How To Use Shopify For DropShipping

Welcome to our guide about Shopify and how you can use it for dropshipping!

If you are seeking to get your business off the ground and find yourself wondering “Can Shopify be used for dropshipping?”, you are in luck because that’s what we’re going to cover today.

To cut to the chase, the answer is yes. As a matter of fact, Shopify actually has a super helpful guide that is broken down into 11 chapters right there on their website.

Each of the chapters are a short 4 min read, so it’s easy to get through.

Using Shopify for dropshipping is not difficult, but it does require you to have some know how so you can get the most out of it.

That being said, let us take you through a few ideas about getting started.

Starting Your Account

Shopify gives you a free trial, so take advantage of it! Just open an account by going to Shopify and putting in your email address. 

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Establish your business’s name, and make a good, secure password.

You can change up your store’s name at any time, and also your email address. Do not let a creative block prevent you from starting.

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Just use the site as a means of brainstorming and method of garnering ideas about what you’d like to do.

After all, you have to find your niche!

After you enter all the vital info, Shopify will ask you for some details and help you set up the test store.

Learn the Oberlo App

Oberlo might sound like a totally different thing, but it is actually Shopify’s drop shipping supplier network.

It is fully integrated and super easy to use. Just click “Products” off to the left, and then click on “Find Products” after that.

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Once you get there, Shopify will ask to double check your store (it doesn't always do it, but it does on occasion). 

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Once you have done that, it will ask to double check you are happy, and then it will install. 

In a mere matter of seconds, you will see the Oberlo dropshipping dashboard. You can then take a look at what to sell in your store, go over top sellers, and get more ideas.

Find Cool Products

After you get that Oberlo app installed, it’s basically a treasure hunt. You can search as specifically or as broadly as you like. You can explore a wide variety of items that relate to your idea or niche.

There are niches like you would not believe that cater to lovers of horses, dogs, cats, you name it. There are thousands of great products on these stores sourced right from Oberlo.

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You can narrow it down and search for “paw print necklace” or just “paw print” for example. Just use the helpful filters.

You can also sort by price, too-super helpful.

If you really want to start finding the perfect products, then be sure to check out the Ecom Hunt review, it's a seperate app, but allows you to start finding viral, or super hot products.

Choosing Oberlo Stuff to Sell

It’s just a few mouse clicks to get the items you need in your dropship store.

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 Here’s what to do you can get the most out of your excellent product list: 

  • Make some product descriptions. Tell the item’s measurements, what it does, colours available, and more. You should write your own or hire someone to do so as it makes a connection to the customer. 
  • Be transparent about shipping times. You might even overestimate the delivery times so you are on the safe side. After all, you never actually handle the products, so snags can happen.
  • Review suggested retail prices, check out the profit margins, see if it is competitive as compared with other Shopify merchants; you might even mark up the price but offer shipping globally for free. 
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Try to choose about 10-20 great items that you can start with. This prevents you from spending way too much time setting up, getting you off the ground sooner. 

Import Those Products Into Your Shop

After you have chosen your items, they will hang out in the “import list” until you move them into your shop.

You can take this time to edit the titles of the item and go over their pricing and descriptions. You can import them with supplier-provided info and revise them in Shopify, or just leave them alone.

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 This is another reason to start small-don’t want to waste time on too much editing!

Under the “product” heading, you can take the time to change the item’s title, and even add in keywords for site search and SEO. 

You can also add it to a product collection if you have set that feature up. (Don’t worry if you did not do this, you can do so later in the dashboard.)

You can also list product variants, make changes to price, and even see the SKU numbers for each product.

Make Categories For Products

After you put together a few products from Oberlo and get them into Shopify, you can set up your store. Use the dashboard to set up Product Collections. Just click “collections” and then hit “create collections”.

You can add images from imported products, and you can also name “conditions” which are used by Shopify to add items to that collection based upon certain criteria. 

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Shopify gives you many options to do this, and you can even add items to your collections manually. It’s all on you how you’d like to manage this area. 

Set Up The Store

Now it’s time to complete your major store details.  

  • Payment, tax and delivery info
  • Create menus to make navigation easier for visitors
  • Set up a theme/design for your store
  • Create pages with info about customer service and shipping info

This portion is a lot easier than it sounds-Shopify takes you through all this stuff with relative ease.

When your store is set up and you have found the perfect product, I would suggest looking for themes, or apps that can start to increase your conversion rates. 

One of the best that I have found so far is EcomTurbo, which comes with a number of apps to capture emails or show stock levels for products, which if used correctly can help increase return traffic and conversions. 

How To Use Shopify For DropShipping -Final Words

Oberlo and Shopify are your tickets to using Shopify for dropshipping.

It’s very easy to use once you start exploring, and the fact that they give you a 14 day trial means there's no excuses about why you can’t give it a try.

Best of luck as you start your Shopify journey!

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