The New Way to Start Dropshipping in 2026 (Step by Step)

[00:01] doing it completely backwards, and I know this because I did that for years. Random products, stores that went nowhere, ads that just bled money. And I would convince myself it was the product. So, I would scrap everything

[00:14] [music] and start over. New product, new store, new ads, just to get the same longer than it should have to figure out why. And once I did, everything changed. started converting, and it wasn't because I got better at finding

[00:28] to show you exactly how to start drop shipping from scratch in 2026, and I'm can follow along. We're going to cover how to find your product, how to get it connected to a supplier, and drive traffic to it. Everything in

[00:43] let's get into it. So, if you're brand new to this, here's the short version of up an online store, you list products you want to sell, and when someone buys, You never hold the inventory, you never buy anything up front, and you keep the

[00:58] and what the supplier charges you. And the reason why I like this model, out, is that you're not putting a ton of money on the line before you know thousand units of something and just hoping it sells. You find out if it

[01:13] works first, and then you can invest more into it. All right, so let's start specifically finding the right person to sell to before you even think about what this. Most beginner guides on how to start drop shipping just jump straight

[01:27] how to scroll TikTok, use a product research tool, look for something that's work, but here's the problem with it. By trending, you validate it, you get your store up and start running ads, there's

[01:40] already starting to close. So, you're essentially chasing something that someone else has found two weeks before you start with the product, you spend the whole time guessing. You're guessing

[01:53] in your ads, and what actually matters to the person on the other side of the to show you, it flips that. You find the person first, you understand their actual problem, and then the product becomes obvious because you already know

[02:07] it in that order, your ads are sharper, your stores convert better, and you So, let me show you how it works. So, the first place that I go to is Reddit, random, but here's why it works a lot better than any product research tool

[02:22] people are completely [music] unfiltered. Nobody is performing trying build a brand or promote something. They're just genuinely stuck on something and just asking for help. And that honesty is exactly what makes it so

[02:36] to do is find a specific community. Not a broad topic, a specific subreddit. And I'm going to be using r-running as an example here. These people, they take running super seriously, everything from marathon training, long runs, the whole

[02:50] nine yards. They spend real money on gear, [music] and they have very strong doesn't. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to search for something super simple. Like, for example, water on runs. And the top result that comes back

[03:04] you use to bring water on runs with a bunch of upvotes and a bunch of read what this person [music] wrote. They said, "I'm training for a marathon and on my long runs, I really feel like I need to be bringing water with me. The

[03:18] the water bottle in my hand the whole time, and I don't want to spend a ton of know if it'll work." So, [music] that one post right here, it tells us so much. It tells us that this person has a real problem, they've already thought

[03:33] are out there, and every [music] option it either cost too much or it just feels wrong to them. Now, we can look at this one right here. 121 comments, everyone's Solomon [music] vests, Osprey packs.

[03:47] [music] because nothing else seems to work well cheaper ones will chafe you." Another is saying, "I've been looking at these vests, but it's really [music] expensive. Any cheaper alternatives?"

[04:01] telling us that there's currently no affordable, comfortable solution for a regular runner who isn't doing ultra marathons, but still [music] needs to carry water on long training runs. So, that middle ground, which is the

[04:15] lightweight, affordable, non-chafing for the everyday marathon trainer, basically And we can even pay attention to the language that people are using here. "Bouncing in my pockets, the cheaper ones will chafe you, it's a bit much to

[04:28] that's the exact language that you're going to use in your ads. [music] And resonates with these people because you literally just have to read it from before we build anything, there is a brand right here. As you can see,

[04:43] they're called FlipBelt. They make [music] running belts specifically designed for this problem. If we pull up the Meta Ad Library, and then we look at have [music] been running for weeks, even months, testing tons and tons of

[04:57] different creatives, different videos, different image ads, different copies. money on these [music] ads if they aren't converting, aka if they're not making them money because it's simply too expensive to keep these ads running

[05:10] for this long. So, [music] if they have the same creative, same set of videos that have been running for three, four, five weeks, they're making money, plain green light. All right, so we've got our green light. FlipBelt has been running

[05:23] their ads for months and months on end. Clearly, there is money in this niche. out our store. So, for this tutorial, I'm going to be using Wix specifically because they just dropped, as you can see right here, Wix Harmony, which is an

[05:38] AI store builder that combines vibe coding with drag and drop. Right here, you can see you simply describe what you want for the website [music] and it builds exactly that for you. So, I'll make sure to leave a link for you guys

[05:52] to access it below. We can just press chat with AI. And then from here, it expert. I'm here to help you create your your business." And here, you want to give a brief description of your

