Passive Income: How I Started Dropshipping From Scratch (STEP BY STEP)

Summary

Highlights

• Mark Tilbury uses AI tools to build a Shopify store for free and keep costs under $1. 🤑
• A $1 budget is maintained, excluding $50 for influencer marketing. 💸
• The setup process involves using free AI, Shopify trial, and the AutoDS tool. 🖥️
• Micro-influencers, like The Grace Brothers, are used to promote products. 🤩
• 12 breathing trainers are sold, leading to a small profit to demonstrate potential scalability. 🎉

Key Takeaways

• Using free AI tools can significantly reduce startup costs in dropshipping. 💡
• Starting a Shopify store with as little as $1 (plus marketing) is possible. 📉
• Choosing the right products and niche is crucial for success. 🎯
• Micro-influencers can offer cost-effective and efficient marketing solutions. 📈
• Scaling a dropshipping business is achievable with the right strategies. 🚀

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Dropshipping The chapter 'Introduction to Dropshipping' starts by discussing the potential financial success individuals can achieve through dropshipping, particularly by using AI-powered Shopify stores. It highlights the possibility of earning thousands of dollars monthly, with some reporting hundreds of thousands in passive income. The speaker claims to have personally made millions with dropshipping. They emphasize the global accessibility of this business model, suggesting that anyone, anywhere, can partake in it. Despite these claims, the chapter raises a critical question about whether this promise of success is too good to be true. It concludes with the speaker's intention to test the viability of making money through dropshipping by using only free tools.
• 00:30 - 02:30: Creating the Shopify Store In this chapter, the author sets out to create a Shopify store with the goal of exploring how many products they can sell online. They establish three rules for this challenge: (1) the store must be created using free AI tools, and the total cost should not exceed $1, (2) the entire process must be executed using only a laptop, and (3) the task must be completed within an hour. The author begins by starting a timer and preparing a list of steps to follow, with the initial step being the utilization of a free AI tool to assist in the store creation.
• 02:30 - 06:00: Customizing the Store The chapter discusses a Shopify store solution known as 'build your store'. This platform can build a Shopify store that enables users to sell products without needing their own inventory or actively managing the sales process. The system operates on a dropshipping model, where products are shipped directly to customers upon order. This method allows users to earn profit with minimal effort. The chapter encourages those interested to check the description for more details.
• 06:00 - 10:00: Setting Up Shopify Account and Store In this chapter, the user is guided through setting up a Shopify account and store. The process begins with navigating to the Shopify website and clicking on a link to build a free store. The user, Mark Tilbury, is asked to provide their full name, email address, and a password to continue setting up the account. Once these details are entered, they move to the next step which involves choosing a niche from six available options.
• 10:00 - 11:00: Finding Winning Products The chapter discusses how to select a winning product focus for a business. It presents a variety of categories to choose from, including fashion, pets, electronics, home and garden, sports, and fitness. The author advises approaching the decision with a business mindset by considering market knowledge and demand rather than personal interest. Among the options, the author personally chooses 'Sports and Fitness' due to personal familiarity and experience through family activities.
• 11:00 - 14:30: Registering with autods The chapter discusses the increasing demand for certain products, particularly among younger demographics like Gen Z. It notes a cultural shift where younger people are increasingly meeting in settings like running clubs rather than traditional nightclubs, highlighting the generational differences. The focus then shifts to the task of customizing an online store to make it appealing to customers. It involves selecting from six different banners, starting with options that feature a variety of sporting items.
• 14:30 - 17:00: Publishing the Store The chapter discusses the process of selecting appropriate product images for a store to ensure they appeal to the entire audience. Images that might confuse customers or do not represent the diverse demographic are skipped. The final decision narrows down to two images: one that works great and another that is vibrant and eye-catching.
