How To Start A Dropshipping Business In 2024 (Step-By-Step)

What Is Dropshipping?

Dropshipping is a business model where you sell products without holding inventory.

You act as the middleman between the customer and the supplier. 

Essentially, you’ll set up the store front and drive traffic to the product page. When customers buy, you have the supplier ship directly to their doorsteps.

That means you don’t need a warehouse holding your inventory, which eliminates the crazy overhead costs of traditional e-commerce.

Getting rid of expensive overhead allows for a low barrier of entry, so any 16-year-old can start selling stuff from their laptop.

This comes with some advantages and a lotta disadvantages….

Who Should Learn How To Do Dropshipping, And Who Should Stay Away?

Dropshipping isn’t for everyone. Some business models are better than others, depending on your situation. Before you jump into this full throttle, I’d say hold your horses and take a second to understand who it’s beneficial for.

You might want to learn how to start dropshipping if…

1. You’ve already taken programs like Ecom Babe, Low Hanging System, or 0 – 100K System. Now, you’re ready to take a leap of faith into the dropshipping business model.
2. You wanna sell products without a huge upfront cost like Amazon FBA.
3. You already have a retail store and want to fulfill orders without having to hold inventory.

On the flip side, you should stay far away from dropshipping if…

1. You’re spooked by all the horror stories of dropshipping. I’m talking about accounts shutting down overnight, dropshipping suppliers failing to fulfill orders, refunds flooding in, etc.
2. You want predictable recurring income. Sales fluctuate month to month, so you can’t forecast how much money you’ll make. If you want something more stable, I’d recommend taking a look at the Digital Rental Method.
3. Your calling in life is to help others. You know that selling cheap Chinese products isn’t what you’re meant to do. That’s where something like lead generation excels since you can make a real difference in other people’s lives.

Should You Learn How To Do Dropshipping? My Personal Opinion

Before you dive right into our tutorial, you might wanna take a step back and ask, “Should I even start a dropshipping business in the first place?”

While I’m no Yoda, I’d like to think I know a thing or two about the make-money-online industry. Writing hundreds of program reviews and doing many of these business models myself (including dropshipping) has given me a unique perspective.

It’s allowed me to see the forest from the trees.

Which is why I wouldn’t recommend you start your own dropshipping business.

Not that it can’t work, but dropshipping isn’t what it used to be, in my humble opinion.

It’s kinda like a foreign fish market.

The moment you walk in, you’re greeted with loud vendors trying to vie for your attention.

One guy shouts at the top of his voice, “FISH FOR 250!” “FISH FOR 250!”

Another one next to him tries to shout louder, “BETTER FISH FOR 200!” “BETTER FISH FOR 200!”

With drop shipping, your offer is a commodity.

There’s nothing differentiating you from other sellers..

And to make matters worse..

Sellers use the same product research and ad spy tools, so everyone is getting their info from the same place. They peep at what others are selling and instantly undercut them with lower prices.

When you compete on price, it’s a race to the bottom.

Dropshippers are bombarding the same audience with the same products.

Even if they do find hot winning products, rarely does it last…

Which brings me to why gurus only show their successes and never their failures…

Read any dropshipping program, and you’ll see dozens of success stories.. Screenshots of 10k days, 50k months, 200k annual sales…

With most dropshipping stores running on 10% or less margins, are you really taking home all that much? After taxes, you’re left with scraps..

Instead, I would look for a more profitable business model that generates predictable recurring income…

One where you didn’t have to:

• Sell low-quality Chinese products that take weeks to deliver
• Suffer through the good months and bad months, wondering when your next winning product will appear
• Copy other sellers and step on other people’s toes to succeed

That’s why I chose the Digital Rental Method instead. The idea is that you build simple one-page websites that attract potential customers who are just waiting to pull out their wallets..

Basically, you bring in customers for local businesses, and they pay you handsomely for it.. When they see people flocking to their doorsteps, they won’t ever wanna stop working with you.

It’s a win-win for all parties.

