A lot of people have asked how much money do you need to spend in other expenses to start a dropshipping store. Off the top of my head it was never that much, but I figure there must have been small things I missed, so during our 30 Day New Store Challenge I wrote down everything we spent starting up our new store. Here is a complete breakdown including building the website, design, logos, phone costs, advertising, buying the domain name and other things we didn't think about.
Domain Name:
You can either buy it through Shopify for $9 a month or you can buy it through whatever host you currently use for your other websites. If you already have a Godaddy or Namecheap account with other domains, use that. If this is your first website, go through Shopify.
Total Cost: $9 (yearly)
Website Hosting:
In Anton's course he recommends using Shopify as he's tried all of the other platforms and hands down agrees that Shopify is the best. Bigcommerce is good for items with over 120 variants/tons of options, but either way, just go with what works. My friend Chris, who partnered with me to start one of our stores recently tried to move to Woocommerce hosted by Wordpress but it was terrible.
Shopify is $29 a month, but if you use this link (only after clearing your cookies) you get 20% off Shopify for life on all monthly plans expect the starter package and a free 14 day trial.
Total Cost: $23.20 (monthly)
Business Email Address:
You can pay $5 a month for a business email hosting either through your domain name provider, or through Google for Work. Or you can do what I do and use the free email forwarding service through your domain to forward to your gmail account, and use that.
Example: Setup info@PodcastMicStore.com to forward to PodcastMicStore@gmail.com and reply from there.
Total Cost: Free-$5 (monthly)
Logo Design:
I get all of my logos made at Fiverr.com which you guessed it, is $5. Actually it's $5.50 now as they raised their price, but still a great deal. The trick? Go to this Fiverr Logo link which has already been sorted by highest rating first, and find one that delivers within a couple of days on average and has examples that you like.
Cost: $5.50
Business Phone Number:
For my first store I just used a free Google Voice number which I would recommend. The only downsides to it are it only works for Americans and you can only get one number. Other options include, getting a cheap prepaid cell phone and using that as a business number. Or using something like Grasshopper (Here's $100 in free credit for Grasshopper) or a Skype number which is $30 for a year.
I personally use one number for Skype and one for Grasshopper when I'm in Thailand but now that my business is grown I've hired someone in the US off of oDesk to answer calls for me full time. But when you're just starting out, take the calls yourself, or even just let them go to voicemail and call them back when you have time.
Cost: Free-$30 (yearly)
LLC or Sole Proprietorship:
Since i'm American I just started my first store for free under my name. Skip this section if you are American. For my new store I started with Larissa, I decided to start an LLC which is a Limited Liability Company since I knew how profitable they could be.
I went with My USA Corporation because they were being used by a lot of international members on Anton's Private Member Forums and came recommended. I chose Wyoming for the same reason, and because they have no sales tax and no state income tax. I paid full price for my LLC but now have a $25 off code I can share with you guys.
For Sole Proprietorships: (US Citizens)
To get an EIN: "Apply for an EIN"
To get a tax exempt state resellers for California: Register for a Permit
If you don't live in California Google: "Your State + Resellers Certificate"
Total Cost: Free
For LLCs: (Non-Americans)
To get an LLC go through My USA Corporation and select your state. I chose Wyoming.
To get your EIN as an LLC use the same link as above it's easy and free.
To get your resellers certificate you can either do it through MY USA Corporation or you can google your state and resellers certificate like above. This is a lot more complicated than getting your EIN but you need it to be able to get wholesale pricing from your suppliers without paying tax.
For Wyoming, I was used my registered agent through My USA Corp and my mailing address in Thailand to get my resellers certificate. In retrospect if I still lived in the US, I would have just got an LLC through Nevada as it would have been easier to get the resellers certificate.
