How To Start A Shopify Dropshipping Side-Hustle In 2023?

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A successful side-hustle can be a game-changer and make a difference in your wallet while giving you the freedom you’ve ever wanted!

Dropshipping is a great side-hustle for entrepreneurs because it doesn’t demand as much as the traditional retail model. You don’t have to open a brick-and-mortar store, pay overhead, and stock products. Instead, you open an online storefront and make it look inviting.

Who is not chasing money? Who’s not looking forward to reaching that financial freedom?

It’s time to get the advantage of all what’s the internet is offering and have a presence in this huge digital world.

Making money has been easier nowadays, unfortunately, you can’t just rely on one source or a job.

Let me guess, your landing on my blog post expresses your dissatisfaction with your financial situation. Logical thinking my friend!

We are all seeking solutions for our problems, that’s why you may have searched and got stumbled with this article on Google. I’ve struggled enough until I thought to myself that it’s time to share my experience with other people and spread knowledge.

I didn’t find someone to take my hand and walk through everything step by step with me, but I will do that to you! Here at EcomDimes we are committed to providing the best value and possible for our readers.

We care for your finances, and we’re here to enhance your financial life.

What Is A Side-Hustle?

From its name, a side hustle is a way to make money aside from your 9-5 job. I’m sure that your job is not giving you the freedom you are looking forward to.

Your job may take responsibility and cover your rent, food, expenses, but if you calculate your finances after those expenses, you might realize that you are left with nothing leftover.

A side-hustle has high growth potential, and at some level, you can be able to quit your 9-5 job, and here are few reasons why you should sooner or later quit your job:

❌ No passion

❌ No room to grow

❌ No moving forward

❌ Have to work from 9-5

❌ Have to use someone’s workflow

❌ You could not see the benefit of your hard work!

Don’t you think that these are just enough reasons to start thinking about the first step to your financial freedom journey?

With a side-hustle, you’re able to generate a couple of hundreds or even thousands aside. You will be building yourself a business that may be fruitful for years to come.

How To Start A Successful Side-Hustle?

At this level, you’ve decided that a side-hustle from home can take your life to the next level, and let you earn more money on the side, but you don’t know where to start. We’ve broken down the steps of starting a side-hustle:

1️⃣ The interest:

A side-hustle requires effort, time and motivation, and remember you will be working on this side-hustle after a long working day, or in your spare time. So it would be an optimal idea to choose something that you are passionate about.

Luckily, we’ve created EcomDimes to be your one-stop resource for how to make money online. We have wracked our brains and scoured the internet to find you the best side-hustle ideas.

Related: You can find all the side-hustle ideas in this article (Open in a new tab) ?

2️⃣ Will you invest money?

The cool part about a side-hustle is that it does not cost too much, but sometimes it requires some upfront small investment, for tools or learning!

You need to be aware of the costs involved before it happens. Know the potential of the business and measure your success accordingly.

3️⃣ Schedule time for your side-hustle!

It’s true that a side-hustle is flexible, and you can work on it on your own, anytime, anywhere you want. But still, it takes time out of your day, daily, so make sure you give it enough time in order to succeed.

I recommend you start by setting daily and monthly, weekly and monthly actionable goals, and if you have a day job, aim to give some evenings a week and some hours at the weekend to your side-hustle.

4️⃣ Make sure there are no conflicts of interest.

Starting a side-hustle with a conflict of interest could lead to costing lessons learned. If you stick to step number 1, you’ll be on the safe side.

5️⃣ Don’t forget about your day job!

Do not forget about your day job, because at the end of the month you are waiting for a cheque to cover your expenses, right?

So, make sure to put all your energy while you’re at your job. A side-hustle is something on the side, that has the potential of expansion over time. It may bring you some extra money, but do not get distracted.

Last tip my friend, don’t try to juggle your day job and side hustle within your 9-5 hours as this is a recipe for disaster.

Start A Dropshipping Business

Instead, you open an online storefront, find suppliers, list their products, set your profit margins and optimize your store to make it look inviting.

You don’t have to store or deliver anything physical at all. You simply make sales and the rest of the process (mainly fulfillment and distribution) is handled by a supplier.

For the store, this is a mostly hands-off process. The merchant doesn’t have to order inventory or fulfill the orders in any way. Instead, the third party supplier (Salehoo) takes care of the product itself.

With dropshipping, the world is your marketplace, you are not limited to a specific location. You can work anytime you want, sell to anywhere in the globe, without even having any inventory.

While the retail industry is dying, it’s good to take advantage of all what’s the internet is offering nowadays.

So basically, after you have chosen a name for your business, all that you need a domain, host and trusted supplier/s to sell their products.

Luckily, there are tons of resources that are offering their digital solutions, which makes starting a dropshipping business incredibly simple.

Thanks to platforms like Shopify, they will act as your hosted e-commerce solution. This will allow you to easily create a professional-looking store, display your products and take payments from your customers.

Dropshipping Process Simplified For Beginners

The seller (You) will set up an online storefront.
The seller selects a product niche to dropship and sell.
The seller will find a reliable supplier to ship products from his warehouse directly to customers.
The seller places the images of the chosen products on his store, showing the exact features through the product’s description.
Someone will find an item they like while surfing your store and place an order.
You the seller will receive the order, containing their information (address, name, phone number, etc…)
You forward the order to the supplier, with a pay cut for the item.
The supplier will handle packaging, shipping and delivering the item directly to the buyer.

Why Dropshipping?

Dropshipping is a great business model, and for entrepreneurs with limited resources and capital.