• 17:00 - 21:30: Evaluating Product Page and Setting Domain The chapter focuses on the importance of selecting the right banners for a Shopify store. Banners are crucial as they are the first visual elements customers see upon landing on a store page. The transcript suggests selecting banners that reflect the store's offerings and evoke a positive first impression, akin to a sunset that captures attention. It reassures that chosen banners can be changed later if they don't feel right. The chapter concludes by instructing readers to set up a free Shopify account to continue building their store with AI.
• 21:30 - 29:30: Promoting the Store with Influencers The chapter begins with the user navigating to Shopify, starting a free trial by entering their email address and creating a password to set up a Shopify account. The user acknowledges that AI will manage most of the setup, allowing them to bypass initial setup questions.
• 29:30 - 33:00: Evaluating Initial Sales and Profit The transcript discusses setting up a plan selection for a service, opting for the basic plan that's popular among solo entrepreneurs. The speaker mentions entering payment details to prepare for the end of a free trial, noting that the plan will cost $1 per month for the first 3 months after the trial.
• 33:00 - 35:00: Conclusion and Future Prospects The Conclusion and Future Prospects chapter discusses the operational aspects of setting up and managing a new online store using Shopify. The speaker mentions not currently being charged until the store gains sales, implying a focus on cost efficiency. The introduction to Shopify's dashboard suggests it may seem overwhelming at first, but reassures that much of the work will soon be handled by AI, reducing manual management. The speaker humorously notes a slight apprehension about relying on AI, acknowledging its growing role.

Passive Income: How I Started Dropshipping From Scratch (STEP BY STEP) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 people are making thousands of dollars each month in passive income by Drop Shipping products from aib built Shopify stores I've made millions of dollars with drop I've been able to make hundreds of thousands of dollars with AI $500 a day working from home a day from hle $600,000 this month alone apparently anyone can do this from anywhere in the world but is this too good to be true well today I want to put it to the test by only using free tools to make a
• 00:30 - 01:00 Shopify store and see how many products I can sell online but I'm setting myself three rules number one I must use free AI tools and keep the total cost of the shop creation to under $1 number two I have to be able to do it all from my laptop and number three I need to finish it in less than an hour okay start the timer right I've got a list of steps to complete the first thing on my plan is to find a free AI tool to create our
• 01:00 - 01:30 Shopify store now I've done quite a lot of searching around and the best one I found is build your store it claims to be able to build a Shopify store for us and lets us sell other people's products without needing our own inventory or doing any of the work ourselves the idea is when the store receives an order the product is shipped directly to the customer which allows us to make a profit without any more work on our end if you want to follow along feel free to head down to the description of the
• 01:30 - 02:00 video and click the top link so I've loaded up page and uh now I'm going to click this button here that says build my free store because that's exactly what we want it to do now they're asking for my full name which is of course Mark Tilbury and they want an email address and to pick a password right that's done and then just click next now it's asking me to choose a niche you have six options here to
• 02:00 - 02:30 choose from fashion and apparel pets electronics and gadgets Home and Garden Sports and Fitness and finally an option for I'm not sure lots of people would just pick something they're interested in however it's best to approach this with a business mind and think to yourself what do you confidently know that has a large Market honestly all of these options are pretty good however I'm just going to go for Sport and Fitness because my son is always a boxing or running or in the gym so I'm
• 02:30 - 03:00 pretty sure there's a big demand for these types of products especially amongst younger people I've even heard that gen Z are now meeting people at running clubs instead of nightclubs very different from back in my day that's for sure right that's the first one off my list the next thing on my list is to customize the store and make it appealing to our customers now there are six banners on here to choose from so let's go through them and find out what suits our store best the first one has a lot of different sporting items which
• 03:00 - 03:30 may seem good but if we don't end up selling those products it could confuse our customers so we'll skip that one then there's this one with just a woman on her own while it's a nice design it doesn't really represent our entire audience and we want our store to appeal to both men and women so using this Logic the bottom right one also feels well a bit too female only so we'll pass on that so out of these remaining three I think the bottom left one works great and the middle right one pops really
• 03:30 - 04:00 nicely with the sunset which could help grab attention and create a positive first impression remember the Banners are the first thing our customers will see when they land on our store so it's important they reflect what we're about and what we're offering if you don't feel like any of these work for you then don't worry as you can always change them later on now that we've chosen our banners let's hit continue and move on to the next step to let the AI build our store we need to set up a free Shopify account so that's the next thing on my
• 04:00 - 04:30 list the first thing I'm going to do is click on access Shopify which opens up in a new tab now I'm going to type in my email address and then hit start free trial then I just need to pick a password and click create Shopify account now as you can see Shopify is now asking us a few setup questions but since AI is going to handle most of the work for us we can just select I don't
• 04:30 - 05:00 want help setting up to save us time now it's asking us to choose a plan for when the free trial ends the basic plan looks good enough for what we're building as it's designed for solo entrepreneurs and it's also the most popular option so I'm just going to go ahead and select that one then I'll quickly add in my payment details so we're all ready when the trial ends but don't worry right now because it's completely free and after the trial it's just1 or $1 per month for the first 3 months as we're not paying
• 05:00 - 05:30 anything right now this doesn't count towards our $1 budget I know we'll probably have to pay it before we get some sales in but technically I haven't paid it yet so I think you can let me off with this one once that's all set up Shopify takes us to this dashboard for our new store where we can manage everything now it does look pretty confusing but that's fine as we won't have too much to do in here ourselves because soon the AI will be taken control that sounded pretty scary I hope this AI stuff doesn't lead us into a
• 05:30 - 06:00 Terminator situation now we need to install the build your store app this might seem like it's getting a bit confusing but after this it gets a whole lot easier so I'm going to click access Shopify again which opens another tab on this page I'm going to click the install button to add the app to our Shopify account with this done I can click create my custom store now we just need to give the AI a bit of time to work its magic and build a store website for us
• 06:00 - 06:30 in the background we'll check out the results later to see what it's created but for now let's keep things moving and jump on to the next step right the next thing on my list is to find some winning products for our store this is so important because the right products can make or break the store they attract customers Drive sales and ultimately set us apart from our competition to make this as easy and efficient as possible we're going to register for autod DS this tool does the heavy lifting for us by selecting products that are proven to
• 06:30 - 07:00 sell it also takes care of pricing uploading professional photos and once we start making sales it'll also ship the products directly to our customers I'm going to go back to the build your store website and select register to autods this gives us the option to either sign up with a Google account or to enter your details manually just make sure that you use the same email address you use for Shopify and build your store to keep everything linked
• 07:00 - 07:30 okay so now it's asking me where will we be selling so of course I'm choosing Shopify now we need to pick the right plan autod DS offers the first 30 days for just 99 cents on any plan this gives us a chance to test everything out and see how well it works in my opinion the basic plan doesn't have enough features to make this truly passive but we don't need the advanced plan yet either the starter 500 plan looks perfect for what we need so I'm selecting start now for
• 07:30 - 08:00 99 there are a few different payment methods available I'm going to go with PayPal as I always use it right so there we go all sorted and just like that that's my $1 budget officially spent hopefully there's nothing else left to pay for while setting up this store because at this point I've only got one cent left now it's finally time to publish our store I'm actually quite excited to see everything come together the last thing we need to do here is to click access Shopify and then uncheck
• 08:00 - 08:30 the box that says restrict access to visitors with a password now that's done I'm going to press continue and boom our store is officially live with winning products now that our Shopify store is live the next thing on my list is to take a proper look and make any tweaks we might need before sending customers over there this actually looks a lot better than I thought it would our two banners were in place and the II has set up buttons that lead straight to the new
• 08:30 - 09:00 product arrivals page which should make it easy for customers to get around the site down here are some of the winning products that auto DS has added for us first we have what looks like some kind of breathing trainer actually I have seen my son use one of these before it works kind of like high altitude training by limiting the amount of oxygen you can take in I think the idea is that when you're in a competition your body can carry more oxygen in your blood which should make you perform better to be honest the more more I'm talking about it the more I want one for
