Dropshipping is the new ‘it’ thing in the e-commerce market, and for all the right reasons. Dropshipping is on its way to greatness because it makes doing business easy. Shopify is becoming the most popular e-commerce site because new sellers join every day.
Traditional business models require a lot of time, effort, and money to start up, but a dropshipping business doesn’t.
Since dropshipping became a popular way to run a business, things have changed. By working with a dropshipping supplier, a new business can get off the ground quickly and grow without having to pay for the inventory up front.
Ecommerce businesses are getting better because Shopify makes it easy to do business. You don’t even need a business license to open your shop. Shopify is quickly becoming the platform of choice for dropshipping stores that do well.
Because of all of these benefits, dropshipping is the best option for most business owners. This free Shopify dropshipping guide will answer all your questions and help you start a successful Shopify dropshipping business.
How does dropshipping work?
First of all, what exactly is dropshipping?
Dropshipping has been the most popular way for new e-commerce business owners to make money in the past few years. A store owner sets up a dropshipping account or an online store and works with a supplier.
The wholesaler sends all the packages to the customers on behalf of the store owner. Dropshipping is an easy and useful way to run an online store because the store owner doesn’t need to have access to inventory.
The supplier takes care of all the packaging and shipping, and the owner does nothing but sell the items and make money.
Why is the business of dropshipping growing?
This way of running a business is a good way for small and new businesses to grow. You can build an online store with the help of a number of e-commerce platforms. Your online store’s needs are the only thing that can tell you which option is best.
Store owners who use Shopify don’t have to touch or store their inventory. For a new business model, it saves space, money on stock, and extra work. So, dropshipping businesses are doing very well right now.
Shopify is used by tens of thousands of business owners and has become a leading ecommerce platform. Because it can be used in many ways and is easy to use. Online businesses are doing very well, and all you need to start selling online is a good laptop and a small amount of money.
As you move up the ladder, you may have to spend more money, but it will never be as much as a traditional brick-and-mortar business.
Why should you dropship on Shopify?
Why is Shopify the best way to get a dropshipping business off the ground? Well, Shopify has everything your dropshipping store might need.
Shopify is a one-stop shop for entrepreneurs who want to start a dropshipping business. It has a built-in online editor and many ways to customize it. It also gives you many ways to pay and a number of dropshipping tools.
Shopify has thousands of dropshipping suppliers who will store, pack, and ship your products to your customers. You will just act as a “bridge” between customers and suppliers.
Your Shopify dropshipping store can work with any of thousands of suppliers or vendors. The vendor will do all of the business’s “hard work” for a small fee. You will also be in charge of the online store and take orders.
Shopify gives its sellers great technical support and some built-in tools. Topped off with fast shipping and safe payment methods, Shopify is the best choice for a new business.
How do you use Shopify?
Shopify is just an online version of a market with many shops. The store owners sell items that are in stock at the wholesaler, but they don’t buy them. In short, dropshipping is all about making money by selling someone else’s product through your platform.
Entrepreneurs in e-commerce don’t have to spend money on stock or take care of the products. They just get a dropshipping order through their Shopify account and send it to the supplier. The supplier then puts the package in a box and sends it to the customer.
To start dropshipping on Shopify, you need a Shopify store and a wholesaler you can trust. Without a vendor, you can’t do Shopify dropshipping because you wouldn’t have any products to sell.
So, Shopify gives its sellers some apps for drop-ship vendors to make their work easier and faster. These apps will help new Shopify sellers list their products and keep track of their orders.
Then it will be easy for you to set up a Shopify store and dropship products that fit with your store’s niche.
Buy already-made Shopify stores
You can also buy a drop-shipping business that is already up and running but the owner wants to sell. It will help you because running a legal and well-known store has its perks. The Shopify Exchange website is a market where Shopify stores can be bought and sold.
On Exchange, you can also look at the stores’ analytics, such as the number of visitors and sales. After looking in thousands of stores that say “on sale,” it won’t be hard to find one you can buy.
The bad thing about dropshipping is
When you run a business where you “dropship” products from a lot of different places, mistakes are bound to happen. Some of them could be:
- If you don’t have the stock on hand, you may have to take more orders.
- Selling goods that are no longer for sale
- The wrong order could be sent to the customer.
Shopify’s steps to start a dropshipping business
Shopify makes it simple and easy to start a dropshipping business. Here are the nine steps you need to take to set up your own dropshipping store on Shopify.
Create a Shopify account.
Sign up for a Shopify account as the first step. A new Shopify store can try it out for free for 14 days. E-commerce business owners can easily use the Shopify app to search for dropship vendors and products to sell.
So, if you want a successful dropshipping business, sign up for a Shopify account and start your ecommerce store.
Follow these steps to set up your Shoify online store:
- Click “Start a free trial” on Shopify.
- In the pop-up window, enter your Email address, password, and store name, then click “Create Your Store.”
