The Ultimate Guide to Dropshipping

The Ultimate Guide to Dropshipping

Dropshipping is a popular method of selling online, but it's often associated with scams, ripoffs and get rich quick schemes. To shed some light on dropshipping, we wrote a free beginners guide to dropshipping as a part of our new Ecommerce University. It's the most indepth ebook to dropshipping you'll find anywhere, and it tells you exactly how to create and run a successful dropshipping business.

This week, we took some of the best parts from the guide and put together an infographic. Check out all of our findings in the infographic below. Please click on the image to enlarge.

37 comments

• Heh this is the first drop shipping infographic Ive ever seen. Great idea.

  Although are you sure its not spelled drop shipping as in 2 words instead of 1 word? I have seen both, but I do see 2 words more often I think.

  Anyway, really, really excellent resource. This blog just keeps getting better.

• Sweet infographic. I’m glad to see Shopify embracing the drop shipping trend. It makes sense because it’s incredibly hard to drop ship through marketplaces like Amazon and eBay these days, as the infographic shows they take a 10-15% cut of your revenue. So all the more reason to drop ship through your own Shopify store so you can keep those margins.

  - Kurt

• Rick: Glad you like the infographic and our Shopify blog. I think ‘drop shipping’ and ‘dropshipping’ is pretty interchangeable these days. To be perfectly honest, when deciding which one we should use we just went to Google AdWords Keyword Tool and found that 1 word had a higher search volume, so we went with that. But either way works just fine.

  Alexander: Good feedback, thanks! And you’re right, spotting fishy dropshippers is a very, VERY important part of starting a dropshipping business. I go into much further detail in my ebook – be sure to check it out.

  Kurt: I couldn’t agree more. You would have to be crazy to only sell via those channels… 10-15% is insane.

• Hi

  I love your info. It’s awesome.

  But, the infographics, red text on red background? Please improve readability. (Like white text on red background).

  But I didn’t come to spoil the party, I’m your groupie…
  (:

  Thanks and sorry

• I have an existing drop ship store I’m trying to convert to Shopify…. but so far it seems Shopify can’t do it.

  To drop ship we need to be able to charge the shipping rate that each vendor uses, and add that to the invoice. So, a 3 line item order with one item from each of 3 vendors would need 3 different shipping charges that may be based on different systems, eg weight from one vendor, $ value from another.

  The Shopify ‘Guru’ told me to use an App to do this but the app vendor said they can’t do it.

  When will Shopify have a system that can REALLY do this. Up till then Shopify is useless for Drop shipping.

• Someone recommended that its good to have multiple shopping carts, if that is so, how much, i am checking out several websites and among them, its either Droptec.net or EcommHub.com. They both can facilitate drop-shipping solutions in the UK, EcommHub is from the US ,and Droptec.net is UK based, they both offer a wide range of shopping carts, i think at least six (Droptec as the most/around nine). just wanted to know whats the best shopping cart, and having multiple shopping cart makes sense ? ( if so i recommend Droptec or EcommGub, well that’s what i am looking at).

• I hope everything is going well…

  I’m just sending you a quick email to find out if you would like to build a partnership in the form of a Joint Venture/Affiliate partnership with Red spyder marketing. I see how profitable video media is at the moment and am in the process of building an informative video course on how to profit from video sales to small local businesses. I see nothing on the market at the moment that is anywhere near as comprehensive as ours will be; hence I am very optimistic about how profitable this could be for us both.

  We are in the process of building our strategic alliance and it would be a great
  pleasure to talk with you about joining our network.

  We really hope this would be something you would be interested in. Please don’t hesitate to ask if there is anything we can do for you.

  Thanks very much for you time.

  To our success

  Ps – Please could you answer with a simple ‘Yes’ and when we are ready to go I will send you full details.

  - Or if you answer ‘No’ I thank you for your time and I will not email you again.

• We emailed you a couple of days ago regarding a strategic alliance with Red spyder marketing, and the fantastic video media product we are building. We thought we would send you one last email just in case the first was sent to your junk folder or you were too busy to reply.

  Please reply with the words Yes or No so we can update our records.

  Again thanks for taking the time to read our email and we really do hope you decide to work with us in the near future.

  To our success

  Adrian.

• I like the guide to drop shipping! I am a master wholesaler for Difresh in Spain. We drop ship for our resellers if anyone is interested in taking on some great products.

  Check us out, we are a drop shipping manufacturer out of Spain. DIFRESH manufactures cosmetics and beauty products, supplements and more. We have 23 products in our line at the moment. Drop ship anywhere in the world for free. Returns accepted and inventory held in the warehouse. http://dropshipping-usa. Register to be a reseller through the site 100% free or email me at jonathan.ohana@difreshpharma.com

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Original article and pictures take cdn.shopify.com site