Are you tired of working on someone else’s schedule and longing for freedom? Dropshipping might just be the answer you’re looking for. With this eCommerce business model, we can enjoy the flexibility of working on our own schedule and location. And the best part? It’s easier than ever to make money dropshipping.
So, in this article, we’ll provide you with a step-by-step guide to creating a successful dropshipping store. So, if you’re ready to take control of your work-life balance and earn some extra income, keep reading!
What Is The Dropshipping Business Model?
Before we learn how to make money dropshipping, let’s learn about the dropshipping business model. Dropshipping is an order fulfillment method where we can sell products without holding them in inventory. Instead, we buy products from third-party suppliers whenever customers order in our store.
Afterward, the same suppliers will deliver the products to our customer’s addresses. So, we only pay for the products after getting paid first. This way, we can start dropshipping with zero investments. To elaborate, here is a step-by-step on how dropshipping works:
- We list products in our online stores.
- The customer places an order and pays for one of the products.
- We order the product from our suppliers and pay them.
- The supplier delivers it to our customer’s address.
- We make a profit from the difference between the selling and source prices.
Can I Really Make Money Dropshipping?
We can definitely make money dropshipping. Online shopping has been growing increasingly popular among consumers. In 2024, the worldwide dropshipping market was worth USD 365.67 billion, and it is predicted to have a compound annual growth rate of 22% from 2025 to 2030. That means there is a massive demand in the market, which will increase in the next few years.
So, how is dropshipping profitable? To begin, we do not have to pay for products in advance or worry about storage costs. As a result, we can start dropshipping with little to no capital. Additionally, dropshipping is a low-risk and high-reward business model. So, even if our products aren’t selling well, we can replace them until we have only best-sellers listed.
On top of that, we can scale our business with dropshipping automation. Furthermore, finding the right products, partnering with reliable suppliers, and providing excellent customer service will result in business success.
How To Make Money Dropshipping: Step-By-Step
As we learned, dropshipping is a business model that can make us a lot of profits. With that in mind, here are 8 essential steps to kickstart our dropshipping business and earn money:
- Find Winning Products: Make Money With In-Demand Items
- Select The Best Dropshipping Suppliers
- Create Your Money-Making Dropshipping Store
- Set Up Financial Obligations
- Import Trending Products To Your Dropshipping Store
- Use Marketing Strategies To Make More Money Dropshipping
- Fulfill Customer Orders Quickly To Gain Loyalty
- Provide Exceptional Customer Service
Let’s understand how to carry out each of these steps in detail.
1. Find Winning Products: Make Money With In-Demand Items
The first and most crucial step of making money with dropshipping is product research. With product research, we can find trending products that have high-profit potential. Here are some successful ways to research dropshipping products:
- AutoDS Hand-Picked Products Hub
- AutoDS Product-Finding Blog
- AutoDS Sell These Now Playlist
- Search Supplier Best Seller Sections
- Analyze The Market Demand With Google Trends
- Finding Trending Product Sources With Google Lens
- Keep Up-To-Date With Social Media Trends (e.g., #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt)
From the list, the AutoDS Hand-Picked Products Hub is the best option for researching products. It is an exclusive tool that automates product research. By using this tool, we can rapidly discover popular and highly sought-after products.
Upon selecting a product, the hub provides us with advanced insights such as the product’s Facebook ad engagement, competitor pricing, and profit potential.
Furthermore, we can obtain valuable information regarding the target audience, allowing us to customize our marketing campaigns accordingly. This tool has gained immense popularity among dropshippers, enabling us to uncover multiple winning products swiftly.
2. Select The Best Dropshipping Suppliers
Suppliers often have limited knowledge and resources to dedicate to marketing their products. By partnering with dropshippers, they can expand their reach further, allowing them to increase their sales without additional marketing costs.
With this in mind, we need a reliable supplier to source quality products. So, we need to select the best dropshipping suppliers. But how do we identify a trustworthy supplier? Here are some ways to verify if the suppliers are reliable:
- International warehouses
- Fast domestic shipping times
- Wide product range
- Practical return, shipping, and payment policies
- Positive reviews
- Excellent customer service
With these features, we have strong support for our dropshipping business. And these features are precisely what AutoDS-supported suppliers offer us. With that said, here are 5 credible suppliers that integrate with AutoDS:
- AliExpress
- Walmart
- CJDropshipping
- Banggood
- Wayfair
With the AutoDS integration, we can automate dropshipping processes like product imports, price/stock monitoring, order fulfillment, and more. That means we can make money dropshipping even while we’re away from our computers!
3. Create Your Money-Making Dropshipping Store
Next, we must choose a selling channel to list our products. A selling channel is a platform to showcase our products to our customers. As such, there are two selling channels: eCommerce marketplaces and customizable dropshipping stores.
