Shopify Dropshipping Guide 2026 — Step-by-Step Guide & Transcript

[00:02] you're in the right place because today I'm going to be showing you the exact process for building a drop shipping store from scratch [music] using the latest AI and automation tools. This is going to be an all-in-one comprehensive

[00:16] guide. By the end of this video, you'll have a clear understanding of what drop shipping is, how to discover high demand products, how to market those products. We'll cover the exact tools that you need for drop shipping. will look at an

[00:29] AI tool that will help you to generate your store's layout and populate it with products that have a high demand. But even more important than that is I'm going to teach you the skill of finding these types of products for yourself and

[00:44] actually start getting your first visitors. Now, with that being said, make no mistake about it, okay? Drop shipping is not a get-richquick scheme. It is going to require a significant amount of work. But this is true with

[00:59] worthwhile. [music] And I'm saying that because I don't want you to start drop shipping with this idea in your head that you're going to get rich overnight with this, right? No one wants to tell you that because they

[01:12] want you to stick around and watch their video. But I just want to be completely transparent with you. Now, with that being said, though, if you're willing to show up, put in the work, and make the sacrifices, and like actually do this,

[01:26] then you're already ahead of most people who start this business with the wrong mindset. So, there are really just four simple steps that you need to start drop shipping on Shopify. But before we get into those four steps, I want to take a

[01:41] step back and talk about step zero, which I don't really ever hear anybody shipping. And honestly, this information alone could be the single thing that alone could be the single thing that causes you to win with drop shipping or

[01:55] not. So, uh there are basically two main types of drop shipping stores that you can create. Okay? You've got general stores and then you've got niche stores. And then technically there is a third option called one product stores. But in

[02:10] my opinion these are basically just niche stores. Also a general store though is a type of drop shipping store that really sells just about anything, right? It can sell electronics, home decor, beauty items, and pet supplies

[02:25] all under the same store. Okay. A niche drop shipping store though focuses on drop shipping store though focuses on just one single product or a small niche of items that all kind of go together. And so this could be things like outdoor

[02:38] accessories or like a gaming console like this product right here in particular got really popular over the 2025 holiday season. Everybody and their mom and their brother was trying to start a drop shipping store for this

[02:53] specific product. Okay. Um and we'll talk about that a little bit later. Now, you'll hear a lot of people say that beginners should start a general store, okay? And the reason they say this is because it allows you to attract a wider

[03:05] audience and test multiple different products to see what might work. However, you'll then hear those same people say that once you've got experience, once you understand how to use the tools and all that stuff, then

[03:19] you should go and create a niche drop shipping store because that is where the real money is made. Okay. And [music] I've always disagreed with that advice, right? I believe that you should start a niche store at the very beginning and

[03:34] just jump straight into the thing that makes you the most money, right? Because you're still going to have to learn all the tools and learn all the tricks of you'll be doing it with the thing that you're going to be making the most money

[03:47] ahead and jump into step number one. Now, the first thing that you'll need obviously is an online store. Now, if you're watching this video, you probably already know what drop shipping is. Uh,

[04:00] for those of you who might need like a quick refresh, it's basically when you sell products that you never touch or even own yourself. All you're doing is building an online store and then anytime somebody buys a product on your

[04:13] store, your supplier will fulfill and ship that product directly to your customer for you without you having to do anything else. And so, yeah, the first thing we need is a store to actually, you know, send customers to so

[04:27] drop ship. So, the first thing you're going to do is click on the link down below in the description of this video, uh, which is buildyourstore, uh.ai/joshuao, but I'll also have that linked down

[04:40] below as well, uh, in the pinned comment and in the description. Now, when you click that link, it's going to take you to this landing page right here. So, from this page, we're just going to click right here on build my free store,

[04:53] and it'll open up this right here. Enter your uh full name, your email, or your password. You can also just sign up with Google if you want, which is what I'll do. After that, uh you can just click on skip for now. We'll skip that question.

[05:05] And so, from this page, uh this is where you pick a niche for your store. So, you got fashion and apparel, pets, electronics, and gadgets, etc. If you're not sure about what niche you want to start your store in yet, you can click

[05:17] example, I'm just going to click on electronics and gadgets and then click done. And then from here, you'll choose uh banners for your homepage. So, just click on a couple of images that stand out to you and then choose done. The

[05:30] next step is to access Shopify. So, we have to create your Shopify account. Shopify is where the entire business exists. And so, click right here on access Shopify. Then you're going to go ahead and sign up for your free trial.

[05:44] Now, the good thing about signing up this way is that first you get a three-day free trial and then you get Shopify for just $1 per month for 3 good deal. So, I'm just going to enter my email in there and go ahead and uh

[05:59] choose a password and then click on create account. Once that's done, it's going to uh ask you to enter in your payment details. This is just so that after the 3-day trial, uh, it'll automatically start your $1 per month

[06:12] enter your credit card details here and then click subscribe for $1. And then, of course, that that $1 subscription will start after your 3-day free trial. The next step, it'll ask you to choose your plan. You don't overthink this.

