How to Start a Dropshipping Business In 2024: The New Era Guide

Wondering how to start a dropshipping business? Or, are you in doubt if you can do it? No worries, I got you covered! In fact, it’s easier to get into than almost any other type of business.

In a nutshell, dropshipping is an online business model that lets you sell products without actually holding any stock. Once a buyer purchases one of your products, you instantly order the same product from your dropshipping supplier and you get to keep the difference.

So, in this era of limitless possibilities, one business model stands out as the epitome of flexibility, low risk, and high reward – dropshipping. As we step into 2024, the dropshipping game has evolved, presenting even more avenues for success and financial independence.

Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur exploring new ventures or a budding enthusiast ready to take the plunge, this blog is your definitive guide to mastering the art of dropshipping in 2024.

Thus, fasten your seatbelts because I am about to embark on a journey that could reshape your financial destiny! Let’s learn how to start dropshipping with a minimum budget & more!

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Step 1: Choose a Niche

A niche dropshipping store is a store that sells only a certain type of product. For example, pet products, kitchen products, etc.

👉 Check out the 15 Trending Kitchen Dropshipping Products To Sell Online.

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Separating yourself from the general eCommerce market gives you several advantages, including:

• You can easily target your ideal audience
• It’s easier to sell products if you’re an expert in that niche
• You have less competition to deal with

If you’re having trouble choosing which niche to start a dropshipping business in, then consider the following tips:

• Choose based on your passions or something you are an expert in (automotive industry, pets, home decor…)

• Do a simple Google search for the market size of the niche you’re considering. If it’s not at least a multi-million-dollar industry then it’s probably not worth it to start a drop shipping business in that niche.

• Use tools like Niche Scraper, Ecomhunt, Sell The Trend, FindNiche, and Google Trends to get inspired and find interesting dropshipping niches or products.

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Step 2: Choose a Platform

When you’re first learning how to start dropshipping, you should avoid building custom online stores or hiring developers. There’s absolutely no need. The only platforms you should be using are the following (choose one):

Sell The Trend

Sell The Trend is a dropshipping platform that can help you find profitable products to sell, create a pretty decent online store in just a few minutes, and offer tons of images and videos for you to use as advertising material.

Main Features

• Product research insights analytics
• Shopify, AliExpress, CJ Dropshipping, and WooCommerce integrations
• Simple Facebook ad builder
• One-click dropshipping store builder
• Automated order fulfillment
• Video creator

Shopify

Shopify is the most popular online store-building platform today. It has a drag-and-drop editor that can build wonderful high-converting stores. There are also tons of themes that let you create highly-customizable branded stores for any niche.

👉 Learn How To Open and Manage Multiple Shopify Stores (Tips + Apps).

Main Features

• Drag-and-drop website builder
• Tons of themes for a stunning store
• Countless automation tools
• Thousands of apps to help run your store
• Order automation
• Customer analytics
• Lots of free tools to help scale

BigCommerce

BigCommerce can support enterprise-level stores and offers the perfect solution for when you’re trying to scale your store through the roof. The platform has a massive ecosystem that will support absolutely any need for starting and scaling a dropshipping store. Thus, it is a great option if you want to start dropshipping.

Main Features

• Page builder visual editor
• Customizations for checkout, mobile, and other
• A massive list of supported integrations
• SEO tools
• Cross-channel selling support
• International selling tools
• Smart scaling tools
• Security

Weebly eCommerce

The Weebly eCommerce website builder offers a simple way to create clean, elegant, and optimized websites to sell your products on. It has all the necessary optimization tools to allow customers to have a great time in your store.

Main Features

• Easy website customization
• Edit and manage everything from your mobile device
• Powerful design tools
• An app center
• SEO tools
• Statistics and analytics

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a free WordPress theme that gives you all the tools you’ll ever need to run a dropshipping store on a WordPress website. It integrates with your WordPress site and becomes a powerful tool to help you customize your dream store.

Main Features

• All the benefits of WordPress plus countless plug-ins to help manage your store
• Customization tools

There are many more, but any one of these will be perfect for running a dropshipping store. If you’re just learning how to dropship or how to start a dropshipping store from scratch, most of these platforms have free trials so you don’t waste your money while you’re figuring everything out.

💡 Tip: Learn about The 8 Best GoDaddy Alternatives For E-Shop Hosting In 2024

Step 3: Source Your Products

After choosing your ideal dropshipping niche and selecting the platform you want to sell on, it’s finally time to find a good product and choose a supplier to ship it to you.

