Shopify Dropshipping Review (Let’s Set One Up Together)

A little curious about how you can start a dropshipping store with Shopify?

Rock on:

After all, at the end of the day with eCommerce, you’re selling something online.

You just don’t always want to develop your own product on your own.

And this is where dropshipping can be super handy.

Especially:

With an eCommerce website builder like Shopify.

In fact:

I could care less if you even know anything about website building

Because they cater to everyone like that and up in skill level.

Ok, I know you’re itching to get started

So:

Let me fill you in a bit

Shopify Dropshipping Review Summary

What Is Shopify Dropshipping?

Basically, you’re selling it on your site and when it sells it goes right from the manufacturer to your customer:

Or, as Shopify puts it

Quick side note:  Oberlo is Shopify’s main dropshipping platform manufacturers list their products on and you choose from.

Let’s do an onboarding process for dropshipping with Shopify (Print on demand)

Just below will check one way with Oberlo (you will learn more)

But let’s just stare at it together from the home screen to the finish

I’m personally starting at their dedicated dropshipping page

I went ahead and hit the start free trial and answered some questions.

These can be important because they will create a tailored dashboard for you.

From here I answered them all and got to my dashboard.

1 question within the onboarding process is this

Imagine if I skipped this and got to my dashboard.

There is a good chance I really wouldn’t know fully what to look for.

So here is my customized setup guide

If you’re following along it should be similar

So, the first thing it asks me is to add a product

Personally, I want to find one first.

So for me, that first task doesn’t have as much value

So let me see what that second one does which is “find products to sell”

Once I hit this it brought me over to the Shopify App Store to check out all the apps I’d connect to be able to dropship

Now you can’t see the whole screen, but the recommended products below that you have categories fully broken down title dropshipping, print on demand, and wholesale.

The one I’m actually going to pick is “Printful: Pring On Demand”

I was tempted by AliExpress but for now, I’m checking this one out.

I went ahead and clicked on it and got to the add app screen for Printful

It’s now taking me to the install screen.

So once I hit install It’s now taking me over to Printful to sign up and connect my Shopify store.

Ok ok, I think this makes sense.

I answered everything and when it got to the question of “what would you like to do with Printful” I entered to start my first online business.

So, from here were now on the Printful dashboard and I personally don’t feel lost at all.

The onboarding for this is still super seamless.

Let’s go ahead and hit the add product 

Ok, and then the next screen is going to let me select a product.

I mean for me or you it’s just up to what we are selling.

For me, this is actually a lot of fun.

I went ahead and selected the “Organic Baseball Cap | Econscious EC7000”

From here you can customize it how you want.

I’m keeping mine black and adding my “Creating A Website Today” logo

Just click or drop your design right where it says to.

I got this outcome.

How cool is this.

Ok, so I’m good with this.

There is a button at the bottom titled Proceed to Media where you can add mockups.

I chose the basic mockups.

Which is all the media aka pictures to show.

This is really cool.

After this, I hit the bottom button titled Proceed to Details to add all of the info about my hat.

One cool thing is I feel it’s quite customizable to start and then I can quickly add in some info if I would like.

From here I hit the proceed to price page by hitting the proceed to price button on the bottom.

I left it as it is.

But when I looked on Reddit someone mentioned 50% is a good margin.

(Hey, leave a comment if you have some expertise on that :-))

Personally, I don’t have a clue at the moment.

Ok, so I now hit “Submit to store”

Once it was submitted I got congrats on adding your first product.

I didn’t exactly know what to do after this but after I took 5 seconds and looked around it was quite obvious.

Wild guess but I bet View in Shopify and Edit in Shopify may be the ticket.

If you hit the view in the Shopify link it opens in a new screen too so I’m still on my Printful dashboard.

When I hit it I came right to my product.

I couldn’t believe it there is the product I just made in under I’d say 25 minutes.

I went back to click the edit in Shopify button just to see what that was all about.

When I hit that I came right to my product page on Shopify

Also, in the top right if I wanted to go back and edit in Printful I could go to the more actions tab and select Edit on Printful.

I then went over and just checked out what the main page of my store would like by clicking on online store then themes and then hitting customize.

More just curious quickly on the format.

Of course, some work to do but there is my product in great formatting from the main page, and looks amazing once you click on it from the product page.

So, overall this dropshipping setup was super easy.

I didn’t expect this to be this easy and I had zero questions for customer support.

Everything synced together well with no errors and was very beginner friendly.

This was the first time I’ve actually made a print-on-demand product and after doing this It’s something I’m personally going to think about at least.

Overall, Shopify did amazing creating a great onboarding process and set up leaving nobody in the dark about what to do.

I think also once again it helps I’m utilizing a free trial so there isn’t any cost involved to do this so that is very nice.

Try Dropshipping Free With Shopify

Now let’s set up an AliExpress Store (This one has me curious)

I went ahead and started here which is the dropshipping main page of Shopify.

Now I already did a Printify store so if you read that remember to fill out all the info on the onboarding before you get to the main dashboard.

That was it’s ready to go for you.

So, now I’m hanging out on this page.

Now you can hit the add product here or under the menu tab hit products 

From there you will be asked to add a product or find a product to sell

I’m going to click find a product since we are doing the Alixpress route.

Once you click there you are taken to the app store to integrate an app that allows you to Dropship.

This is the one you want to select.

I went ahead and clicked on this one which brought me to the main screen for the AlieExpress app

From here I’m going to see the Install screen where it’s going to connect my store to the app.

I went ahead and hit the install app button.

Once you hit install it’s now time to create an account over on the platform.

I was a bit confused myself but realized this is a dropshipping platform connecting me to AliExpress and not AleExpresses personal app.

It makes sense once I thought about it

Ok ok

From here I do have to select a plan I chose the basic free plan that allows me to sell 3000 products.

