A Beginner’s Guide to Amazon Dropshipping UK

Dropshipping has achieved phenomenal results for entrepreneurs everywhere. Now, dropshippers are looking to expand and find new markets to imitate the same success. To clarify, dropshipping is a business model where sellers buy products only after a customer has made a purchase. Notably, Amazon is one of the most popular platforms for dropshippers.

The UK market offers a lucrative opportunity with less competition and high demand.

Plus, Amazon supports selling on one of its counterparts – Amazon UK – giving us access to millions of customers. So, if you’re looking to start or expand your online business, dropshipping on Amazon UK is the way to go.

In this article, we offer a step-by-step guide on how to get started dropshipping on Amazon UK. We’ll explore pros, cons, and success strategies to help us achieve our business goals. Let’s jump in!

What Is Amazon Dropshipping & How Does It Work In The UK? 

Dropshipping is an online retail fulfillment method that allows sellers to sell products without keeping inventory. We outsource third-party suppliers to handle the entire order fulfillment process while we sell items for a profit. It’s a model that requires little capital and lower overhead costs, making it ideal for beginners.

Setting up our online dropshipping store from the ground up can be tedious and costly. Luckily, online marketplaces such as Amazon allow dropshipping so we can sell items alongside other sellers on the platform. Everything is already set up with Amazon, so we can start selling our products immediately.

When it comes to dropshipping in the UK, there’s more than enough of room for new entrepreneurs to enter the UK online retail marketplace. 

Is Amazon Dropshipping UK Allowed? 

The short answer is yes: Amazon dropshipping in the UK is totally legal. However, like most marketplaces, we need to abide by the policies of the Amazon UK marketplace. Additionally, we must adhere to UK consumer laws for business to avoid fines and penalties.

With that said, here are some key factors we need to consider when dropshipping on Amazon UK:

• We must follow all terms of the seller agreement on Amazon
• We must refrain from selling products on the eBay VeRO Database
• We must follow all laws and regulations in the UK (e.g., Competition and consumer laws)

Overall, we can easily comply with UK laws around dropshipping since our third-party suppliers do a bulk of the work for us. Plus, with multiple suppliers, it’s easy to find authorized products to dropship on our Amazon UK storefront.

The Pros & Cons Of Amazon Dropshipping UK

Like any business venture, a good entrepreneur must weigh the pros and cons to make the best decision possible. In this portion, we briefly examine the potential advantages and disadvantages of dropshipping on Amazon UK.

Pros of Amazon Dropshipping UK

Let’s start with the pros. Here are some benefits we can enjoy if we dropship on Amazon UK.

• Low startup costs
• No warehouse/storage costs
• Free organic traffic
• Wide customer reach
• Easy scalability 
• Efficient order fulfillment

When dropshipping, we don’t hold an inventory of products which cuts our costs significantly. When dropshipping in a marketplace like Amazon UK, we also gain access to millions of active users on the platform. Thus, we can utilize their free organic traffic to significantly minimize marketing costs.

We start with a free individual plan and, once sales are in, move up to a professional plan and sell more products. Plus, with dropshipping automation tools, it’s now easier to scale up our business on Amazon. Automation streamlines our process so we can focus on growing our business. We’ll know more once we learn how to dropship and succeed on Amazon UK later in the article.

Cons of Amazon Dropshipping UK

While knowing the pros is good, looking for possible cons is essential before jumping into any venture. With that said, here are some cons of Amazon dropshipping UK.

• Intense competition
• Limited branding capabilities
• Lack of control

When working in a marketplace, there’s intense competition with existing sellers on the platform. Moreover, there are limited branding opportunities on the platform with a standard setup for all stores. This makes it difficult to create a recognizable brand and stand out from our competitors.

To combat this, we can employ other strategies to gain the attention of buyers. For example, providing excellent customer service leads to positive reviews and ratings that help increase buyer confidence in our store. We can also beat our competitors by offering the best prices for our products. Moreover, these strategies help us win the buy box, thus, increasing our sales.

