Dropshipping 101: How To Start a Dropshipping Business

It is absolutely possible to make money through dropshipping. I have tried dropshipping and I have managed to sell products and make money. However, before you try dropshipping yourself, you need to understand a couple of things. Well, dropshipping does not require you to spend money to build your inventory, however, dropshipping is not a hundred percent free method to make money. You will have to spend a lot of money to build your store and also spend money on marketing. The second important thing to consider is what kind of store you are building (because this will determine your start-up cost). If you are using premium software like Shopify, you will be spending a lot of money, WordPress with woo-commerce is a cheaper option but you still have to spend money on themes and plugins. If you do not want to take a lot of risk, you can try dropshipping on marketplaces like ebay or even Facebook marketplace. This saves you money on building a store but you still need to spend money on advertising as without advertising it is quite not possible to generate sales. You also need to be very careful about the products you want to sell.

Shopify Review: Is this The Best Dropshipping Platform

Shopify is one of the best platforms for online business. You can use this platform to build your own store with your own inventory, create a dropshipping store, or a Print-On-Demand store.

Shopify allows you to automate everything from importing product details (including images, description, title, etc.), to forward your shipping address to your supplier. You can start building your store without prior knowledge.  It is integrated with so many features that everything can be done on autopilot.

The platform is extremely SEO friendly and with a few tweaks, you can easily rank high on Google. The developers have done so well with the platform that everything can be done through the backend even by those who do not have much knowledge of SEO and marketing. Shopify is so easy to use that it is usually called one of the best ecommerce platforms for non-tech people.

The only downside of this ecommerce platform is it is super expensive. The basic price starts from $29 per month. They do offer 14 days trial.

Apart from shopify subscription, you will have to pay for premium plugins for your shopify store that imports products from aliexpress to your store. These plugins are pricy but some of them also offer a free trial.

Is It Easy to Make Money From Dropshipping?

When I started making money online, I was also planning to start a dropshipping business. I built a fund, did some research on the niche, drop suppliers, etc. I even bought a domain for that purpose. However, before I started building  dropship website, I wanted to know about real cases. I searched on Google and Youtube and most of the people said anyone can make money through dropship. I was not satisfied. I began to search for people that I knew personally who had tried dropshipping, luckily I found a friend.

Here is the story of his dropshipping business

When covid took away his job, he started looking online for money-making opportunities, which made him choose a dropshipping business. He bought a domain hosting, and an Ecommerce website designer and spent about $600 to build the store. He also hired an SEO consultant and spent $300 to do SEO on his store. He also spent an additional $300 on Facebook ads. For 3 months there were zero sales. He spent about $500 on Google and Facebook Ads. He was bent on making money from his store, therefore, he refused to quit. He spent more money on ads and SEO. He did every kind of digital marketing from influencer marketing to email marketing. By the time he spent $3000, he had made just 2-3 sales.

Can Anyone Earn Through Dropshipping?

Since you do not have to buy or manufacture products, you do not have to maintain an inventory, you don't have to spend money on maintaining a warehouse, dropshipping business does not cost much to start and manage. This is the main selling proposition of a dropshipping business. That's why people are interested in dropshipping. There is money to be made in dropshipping but you will have to work hard.

Dropshipping is reserved for experienced marketers and someone who has $1000-$2000 to spare. You need money to build a dropshipping store, you need money to run ads for your store and generate sales. You also need money to do SEO and digital marketing. In my opinion, if you want to make money through dropshipping, you should first consider building your skills and funds.