[06:05] website, your brand, the products that you're selling. So, I went ahead and said, "I'm building a drop shipping store selling running accessories, specifically lightweight running belts for marathon training. My customers are

[06:17] serious runners who need to carry water, keys, and their phone on long runs without holding anything or spending $150 in a vest. Clean, minimal design." So, that is my prompt. Of course, you want to cater this prompt to whatever

[06:30] you're selling, whatever your brand is all about. So, I'm going to press next. And then right here, it says, "Do you have a business name in mind for your store? If you're still designing, here are a few ideas." And it gives you some

[06:42] Minimalist. So, it's actually a pretty good name. For the sake of this example, let's just go with that Stride Belt. And then we'll "Based on what you shared about Stride Belt, I've updated your site description

[06:56] on the left. Feel free to edit. Okay, you have two great options: design with Arya, I'll generate fully tailored site based on your business vibe and goals, templates I've selected for you." So, you can choose any of these templates

[07:09] right here to build off of. Now, you'll see that a lot of these templates are geared to a specific niche or style. You can see t-shirt store, a toy store, a home goods store, an electronics store. I'd rather just design it all with AI,

[07:24] so that's what we're going to do. So, based on the questions that we've already created a prompt for us. So, we're going to go in and use AI to to press design with Arya. And then as you can see, it's starting to work on

[07:39] the brand colors, the typography, the site vision. It's doing all the building on the back end. So, here it says I put together a brand identity and business goals for your stride belts for your brand. I've selected sleek, technical,

[07:52] and minimalist visual profile. Nice, nice. To drive your business forward, products, connect with clients. Nice. What do you think? Should we make adjustments? No, that for the most part sounds pretty good. So, we'll just go in

[08:05] with just say move on. And what's cool with this vibe coding type of interface, we can make any adjustments that we would like simply with chat. So, it's like having chat GPT or Claude integrated into your online store and it

[08:19] like it to do. So, it's going to ask you a couple follow-up questions. So, your business name, whether you want to add a store. So, just answer all these questions. Takes maybe 30 seconds. All right, now it has prepared everything.

[08:33] We're just going to press generate our site now. Now, it's starting to work on building out our store for us. We don't want to leave this tab because it's may screw things up on the back end. And bam, just like that, our site is in fact

[08:46] ready. This is exactly what it looks like. Just like it said, it built something that's clean, minimal, and this is what it looks like on mobile. That looks really good. I mean, this was within a few minutes. We click the drop

[08:59] down. We have all of our pages. So, we have the about, we have the product page, we have the category page, the cart page. All these pages that it'll direct us right here. So, this is the example product page that we have, just

[09:12] like so. Looks really clean. We have free will to change the background, the colors, the fonts, pretty much anything that we like. So, we can make pretty much any adjustment that we would like with the AI chat. So, you want to select

[09:27] example, if I want to change this image right here, I select this image. Then we can go in and say that we want to change this image of of male runner to a female runner. And we'll have it do its thing. And then simply like that, we have made

[09:40] that change. Now we can go in and regenerate this entire site. If we don't like any of it, we can enhance it. We can do anything that we would like within this AI chat. So we're currently happy with what we have. All we have to

[09:54] do is press publish right here. All right, nice. Our store has been published. All right, so once you're on the dashboard where we're just editing do is go through this checklist and make sure that you check off each one of

[10:07] for example, if we want to connect a domain or have our own custom domain, if you know, our brand is called Stride Kits, we want to get the dot com. We could just type that in and press let's go. And then from here, it's going to

[10:21] direct us to Wix Domains where we can see if that brand name is in fact this one is taken. So let's just put Stride Kit Belts. Let's say you wanted to go with this. And since this one is available, all we have to do to claim

[10:35] this domain is press make it yours right here for $0 per year. And if you guys subscribe to Wix Premium, you can see that you can get the domain for free. If go and buy the domain only. You guys don't have to do it for 3 years. If you

[10:50] eight bucks. And that is going to be the URL that gets directed to your specific website. So someone types in Stride Belt Stride Kit Belts.com, they're going to that we just went ahead and built with Wix Harmony. All right, so the store is

[11:05] products onto our store. And this is actually something that I didn't expect from Wix. They have product sourcing built right into their dashboard. So you never actually have to leave the

[11:17] platform. The first thing that you want to do from the main dashboard, from your to do from the main dashboard, from your home page, is go right here to catalog. then we'll go to find products to sell. So there's going to be two main options

[11:30] right here, which is going to be like the top created drop shipping products uh that you can simply just import with a single click like this. Now, this get something live super fast. And the difference really matters here because

[11:45] with Modulus right here, you're paying the retail drop shipping prices. But, if you're going straight to the source, which is going to be Alibaba in this products. You're going to get better pricing, which, you know, in turn is

