Drop Shipping on a Budget: Getting Started for Just $20
So if you’re a beginner that want to start Drop Shipping, of course if you have a big budget you’re going to be able to invest in various different aspects of a Drop Shipping business that’s going to increase your chances of being successful. But in saying that, realistically all you need when it comes to getting started is probably going to be around $20. So if you’re able to find $20, that’s going to be more than enough when it comes to getting your store up and running and putting yourself in a position where you can start getting orders coming through the door.
Now in today’s article what I want to do is focus on the four main steps that goes into Building A Drop Shipping business. I’m going to take you through each of these different steps and explain how you can do each one with the least amount of money possible. So if you’re someone that does have a low budget make sure that you stick around for this entire video from start to finish because you’re definitely going to learn something that’s going to put you on the fast track when it comes to Building A Drop Shipping Store with the least amount of money.
The Education Phase: Free Resources for Drop Shipping Success
All right so let’s jump straight into one of the first steps which is the education phase. So what you’re doing right now is that you’re educating yourself and of course you don’t need a lot of money when it comes to education. There’s courses out there that charge thousands of dollars. You know I wouldn’t say that’s necessary because there’s a lot of free education on the internet. A article like this is perfect and I’ve got hundreds of article on my website that’s also perfect as well and in addition to that I’ve also got a completely free course as well.
I spent a lot of time building a step-by-step Drop Shipping course that anyone is going to be able to access for free. Now a lot of the information that I’m going to talk about in today’s article is also going to be in the course but I’m going to be able to spend a little bit more time walking you through everything in that course. So straight after reading this article.
Finding Winning Products: TikTok and ZEK Analytics
I would say that this is probably the official step that you need to take in the direction of getting your Drop Shipping business off the ground and there’s so many different ways that you can do product research when it comes to finding a winning product. Some methods are somewhat expensive and there’s also cheap methods out there as well and of course in this article I’m focusing on those of you that don’t have a big budget.
So if you are someone that is looking to find products that may be selling well from my own experience the cheapest way that you can do that is to go directly onto TikTok. So as you can see I’m just going to set up a screen recording over here and I’ve just logged into my TikTok account and what you’re going to do is just type in TikTok made me buy it and then from here you’re going to see all of these different articles, all of these different profiles, they’re uploading all of these different products that nine times out of 10 they’re going to be Drop Shipping them.
So literally within a few minutes you saw me go from not knowing what product I want to sell to going onto TikTok and finding someone that is Drop Shipping a product that is widely available on various different Drop Shipping suppliers websites but if I just jump onto my MacBook quickly just to give you guys a clearer look at the store. So this is what it is right here. Now I do want to emphasize that of course you can go onto TikTok type in TikTok made me buy it and you’re going to be able to get an idea of all of these different trending products but from my own personal opinion that’s just one part of the puzzle because you’re not going to be able to know just by looking at a store just like this if they’re successful or not.
So my recommendation is to sign up to something called ZEK analytics and remember at the start of this article when I said that you’re going to need around $20 when it comes to getting started, $1 of those $20 is going to go towards ZEK analytics because you’re going to be able to use this tool when it comes to spying on how much money a particular store is making. So when it comes to signing up you.
Building Your Store: AI Store Builder and Shopify
So of course if you’re someone that doesn’t have a big budget when it comes to designing and building a website you’re not going to be able to go over to websites like Upwork or Fiverr and pay someone $150 $200 for them to get your Drop Shipping Store built.
So literally all you got to do is just click on this link over here that says build my free store then you got to enter your name email address and password click on next then it’s going to give you these options when it comes to a niche. So whatever store you’re going to build whatever products you’re going to be selling you’re going to select the appropriate Niche over here. So of course the example that I’m using in today’s video is the projector so the niche that I would select is electronics and gadgets and then the AI store Builder is going to take you directly to Shopify and this is where you’re going to now spend a little bit more of that $20 budget which is another $1 where you’re going to pay for a Shopify trial.
So again it’s only $1, you’re going to be able to use Shopify for an entire month no restrictions whatsoever. So right now we’re up to $2. So complete the trial application, doesn’t take long, you just need to insert your details insert your card details and from there you’re going to pay the $1, your Shopify trial is going to be activated then there’s going to be a couple different steps which doesn’t take more than a couple minutes but once you’ve completed that you’re then going to see that the store is now live.
