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What Is Dropshipping & How Do You Get Started?
Understanding dropshipping and steps to launch your own online business
May 2, 2024
16 min read
In this article, I will show you the best places where you can buy a Shopify store. Although it is easy to build one yourself, we all possess different skills and must deal with different situations. As such, there are scenarios where it makes perfect sense to just outsource the building process to someone else.
We will discuss:
Ready to see where to buy a pre-built Shopify store? Let us begin!
While it is an excellent idea to build your dropshipping store yourself, there are merits to buying a ready-made store. These are:
Let’s go through each one.
You can indeed build a Shopify store in less than a day. However, that kind of store is rudimentary—it is too basic and bare bones. Your legal pages alone can take hours or days to write. In addition, you have to create product collections, choose products, rewrite the product description, import the products, etc.
Perhaps you can now imagine how long it can take to build an eye-catching, professional Shopify store. If you have never used Shopify before, I can tell you right now that it can take you weeks of tinkering before you can finally say you are happy with it. Buying an established shopify store could be the solution.
In addition, you may also make mistakes that need rework—more time spent on something that should have been done the first time. For one, you do not really know what a Shopify theme can do, so you end up trying one theme after another. Plus, you would have to look for product images, videos, hero banners, and many more.
Building your store is certainly worth the effort, but buying a existing Shopify store can save you weeks of labor and frustration.
The store you buy is a professional one, not one that looks like a stitched-up Frankenstein’s project. Shopify Stores that you buy online have the following professional merits:
Perhaps you do not know it yet, but you will have to build a store that uses a color palette and a stylebook. These two are essential components of branding—something that you will have to standardize yourself.
In addition, the business owner who created the online store also know how speed plays a critical role in e-commerce. As such, I am of the firm belief that they will never integrate an unnecessary app in the Shopify store that would slow down the website.
If you build your Shopify store yourself, you end up having to try different apps, only to find out that these apps are bad for your online business.
Finally, the colors, fonts, and font sizes—all of these come into unison or harmony of done by a professional. If you do it yourself, you will likely grope around trying to figure out what colors match what, or what fonts best represent your brand.
A Shopify store-bought online is ready for operation. Below is a sample checklist of what you get:
Think about this: how much is your time worth? If your salary is $30 per hour, and you spent 100 hours building your store, you would have spent $1,000 worth of your time building it.
On the other hand, there are stores you can buy for as little as $299. Stores like this are brand new—they have products in them, and they are made based on your specifications. These stores are ready for launch, so you have saved yourself $700!
The ready-made Shopify stores already have products in them. These stores have carefully selected niches, so you no longer have to do the hard work of finding winning products.
In addition, there are Shopify store marketplaces where you can see the store’s revenue performance. Some sellers have already earned enough money from these stores, and they do not want to continue anymore for various reasons.
The only thing you need to worry about now is supplier reliability. It is easy to import products to a Shopify store but guaranteeing that the supplier is reliable is a different beast altogether.
The good news is that Shopify stores for sale have winning products in them. The store builders use tools that like Tradelle allow them to identify products that have a demand. If you do this yourself, you may make mistakes that will cost you money later on in ads.
Tradelle is a free dropship supplier and research tool that allows you to look for winning products. However, to get the best out of it, you must pay a subscription. I suggest that you use this tool after buying a Shopify store, especially if you are in a phase where you want to expand or add more products.
If you buy a Shopify store, all you need to do is launch ads and wait for the sales to come. On some occasions, you can even buy one that already has a loyal customer base. These stores, however, are much more expensive.
The dropshipping business model is a highly profitable business because you do not need to pay a lot of overhead costs. There is no rent, and you do not even have to pay for an employee.
All you need to spend money on is our Shopify and Tradelle subscription, which costs roughly $31 monthly together. You can make a Shopify store for $1 for the first month, and Tradelle costs just $29.99.
Here is a hypothetical scenario:
Now, let us say that you sell 500 pieces of that in a month. Your gross revenue is 500 pieces x $9.99 each = $4,995.
Your capital is 500 x $1.81 = $905. Let us say that you spent $100 on Facebook ads. That and $25 or Shopify total $125 in expenses.
From here, your total expenses are $905 on the cost of goods sold + $100 on Facebook ads + $25 for Shopify = $1,030.
As such, your net profit is $3,965.
As you can see, dropshipping is profitable, but the volume is the name of the game. You need to ensure that your marketing activities work to make sales.
There are many places where you can buy a Shopify business. However, not all these website marketplaces are safe. So, to help reduce the likelihood of buying from fraudulent sellers, below is a list of the best Shopify store marketplaces where you can shop for online businesses.
The selection on those Shopify exchange sites is huge. You can find wholesale businesses, already established businesses that have decent revenue, or print on demand businesses. Let us see the pros and cons of these sites and what each has to offer.
Empire Flippers is a very popular exchange marketplace, not only for Shopify stores but for all stores on all platforms. It has currently sold over 2,000 stores valued at $482 million.
Sellers pay a commission rate of 15% to Empire Flippers, which you as a buyer will probably shoulder
Prebuilt Shopify stores are a tad expensive on this site—the stores I saw range between $80,000 and $1.5 million. Nevertheless, these stores are priced that way for a reason: they have sales.
Flippa has a similar business model to Empire Flippers. It’s an online marketplace where you can browse stores built on different platforms. Like Empire Flippers, you can narrow your search to Shopify dropshipping stores only.
There are stores here that sell for as little as $16,000, and these stores make about $4,000 in profit per month. As such, you can expect to get your return on investment in as little as four months.
AdSellr is a marketplace for many things. Apart from selling e-commerce businesses, they also provide services for Facebook ad management, user-generated content, and many more.
Overall, AdSellr is a marketing agency. They help business owners find traffic, manage ads that convert, and turn a Shopify store into a thriving online business.
Please note that the store you buy here is not yet built, you will have to speak to them about the design you want. It is not like Flippa or Empire Flippers where the Shopify stores are already launched and functional. In essence, you are asking AdSellr professionals to build a Shopify store for you from scratch.
This business broker offers three types of Shopify stores: custom, pre-built, and dropshipping. The first one is best for those who have their products, not dropshippers. The second one is a ready-made store that also has winning products, and the third is specific for dropshippers.
Ecommerceify is an excellent choice if you are on a tight budget. The dropshipping stores only cost $149. To get started, all you need to do is sign up a form and provide as many details as possible. They will get in touch with you to discuss what you need, and then they will begin building the Shopify stores.
The last recommendation we have is to buy Shopify stores from freelance marketplaces like Fiverr and Upwork. In this setup, you will be dealing with freelancers who will build your store according to your specifications.
Take your time in investigating and dealing with freelancers. Read their service postings carefully, and understand the limitations of what they offer. It is best to consult with them and ask them what you can expect from the amount you paid rather than have to complain later for arbitration.
Before you decide to buy, or before you sign up an agreement, there are some important things you must consider. Once you have made a purchase, the last thing you want is to feel sorry for your decision.
There are millions of products out there and tens of thousands of suppliers. Before buying a store, you need to do your due diligence in checking what products are uploaded and find out who is selling them.
Make it a point to know who the supplier is and buy an item from the supplier. Check the quality of the product. If you do not know it yet, pictures always look great, but the products are dismal. The last thing you want is to buy a pre-built store whose products are sub-par.
It is of no consequence if the ecommerce business you are buying is an existing one that has been around for years. If the store has sales and is profitable, it only means that the products are of high quality and that the seller has a decent-sized customer base.
Ask the seller what apps are in the Shopify store, and if these apps have a subscription requirement. There are thousands of apps in Shopify, and while most are free, you only get the full functionality if you pay for a subscription.
One of the most important apps to look into is the supplier import tool. These platforms are not cheap and can cost you at least $30 monthly.
Do this if the store you are buying already has products pre-uploaded in them. Do the same thing if you are buying an existing shopify business.
Another thing you want to ask about is the payment processor. For example, if the seller uses Stripe, know that Stripe is not available in all countries. if you live in a country where the stripe is not offered, be prepared to look into other payment processor alternatives.
Finally, ask about the business issues of the store you are buying, such as debts, ownership, partners, and similar problems. The last thing you want is to buy a store that owes money to its suppliers.
This issue only exists if you are buying a Shopify store that belongs to an existing company. If you buy a pre-built store from a freelancer, then this should not be an issue.
Yes, it is worth buying a prebuilt Shopify store because it will save you a lot of time and prevent frustration.
Yes, there are existing Shopify stores that you can buy. Either these stores are making money or not, so be careful.
You cannot do this, but the alternative is to look at existing Shopify stores or built ones, and then shop for which store you want.
The creators will tell you if your store is ready. Before agreeing to the handover, make sure you test the store.
The next step that I recommend is to take a look at the recommended Shopify store providers. Take the time to read their offerings, and then decide who can provide the best service to you according to your business needs. Once that’s done, you can fill the already build store with current, in-demand and trending products, which you can find and import from Tradelle.
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