipper lists and their product categories But to tell the truth the product does not excite me – it is one of the signs that I would lose any enthusiasm shortly after I get into the saddle business. As a result, there would be no creative ideas for marketing or much effort put into this project. Yes, passion plays a crucial role in any kind of business, do not you think so?
Dropship eCommerce Store Making Good Money
Good Rankings & Making Over $2,087 In Net Profit Monthly
• URL: www.HoltzSaddleCo.com
• Established: Thu Jan 06 2000
• Uniques/Month: 4,467
• Page views/month: 110,426
• Monthly Revenue (USD): 2,088
• Google Pagerank: 2
• BIN: $23 000
Description:
About the Company
My brother and I are selling our site that is averaging over $2087 in true profit monthly. The domain name is almost 9 years old and has 450 external backlinks. We bought the domain name just 4 or 5 months ago and built an eCommerce store on it using CRE Loaded. We build up eCommerce stores and sell them part-time, so that’s why we are putting this up for auction at this point.
Potential of the Company
We purchased the template that we are using on this site for another site over a year ago. We have made hundreds of changes to the template and have spent hundreds of dollars to get it to where we thought it would make the most conversions. It is the perfect design for any retail store. It has flawless navigation and everything that is important to a new customer above the fold. All the buyer will need to do is attach a merchant account, put their contact information in, and it is ready for business.
Right now, we carry two brands of saddles. The first is “Circle Y” and they are by far the biggest brand name when it comes to saddles. The other brand we carry is “High Horse.” They are manufactured by Circle Y so all of our orders come from the same source. We have the saddles dropshipped so we never actually touch the product. No exaggeration, you make hundreds of dollars on every sale. The best sellers are priced at about $1499 and we get them for $1099. After shipping, dropship fee, and cc fees, we still make over $300. Plus, some of the higher priced saddles have much higher margins.
Getting into this market was not an easy task. Saddle makers are old school and make it nearly impossible to enter the market. We were fortunate enough to have an impressive history on-line and were able to finagle our way in. This is not a market that you need to worry about huge competitors. There are only a dozen or so decent competitors and the majority of them don’t know what they are doing. We have only built a few backlinks since we got this site and moved up drastically for top phrases. With consistent link building, this site could rank at the top of Google within weeks. Here are some of our current rankings in Google with virtually no link building:
• horse saddle: 18
• horse saddles: 15
• saddle: 22
• saddles: 16
• saddle for sale: 4
• saddles for sale: 4
• high horse saddle: 4
• high horse saddles: 3
If you look up specific saddle models, we rank in the top three for just about all of them. We have a froogle feed that is all set up and auto renews once a week. We rank in the top three for tons of phrases and therefore show up on the first page of google. Like I said before, we have done virtually no link building and we already have these rankings. Do a little research and you will see that this market would not be hard to get ranked higher in.
In regards to expanding the product offering, there are some options. Many manufacturers will not give you an account without a brick and mortar store, but there are some manufacturers that will dropship. They are cheaper saddles but that may be a good contrast to the more expensive saddles that are currently offered on the site.
Running the Business
Running this business is very simple. When we get an order we email our rep and he puts the order in for us. We are emailed with tracking info and we forward it on to the customer. The dropshipper sends us an invoice and we pay it within thirty days. We work on other projects full time but we do answer calls when they come in. With our current rankings we get a few calls a day. You could expect calls to increase when your rankings go up. We are not horse people at all. We have each ridden on a horse once or twice. You will need to do a couple of hours of research to find out a little bit about horses before you can start taking phone calls. It was not a hard thing to learn about. All the site development is done so the only development you would need to do is expanding product offering if you want.
Keep in mind that the current sales and profit are based on these Google rankings, most of which are page 2. You can imagine how much more this store would make if it ranked on page 1 for all those phrases.
You will need to apply for an account with the dropshipper, and we will give you their contact info. We cannot guarantee that you’ll get approved, but our rep says if you have decent credit you should get approved. Keep in mind that the winter months are slower than the warmer months. Our rep says the upcoming season is much slower than Spring through Fall is. We opened this store towards the end of this years good selling season.
Revenue Details:
As I said before, after all expenses were paid, we still averaged over $2,087 a month in net profit. Within 12 hours I will post screenshots of our backoffice showing sales made. We will also post a spreadsheet that shows all income & expenses including: hosting fees and phone bills. We will also post traffic screenshots. If you want to look at anything else, feel free to PM and ask.
Included in the Sale
• Domain name: www.holtzsaddleco.com
• All Content found on the domain name
• (we reserve the right to use the custom designed template on other stores)
• 1-800 number: through ringcentral
• Froogle Feed file
• Hosting account with Hostgator
• SSL certificate (paid for the next 8 months)