So what you got to do is just click on access my store over here and as you can see this is the AI built store it’s a great foundation for you to work from you’re going to be able to make any changes that you want to it and just another reminder that if you wanted to build a store just like this 5 months ago a year ago you would have had to have paid someone maybe $250. With many of the Shopify stores that I’ve built and I’ve ran over the years I’ve had to pay out thousands of dollars to various different web designers for them to build it for me. Now of course I’ve built various different stores myself but just to speed up time I’ve always paid someone but nowadays I don’t need to pay anyone because I’ve got this that gives me a solid foundation and I’m going to be able to make any changes to it that I need to.
Now once your store has been built there is going to be some changes that you need to make in the back end. You need to go through the settings and update things to your own personal information. One of the first things that you’re going to need to do is sign up for Shopify payments so go through that process because if you don’t then you’re not going to have a way for you to receive money from your customers. You also want to complete all of these policy Pages as well but one of the next things that I would recommend that you do is buy a custom domain to your store.
Now some people out there would recommend that you just stick with the my.shopify.com domain that they give you and that’s definitely something that you can do because you don’t have to obviously buy a domain you’re going to be able to just use that one but you know a new domain doesn’t cost any more than $15 or so. For example if you just come over here to The Domain section in the back end of your Shopify account as you can see if I wanted to buy this domain over here gogo projector.com it’s only going to cost $15 and that’s going to renew every year.
So you’ve got two options you can use the my Shopify one if you wanted to maybe if you just want to test the product out or what you can do is just shell out $15 and instantly you’re going to be able to give your store a professional look but we’re still on step number three which is building your store and one of the final parts that goes into this process is loading your store with the winning product that you found. Now this isn’t expensive to do because there’s different ways that you can do it. There’s the manual way and there’s also the automated way.
Now the manual way involves you going over to your suppliers website copy and pasting the images the description the item specifications and pasting it into the back end of your Shopify account. That’s definitely one way that you can go and it’s probably the cheapest way as well and I’d maybe recommend it if you’re a complete beginner that’s just getting started and you’re just trying to understand how everything works but the only issue with the manual method is that every single time that you make a sale you’re going to have to now go over to your supplier’s website copy and paste your buyer’s information buy the item from your supplier and there’s no real automation when it comes to the manual method.
So if you want to take a bit more of a professional approach when it comes to starting your Drop Shipping Journey what you can do is sign up to something called AutoDS. Now this is only going to cost $1 as well and you’re going to be able to use it for an entire 30 days and there’s a number of reasons why I would recommend that you use AutoDS try it out see if it’s something that you want to continue using because firstly you’re going to be able to search their Marketplace for the item that you want to sell and you’re going to be able to find various different options for various different suppliers that are offering that particular product and you’re also going to be able to of course connect your AutoDS account to your Shopify account as well and by the way to access that 30-day.
Once you’ve clicked that link you’ve created your account what you’re going to need to do is click on ADD store then select this first option over here that says I have a Shopify store connected to AutoDS and right here this is the product that I want to load onto my store. So all I got to do is just click on import draft over here. From here I’m going to have the option to update the title update the description you know take a look at the variance take a look at the images remove any images that I don’t want and if I’m happy with everything or I’ve made all the changes that I’ve made and I’ve also selected stock monitoring and price monitoring as well so that if the item becomes out of stock or the price changes AutoDS are going to monitor it and update my listing accordingly once I’ve done all of this on this page over here I then need to click on Save and import and within a few seconds as you can see it’s now been completed.
So if I want to view it in my store all I need to do is just click on this link over here and right there as you can see I’ve got a fully built store I’ve got a product loaded on it where I know someone is actively making over $100,000 in a single month and for me to have gotten to this point I would have only spent maybe Max $17 and again if I didn’t want the domain then all I would have probably paid is around $3 and this actually now brings me on to the fourth step for this process that I’m sure that most of you are probably thinking right now which is Sam everything is great that you showed me I’m actually blown away that I don’t need that much money when it comes to getting a fully built Shopify store up and running but how exactly am I going to get customers onto my store for them to even buy the item in the first place.