 Today, I'm going to be giving you a checklist that has absolutely everything that you need in order to start a successful dropshipping business in 2024. Not only that, but if you comment down below the hashtag checklist and let me know what your takeaway is from this video, I'll also be giving you an actual checklist that you can reference and actually check off with all of these different things so that way you can make sure you don't miss anything. Run checklist protocol. All right, so the first thing that we need to check off is learning the basics of the dropshipping business model. And this begins with what exactly is dropshipping? Well, simply put, dropshipping is a fulfillment business model, meaning all you have to do is simply fulfill orders, but not necessarily in the same way as a conventional or traditional business or a traditional brick and mortar business. So with dropshipping, you're never touching any inventory. What happens here is somebody's going to place an order for your store for a pair of sneakers that cost them $120. You're sourcing those sneakers or you're getting those sneakers for $60. Now, what happens is when that order comes through, instead of you fulfilling it and packing it up and shipping it off, instead, you're rerouting that order to your supplier. So you're going to place an order with your supplier and have them ship it out to your customer. So that way you're never touching any inventory. You're pretty much doing everything from the comfort of your chair. So you sold those sneakers for $120. You sourced them for 60. Those remaining $60 are your profit. Now, some of the advantages and some of the disadvantages. Well, first off, one of the biggest advantages is the fact that it has such a low entry barrier. So pretty much anybody can get started in the business, but that also kind of contributes to one of the disadvantages, which is that there's a lot of competition. But don't worry because I do not want that to deter you from getting started. There is a lot of ways to be able to stand out, a lot of which we cover in this video, not just sourcing some of the best products, but also having some of the best customer service and some of the most creative ways to market your products. So remember, while there is a lot of competition, that doesn't mean that you can't be successful. You just need to think outside the box a little bit. But if you want more information on that, or if you want to learn more about how you can actually succeed in dropshipping, then make sure you hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on any future videos. Remember on this channel, we cover pretty much anything and everything dropshipping related to help you succeed. Now, when it comes to understanding dropshipping, you also have to understand the legality of it. Is dropshipping legal? Yeah, 100% legal. The dropshipping business model, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it, and there's nothing illegal about it. It can get illegal when you start dropshipping the wrong items, some of which being copyright items and things like weapons. So there's tons of different types of items that you're not supposed to dropship. If you want a little bit more information on that, then just make sure you check out the cheat sheet. On there, I'm going to have links to pretty much every single one of these points that I'm making that can actually help you out in understanding a bit more. So I'm going to have different links in that cheat sheet to elaborate on each one of these points. Now, is dropshipping profitable? That's probably one of the most important questions, right? Well, it can be. So if you do things right, if you set your pricing right, if you have the right suppliers and you have the right products, and you market your products right, you can be very profitable. When it comes to dropshipping, typical profits average between 15 to about 60%. Some items you can sell for a little bit more, some could sell for a little bit less, even though I wouldn't recommend going anything less than 20%. But on average, you are going to be seeing profits of about 15 to 60%. All right, so understanding dropshipping, check. So the next item on our checklist is setting a starting budget, something to just get you off the ground and get you started. Although you can start for completely free, depending on the platform that you're selling on, it is recommended that you start with some sort of budget anywhere between $1 to $500 can get you through. But again, this is going to be dependent on the platform that you're selling on. And ultimately, starting off with a budget is going to help you scale a bit faster than starting off for completely free. So with some of the most popular dropshipping platforms, starting with Facebook Marketplace, you can start dropshipping on there with a budget of about $0 to $200. You can start for completely free because you don't need anything to list on there. You can list on there for free, and you can start promoting your products on different Facebook groups. But you can go into paid advertising with a budget and anywhere between $1 to about $200 should be enough to get you off the floor. Next is probably the most popular dropshipping platform, and that's going to be Shopify. Now with Shopify, you can start with less than about $100 given you choose the right plan. But if you really want to start speeding up your profits and getting a bit more sales a bit quicker, then you can set a budget of