Customizable eCommerce Platforms
Customizable eCommerce platforms are website-building platforms that help us create our dropshipping store from scratch and with custom domain names. Thus, we can personalize our dropshipping store with professionally designed templates, themes, images, logos, and more. This allows us to focus on branding our store.
Here are the customizable eCommerce platforms that integrate with AutoDS:
- Shopify
- Wix
- WooCommerce
eCommerce Marketplaces
eCommerce marketplaces are trading platforms that can generate organic traffic due to the significant number of active users. Due to the high number of active users, our dropshipping store gains more visibility in front of a large audience.
With that said, let’s look at the AutoDS-supported eCommerce marketplaces:
- eBay
- Amazon
- Facebook Marketplace
- Facebook Shops
- TikTok Shop
AutoDS’ seamless integration with various selling channels guarantees smooth business operations, and with their efficient dropshipping automation solutions, our selling channels can operate seamlessly even without our constant management.
4. Set Up Financial Obligations
When making money dropshipping, we must abide by business regulations. Plus, complying with these regulations helps us smoothly perform our business operations without legal hassles. With that said, these are key financial obligations we should abide by:
- Business Registration
- Tax Obligations
- Financial Accounts
First and foremost, most regions require us to register our business. There are different types of business registrations, such as LLCs and Partnerships. It also helps to build trust in our business.
Additionally, we must pay our dropshipping taxes. Since paying taxes is compulsory, we can incur hefty fines if we fail to do so. Finally, we should take care of our financial accounts to clearly understand our profits and losses. All in all, it’s best to work with a professional accountant to ensure we are all set up with our financial obligations.
5. Import Trending Products To Your Dropshipping Store
In dropshipping, importing a product means sourcing from a third-party supplier and listing it for sale in your store without holding inventory. This allows for easy testing and replacement of products, maximizing profits by identifying the most profitable items.
Now, the next step is to import products to our store, which can be done in two different methods: manual and automatic.
In general, the manual product importing method includes adding titles, descriptions, images, and product variations. As such, the manual importing process can take 5-20 minutes per product. Due to this, manual dropshipping is only suitable for dropshipping stores with few orders per day.
On the other hand, the automatic method can fulfill multiple orders daily, saving us a lot of time and effort. With that in mind, let’s look at AutoDS product importer, one of the best product-importing tools:
- One-click Importer
- Single Product Importer
- Multiple Product Importer
- Bulk Upload with a CSV File
Bulk Upload With A CSV File
To demonstrate, we will look at the Bulk Upload with a CSV file. The Bulk Upload with a CSV file enables us to import trending products in just a few steps. Before we begin the importing process, install the AutoDS Dropshipping Helper Extension.
Then, we’ll go to AliExpress (the supplier’s website) and search for products to import. In this case, we are looking for soccer gloves. When you reach an item search page, click on the logo in the bottom right corner and activate the AutoDS extension.
After the Helper extension is activated, click on ‘Extract.’ Then, click on ‘Export as CSV.’ Doing so will download a CSV file, including all items you can see on the supplier’s page.
Now, head to the AutoDS platform, click ‘Add Products,’ and select ‘Multiple Products/Stores.’ This option allows us to import multiple products in a few clicks. When a dialog box opens, click on “Upload CSV.” Here, you will see a dialog box where you can drag and drop the CSV file.
Once we upload the CSV file, we can add products to drafts to enhance them further. On the drafts page, we can edit their titles, descriptions, variations, images, and more. As we have to differentiate ourselves from the competition, we need to optimize our listings.
Alternatively, we can also directly publish them in our stores. Overall, bulk importing is the best method if we want to import multiple products simultaneously.
6. Use Marketing Strategies To Make More Money Dropshipping
Once we have imported our products, it’s crucial to set ourselves apart from the competition by effectively marketing our products. Marketing plays a vital role in drawing more customers to our stores, enabling us to stay visible in a crowded marketplace.
By leveraging marketing strategies, we can highlight our products’ unique features and benefits, showcase our brand values, and create a strong connection with our target audience. Ultimately, effective marketing helps us build brand recognition, boost sales, and establish a competitive edge in our industry.
So, let’s look at the best marketing strategies for each selling channel.
Shopify, Wix, and WooCommerce
- PPC Ads
- Influencer Marketing
- Create a blog page
- Create posts on social media
- Email Marketing
eBay/Amazon
- Promoted Listings
- Volume Discounts
- Amazon’s ‘Win The Buy Box’
- Amazon Sponsored Listings
Facebook Marketplace & Facebook Shops
- Facebook Promotions
- Promote products in Buy & Sell groups
Now, we can select the most suitable marketing techniques based on our selling channels and business scaling strategy.
