How To Start Dropshipping with $200

Usually, start-ups give up before they even start their dropshipping journey because of the capital required to launch and run the business. Today, I share how you can Start Dropshipping With $200, using the dropshipping strategies I am about to unleash for free.

Starting a dropshipping business requires capital, some would say above $2000; to be successful in this venture, you need money to run advertisements, fulfill orders, design the store, pay for apps, and perform general management tasks that require cash.

The good news is, you don’t have to do all that. If you only have $200, you can start a dropshipping store on Shopify and pave your way up as you learn to save and work smart.

Many Shopify stores closed due to a lack of funds to manage and run marketing; others couldn’t keep up with the pressure, so 95% of Shopify stores closed without making sales.

• Start Dropshipping With $200
  • The store should have the following:
• Finding your dropshipping product
  • Use of Instagram
  • Building the store
  • Product Marketing.
  • Conclusion

How to Start Dropshipping With $200

Since you love dropshipping and are desperate to start and make some sales on a low budget, these strategies should work for you. We will spend the $200 wisely until you make sales that will enable you to scale your eCommerce business.

• Shopify basic monthly Plan = $29 Monthly
• Premium Domain Name = $14 Annually
• Install Free Shopify  Apps Only
• Use Free Shopify themes only.

From the $200 in working capital, we are left with about $150 on our credit card. You can now decide to buy your domain name from other domain name providers, which may be cheaper than on Shopify. Then you can add it to your existing stores later through your host’s DNS settings.

At this stage, I assume you have your store already designed using one of the free Shopify themes on their platform. The store must have a logo, which you can create for free using Canva or another online logo tool.

You must install only free Shopify apps that are essential to your store. When the shop is flooded with apps, performance slows, and some pop-up apps make it hard for customers to navigate.

So, only install apps that you need at the beginner stage; the Dsers app is a must-have; it is the app you will use to import products from AliExpress after you’ve identified the niche you want to start with.

The store should have the following:

• Menus (features your product collections and navigation)
• Pages (about us, privacy policy, terms of use, refund policy, FAQs, and shipping page)
• Homepage set up (includes graphics and setup)

Finding your dropshipping product

There are various ways to find hot-selling products; if you want to go the Ecom hunt or niche scraper route, you’re welcome, but remember, your budget won’t allow it.

There are other free ways of finding a good product we won’t look into, like searching for them on Facebook using terms like ‘Get yours here, free shipping’.

You can find suitable products on Facebook, but for a product to gain traction on Facebook feeds through ads, it only means the cash the store owners have pumped into the ads; hence, you must have a huge budget to try selling a product that has trended on Facebook.

So what do we do?

Use of Instagram

Regarding how to start a dropshipping business with $200, the best and most effective way to find our product is through Instagram Explorer. It is easy to find a product on Instagram, as store owners use influencers to reach the right audience.

When you hit the explore page and see an ad for a similar product at least 5 times, you must stop what you are doing and start looking into it.

When several Instagram influencers promote the same product, it means the product is doing well.

A store owner would only repeat one Instagram influencer if they get sales. When this happens, it only proves that the product is hot, and you can make a sale on it.

So, when you head over to the Explorer page on your Instagram, you will see posts, ads, and Instagram TV content presented to you; the data you access is based on your cookies and browsing habits.

So, if you like searching for specific keywords or products, you can only see the exact and related keywords.

After you’ve found the product, head over to Google Trends to see the data for the last 12 months; if the graph is rising, it means you can look for the product and add it to the shop.

Pet Pooper Scooper has been on my feeds and Instagram Explorer of late, and I have seen the ads from influencers at least 6 times. Today, I am using this product as an example.

Here are the Google Trends searches in the USA over the last 12 months. You can try the product from here or keep looking for others.

The same applies to AliExpress: check the product, focus on the number of orders, copy and paste the product link, head over to the dropshipping center, and check whether it is hot.

Now that you’ve identified a product you want to sell, it is time to build the store and set things up for you. We are still on a low budget of $200, so everything we do must not involve money or pay for anything not part of the plan.

Building the store

We will build a one-store product, and you may ask yourself why. With this kind of store, you get time to focus on what works and kill what doesn’t. Since we are on a low budget, we must focus on one thing to succeed.

A one-product store works magic if you have a good product and a unique marketing approach. In this case, you’ve already learned how to create a Shopify store.

Then let’s add our product using Dsers. Make sure to have looked for stores selling the same product, probably the one you saw on Instagram.

Don’t try to reinvent the wheel; duplicate everything as is, but edit it to suit your store brand and uniqueness.

Product Marketing.

As stated earlier, when I started this post, we would deal purely with Instagram. We’ve already found a product on Instagram, and now it’s time to launch our ad campaign.

Instead of using Facebook ads for our product marketing, we switched to Instagram influencers. We want to use them simply because our budget won’t allow us to sell on Facebook. The point where most drop shippers go wrong is starting their marketing on Facebook while on a low budget.

The next task would be to find influencers in the niche we are trying to promote. The influencer must have at least 50-200k followers.

You don’t want to look for influencers with 900k followers; the more followers they have, the higher their rates. Going for influencers with no marketing posts is highly advisable, as the clean account that hasn’t marketed anything.

When we do this, we stand a high chance of conversions; users tend to ignore ads more so if an account constantly posts ads and promotions, unlike a new account with followers who haven’t seen any advertisements from it. They will likely convert or take action.

The low-followers account must be engaging, and your budget for promotion must not exceed $20 per post for 12 hours.

Now, if this is done successfully and results in conversions, you can negotiate a long-term arrangement with the influencer. Meanwhile, you can browse Instagram to find similar influencers for the said product.

Read Also:

• 10 Dropshipping Challenges In Africa That Kill Dreams
• Is Walmart Dropshipping Profitable?
• Is Temu Good For a Dropshipping Business?
• Is It Better To Dropship Or Ship Yourself
• What’s The Difference Between Amazon FBA And Dropshipping

Conclusion

When you do the above and get sales, you can rinse and repeat, find new influencers within your niche, negotiate better rates, run promotions, and see results.

If conversions increase and sales come in at a crazy pace, look for influencers with huge followings, see if you can afford them, hire them, and run the promotions.

When you hit $2000-3000 in profit, you can start running Facebook ads using the data gathered from Instagram pixels and lookalike audiences (LAs).

However, always ensure the product image or video you promote is free of copyright issues. It is wise to create your video ads or edit the existing ones, just in case they run into problems with copyrighted marketing materials.

This brings us to the end of how you can start dropshipping with $200, and it is clear you have no excuse to start a dropshipping store on Shopify.

All you have to do is sign up on Shopify and start your dropshipping journey. If you are stuck, I am here to help you go through it, and help will come your way.

Do you have any questions regarding the above topic? Let me know in the comments below. Please share this article and subscribe to my mailing list.

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