anywhere between $500 to $1,000. Now this budget is going to be contributing to things like your monthly payment plan, or your yearly plan. It really depends on which one you go with. And most importantly, one of the biggest chunks of your budget is going to go to your marketing. And that marketing is going to be specifically through Facebook or TikTok ads. Now if you don't know much about running ads, then I don't blame you. It can get very complicated, which is why we have a completely free ebook. This ebook teaches you absolutely everything that you need to know about Facebook ads. And if you want access to that, just check out the cheat sheet. It's going to be in there for you. Next we have eBay. And on eBay, you can get started for totally free because you don't have to pay to list absolutely anything. But you can also start with a budget of about $100. Now when it comes to advertising on eBay, there are two different ways to do this. The first one is the promoter listing standard, which is where eBay is going to take a percentage that you set from the final sale of whatever item you're selling. So you can choose to sell a particular item, and you can promote it in exchange for a percentage of it. But then there's also the promoted listings advanced, in which case you are going to be setting aside a budget for. Aside from marketing though, there are a few other things that you need to take into consideration when you're setting a budget. One of those is going to be simply your actual product cost. So typically with dropshipping, you're not going to have to pay anything until you actually make a sale. And that's when you're going to have to purchase the item that you're selling. So you get a sale, you make that purchase from your supplier, and you have it shipped to your customer. A couple days pass by, then you get your payment. Now when you get started, typically speaking, it is going to be a bit easier on the wallet to get started shipping on orders, simply because unless you're really good at marketing, you're going to start off somewhat slow. So you're going to get an order here, an order there, which is going to be a lot easier to process those because it's going to be cheaper. You're only going to have to put down the money for one, two, maybe five, maybe 10 items. But at that point, whenever you start scaling, instead of setting a budget aside from your wallet, what you can do is just take the profits from the sales that you're already getting and set those aside for your product budget. And just a few other fees to keep in mind that can vary are going to be for one, international selling fees, two payment processing fees and three, your taxes and your customs. All right, setting a budget check. The next item on this checklist is going to be product research and finding best sellers. So if you don't know when it comes to drop shipping, one of the most crucial aspects is going to be product research. If you don't have the right products, you're not going to get any sales. You need to have products that have either a wall factor or provide some sort of value to your customer's life. Now, product research can be pretty daunting if you don't know what you're doing or if you don't know what you're looking for. But luckily for you, you're watching the AutoDS YouTube channel where we help you out with absolutely everything. So when it comes to product research, there's a few things that you need to keep in mind. One, don't sell just anything. Yes, I've seen a lot of stores that sell literally anything and try to be the next target or the next Wal-Mart or even the next AliExpress. But while sometimes it works, for the most part, it doesn't. What you want to do is you want to try to niche down. You want to try to niche down to a particular niche that actually has demand. Some of the best niches in my book are always going to be baby products, pets and dogs, and home and DIY. Now, when you're looking through your different suppliers, which we're going to get to a little bit later on in this video, how to find some of the best suppliers, when you're looking through their different product catalogs, there's a few things you want to keep a lookout for. For one, when you find a product that stands out to you, make sure it has good reviews. Make sure it has at least a 4.5 star review and then it has multiple reviews, not just one or two. Look for one that has at least 50. Also, look for reviews that are actually specific to this item and even better have pictures. There's a lot of times where people or suppliers are going to fake reviews, in which case these reviews are going to be very, very generic. They're going to say things like this product is great. This is a very awesome product. I loved it. So things like that. So what you want to do is you want to look for comments or reviews that are a lot more specific, some that actually mention the product or a use case or again, even better have a picture. Also, you want to make sure you check out the best seller sections on any marketplace. So if you're on Amazon, if you're on eBay, if you're on AliExpress, if you're on Costco's website, if you're on any marketplace or anywhere where you can buy anything, look at their best seller section and look to see what's selling, see what's trending and see if you can find products either that are the same thing or similar to it or similar to it with a unique twist. Those are usually the best ones. The ones that are similar to the best sellers, but have one