Drop shipping is one of the most talked about ways of making money online, and that’s for good reason. About a quarter of all online sales are fulfilled with drop shipping, and it’s a great way for beginners to make money online.
The main problem with drop shipping is figuring out what to sell. If you’re a beginner, you start on YouTube. You learn about Alibaba and AliExpress, but there are problems. Alibaba is for advanced entrepreneurs, and the products on AliExpress are overpriced, low quality, and are going to take forever to get to your customers. Your next move is to do market research. You find a product niche and learn about suppliers. This is when you hit the paywall.
Why do so many drop shipping suppliers charge money?
Directories charge money for access because they have and offer a competitive advantage. The quality of this competitive advantage depends on your supplier.
How can I find a supplier and list products for free?
Without using one of the big companies, your options are a bit more limited. When you pay a directory, you’re getting a database of suppliers. Without that database, it’s harder to search for products, and you won’t be recommended cool products. You’re going to need to be creative when coming up with new ideas for listings. In addition, the drop shipping suppliers may have exclusive products that you can’t find on Google. Still, you can find something to sell.
What I do is go on google, and search “dropship” + product. Here is an example below.
From there, I check all of the results, and see if I find something I can sell for a profit. I also check if it looks like I can just copy paste the orders onto the site in order to fulfill the transaction. After a bit of scrolling and clicking, I find a site: tomade.com.
You can also search for “whitelabel” + product or “print on demand” + product. These options will also yield results for drop shipping suppliers, although the barriers to entry might be higher.
Now that I have a site from which I can copy products, I need a place to sell products. I know three places where you can sell your products, whether they be physical or digital.
- Gumroad.com
- Payhip.com
- Bigcartel.com
All three of these sites let you sell products without getting a domain name. Big Cartel has the lowest transaction fee, but you can only list 5 products on the free plan.
How can I promote my products for free?
This is honestly the hardest part. Dropshipping requires a lot of time and effort on behalf of the seller if you’re truly broke. If you have some money, but not enough to buy a domain name, it’s best to try listing your products on Ebay and Etsy to start. If not, you’ll need to list your products on one of the sites I gave you and then grow your own following on social media. This is actually pretty easy on a day to day level. All you have to do is make content you love. Staying consistent is the harder part. You’ll have the desire to quit, or delete content, or change your product. Making money with free traffic requires mental focus. But it is possible.
There you go. That’s how you start drop shipping for free. Let me know if you have any questions. I would be happy to help.
