Let’s address a common dropshipping question: What does it cost to start your dropshipping business?

You can begin dropshipping starting at $100. With a combination of starter plans and free trials, and the willingness to invest in the quality of your products, you can start dropshipping.

However, you don’t have to borrow from The Big Book of English Expressions.

This article will discuss the unavoidable expenses that dropshipping stores (legitimately) will have to pay to get started. You’ll find an itemized list of dropshipping startup expenses and insights from entrepreneurs to help you understand what to expect.

What does it cost to drop ship?

Dropshipping has made it easier to start a business. Dropshipping allows you to work with suppliers around the globe and sell their products without having to keep inventory. It’s an amazing setup.

It’s so amazing that many people get carried away dreaming about a six-figure company that doesn’t require investment.

It’s not easy to start a successful business. Dropshipping is possible.

While you don’t have to take out a second mortgage to drop ship, you must put money into your business before it makes money.

Start-up costs for dropshipping businesses

Dropshipping stores are the simplest version.

• Shopify Subscription
• A DSers subscription

We chose Shopify as it is the most widely used ecommerce platform. We’re also going with dropshipping tools.

It’s good news! Shopify offers a 14-day free trial. It will cost $29 per month, but you can still get started for free. Shopify takes care of the store portion. Let’s now move on to dropshipping.

DSers offers a free basic plan. It is limited to 3,000 products, so you won’t be scaling with it. You can get started before you spend your credit card. To access advanced features such as bundle mapping and automatic inventory updates, you will eventually need to upgrade to $19.90 Advanced.

Dropshipping is a serious business. You need a domain. You can purchase a domain through Shopify. You’ll be asked questions about it during your trial. The annual fee is $14.

So if you’re willing to do it cheaply, your store launch costs will look like this.

14-day free Shopify trial + DSers plan =

We can then start to look at the following:

$29/month Shopify Basic + $14 Domain + $19.90/month Advanced Ders = $62.90

We’d then be paying $48.90 per month, which includes the Shopify and DSers recurring costs, minus the $14 domain.

Dropshipping product validation costs

This is the “eat all your vegetables” part of starting a dropshipping business: Just as nobody is going to force you to eat your vegetables, no one will force you into ordering your dropshipping products.

You should do it.

Dropshipping allows you to sell the products without handling them. While this might solve one of the biggest challenges of commerce (having cool products to sell), it introduces a new set of considerations–namely, you don’t control the quality of the products, the timeliness of delivery, or the appearance of the packaging.

We recommend that you set aside time and money to purchase the products you will be selling at your store.

This allows you to get to know the suppliers. You can ask questions after you have placed your order. For example, when can you expect your order to arrive? Is it damaged in any way? Would you buy it?

You can sell your products once you have them in stock. Display them. Photograph people holding them. Ask your friends to tell you what they think and how much they would pay.

So how much will you pay to eat your dropshipping vegetables? You don’t have to purchase every variant of every product. You can order one color if you have yellow, red, or blue dresses from the same supplier. It’s a good idea, however, to order at most one sample from each supplier whose products your store will be selling.

Let’s assume that this will run you $75.

It is a large upfront cost. Add it to the store infrastructure costs.

We can anticipate paying approximately $140 in the first month.

Dropshipping store improvement costs

You can only go so far with the $140 you have spent on your website. To get the functionality you need, you might have to install apps. Shopify and DSers, for example, don’t offer bulk discounts.

Sure, there are ways around this. It is possible to offer a product that contains five items, and then sell the quintet at a lower price than purchasing five individual items. You don’t want your business built on workarounds. Your store should be simple to navigate for shoppers, and for you to use.

Sometimes, it’s worth spending to install Shopify apps.

You can find a wide range of apps in the Shopify App Store to solve any tweak, improvement, or upgrade you could think of. Let’s take a look at some of the most requested features for store owners, and a small selection of the apps that can help make them happen.

Cross-selling and Upselling

Cross-selling refers to offering a product/service that is related to what the customer already bought. Upselling is a strategy to encourage customers to purchase an upgraded, more costly version of a previously purchased item. These methods are designed to increase the average order value (AOV) of a merchant.

Shopify offers many great apps for upselling and cross-selling. 