How To Dropship On Amazon UK: Full Tutorial 

Before we can start dropshipping on Amazon UK, there are a few steps we need to cover first. Let’s look at each stage and determine how to begin our dropshipping journey on Amazon UK.

1. Set Up Your Amazon UK Seller Account

To start dropshipping on Amazon UK, we must first set up our Amazon UK seller account. Don’t worry about fees because once we’ve set up our Amazon seller account, we simply need to downgrade to a free individual account from the default paid professional account. We’ll discuss this further in the next step. 

For now, here’s some basic information we’ll need for the sign-up process:

• Name
• Address
• Email
• Contact Number

After setting up our Amazon UK seller account, we must also go through a verification process. There are a few steps to go through before our account gets verified. Let’s go through them quickly together.

First, we’ll need to upload a scanned version of a government-issued ID and provide a bank or credit card statement. The purpose is for Amazon to determine whether or not we are who we say we are. So, make sure the name and address on the documents are the same as what’s in the sign-up.

Additionally, a verification video meeting might be something Amazon UK will require. In this step, we simply need to show our ID and bank information live on camera. After that, we’ll have a verified Amazon UK seller account!

2. Choose An Amazon Selling Plan

Now that we have our seller account on Amazon UK, it’s time to choose an Amazon selling plan. As mentioned in the previous step, there are two types of Amazon plans: individual and professional. Understanding the difference helps us know which one we’ll need and how much it’ll cost.

To start, the individual plan is ideal if we’re still deciding what to sell. With this plan, there are no monthly fees. However, we pay a 75p fee for each item sold. So if we want to sell more than 35 items in our store, it’s better to upgrade our plan to make the most of our coin.

That said, we can subscribe to a professional plan and sell as much as we want with no per-item fee for just £25 per month. Plus, we get access to APIs and more selling reports that help us optimize our Amazon dropshipping store. 

How Much Does It Cost To Sell On Amazon UK

Besides the selling plan fees above, we must also note the ‘Category Referral Fees’ we pay on every transaction. As the name suggests, the fee depends on the product category we’re selling in.

We pay a referral fee because selling on Amazon already gives us access to millions of customers. As a result, this cuts down our marketing costs exponentially. So, Amazon deducts the referral fee percentage calculated from the total sales price (total amount paid by the buyer, including delivery + gift wrapping charges). 

3. Find Your Best Sellers: Amazon UK Product Research

Once we’ve set up our store, the next step is to find products to sell. Product research is integral to the success of our business–especially when dropshipping on a highly competitive platform like Amazon. It’s important to find sellable products for maximum profit because that’s what we want at the end of the day.

We can effectively conduct research to find winning products for our store in many ways:

• AutoDS Winning Products Hub
• AutoDS Product Finding Blog & YouTube Channel
• Amazon Best Sellers / Movers & Shakers
• AliExpress Dropship Center
• Google Trends & Google Lens

AutoDS Winning Products Hub

Product research can be tedious and time-consuming. However, tools like AutoDS Winning Products Hub make it easier and faster to find trending products for our store. It automates the product research process so we find in-demand profitable items in no time.

Moreover, it provides detailed analytics we can use to optimize our listing. Included here is information like suggested retail/sales prices, profit potential, target audience, and an analysis of our competitors.

AutoDS Product Finding Blog & YouTube Channel

Another easy way to find trending products is through AutoDS’s product-finding blogs and Youtube playlist. These present curated lists of trending products we can add to our store. Exclusive product suggestions will help propel and scale our Amazon dropshipping UK store.

Amazon Best Sellers / Movers & Shakers

One way to research is by looking at the best-sellers on our chosen platform. Amazon UK’s Best Sellers category tells us which items are selling out so we can include them in our listing. The high volume of interested buyers looking for these items can find our store, helping increase our sales and profit.

Meanwhile, Amazon UK’s Movers & Shakers tells us which products are gaining interest from buyers right now. These are items with a significant rise in sales within the last 24 hours. Based on this trend, we can identify an increase in popularity we can jump in on.