[06:27] Just go with the basic plan. Mostly, pretty much everybody who's watching this video is they don't need anything more than the basic plan. Uh once you begin scaling, making more money, making more sales, things like that, you can

[06:39] beginning, though, the basic plan is more than enough. It's going to ask you to share your business address. You can uh feel free to add this later or add it now. For the sake of this video, I'll just add this later. So, click add

[06:52] click on uh skip customize setup. You you want. I don't think it's necessary. It's not going to change anything. And then once you're done doing that, let's go ahead and click back over to the

[07:04] build your store uh AI tool. That should still be open in another tab on your click right here on done to go to the next step. Next, it's going to ask us to link your Shopify store to this AI. Okay? So, click right here on access

[07:19] Shopify. Uh if you already created your Shopify account, it should just bring you back to this page here. Then, you're just going to copy this link right up here within your browser. Okay? Copy that link and then head back over to

[07:32] build your store and then just paste that link in there. Click on save and then click on done. Next, it's time to grab your Shopify discount. Okay, so click right here on access Shopify again. It's going to bring us over here

[07:45] to this page. Uh just click right here on subscribe. That's all you need to do. And once that's done, we'll just head back into build your store and then click right here on done. The next step after that is we want to install uh the

[07:58] build your store app onto your Shopify store. This is going to be a very important step. So, click right there on install and then we'll just install this automatically bring you back to build your store. And then you can either

[08:11] choose to go with the free beginner store, which costs no money to you, or you can pay $97 to go with one of the professional one product stores. It's this video, we're just going to start with the free beginner store. This will

[08:27] give us the free Shopify theme plus 10 preloaded products. But if you have the money to spend and you want like a a more customized solution built specifically for a one product or like a niche store like we talked about

[08:39] earlier, then it could be worth it to go with this $97 um option right here. For free beginner store and then click right here on continue with the basic store and then click yes, skip, I'll do all the work myself. After that, you might

[08:53] get this offer pop up right here, which is instead of $97, you only have to pay $47. In that situation, I'm not trying to force you guys to spend any money uh unnecessarily, but it could be worth it to pay, you know, $47 to have a little

[09:08] bit more of a custom uh store built for you. And so, in this situation, I am going to actually click right here on yes, upgrade my store for $47 and then details. But again, I can't emphasize this enough. You don't have to go with a

[09:24] just that this is going to give us a more premium customized setup, which I think is worth it at that $47 price range. So, click right here on create my custom store, and it's going to begin

[09:37] customizing your Shopify store for you. So, we'll just wait for it to finish. Once that's done, it'll uh say add top selling products. And so, we have to actually begin registering with AutoDS. AutoDS is the drop shipping uh

[09:51] fulfillment platform that we'll be using to kind of automate and help us with fulfillment of the drop shipping products. So, click right here on register to AutoDS. Once you uh sign up, it's going to ask you to select your

[10:03] selling channel. For this, we'll click on Shopify and then we're going to basically, there's three different plans. Again, kind of similar with the Shopify plan. I would recommend you just start with the lowest plan, which is the

[10:16] start with the lowest plan, which is the import 200. It's only $20 per month if you pay annually and $27 per month if you pay monthtomonth. So, it's not really that expensive. You'll get your first month for only 99 though, so you

[10:29] can give it a try to see if you like it. Uh, so we'll stick with the monthly. And so, under the import 200, just click on start now for 99. And again, enter your Now, you might be thinking to yourself right now, Joshua, it seems like we're

[10:42] signing up for a ton of different subscriptions and softwares and things like that. That this is the cost of doing business with drop shipping. You have to have these tools because these tools are what make it even possible in

[10:55] the first place for you to do this business. Okay? It's a very very small price to pay all of these tools and there's not even a lot. We have Shopify and AutoDS, right? Those are the only two tools that we that we've paid for so

[11:07] far. Between those two tools and we upgraded to a more premium theme with Build Your Store, it's not a lot of money to spend for something that has the potential to scale to a massive level. Okay. Uh so the monthly expenses

[11:20] we've got the free months, the free trials, all that stuff so that we can test the waters. So once that's all done, I'm going to click X-ray here to exit out. And you should land on the uh the AutoDS dashboard. once this is

[11:34] land on this page right here. It says, "Hi Joshua Mayo, connect your Shopify store to AutoDS." It'll give you three options. Um we're going to click right here on the first option. I have a Shopify store connected to AutoDS

[11:46] because the build your store AI has already created the Shopify store for us, right? So we technically do have a store ready. So we'll just click on that take you to this page right here that says install. So, we'll install the

[12:01] AutoDS plugin and then click install again. And this is going to connect the drop shipping software AutoDS to our Shopify store to make it possible to even drop ship in the first place. Once you do that, you'll land on the AutoDS

[12:16] to kind of go through this platform by yourself and learn how where everything is and learn how things work and stuff. Really the key places you'll want to be looking though are the marketplace which will show you all of the different drop

[12:29] shipping products that AutoDS has ready to import into your store and start selling immediately. Um and then we'll talk about the sourcing request which is another very important um part of the platform. Once you're done signing up,

[12:41] head back over to build your store and click right here on done. And then from here we can click right here on access my store and it'll take us to our new store. Now, I think that it is it was worth it to pay for this premium upgrade

[12:56] because this store looks incredible. You can see that the focus, ironically, is can see that the focus, ironically, is on this um this this uh portable vacuum, which is a very popular product. We saw this all over Tik Tok and even Amazon.