particular unique feature or some twist to it. A hugely valuable resource you have at your fingertips that's totally free is going to be Google Trends. So if there's a particular niche that you're thinking of starting, check it out on Google Trends. So right now we're actually on Google Trends and let's say we want to do swimsuits. So I want to start a swimsuit business or a swimsuit drop shipping business. So I'm going to look up that keyword on Google Trends and I'm going to switch over here the timeframe from the past day to the past five years. This is going to give us a more accurate representation of when the trends start to rise. And as you can see, it's pretty much as clear as day when we should start. So we want to get in right here, right before it starts to take off. And each and every year you can see it's about in the middle of October to November. Same thing here, October to November. Same thing here, October to November. And it starts to rise around December, January. October to November at its bottom starts to rise around January. So in January is when I would expect to start seeing sales for my swimsuit business. Because statistically speaking, that's when people start to look for them. In January, people start to look for their different swimsuits so that way they can be ready for the summer. Another extremely valuable resource that you have is the AutoDS handpicked product section. So this is full of different products that are currently trending and have market demand. But not just that. Let's go ahead and click into one of these. You also have tons of information that can actually help you make a decision on whether or not one of these products is worth selling. So for one, you have an engagement score. I've never seen this on pretty much any other platform. This tells you how much engagement this product has on social media. So how many videos are there? How many likes are there? How much engagement are these videos getting? How many comments are they getting? All of that is put together and displayed for you right here. Then there's also a saturation score. This saturation score tells you how saturated the market is with this product. So how many people are selling this product right now? Is there too many people selling it? Are you not going to be able to get a chance to show yours off? Or is it just getting started? And you can step foot into this product right now and actually have a chance at getting noticed. All of that information is available to you here and more, such as a profit analysis, a target audience. So this can help you find out who your target audience is for this product's for ads. And if you need help constructing these ads, we also have different ads on here that you can check out that are actually promoting this product. So that way you can more or less get inspiration to structure yours. Also, the last resource I'm going to leave you with right now is probably one of the most valuable ones. And that's going to be the AutoDS YouTube channel. Every single month we come out with monthly product videos that are best sellers. Aside from that, we also have different videos that are the top sellers in particular niches. So we're going to have the best electronic products to sell, the best Valentine's Day products to sell, the best products you should sell in March, the best products you sell in June. So these are full of valuable information and all the best products for you to drop ship. So again, make sure you hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on any of these. And once this video is done, just go ahead and check out our playlists and look for the sell these now playlist. On there, you're going to find every video that you need with the best sellers on there. Product research, check. Next up, we need to find a reliable drop shipping supplier. Now, there's tons of suppliers out there, but which ones are the best ones? This is what every single person asks themselves, where should you source your products from? Well, again, there's tons of different factors that go into this. But for one, just like with product research, look for suppliers that have good reviews. Look for suppliers that have multiple reviews. Go with a supplier that has at a minimum 4.5 stars. Also, you want to take it a step further and reach out to the suppliers. You want to ask them what their shipping policies are, how long does it take them to ship out their items? What kind of shipping options do they have? Also, do they have multiple warehouses or are they only shipping from their one warehouse in, let's say China? These are all questions that you want to ask. So that way for one, you can see what their actual answers are. You want to make sure that, yeah, your supplier has multiple warehouses around the world. So that way they can ship to multiple countries a lot faster. You want to make sure that they do have a return policy, a good one. And the second thing that you're looking out for with this is how their communication is. So remember, a lot of our suppliers are going to be overseas. Typically, for the most part, they're going to be in China. So because of this communication can be an issue. So you want to use this email as sort of a judge to see how they communicate with you. Are they understandable? Do they get back to you quickly? How quickly are they getting back to you? Remember that our customer service is essentially going to be a reflection of our supplier's customer service. If it takes our suppliers, let's