Passive Income: How I Started Dropshipping From Scratch (STEP BY STEP)

Step 1: Find a Free AI Shopify Store Builder The first step is to find a free AI tool to create your Shopify store. After searching, "Build Your Store" seems like the best option. It claims to build a Shopify store and lets you sell other people's products without needing your own inventory or doing any of the work yourself. When the store receives an order, the product is shipped directly to the customer, allowing you to profit without extra work. To follow along, you can check the link in the video description. After loading the page, click the "Build My Free Store" button. Next, fill in your full name and email address, and pick a password.

Step 2: Choose Your Niche Now you'll be asked to choose a niche. Six options are available: Fashion and Apparel, Pets, Electronics and Gadgets, Home and Garden, Sports and Fitness, and "I'm Not Sure." Many pick something they're interested in. However, approach this with a business mind: what do you know confidently that has a large market? All options are good, but Sports and Fitness is selected because there's a big demand, especially among younger people.

Step 3: Customize Your Store's Appearance Next, customize the store to appeal to customers. There are six banners to choose from, so let's find the best fit. The first has many different sporting items, which may confuse customers if you don't sell all those products. Skip that one. One with just a woman on her own, while nice, doesn't represent the entire audience, so we want our store to appeal to both men and women. Using this logic, the bottom right also feels too female-only, so we'll pass. Out of the remaining three, the bottom left works great, and the middle right pops nicely with the sunset, which could grab attention and create a positive first impression. Remember, banners are the first thing customers see, so ensure they reflect what you're about and what you're offering. You can always change them later if none feel right. After choosing banners, hit "Continue" to let the AI build the store.

Step 4: Set Up a Free Shopify Account To let the AI build your store, set up a free Shopify account. Click on "Access Shopify," which opens in a new tab. Type in your email address and hit "Start Free Trial," then pick a password and click "Create Shopify Account." Shopify will ask a few setup questions, but since AI will handle most of the work, select "I don't want help setting up" to save time.

Step 5: Select a Shopify Plan Shopify asks you to choose a plan for when the free trial ends. The basic plan is designed for solo entrepreneurs and is the most popular, so select that one. Add your payment details, so you're ready when the trial ends. It's free right now, and after the trial, it's just $1 per month for the first 3 months. Since you aren't paying anything right now, this doesn't count towards our $1 budget. Once set up, Shopify takes you to the dashboard for your new store where you can manage everything. It looks confusing, but that's fine as the AI will take control soon. ##

Step 6: Install the "Build Your Store" App Install the "Build Your Store" app. Click "Access Shopify" again, which opens another tab. On this page, click the "Install" button to add the app to your Shopify account. Click "Create My Custom Store." Give the AI time to work its magic and build your store. The results will be checked later.

Step 7: Find Winning Products with AutoDS Next, find winning products for your store. The right products can make or break the store. They attract customers, drive sales, and set you apart from your competition. Register for AutoDS. This tool selects products proven to sell, takes care of pricing, uploads professional photos, and ships products directly to customers once you start making sales. Go back to the "Build Your Store" website and select "Register to AutoDS." You can sign up with a Google account or enter your details manually. Use the same email address you used for Shopify and "Build Your Store" to keep everything linked.

Step 8: Choose an AutoDS Plan and Payment Method You'll be asked where you will be selling, so choose Shopify. AutoDS offers the first 30 days for just 99 cents on any plan. The starter 500 plan looks perfect, so select "Start Now for 99¢." PayPal is always a good option.

Step 9: Publish Your Store Now it's time to publish your store. Click "Access Shopify" and uncheck the box that says "Restrict access to visitors with a password." Now that's done, press "Continue," and your store is officially live with winning products.

Step 10: Review and Tweak Your Store With your Shopify store live, take a proper look and make any necessary tweaks before sending customers over. The two banners are in place, and the AI has set up buttons that lead straight to the new product arrivals page, which should make it easy for customers to get around the site. Down below are some of the winning products that AutoDS has added.

