How to Start Dropshipping For Free? Beginners Guide

If you’ve heard about dropshipping and want to know how to start dropshipping without money, this article will help you get started.

Dropshipping might be the solution for you if you’re considering starting an online business but have little spare time to handle orders and less money to stock things. Dropshipping is an e-commerce strategy that, especially if you’re short on time, makes it incredibly simple to launch an online business.

You’re lucky if you want to start your dropshipping business right away without having to pay any money in advance!

What Is Dropshipping? Is Dropshipping Worth It?

1. What is dropshipping?

How to start dropshipping for free? First, you must understand what the exact dropshipping business is.

Dropshipping is a kind of online retail business in which the owner doesn’t keep the products in stock. Your suppliers, instead, will be in charge of inventory management. You just act like a middleman who finds customers and then sends the orders to the suppliers.

Recently, many people have chosen to start dropshipping with no money because of its distinct advantages, such as low-cost and time-saving investment. With drop shipping, you don’t have to worry about a considerable amount of money and other risks if the business comes nowhere.

2. Is dropshipping worth it?

Yes, absolutely! Dropshipping will be the most lucrative business model if you pick a suitable niche, implement an effective marketing plan, and enhance your customer service.

Dropshipping should be at the top of your list when you are about to kick off an online business.

How to Start Dropshipping with No Money

Explore a streamlined 5-step approach to kickstart your free dropshipping business. Begin by selecting your products, identifying reliable suppliers such as CJdropshipping or AliExpress, choosing your sales platform, and then testing and promoting your online store to get things rolling.

Let’s get into detail!

1. Decide your products

The first and foremost thing you have to do is to decide which products you target. The right product is the golden goose that has a significant role in both attracting your first customers and developing your future business.

Here are some recommendations for you when you start dropshipping for free:

• Choose to sell products that you are passionate about
• Look for items with positive reviews
• Visit other dropshipping-related sites to keep up with an endless list of trendy products actively.

2. Find reliable dropshipping suppliers

Because you don’t manage and store your products, the quality of the products is heavily dependent on suppliers. Finding trusted suppliers not only assists you in getting a reasonable price but also ensures the quality of your products when they are delivered to customers.

That means you must choose suppliers with extreme caution when commencing dropshipping for no money. 

Firstly, you should ensure that the products are as advertised. Then check to see if the quantity and quality meet your requirements.

Here are some suggested questions you should ask yourself to check whether the suppliers satisfy your needs or not:

• How do they handle product returns or damage?
• How long does it take them from sale to delivery and complete an order?
• Do they provide protection against fraud?
• Can you find online reviews or references related to the suppliers?

Step 3: Set up Your Free Online Store

Now it comes to the key part, setting up your online store. The process includes the design of your store, the homepage and the images of your store, adding products to your store, setting up payment methods, adding checkout, and shipping settings as well as buying a domain and opening your store for orders.

When it comes to cost, you indeed can get a free online store if you have the technology to build one for yourself. Otherwise, you have to pay for your website and hosting.

What’s more, you could set up your online store on your social media account, such as Facebook, Instagram, etc. This will not cost you any money, however, you should also know the risks, if the account does not have enough followers, it could be a problem for you to promote your products.

If you want to make a lot of money, you’d better invest in other platforms to start your online store. It will cost you some money and time, however, you don’t need to spend too much money on your store decoration, store design, etc.

There are many platforms you can choose from, including Shopify, BigCommerce, Dukaan, Squarespace and WooCommerce. Shopify is the most popular one and suitable for beginners.It offers a 14-day free trial.

Shopify

If you want to have an online store that is free or at a low price, Shopify is a favorable choice. A unique domain name for your store can make it more attractive so you can buy one from Shopify or WordPress etc.

What’s more, though you can try it free in 14 days, its paid plans can provide you a lot of features.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce costs as much like Shopify, however, with a Shopify plan you could save 10% on your plan when you sign up for one year, and save 20% when you sign up for two years.

That means, with a 20% discount, you’ll save almost $200 per year on the Shopify plan.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is established on WordPress. WooCommerce is a plug-in that can be easily integrated with your existing WordPress website. With just a few clicks, your website can become a fully functional WordPress e-commerce website.

From the above comparison, the pros of Shopify are obvious especially for those who don’t have much money for their budget.

Since the costs of Shopify are lower than that of BigCommerce and WooCommerce, Shopify is much cheaper to start your online store.

Step 4: Choose a Free Dropshipping Tool

A great dropshipping tool could help dropshippers to do their dropshipping business easily, allowing them to find different suppliers around the world.

DSers has a lot of useful features to help you achieve most of your dropshipping goals for free. It will sync order information automatically, allow you to manage your multiple stores with one account, provide 24/7 support services, process orders to AliExpress, make payment in bulk, find multiple AliExpress supplier options in one click, and more.

DSers is compatible with different e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce and Wix. Most importantly, it’s fully free with a couple of features.

Step 5: Start Marketing Your Products

Your business is now ready, it’s time to market your products. There are three top marketing tactics to get more sales rolling in.

• SEO – SEO stands for “search engine optimization”, you should optimize it so that your online store site could get a higher rank of Google search results and ultimately, more traffic.
• Social Media – Pick the right social media channel for your business, in other words, not all the products or stores should be promoted on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. You should choose the most suitable social media for your products.
• Email Marketing – As its name suggests, Email Marketing means that you could send an email to introduce your latest launch of new products or your discount activities. It’s a powerful and cost-effective way to attract and engage your customers. For more details you can check the What Is Email Marketing article.

