10 Drop Shipping Tools To Build Your Next Store

The more I learn, do and write about drop shipping (and its many wonderful opportunities), the more I am amazed at how much I have missed out by not jumping into drop shipping the first time I heard about it some three years ago.

A little back story about me is that I have been doing online business for close to 7 years now, mostly affiliate marketing, but around 2014, I came across the idea of drop shipping and totally disregarded it as I thought it would be too much of a headache to learn and understand.

Obviously, back then we didn’t have the drop shipping tools available to us that we do today, but if I had just spent a few days learning about it back then, I would have made much more progress, much quicker.

Today, the drop shipping world, as I see it, is a ripe opportunity – but it won’t be this way for too long. All the top money-making guys on the internet are jumping on the drop shipping like they would jump on the last standing female at the bar at closing time.

I think that drop shipping is excellent – but no, it won’t be for long and I say this with a bit of remorse in my heart.

This doesn’t mean that it will go away or it’s now impossible to make money – quite the contrary – it just means that over time, it’s opportunities and low cost of entry will start to disappear as happened with many other online money-making opportunities when it gets too big (and competitive).

best Drop Shipping Tools

So, does this mean you should not start a drop shipping business?

I’m saying you should start a drop shipping business and start it today. The sooner, the better!

As I am currently writing this, I can assure you there are hundreds (if not thousands) of drop shippers worldwide sniffing out the next hot-selling products and building Shopify stores around it.

Today is your turn – today is where you come in and today is when you finally start your store.

Now you may be thinking like me – drop shipping is a headache and too complicated. I made that mistake, so please don’t repeat it yourself.

Back to my drop shipping story…

After having ignored it for years, I finally stumbled across a pdf guide by Oberlo (which I will talk about soon) and in a quick read of 15 minutes, I knew how to do it but more importantly, I understood how easy it was to get started – which is what I want to teach you today.

As I said already, back when drop shipping came about, there weren’t any tools to make it easy for beginners to get started.

Today, however, there are plenty of them – plenty of drop shipping tools to help you make money with what I would genuinely describe as one of the easiest ways to make money online.

I have written about drop shipping before on this blog so take a look at my Drop Shipping guides if you want to find out more about it, but today, I want to give you a list of drop shipping tools you can use to create for yourself a nice income online.

Apart from the drop shipping tools, towards the end of this post, I will also give you a few places to learn about drop shipping in much more depth.

While it is easy to comprehend, the topic goes deep, and there are many ways you can do dropshipping. I will not be able to cover all that you need to know in this post, but I will give you a good starting point and a simple to-do-list of where and how you should start.

Ready to take the leap? Here are my favourite 10 best drop shipping tools you might want to use.

tools

Shopify

Drop shipping consist of building an e-commerce store that sells products worldwide.

The beauty and the magic sauce of drop shipping is that you do not have to hold the products in a warehouse – in fact, you don’t even have to see the products as drop shipping allows you to have your supplier ship directly to the consumer.

I won’t go into detail much about that process as I have covered it in my guide on drop shipping products from China but what you will need to make this happen is an online store, hence why Shopify is at the top of this list.

How To Get Started With Shopify

My Shopify review goes into this much more in depth, but just for a quick guide, the following is what you need to do to set up your Shopify store.

Step #1: Visit the Shopify homepage.
Step #2: Register your store.
Step #3: Use the complimentary 14 days free to build your store.
Step #4: Buy a domain and a membership plan and go LIVE!

Congratulations, you have created your brand new Shopify store.

Let’s now move on now to the second most crucial drop shipping tool you need to build a fantastic, profitable online store.

Oberlo

Oberlo is a plugin that will run you about $5 per month, but if you have joined Shopify and paid for a membership plan, Oberlo will be included for free.

This is super important to have so do not think you can get away with not having this on as this is will not only help you fill up your store with great products but it also automates the whole process saving you a lot of time.