• 09:00 - 09:30 myself so I think this will sell really really well next we've got bag clips for your golf club now I personally use these all the time because they stop my clubs rattling together and getting damaged and if you've ever had to replace a carbon shaft you know how expensive that can be then we have the classic resistance band which I imagine is always a good seller and a warm jogging hat to round things off as it's getting a little bit chilly this time of year so honestly I'm pretty impressed with the items it's picked but if we did
• 09:30 - 10:00 want to pick more then it's pretty simple to do that too I just have to head over to autod DS click Marketplace and then trending products now this brings up a page with all the products that are selling very very well and we could pick any of these even if they don't necessarily fit with our Niche to be honest though it's probably not a good idea to be too random with it as your customers need to know what your store is about so I'm going to click on this filter first Sports and Fitness and
• 10:00 - 10:30 it pulls up some products that would fit really well into our store now if I wanted to add one of these then all I'd have to do is Click import draft and then wait for the import of the product then it gives me the option to adjust all the information and photos before publishing it onto the store now I'm pretty impressed so far but let's dive a bit deeper and check out what our product page looks like and see if we can spot any mistakes we need to fix let's click on the golf club clips now there is a decent selection of product
• 10:30 - 11:00 photos and to be fair they do look quite professional there's also quite a wide range of different shots which is important because when I'm buying something I always like to look at a few different photos according to Auto DS these golf Clips cost me $684 and drop shippers normally sell their items for two to 2 and a half times their cost so I should be able to sell these for at least $13.68 which would give us
• 11:00 - 11:30 $684 profit per sale not taking into account any marketing cost now I'll be honest that's not a crazy amount of money but when you're selling at scale it could definitely start to add up plus if I think these clips could sell for more than $13 I can always bump up the price manually and see how it goes one small detail I really like on here is the little animation on the PayPal button now I've always found that having PayPal payments available on my website adds a bit more trust and often improved
• 11:30 - 12:00 sales the AI has even written the product descriptions for us and thrown in some emojis I'll admit that is Handy and saves a lot of time which I am a bit short of right now it's also included related product suggestions at the bottom of each page which could help with upselling I admit it's fairly basic but I found that basic websites often perform better this footer is actually a bit of a surprise huh I wasn't expecting much here because let's be honest foots are usually an afterthought but the AI
• 12:00 - 12:30 has done a decent job with it all the important pages are already set up like the shipping policies and terms of conditions these little details might not seem like a big deal but they do make the store look a lot more professional now let me click into the terms and conditions page and take a look yep most of the heavy liftings already been done all I need to do is drop in a store name our location and some contact details to finish off now the only thing letting the store down right now is the domain name it's just a
• 12:30 - 13:00 random jumble of characters and honestly it doesn't scream professional a good domain name is so important because it's the first thing customers see so I'm going to head back to build your store AI to sort that out I'm going to set up a store domain instead of a com because it's specifically designed for online stores there's actually been studies that show websites with a DOT store domain get 87% more traffic and rank Two Times Higher on Google Google so using a
• 13:00 - 13:30 domain like this should actually help us sell more when you think about it this makes sense because when someone sees a DOT store domain they know right away they're visiting a shop luckily we can get a DOT store domain for free as we're using the build your store AI tool however if you aren't using this then you can also buy one from sites like GoDaddy and name Chief let's go with something simple like Tilbury Fitness because let's face it I have the the body of a Greek god and obviously
• 13:30 - 14:00 everyone wants to look like me now I've got to link the domain name to the store so I'm going to press connect now and enter the new domain name here now it will take a few moments to verify and then we're ready to go before we officially start selling I'm going to spend my last bit of time left on the clock to tweak the website stuff like filling in the footer details Link in some social media accounts and making sure everything looks polished there we go all done and just in time