- Remember to enter a unique store name to get approved
- Shopify will then ask you for your first information. Type in your name, phone number, address, and country.
- Then you’ll be asked, “Do you have products?” and “What will you sell?” Choose the right answers from the drop-down menu.
- When you’re done with the sign-up process, click “I’m done.”
- Your store will be set up by Shopify, and you will be taken to the store admin screen.
- Lastly, go to the Shopify dashboard and put in your banking information for payments.
Pick a name for your web store.
It can be hard and time-consuming to choose a domain name for your online store. You should choose one that is interesting and different, but also looks professional. The name of your store also affects how people think of your brand and draws in potential customers.
Changing the name of an online store will cost money and take time. It could also hurt the store’s search engine ranking. But picking a name for your store that people will remember isn’t all bad dreams.
Here are some things to keep in mind when coming up with a brand name for your online store:
- Think of a word or phrase that is easy to spell, say, and remember.
- Try to keep it simple, with no numbers or symbols.
- Check to see if the name has already been taken.
- Try to avoid using the same letters in the name.
Install dropshipping apps on Shopify.
After you’ve set up your Shopify store for the first time, you need to choose the sales channels. It will make it easy for you to send the items to your customers. Follow these steps to choose and download apps for Shopify dropshipping:
- Go to your Shopify dashboard and click on “Settings.” Then click on “sales channel.”
- Then click “Add sales channel.” A pop-up menu with a list of sales channels will appear.
- Scroll to the bottom and click “Visit Shopify app store.” Then you can scroll through and choose the Shopify dropshipping app that fits your needs.
- There are many popular Shopify dropshipping apps that can help you get inventory for your Shopify dropshipping store. Here are some of the most popular Shopify dropshipping apps. You can start by downloading any one of these dropshipping apps.
Oberlo
The best app for dropshipping on Shopify is Shopify’s own “Oberlo dropshipping app.” Since this app is built into Shopify, it is easy to use and works well. You can add items from Oberlo express and the dropshipping giant Aliexpress to your Shopify stores.
KITE
KITE sells more than 250 different items, such as clothes, accessories, home goods, and more. It also lets sellers change the way their products look, and they can even print their own designs.
Spocket
Spocket has sellers from the US and EU who have products that can be shipped quickly. As a result, customer orders are delivered quickly and safely because it is easy to keep track of the suppliers.
You can look at the other apps in the Shopify app store and download the one that works best for you.
Find products to sell online and bring them in.
To make money with a drop-shipping business, the items in your Shopify store must be unique and sellable. AliExpress, Alibaba, and many other sites make it easy to find what you need. But if you want to sell more, your product ideas should be based on the niches that are at the top of Google Trends.
After you find the products you want to sell online, you can use any of the three methods below to import their information:
Import by hand
You can download the data from the beginning to the end of your product import by yourself.
Use THE import store app to import.
The Import store app is a Shopify app that lets you get product information from a website and put it in your Shopify store.
Use LitExtension
LitExtension is a service for moving your products, customers, orders, etc. from one shopping cart to another without any risk.
Work on the look of your online store.
Design and layout of your store matter a lot when it comes to getting customers to buy things. Because of this, Shopify gives stores a lot of free and paid themes to use. You can choose any theme you want and change it so it fits your niche.
There are different ways to set up the design of your e-commerce store:
- You can choose from the list of “free themes.” These are designs for your store that look decent and give you limited ways to change them.
- You can choose one of the “paid themes,” which cost between $100 and $180. Paid themes give you a lot of ways to change them. There are also different themes for the different types of items.
- Lastly, you can hire someone from Shopify’s team of “Shopify Experts.” The design team will make themes for your Shopify store that are unique to it.
Tune up your settings.
After you’ve set up your Shopify account, you’ll need to optimize your store so that it can reach more people. Your e-store needs to be easy to find, use, and look around in.
Follow these steps to get the best settings for your store:
- Make sure that your products are easy to find from the homepage. It makes it easier for customers to buy things.
- Add a “About” page and a “contact” page to your site. It will show that your page is real.
- Go to the Settings dashboard and make sure that all the sections have the right information in them.
- Add your store’s payment gateways and make sure they can be used.
- Also, don’t forget to put a “search box” on the home page of your store. It is important for e-commerce optimization and will be good for the customers.
- Add keywords to your site’s title tags, search results, and product pages to make them better. Also, make sure your site is set up for search engines.
- Try to make the design and theme of the store easy for mobile users to use.
- You can now open your fully optimized online store.
Get your Shopify dropshipping store up and running.
Launching your Shopify store is the last step after setting it up and making sure it works well. Now, set up your Shopify website for drop shipping. The Shopify quick-start wizard makes it easy to set up your website and open your store.
Follow these steps to set up your Shopify site:
- Finish setting up your dropshipping store’s design and add shipping pages.