Again, I do have an Oberlo review which I would invite you to check out, but here’s what Oberlo can do and WHY it is so important to have it installed and ready to receive orders.

  • Step #1: Find products on AliExpress (see why we do drop shipping with AliExpress)
  • Step #2: Import them to Oberlo (all is explained here).
  • Step #3: Set your own profit margins (yes you pick your profit margins)
  • Step #4: “Ship to Store”.

Once the product is on your site (with your mark up in price), as soon as you get a sale, the order will show up in Oberlo, and it will automatically buy the specific item from AliExpress for you and ship it to your customer – all you would need to do is click “Confirm & Pay” on AliExpress.

Remember, you make your own profit margins, and you get paid first. Meaning if you sold a $50 product item, you first collect your $50, then you (Oberlo) buy it from your AliExpress supplier for let’s say $15, and ships it to your customer’s address.

Done and dusted. Moving on…

The above two tools I mentioned are a must to have – do not go into drop shipping without them.

So far, the estimated cost of the above tools is only $29 per month (which is for Shopify and the free Oberlo app).

If you want to build your store to be profitable, then you may need some more tools (which I will be talking about next).

Mind you that the ones below are not a must, but they sure do help, and I can tell you I would not be making the sales I am making today without these following few drop shopping tools.

Ready to take your store to the next level? Here’s what you should do next.

Email Marketing

I love email marketing, it has been proven to be both mines and also the whole industry’s best way to generate traffic to your blog and drive sales.

When it comes to my drop shipping business, email is the best source of traffic I have (and would probably be yours too). Why? Because whoever signs up for your email newsletter, is super interested in what you have to say and offer.

There’s also a good way and a and way to do email marketing when it comes to drop shipping, but I will leave you into the hands of Franklin Hatchett, one of the most respected drop shipping guys out there whom I learned a lot from.

Find out how he uses email marketing and the specific emails you would need to send to make “email” one of the best drop shipping tools in your arsenal.

You may also want to check out Aweber if you are thinking of doing email marketing.

Canva

Unfortunately, although I do not mind it one bit, as a solo-preneur you have to wear many hats, and that included being your very own graphic designer.

I know what you may be thinking you have no clue about graphic design, let alone great graphic design but trust me, with tools such as Canva, you are more than capable of creating fantastic artwork you can use your store and run ads with.

Which brings me to my next point…

Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads is not a “drop shipping tool” but it’s something you are going to need to do to get your new drop shipping business off the ground and into the green.

Facebook Ads, again, may seem too daunting to try but you’d be wrong. The platform itself is fairly easy to use, and there are many tips and video guides on how to create winning campaigns.

Again, I’d leave you into the capable hands of my mentor Franklin Hatchett as I use the same formula he carefully perfected and teaches in this upcoming video;

Shopify Tools (Apps) For Drop Shipping.

Just like WordPress has plugins to enhance your website’s look and functionality, Shopify has what we (they) call Shopify Apps.

There are hundreds, maybe even thousands of different plugins (apps) that you can use to build out a better store, increase sales, handle social media, show discounts and sales, etc..

The Shopify App market is truly vast, but below are some of the actual apps I use. These following apps are what I currently have running, and I have found them to be great, and I can’t see myself working without them now,

Again, may I remind you that although these are all free, you can do without these tools if you choose not to use them – however, I have found that they have helped me a lot both with saved time and even increases in sales.

Best Currency Converter

This is a nifty plugin that will automatically change yore prices to your users home-currency based on the current exchange rate.

Why is this so great? Because it gives the user a friendly-er experience of your store.

I am based in Europe, so I use € to shop, and whenever I buy from the US, prices are displayed in $ obviously.

While this is not a make or break deal for me, it may be for some people, so this currency makes it much easier for people to know how much they will actually be spending and how much the item will cost them.

It also gives the user a much “closer-to-home” feel when browsing the store.

Beeketing Apps

I use 2 Beeketing apps, which are Shopify App developers that have quite a selection of great drop shipping tools themselves.