You get the financial freedom you want. Businesses get customers and can keep their lights on. People in your community get the products and services they need.

And it’s a whole lot simpler and less risky than dropshipping. There’s countless students who’ve gone through the Digital Rental Method and changed their family’s lives..

Some dropped out of college and tried all kinds of business models like MLM and ecommerce. Others are struggling mothers who took a leap of faith to do what’s best for their family and put food on the table.

It’s the most sure-fire business program out there if you’re looking to get outta the rat race and quit your job… Or even if you wanna make a few extra thousand dollars to pay off your debt, it can do that for you too..

You can grow it to be as big or small as you’d like.

If that sounds like music to ears, you may wanna just skip this tutorial and jump straight into the Digital Rental Method.

But.. if you’re still curious about what it takes to build a dropshipping business, I’ll give you the details below..

How to Start a Dropshipping Business In 7 Steps

The dropshipping game has changed over the years. Gone are the days when you could throw up a simple carousel ad and call it a day..

The market is more competitive than ever, with 30% of all ecommerce stores using dropshipping to fulfill orders.

What worked years ago no longer works today.

That said, if you wanna start an ecommerce business that actually sticks around, follow these steps below.

1. Pick a Niche

The first step to starting a successful dropshipping business is picking a niche.

As the saying goes, “The riches are in the niches.”

Sure, you could build a general store, but shoppers inherently trust a niche shop more.

Case in point, would you buy makeup from a niche-specific store like Sephora, or would you buy it from a general retailer like Walmart?

When picking a niche, simply choose a broad category, like:

• Pet supplies
• Kitchen tools
• Phone Accessories
• Home office and decor
• Baby products
• Health and Wellness
• Beauty

These are tried-and-true niches that have a lot of demand, so there’s no need to overthink this.

If you wanna dig deeper, you can use Google Trends to find rising queries. For example, I typed in “pet products,” and they gave me a list of pet product topics and queries that are currently trending on Google.

Then, you can search these types of pet products to see if there are viable products you can source from a supplier.

Personally, I’d recommend picking something that you’re passionate about or have a lot of experience with.

This will give you a leg up when it comes to choosing undervalued products that aren’t saturated. Also, you’ll be able to craft ads that better speak to your audience later.

2. Do Product Research And Pick A Supplier

Your products are the bread and butter of your ecommerce store. That’s what drives customers to you and, ultimately, what brings in the dough.

It’s arguably the most important step of the entire process.

Without the right product, it doesn’t matter how good your advertising is. It’ll be like putting lipstick on a pig. Low-quality products only lead to high chargebacks, poor sales, and razor-thin margins.

Start by having a product research criteria. I recommend evaluating all products through the following checklist:

• Does it solve a problem?
• Does it grab your attention?
• Does the profit have at least a 3x margin potential, not factoring in advertising costs?
• Is the product currently trending? Do they have an uptick in recent sales? Or is it getting active engagement and traffic to competitor stores?

If you can answer yes to all of these questions, it’s probably worth testing.

The easiest way to find winning products is with a product research and ad spy tool.

There’s a ton out there, like AutoDS, Dropship.io, Minea, Asify, etc.

For example, with AutoDS, you can filter products by:

• Category
• Ships from
• Price range
• Bestsellers
• Fast shipping times

After a bit of research, I found a spill-free dog bowl..

The product research tool gives you a lot of info about the product, such as:

• how many orders the product has gotten recently
• profit potential
• ad engagement level
• item cost
• supplier to source it from

They even tell you the specific demographics to target on Facebook ads..

Beyond that, they’ll give you links to the Facebook and TikTok ads as well..

Notice that the Facebook ad has a ton of recent engagement (83.8k likes, 7.5k comments and 13k shares)

The product seems to meet the product research criteria I laid out above. Here’s my two sense on why it’s a good product:

1. It solves a real problem. I know my pup makes a huge mess when drinking water…
2. The sales and engagement metrics are great, meaning it’s gotta potential to be a winning product.
3. The ad is easy to understand and will generate impulse purchases.
4. It’s cheap to source at about $8 to $9 with decent profit potential.