- Make navigation menus for your website and put in your payment information and shipping costs.
- Lastly, link your Shopify dropshipping store to the URL or domain name of your own website and open your store.
- Your Shopify dropshipping store can be set up and ready to go in just a few hours.
Promote your dropshipping store.
There are thousands of new dropshipping sellers on Shopify, so your marketing plan needs to be top-notch if you want to do well. Google won’t list a new store for a long time. So, you need to use other marketing strategies to bring in customers.
You can promote your Shopify dropshipping store using one or all of the following methods:
Paid Ads
If you can afford it, paid ads are a great way to get more customers to buy from you. When you buy ads on TikTok, Facebook, or Google Ads, you can target the people you want to reach. It also has ads that are affordable for most people.
Big platforms like Facebook marketplace and Instagram business are great places to market your dropshipping store on a small budget.
Marketing with influencers
You can also promote your Shopify dropshipping store by teaming up with social media influencers. Marketing through influencers is a business strategy where you pay an influencer to show and promote your products to their audience and link to your store.
Marketing is done all the time today through Instagram, Facebook, and other social media influencers. These people have a lot of fans on social media and can help your Shopify store grow.
Email Marketing
Email marketing needs to be the most important thing for a business from the start. Make a list of the email addresses of your customers and start sending them emails about your products that are interesting and give them information.
You can also change the Emails so that they work for different types of people and solve their problems. Email marketing is a direct way to reach the people you want to reach. Email marketing is the easiest way to get in touch with your customers and offer deals directly.
Content Marketing
Every e-commerce business needs to use social media to promote its content and bring in customers. You can make Facebook and Instagram pages for your store and post about new products and sales.
Having a strong social media presence is a must if you want to keep customers coming back. It shows how real a brand is and also has customer reviews.
Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing lets people use their phones to connect to your e-commerce business. It is important to get reviews from customers and offer customer service through texts or messages.
You can also set up a support group chat on Messenger to answer questions and concerns that customers often have.
Tools for Keyword Research
No matter how unique your ecommerce stores are. If you don’t do enough keyword research and SEO, no one will be able to find your Shopify stores. The keyword research tool will tell you how many times your products are searched for each month.
You should use this information to figure out how many sales a product will make and what new products to add to your dropshipping store. There are a lot of tools for keyword research that can help you boost sales.
Sell your first thing.
It will be both exciting and nerve-wracking to make your first sale. After setting up and running a Shopify store that is fully optimized, you are ready to go to market. The first few sales are always hard, but you’ll get the hang of it quickly.
Try your best to make the customer happy and answer questions quickly. After a few happy customers, you’ll be on your way to becoming a big name on Shopify. Lastly, don’t forget to keep your item listing up-to-date so that customers don’t order items that are “out of stock.”
Questions about drop shipping that are often asked (FAQ)
What can you do to make money?
Dropshipping on Shopify is an easy way to make between $100 and $200 per month. Unlike a traditional wholesale business model, a Shopify dropshipping business does not lose money because the seller does not buy or store the items ahead of time.
A seller with a lot of experience or a high level of skill can easily sell products on Shopify and make between $1,000 and $10,000 a month.
How can a person new to dropshipping get started?
By following the steps below, a person who has never done dropshipping before can get started quickly:
- Choose the items you want to sell through your sales channels and do research on the market.
- Find a reliable supplier, then set up a dropshipping account on Shopify.
- To build your brand, you should advertise your online store and sell products at prices that are competitive with the market.
- In the future, you can set the retail price for each item.
How do I handle pictures of products and descriptions of those products?
Here are a few tips to help you write product descriptions:
- When writing descriptions, think about who you’re writing for.
- Don’t forget to talk about what the product can do for you.
- Keep your tone interesting and catchy.
- Add pictures of your products that are of good quality.
Who pays the costs of shipping?
Most of the time, if it doesn’t say otherwise on the page about the item, the buyer pays for shipping. Shipping costs are based on how much an item weighs, so make sure your store’s shipping prices are always up to date.
Is drop shipping legal?
Dropshipping is allowed by the law. Dropshipping is a way for sellers all over the world to fill customer orders. But you should be careful about who you join forces with. Some dropshipping suppliers will try to trick customers, which can get your account shut down.
Who takes care of customer service and returns of products?
As a business owner, the seller usually handles product returns, keeps track of returned items, and restocks customers from their Shopify admin. You can also hire a team or a fulfillment company to do this for you so you don’t have to deal with the returns yourself.
Conclusion
You should now know everything there is to know about Shopify dropshipping. Ten years ago, business owners couldn’t even imagine selling products they didn’t buy themselves. What could be better? Dropshipping businesses are growing for a reason.
Shopify makes business so easy for its sellers that nothing else comes close. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Shopify has become the ecommerce platform that dropshipping business owners love the most.
So, are you ready to use Shopify to start your own business?