[13:09] And you can see it sets up this really really cool like bundle and save feature vacuums, you'll save more. This obviously encourages, you know, upselling and like getting more units sold per customer. Um, but if we scroll

[13:22] down, you can see all these other details and we can obviously edit all of this. We can add sections and stuff. We'll talk about that in a little bit. But I think that it was worth it to pay $47 to have a more custom store compared

[13:35] different products and we have to kind of um navigate those products and choose which ones we want to sell versus having just one product selected for us. I think that's a game changer. Um, and so anyways, we'll head back over to build

[13:49] your store. Click on done. And a really cool feature here that they just recently added was you can now create these viral videos using like UGC AI

[14:01] avatars. I mean, it's it's incredible how this works. So, I'm going to click right here on generate my first video because I want to show you how cool this technology actually is. It's going to bring us over here to this create UGC

[14:13] page. And this what I'm going to show you here will make a lot more sense later on when we talk about how to actually market your drop shipping store. You'll be able to see how you can use this platform right here for your

[14:27] marketing purposes. But anyways, yeah, there you have it. There's your store buy now and you can see that it's built us this impressive uh one product aka niche store. And I think this looks very very good. Every single successful drop

[14:43] shipping store that I've seen over the past like 2 years uses this exact setup where they've got these this bundle option right here. They've got details and high-quality images of the photo. They've got all this different

[14:56] information and customer reviews and all that stuff. And you know, like I said, customize any of this stuff using the built-in Shopify editor, which I'll show you how to do soon. But there it is. There's your store. And it was all built

[15:09] for us in just a few minutes. But yeah, we'll go through this platform in a little bit more detail once we actually find or begin searching for the drop shipping product that we want to sell. All right. Now, the next step, step

[15:21] number two, is we actually have to decide on a product uh to sell in your store, right? And to be honest with you, this really is the hardest part of the [music] opinion, right? But I don't want you to overthink this process because

[15:35] after I break all of this down, I promise you, you'll completely understand how this works. Now, you might be wondering, Joshua, why are we going to find a new product if our AI built store already has preloaded

[15:49] winning products in it? Like, shouldn't I just sell those ones? Well, you certainly can choose, you know, one of those pre-loaded products to sell. That's totally fine. But regardless, you still need to learn how to like the art

[16:02] of actually finding and validating new product ideas as well. Okay? It's kind of the same idea of give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, he'll eat the rest of his life, right? Uh so it's it's that same

[16:16] philosophy. We have to teach you how to actually research and validate products so that you can do this again and again for yourself in the future. And so this step is probably going to be the most important in this video. So I would pay

[16:29] common question that I get when it comes to drop shipping is Joshua, I want to start drop shipping, but I don't know what niche or product to choose. And my

[16:41] answer to that question is always the exact same. First of all, don't overthink it. Okay? Uh, second of all, I want you to remember that just because a product is hot or trending right now does not mean it will make you money.

[16:55] People have this tendency when they start drop shipping to look at products that are like really trendy or like just really hot right now and they'll start trying to drop ship those products. A perfect example of this, I'll refer back

[17:08] to this, was this really cool gaming console right here. This thing's got console right here. This thing's got over 21,000 games on it. It's got GTA, all of the old PlayStation games, pretty much every popular console. Um, all the

[17:23] games are on this device right here, right? And this product was extremely hot during the 2025 holiday season. However, because it was so trendy, everybody was trying to drop ship it and therefore there was not a lot of money

[17:36] to be made because the market just got way too saturated. So, with that being said, how do you find a winning product to begin selling for your drop shipping store? Well, any niche or product you choose needs to make sense in three

[17:50] different ways. You can kind of treat these three things as your criteria. The first criteria is that the product needs to be in demand. People already need to be buying this type of product. We're not trying to convince the market that

[18:03] something should exist. We are just tapping into demand that's already That might be obvious, but if the margins don't work, nothing else

[18:15] matters. As a general rule that you can follow, you want to make sure to price the product that you're going to sell at least two and a half times or like between two and three times the cost uh of the product so that you have room for

[18:28] profit and marketing if you're doing paid ads. And the third criteria is I personally like products that have some longevity to them. These are called evergreen products. And so things that solve a real problem or fulfill an

[18:43] ongoing desire, not just something that spikes for a few weeks during Christmas and then, you know, disappears after the holiday season is over. Now, don't get me wrong, okay? selling trendy products absolutely can work and you can make a

[18:58] lot of money doing it. But the thing is is that you have to time them absolutely perfectly right before everybody else starts jumping on the bandwagon and build their own landing page for it and trying to drop ship this one product

[19:13] before the market gets too saturated. And so you have to time it absolutely perfectly. And honestly, sometimes that just means being lucky. I hate to say it, but it's it's true. But the good news is that you don't have to be lucky

[19:26] to win with drop shipping. And this is why I like evergreen products so much end up working out for you better long term because people always need those products year round. And so with those three uh things in mind, that three

[19:42] criteria, now it's time to actually begin doing some product research. Now the goal of product research is very simple. The goal is to first find a product. and I'll show you how to do that. But then we need to validate that

[19:56] that as well. And the good thing is that this. Basically, we're just going to look around using some free tools to see what other people are having success

[20:08] selling. And this will help to kind of give us an idea for what we can sell. And the first place that I would check personally is the Tik Tok creative Tok creative center. And if you just go to Google and type in Tik Tok Creative

[20:22] Center, this will pop up right here with the first link. So basically with this, it's pretty cool. You don't even have to sign into an account to use this. But um it just basically shows you all of the top like trending ads and like products

[20:35] that are working on Tik Tok shop. Now, the reason we're referring to Tik Tok shop is because um oftent times drop shippers will first of all they'll drop ship using Tik Tok shop, but also they'll just use it to find inspiration

[20:48] because if people are buying things on Tik Tok shop, then chances are those are going to be good products to drop ship as well. And so from here, the first place that I would look is right here under inspiration and then click on top

[21:01] go about this. The first way is you can search uh using the top ads dashboard. different options. You can filter by the country by the industry. You got like

[21:13] you know apparel and accessories, appliances, baby, kids and maternity, you know, education, games, all these different um industries or categories. You can filter by objective. And when you filter, it'll show you different ads

[21:27] uh based on those filters, right? Uh the other way that you can search is just looking at the top ad spotlight. And so like for example, if we scroll down here, we can see that this it looks like some kind of projector. Um has performed

