 In today's video, we're going to be reviewing Shopify as a dropshipping platform. Is it worth dropshipping on Shopify? This video will cover everything that you need to know before starting your e-commerce business. Let's go. What's going on everyone? Mara here with AutoDS and in today's video, we're going to be covering everything that you need to know about dropshipping on Shopify. Is it worth it? Is it right for you? Well, just stay tuned to find out. Now, before we start talking some smack about our buddy Shopify, remember if you haven't done so already, please make sure to hit that subscribe button and ring that little notification so you don't miss out on any future videos. On this channel, we cover anything and everything dropshipping related starting from some of the best tips and tricks to help you start and scale your business all the way to some of the best products to offer for maximum profits. So if that's something that interests you, just make sure to subscribe. Also, if you want to learn more about Shopify or anything that I'm going to be talking about in this video, just go ahead and check out the description down below. I'm going to have a link to a relevant article down there. Okay. So before we get started reviewing everything about Shopify, let's go ahead and first understand what exactly is Shopify dropshipping. Dropshipping is nothing more than a fulfillment business model. So all you're doing is fulfilling your customer's orders. What ends up happening is when somebody places an order from your store, all you have to do is reroute that order to your supplier. Your supplier is going to fulfill it and update you with a tracking number. And all you have to do is update your customer with the tracking number and whatever the difference in prices. Let's say they paid $20 and you paid 10. Those $10 that are left over are going to be your profit. That's really all there's to it. It's really simple. It's a very simple business model and it has a very low barrier to entry, meaning pretty much anybody can start in it. It's super simple and very low cost to start. Now, in order for you to start dropshipping, you need to have an online store, whether that be in a marketplace like eBay, Etsy or Amazon or on your own website using a service like Shopify. Now, there's a lot of benefits to setting up your dropshipping store on Shopify. For one, it's a hosted platform. And what does that mean? Well, simply put, that means you're able to have your own website with your own domain address. So instead of somebody going to www.ebay.com and searching up for the products, they're going to go directly to your link www.myhappystore.com and they'll see your website with all of your different products and everything is going to be structured the way that you want it because Shopify offers full customizability. On top of that, Shopify is extremely easy to set up. When you get started, you just get asked a couple of questions regarding your store fill out some information about yourself and your business and it's pretty much it. Your online store is created. And as I mentioned earlier, you can customize the entire look of your Shopify store to make things even easier. They have ready made templates that you can simply click and change whatever colors you want. You also get the ability to drag and drop certain elements such as featured collections or a featured product. And for when it's time to actually ship your item, they also offer things like shipping discounts to be able to give you a break on all of these high prices. Shopify also has top tier 24 seven customer support. So if you ever have a problem with their website, if you have a question regarding their services or your website itself, then you can reach out to them whenever and they'll reply back to you fairly quick, typically within 24 hours. And to make things even easier, you can even purchase pre-made stores. So with this, what people typically do is they'll set up an entire store, whether that be for one product or multiple products, whether it be a general store or a niche store and they'll put it up for sale. So all you have to do is purchase it, you get the credentials and you have a store that's ready to start selling. Now, of course with anything, there's always a couple of drawbacks. One of those being that there is no organic traffic. So what this means is that nobody is really going to know that your store is there. Nobody's going to know that your store exists. It's going to be up to you to let people know that your store is out there and it exists to be able to bring them in so they can start making purchases and you could start making some money. Now, there are a bunch of different ways to make this a lot easier and actually get your name out there or your store's name out there. For one, you can run Facebook ads or pay for click ads. Two, you can also work with influencers and work with influencer marketing and you also have the option for email marketing. Another downside to Shopify dropshipping are credit card and transaction fees. Now, whenever somebody makes a purchase from your store, you're always going to get charged a transaction fee. That transaction fee is going to consist of 2.9% of the total sale plus 30 cents. Now, that's not really anything new though. Wherever you decide to set up shop, whether it be on Shopify or somewhere like Etsy or eBay or even if you choose a different dropshipping website where you can customize your own site like Wix or WooCommerce, there's always going to be some sort of transaction fee. So that's something that you really can't get away from. Now, speaking of fees, another fee to keep in mind is going to be either the monthly or the yearly fee. Since Shopify is a subscription plan, you are going to have to pay a fee to use their services. Now, those fees come in a few different levels. For one, you have the basic, which comes out to $39 a month. Then you have the advanced, which is about $400 a month and the plus, which totals out to $2,000 a month. But this is if you pay monthly. Now, you can save 25% if you do decide to pay the yearly subscription. So instead of paying monthly, you're going to have to pay one big lump sum once a year and that's it. The good thing about doing that is you do get quite a good discount. So in this case, if you decide to go with the basic, it's going to roll out to $29 a month whereas the advance will be $299 a month and the plus is still going to be $2,000 a month whether you do yearly or monthly. Now, if you do want to try Shopify, they also have a trial period. This trial period consists of three months and costs just $1 each month. Now, each of the different plans that I mentioned do have their benefits. So one big difference between all three of them are the different credit card rates. So on the basic, you are going to be paying your 2.9% plus your 30 cents, whereas in the advanced, you're only going to be paying 2.15% plus the 30 cents. Depending on the plan, you also do get a few different features regarding reporting and analytics. But realistically speaking, especially if you're just starting out in your drop shipping journey, starting off with the basic is more than enough. Now, another awesome feature that you get access to when you're using Shopify are going to be shipping zones as well as payment gateways. Now, when it comes