say two days to get back to us, if a customer has a question about a particular product, then we're going to have to reach out to our suppliers if we don't have that answer. And if it takes our suppliers two days to get back to us, then it's going to take us two days and a little bit of extra time to get back to our customers. And that's unacceptable. If it takes you more than one day to get back to your customer, they're either going to one, forget that they ever messaged you in the first place, or two, they're going to go to somebody else and they're going to ask them. And right there, you just lost out on a sale and a potential repetitive customer. Now, just to give you a quick idea, some of the best dropshipping suppliers are going to include AliExpress, Amazon, Etsy, Costco, Walmart, I absolutely love Walmart, Costway, Banggood, CJ dropshipping, Alibaba and DHgate. And those are just to name a few. All right, selecting a dropshipping supplier, check. Next up, we need to choose a selling marketplace. So where are we going to sell our products? Now, there's a few different places to do this, but these are going to be some of the best ones. For one, you're going to have Shopify. Shopify has to be one of the most popular ones, but there's a few things you need to take into consideration when you're doing this. For one, the biggest difference between Shopify and any other marketplace I'm going to talk about right now is going to be the fact that you need to market your products yourself. So because you have your own website, you need to bring in the traffic to that website by yourself. There's nobody that's going to be helping you do this, except for AutoDS, of course. But aside from that, you are going to need to be running ads, whether that be on Facebook or TikTok. You also want to do organic marketing. That's going to include things like making videos, making different types of content, doing different types of posts on Instagram or Facebook, influencer marketing, writing blogs, things like that. So you are going to have to take that into consideration because for one, all of this is going to take a little bit of extra time. Two, some of these like running ads are going to have an extra cost as well. Now, aside from that, you also have the other types of marketplaces, which are the ones that actually bring the traffic to you. Those marketplaces are going to include Etsy, eBay, Facebook, and Amazon. And the reason for this is because these are selling marketplaces. People are going to these websites specifically to make a purchase. Anybody who goes to Etsy is already thinking, I'm going to buy something. They already have something in mind that they're going to be looking for. And if your products match your search terms and your SEO is on point, then your products are going to show up and they're going to make a purchase from you. So you don't really have to market your products that much if you're selling on eBay or Etsy or any of these marketplaces. Even though it can help you, it's not going to be fully necessary. Now, there are two more that I didn't mention, and that's going to be Wix and WooCommerce. Now, these are also similar to Shopify, where you get to create your own website. These are going to be two different options, but in my opinion, they're going to be a little bit more advanced. And honestly, with Shopify, you have absolutely everything that you need. So when it comes to starting up your website, my suggestion to you is always going to be go with Shopify. Selecting your selling channel. Check. Now that you know where you're going to sell, the next part is pretty crucial. And honestly, this can be the point where you really start to scale. And this is connecting to a drop shipping automation service. So what happens here is you're going to connect to a drop shipping automation service, such as AutoDS, where whenever you get an order, it's going to be pretty much fulfilled for you. So one of the biggest features when it comes to connecting to a service like AutoDS is going to be order fulfillment, which is where somebody places an order in your store. And instead of you having to go to your supplier, signing on, going to look for that item, adding it to your cart, putting in your customer's details, having it shipped to them, taking that tracking number once it's available and updating your marketplace with it, it's all going to be done for you through AutoDS. AutoDS is going to do the entire thing for you. Now, even though everyone has checked out before and everyone knows how to make a purchase online, it's perfectly fine if you want to do it yourself. But think of it this way. It can take a couple of minutes to order one item. Imagine if you have 20 orders that you have to fulfill in one day, and you have to place 20 different orders. While it might not sound like a lot, because it's a pretty easy process, it's very time consuming. And it's going to ultimately keep adding up the more and more you scale. A drop shipping automation service like AutoDS is going to completely take this out of the equation for you. So you don't even have to think about order fulfillment. Aside from that, you also have automated product importing. So what happens here is pretty much the same thing. Instead of you having to go to your supplier's website, let's say on AliExpress right now, and going to each and every one of these different variations, right clicking, saving the image, copying over the title, making any adjustments to