[21:40] extremely well. So yeah, it's it's basically just a projector that you can like lay on your bed and it'll project onto your onto your um ceiling for you to watch shows, which is pretty cool, or play games. And so this is getting a ton

[21:54] of likes and a ton of engagement on Tik Tok. And so you could look at that and product that we could end up drop shipping, right? If we click on see analytics, it'll show us even more details. It'll also show us like

[22:07] different ads that people have ran that are similar to this projector ad right here. So that's one way to use the Tik Tok creative center. Another way is to go back to inspiration and then click on top product. And then from here, same

[22:20] you can filter by the product. And so let's just say that we wanted to filter by, I don't know, maybe household appliances. And then we'll do last seven days. Let's change this to last 30 days just to give us a little bit broader of

[22:35] a horizon. So you can see right here, air purifiers, uh, vacuum cleaners, juicers, and blenders. All these things are are popular household products that are selling really well on Tik Tok shop right now. If we were to click, for

[22:47] example, on air purifiers, or maybe we'll do vacuum cleaners and sweepers, we'll click on details right here. It's going to show us some more details about it, but also if you scroll down, you'll see related videos that people have have

[22:59] posted about different vacuum cleaners that they're drop shipping on Tik Tok shop, right? And so, like, if we click on this one, for example, that's for a any case, any case, I'm not going to watch the video. The point though is

[23:13] that you can look at these videos. You can get ideas first of all for, you know, making your own organic ads on Tik Tok, but you can also just see what if they're selling a lot of that product. If there's getting if the

[23:26] videos are getting a lot of engagement, that can be an indication to you that that's going to be a product that you could try drop shipping yourself. And so this is a very very powerful and free tool that you can use to get ideas and

[23:38] insight for you know products that you can drop ship on your own store. Now something else you can do is sign up for the Tik Tok creator affiliate program. in a second. Uh but signing up for this program literally takes 10 seconds. I've

[23:53] walks you through this entire process. I'll leave that down in the uh it. But once you join the affiliate program, you'll get access to this kind of dashboard area here that gives you a ton of valuable information that you can

[24:07] use to figure out what you might want to drop ship yourself. And so we can just scroll through this dashboard of products here and just get a ton of like see how many times the product has sold, kind of what the average price it's

[24:20] selling for. Uh look at this right here. This is the gaming device that I have right here. And you can see right here it's being sold on Tik Tok shop. It's sold over 80,000 times, you know, through different Tik Tok shop affiliate

[24:32] sellers. But in any case, one product in particular that I keep seeing pop up that is getting a ton of sales are these little mini like leaf blower things, right? You can see this one right here has sold almost 200,000

[24:47] times. That [music] is a really big deal. And so that is something that we could potentially start trying to drop ship ourself. And so we can click on get some more info on it. We can see the price range for what wear typically

[25:01] sells at. We can scroll down some more. We can see videos that people have and like promoting the product for themselves to to sell. So once again, this can give you an idea for the type of video that you could make the like

[25:15] the organic ad that you can post on Tik Tok to bring sales to your drop shipping there's tons of videos like this being posted. Okay. And so yeah, uh for my drop shipping store that I'm starting in

[25:28] this video, I'm just going to drop ship a product that is similar to this one or this exact one if I can find it. And so you can see Tik Tok shop affiliates dashboard is a really good resource to use to find products that you can sell,

[25:41] but also then to research those same products. So that's another place. Um should be checking is Google Trends. Whenever I have like one or two products that I'm considering drop shipping, I'll head over to Google Trends and then

[25:57] search for that product within Google Trends. Now, the goal of Google Trends Trends. Now, the goal of Google Trends is to see if that product or if the the category of products that that product exist in is trending up or trending down

[26:10] or maybe just going sideways. And so for this, I'll type in mini leaf blower category of the product that is being sold. And I'm going to go maybe to the last month to see how this is uh trending. And so you can see right here

[26:27] starting at the top of this year, it had a huge spike in interest, [music] which is a really good sign. Now, I want to go back a little bit further, like the past year, to see if it's overall trending up or going kind of sideways. So you can

[26:40] see over the past year it's got very consistent like interest which is a good sign. That's what we want because that's what you want out of an evergreen product is just kind of like almost a flat line of consistent interest year

[26:53] round. Now if it spikes up like this occasionally that's totally fine. That's you can make extra money during that season. But overall we can see that this product right here is not going up on average. It's not going down over time.

[27:09] it's just kind of staying straight. And we can even zoom out to see over the past 5 years if it's doing the same thing. And that kind of remains true. Like over time it is going up a little bit I would say, but for the most part

[27:22] it's a pretty flat line which is absolutely perfect for um evergreen products. And so Google Trends kind of helps to validate our product idea because we can see with real live data pulled directly from Google that this

[27:35] product does have interest over time. Okay. Now, the final place that I would check even after all of that, even after you validate it with Google Trends, I would also check amazon.com. So, I would go into Amazon and then just type in the

[27:49] name of the product that you are interested in drop shipping. And so, in this case, we'll go into Amazon and type in mini uh leaf blower. And really, the goal here is to see once again, is this product actually selling? Because, you

[28:02] that people are buying this product on Tik Tok shop. What about Amazon? because Amazon is another massive e-commerce platform that people are constantly shopping on. And so if people are buying this product on Amazon.com as well, it

[28:16] just kind of helps to validate to us that this is broadly speaking a popular looking for. And so we can see right here the first one on the list of 5,000 plus people bought this mini leaf blower last month. Right? We can keep scrolling

[28:31] down here. We got one right here that's 4,000 plus people. Um, even 300 plus scrolling down here. You can see all these different leaf blowers. Some have more sales than others. This one right here, gosh, has 40,000 plus people

