How to start a online ecommerce store business with dropshipping and shopify

If you are looking to make money online via blogging or  ecommerce stores in Australia, then this tutorial with shopify for creating your online shop will help you get started in 2020.

It involves making an eCommerce online store and selling stuff/products on the internet from other merchants and making a commission (this is called drop shipping) as opposed  to  making money with affiliate commissions via links on your blog.

I have researched online shops and selling quite extensively before starting my first online store and there are many ways you can do this, but using Shopify and Ali express seems to be the easiest way to getting started with your own online internet shop.

You can even give it a go by trying it for free today with the free trial offer listed here.

This has worked for many newcomers and also internet marketers in the eCommerce niche because it’s easy to set up and requires minimal effort.

These two platforms are one of the best platforms for this method and is the most easy to use internet-shop building software available today.

If you are just looking to build an income, by just starting a website or your own blog then you can read my this post over here, but if you are serious about making some  money on the side selling stuff on the internet then read on.

I can most certainly vouch for the getting started process  given below as I myself have just started a shopify ecommerce drop-shipping shop and got  sales going on my brand new shop. I’m not yet there,  like some of the other gurus/wizkids who do up to  a incredible $50k  a month and possibly wont be there for a while, but hope to make some spare change in the meanwhile.

I do know a few people who make that kind of money(10k to 50k turnover  a month) doing this featured online-selling method.

Some of the tips, in this detailed guide has been provided to me by my experienced marketer friend who is making up to $10,000+ a month.He is using aliexpress and shopify for his stores with this drop-shipping method  for selling stuff online.

So what is this dropshipping – Drop-shipping is the process where you buy from a wholesaler online and resell it online to another buyer and make a commission in between.

This can be done by you selling a product collecting money  for it  from the buyer – then purchasing the same product from a  wholesaler and providing  the buyer address (from your shop) for the wholesaler  to ship the product to that client. This is called dropshipping as you physically dont have to store any products  or ship any products to your customer but just get all this arranged between the buyer and wholesaler
Drop shipping VS selling your own product !

Normal selling as opposed to  dropshipping involves  selling your own product , keeping inventory of your products , handling all shipping, packing ,tracking etc until  the product reaches your  customer/client.  You will also need space to store your products that you are selling. This  does involve a lot more work and money.

Many punters start with dropshipping because it is easy to start  with and if you start getting sales – it is quite easy to scale up to $10k to $25 K a month easily if you become good at it and learn all the ropes  – and this has become a full time income to many successful people.

This is a new  growing trend  in the online world and so is not saturated yet , so if you get in fast  you can still make money.

I  will provide you some screenshots of how I started my store along with the essential tips my experienced buddy gave me to promote and scale the shop and online bizness.

There is two things you definitely need to start an online store with dropshipping

1. You need a Shopify account

2. An Aliexpress account

Shopify for newbies (in short) – Its a ecommerce platform that allows you to build your online store and sell stuff online in a few clicks  – Its that easy.

Get your aliexpress account  here – Free registration

Get the – Free 15 day trial  for shopify stores to test it out

I suggest using this 15 day trial if your a beginner, however in my humble opinion it would take at least a  month or two to start getting some real traction with sales-So its best really if your have atleast 2 months fees to start with  to trail this service,but this is upto you entirely to make that call.

What’s aliexpress for newbies – Aliexpress is   one of the biggest  china wholesale website  that sells everything from gadgets , garments  clothes,  consumer products ,electronics , jewellery and many more. With  drop shipping you can easily buy from Ali express and sell on shopify making a commission. To register with  aliexpress is free – Register here

This trend of creating your online shop and making money has just recently caught on, and many people have become full-time online entrepreneurs with this new hot trend.

Unfortunately all good things do not last very long and trends and new ventures get saturated  quickly – and so if you want to get in – NOW is the time.

How to get your store online?

Well the reason so many people are starting ecommerce online shops is that shopify has made it  so easy to set up a store in minutes.
It doesn’t matter if you got  your own products to sell, selling someone else’s products for a commission, or you are selling digital products – you can do this by getting a shopify account.