The two I use are “Countdown” and “Product Recommendations”, which I explain below:

-> Beeketing Countdown Timer

This is a simple plugin that shows a countdown timer next to the price.

Ideally, you want to create a subtle hint of urgency for your reader, and since most of my products are discounted, I like to add a countdown timer showing them when the next price hike will occur.

There are many ways you can experiment with this, and I would advise you to get it installed in your store (its free) and start experimenting with it.

-> Beeketing Product Recommendations

This is an other huge driver for me because this app (still by Beeketing) shows users related products based on what they are browsing.

For instance, if they are looking at signs, the app will show at the bottom of the page a selection of other rings that other users have found and bought.

This is fantastic as most of my traffic goes into looking one product and if they do not like it or want to see the options, this app displays the information they are looking for right there in from of them.

So far, this app has generated close to $3,000 for me, and I couldn’t be happier – if you want to know what’s more shocking. It’s the fact that it is free to use and install.

Product Reviews App

Do you ever read reviews online before you shop for anything? Well, it’s not just you.

People like seeing reviews and this little tool allow people to leave reviews on your products so other people can see them.

This is obviously great because it gives so much more trust, but on a technical side of things, reviews also help you rank better with SEO allowing you to gather more visitors to your store.

This app also free and you can see it in action right here in the Shopify app marketplace.

Abandoned Cart Emails

One other drop shipping tool that I recommend you install on your store is the Abandoned Cart email app.

What you will see happening a lot is people come to your store, add their products and then 9for some reason) leave without ever checking out.

This is where this app comes in as it will show out an email to your potential customer’s email encouraging them to complete their purchase.

You may also want to offer them a quick “today-only” discount in that email to help close the deal faster.

You can see the app and all that it does on their product page.

How To Use Aweber For Best Results

Where To Learn More About Dropshipping

Those have been my most recommend tools for drop shipping although as I am sure you have realized this is a vast topic that I just can’t cover in one blog post.

There are many resources for you out there where you can learn all about it, and I will list some resources for you below,

While I do suggest you go get started straight away with building your Shopify store, I would also encourage you to spend some time going through this resources and learning all that you can about how to run a profitable Shopify Store.

3HUNDRD.com

The 3HUNDRD website is the site you are reading right now, and although I talk a lot about online business in general, I have a dedicated section for blogs and guides about drop shipping.

You can see all the posts I have ever written about this topic on the drop shipping category.

Franklin Hatchett

I have referenced this man a couple of times in this blog post and for a good reason; he’s the main reason why I have managed to make my store extremely profitable and I can’t thank him enough.

Visit his website (onlinedimes.com) and also his YouTube channel to get a better understanding of what you need to do and I would also ask you to see his interview with Miles Beckler, which is another guy you can learn a lot from.

Miles Beckler

This guy is a genius and a super-successful drop shipper and e-commerce marketer.

I have just now started watching his stuff (after the recommendation from Franklin Hatchett) and I am loving his way of explaining things.

You can follow Miles on his YouTube channel here.

Drop Shipping Facebook Groups

Facebook groups is another place where I spend a lot of my time learning from other drop shippers of all levels.

Some of the groups I am a member of and that you can also join are these:

Learn How To Build An Online Business

Drop shipping is only one way of building an online business, and although it is a great resource to use to build your passive online income, I would also suggest you look into other online-business opportunities such as affiliate marketing.

Since you’ve made it all the way down here, I would like to offer you a free 10-day getting started affiliate marketing course which I think would help you understand more about how to start an online business (including drop shipping).

If you have any questions be sure to let me know and I hope you have enjoyed (and get to benefit) form this list of drop shipping tools that I am passing on to you.

I honestly believe drop shipping is one of the best ways to make money online and I will be publishing more and more content around this topic for the foreseeable future as I myself get into it deeper and deeper.

Let me know if you have any Qs down below and also do not forget to subscribe to my newsletter for updates on new content and exclusive, bonus tips.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Till next time.

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