What Is Drop shipping:
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Drop shipping is a business model that allows you to market and sell a unique collection of products without any storage, inventory or staff costs. Shopify connects to hundreds of drop shippers through Shopify apps that automate every step, making it one of the quickest, easiest and most economical way to launch an e-commerce business.
What is Shopify:
Shopify is a complete commerce platform that allows you to start, manage, and grow a business.
- Create and customize an online store.
- Sell in multiple places, including web, mobile, social media, online marketplaces, brick-and-mortar locations, and pop-up shops.
- Manage products, inventory, payments, and shipping.
- Shopify is completely cloud-based and hosted, which means you don’t have to worry about upgrading or maintaining software or web servers. This gives you the flexibility to access and run your business from anywhere with an internet connection.
If you are wondering how to start an ecommerce business, drop shipping is one of the most popular methods.
Here is a complete Shopify tutorial and step by step guide on how to start your dropshipping business from scratch today
Step1: Sign up for the free Shopify 14-Day Trial
Step2: Install The Free Shopify Theme Minimal
Step3: Install The Oberlo Shopify App & Update Its Settings
Step4: Install The Free Chrome Extention
Step5: Add Products From Aliexpress Into Your Shopify Store Using Oberlo
Step6: Add Product Collections
Step7: Edit Your Product Pages
Step8: Add Free Trust Badges To Your Product Pages
Step9: Add Free Shipping To your Orders
Step10: Set up Shopify Payments and Paypal
Step11: Create An About Us Page
Step12: Create A Contact Us Page
Step13: Add Menus To Your Store
Step14: Create Your Store Design and Homepage
Step15: Select A Payment Plan For Shopify
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Step1: Sign up for the free Shopify 14-Day Trial
To start off click here to register your Shopify 14 days trial.
After you register, Shopify will ask you to fill up a little survey. It does not matter what you put you can put anything that you like it’s just data that Shopify is collecting and has no legal impact on you. you can put in the following information.
In the next page, you need to fill in your personal info and then click enter my store which looks like this.
After a few moments, you will get to this page, which is the admin page after you sign in to Shopify login page.
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Step2: Install The Free Shopify Theme Minimal
On the left sidebar menu click on the Online Store, this will automatically take you to the shopify themes page. When it loads click on explore free theme button on the right side. There are a lot of shopify themes to choose from but for now, we can start with the minimal shopify theme.
After you select the theme you get to the next page where you can see 3 styles(modern, vintage and fashion) of this theme. You can select modern or any of them that you like and then click Add Minimal. After you successfully added the minimal theme, in the middle of the next page click publish. A new little page pops up, just click publish and then let it load.
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Step3: Install The Oberlo Shopify App & Update Its Settings
What is Oberlo?
Oberlo is a Shopify app which semi-automates your dropshipping site for you, it makes the process of adding products way easier and faster. Also, it helps to semi-automate the fulfillment process for your customers down the track(You are going to need it). Making your store as passive as possible is a key aspect to scale your business for huge profit(it’s also a free app to use).
To install the Oberlo, click Apps on the left side menu of the main page. When you get to the Apps page, click on Visit Shopify Apps Store on the top right side of the page type in Oberlo in the search box. Find the Oberlo app and add it like below.
In the new page click on install app and let it load. Once it’s loaded we can then update the settings inside Oberlo.
In the new page click on settings button at the left side of the page. In the settings page put in the store name and scroll down a bit and set the Set unit of measurement for product weight to lb(depends on where you live). Make sure that Notify my customers is also ticked(so the customers know when the item is being shipped). Then come down to Auto updates and Set the quantity to zero for When variant is no longer available and tick the notify my checkbox. Also, set the When the cost changes to Do nothing and tick the notify my checkbox like below and save these settings.
In the new page click on suppliers and make sure in the default shipping method, ePacket is selected. Put in your phone number in the Override phone number section(customer won’t be able to see this dont worry) and leave the custom note as it is. Also, click on the Add Payment Card button to add your debit/credit card info that is going to be used to pay for our Aliexpress items that our customers order.
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Step4: Install The Free Chrome Extention
Why you need Oberlo chrome extension? If you want Oberlo to semi-automate your orders then you are going to need to add products directly from Aliexpress to your store using this app the easiest way to do this is to use Oberlo chrome extension. Click this link to access Oberlo from the chrome web store, click on add to chrome and in the pop up box click add extension. After the installation the new Oberlo icon will be added ttheur top right of your browser.
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Step5: Add Products From Aliexpress Into Your Shopify Store Using Oberlo
Now we are going to aliexpress.com and pull products directly to our store using the chrome extension that we just installed. Click the Oberlo chrome extension button and click Add to import list.
And then click Open import list you will get to the Shopify admin area and the item is added your list like below.
Click on the images tab and select the images that you like to add to your store. Then click Import to store to add the images to your Shopify store. Once you have done this for all of your products you can move on to the next step.
