Can anyone really dropship for free? is that even possible? Well it is possible to start dropshipping for free but at some point, you’d need to invest money into the business.
Anyone can start dropshipping without investing money by opening a free ecommerce store on Ecwid then driving sales with organic traffic. However, you’d need to invest money later on, to preorder the product from the supplier when you get a sale.
Most payment getaway like paypal temporarily hold payment when you are a new merchant. So, you’d need money to preorder the product from your dropshiping supplier in case, you get an order on your website but the money paid by your customer is held temporarily.
Dropshipping on Shopify and facebook ads does cost money to start but you can start dropshipping for free using a freemium ecommerce website created on Ecwid and drive sales with organic traffic.
it’s a longer term approach which can generate revenue, however the process can be slow when using organic traffic so you’d need patience. Lots of patience!!
My recommendation is that just toss the get rich quick mentality out of the window (actually, do the tossing for all dropshipping models, lol. It helps).
You’d need to Put on a more “branding” approach so it’s not just about making sales, it’s also about building an internet presence and brand recognition that way you could get loyal and returning customers and this is especially important when you’re trying to scale your store organically.
Let’s break this down, Dropshipping usually involves three phases, the methodology used in these phases differs when a dropshipping store is trying to scale using paid Facebook ads and when trying to scale without paid ads. Below, I’d be discussing the phases and methodology used to start dropshipping for free (without paid ads) Let’s begin!
- Creating a free ecommerce store
- Testing products organically
- Scaling and niching down
CREATING A FREE ECOMMERCE STORE
A free e-commerce store can be created on ecwid. Ecwid is a platform which enables the creation of an ecommerce store with a free forever plan.
So, if you want to dropship for free this is a good start. It’s worthy to note that Ecwid comes with a paid plan which gives access to more features and the ecwid app store! Nevertheless, the Ecwid free plans come with all the basic features needed for an ecommerce store!
The loading time is fast, the uptime rate is great, the UX is crisp! It has lots of shipping method integration, to choose from and you can even create your own custom shipping method! You can integrate many payment getaways!
The features are just amazing but with the free plan you can only list 10 products maximum. If you plan on Dropshipping 10 or less products, Ecwid free forever plan is a good choice.
Ecwid provides customization options for the free plan but the customization features are limited (compared to the paid plan). However you can use Custom CSS code to make any kind of customization you want on the free plan. There is no limitation for using CSS codes.
You can check out our guide on how to create a free ecommerce store using Ecwid with CSS customization code snippets and instructions on how to implement them.
TESTING PRODUCTS ORGANICALLY
Two very important data in any Dropshipping business is knowing what products sales and which audience buys these products! You can test products on Facebook ads which do cost an advertising budget! However you can also test products organically if you just want to start dropshipping for free.
Lets practicalize this; post the product pictures and lifestyle pictures of your products on the social media where you want to promote it organically.
You can promote organically on Instagram, Facebook, tiktok, youtube etc! But we recommend doing your niche research then pick and stick to one social media platform.
Observe your target audience behavior on that social network, try to build a substantial audience base on it before moving onto the next. In summary; focus on one social network at a time!
It can be okay to focus on more than one social network, if you are prepared to give each a good amount of attention since you’d be growing your audience organically.
I find that home improvement products do well on Facebook, beauty products do better on instagram, fun products needing unboxing and feature reviews like toys perform well on YouTube!
Whichever social network you choose to promote your products, post regularly, do not spam but engage with other users.
Get your friends who use that social platform to share your posts. You could even message strangers in a friendly way and politely ask them to help share your post with their audience. Some may oblige and some may not and that’s okay.
Actively engage on the comment section of pages where your target audience is interacting. Keep your messages relevant and be helpful only by linking to your website where it feels natural to do so. You could also link to your website on your profile.
Create a brand around your products, create engaging posts, use hashtags, post customer reviews, post engaging custom graphics (you can use canva to create free graphics).
Find ways to make your business page engaging and build up a loyal following! The good news is if you’re using an ecwid free plan, you don’t have to worry about monthly fees for your website, so take your time to grow your social media presence.
I highly recommend following the “followers” of your competitors, some of them will follow you back then you can unfollow them later.
Testing dropshipping products organically is a slow process but if you stay consistent, you’d then begin to see what products your social media followers show interest in and if they don’t show interest in any products then you should change the product listings on your webstore and on your social media business page until you find what works!
You could also try tweaking price and other metrics or offering the product as a bundle.
More so, the audience you build should reflect your target market so if you intend to dropship in the US then work on building a US social media following.
Very importantly, you should target your ideal customer avatar for example; if you sell baby toys then it’s recommended to actively engage on social media posts that are about kids or young parents.
Set up Facebook pixel on your ecwid store and when people inquire to make purchases, refer them to your ecwid e-commerce website.
The point of setting up facebook pixel is to start tracking the data of people who visit your website, so if at anytime you want to try Facebook paid ads, you’d be running retargeting ads based on the data you have stored on your Facebook pixel.
SCALING AND NICHING DOWN
Once you find a product your audience appears interested in then you can make your store brand about that product and its related products for upsell.
You should also post more about that product on your social media business page. That’s it!
