How to do dropshipping with WordPress?

Imagine running an ecommerce business and selling products… that you don’t own. It sounds like a sweet madness, doesn’t it?

Not to mention all the problems and customer dissatisfaction it can cause.

However, this kind of practice is common, and completely legal. It is the concept of dropshipping, one of the most popular sales techniques in the recent years. And one of the most popular topics on ecommerce Facebook groups.

At the end of this article, you’ll know exactly what it is, and how to set up a dropshipping system on WordPress.

Originally written in August 2019, this article was last updated in March 2022.

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What is dropshipping?

Dropshipping is marketing and selling products that you don’t own on your online store.

Acting as an intermediate, you do not manage the stock of products, nor the logistics such as delivery, for example.

This system relies on three different pillars:

• The seller: you, via your website. You aggregate products from external services, such as Amazon, AliExpress, Etsy, or eBay. You put these products on sale on your website. You do not have those products in stock.
• The buyer: the visitor who places an order on your site and becomes a customer.
• The supplier: this “wholesaler” owns and ships the products to the end customer (the visitor who bought on your site).

With dropshipping, you free yourself from all the logistic side of the sale, and collect a commission on a product you have never seen.

If you want to start ecommerce, you limit the risks, particularly financially.

Interesting, isn’t it? On the one hand, yes it is. On the other hand, it is important to say that dropshipping is not the goose that lays the golden egg either. If everything was so easy, everyone would be a (successful) dropshipper.

Selling products that you don’t have requires certain formalities to be respected, and a very precise organization on many important points that you’re about to discover.

How to do dropshipping with WordPress?

You want to create a dropshipping website with WordPress? You should know that in order to start such an adventure, several prerequisites are necessary. In particular, you must:

• Have an online store. The most popular solution to transform WordPress into an ecommerce site is called WooCommerce.
• Use an ecommerce-compatible theme, like Storefront or the very complete Astra.
• Activate a dropshipping plugin for WordPress. You just have to wait a little more until you discover our selection.
• Have a business structure. The easiest way to do this is to have your own company.
• Comply with official regulations in force and certain obligations: consumer information, delivery, and commercial practices.

Now let’s review the advantages of dropshipping. If it is so popular, it’s because there are some interesting positive sides.

What are the advantages of dropshipping?

A low financial investment

The stock of a store can quickly represent a significant budget when you start your business.

Indeed, usually, you must have in your possession at least 2 or 3 copies of each product in your store to send to your customers who place an order.
Imagine their frustration if they hear that the product they were looking for is eventually out of stock.

Well, with dropshipping, you are not concerned by this problem anymore. You don’t have any stock and you don’t send anything to your customers.

This sale system reduces to the maximum the costs generated at the beginning of your activity. In the end, you only need an ecommerce site.

A varied product catalog

After this first advantage comes a second one: the product catalog.

Since you don’t have stocks and you don’t have the products yourself, you can offer as many products as you want.

Nothing prevents you from selling both Bluetooth speakers and toys for pets. So there is no limit (actually this is not quite true, but I’ll tell you more about it later).

Simplified logistics

I remind you again, but the principle of dropshipping is to have no stock, no product.

You do not have to deal with delivery and shipping. They will be entirely managed by the supplier himself. You save a lot of time, costs and energy.

As you can see, this system seems rather attractive.
However, there are some drawbacks to consider before you start.

What are the drawbacks of dropshipping?

You are not the only one who has thought about it

Starting a business easily attracts people. I mean, a lot of people.

The competition in dropshipping is fierce because almost anyone can try it.
So you will have to stand out from the crowd and this implies a lot of work.

Try to niche your activity as much as possible to invest in areas where you have a chance to be a reference site.

Take the example of Alexander and Andreas’ adventure and their $10 million-per-year dropshipping business. After many different stores that were not so successful, they eventally specialized in the pet niche.

Margins can be low

The competition being fierce, you will have to align your prices with other online stores if you sell similar products.

Your margin per product may not be very high, and only the sale of a large volume will save you.

In addition, you will have to invest in advertising on search engines and social networks to make yourself known.

To understand a little better how to set your prices and make a decent margin, you can read AliDropship’s article on the subject.

You don’t have control over the delivery

Dropshipping frees yourself from all the logistical and organizational side, and this is both an advantage and a disadvantage.

Indeed, you are not in control of the delivery times, nor of the personalization of your packages.

You can therefore forget about the goodies in the box, or the little thank-you flyer.

A difficult control over the quality of the products

Another advantage that can become a disadvantage: the possibility to sell almost any product.

Most of the time, you will never have had it in your hands and therefore cannot really be sure of its quality.

Therefore, try to order a few test products before selling them on your store. This to avoid impacting negatively your customers on the one hand, and your reputation on the other hand.

Second point: I told you that it was possible to sell thousands of products in a few clicks. This is true, but it has some limitations.

For example, you are not allowed to sell a branded product without having the license.

For example, you cannot sell Nike clothes or Playmobil toys without asking anyone.

A customer service to provide

Even if you don’t take care of the delivery, you remain responsible for the good execution of the order placed by the customer.

In turn, you may have a lot of customer support to manage regarding delivery delays, questions about the products, or the returns.

Think about setting aside some extra time to deal with them to avoid disappointing your visitors and damaging your reputation.

A strict legislation to respect

Beyond the elements already mentioned, you should know that you must declare your taxes to the customs, and it can vary from a state to another.