Once you’ve decided on the product, go ahead and pick out the supplier.

The product research tool usually has a direct link to the supplier, but if not, you can search for it on Aliexpress or any other supplier marketplace such as Alibaba, Saleshoo, or Spocket..

Pick the most reliable suppliers with the best ratings, shipping times, and costs.

It might be a good idea to message the supplier directly and ask them if they’re able to handle 1,000+ orders in the next few months. That way, if the product does sell like hotcakes, you won’t run into issues where the supplier is out of stock.

3. Build Your Dropshipping Store

Alrighty, next comes building the dropshipping business store. This is relatively easy, as most e-commerce platforms are plug-and-play.

You have a few options you can choose from to host your online store like:

• Shopify
• WooCommerce
• BigCommerce

I recommend Shopify because it’s the most user-friendly..

Start by giving your store a name. Shopify has a business name generator to help you decide.

Then, sign up for Shopify’s free trial to get started.

Shopify costs $29 per month to get started, but if you wanna add virtual assistants to your team down the road, then you’ll need to upgrade to their higher-tiered plans.

Go through the setup wizard. Once you’re inside, there are several settings you’ll need to optimize:

• Payment information: You’re gonna connect your payment provider, like PayPal and Stripe, to Shopify.
• Store policies: You’re gonna generate pages like a privacy policy, terms and conditions, and refund policy for your store.
• Shipping rates: Here is where you set clear shipping rates. For instance, you can say, “All orders above $25 get free shipping.” You can also set rules like whether customers need to pay sales tax.

From here, you need to pick a theme on Shopify. You can play around to see which design fits your brand identity.

For instance, if you wanna build a luxury brand, it’s probably better to pick something minimalistic and sleek.

Go ahead and add a theme.

You’ll be taken to their drag-and-drop editor, where you can customize just about any aspect of your store.

You can do all kinds of stuff like add your hero’s image and logo, edit the typography, incorporate featured products, customize the call to action button, etc.

After that, you need to upload and import all of the products to your store.

Here’s what your product page could look like.

Once you get all your products uploaded, everything else is gravy on top.

Explore the Shopify app store and install any extras that would be beneficial to boosting sales.

For example, here’s a few ideas:

• Upsell and cross-sell app
• Email marketing service
• Sales funnel builder
• A countdown timer add-on
• A loyalty program app
• Pop-up form builder

There’s a lot you can do. Keep in mind most apps cost extra, so your expenses can rack up quickly.

Once you have your store built and ready to go, it’s time to start advertising!

4. Advertise Your Products

Advertising takes a lot of skill and is something that can’t be taught on a blog. That said, you have two options.

1. Organic traffic methods – You post social media content and drive them to your store.
2. Paid traffic methods- You run Facebook, Google Shopping, Influencer Marketing, or TikTok ads.

Organic ads can work if you’re really good at making viral TikTok videos. This store generated a few hundred impressions just from one post. If you’re tight on budget, organic traffic is a free method and can help you get the ball rolling.

Paid traffic is the best way to go because it’ll start getting visitors to your store immediately.

For dropshipping ads, I recommend Facebook or TikTok ads. That’s because these products don’t have a lot of high search traffic on Google, which makes it less effective to do Google Shopping ads.

To create the video ad creative I recommend filming a user-generated video if possible or mashing up content you find online. The supplier usually has some video content or customer videos you can use.

A general rule of thumb for video ads is:

• Keep it under a minute-long
• Open the video ad with a relatable problem
• Add subtitles that line up with the video
• Include background music

It’s a good idea to hire a video editor with experience creating dropshipping ads. Just have them send you a handful of ads per product so you can test the creative to see which performs the best.

When you’re inside the ad manager of Facebook or TikTok, you’re gonna need to set the ad budget and target audience.

Every guru has their opinion on the ad budget. It’s always best to start small and work your way up.

You can see target visitors by all types of demographics and interests. For the pet water bowl product, I can simply target dog and cat owners with a propensity to buy pet products.