• Cross Sell ($29.99/month)
• Convert ($19/month).
• Bold Upsell $9.99/month

Bulk Pricing

Bulk pricing is discounted pricing that customers who buy large quantities of products can access before checkout. Dropshipping stores can offer bulk pricing to encourage customers to purchase more products and return for more.

Shopify makes it simple to set up bulk pricing.

• Discount Pricing (19.99/month).
• Quantity breaks ($20/month).
• Bulk Discounts and Sales Scheduled ($18.95/month).

Exit intent

Exit intent is a smart behavioral technology that delivers an attractive offer to visitors who are about to leave your site. It monitors the mouse movements of website visitors and determines when the cursor moves to the top of the screen to close the browser window.

Shopify offers several apps that offer exit-intent technology.

• Wheelio (14.92/month).
• Spin-a-Sale ($9.99/month)
• Smart Popup Builder ($29/month)

This stuff is not necessary, but if you want to offer discounts to customers who buy 10 or more products than one, then this app will be a great option. A bulk pricing app would cost about $20 per month. Let’s add that to our initial costs.

After the first four to six weeks, we are now at $160.

Dropshipping Marketing Costs–The Biggie

Every product we have seen so far has been tagged with a price. Marketing doesn’t.

It is impossible to estimate how much marketing money you will need. However, there are some assumptions we can make to estimate the amount of marketing money needed.

The average global conversion rates in Ecommerce are between 2% to 3%. This will vary depending on the country and niche, but let’s say that the conversion rate is 2.5%. This means that if you have 200 people visit your store, you can expect five to buy something. How can we bring in 200 customers to our store? Marketing.

Dropshippers currently use Facebook as their main marketing channel. Let’s take a look at how to drive 200 customers to your store via the platform. WordStream puts the average click-through (CTR), for Facebook ads at 0.9%. Let’s say your ads are great and have a 1% CTR.

Your ad must reach at least 20,000 people to attract 200 people to your store. Prices for 20,000 impressions vary depending on the target audience. Reaching US Facebook users is more expensive than reaching Singaporean users.

According to the AdStage marketing software provider, the average cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM) was $12.45 in Q4 2017. Let’s just call it a tidy $12.50. We now have an equation.

(20,000/1000) x 12.50 = 250

These averages show that we need to spend $250 on Facebook advertising to generate five Facebook sales.

You have many levers you can use to manipulate these numbers and increase profit. Make great ads. Your cost per click (CPC) will drop if your ads are suitable. People will click more often on your ads if they are better. has all the information you need to create high-impact ads.

Target countries with lower CPM rates. Dropshippers have had success in many countries, not just the obvious ones.

There are steps that you can take to increase your conversion rate, and increase your average order value in your store. One way to convince people to buy from your store is to design easy-to-use product pages. This would increase the 2.5% conversion rate we previously mentioned.

To increase your average order value, you can also use cross-selling or upselling apps. These will be a bit more expensive, but with a few good upsells per month–not an unreasonable goal–they’ll make it worthwhile.

Dropshipping Website Cost: Our verdict

It’s not a good idea to spend money on launching an ecommerce site if you think it will be free or if you forget that this is a business venture. Don’t forget that the money you invest in your store is an investment. You invest in things because you expect a return, regardless of whether you are buying stocks or opening stores.

You’ll never stop making money from ecommerce if you stay with it. Once your price-breaks app has worked, you will want to add a cross-selling application. You’ll need to invest in marketing automation technology as your Facebook campaigns grow. We haven’t even mentioned email marketing or premium Shopify themes or logo design tools such as Hatchful.

It is difficult to predict how much you will earn or how long it takes to recover. As expenses rise from double digits to triple digits, remember that there is no “free” way to start a business. It’s not a good idea to start a business.

You must use your sales profits well after you have started to make sales. To cover unexpected costs, set aside a certain amount of your revenue. The rest of your earnings can be used to grow your business. These will be divided into two areas.

First, improve your business’s infrastructure. This includes your website design and email marketing software. While these services can be costly, once you make a profit, they can greatly improve customer retention and conversion rates. This will allow you to make more money and your paid advertising can be more aggressive than your competitors. You can calculate the lifetime value of each customer as opposed to the profit of one sale.