it, copying over the description, optimizing everything. It's going to take a long time, especially if you want to upload multiple products to your store. And speaking about uploading multiple products to your store, AutoDS will take care of that for you as well. So you can upload either just one product or multiple products. So check this out. So let's say I want to import this product. So I'm just going to go ahead and take the link. I'm going to cut it or copy it, go to add products, and I'm going to choose either single or multiple products. I like to use the multiple products one because I do this all the time. So I'll look for one item, I'll paste it on here, I'll look for the second item, I'll paste it right under it, and so on. Now when this is done, all I have to do is click on add as draft, and everything is going to go to my draft section. On here, you can make any necessary adjustments to any one of these products. So let's say this one, for example, I can go ahead and change the title, I can change the category, I can change the shipping policy, I can change the description as well. If you're not good with actually writing up these titles or descriptions, don't worry about it, because there's even an AI rewrite tool built into AutoDS. This will rewrite your description and your title as well. So that way, you don't have to worry about that, or even go to a different website to get this done. It's all done for you right on the same platform. Now these are just some of the benefits that you get with dropshipping automation. There's tons more. And again, if you want to see any more details on this, if you want to find out more, just check out the cheat sheet. On there, you're going to have a lot more information that you can go through. And remember that for access to the cheat sheet, just go ahead and comment down below the hashtag checklist and let me know what your takeaway is from this video. So connecting to a dropshipping automation service, check. The next one is one that actually we just covered and that's going to be importing products to your store. So after you connect to your service, you do want to make sure that you start importing these different products to your store. Because of course, if we don't have any products in the store, then we're not going to be able to make any sales. Now I did show you one way to be able to import your products, but check this out. This is the second way. So I showed you earlier handpicked product section at AutoDS, but we also have a marketplace. So both of these have trending products that are all currently in demand. And to make things even easier for you, you can import these products straight from these screens. So let's say this Rubik's Cube is one that I want to import to my store. Instead of having to copy the link or any of that stuff, since it's right on the AutoDS platform, all I have to do is click on import draft. And from there, it'll automatically go to my draft section. Importing products, check. Next up, we need to start marketing these products. Now, how are we going to market these products? Well, that's going to depend on the platform that you're selling on. Remember, if we're selling on Shopify, we're going to go ahead and start running Facebook ads. On top of that, we also want to run TikTok ads. And we want to start making content. We want to start writing blogs. These blogs are going to include different pain points that our products can solve. We want to try to go viral on TikTok. TikTok is probably one of the best resources that you have to be able to market your products. Dropshipping on TikTok right now is the biggest thing that you can start doing. It has so much potential because you have so much possibility to just simply go viral. One video can make you a ton of money. And best thing is that that video can be completely free to make. Then you also have the other selling platforms like Etsy, eBay, Amazon, and Facebook. In which case, all of these, you can follow some of the same roles that you do with Shopify. You can market them the same way. But these platforms also have their own ways to market their products. Etsy has their promoted listings where you can promote a certain listing and set a daily budget. eBay has the promoted listing standard and advanced, each of which work in their own specific way. The standard way is going to be by taking a percentage that you set from your final sale. The advanced is a bit more complicated. Typically speaking, to be completely honest with you, you're going to be okay with the standard. But with the advanced, you are going to have to set a budget for it. Amazon also has their own way of marketing their products through their own promoted listings. And another way that you can market your products, regardless of the platform that you're selling on, is going to be with one of my favorites, influencer marketing. So you're going to want to find an influencer in your niche. So find an influencer that could use your product and whose audience is going to be interested in that same product. Reach out to them, talk to them, strike up a deal that can either be a monetary deal where you pay them to promote your product, or you could just give them a free product and they'll promote it for you to their audience. To make things even sweeter, give them their own discount code. That discount code can be used by their followers to get a discount when they place an order. This can also help you track your sales through an influencer