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Step6: Add Product Collections
The word collection is just the Shopify phrase for the product category. You are going to need to create different product categories/collections for different products that you are selling. On the left side, menu click products and from the products submenu click collections. Then click Create collection button from the right to create your first collection.
To create your collection just type in the name of your collection then under the collection type click manual leave everything else as it is and click save. Repeat this process for as many product categories you have. You probably need to have at least two product categories or your store may look pretty empty.
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Step7: Edit Your Product Pages
On the left side menu of the main page click products. When it loads, select the product that you are going to edit. The first thing that you are going to change is going to be the title. Delete the title and add your own, since it is a copy of Aliexpress product title. Then delete the product description and add your own. Try to add a description that is longer and optimized for Google SEO, so you can rank higher on Google for certain keywords. Then from the right sidebar set the collections for this product that you already set from the previous step.
Scroll down a bit and set the image and the price for different variations of this product. If you don’t want a certain color of this product simply click delete next to the edit button, and then click save.
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Step8: Add Free Trust Badges To Your Product Pages
The reason why we recommend to do this is that, when customers see an icon that they trust, a little bit of authority will be transferred to you which will increase your sales.
Form the main page come to the left side menu and click apps. Then click Visit Shopify App Store button which takes you to the Shopify official app store. Come to the search bar and type free trust badge and do a search for that, click on the app that says free trust badge, and click add app button and then click install add button.
After the installation, in the new page add the badges you would like to add and click on Activate badge on the left side of the page and save the changes.
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Step9: Add Free Shipping To your Orders
We recommend to have one shipping option and that is free shipping(it is actually not free you just slightly increase your product price). With this method, you get to promote your item as free shipping which is a great sales pitch. This should increase your conversions. Let’s do it!
From the main page click Settings from the bottom left corner, when the new page is loaded click on Shipping icon. Shopify with automatically populate this with LOCAL SHIPPING option and REST OF WORLD option. Click edit next to the and delete both of them.
After deleting both shipping zones, go back to the shipping and click on Add shipping zone. In the zone name type in Free Shipping, select your countries, then come down to Weight base rates click on Add rate and select free shipping tick box. Click done and save, that’s it you set up free shipping options for all your items(just be carefull we the coutries that you select).
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Step10: Set up Shopify Payments and Paypal
On the left menu click Settings and then click General. In the new page scroll down to Standards and formats and make sure to use imperial system and pound(lb) as your default weight unit. Then come down to Store currency and choose USD from the menu and then click save.
Head back to Settings and select Payment providers. If it is already on Shopify payments just click Complete account setup. Otherwise, click Add a provider and select Shopify payments. After clicking on Compete account setup, in the new page fill in your business, personal, product and banking information and click Complete account setup button.
Now setup PayPal express gateway, if this option is already set up for you skip this step. Otherwise, select Paypal Express Checkout, activate it and put your PayPal info and click I Give permission button. Now you have successfully added both Shopify and PayPal payment added to your store!
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Step11: Create An About Us Page
You can also use this method to create your refund policy, term and service and other pages for your store(just replicate these steps).
From the left menu click the Online Store button, from the submenu select the pages button and then from the right side select the add page button. Add your SEO optimized content and save the changes.
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Step12: Create A Contact Us Page
Again from the left menu click the Online Store button, from the submenu select the pages button and then from the right side select the add page button. From the template on the right side select page.contact and save. Now you have a contact us page with a contact form. All the messages will be sent to your email addess that you signed up for shopify account.
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Step13: Add Menus To Your Store
On the left side menu come and click Online Store and from the submenu click Navigation, now you are on the menu page. click on the Main menu in the middle of the page and then Add menu item. In the name section put in the name of the menu and from the link dropdown select collection, and select the collection you would like to assign to this menu item and click save. You need to do the same steps for all of your collections and sub-collections and the footer menu.
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Step14: Create Your Store Design and Homepage
One thing to consider is your home page needs to be nice but do not overthink the homepage design.
From the left menu click on Online Store button, by default the theme submenu is being selected. Click on Customize and in the new page, you can set the slide show, collection list, newsletter, and footer. You can just customize it yourself based on your store(it’s very simple).
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Step15: Select A Payment Shopify Plan For Shopify
The Shopify 14 days trial is great to start off your business, but if you want to sell to your customers you need to purchase a paid plan.
On the left menu come and click the Settings button, in the new page click the account button at the right side of the page. When the new page is loaded click on Compare plans. We recommend starting with a monthly plan of 29$/month and then you can scale up. Choose your plan, fill in your payment details and Start plan. Congratulations you are now ready to sell! 😉
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Step16: Choose A Domain Name
We recommend choosing a .com domain name, which is not more than three words that you can do throuh Shopify domain search feature.
From the left side menu select Online Store and from the submenu select Domains. From the domains page click Buy new domain button. In the new page just type in the domain name, an available domain and click on the Buy button and purchase your domain name.
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Step17: Go Live!
In order to go live, just select Online Store from the left menu, in the new page click on Disable password. When the page is loaded just untick the Enable password and that’s it your store is now LIVE and ready for customers to come in!!
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