It’s a good idea to test multiple audiences, ad creatives, and even product pages to see which has the best-performing conversion rates.

You’re gonna tinker with the ads until you find ones that are profitable.

Then, cut out all the unprofitable ad sets and scale the profitable ones by increasing the ad budget or expanding to related audiences.

5. FulFill Orders

Once the sales start rolling in, you’re not done yet. Now you gotta actually fulfill those orders.

There’s the easy way to fulfill orders, and then there’s the hard way.

The hard way is manually entering all of your customer details for each order. That means entering their name, address, email, etc.. That’s just asking for human error.

The better way is to automate the process.

Tools like AutoDS and Dropified can take the workload off your shoulders.

It will sync your Shopify store to your Aliexpress account (or wherever you source products). When orders roll around, the software automatically places the orders with your credit card.

Then, all orders are updated within the software and Shopify app. Email notifications will automatically be sent to the customer so they can track the progress of the delivery.

Here’s what it would look like on the backend of your Shopify site.

Make sure to have a business support email so if customers ask questions or make refund requests; you can answer them promptly to avoid potential penalties from Shopify or your payment provider.

6. Handle Your Business Finances

Now, you’ll want to set up all the legalities of your online store, such as the business structure.

There are four common business structures:

• Sole proprietorship
• Partnership
• Limited liability company (LLC)
• Corporation

It’s best to seek legal counsel to ensure you pick the right option for you. Most dropshippers would benefit from an LLC because it provides personal liability protection.

If someone decides to sue you, they can’t take your personal assets like your house and car.

Besides that, you should also create a business bank account so that you can separate personal and business finances. Believe me, it’ll save you a lot of headache when doing your taxes.

7. Scale Your Business

At this point, you now have profitable products that are churning sales, and you have a legitimate business entity.

You’re gonna wanna diversify your marketing methods and boost sales by incorporating:

• Search engine optimization: Optimize your product pages with keywords and Google’s best practices. Consider publishing how-to guides and listicles to feature your best-selling products.
• Email marketing: 70% of shoppers abandon their carts. Your ad spending is all for naught if you don’t know how to follow up with abandoned visitors. That requires creating email abandoned cart sequences and running retargeting ads to remind visitors to complete their purchases.
• Influencer marketing and user-generated content: Branding builds trust and credibility, which is something that all successful e-commerce stores understand. You can build your brand name by getting influencers to rep your products and customers to promote it via word of mouth on social media.

Conclusion – Should You Learn How to Drop Ship?

There you have it!

I’ve handed you a business plan on a silver platter, so now you’re ready to go out there and build your ecom business from scratch.

But.. before you start your dropshipping journey, you may wanna reconsider.

I know I went on a long spiel telling you all about dropshipping, and I hate to go a full 180 on you. But if you’re an action taker like myself, I wanna give you a few words of wisdom.

Life is precious.

Even if you’re in your 20s, do you really have the time to spin your wheels for months, if not years?!

Wouldn’t you wanna achieve financial freedom in the shortest time possible so you could spend the most time with your loved ones?

While I think dropshipping could work, there’s a lot of risk involved. Ad accounts can shut down, suppliers can turn on you, and competition is stiff…

Worst of all, you’re riding on thin ice since margins are ultra-slim..

If you have grandiose dreams of firing your boss and living the digital nomad lifestyle, I would check out the Digital Rental Method instead and let go of your dropshipping aspirations.

I was in your shoes years ago.. And if I were to do it all over again, I would skip dropshipping altogether.. That way, I don’t have to deal with all the mess and struggles that come with it.. If I had known about the Digital Rental Method earlier, I woulda hopped on board faster so that I didn’t have to waste precious years of my life..

So, my gift to you is saving you time.

You have two choices.

Take the blue pill and continue down the false promises of dropshipping..

OR

The red pill, where you have the opportunity to change your financial fortune for you and your loved ones.