to the shipping zones, all it really is is where you're going to be shipping your items to or where you're going to offer shipping to. So on Shopify, you're able to go to the shipping and deliveries tab and simply create a profile for custom shipping rates. So here, all you have to do is name your product. So let's say I'm going to be selling t-shirts here. I would name it t-shirts here. I can add whatever one of my products I want to add to this particular profile so I can select all of my different t-shirts and add them to this particular profile. And then I can set a shipping zone. So when I create a zone, all I have to do is name it. So this will be the USA and now I'll be able to ship to the entire United States. Creating different shipping zones will also give you the ability to ship to different countries. So let's say if you create a shipping zone for Canada, you can set that shipping profile to particularly only use DHL or let's say UPS. Whereas when we're shipping within the US, we can set it to ship using only USPS and UPS. Now with Shopify, you also do get access to Shopify exclusive shipping rates. So different shipping companies like FedEx, UPS or USPS will give Shopify users discounted rates on shipping labels. So you can save a little bit of money on that and pass on those savings to your customers as well. Now those rates are going to be calculated based on the specifics that you give each item on your store. So let's say a t-shirt that I sell away six ounces. Shopify is going to take those six ounces and tell our shipping providers that our item weighs that much. And then from there, it's going to calculate the appropriate shipping rates that makes shipping a lot easier, especially if you don't really understand shipping too much and you don't really know how much to charge. Now you also do get the option to set your own rates. So instead of having Shopify set the rates based off of USPS and UPS rates, you can set your own rates and charge whatever you want. So let's say you want to charge a flat rate of $10 for t-shirts and $25 for let's say, I don't know, a pair of shoes, then Shopify gives you the ability to do so. Now regarding payment gateways, Shopify has tons of different ways for you to be able to get paid or for your customers to be able to pay you for your items or services. So when you open up your store on Shopify, you can start accepting payments either through credit cards, PayPal, or third-party payment gateways, such as Cezul, which allows your customers to buy now and pay in installments. Each one of these different payment gateways are going to have their own rates though. So keep that in mind. So when somebody uses their credit card, you're going to get charged a lower fee. Then if somebody uses a third party, such as Cezul. Now as mentioned earlier, Shopify gives you the ability to customize your website however you see fit and to make things easier. It also gives you a bunch of ready-made templates that are easily customizable. So right now we're on our Shopify dashboard and in order to gain access to all of these different themes, all we have to do is simply click on online store under our sales channels. From here, it'll automatically take you to the themes section and all you have to do is scroll down and here you can see the entire themes library, which is all the ones that we have installed. Then if you scroll down a bit more, you're going to see popular free themes. So from here, all we have to do is either click on one of these to preview or add them or just visit the theme store. Now once you visit the theme store, here you can find both free as well as paid themes. As you can see, they have quite the variety starting from completely free ranging to about 350 to $400. Now you can also find different and more customized themes for yourself on other websites such as Fiverr. Now on Fiverr, you can hire somebody to actually make a theme specific for your store. Now Shopify also has a massive app library with tons of different apps that can help you in different aspects of your dropshipping store. Now some of the apps that we recommend for one are going to start with the AutoDS all-in-one dropshipping app. Using this app, you can automate your entire dropshipping store. So pretty much everything is going to be handled by this application. So what this app does is it automates your dropshipping store. So you can import different products in just a few clicks. You can also optimize your titles, descriptions, variations, images, everything all from within this app. Another awesome feature is automatic order fulfillment. So once an order comes into your store, you really don't have to do anything. AutoDS will take your order, place it with your supplier and then update your customer with the tracking number once it becomes available. It really makes everything super easy and at the end of the day, pretty hands-off. Another awesome app for you to use is Omnisend Email Marketing and SMS. This app helps you with email as well as text message marketing. TD O Live Chat is another great app that helps you chat directly with your customers. The cool thing about this app is the fact that while you can chat directly with your customers and answer any of the questions that they have, you can also set an AI bot to be able to chat with your customers and answer any common questions. And the last app that I'm gonna mention is JudgeMeProductReviews. This is an awesome app because it lets you import different reviews to your products page. So you can even import reviews from your suppliers. So let's say you source one of your products from AliExpress and the product that you're sourcing has 50 different reviews and they're all positive. You wanna add those to your products page so that way people can see it and gain more confidence when they're actually making the purchase. Judge.meProductReviews gives you the ability to do so. Now with everything that we just covered in this video, I wanna know, do you think that Shopify is worth it? Is it worth it to you? Is it worth it overall? And will you be using Shopify? Let me know down in the comments below and also let me know what you like about it and what you don't like about it. Now, as for our final verdict, do we think that Shopify is worth it? Yes, 100%. Shopify is 100% worth it because for one, it's a hosted platform. So you get the ability to create your own website and customize it the way that you see fit and tailor it to your brand or your product. And with that, you also have the ability to customize it in some of the easiest ways using ready-made templates. While there are some fees associated to Shopify, whether that be the monthly subscription fees or the credit card transaction fees, they're nothing compared to some of the other platforms out there. And honestly, you're gonna get charged fees pretty much anywhere that you go. But with that being said, we have reached the end of the video and I wanna thank each and every one of you for sticking around all the way to the end. I greatly appreciate it. If you liked this video, if you enjoyed it, if you found it informative, please make sure to smash that like button and also while you're there, make sure to hit that subscribe button as well so you don't miss out on any future updates. Once again, my name is Mario with AutoDS. We'll catch you all next time.