"You can start dropshipping with no money" is half true. You can open a store with almost nothing. You cannot find buyers with nothing, and that second part is the expensive one. Here is a line-by-line view of what to expect, so you can set a budget before you start and not after you have spent it.
The fixed costs
These are the predictable ones.
- Store platform. Most hosted platforms charge a monthly plan, with a free trial period at the start. Open-source options need hosting instead.
- Domain name. Usually a modest yearly fee. Buy it straight away once you have chosen a name (see how to name your store).
- A theme or template. Many stores are fine with a free one.
- Apps and tools. Email, reviews, order sync with suppliers, and product research. Add them when you need them, not on day one.
Together this usually lands in the range of a few dozen dollars per month at the start.
The one-off costs
- Samples. Ordering the product yourself is worth it, as explained in order samples before you sell. Budget for two to five items to start.
- Photos and design. A clean logo and a few good product photos can be done cheaply with a phone and free tools.
- Business registration and advice. Rules differ by country. A short conversation with an accountant at the start can prevent expensive mistakes, especially about sales tax.
The variable costs
These grow with sales.
- Payment processing fees on every order, normally a percentage plus a small fixed amount.
- Supplier costs, paid when a customer orders.
- Refunds and chargebacks, which you should assume will be a small percentage of orders.
The big one: testing traffic
Whatever you spend on the points above, the largest cost is finding out which products and audiences work. If you plan to test with ads, set a testing budget per product. A common approach is to decide in advance how much you will spend on a product before judging it, for example the price of a few sales' worth of profit, and stick to it.
Do not forget that most tests fail. Plan on several products before finding one that works, and treat the money spent on the ones that fail as the price of the data.
Ways to keep it lower
- Use the free trial period of your platform and set up the store while it runs.
- Start with one niche and 5 to 10 products, not hundreds.
- Test demand with organic content or small ad budgets before scaling.
- Choose suppliers with no minimum order.
- Track every cost in a simple sheet from day one.
An example starter budget
As a rough illustration only, for the first three months: store and domain, a small number of tools, a handful of samples and a testing ad budget. Many people end up spending somewhere between a few hundred and a couple of thousand dollars, depending mostly on the ad budget. Pick a number you can lose without it hurting, and treat anything above it as off limits.
Once you know the numbers, it is easier to judge the question in is dropshipping still worth it for yourself.
Product research, store research, ads spy and video dropshipping in one place.