[28:46] bought this one in the past month. That's that's insane. Okay. And so, I think that that pretty much validates it that this is a product that we could absolutely sell on our drop shipping store. And so, we were able to discover

[29:01] this product using Tik Tok shop. and you know the Tik Tok creative platform and then we were able to validate it also using Tik Tok shop affiliates platform uh Google trends and then now Amazon right and so I think it's safe to say

[29:15] that this is a product that we could absolutely have success drop shipping now I want to say something really quick as clearly as I possibly can so that you paralysis trying to find like the perfect product or something drop

[29:29] shipping is not about trying to find the perfect product Some products won't work and that's fine. That's normal. Even after your research, right? Even after validating the idea with data and stuff like that, you might start drop shipping

[29:44] it and it might not work. And that's normal. That's okay. You only need to find one or two winners to build something real, to make a lot of money, and to build something that is going to last, right? And so I wouldn't get stuck

[29:58] in analysis paralysis trying to find the most perfect product that has ever existed because you're probably not going to find it. Pick something that yourself like, "Yeah, sure. I would buy

[30:10] it and that there's actually margin to follows the three criteria that we talked about earlier. And then if it does and you've done the research and you validated the idea and it looks

[30:23] good, just move forward with it. And that actually brings us to step number three. And step number three is all about product fulfillment. We have to make sure that the product you are selling actually gets delivered to the

[30:36] customer uh once they start buying it from your store. And this is where AutoDS comes in because remember as a drop shipper you the drop shipper are not handling the product at all. Right? Because your only responsibility is

[30:50] finding good products to sell in the first place and then getting those products in front of people with videos, organic content on social media or paid ads or whatever. Getting those products in front of people and convincing them

[31:05] to buy the product. And then when they buy the product from your store, AutoDS will fulfill that product for you. And so this means they'll contact the supplier, have the supplier prepare the order, ship the order to your customer

[31:19] in a timely manner, and really just take care of all of the back-end stuff for you. And so we're back in this dashboard now, and let me just really quickly run through this tool so that you can see how amazing it is. This right here is

[31:32] the marketplace. This is where you can browse for new products to sell, kind of discover new ideas, and things like that. AutoDS has an insane amount of products that you can import into your store right now and start selling. Now,

[31:47] attention to the price of the product and also the shipping time. Usually, if the product has a very long shipping time, it's simply not worth your time to try and sell it. Now, you could always try and find a supplier with a better

[32:02] shipping time, and we'll talk about how to do that in a second. But overall, you to be like over a week on any product take way too long to get to the buyer, and you'll end up getting a ton of

[32:14] complaints. But anyways, you can also filter the product by different categories if you want, and you can sort by things like best sellers or fast shipping, or you can just search for a specific product if you already have a

[32:26] selling. And so let's just say for example that we wanted to start selling the mini leaf blower, right? I could come in here and I could search for mini uh leaf blower and see what options pop up here. Now if I didn't see the exact

[32:41] leaf blower that I wanted to start drop shipping on my store or whatever product you were trying to sell, if you didn't see it in the marketplace here, you can come over here to the side and click on sourcing request. This is a very, very

[32:55] powerful feature that basically lets you tell AutoDS what product you're looking tell AutoDS what product you're looking for and their team goes out and finds a supplier for you, usually with better pricing and faster shipping. And so,

[33:09] yeah, you can use this feature if you want AutoDS to source a specific product for you. And so, yeah, so let's just say for the sake of this example, I wanted to start drop shipping these mini uh leaf blowers. I'm basically just looking

[33:21] for one within the marketplace here that is decently priced and has a shorter shipping time, right? And just overall, it looks like a good mini leaf blower. And so I like the way this one looks right here. The pricing looks good. It

[33:35] looks like the margins will work and the shipping time is relatively short. And you can see right here that AutoDS shows us the item cost as well as the shipping price and the shipping and processing time, which is very low, which is good.

[33:49] good product photos right here that we can use for our drop shipping store, a detailed product description, and everything here is pretty much already done for us. The only thing we have to do now is import this product into our

[34:04] store. Plus, this brand is the same one that we saw being sold on Tik Tok, the C ceay or however you pronounce that. So, we're just going to click right here on import uh draft. And then it's going to say that items added to drafts. And then

[34:18] we'll just click here to track the progress. So you can see it's uh we'll just wait for this to finish. And then once it's done, we'll come back. click right here on import. And it'll begin importing this product into your

[34:33] Shopify store. So um once it's done, it'll say products have been imported and then click on view. You can see that we got these two products now in our store. The vacuum cleaner and the uh

[34:46] obviously the vacuum cleaner was the product that Builder Store chose for us and added into our store. Like I said earlier, you can feel free to use that product if you want. It's a product that they chose based on their internal

[35:00] research and their internal data. And so, they know that this is probably a good product that it's a winning product that you can sell. But, we're just going to go ahead and switch over our store to begin selling this mini leaf blower

[35:13] transition into the part where I show you how to actually edit your Shopify store. So I'm going to head back into Shopify really quick. Click right here on products. So you can see that we now have this new product that was added

[35:26] from AutoDS. And yeah, but let's talk about how to actually edit your store though. So to edit your store from the main Shopify uh homepage, you'll click right here where it says online store and then you should land on themes. And

[35:39] if you click right here on edit theme, it's going to bring you into the Shopify editor. So the Shopify editor is a drag and drop page builder. That means that anything that you hover on, if you click on it, you'll have access to edit that

[35:54] information on that page. So let's just say for example, we wanted to change the info within this top banner up here. All we have to do is hover over the top banner, and then right here in this left sidebar, you can see that we can change

[36:08] sidebar, you can see that we can change the heading text to be anything that we want with terrible spelling. We can change the subheading text, the uh button text, the button link. We can change the background image right here.