AliExpress Dropship Center

The AliExpress Dropship Center is a product research tool listing top-selling products ranked by sales volume, rating, and performance. It offers detailed analytics helping us find top-selling products on AliExpress. We can then source these products on Amazon through any supplier we choose.

Google Trends & Google Lens

Google Trends enables us in finding search data using keywords and provides information on a product or niche’s popularity over a period of time. We can use this to determine whether a product is popular in certain seasons or has stable profitability.

On the other hand, Google Lens assists in identifying products. To elaborate, we can scan an image using Google Lens, which can provide helpful information about the product. Through this, we can identify a product’s name, manufacturer, and supplier, making it useful for dropshippers like us.

These tools help us identify what products are selling well, how much they’re selling for, and additional analytics. Still, no matter which method we opt for, we should utilize the AutoDS Product Research Spreadsheet to narrow down winning products for our Amazon dropshipping UK store.

4. Connect Your Amazon UK Store To AutoDS

Did you know we can automate the dropshipping process for our Amazon UK store? That’s right! We can save time, money, and effort with efficient and accurate systems in place working automatically for us. Plus, we can maximize our profit and optimize our business for scaling!

AutoDS is the best all-in-one automation solution for Amazon dropshipping UK stores. With this tool, we can easily streamline our process with the following features:

• Quick product importing
• Price/Stock automation
• Automatic orders
• Setting break-even, profit percentage, etc.

AutoDS’ price/stock monitoring feature automatically adjusts our stock and prices to match our suppliers. If our supplier changes their pricing, we have to manually adjust the price on our Amazon UK store as well.

Now, to connect our Amazon UK store to AutoDS, we need to register via the AutoDS platform. Then, to connect our store, we need to select ‘Add Store’ found in the upper left corner of the AutoDS Dashboard. After that, we must choose the type of store we are adding. In this case, we will choose the Amazon store.

The next step is simply signing into our Amazon UK Seller Center and confirming connection to AutoDS. After connecting our seller account, AutoDS stays synchronized with our Amazon store even when we log out. Now we’re ready to automate our dropshipping process.

5. Select A Reliable UK Dropshipping Supplier

Selecting an Amazon UK dropshipping supplier comes next. We source all our products from third-party dropshipping suppliers. Therefore, we rely heavily on them to deliver orders to our customers.

With that in mind, it’s vital to have reliable suppliers that can represent our store. Additionally, we must find suppliers whose policies and product range align with our needs as a business.

To ensure we choose a suitable supplier for our Amazon UK dropshipping store, we need to consider some key characteristics, such as:

• UK Warehouses
• Fast Shipping & Delivery Times
• Partner With Reliable Shipping Couriers
• Various Payment Options
• Affordable Product Pricing
• Wide Product Range
• Positive Reviews
• Excellent Customer Service
• Practical return, payment, and shipping policies

Having UK Warehouses in our roster helps us quickly ship products to and from the UK. Additionally, we can source from plenty of dropshipping suppliers,  such as  AliExpress, CJDropshipping, eBay, etc. In fact, it’s ideal to have multiple suppliers to have a better range of products and have something to fall back on in case of stock shortage.

Moreover, there are several AutoDS-supported global suppliers we can work with. Since these suppliers are compatible with AutoDS, we can easily automate everything from product imports to order fulfillment.

6. Import Products & Create Amazon Listings 

After finding winning products and suppliers to source them from, we can begin creating listings and importing products. To start, we need to determine whether or not we can sell a product or brand on Amazon UK.

Product brand approval is sometimes required before we import and list products in our store. Clicking the ‘Sell On Amazon’ button on the right side of a product listing tells us whether or not we need one. However, AutoDS will likely warn us when a brand requires approval with a link to Amazon on how to obtain it.

Once we can sell a product, we have two options: One, we can manually list it by adding all the listing details individually. However, that’s inefficient and can take time away from our business.