[11:57] brand. if we want to just sell all those running belts, we just go into explore products right here. And then we can literally type in running belt just like so. And then it's going to populate all the different running belts that we can

[12:11] sell. This one probably looks the most similar. And you'll see that the pricing is typically going to be a lot better from what we have on Modulus. Now, the only caveat here is that sometimes there will be an MOQ for these products, which

[12:25] this one is five. You'll see this one is 50. However, there are some that are a single minimum order quantity. So, you just need to buy one, and that will get reason why you might want to use Modulus is because the pricing is going to be

[12:40] better. So, you're kind of paying for the convenience. So, if we just go into go right here into view more products on Modulus. And then we just type in something running belt. And then it looks like this is probably the closest

[12:54] The product cost actually isn't bad, 285. Uh the retail we could probably sell it for more. I don't know why it has it at 850, but it is sourced from Alibaba. So, this is actually not a bad option right here. So, if you want to

[13:07] add this product right here to our online store, all we have to do is add to import list like this. You can also order a sample, and then we'll view it in our import list. And then we just change the name to whatever our brand

[13:19] name is, whatever we would like to name it. Pricing, we could change the pricing per unit, but I'll just leave it just like this. Now, all we have to do here is add this product to our store. We can change the product page as well on Wix

[13:33] Harmony, but the main thing is that when someone buys the product, it's going to be linked to this fulfillment right here at the product cost of 285. We can then would like, but the main thing is that the back end is now set up. Now, when

[13:46] someone orders your product, you just have to go to the Modulus dashboard, we'll go into orders, and then you will go and fulfill each of these orders is that supplier that you've chosen will then ship the product to your customer,

[13:59] so you don't have to touch or hold any of the inventory. That order will then get synced, and you'll be pretty much good to go. All right, so your store is you need to actually get people to it, and there are two ways to drive traffic.

[14:13] You have paid ads or organic. Both work, but before we get into paid, I want to >> You are going to need some money set aside for this, somewhere between $250 to $500 per product just to get an actual read on what is working. So, if

[14:26] right now, organic is going to be your on TikTok and Instagram using the language that you pulled [music] from you do have some budget, here's how I'd run it. One Facebook campaign, sales

[14:39] objective, and for the targeting, just keep it broad. Don't touch the interest settings. Don't try and get super clever with it. Literally, just select your alone. Facebook at this point has so much data that it's just better at

[14:51] you're just starting out. So, let it do that. $50 a day, load up anywhere from three to five different videos [music] inside of that one ad set. So, you have everything from the same product, the same text copy, but every video has a

[15:04] different hook or different way of opening on the problem that you have. perfect campaign setup here. You're just trying to figure out which version of buy. Then, you just leave it, give it three to five days, and I know you're

[15:17] going to want to go in there and start tweaking things. Don't do that. Just that, you're going to want to check your cost per purchase. This is basically how You can compare that to what you're actually making per order. So, if you're

[15:31] spending less than you're making, you're good. Keep going. Let it run. If not, that's fine. That's literally what this test is going to be for. Now honestly, the targeting or the budget. It's the video. It's the message didn't land. So,

[15:44] creative, and then run it again. Now if you're actually making those videos, don't start from scratch. Go back to the Meta Ad Library, the same place that we went and validated the product earlier, and find the ads that have been running

[15:57] Actually go in there and study them. So, how do they open? What was the first they leading with? That's going to be your reference point because you're not copying it. You're just trying to figure out why it works, and then build

[16:10] for the actual footage, your phone is completely fine. But, if you want to entirely, which I do recommend when you're just starting out, better to use AI UGC right now at this moment. There are tools now where you basically feed

[16:24] in the script and it generates a realistic video of someone using the product. They have tools like Arc Ads, Hicksfield. Doesn't really matter what an in-depth video on exactly how to do

[16:36] can just watch it right here. Because for testing angles early on, this is what works really well, really efficiently, and will help you gain that everything I just walked you through, that is the foundation. And honestly, if

[16:49] of most people that are trying to do it. The part that I can't put into a YouTube So, knowing whether the product that you you're just simply excited about it. Knowing if your ad numbers are telling

[17:03] you to keep going versus if they're telling you to pull the plug. That stuff only comes from doing it or having someone next to you who has already done program is. Me and my team are working through it directly with you. Now, this

[17:16] is not a course you just sit through and close a tab on. You bring your store, together. Now, if that sounds like something that you need right now, I'll more. Now, if you take one thing from this, go find your community first.

[17:29] Spend 20 minutes on Reddit. Read how people actually talk about a problem. say, [music] and everything else flows from that. Other than that, thank you for watching. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.