[36:20] So, if we click on change, we can either select our own custom image or we can explore free images that come with Shopify. So, you can either just scroll through the different categories here, or if you had a specific stock image

[36:33] that you had in mind, like let's just say, for example, we typed in living room. You can see all these different living room images pop up. Perhaps I want to add this one into my banner. And so, it adds that image right there, just

[36:45] like that. And then we'll click right here on select to confirm our selection. And yeah, so anything that you want to make changes to, you just click into it sidebar over here. Once you're done with the edits, you'll click up here on save.

[36:59] Okay. If you want to go to a different page, all you have to do is come up here to this top dropdown right here. And right now, we're on the homepage. But let's just say, for example, we wanted to edit the default product page. We'll

[37:11] just click into products, select default product, and it's going to take us to our product page right here. And there is the um mini leaf blower that we just imported from AutoDS. So, kind of the same theory here, right? Anything you

[37:25] want to update, just click on it and the options for that section will be will appear over here in this left sidebar. So you want to change uh info for the title right here. Click on it, settings in the left. You want to change info for

[37:39] the quantity selector, you click it and the info will be available in the left. Let's just say you wanted to add a new section. Perhaps you wanted a section underneath the main section right here that shows perhaps more images of

[37:53] somebody using the the leaf blower or like a video or something. All you have to do is when you hover in between two sections, there's going to be this option here that says add section. If you click on that, it's going to open up

[38:06] a list of different sections that you can add. And the cool thing about this is that these are all pre-built sections. And so let's just say for example, like I mentioned, we wanted to add a video. I'll click on video. Just

[38:19] going to drop that section in there. And all we have to do from this point is click on that section. We can add our video. And just like that, the video you're done with your changes, you'll click right here on save. Okay. And all

[38:33] of these once you save it, all the changes will now be live on your website. And so yeah, that's basically how you edit Shopify. It's very, very straightforward. Let's go back to the main Shopify dashboard really quick and

[38:45] things, a couple of small details here. Okay, so I want to really quickly point out that when you are ready to launch your Shopify store, like you've selected, you've done all the things you want to do to it, you want to make sure

[38:59] that you first make your store live. Okay. So, the way you do this is on your main dashboard, you'll see this option, this this notice right here that says password protected. To remove the password, add a store address. So, the

[39:13] right here on add the store address. And if you have not already done this, you have to add your business address. Okay? Um, your business address is typically going to be your home address, unless you have a real business address

[39:27] somewhere else. So, I'll just go ahead and enter my home address here. and then click on save business details. And then once that's done, we can now remove the password because if I were to go to the website right now, um well, we're logged

[39:42] somebody else were to go to the website, they would not see the website. They would see like a password screen. So, we have to remove that. And you can do that just by clicking right here on remove password. And now your online store is

[39:56] open to everyone. So, that is a very important step that you have to take before you can officially launch your Shopify store. Now, once you've got your store is built, everything looks good, it's time to actually start getting

[40:10] traffic to your store so that you can get sales and actually start making money with this. And this brings us to the final step of this process, which is marketing. Now, when you hear the word marketing, it might sound intimidating,

[40:26] right? But honestly, don't even overthink it. Marketing is simply about distribution, right? Your job is not to be some insanely creative marketer who can come up with clever ads. Your job is to simply put your product in front of

[40:42] to simply put your product in front of the right people. Even if it's with a 30 secondond video that you filmed on your phone that you're, you know, filming of your product and then you have a voice over uh talking about the product over

[40:54] be something stupid simple like that. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. It just has to make it in front of the right people. That's it. That's all marketing really is. If you have a decent product and the right people

[41:08] decent product and the right people actually see it, sales will happen. It's fail at drop shipping because their product is terrible. They fail because nobody ever sees the product, right? No views means no traffic and no traffic

[41:24] means no sales. Everything we're about to talk about in this step is simply about getting eyeballs on your product. Now, there are really only three ways that people will ever find your drop shipping store. Three types of like

[41:38] marketing, if you will. Uh there's organic content, paid ads, and influencer or creator marketing. Let's start with organic marketing first, which is my personal favorite. So, organic marketing is when you post

[41:53] content on platforms like Tik Tok, Instagram reels, uh YouTube shorts, even Pinterest nowadays. Um, and the content that you're posting is just organic to that platform, right? Like you're not paying for views. You're not paying to

[42:08] be boosted. You're simply relying on the algorithm to serve your content to the correct viewer. With this marketing type, you're basically trading your time and effort for attention. But the benefit of this is that the cost is

[42:23] usually zero minus whatever money you spend to create the videos themselves, which really shouldn't be that much. But anyways, uh, next are paid ads. This is when you pay platforms like Tik Tok, Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube to show

[42:37] your product to people. you simply create an ad and then you pay to have that ad boosted or pushed to a specific audience. And so instead of waiting around for the algorithm to push your content, which takes time sometimes,

[42:52] you're simply boosting it or pushing it to the right people by just throwing money at it. And third is influencer or creator marketing. This is basically audience. And so instead of building an audience yourself, you pay or you

[43:07] audience. They've already got the attention and they promote your product for you to their audience. Now, this can work extremely well, but it requires outreach. It requires negotiation and testing different creators to see who

[43:23] actually converts. Now, here's the key with all of this that I want you to remember, okay? You do not and should not master all three of these, especially not at the beginning, right? You only need one traffic source to get

[43:36] started. That's it. And of these three types of marketing, you should always start with organic short form content, especially if you're brand new to drop shipping. And so what you should do is post organic content to Tik Tok and then