• 14:00 - 14:30 now it's time to move on to the exciting part promoting the store and getting those first sales in okay so it's a couple of days later now as I needed some time to order a couple of the products the next thing on my list is to advertise our store so to get some eyeballs on our store I've decided to work with some influencers now Jim shark has proved this strategy works very well in the fitness Niche and it's great because I get a positive endorsement from a trusted figure and
• 14:30 - 15:00 traffic to my store so it's essentially killing two birds with one stone but don't worry I'm not going to be spending thousands of dollars working with huge influencers I've got a much better plan I'm going to use micro influencers these are accounts with anywhere from 10 to 50,000 followers whereas macro influencers are accounts with 500,000 to a million followers so what does that make me then Super macro that is terrible I'm
• 15:00 - 15:30 not I'm not doing this just to save costs according to Social Bakers micro influencers boast up to a 60% increased engagement rate compared to macro influencers micro influencers also have a 20% plus higher conversion rate this can help Brands boost their e-commerce sales that sounds perfect for what we need so I've reached out to a couple of lads I know called The Grace Brothers they've been making short videos for a couple of years now and have around 145,000 followers on Instagram they do
• 15:30 - 16:00 have more on other platforms but I'm more interested in Instagram because I want them to post a story with a link I could also get them to promote the other products but first I want to test out if Their audience will actually buy before risking any more money and who knows people might even Explore the shop and buy other items without me having to promote them directly I approved their script yesterday and they've just sent me the final video but before we have a look let's do a bit of quality check on the items I ordered this is the
• 16:00 - 16:30 breathing trainer and it feels pretty damn good and built to last I think my son might even take it for himself but seriously it's always good to know that the quality is good because the last thing we want is unhappy customers wanting refunds okay so we also have the Hat nice and Woolly that should keep nice and warm I like the fact it's got a peak on it very stylish can't be bad and the golf clips do you know what they are really
• 16:30 - 17:00 good they are better quality cuz my ones slip off and they've got a lot more power behind them so I think I'll be having those for myself and then a resistance band they're always popular so I think we should be on to a winner with those right let's take a look at the video what are you doing I'm just wearing my respirator respirator you're in a gym not a hospital mate but it's improving my cardio what are you on about the breathing training respirator restricts your breathing which increases your red blood cell count helping you
• 17:00 - 17:30 improve your cardio buy it today using the link in the bio well that's definitely a bit wacky but that's part of the charm it's quick attention grabbing and shows off the breathing trainer in action which is exactly what we needed that high energy slightly off-the-wall style works really well on Instagram stories because it stops people from skipping and pulls some in even though it's not the most traditional approach it fits the Graze Brothers audience perfectly their followers love this kind of content and
• 17:30 - 18:00 it feels so natural coming from them I'm going to get them to put this story up with a link to the product page and check back tomorrow so let's hope we make some sales so it's been 24 hours and I've got some exciting news we've made some sales now it doesn't seem like my Approach of only promoting one product really worked as people didn't buy anything else but as of today we've sold 12 of these breathing trainers okay two of those sales were technically me for tested of course but the other 10 will AER so not
• 18:00 - 18:30 counting my two orders 10 genuine purchases for £1 1342 is £1 13420 and converted to US do is $17.85 but of course not all of that is profit the items cost me an average of $3.95 each so $39.50 went towards product cost and shipping as autod DS shipped all the orders for us we didn't need to worry about anything after factoring in the
• 18:30 - 19:00 $50 I paid the Graze brothers and the $1 Shopify fee after our 3-day trial ran out our total cost came to $90.50 that leaves us with a profit of $0.35 now I know $80 might not sound lifechanging but let's put this into perspective this was all done with minimal effort using AI tools and a budget of just $1 to set everything up and $50 for marketing now imagine
• 19:00 - 19:30 scaling this if we promoted 20 products and they kept ticking along making regular sales this could easily turn into thousands of dollars in profit every month if you'd like to see a follow-up video in the future be sure to give this one a thumbs up of course before I post this I'll need to change the name of the store to make sure no one stumbles across the site and starts buying products as that wouldn't make it a fair test if you want to see more ideas for making passive income I've got another video right up there but don't
• 19:30 - 20:00 click on it just yet make sure to subscribe if you want to grow your wealth okay I'll see you over there