My #1 Alternative For Making Money Online In 2024

I’ve personally tried all of the major online business models:

• I’ve drop-shipped a toilet-bowl putting green on Shopify
• I’ve drop-shipped jade rollers via Clickfunnels
• I’ve sold fidget spinners through Amazon FBA
• I’ve sold women’s health supplements via Clickbank affiliate marketing

And I made money with all of them, so trust me when I say there is no “perfect” business model.

That being said, my #1 recommendation for making real money online is, hands-down, the Digital Rental Method.

Whether you’re a complete newbie or you’ve been around the block before but have never had that “big win” to propel you forward, the Digital Rental Method is for you.

Why?

1)Time: If you’ve got a spare hour or two each day, you can do this. If you want to drop everything and go all in, you can do this. More time obviously means faster results, but even putting in a few hours per day is enough to see real success.

And because of that flexibility, you don’t need to trade your time for money. Once the income starts, it’s recurring.

That means you can take a month off, travel the country, pursue a passion project, chill on the beach, or charter a boat across the world.

But you can only do that once you’ve created an income stream that doesn’t require YOU to be there all day, every day.

2) Ownership & Control: With dropshipping, you don’t actually own anything. You can’t control your product quality or even what the package looks like when it shows up.

Technically, you own your Shopify site… but ad platforms could shut you down at a moment’s notice… so you don’t really have much control there.

Why pour your soul into a business that could be taken away from you at the drop of a dime?

When you run a Digital Rental empire, you literally own all of the assets, which means you have ultimate control.

3) Fulfillment: Alright, so you don’t have any inventory… but that worry has been replaced with the pains of overseas fulfillment.

That means your customer is going to have to wait 3-4 weeks to receive their order.

Then add in the current global supply chain woes… and you’re looking at 5-6-7 weeks!

Then the customer slaps you with a refund, and all of that time spent testing and spending money on ads was for nothing.

You don’t have to worry about any of that when you’re renting out digital properties.

4) It’s Effectively Copy-Paste: Here’s my favorite part: once you have your first Digital Rental Property up, you can literally copy-paste another version of it and find another willing “renter” in a few days. DOUBLING your income doesn’t get much easier than that…

If you wanted to double your income with dropshipping, you would need to sell twice as much inventory or double your profit margins. And I can guarantee you (from my Shopify dropshipping days) that’s a lot harder than a few clicks & a phone call.

5) Big Margins: With dropshipping, you’re often going to have really slim margins. That means you need to hit a serious scale to make serious money. This usually entails spending A LOT of money on ads and other methods for growing traffic to your product.

When you follow the Digital Rental Method, your profit margin is nearly 100%. Watch here to learn how.

Just a reminder: these Digital Rental Properties are worth (at a minimum) $500/mo in semi-passive income. And each time you create another one, your income increases, and the effort put into creating the next property decreases.

Best case scenario, you have properties bringing in over $3,000+/mo on auto-pilot.

6) You’re Helping REAL People: My biggest gripe with dropshipping is that you’re usually finding some product that’s complete garbage and tricking people into buying it. It provides no real value to them or to the world in general.

It’s cool in the short term to make a quick buck, but in the long term, it gets really old, really fast. 

But as the owner of a Digital Rental business, you’re helping solve REAL problems that people are ASKING for help with.

Small local businesses around the world need one thing: customers. Without them, their business would fall apart. If we can provide those customers, they’re going to be really happy – and they’re going to pay you for it.

You’re helping a struggling mother or father put FOOD on the table for their families, put their kids through college, or simply live life a little bit more comfortably.

Having this type of impact on the world is what will help you sleep soundly at night.

So, the rest is up to you. You could keep looking at ways to dropshipping tutorials, which might make you money 12 months from now.

You could keep researching and researching for the next few months (or a few years), never making a concrete decision.

OR, you can look deep inside, think about those dreams, hopes, & desires, and make the decision to ACTUALLY make it happen, just like it has for thousands of other students before you.

Making a fortune while actually helping real people who need it.

If this sounds like you, click here to see how it all works.