7. Fulfill Customer Orders Quickly To Gain Loyalty
Once we launch and market our products, customers will start buying from us. So, we need to fulfill customer orders swiftly to increase customer satisfaction. When customers receive their orders quickly, they are more likely to feel valued and appreciated. This can lead to increased trust in the company and a greater likelihood of repeat business
With that in mind, here are two different ways to fulfill orders: manual and automatic. The manual fulfillment method includes visiting the supplier’s website, filling in customer information, and placing customer orders. As we are fulfilling orders one at a time, it can take a lot of time and effort to fulfill multiple daily orders manually.
In contrast, the automatic method helps us save time and labor by automating the order fulfillment process. The AutoDS order fulfillment solution is among the best-automated order fulfillment solutions. With that in mind, we can fulfill our orders in two ways: Automatic Orders and Fulfilled By AutoDS.
AutoDS Order Fulfillment Solutions
The AutoDS automatic ordering tool is an order fulfillment feature that automatically processes customers’ orders. It uses our buyer accounts to order and purchase from our suppliers when fulfilling orders.
On the other hand, Fulfilled by AutoDS provides a complete order fulfillment solution that includes order fulfillment, tracking information updates, and one-click returns. This tool doesn’t use our buyer accounts and payment methods to fulfill orders.
Instead, it uses AutoDS’s buyer account to process orders from our suppliers. Hence, our buyer accounts are fully protected from getting locked. Besides that, Fulfilled by AutoDS offers one-click returns, which process returns and refunds in a single click.
With both methods, AutoDS automatically sends tracking information updates to the customers after they place an order. Overall, the AutoDS order fulfillment tools handle our dropshipping operations efficiently. With efficient order fulfillment, we can build a loyal customer base.
8. Provide Exceptional Customer Service
Last but not least, we must provide excellent customer service. And with high competition in eCommerce, taking care of our customers is integral to making money dropshipping. Not only can we remain a step above our competition, but we can also build a loyal customer base by consistently providing quality service to our customers.
With that in mind, here are some of the ways we can provide exceptional customer service:
- Solve customer queries and complaints swiftly
- Process return and refund requests promptly
- Remain in touch with your customers
- Create an FAQ page
- Invest in customer service management software
Automate Your Business & Make Even More Money Dropshipping
At this point, we have completed all the steps and have a fully functional dropshipping store. From here, we are ready to make money dropshipping. But there is no reason to stop here because we can keep scaling our dropshipping business to earn even more money.
So, here are some critical tips for scaling our business:
- Stay up to date with the latest trends
- Remove & replace slow-movers
- Scale ads that are converting
- Optimize your business with dropshipping automation
Dropshipping Automation With AutoDS
Regarded by many as one of the best scaling tools, the AutoDS dropshipping platform provides an all-in-one solution for automation. AutoDS helps us perform dropshipping operations efficiently, helping us save a lot of time and effort.
With that in mind, here is how to make dropshipping automated with AutoDS:
- Price/Stock Monitoring
- Price Optimization
- Inventory Management
- Tracking Updates
- eBay Customer Support Management
- and so much more!
All in all, these AutoDS tools strongly support our dropshipping business and help us scale our store to make more money.
Dropshipping can be a grind, but AutoDS users have some stories to share about how it’s made their lives easier—take a listen:
Frequently Asked Questions
How Profitable Is Dropshipping?
Dropshipping is a very profitable business model. The huge dropshipping market size combined with the low-risk business model makes dropshipping a highly lucrative business. In fact, dropshipping profit margins often exceed 50%.
Is It Easy To Make Money Dropshipping?
Absolutely! Dropshipping is one of the most accessible eCommerce business models to make money. All we have to do is set up our online store, list products, automate our repetitive tasks and watch the money roll in.
How Can A Beginner Start Dropshipping?
A beginner can start dropshipping by following these 8 simple steps:
- Product Research
- Select The Best Dropshipping Suppliers
- Create Your Dropshipping Store
- Set Up Financial Obligations
- Import Trending Products To Your Dropshipping Store
- Use Marketing Strategies To Promote Your Products
- Fulfill Customer Orders Quickly
- Provide Exceptional Customer Service
Conclusion
Amazing, isn’t it? The world of dropshipping presents an incredible opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs like us to start our own businesses and make money online. To make money dropshipping, we must identify profitable niches, find reliable suppliers, optimize our website for conversions, and implement effective marketing tactics.
However, it is essential to remember that dropshipping is not a get-rich-quick scheme, and success requires dedication, hard work, and a willingness to learn and adapt. With that said, here are some helpful guides and strategies for success in the world of dropshipping:
