How To Start a Successful Shopify Dropshipping Store [2025]

Dropshipping is a cost-effective method to launch an online business. However, unless you know how to start a successful Shopify dropshipping store, it can be challenging to scale up and profit.

Therefore, we are here to help. In this guide, we will show you all you ever need to:

• Start a Shopify dropshipping store properly
• Promote your eCommerce business effectively
• Estimate your budget accurately

Let’s dive in!

1. What is Shopify dropshipping?

If you are a “newbie”, we think it’d be important that you have a grasp of what Shopify dropshipping actually is first. 

Simply put, dropshipping is “an online business model where you don’t have to get your hands on inventory management or shipping and fulfillment”. Instead, when a customer makes a purchase on your website, your supplier will be in charge of handling and delivering the product to your customer’s doorstep.

As a dropshipping merchant, you’d profit from the price differences, also known as royalties. For example, if you list a T-shirt for $10 and your supplier charges $5, you earn a $5 profit on each sale. Indeed, dropshipping stores are reported to be 50% more profitable than companies depending on their online inventory. 

Why Choose Shopify for Dropshipping?

To launch a dropshipping business, you’d need an eCommerce website to list your products, do branding, and drive your marketing effort. And most dropshippers out there prefer Shopify as their go-to platform for the several benefits Shopify offers, such as:

• Ease of use: Shopify’s intuitive interface, responsive themes, and drag-and-drop editor will let you build a website quickly and speed up your time to market (TTM)
• Diverse dropshipping-specific tools: The platform supports a wide range of prominent dropshipping tools and services like Zopi, Dsers, etc., to help merchants easily source products and connect with suppliers.
• Flexible pricing plans: It only costs as low as $32/month* to sign up for a Shopify account with a powerful sales and marketing toolset.

*The price shown is for the US Basic plan (updated February 2025).

2. How to start a successful Shopify dropshipping store in 2025?

As promising as it might sound, Shopify dropshipping doesn’t guarantee easy money unless you do it the right way. So, let’s get to the core of today’s blog– how to set up Shopify store for dropshipping properly.

First, you’d need to sign up for a Shopify account. And the good news is Shopify currently has the Shopify $1 for 3 Months program, which lets you try any plan Shopify offers at just $1 for 3 months. 

2.1. Selecting your niche

After you have registered a Shopify account, the next thing to do is choose a niche where you can most likely thrive and make a profit. Though there is no fixed recipe, here are some key factors you should consider to identify a profitable niche:

• Target audience: The better you understand your audience, the easier it is to sell to them. Hence, it’s important to have in mind a portrait of your potential shoppers, including their age, interests, or shopping habits. 
• Market trends: A profitable niche should have steady or growing demand. So, remember to use Google Trends and social media to track what’s trending and avoid fading markets.

• Competition: Your customers aren’t willing to buy a T-shirt from your store knowing that the same item can be found in any store. Therefore, our advice here is to do your research “homework” carefully– read customer reviews, and find gaps where you can stand out (unmet needs, pricing issues, or product improvements).

💡 Check our blog on How To Find Winning Products for Dropshipping for a more detailed guide.

2.2. Choosing suppliers for dropshipping

With the dropshipping model, your suppliers would be responsible for your product’s quality, delivery times, and, most importantly, product costs. This means the key on how to start a successful Shopify dropshipping store lies in the palm of your suppliers.

Most Shopify dropshippers start with AliExpress as it’s a vast marketplace with diverse product categories at competitive prices. However, not all suppliers are worth partnering with. 

From our experience, to vet suppliers, we’d recommend:

• Doing careful research on the suppliers’ pricing offers and clarify whether they have any extra fees. For instance, some suppliers require a minimum order quantity (MQQ).
• Looking for suppliers close to your target market or have fast and reliable shipping options to that region? This way, you can minimize shipping times and costs, leading to happier customers and higher conversion rates.
• Reading reviews about that supplier on as many sources as possible (blogs, forums, Facebook communities, etc.) This will help you know whether a supplier is really credible or they are just seeding and self-promoting with cloned accounts.

• Ordering product samples to inspect the products more thoroughly before rushing into closing deals with the supplier.
• Checking the supplier’s tool integration to ensure they support tools like Zopi or Spocket, and if you’re opting for print-on-demand, confirm they support platforms like Printify or Printful.

2.3. Adding products to your store & set prices

After choosing suppliers, the next step on how to make Shopify dropshipping store should be populating products to your store. 

You can work with your suppliers to get a CSV file containing all the agreed-upon products. Or, for a more automated and professional approach, you can try a dropshipping solution like Zopi or Spocket. 

For example, with Zopi, you can import products from sources like AliExpress, Temu, and CJdropshipping, and push them directly to your Shopify store—as shown in the GIF below.

Make sure that the products you import to your stores have clear product images (ideally videos) and descriptive product descriptions. 

And one thing not to forget is setting your price. Since dropshipping relies on competitive price differences, it’s crucial to research your market, account for all associated costs (such as shipping, transaction fees, and supplier charges), and establish a price that provides a healthy profit margin while still attracting customers.

For example, if a supplier offers a product for $10 and your total cost, including fees, is $12, you might apply a 30% markup to set a selling price of around $15.60

2.4. Customize your Shopify store

After adding products to your Shopify store, the next thing to do is choose a theme that accentuates your products and customize it.

By default, Shopify gives you the Dawn theme to get started. Before you invest in a premium theme, we advise you to spend some time getting familiar with the Shopify theme editor first.

When choosing a theme for your dropshipping website, here are some questions to ask yourself:

• Do you want to launch a single-product store or a store that sells a wide range of products?
• How do you want your products to be displayed?
• What is the level of customization you want for your store?
• Is there any particular feature that you must have for your store?