Here’s how you find a supplier for your dropshipping business:

The easiest way to do this is to source them straight from the dropshipping.com supplier directory. We’ve compiled an endless list of the best and most reliable dropshipping suppliers, categorized by location, niche, pricing, and more factors.

For example, if you want to sell in the US, you can search from a list of only the best dropshipping suppliers in the USA. 

The next step lies in contacting your ideal supplier and working out a great deal for both you and them. Send them a simple email with your business goals and proposals.

Just make sure you don’t ask for too much. Try to get the price down if you can but be willing to accept the original price if they reject your offer.

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Step 4: Build Your Online Store

You have your niche, your product, and your ideal supplier. The next step in this dropshipping guide is to create your online store on the platform you chose earlier.

Before you start designing your store, you need to purchase a domain first. Don’t worry, it shouldn’t cost you more than around $10-$15. Just go on GoDaddy.com, search for a short and unique domain name, and buy it.

Next, create an account on the dropshipping platform that you chose and connect your domain. There are tons of videos online on how to do this, so you shouldn’t struggle. Just search something like “how to connect a domain to X store.” The “X” can stand for Shopify, WooCommerce, or any other platform.

Lastly, take your time and start designing. The best part is that all of these online eCommerce store platforms have drag & drop editors. So, this part should also be a piece of cake. 

But just in case, here is a comprehensive guide on building an eCommerce store from scratch. It will help you out a lot.

💡 Tip: Read about Shopify vs. Custom Store for Dropshipping – What’s Better & Why?

Step 5: Marketing and Advertising

The next goal in your journey toward building a successful dropship online business is to bring visitors to your site. That is the main goal of marketing – getting people to see your product.

Hence, the majority of beginners will ask how to get started with drop shipping without even knowing anything about marketing.

There are two main ways: paid marketing and organic marketing.

Moreover, the way to decide which one to use is to answer this question: “Do I currently have more time or more money to spare?” 

If you have more time, do organic marketing. If you have more money, go with paid marketing, it’s much faster.

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Here are the main marketing channels you can consider promoting your product and dropshipping store on:

Facebook (Paid Marketing)

Facebook ads for dropshipping offer a relatively easy and fast way to start making money. Thus, all you have to do is learn how to create a good ad and which audience you need to target. Then, launch the ad to attract people who want to buy your product.

TikTok (Paid & Organic Marketing)

TikTok marketing is absolutely excellent for both paid and organic marketing when it comes to an online dropshipping business. 

One video can go viral and bring you millions of visitors. On the other hand, you can create high-converting and engaging TikTok ads and instantly present them in front of your target audience.

👉 Check out the 100+ TikTok Bio Ideas For Your Dropshipping Business In 2024.

Google Ads (Paid Marketing)

The main benefit of Google Ads for dropshipping is that you don’t pay upfront like with Facebook Ads. Instead, you simply insert your budget and only pay when someone clicks on your ad.

Now, the more people click and the better your product page is, the more sales you will have. It’s as simple as that. 

Email Marketing (Organic & Paid Marketing)

Email marketing for dropshipping is a very worthwhile thing to do. Hence,Email marketing in general offers massive ROI and has incredible conversion rates. However, you have to get good at it but it’s not that difficult to learn.

It basically involves creating customized email flows that your customers receive and will potentially buy more from you again, and again, and again.

SEO & Content Marketing (Organic Marketing)

This may offer an organic way to attract new and very targeted visitors to your dropshipping store, but it requires a lot of investment, both time and money.

SEO for dropshipping is difficult but can yield incredible results for years to come, once you set up the right foundations.

Step 6: Fulfillment and Shipping

Nowadays, fast shipping is almost a requirement when it comes to whether you will succeed as a dropshipper or not. When learning how to dropship, you simply must find suppliers that will ship fast. The faster, the better. Anything over two weeks is already too long.

When you decide to start a dropshipping business, talk to your suppliers about shipping times first. If it’s short (only a couple of days), then you’re good to proceed to the next step.

So, you need tracking for your shipments. Customers feel much safer and more comfortable when buying from you if they can track their orders. So, ensure that your supplier also offers this information.

Moreover, as for fulfillment, platforms like Shopify, Sell The Trend, and most others already offer automated fulfillment. So, once you set up everything with your suppliers, you won’t really have to worry about order fulfillment.

💡  LEARN: What Does Shipped Mean In Dropshipping?

Conclusion

Following these six steps will help you track your progress and always know what the next part of the job is. It will offer a clear path to success and eliminate any confusion along the way.

Remember to stay patient and enjoy the journey. The next time you ask yourself “What is a dropshipping business?”, refer to this guide for help.

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