If you want to start your dropshipping business for free, paid advertisement seems not to be an ideal option for you. The power of advertisement is unbelievable, but cooperation with professional social media content creators which is called the influencer marketing can cost a lot of money.You could discover people who are popular on their Facebook or Instagram account in their social network, they have their own network, and they might not cost as much money as professional ambassadors.

Also, you can use your own network of family and friends. Some of them maybe interested in some of the products you sell, you could give them some samples and ask them to post on social media and share with their friends about your brand and what you offer. The important thing is that you don’t need to invest so much money to promote your products through them.

Tips on How to Start Dropshipping for Free

1. Select qualified products

Anyone going with a business wants to make profits from the items as much as possible. So, sometimes they are willing to invest in unqualified products to minimize input and maximize profit. However, sooner or later, the customers will realize and never come back to buy from their stores anymore.

The most important thing that helps you to retarget customers is the value of your product. High-quality products with reasonable prices are the best marketing strategy to build a sustainable business of dropshipping with no money.

2. Build a strong brand

Buying online has become a hot trend in this decade. Instead of visiting to see how your brick-and-mortar store is, people tend to spend time looking for information and review about your brand before buying.

This is the reason why you should focus on promoting your brand. Customers will trust well-known stores that have received widespread praise, even if they have never purchased from these stores before.

A strong brand also helps you to beat out today’s fierce competition. 

Furthermore, you may totally create a strong brand without investing any money.

Zero-cost marketing campaign on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram is a good choice for dropshipping for no money.

3. Provide excellent customer service

Besides the quality of the products and the branding, customers now care more about customer service. They will be satisfied and want to return for a second purchase if you provide good service.

Excellent customer service is shown by how you market your products, communicate with customers, and provide solutions to any unfavorable situations. 

It doesn’t cost you anything to provide the best customer service. You may still treat your customers with the utmost kindness when dropshipping with no money. Friendly assistance, a thank you card, and a supportive community are a few examples to improve your customer service. Your commitment to great customer service sets you distinct.

Dropshipping With No Money: Pros & Cons

How to start dropshipping for free? To start dropshipping for free, you must understand all benefits and challenges that may arise!

1. Dropshipping pros

1.1. Save time and effort

If you own a physical store, it will take you a lot of time and effort to buy or rent a space, set up a real store, hire employees, and so on. It seems to be daunting to tackle all the tasks with just yourself.

However, if you learn how to start with dropshipping for free, you can save time and effort setting up your business. In addition, keeping track of your sales requires simply a computer and an internet connection. You can contact vendors on the other side of the world by using messaging programs like Skype or Viber, or by email.

1.2. Minimize risks

Stocking a warehouse costs plenty of money. Using dropshipping will help you avoid the risk of incurring debt to launch your firm.

You can launch a dropshipping business with zero inventory and start making money right away, as opposed to investing much in inventory and hoping it sells. Dropshipping enables you to update your inventory fast, conveniently, and affordably without the limitations of a physical inventory and expenses.

1.3. Start with low-cost

How much money do you need to start dropshipping? The answer is you can try dropshipping with no money.

There are no up-front fees for inventory or a warehouse where you keep your goods. In addition, since the products are supplied directly by your suppliers, you can avoid paying shipping and packing costs.

2. Dropshipping cons

2.1. Depend on suppliers

Suppliers are in charge of products’ storing, packaging, and delivery. Therefore, the dropshipping business model does not allow you to inspect the items before buyers receive them personally.

Nevertheless, your brand will take full responsibility for any product issues (such as those related to expiration dates, for example). This drawback is inevitable because the providers might make errors. You had better prepare for it.

While the product is the core of every business, dropshipping with no money always limits you from customizing and improving the quality of your products. You cannot change the composition of those because suppliers are responsible for their design and production. You won’t be able to use product customization to create any unique selling features (USPs).

2.2. Compete with others

A large number of store owners are also eager how to start dropshipping for free because it is quite simple to get started with.

According to Google Trends statistics, dropshipping searches have tripled over the last five years. It demonstrates the rapidly expanding interest in dropshipping. Therefore you should get ready for fierce competition.

Finding the dropshipping niches will be more difficult for you because there are many dropshippers like you in one playground. Moreover, the earlier ones have covered almost all markets and product categories. Thus, in order to differentiate yourself from the competition, you must invest a lot of time and energy in market research and brainstorming.

How to Start Dropshipping for Free? – Requirements

Starting a business of any kind is somewhat challenging, even with dropshipping for free. So the first step is to get yourself ready to face difficulties. Persistence and perseverance will help you overcome obstacles and grow your business.

Furthermore, you must devote significant time and effort to each stage, from selecting products and suppliers to promoting your store. This is extremely important for those who want to start dropshipping with no money because it’s hard to outsource the work.

How to Start Dropshipping for Free? – Final Words

Starting a dropshipping business is straightforward, and there are tools available to simplify the process. After grasping the 5 steps to commence your free dropshipping venture, it’s time to put your business idea into action without any upfront costs. Once your online business is up and running, remember to promote your products effectively to generate sales. Conduct research to select the most suitable marketing methods for your store and products before diving into dropshipping, as advertisements can be a valuable means to drive traffic.