The other day I saw a Reddit post from a broke college student looking to launch a Shopify dropshipping store. I wound up chatting with him a bit via PM and e-mail and we talked a little bit about him launching his Shopify store.
Now don't get me wrong there's nothing wrong with Shopify, I absolutely love Shopify and it's a great way to make money. That said I see a lot of people rushing into ecommerce and opening Shopify stores and setting up dropshipping stores not because they have a skillset that caters to this business and not because they even necessarily have an interest in this business, but because it's what everyone on Youtube is doing and it seems like people are making money.
This is so common that everyone seems to think Shopify is just an ATM machine, you setup a dropshipping store and it pops out your $500 to $800 per month with little to no effort.
When it comes to starting a business or a side hustle I think it's important to take a look at all the opportunities out there. Look at your bank account, your schedule, your interests and your skill-sets and find something that's a good fit for you, don't try to force something that is not.
This gentlement I was talking to about launching a Shopify store admittedly has no money, just buying the domain is going to tap him out. He's counting on making money within his 14 day trial period to enable him to pay the first month of Shopify fees which is $29.
While Shopify stores and even more specifically dropshipping can be done on a tight budget, you still are going to need some money. Sure a store can be launched without Facbook ads, Adwords ads and influencers, it's going to take a little bit longer to build up but it can absolutely be done.
The bigger challenge here is that the guy has no money to even order inventory for his customers. He's counting on being able to use the customers money to order the product. As we all know with Paypal or Stripe aka Shopify payments sometimes payouts take a couple days to come to you, that means ordering the product for the customer is going to be pushed back a couple days on top of an already long delivery time due to ordering from Ali Express or China.
This is also assuming Paypal and/or Stripe dont' put any holds on this guys money until he uploads tracking info. If that happens he's screwed and he can't order products for his customers.
This plan suceeding is also predecated on everything going perfectly. Not only is he landing sales in his first week with no paid advertising, but were also assuming every sale is going to go well ie no returns, no chargebacks, no lost packages. If anything goes wrong, again this guy is screwed.
Again while Shopify stores and dropshipping businesses can be started with a low budget, it's not a good idea to start them with no budget. My suggestion would be to hustle together some money, go mow some lawns, go on Craigslist and find someone hiring for moving help or yardwork help. Start freelancing on Fiverr, selling on Merch. Do something to make a couple hundred bucks and you''ll be much better positioned for success than trying to do this with no money
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