Have you decided to start your own online business but don’t know how or where to start? Well, let me share with you. In this quick guide, I’ll walk you through steps on how to start WordPress dropshipping and start your business in under thirty minutes.

Sounds good? Let’s begin.

First off, you must know about the concept of dropshipping.

What is dropshipping?

Dropshipping is a business model where you can sell products online without actually keeping any inventory. This variably reduces the number of resources required to start your own business. You can start your WordPress dropshipping store with minimal finances and in lesser time as well.

Now, if you must be wondering if you don’t keep any inventory or product stock, how will you fulfill orders?

It’s quite simple. Once you receive an order, you transfer it to your supplier who packs and ships the order items to your customer. You let them know when their product is shipped and they happily receive the product.

How wordpress dropshipping works: a simple breakdown of the complete process

Here’s how dropshipping business model works:

1. You set up your WordPress dropshipping store and fill it with products from your dropshipping niche.

2. You promote your dropshipping store with different marketing strategies including Inbound Marketing, Facebook Ads, and Instagram Marketing.

3. The buyer visits your store and places an order.

4. You notify the supplier or product seller and make the payment filling your customer details for product shipment.

5. The supplier packages and ships the product.

6. You notify the customer with an email and within a few days, they receive their product.

Now, this is how a simple dropshipping model works.

You don’t keep any stock. Rather, when you receive an order in your store, you transfer it to the supplier who takes care of the rest from there.

Dropshipping is an ideal business model specifically for first-time entrepreneurs and people who are looking for a way to generate second income in their free time. Further, WordPress is a free and open-source platform to create your own e-commerce store easily even if you’re not a techie person.

Trust me, it’s as easy as a pie and if you still have any inhibitions, this post will put all your worries to rest.

How to start dropshipping business with wordpress: the benefits

1. Open-source software

This is a no-brainer! WordPress is a free open-source CMS which is the first choice for many e-commerce business owners. And not just because it’s free. There are many other reasons as well.

Being an open-source software, WordPress gives you more control over your site and allows for maximum customization and automation of your dropshipping business.

Further, you can easily find WordPress hosting services at dirt-cheap prices as compared to its counterparts that are insanely expensive.

If that isn’t reason enough for you, there are a lot more to convince you of WordPress dropshipping.

2. Easy setup

Are you scared of running an online dropshipping store partially because of your non-technical background? Well, you’re not the only one.

It can be a daunting thought to run an e-commerce store without proper knowledge of running it. Besides, how will you manage routine tasks if you don’t know a thing about coding?

Here’s the good news:

WordPress is easy. Everything you’ll need to run a store or anything you can think of, it is pre-built in WordPress in the form of plugins. For instance, WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin to power your dropshipping store with all the necessary features.

Just install WooCommerce and more than half of your work is already done. All the pages like My Account, Shop, Cart and Checkout page are automatically created with a single click.

Need more? WooCommerce supports multiple payment gateways and currencies to help you sell your products anywhere in the world.

3. Variety of themes and plugins

There are thousands of WordPress dropshipping stores online. How will you make yours any different from them? You don’t have to design everything from scratch. There is a wild choice of themes waiting for you on WordPress.

I am sure you’ll find the one you like for sure. Moreover, you can create pre-built themes and customize them with plugins like Visual Composer with drag and drop features to create your own page designs, layout structures or Responsive slider to design your sliders.

Need more?

Most WooCommerce themes have a responsive, light design with SEO compatibility to improve your site’s ranking on Google and increase your chances of being discovered online.

Here are the handpicked 10 best WordPress themes for your dropshipping website. Try them and start your WordPress dropshipping business today.

4. Help and support

Being open-source, WordPress has a large community of developers and people always on the lookout to make it better and more refined than the previous versions. If you find any problem with your dropshipping site during setup or otherwise, just do a quick Google search and you’ll find your answer in minutes on thousands of forums dedicated to WordPress with active users there to help you out.

Now, I am sure you can’t wait to get started with your own dropshipping business. In the next section, I’ll cover the steps you need to follow in order to create your own WordPress Dropshipping store.

How to start wordpress dropshipping store: a quick walkthrough

1. Select a niche for your store

Finding a niche can be very confusing for anyone. You may be tempted to sell something you personally like or have a passion for or maybe something which is quite successful for other stores. However, you need to do this carefully after a lot of research.

The beauty of dropshipping is how flexible it is. Even if a niche doesn’t work for you, you can always change it without incurring any loss of money or stock. Still, a wise decision needs to be made here to select the best profitable niche for your dropshipping store.

Pick a niche which has a target market and is trending. Products that can’t be found in the local market seem to do quite well. For instance, you can start a dropshipping store to sell Fan Merchandise for Game of Thrones or Marvel Comics.

This will include things like T-Shirts, badges, bags, mobile covers, laptop sleeves, action figures, posters and more. The list is endless. Further, it’ll be easier to promote your store in well-built fan communities on social media platforms like Facebook and even Google+.