Two, we can automate our product-importing method through AutoDS. 

With AutoDS’ Automated Product Importer, we can simply copy+paste a product’s ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) and add the product URL from our supplier. With that, we can already import our product in seconds.

However, it’s important to note that we cannot change titles, descriptions, images, and item specifications through AutoDS Draft Editor. Therefore, if we wish to improve these, we need to do it directly on the product detail page of our Amazon UK store.

What Are The Key Elements Of An Amazon Product Page?

Moreover, there are several key elements of an Amazon product detail page we can optimize:

• Title/Description (product-identifying information)
• Images (up to 7 product images)
• Product video
• Brand name
• Product reviews/rating
• Price
• Variations (product variants)
• Buy Box
• Bullet points (up to 5 bullet points of information)
• Best Seller and Amazon Choice badges
• Frequently bought together
• Special offers and product promotions
• Product description/A+ Content
• Product details
• Customer questions & answers
• Customer reviews
• Competitor ads/related products

It’s important to consider these factors when optimizing our product page. A well-made product page helps customers make informed purchases. Plus, it makes us more reliable and improves the overall success of our Amazon dropshipping UK store.

7. Promote Your Amazon Dropshipping UK Store

Since Amazon is a marketplace, we compete with other sellers who are likely selling the same/similar products as us. Thus, we must utilize effective marketing techniques to promote our store and stand out.

Here are some marketing strategies we can use to promote our Amazon dropshipping UK store:

• Sponsored Product Ads
• Win The Buy Box
• External PPC Ads 
• TikTok Marketing
• Influencer Marketing 
• Email Marketing

Sponsored product ads refer to products on Amazon’s search results labeled as ‘Sponsored’. This is Amazon’s version of PPC, known as CPC or cost-per-click, which helps increase the visibility of our products and drive more sales for our store.

Whenever a buyer wants to buy a product from Amazon, there will be several seller options available. However, if a buyer doesn’t choose which seller they’d like to buy from, whoever is in the Buy Box on Amazon gets that sale. Winning the Buy Box highly depends on factors such as competitive pricing, reliable fulfillment, stellar seller metrics, and positive customer ratings.

Using Facebook ads is another way to market to our target audience effectively. With this, we can create an impactful ad and put it in front of the right people at the right time. On the other hand, TikTok is arguably the most popular social media platform, especially among Gen Z. We can use TikTok ads to our advantage, and optimize our ads and increase our conversion, traffic, reach, and more.

Influencer marketing refers to partnering with known experts in a particular niche or individuals with significant influence within our target audience to promote our products. Meanwhile, email marketing means promoting our Amazon dropshipping UK store through emails with exclusive offers, discounts, and other relevant content to potential customers.

Remember, we should utilize multiple marketing strategies to reach more people and increase sales.

8. Fulfill UK Customer Orders Quickly

Having an efficient order fulfillment process is vital for customer satisfaction. We can fulfill orders manually on Amazon by first validating the buyer’s payment method and order details. Once an order has been verified, we can use information from the order details page to ship it using their delivery address and requested shipping method.

Finally, from ‘Manage Orders’, we must click Confirm Shipment and complete the required information. The downside to manually fulfilling orders is the risk of errors and delays. The good thing is we have a solution, and that is automation.

Using a tool like Fulfilled by AutoDS, we can save time and avoid mistakes because the system fulfills our orders. On the AutoDS platform, our orders will appear on the orders page of our AutoDS dashboard. Then, the system automatically processes orders directly from our supplier to our buyer.

When automating orders with Amazon, the buyer’s details aren’t automatically updated on AutoDS. In this case, we must use the Marketplace Chrome extension to transfer the information from Amazon to AutoDS, except for the buyer’s country. For this, we simply need to input the buyer’s country on the AutoDS orders page, and we’re done!

As soon as tracking information is available from our supplier, AutoDS simultaneously updates the status of the customer’s orders and the supplier’s order number. This removes all the fuss of the order fulfillment process and significantly lessens the chances of errors, so we don’t have to worry.