But you also have to pay for the sales tax on imported products, otherwise you take the risk to be fined or to have your products confiscated.

Now that you’re well aware of the benefits and limitations of dropshipping, let’s move on to the presentation of 5 plugins to do dropshipping on WordPress.

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The best dropshipping plugins on WordPress

To make your life easier, there are many plugins dedicated to dropshipping on WordPress.

Several of them caught my attention because of their simplicity and functionality. Let’s see in particular:

• How to dropship on AliExpress and Amazon on WordPress.
• How to dropship on WooCommerce.

AliDropship

AliDropship is a plugin on WordPress to do dropshipping on AliExpress. It is surely one of the most advanced plugins in this selection, but also one of the most expensive.

It is sold for $89 as a one-time payment.

It allows you to search and import products on AliExpress from the WordPress admin. You can then sell them on your WooCommerce store. Your customers can order in one click.

The information of the products on sale is automatically updated if the supplier edits them on AliExpress, and resale price ranges are suggested to you as an indication.

You can also edit the images or information yourself if you wish.

AliDropship also automatically sends notification emails to your customers about the progress of their order. This is quite useful.

It is also possible to import customer reviews from AliExpress, but I don’t recommend it because they may not be in English and won’t be unique.

As its name implies, this plugin only works with AliExpress.

Download AliDropship:

Spreadr WooCommerce Plugin

Spreadr WooCommerce is dedicated to Amazon products. It works a little differently than AliDropship, because you don’t set the prices of the products.

You can search for them and import them into your WooCommerce store exactly as with AliDropship, however once the visitor places the order, Amazon takes care of the rest of the process (shipping, returns, inventory, customer service, etc.).

You will need an Amazon Partner account (free). This is how you will earn commissions on every order placed on your site.

Spreadr WooCommerce is a monthly subscription plugin starting at $6/month. The product import is unlimited for each monthly license.

The price then depends on the number of products to sync with Amazon, and the chosen options (geolocation, customer reviews, analytics).

Download Spreadr WooCommerce Plugin:

Wooshark Dropshipping

Wooshark is a dropshipping plugin on WordPress coupled with a Google Chrome plugin.

It allows you to import products from Amazon, Etsy, eBay or AliExpress in one click from the product page to the WooCommerce store.

It offers similar features to AliDropship, such as editing product images, descriptions or prices, and offers full import of all product variations (colors, sizes, etc.).

It offers two lifetime licenses. The first one is sold for $39.99 for use on up to 3 sites, the second for $49.99 for use on up to 5 sites.

Note that Wooshark also offers a free version of its plugin on the official directory: TheShark Dropshipping for Aliexpress, eBay, Amazon, etsy and woocommerce.

It is logically more limited than the paid version. For example, you can only import 100 products per month.

Finally, besides that, there is also a plugin dedicated specifically to dropshipping on AliExpress: Aliexpress dropshipping for Woocommerce by Wooshark.

Download Wooshark:

WooCommerce Dropshipping

This official plugin sold by WooCommerce features AliExpress integration and Amazon Affiliate support (the affiliate program dedicated to Amazon partners).

A Google Chrome plugin helps you find, compare and select the best products sold on AliExpress, as well as shipping methods for your store.

WooCommerce Dropshipping allows you to send an email notification to your suppliers containing the order details they need to send to your customers, as well as the invoice for your store.

This way, the process is completely transparent to your visitors and the invoice only has your store’s name on it.

You also get a complete dashboard, showing for example the best-selling products, the number of orders, the profit generated, etc.

Finally, the support of the Amazon Partner Program allows you to add on your WooCommerce store the Amazon products for which you are affiliated. Your visitors are then redirected to Amazon to pay for their products.

WooCommerce Dropshipping is sold for $79/year.

Download the WooCommerce Dropshipping plugin:

DropshipMe

DropshipMe works with AliExpress and allows you to import all the products you want in a few clicks.

Its main assets are its advanced product search filters that will allow you to select the best-sellers with the highest ratings and the most positive reviews. Its product description editing system differs from the competition.

DropshipMe is available for free for up to 50 imported products if you want to try it out, and the price after that depends on how many products you want to aggregate to your store (from $29 to $199).

Download DropshipMe:

Obviously, the above list of plugins is not exhaustive. When searching, you may also come across Spocket, Dropified, WP Amazon Shop, or even WooDropship. If you use them and they do the trick, don’t hesitate to share your feedback by posting a comment.

Our final opinion about dropshipping on WordPress

Throughout these lines, you have discovered free and paid WordPress dropshipping plugins.

You now know a bit more about what dropshipping is and how to implement it on your WP sites.

It can be interesting to make profits without big investments.

It can suit several types of profiles, especially those of you who want to start in the world of ecommerce without too much financial risk at the beginning, just to test the waters a bit.

It’s also an interesting way to offer more products for sale, without having to manage restrictive side effects (delivery, stock, etc.).

If you want to try dropshipping, remember however to:

• Remain vigilant and in compliance with the legislation.
• Regularly control the products you sell.
• Follow up with your suppliers.

Keep in mind that many try dropshipping… but that a few succeed. Unfortunately, it is not the Eldorado that many online courses or paid guides can sell you.

Are you planning to try dropshipping on WordPress? Tell us all about it in the comments.

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About the author

WPMarmite Team

WPMarmite helps beginners get the best out of WordPress with in-depth tutorials and honest reviews. Meet the founder, Alex, and his team right here.