I feel that’s enough for now 🙂

Here is the pricing chart to give you an idea of what I saw.

I just hit the get started button under the free plan.

After clicking that you are going to be asked to link your AliExpress account.

I just signed up and it brought me to a dashboard looking like this.

So as I’m looking I see it’s offering me some areas to start and since I have no products and no orders I’m looking under this section.

When you click on those links they are videos showing you how to set up.

And I will say I didn’t like this at first but they get right to the point.

So, I’m actually fine with it now.

I know now to hit “Find suppliers” in the menu on the left.

When you do that you will get a nice layout of a ton of products by suppliers.

Now here of course we all have to have a plan of what we are selling.

But, our goal here is to see how easy it is to set up using Shopify.

I went ahead and click on the high profits selection and chose the Fashion front hat beanie

This one to be exact

Now here I first clicked on it but then realized on the main screen that little orange circular button that looks like a piece of paper is how it lets me import the product to my 

Once you click that it will add it to your import list which you can find in the menu tab on the left title “import list”

So now that I’m on that page I can see I can push that product to my Shopify store.

Ok ok, pretty simple right here.

Another screen is going to pop up asking you a few more questions on what store you want to publish it on and some preferences.  

The only confusing part for me is that it asked again to “also publish to online store” which I assumed that’s what I was doing since I selected my store.

After I selected anything I felt fit to hit I then hit the “push to Shopify” button.

So I then went back to my Shopify store and saw this.

Hopefully, if you are following along you see it too.

Product there and I can click on it and edit it.

Some key additional things you will want to do when you’re over on the Dsers platform under settings is utilizing pricing rules that way it factors in you’re cost for the product and shipping.

And as you add more and more products having a simplistic rule will make it easier to update all of your products.

Overall setting up a dropshipping store up and adding a product from Aliexpress was really simple.

Diving deeper into some of the settings will take a few minutes but nothing crazy.

I’d stick with 1 or a couple of products and test out different rules and settings to see how they effect it.

But I’m happy with the process overall.

Shopify Dropshipping Apps You Can Use

Shopify carries quite a few dropshipping apps that can help pump up your eCommerce site.

A few of you might know our  Printful and Dropified.

Here is what the app store looks like

I noticed checking them out there are a ton to see.

And a lot of options which you saw in the set up just above.

Remember to the easiest way to get to it is in the menu on the side or just using Shopify search which is super easy.

Shopify Fulfillment Center Option For Dropshipping

I’ve got to say this is a huge thing right here.

You might not have known but Shopify offers a spot just like Amazon does to fulfill all your products and ship them out.

The costs of this can vary of course but they will handle everything for you with the option for most products being delivered in 2 days.

You can learn more here

The Pros Of Dropshipping With Shopify

Simple setup:

takes just a few minutes and you literally have products to sell

Great customer service:

Shopify makes it super simple to get help when you need it.

And, you are going to have questions or need help eventually.

Tons of resources:

Shopify is a large online platform so there are courses you can watch to really help you out.

The Cons Of Dropshipping With Shopify

Selling the same product:

Because you’re picking from a drop shipping catalog everyone has access to selling the same thing.

So, for instance:

You want to sell umbrellas and you go out on the site and choose all sorts of them and start selling them.

There is a good chance your customers will find the same product.

I have to add though:

To set yourself apart.

Maybe add some custom photos of your own.

So, yes, same product but a better workaround 🙂

Dropshipping Tools To Help You

Let’s check out some great tools you can integrate right into your Shopify Dropshipping setup.

The cool part is some of these have their own app right in Shopify or integrate perfectly with them.

Spocket – 2915 users rated this tool 4.75 stars out of 5 

Sprocket is a terrific research tool that helps you find top-selling products from tons of suppliers. 80% of these suppliers are located in Europe and the US.

You’re also to order samples of each product too which can let you see the quality before selling it.

A few other key things:

• Easily connect your Shopify store to Spocket to sell.
• Fast dropshipping suppliers.
• Great user reviews
• Good customer support
• free trial
• Fair starting cost at $25 per month

Oberlo – 431 users rated this 2.6 stars out 5

I know I know

Low ratings.

I had to scratch my head on this too because it’s a good dropshipping tool.

I’m seeing the ratings based on some heavy things such as inflated prices and bad support.

But it’s a valuable tool to me.

Let’s look at the positives I’m seeing

• Only for Shopify
• Plans start at a fair price of $29.99

Cons

• Customer support (A workaround to me is to contact Shopify support)
• Inflated prices

Shopify Dropshipping Courses You Can Utilize

Shopify offers a nice course that can really help you out.

A few things you will go over are the following:

• Learning the dropshipping model and what it is all about
• Identifying your target market and what you want to build your business around
• How to get started on Shopify
• Find products to sell
• Getting your first sale

Here is the link to the courses to help you

A few other places to find courses are….

Udemy – check out this nice selection of Shopify dropshipping courses.  1 key tip is to look for the ratings of each course.  This will give you a good idea of the thoughts of other people that have bought them.  They also are very reasonably priced.

YouTube – Tons of course are right on YouTube.  Sure some are going to want to sell you something but take a look at the first and second page to get started.

Try Dropshipping Free With Shopify

Some Frequently Asked Questions About Shopify Dropshipping

Shopify Dropshipping Review Conclusion

This eCommerce option is a great way to build a site today

The best:

You can try it totally free and just see what you think.

Remember these 5 things:

1.  Add your products first
2.  Pick a niche and don’t go too broad to start
3.  If you’re going to advertise only start with Facebook
4.  Add your theme
5. Explore all the features in Shopify

I think you’re really going to like it actually

Wait till your site is up and running and it’s live, and BOOM

First Sale:

Any questions just let me know.