Shopify is one of the most popular all-in-one e-commerce store-building platforms that enables store-building in just less than an hour. A fully functional Shopify Dropshipping Business is born. We talked about Shopify in the previous post where we reviewed the Shopify platform and explained what it does. You can check it out here.
But here I would like to disclose how much you actually need to start your Shopify Dropshipping Business.
Expenses #1: Shopify platform cost
It depends on which plan you choose. I’ll start here with the basic plan first which is $19/month. This is what you need to pay in order to start dropshipping Business on Shopify. But as your store grows, you would want to upgrade to a higher plan as it will have lower transaction fees charged. So, you’ll end up saving more by paying for a higher plan.
To start, you can sign up for a Shopify free trial here. You will not need to pay Shopify to use it for 14 days. All you need is just to activate the plan with your credit card, after the free trial, you can get the first 3 months for $1 per month.
Expenses #2: Domain Name
The next expense that you will have is domain cost. Although Shopify provides you with a .myshopify.com subdomain as your store URL, I strongly advise you to get your own domain name.
Why? Branding. You want your store to be branded as its own but not a subdomain of another brand. It is less so unprofessional and spammy. It gives the impression that this business doesn’t even invest in a domain name.
To get a domain name is simple, you can either get it from Shopify itself or you can go to websites like Namecheap or GoDaddy. Both offer great prices for you to get one and of course, you can add other services like privacy, private email and etc. Always go for the .com domain if possible as we’re shipping worldwide with our dropshipping business.
You will need to renew the domain name each year. I would suggest choosing the auto-renew option so you don’t forget!
Total cost $15
Expenses #3: Shopify Apps
Shopify is great by itself with all the features it provides. However, Shopify cannot includes all the features in the platforms. Else it will make the entire website slow as not everyone will need everything.
To solve this issue, Shopify provides its own & third-party apps to add their own features. Some of these apps are free but some will charge you a monthly fee after their trial period end.
A few must-have plugins for dropshippers are trifunnel, review import, countdown timer, abandon cart recovery, and email marketing.
Try to limit the number of apps installed, and only install those required as it will slow your website loading speed with too many apps installed.
The total estimated cost is $30
Expenses #4: Autoresponder
Every successful business will need an email list. The list of customers that you can market to time after time without spending ads cost. These are what we call warm/hot traffic. People that bought from you and know you. It is easier to convert this group of people from cold traffic. However, a lot of new dropshippers ignore this and just focus on ads.
To start with this, you can integrate with MailChimp as it provides a free plan to start with limited features. And you’ll need to start paying when you reach 2,000 subscribers and no affiliate offers for Mailchimp.
Total cost $25/month
Expenses #5: Paid Traffic
For this part, there are several ads platform like Facebook ads & Google ads to start with. And you’ll be getting $100 for signing up with Google Ads.
For this, you may spend $5 per ad to start testing. However, try testing as many ads set as you can to get the winning ads that you can scale and make a great profit. What most gurus don’t tell you is that you will need to test 10-50 ads to get the winning ads.
Another way is to pay influencers to promote your product on their page. It can be a 24 hours shoutout on their Instagram page or stories. It cost between $20-$100 to get one, but make sure to research the right influencer and negotiate to get a good deal. Beware of those with fake followers. One thing you can check is the engagement rate for their post.
Total cost – as much as you can
Conclusion – How Much To Start Shopify Dropshipping Business
The total cost as we listed here would be around $99 for the basic cost to start a dropshipping business. And besides that, expect another $100-200 for A/B testing. This would be the real cost of starting a dropshipping business from scratch.