[43:50] repurpose that same video over to Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, and a can even post short form content on Pinterest nowadays, right? And so make the content and just post it everywhere. Now, you might be wondering why why,

[44:06] Joshua, should I start with organic content instead of just paying for ads and reaching people immediately, right? I want to make money right now. I don't want to have to wait for some algorithm. Like, why can't I just jump straight

[44:19] into paid ads? Well, the issue with running ads immediately is that first of all, you don't even know if the product will work, right? People think that paid ads are like magic. That the moment you turn ads on, the moment you start

[44:33] throwing money at this platform, but that's simply not how ads work. Ads um are more like gasoline, right? The organic content that you make on these platforms are the fire. So imagine that you post a short video on Tik Tok that

[44:50] starts gaining traction. It starts getting really good views, good engagement. A small fire is starting to form. You then take your gasoline, aka paid ads, and you pour some of that gasoline into the fire to create an even

[45:07] bigger fire. Right? You get my analogy there. The issue here is that too many beginners are just dousing the ground with gasoline and nothing ever happens because there was never a fire in the first place. Are you tracking with me?

[45:21] And so definitely start with organic content first and then you can apply the paid ad strategy after a certain video starts gaining traction. simply boost that video, run that video as an ad because now you have proof that people

[45:36] are actually interested in this product because it's doing well organically. Now, let's actually talk about the type of organic content that actually drives sales because this is where a lot of people get stuck. The first thing I want

[45:49] you to know though about organic uh marketing, organic content, is that you don't need to do anything fancy, right? No fancy editing. You don't need a studio. You don't even need to show your face to make organic content. In fact,

[46:03] raw content usually performs better than polished content, especially when it comes to short form videos. And so, I want to really quickly go down a list of the types of videos that consistently work for drop shipping product, right?

[46:18] Like these videos are proven to convert time and time again and drive traffic for drop shipping stores. So, the first type of video is problem to solution

[46:30] videos. This is where you show the problem first before you ever even show the product. For example, maybe it's a video of a messy car. The car is dirty. and then you take this mini vacuum cleaner and you start cleaning the car,

[46:46] and then like before you know it, it's it's clean, right? You're advertising that vacuum cleaner. Or maybe it's a video of you showing a bunch of tangled video of you showing a bunch of tangled cords, uh, but then you show this other

[46:58] cords. And then at the latter half the video, you show all of the the cords organized inside of this little thing. Or maybe it's like pet hair everywhere. And the same idea, you take this vacuum, you start vacuuming up the pet hair, and

[47:11] it it looks easy. It looks seamless. It looks like it works, right? You start the video off by showing that frustration and then you introduce the product as the solution to that frustration because remember people

[47:24] don't buy products, they buy solutions to problems that they already have. The second type of video though is before and after videos. This one is super simple. You start by showing what something looks like before the product

[47:38] is used and then you show what it looks like after the product is used. It's very similar to the first style of video to be honest with you. And so think dirty versus clean or disorganized versus organized or broken versus fixed.

[47:53] With these types of videos, there really is no talking required because the visuals do all of the work for you. The third video is demonstration videos. This is really when you just show the product being used. There's not really

[48:06] any talking. There's no explanation, nothing. For example, let's say that you're selling a portable uh mini blender. A demonstration video could literally be just a 15-second clip of you dropping some fruit into the

[48:20] blender, pressing the button, and watching it blend, and then you pouring that blended drink into a cup and start drinking it. And that is the entire video. You're simply letting the viewer figure it out themselves, which actually

[48:34] somebody can understand what the product does by themselves just by watching it being used, that's a win. The fourth type of video though are curiositybased videos. And so, for example, let's say that you're selling a portable sticker

[48:50] printer. A curiositybased video could start with something like this. I didn't think that this would actually work. and the video immediately cuts to the sticker printer printing stickers in real time, right? Or maybe uh the first

[49:05] clip is you holding the product saying, "This little thing has completely changed my life." And then you show the product being used. You're not simply starting with this really big statement. And by doing this, you are

[49:20] viewer's mind because in the viewer's mind, they're wondering, "What is that thing? And why does it matter?" That curiosity is what makes people stop scrolling through the different videos and they keep watching your video and

[49:33] then hopefully if you did a good job of convincing and explaining then maybe they'll buy the product. And so yeah, those are really the highest converting videos that you can make on short form platforms like Tik Tok or Instagram

[49:45] reels or YouTube shorts. And just remember, okay, the most important thing with all of this is that you don't need to create perfect videos. I cannot even begin to stress that enough. What you need to do is create fast, post fast so

[49:59] that you can start getting feedback from the market fast and then you just the market fast and then you just reiterate, try again, reiterate, try again, and just keep testing, testing, and testing. And if you do this enough

[50:11] time, it's literally impossible to not start getting feedback that you can use to start driving traffic to your drop shipping store. And then like I said uh earlier, when you inevitably have a video that starts going semiviral or

[50:26] maybe even mega viral, that is when you start running paid ads with it because that is when sales really begin to take off. The last thing that I want to do in this video is answer some of the most common drop shipping questions that I

[50:41] get. These are kind of the most common questions that stop people from getting started with drop shipping or just being successful with it. And honestly, already have as you've been watching this video. So, the first question that

[50:54] this video. So, the first question that I always get is, if drop shipping works so well, as you say, Joshua, why do most people fail at it? Well, it's very simple. Most people fail at drop shipping for a very simple reason. They

[51:08] quit too early, right? They expect results way faster than reality. They'll post a few videos or maybe run a couple of paid ads. They don't see any sales come in immediately and then they just assume that the business doesn't work.