You may have come through an article or a video about someone who’s making huge money from dropshipping, well that’s possible and true. A lot of people are killing it with dropshipping, and you can become successful at it too.

This is a serious business opportunity, and yes it’s not hard but it’s not easy as well. It requires effort, time and work. The trouble is, not many people understand how it works, they may get involved in it without even learning about its basics, so they fail and claim that this is a dead business model!

However, it’s a real and LEGAL business model, and you can achieve more than you even expect.

Why You Should Start Your Dropshipping Business In 2023? (Open in a new tab)

Creating A Shopify Store

Starting a dropshipping business is incredibly simple. You only need a couple of days to set up a store then you can start selling to customers all over the world.

Since that Shopify offers a 14-day trial, you don’t need to enter your credit card details. All you have to do is to provide a valid email, choose a password and pick a name for your business.

Want to learn more about Shopify’s free trial? Check out my other article (Open in a new tab)

It’s very easy to set up a store through a drag and drop builder like Shopify! You don’t need to do any coding, they do the hard work for you, you simply edit the storefront, adding products, editing the navigations, buttons, pages and you are good to go.

In addition, Shopify has the capabilities to handle your sales, marketing, and payments.

It’s also important to mention that beyond all of this, Shopify may seem complicated, but it’s actually very easy to use, they provide a range of features and tools, besides several guides on how to make the most of its solution. It’s good to check their rich-content blog and the tools they provide.

How To Start A Shopify Store With 7 Simple Steps? (Open in a new tab)

Is Dropshipping For You?

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As mentioned before, there are both pros and cons of dropshipping, meaning it isn’t for everyone. This is especially the case for people who are looking for a get-rich-quick scheme. Dropshipping won’t do that for you, and if you’re approaching it that way, it’s probably not the best choice for you.

With that being said, nearly anyone can build a dropshipping business.

Still, you might have one of these fears:

“I don’t know if I have enough time to start a business.”
“I don’t want to risk getting fired from my day job.”
“I don’t want to work so hard on dropshipping that I underperform at my 9-to-5.”

The good news is that you can put as much or as little into dropshipping as you want to. Here are two common approaches:

In case you have any questions about Dropshipping, feel free to refer back to my other article, which talks in-depth about dropshipping benefits, challenges and stats! (Dropshipping guide)

Dropshipping As A Side Hustle

What is dropshipping’s main appeal? Because it’s flexible and it doesn’t demand much, it’s the ideal side job. Many entrepreneurs choose to do dropshipping on the side while they have a main job that provides a steady income.

You don’t have to sacrifice your day job to pursue your dreams of becoming an entrepreneur.

The number one worry here is that your employer will prevent you from having a side hustle, but believe it or not, many companies are fine with it.

You’ll want to make sure you’re in the clear – ask about your company’s policy on side businesses and review any non-compete agreements you’ve signed. You also definitely want to ensure there’s no conflict of interest. But if everything checks out, then you’re good to go.

You don’t need to dedicate too much time and energy to dropshipping, meaning you’ll likely be able to take it on without a hitch. Worried that your side hustle will make you underperform? You don’t have to be! You can spend only a couple of hours on your business every day and still succeed.

However, it’s important to know your limits. If you regularly work overtime at your day job and struggle to find time for important daily responsibilities, you might not be able to give a dropshipping business the attention it needs.

Dropshipping doesn’t require a lot, but you do need to put serious work into it and carve out time in your day for it.

In most cases, it just takes a little bit of time management and scheduling. Plenty of dropshipping retailers manage their main and side jobs easily. You don’t need to sleep 3 hours a night or skip meals to make it work. You’ll need to figure out a schedule that works for you and stick to it religiously.

Dropshipping As A Full-Time Ecommerce Business

One of the benefits of dropshipping is flexibility. You can make your business as big or as small as you want it to be. Many dropshippers choose to do it on the side, but it’s also a viable career path. If you want to be a full-time dropshipping retailer, you can be!

It’s easy to scale up your business with dropshipping, meaning you can grow your business pretty quickly while keeping costs down. Once you’ve reached customers and gotten enough sales, you can move from dropshipping part-time to full-time. Best of all, you can make this happen at whatever pace you want to.

Obviously, this is going to take more work, but the payoff is well worth it. Once you figure out how to dropship effectively, you won’t have to worry about unsteady revenue.

A well-established dropshipping eCommerce business operates like clockwork, and it can even feel like you’re generating passive income.

And since it doesn’t take up a lot of time, you could even take on a side hustle while still being a full-time dropshipping retailer!

The sky’s the limit. Maybe you’re rolling your eyes right now at the thought of becoming a full-time dropshipper, but there are thousands of success stories from entrepreneurs who started out right where you are today.

It doesn’t take a degree in business or millions in capital to make a living from it.

Final Shot

Dropshipping is a great business model and it does not require huge resources. You can build-up a dropshipping side-hustle in as low as 2 hours!

Dropshipping can be a lucrative and flexible business at the same time. You can set your own schedule and be your own boss.

The best part about dropshipping side-hustle is that you can learn as you go along. You don’t need to master it all before entering it, you can get into it, test its waters and decide if it’s for you or not!

It’s time to take the first step towards your financial freedom dream, and remember if you do not take any action it will remain a dream!

Do you have any questions? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment box, and we will make sure to reply back to you!

Because you, our readers are precious to us, we’ve come up with this amazing course, that can teach how to launch your own Shopify store without paying big bucks to some guru! Do not forget to grab your seat, It’s FOR FREE!