2. Pick a SEO friendly domain name and host provider for your store

Found your niche? Good.

Now, you must select a catchy name for your webstore known as the domain name and a hosting service provider as well. A hosting service provider will set up your account for a small fee where your website will reside on the Internet.

Just like you have your own house in real life, this will be your dropshipping website’s location on the Internet. You can select any of the WordPress hosting service providers like iPage, HostGator, GoDaddy. Do your research and select the one which best suits your needs.

3. Install wordPress

WordPress installation takes less than 5 minutes depending on the speed of your Internet service provider. Simply install WordPress manually or using 1-click installation from your web hosting provider.

Once done, create your WordPress account. Remember the username and password to manage your WordPress dropshipping site as an administrator.

4. Set up WooCommerce on your store

As discussed earlier, WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that makes things easier to run an e-commerce store. Now, install WooCommerce on your store to set up necessary functions like cart, payments gateway, product page, checkout page, currency and other settings.

Once you set up WooCommerce successfully and make the necessary modifications like currency for your store, payment gateway, and others, you have done half of the work.

Let’s keep going!

5. Select a theme for your store

WooCommerce supports many free and paid themes for your store. A theme decides the overall look, layout, and design of your website. Select the best WordPress theme for your dropshipping store to entice the users for browsing your store further.

6. Fill your store with products

Because you’re dropshipping, you don’t have a stock of products with you. So, you’ll have to search and import products from sites like AliExpress. AliExpress is a website which sells trending and best products at cheapest prices.

There are many suppliers selling similar products and you can find a suitable one by checking the seller ratings on the website.

Now, adding products manually on WooCommerce can take up a lot of your time. You’ll have to manually edit the pictures, write the description, add variants and other information. Further, you’ll have to keep a tab on all products for any inventory or pricing fluctuations.

Tough, right?

Before you start worrying or have second thoughts, let me introduce you to WooDropship.

WooDropship is built and designed to manage and automate your WordPress dropshipping store and make things easier for you.

Let me show you how.

a) Sign up or create an account on WooDropship and click Connect Shop to connect your WooCommerce dropshipping store with WooDropship.

Make sure that you’re logged in as WordPress admin before you perform this step.

b) Next, select Go To AliExpress from WooDropship dashboard. Search the products with your keyword and click Import icon. The products will be automatically imported into your dashboard.

You can find them under Products> Import List.

c) Now, you can edit the product title, description, variant information, adjust the pricing and edit the images as well.

d) Once done, click PUSH TO STORE and the product will be automatically published (added) on your WooCommerce dashboard.

It’s that easy with WooDropship.

7. Promote your dropshipping store

If you want people to buy from you, they should know about your existence. While organic search works well, it’s not enough to stand out from thousand other dropshipping stores just like you.

What marks the difference between them and you?

It’s all about presentation and promotion. You must keep aside few funds to promote your store and products on Facebook, Instagram, Google AdWords and for Inbound Marketing as well. See what works for you and then retarget existing customers with a well-thought-out and planned marketing strategy for your WordPress dropshipping store.

8. Take care of your orders

You made the first sale on your store. Hooray!

Nonetheless, don’t forget to transfer the order to your supplier. After all, you just have to fill the customer details, add their selected product and make the payment. Your seller will take care of the other things.

But…

What will happen when the number of orders escalates? How will you fulfill, say 100 or 200 orders per day, manually? It won’t be easy and keeping a tab on all the orders will be a headache, to say the least.

To make things easier, you need to know this secret all successful dropshippers use. They don’t do all the work by themselves. They are smart and while they don’t hire a team for a new business they know how to delegate the work successfully.

WooDropship doesn’t just import your products for you. It does a lot more.

With WooDropship, you can easily automate your order fulfillment

WooDropship will notify when the customer has placed a new order. You just have to make the payment and WooDropship will fill all the variant details and auto-fill customer information for you.

The task that could take 5 minutes is done in less than 30 seconds. Now, you can spend all the free time on store promotion or create another dropshipping store with WordPress and WooDropship.

9. Provide excellent customer support

Dropshipping business is easier and can help you earn profits in lesser time than any other business. However, your customers are your responsibility and you can’t run from it. Your customers will love to purchase from you if you excel at helping them wherever you can.

An excellent customer support service should be a must in your dropshipping store. Make sure your customer doesn’t have any problem during their purchase and have a quick solution in case of returns and refunds from your store.

Providing exceptional customer service can convert problem customers into loyal brand advocates for your business.

How to start wordpress dropshipping store: In a nutshell

So, there you go- all the things you need to start your own WordPress dropshipping store are covered in this post. While this doesn’t encompass everything, it is all you will need to begin your journey with dropshipping.

Dropshipping can help you make money online as a full-time business or your second income to grow your lifestyle and succeed as an e-commerce entrepreneur. Don’t wait anymore and get started with your own business today with best AliExpress dropshipping plugin!