Step 11: Product Review - Breathing Trainer: Works like high-altitude training by limiting oxygen intake. The idea is that when you're in a competition, your body can carry more oxygen, which should make you perform better. - Bag Clips for Your Golf Club: Stop clubs from rattling together and getting damaged. - Resistance Band: Always a good seller. - Warm Jogging Hat: As it's getting a little bit chilly.

Step 12: Adding More Products To pick more products, head over to AutoDS, click "Marketplace," and then "Trending Products." This brings up a page with all the products that are selling very well, and you could pick any of these. To be honest, though, it's probably not a good idea to be too random with it, as your customers need to know what your store is about. Click on the "Sports and Fitness" filter to pull up some products that would fit well into our store. If you want to add one of these, click "Import to Draft," then wait for the import of the product. It gives you the option to adjust all the information and photos before publishing it onto the store.

Step 13: Check Product Page and Fix Mistakes Let's dive a bit deeper and check out what our product page looks like and see if we can spot any mistakes we need to fix. There's a decent selection of product photos, and to be fair, they do look quite professional. According to AutoDS, these golf clips cost $6.84, and drop shippers normally sell their items for two to 2.5 times their cost. You should be able to sell these for at least $13.68, which would give us $6.84 profit per sale, not taking into account any marketing costs. Having PayPal payments available on my website adds a bit more trust and often improves sales. The AI has even written the product descriptions for us and thrown in some emojis. It's also included related product suggestions at the bottom of each page, which could help with upselling.

Step 14: Footer Review The AI has done a decent job with the footer. All the important pages are already set up, like the shipping policies and terms of conditions. These little details might not seem like a big deal, but they do make the store look a lot more professional. The heavy lifting has already been done for terms and conditions. All you need to do is drop in a store name, your location, and some contact details to finish off.

Step 15: Store Domain The only thing letting the store down right now is the domain name. It's just a random jumble of characters and doesn't scream professional. A good domain name is so important because it's the first thing customers see. A ".store" domain is specifically designed for online stores. Websites with a ".store" domain get 87% more traffic and rank two times higher on Google. This makes sense because when someone sees a ".store" domain, they know right away they're visiting a shop. Luckily, you can get a ".store" domain for free as we're using the "Build Your Store" AI tool. Otherwise, you can also buy one from sites like GoDaddy and Namecheap. Go with something simple, like "Tilbury Fitness." You've got to link the domain name to the store, so enter the new domain name. It will take a few moments to verify, and then you're ready to go. Before officially starting to sell, tweak the website, fill in the footer details, link some social media accounts, and make sure everything looks polished.

Step 16: Promote the Store with Influencers To get some eyeballs on our store, work with some influencers. Gymshark has proved this strategy works very well in the fitness niche, and it's great because you get a positive endorsement from a trusted figure and traffic to your store. Use micro-influencers (accounts with 10,000 to 50,000 followers). Micro-influencers boast up to a 60% increased engagement rate and a 20%+ higher conversion rate compared to macro-influencers. Reach out to influencers and have them promote the store. Get them to put up a story with a link to the product page and check back tomorrow.

Step 17: Review Product Quality Before the influencers start promoting, do a bit of quality check on the items you ordered: - Breathing Trainer: Feels pretty damn good and built to last. - Hat: Nice and Woolly. - Golf Clips: Better quality. - Resistance Band: Always popular.

Step 18: Campaign Result The approach of only promoting one product didn't work, as people didn't buy anything else, but 12 of these breathing trainers were sold. Ten genuine purchases.

Step 19: Profit Analysis Ten genuine purchases for $17.85 each is $178.5. The items cost an average of $3.95 each, so $39.50 went towards product cost and shipping. After factoring in the $50 paid to the influencers and the $1 Shopify fee, the total cost came to $90.50. That leaves a profit of $88. This was all done with minimal effort, using AI tools, a budget of just $1 to set everything up, and $50 for marketing. Imagine scaling this. If you promoted 20 products and they kept ticking along making regular sales, this could easily turn into thousands of dollars in profit every month.