9. Deliver Excellent Service To Your UK Audience

Lastly, providing excellent customer service to our Amazon UK customers is vital for our success. When we deliver excellent customer service – we not only differentiate ourselves from the competition, but our overall business will benefit. On top of that, customers will want to come back, meaning more repeat customers for our store. 

On Amazon, the seller handles all customer contacts relating to those customer service issues for which the seller is responsible. Likewise, Amazon will manage all customer contacts relating to customer service issues when Amazon is responsible. In other words, Amazon will handle all transactional communications while the seller handles service or content updates.

Consequently, offering top-notch customer service benefits our Amazon dropshipping UK business in many ways. We can acquire higher seller ratings from customers, giving us more credibility in the eyes of other potential buyers. In turn, we increase the chances of being chosen by buyers, resulting in more sales for our business.

4 Tips To Achieve Success With Amazon Dropshipping UK

We now have all the steps to start dropshipping on Amazon UK. But it doesn’t end there. If we want to achieve success with our Amazon dropshipping UK business, there are five tips we need to keep in mind. Let’s quickly discuss them one by one.

Add Products With High Demand

We want to sell products that people actually want to buy. Having in-demand, trending products in our store helps us increase our sales, thus, increasing our profit. Moreover, product research is how we find top-selling items.

Price Products Competitively

Pricing is another important factor to consider before we start dropshipping. By offering the best prices, we have more chances of winning the buy box. If we lose the buy box, we let other sellers get the sales instead. Hence, we must source our products from affordable, reliable suppliers to get the best deals.

Gain Positive Reviews With Great Service

Positive reviews from customers are another way to find success in our Amazon dropshipping venture. By providing great service, we can attain loyal customers that will keep coming back to buy from our store. Plus, positive ratings and reviews will improve our social proof making us a more credible choice for our target audience.

Automate Your Amazon UK Dropshipping Store

Lastly, the one sure way we can achieve success and scale our Amazon UK dropshipping store is by automating our process. A streamlined system saves us time and lets us take in more orders, resulting in more profit.

AutoDS is the #1 all-in-one automated dropshipping solution for our Amazon store. We can save time and streamline our processes, from finding and importing products to inventory management, price monitoring, and fulfilling orders. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Amazon Dropshipping In The UK Profitable? 

Yes. The average dropshipper in the UK totaled £2000 in a single month in 2022. However, there’s no limit to how much we can earn with our Amazon UK dropshipping business. Plus, we can apply tips and strategies to maximize our profit-earning capabilities.

Is Dropshipping Legal In The UK? 

Yes, dropshipping is legal in the UK and is considered just like any eCommerce store. However, we must abide by the UK competition and consumer laws for businesses to avoid penalties and fines.

How Can I Start Dropshipping On Amazon? 

You can start dropshipping on Amazon by setting up a seller account on the platform. We don’t have to pay anything upfront with an individual plan. When ready to sell, we only need to pay 75p per item sold. However, we can upgrade to a professional account and sell more items for only £25 per month with no per-item fee.

What Products Should I Avoid Selling On Amazon?

On Amazon, there are several products we should avoid just to be on the safe side. You do not want to be selling the following items on your dropshipping store:

• Hazardous materials
• Liquids
• Medicines, supplements
• Choking hazard
• Tobacco
• Firearms

Conclusion 

Voila! Now we’re ready to start our Amazon dropshipping UK journey! It’s definitely a profitable venture that we can and should consider if we want to enter the eCommerce market.

To find success in dropshipping on Amazon UK, we need to determine what products we want to sell and apply strategies that will help us optimize our process. Plus, we can make scaling our business so much easier with dropshipping automation.

For more information and to increase our chances of success, we recommend the following articles to help us get started:

• Dropshipping In The UK: A Step By Step Guide For Beginners
• Top 16 UK Dropshipping Suppliers For Your Online Business
• AliExpress Dropshipping in the UK: A Step-By-Step Guide For Beginners