3. Marketing your Shopify dropshipping store

Now that you know how to create Shopify dropshipping store, your entrepreneurship must be high. Nevertheless, without an effective marketing plan in place, your store won’t be able to sell itself. 

Hence, sit back and think hard about your marketing and promotion plan. Normally, here are a few channels we’d suggest:

Ad campaigns

If you’re just getting started with no branding yet, running paid ad campaigns is a must, not a plus. By investing in paid advertising, you can prominently place your brand and products aesthetically in front of your target audience, boosting your product visibility, driving relevant traffic to your store, and, most importantly, turning that traffic into sales.

Influencer marketing

Another paid campaign you could try to experiment with besides ads is investing in influencer marketing. Ideally, you should start with micro-influencers in your industry and measure their effectiveness before investing big budgets in more influential KOLs.

Content marketing

While using paid advertisements can be effective for boosting website traffic and sales, relying too much on ads will eat into your profit margin over time. So, after you make some decent sales from ads, consider producing valuable, sharable blog content to drive organic traffic to your site.

Social media

Besides the homepage, social media, in general, and TikTok, in particular, are another effective channel to increase your brand awareness and educate your potential audience on your products and services. 

Indeed, a lot of brands nowadays build their empire through engaging TikTok videos. For instance, you can try hopping on creative challenges, recording behind-the-scenes footage, etc., that tap into trending hashtags/sounds to resonate with younger audiences.

Communities

Another marketing tactic worth executing is engaging with niche communities on platforms like Reddit, Quora, or specialized forums to build trust and generate word-of-mouth referrals.

Email marketing

Don’t forget to use email marketing throughout your sales funnel. From nurturing leads to cross-selling and retaining current customers, email marketing is an old but gold channel you shouldn’t miss out on.

4. How much money do you need to start dropshipping on Shopify?

As we mentioned, you can sign up for a Shopify account at $1 for the first 3 months, which is next to nothing to get startd. Nevertheless, besides Shopify’s licensing fee, there are many other crucial costs you need to consider in the long run.

Overall, after the 3-month trial ends, it will cost around $60/month to run your dropshipping business on Shopify, which includes three main fees:

1. Basic Shopify plan subscription: $32/month 
2. A custom domain: $14/year ($1.17/month)
3. A dropshipping app: from $20/month

Later on, as your store grows and scales up, you’d want to install Shopify apps to extend your shop’s functionalities, which might cost around 50/month for a tech stack that includes:

• An upselling app: from $4.99/month (ReConvert Upsell & Cross Sell!)
• An email marketing app: from $15/month (Klaviyo)
• A loyalty app: from $9/month (OneLoyalty)
• A landing page builder: from $24/month (PageFly)

Marketing is another critical expense. For instance, if you run Facebook ads to get your first sales, then it’s important to know that Facebook bills advertisers based on two metrics: cost per click (CPC) and cost per thousand impressions (CPM). 

In 2025, Facebook ads cost around 70¢ per click and approximately $13.75 per 1,000 impressions. (Source: Shopify)

So, you only need around $100 – $200 for a basic, functional store with beautiful design and essential features. But the rest depend on your skills.

5. Tips for Shopify dropshipping

With years of experience enabling thousands of Shopify merchants to succeed, we’ve compiled some practical tips to increase your dropshipping store’s success rate.

Do thorough market research

Before you start, spend time diving deep into:

• Your audience and their demographics (e.g., age, gender, interests, etc.)
• What’s trending and what’s seasonal 
• What customers’ pain points your competitors haven’t addressed yet

When you’ve done careful research on the aspects above, things like product sourcing and dropshipping suppliers will be automatically easier. 

Be smart with your pricing strategy

Your product prices can be a deal maker or breaker. Therefore, be strategic with your pricing. Research your market, analyze competitors’ prices, and experiment with different price points until you find the perfect balance that attracts customers and, at the same time, leaves you with a high enough profit margin to scale.

Optimize your store for conversions

No matter how much traffic you successfully drive to your store, your effort will be in vain if your site visitors don’t convert into customers. So, optimizing your store for conversions should be your top priority. 

Here are a few tactics you should try to boost your store’s overall conversion:

• Add product reviews: Besides high-quality product images and descriptions, you can try tools like Kudosi to quickly import AliExpress reviews to your products to build trust
• Improve your site speed: As low speed is a top reason why customers abandon their carts, you should do some speed optimization techniques to ensure your site’s loading speed. For instance, you can compress your images, enable lazy loading, or minify your theme code using SEO apps like Tiny SEO Speed Image Optimizer.
• Add a sense of urgency:  Place psychological triggers like limited-time offers and low-stock alerts on prominent spots on your web store can be a brilliant way to drive impulse purchases from your potential shoppers.

Avoid over-reliance on a channel or strategy

One common mistake many merchants make is relying too much on a single marketing channel or strategy. While it’s smart to focus on what works, diversifying your marketing efforts helps protect your business from sudden algorithm changes that could hurt your traffic and sales.

Hence, we’d recommend that you use a mix of SEO, paid ads, social media, email marketing, and influencer collaborations to build a more resilient and sustainable marketing strategy.

6. Final thoughts

Starting a Shopify dropshipping store is easy, but starting a successful one is definitely not. You’d need to get all the right things in the right place. 

Thus, eComStart team hopes this article can give you a clear picture of how to start a successful Shopify dropshipping store.

If you find this blog helpful, you can enjoy more reading like this at eComStart, where we constantly share our expertise in all things eCommerce. 

7. Frequently asked questions