[51:24] But in reality, they just didn't give the market enough chances to respond to whatever they were trying to sell and promote. And even more importantly, they didn't persevere long enough for themselves. Another huge reason people

[51:38] fail, though, is because they spend way too much time preparing and not enough time testing. They obsess over things like their logo or their Shopify theme or their product descriptions or all these different things that sure might

[51:54] make you feel productive, but they never actually put products in front of real people. I mean, you saw for yourself in this video how little time we spent on the actual drop shipping store, right? I mean, we literally had AI build it for

[52:09] us and then that's about it. There were very minor changes that were made because that's not what is most important. Your logo and your brand colors have almost zero impact on your ability to generate sales. Most

[52:22] beginners also underestimate how much testing it takes, right? Not every product will work. I cannot stress that enough. Not every single video that you post on Tik Tok is going to work, is going to go viral. In fact, most won't.

[52:38] And that's normal. And also for the record, not only is that normal with dropshipping, it's also normal with really any business, right? The people who succeed are the ones who keep testing and trying long enough to find

[52:52] something that actually clicks, right? They don't take failure personally. They treat it like data. And once you can begin approaching drop shipping or really any business, that way your chances of success go way up. But

[53:07] the time is what are some of the biggest mistakes that beginners make? So, the biggest mistake that I see beginners making is they're trying to copy someone else. Exactly. Right. I used this example so many times in this video

[53:22] because I saw it happening so much just a few months ago. They'll see a product that worked really well for somebody else on TikTok and they'll try to recreate that same product step by step. And so the same video style, the same

[53:36] drop shipping store, the same everything without actually understanding why that product worked in the first place. What works for one person on one account at

[53:48] works for one person on one account at one moment in time during one season might not work for you the same way. That's why the goal of this isn't to copy a winning product. The goal is to learn how to test ideas quickly until

[54:02] you find something that works for you because typically by the time you spot a trending product in the first place that's working, usually that means it's the end of its life cycle. Like you're already too late to the party, right?

[54:16] down. And this is why just copying people never works and why you have to learn how to test products and do the research for yourself. But anyways, the next question, and this might be one of

[54:28] the most common questions I get, is how long does it usually take to get my first sale? Like, when when will I see my first sale come in, Joshua? And the answer is really, it depends. It will probably take a lot longer than you

[54:42] want, but it'll be a lot shorter uh than you think. So, some people make their first sale like in the first few days. first sale like in the first few days. others takes a few weeks and for some it

[54:54] might take a couple of months and that's all completely normal. What most beginners get wrong is they assume there's some weird like specific timeline for getting their first sale. Like if I don't make my first sale in

[55:07] the first week, then something must be broken. Maybe I'm not like good at this. That's not how this works. Okay? You can't just go and set these weird arbitrary timelines for yourself to try and meet because inevitably you'll

[55:21] probably end up not meeting those goals, not meeting those timelines, and that's you want to quit. Your first sale usually comes uh after enough people have seen your product, not after a certain number of days. And so if you're

[55:35] posting content consistently, testing hooks, and actually driving traffic to your website, sales tend to show up faster than you expect. But if you're just sitting there tweaking your Shopify store and waiting for sales to magically

[55:50] appear and posting like one video per week, then you're probably going to be waiting for a sale forever. So don't obsess over specific arbitrary deadlines for getting your first sale. obsess over volume uh testing and getting eyeballs

[56:06] on the product because that is what actually speeds things up. Another question that I get is how do I price my products? So, pricing is way simpler than most people make it. Here's kind of the basic rule of thumb. You want to

[56:19] the basic rule of thumb. You want to price your product at least 2.5 to 3x your total product cost. And when I say product cost, I mean the cost of the product cost, I mean the cost of the item itself plus shipping plus any

[56:33] additional fees, right? All of this needs to be built into the price of the product. And that margin gives you room to actually make a profit and eventually even run paid ads if you want to scale faster. But for example, if your product

[56:47] cost you $10 and you're selling it for $15, I mean, that's a losing game, right? that's not enough margin to actually be profitable or make a lot of money long term. If your product clearly solves a

[57:01] problem, it looks good and is marketed well, people will pay you a lot more money than you think for it. So, these are some of the most common questions question that you want answered that I

[57:14] the comment section down below and I'll do my best to answer um all the questions that you guys have as best as possible. Listen guys, if you made it this far into the video, I just want to say that I genuinely respect you because

[57:29] most people do not stick around long enough to actually learn how this works. What I wanted this video to be was a clear uh realistic overview of what it actually takes to get started with drop shipping without over complicating it

[57:44] and without turning it into some overwhelming 5-hour long video. There are definitely videos out there that go way deeper into each individual piece of this business and those definitely will be helpful. They might be helpful later

[57:59] on, but from my personal experience, when you're just getting started, too when you're just getting started, too much detail too early on actually stops people from taking action because it creates uh analysis paralysis. And

[58:12] that's why this video exists. My advice to you is simple. Watch this video, follow along, take action, and then just learn as you go. You don't need to have everything figured out on day one.

[58:27] You'll actually end up learning faster by just doing the business than watching 10 more tutorials like this one, okay? All of the tools that we talked about description. And honestly, that's all you need to get started. And hey, if you

[58:41] know somebody personally who's been talking about starting drop shipping or starting some type of uh e-commerce or like online business, send them this video. It's free and it can save them a ton of confusion. And also, if you got

[58:54] value out of this video, do me a huge favor and drop a like down below for the video so that it can reach more people. Drop a comment and let me know where you're starting at with drop shipping or if you have any questions. And also

[59:07] subscribe to the channel if you want more content. just like this. How to build online businesses, investing, and making money in realistic ways. Hey, appreciate every single one of you being here and watching until the end. It

[59:22] means the world. And as always, I will see you again very soon. Take care.