Do you know you can start a dropshipping business with no money? Yes, that’s right! Dropshipping involves selling a physical product without necessarily having physical contact with the product.
It also involves sourcing from a reliable supplier who’s willing and able to deliver on your behalf any product your customer has ordered.
You can dropship for free with the right dropshipping model. If you have little-to-no information about dropshipping with no money, don’t worry—you are at the right spot.
This article covers everything you need to know to start a profitable dropshipping business with no money.
To start a dropshipping business with no money, you need to:
- Be Prepared
- Pick A Niche
- Choose A Target Audience
- Know Your Competitors
- Create A Free Ecommerce Store
- Find Dropshipping Suppliers
- Run Free Adverts
- Order On Request
Also, when you start making profit, ensure you: - Re-Invest Your Profit
1. Be Prepared
A dropshipping business comes with tons of responsibilities. You must be prepared if you want to start a dropshipping business with no money. Ensure you are prepared physically, mentally and emotionally when it comes to handling the responsibilities inherent in dropshipping business with no money.
Whether you are dropshipping with or with no money, bear in mind the following responsibilities:
- Accountability. Know when your business is making profit or loss. Keep account of all income and expenses.
- Customer management. Manage customer requests and feedback. Know their thoughts about your services.
- Time management. Ensure that orders placed are delivered to the customer on time to maintain your business integrity.
- Marketing. Keep in mind that dropshipping requires skillful marketing. Convince prospective buyers to choose your products over competitors’ items.
- Internet connection. Make sure you have good Internet connection for swift communication with customers and suppliers when necessary.
2. Pick A Niche
To start a dropshipping business with no money, pick a niche that has products in high demand and has a high-profit margin. Also, look out for recurring products—they’ll give you a stable income stream.
Such niches are lucrative to run. Choose high-profit niches like health products, beauty products, jewelry and accessories, etc., given their recurring market demand.
However, avoid occasional niches with products like children summer tool kits, Christmas trees and lights, electoral campaign gadgets, etc. These occasional niches will limit to specific seasons your sales and cash flows.
Also, if you must go for niches with low competition, ensure you do your research properly. Sometimes, such niches tend to have low profit margins or supplier issues.
To be sure, use tools like Google Trends to know whether your desired niche has a positive or negative trend. Also, use Ubersuggest’s Keyword Tool to predict your niche’s future potential.
When picking a niche for your dropshipping business, ensure that:
- You can reach your target audience.
- You know something about the niche or are willing to learn something about it.
- The niche is trending or evergreen.
- You choose a niche you have passion for—or something you are motivated about.
3. Choose A Target Audience
After picking your desired niche, know your target audience. Know the demography of your target audience. Demographic research shows you the ethnicity, sex, age, education level and marital status of your target audience.
Also, know the psychographic of your target audience. It tells you more about your customer’s values, personality, lifestyle and behavior.
This also helps channel your ads to the right people and place. To do this, use Quantcast to know and grow your audience—also, to analyze your products to know which problem to solve within your niche.
4. Know Your Competitors
Study similar dropshipping businesses within your niche. Know what works and what doesn’t work for your competitors.
Study their strengths and weaknesses. Understand their business models. See reviews from previous customers, and know what they are saying about your competitors.
Know their pricing strategy and days of delivery. Check their web designs, products arrangements and listings. Search for deficiencies within your niche and provide solutions to those deficiencies.
This strategy places your dropshipping business in a unique position. Also, search for products with little-to-no competition. Sometimes, such products come with low shipping costs and high earning margins.
5. Create A Free Ecommerce Store
Next, create a free ecommerce store. Choose a free ecommerce dropshipping platform that comes with customizable templates and a collection of stock images, and makes it easy for optimization. For instance, Square, Wix, or Shopify come with free customizable templates—they don’t require any coding skill to begin.
Note: You can start a free dropshipping business from two categories of ecommerce platform—a free platform with restricted features or a platform with free trial.
For a free platform with restricted features, choose Square. Square helps you dropship with $0 investment with no incurred monthly fee. Square only charges you 2.9% per sale with your business fully integrated into your social media accounts.
Alternatively, go for a platform with free trial. Choose Wix or Shopify.
Wix helps you build an ecommerce website with a 1-year free domain name and free hosting. The 1-year trial period gives you time to upgrade to paid plan.
Shopify, on the other hand, gives you a 14-day trial for free ecommerce operation. Choose a platform that works for you, and sign up for an account. Employ an eye-catching theme to display your products in your online store.
Also, add relevant pages—which must include a home page, an about page and a contact page. Similarly, use free business tools and a payment system.
6. Find Dropshipping Suppliers
After choosing your ecommerce platform, find a dropshipping supplier. Don’t just pick any dropshipping supplier; select a reliable and reputable dropshipping supplier.
Use tools like Modalyst and DSers to find trustworthy suppliers for different products within your niche. Check suppliers with great feedback scores and extensive business history—they are more dependable.
7. Run Ads
Run ads to help customers find your business.
To advertise your dropshipping business with no money, go for free adverts. There are ways you can go about it. Use your social media accounts to promote your products and sell at discounted prices.
Check your competitors’ prices and cut down yours by a percentage. Also, create a Facebook business page for your products and invite friends to follow the page.
Also, ask your friends to invite their friends to follow your page. Join Facebook marketing pages and groups with large followers to promote your products.
Also, use forums like Reddit Ecommerce to get more information so you improve and target your dropshipping ads better.
Subsequently, when you start making profit, run a paid Facebook Ad Campaign because it helps place your business in front of your target audience.
Also, collect emails from customers until you can afford a landing page and an automatic email collection plugin. This will help you spend less in the future.
Note: Do not expect profit at the initial stage of your business. Also, when your business fails to make profit eventually, do the following:
- Re-check your niche. You probably may need to change your niche.
- Re-check your business promotion model. You may need to change your promotion model.
8. Order On Request
To start a dropshipping business with no money, do not place an order on impulse. Ensure you place an order to your supplier only when a customer orders and pays for the product. This is how you can run a dropshipping business with no money.
Once your supplier receives payment, deliver your order to the address provided. Add your profit and shipping cost to your sales price so you won’t have to pay for that.
What To Do When You Start Making Profit
9. Re-Invest Your Profit
When you start making profit, ensure you re-invest your profit into the business. You shouldn’t stay long on the free platform. Upgrade your dropshipping store to a paid plan where you’d have access to numerous features and premium business tools. Also, re-invest your profit on paid ads to reach a wider audience within your niche.
Recap
To start a dropshipping business with no money, choose a profitable business idea with a specific target audience.
Perform research on your competitors so you know their strengths and weaknesses. Also, create your ecommerce store on free platforms and work with reliable suppliers.
Run free ads on your social media accounts and on large marketing forums and ensure to place order for a product only when you have received payment from the customer.
Finally, when you start making sales, ensure you re-invest your profit into your dropshipping business for growth.