to see which ones are working and which ones aren't. So who do you want to keep working with and which ones are going to be better to just cut off? Marketing check. Next up, let's fulfill our orders. Now when it comes to fulfilling orders, there's three ways to do this. The first one is going to be the manual way. The manual way is going to be the most time consuming way, but it's also free. So we already went over this. When it comes to placing your order, you're going to have to do everything manually from getting that order, signing onto your supplier, adding the item to your cart and everything else. But if you implement a dropshipping automation service, such as AutoDS, then you have two extra options. One of those is going to be fulfilled by AutoDS and the other one is going to be automatic orders. My personal favorite and the one that I always use is fulfilled by AutoDS. But with automatic orders, this is how it works. Somebody's going to come to your store, they're going to place an order. And what's going to happen is that AutoDS is going to sign on to your buyer account. Whether that be through AliExpress, Amazon, or any other supplier that you're using, that's compatible with AutoDS. You can link it to your AutoDS account. So that way AutoDS can sign on on your behalf to your account and make a purchase using your credentials, whether that be your credit card or your banking details. Now the other one is my personal favorite, which is fulfilled by AutoDS, where pretty much the same thing is going to happen. Except instead of signing on with your credentials, AutoDS is going to sign on with its own credentials. So AutoDS has tons of buyer accounts for marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, AliExpress, and all of these other suppliers. So it's going to sign on using its own account and place that order on your behalf with a balance that you set. So you don't even have to put in your credit card details. All you have to do is top up the balance whenever it gets low. So that way you can keep automatically ordering with fulfilled by AutoDS. Now the biggest way that fulfilled by AutoDS shines is going to be with Amazon. So if you're using your buyer account on Amazon to drop ship and send items to a ton of different addresses, Amazon's going to block they're going to restrict your account. But if you're using the fulfilled by AutoDS service, you're never going to have that issue. AutoDS is going to use its own buyer accounts. And if one of those gets locked out, there's tons more. Don't worry, your account is always going to be safe. So you're never going to have any issues with it. As long as you're using fulfilled by AutoDS, fulfilling your drop shipping orders, check. Now, this next one is probably going to be one of the most crucial ones in order to get repetitive sales. And that's going to be to provide the best possible customer service. If a customer sees that you're caring to them, and they see that you do care about their business and them as a customer, they're most likely to come back to you, even if they have a bad experience with a product. A lot of the times customers will think that's just the one off, which most of the times, hopefully it is, hopefully you have a good supplier and that was just an accident. But a lot of the times customers are actually willing to oversee a bad item, if they know that you're trying to take care of them. Customer service is crucial. And it can really outweigh a bad product. Of course, if you have multiple bad products, and you have the best possible customer service, customers are going to stop coming to you because they're just going to have bad products over and over. If you have bad customer service, even if you have the best products, then a lot of the times a customer won't go back to your store, especially if they reach out to you and you're either really rude to them, you sound like you don't care, or you take a long time to get back to them and reply back to their email. Trust me, it's happened to me. I've purchased some amazing quality items from certain places, but they just give me such bad customer service that I say I'm not going back there. Customer service is extremely important, whether that be before a sale, during a sale, or after a sale. You always want to make sure that you provide the best possible customer service and that you get back to your customers at a max of one day. And with that, we officially check off the last item on this list. What did you think of this video? What did you think of this checklist? Let me know down in the comments below and let me know if this was helpful to you. Remember, if you want access to the cheat sheet, I mean the checklist, then just go ahead and comment down below the hashtag checklist and let me know what your takeaway was from this video. Do you like dropshipping? Do you think it's worth it? Is it something that you've been trying to start? Is it something that you've been dipping your toes in? Let me know down in the comments below. Huge thank you to everyone for watching, especially if you made it all the way to the end. As always, if you made it this far, then that means you obviously, you enjoyed the video. So make sure you smash that like button. Make sure you hit that subscribe button and ring that little bell notification so you don't miss out on any future videos. With that, my name is Mario with AutoDS, wishing you all nothing but the best in your dropshipping business and I'll catch you all next time.