Here is a quick step by step process to get you started with your new online  shop with shopify

1. Sign up for the free trial here  ( they will ask you for your email )

2.They will send you login info for your online shop  and you need to pick  an appropriate plan for your shop ( recommended one is  $29 for beginners- though if you can afford more go for $79 a month)

I chose the $29 plan as you can see

Then you  choose a name for your store and  click publish and its done , you will see the welcome screen like below

Now you can  add products to your store manually by  clicking on the products  link as shown above and adding prices and pics and descriptions (its that easy  and you can start selling in minutes). Here is a look at the front end and back end of a shopify store.

If you are going to do dropshipping than you can pay like an extra $4.99 a month  and get oberlo app add on – which makes it really easy  to add products and pics description automatically from aliexpress with one click ( Aliexpress is china’s biggest wholesaler that sells stuff cheap online and many new online store entrepreneurs use this website to do  dropshipping selling stuff on their online store).

To make a profit , you will need  to mark up the product prices you import into your website with oberlo and then sell.

If you dont want to spend the extra money  on oberlo, then you can do the adding products manually as well.

I would suggest adding atleast  20 products  to your store  as a start to get some variety in your store  and setting up the structure and important pages ( privacy policy , about us , contact us pages, social media buttons +pages etc)

I would suggest though that you get a good domain name  for your shop from godaddy  (they got a current 30% off deal for au users- get it here ) eg. www.myrabbitgear.com, rather than the  free shopify domain name that you get  with  your  shop account.  eg. rabbitgear32.shopify.com as a proper name with .com looks more professional.

You can do this by  buying a relevant domain name from godaddy and then  getting it to point  to your online shop by following instructions from the domains area in your online shop  or then  contacting godaddy support and getting them to help you out doing that.

Improving your online store look

By default  there are many free themes  you can use on shopify once you sign up for an account.

A theme is basically what changes the look of your shop and you can choose any free theme to change the look of your shop.

Shopify has some decent  free shop themes .Another way of making your shop more attractive is  to get a nice paid theme  for your store that will make it look better than the rest,  but the free provided themes have some great ones  too if you are on a budget.

They are  shopify them providers from outside of shopify as  well if you want o shop for a great cheap theme outside of shopify.

The best way to promote your new shop  is to  start a facebook page for your shop and then integrate it with  facebook to show new products launched , it will look something like this  once integrated

They also make it seamless to advertise with Facebook advertising and ads  for your online-shop.

Why shopify as a ecommerce platform?

People who are more into coding and programmers prefer magento ecommerce software, but most people prefer  shopify  for these reasons(my reasons)

• Easy to use and set up
• Amazing free themes (don’t pay)
• Set up online shop in minutes
• Can start making money quickly due to  easy integration with facebook and facebook ads
• Case studies & success stories from people who started shops provided
• Regular tips and tutorial posts from shopify newsletters
• Easy for Promoting  your store and getting sales
• Free 14 day Trial offer to test it out for free

Once you have your store online, you will need to promote it to make sales.  Facebook , instagram  are good platforms to get sales for your shop with advertising on Facebook and Instagram  sponsored shout outs.

Google Adwords, Bing advertising , linked in and Pinterest advertising are other advertising options you could try depending on your niche.

Health products normally do well with Instagram promotion.  With Facebook advertising – if you target your niche properly it can do wonders.

You can s start making money with this method just by getting the monthly plan and Facebook advertising- but there is  many  add-ons that can still help you get more sales.

They are some paid ones which I will list below.

• Oberlo – adding products seamlessly to your onlinestore (available via shopify portal)
• Coin – Changing currency from AUD to USD and other curencies
• Scarcity – Showing urgency with count down timer etc

Get your free Oberlo trail here – Free Oberlo trial

Oberlo features and Pricing:

FREE Starter Plan is for those who are just starting out. It has all the main features and will perfectly suit you until you reach 50 orders/month.

Basic Plan ($29.90/mo) is for those who receive up to 500 orders/mo. It has shipment tracking and orders monitoring features.

Pro Plan ($79.90/mo) has all the features you need to scale your business. Unlimited orders number multiple users and sales channels.

WordPress + Ali affiliate

If you do decide wot work with wordpress instead of  shopify then this WP plugin below might help you

You can also join  a Facebook group for support  to get tips and ideas and guidance.  if your in the online store niche with shopify in this facebook group – https://www.facebook.com/groups/211798732549122/ (Murray Edwards Mastermind). I am also a member of this group

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