Total Cost: $329 + $99 a year
Use this link and use coupon code JOHNNYFD0924
Advertising:
Anton gives a bunch of different ways to get visitors and traffic to your website and advanced ways to get sales. However, when you first start your store, 95% of your customers will come directly from paid ads. You'll eventually wean yourself off of paid ads and get more organic traffic from other sources, but the first month, just pay for the ads, especially since both google and amazon give you free credit to start off. We got our first sales before our free credit ran out, but just in case, I would budget an additional $100 as a buffer.
For Google Shopping/Adwords: $75 in Free Google Credit
For Amazon Ads: $75 in Free Amazon Credit
Total Cost: Free - $100
Amazon Ad credit
Other Stuff:
We also started a Pinterest Account, facebook page, installed the Shopify product reviews app, Inspectlet, Google Analytics, and some other random stuff, but these were all free and optional. When you first get started you should just follow Anton's course exactly and do the bare minimum that he suggests so you don't over complicate things. For my first store I have Trust Guard, Aftership and a bunch of other paid apps, but when I didn't install those until after a few months of making money from my store and haven't installed them on our new store yet.
Bookmark this post and come back to my recommended resources page after you've made your first couple of sales.
Anton's Course:
The biggest upfront expense is going to be your time and education. If you try to do this on your own you will end up wasting months and months of spinning your wheels and wasting your time. I know a few people who have tried to start dropshipping stores without taking a proper training course and exactly zero of them are profitable. I highly recommend taking Anton's course because it worked for me, it worked for Larissa, it worked for my friends Chris and Elaine in California, it worked for Ben Finnigan who is now living in Thailand as well, it worked for literally a hundred people who I have now met in person after interacting with them on Anton's forums and helping each other out answer questions.
If you want to be successful with a dropshipping store, sign up for Anton's Drop Shipping Training Course and I promise you that as long as you put in a sincere effort, you will make your first sale and have a profitable location independant dropshipping store in around 2 months.
What's inside the course?
Anton basically walks you through and holds your hand step by step throughout the process from finding a niche, to researching your competitors, to building a master list of suppliers, to creating a demo store, getting approved by suppliers, launching the real store, getting traffic and making sales.
You also get access to the private member forums which has a strong community of successful store owners as well as people just starting out who are asking questions. Best of all you also get access to Anton himself through the forums and by email to ask him any questions, as well as access to my thread on the forums where I documented exactly what I did when I started my first store. If you think this post has a lot of info, that first one is worth $5,000 easily as I openly documented the entire process of starting my first store which now makes $400,000 a year in sales.
Total Profit: Up to $4,000 a month per store you open, remember since these stores are considered semi-passive income and the customer service can be outsourced, you can start multiple stores as I have once you've gone through the process of setting one up.
Get started and Sign up using this link to get the following bonuses:
Free access to the eCommerce Design Training Course
Free access to the "Insiders" video series with case studies from successful members
Free access to the 2014 Retreat Video Presentations
TWO Invitations to the Next Annual DSL Retreat
Cost for Anton's Course: $297 a month for four months, or $997 upfront.
Total Costs Summary:
Aside from signing up for the course, you should budget an additional $496 to get your business running, your store completely finished, your advertising running and enough traffic to get your first sale which will usually pay for the entire process within the first week or two.
If you are American you and skip the LLC for now and get started for only $168.
There is absolutely no reason and no excuses on why you shouldn't start your own online store today. Larissa and I have already made $1,215.99 in profit with our new store that we just started less than two months ago. This is our actual spreadsheet that we use for accounting. Since I had already paid for Anton's course and it was a one time expense, making this new store with the same knowledge was essentially free. Now Larissa's already talking about making another store once this one is automated.
I sincerely wish everyone the best of luck with their own businesses. With a little bit of hard work, the proper guidance and the right tools, anyone can run a successful online business.
Check out my Recommended Resources for everything that I personally use and my Start Here page which I originally wrote as an open letter to my friends and family when I started making my first sales and knew wholeheartedly the system worked.
Keep in touch:
Follow @JohnnyFDK
Warm Regards,
Johnny
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