If you’re looking to start drop shipping on eBay or through your own website you may be looking for guidance on how to get started drop shipping. I’ve been in the drop shipping scene for over ten years and shared some of my experiences of resources, business advice and more in other posts. Today I’m going to show you the best drop shipping resources to suit every budget.
This guide will break down the best drop shipping resources in categories sorted by price, starting with the cheapest and ending up with the most expensive. I have done individual reviews on most of the resources listed so you should check them out too.
Best Drop Shipping Resources
Complete Courses
The first section includes best drop shipping resources that are complete courses, i.e. include everything you need to learn about drop shipping through videos and guides while also having additional resources such as forums, help sections, supplier directories etc.
I’ve done a full guide on many of the best courses here.
eCom Elites is a complete drop ship training course with HD videos and articles on starting a drop shipping business. They offer a regular free training on Franklins Youtube channel.
They offer advice on starting a locally based drop ship website drop shipping from overseas, namely China using Aliexpress. There’s no place better than eCom Elites to learn how to start an online store.
This course is very affordable and for only $197 one time you get access to a wide variety of information, there’s over 200 videos and follow along content. Franklin guides you through every video and there’s a Facebook mastermind too.
Checkout my Ecom Elites review.
Tristan Broughton, an Australian entrepreneur is behind this course which is more of a intermediate course with advanced scaling techniques and more detailed Facebook Ad techniques. For an extra $200 you can get his Google Ads and Google Shopping training too.
If you are a beginner then eCom Elites is your go to. If you’re looking for something more advanced and less of an A-to-Z approach this would be the best course for you.
The course is very affordable and for only $297 you get access to ongoing updates, a great community of like minded students and over 120 videos and follow along content.
Checkout my Product Winner Blueprint review.
Free Drop Ship Training
Some readers have no funds to buy a paid course and I totally understand that so here are some of the best resources for learning drop shipping without spending a dime. While free information is great you won’t get the same level of detail compared with a paid course.
Shopify has come up against serious competition in the last few years from other hosted e-commerce solutions such as Bigcommerce and they’ve looked at ways to add value to their future customers. Last last year they created a monster drop ship guide on how to start your own drop shipping business. While the information is free, it is very good and if you can’t afford to sign up for a paid course just yet, it’s definitely enough to get started.
The training was written by people who use Shopify and drop ship suppliers so the information is up to date and accurate. They do throw a lot of affiliate links in and try to up sell you to buy their products but you can definitely learn lots for free.
Store Themes
When starting a Shopify store (the #1 recommended way to start a store) you’ll quickly find out how boring the free and premium themes are.
You need a theme that’s optimized for conversions, one that encourages visitors to checkout fast and make you more money.
I’ve looked at some of the best themes here, but below you’ll find one of the best themes to consider.
It’s my go to theme for all my drop ship stores and after creating dozens of stores, the unlimited license by Franklin Hatchett is definitely the theme I recommend to any future drop shippers out there. It not only looks amazing on mobile, it looks sharp on all other devices too.
The main problem I initially faced was my store made quite a few sales but I had a major problem. I needed higher conversions. eCom Turbo that was created from the ground up and seamlessly integrates with the high converting apps and features right through the simple installer. You don’t need 12 different third party apps as they are all included in eCom Turbo.
The biggest benefit to this theme is having the title, photos, price and buy now button above the fold on mobile, so no scrolling is required for your consumers. It really does boost your conversions from day one!
eCom Turbo is currently priced from $97 for a single store through to $147 for unlimited licenses (on your own sites of course, you can’t simply share the key with your friends). If you’re going to be building out quite a few stores over the next year then the unlimited package is definitely the way to go. It’s one time fee so no monthly or yearly renewal fees are payable.
Read my full review on eCom Turbo.
How To Find Winning Products / Niche Research
If you want to dropship from China using Aliexpress, then you can find winning products and niches to target by using AI research tools.
Here are some of the best tools I recommend however you can read about 17 more tools here.
One of the best SaaS platforms for finding winning products is called Sell The Trend and offers a one stop shop for finding Aliexpress, Amazon and Shopify trending products, hot products, new products and hidden gems.
You can access all Shopify stores and view estimated store traffic, daily orders, technology spend and all their best selling products. You can also view their social media profiles and with one click view the store, the products on Aliexpress and even favorite stores for future lookup.
They have a unique system called, ‘Nexus.’ This game changing technology will show you the best things to sell online in a flash and will provide trend reports, total stores selling the same product and much more.
Other features include spying on Facebook Ads, audience builder, video creator software, engagement rating calculator and a discovery machine.
Video tutorials are included to help you get started.
Start your free 7 day trial. ($39/mo)
Intelligyence has been around for years and has been used by thousands of marketers looking for the best winning products on successful Shopify stores.
You can monitor over 500,000 stores and 2 million products and it allows you to filter search results to find products that are in-demand and actually selling through estimated daily sales volumes.
You can then click on products and go directly to Aliexpress where you can right click and import them into your own store.
You can also see Facebook and Google Ads that stores are running. You can also see Amazon and eBay too.
Paid Supplier Directories
Many people are scared of signing up for a wholesale or drop ship directory as they are concerned that the suppliers listed are seen by everyone else already joined. That’s a pretty true statement but 95% of people who sign up for these directories don’t actually contact more than 1 supplier.
They find out it’s too difficult and give up before they really get started. Here are some of the best resources for finding drop ship suppliers.
Probably one of the most talked about directory online is Salehoo with over 10,000 genuine wholesalers and drop ship suppliers with access to over 1.6 million products. If your looking for a directory that has thoroughly researched all suppliers, including address and phone verification then Salehoo is a good place to checkout.
Over the last ten years, this kiwi business (like me) has changed the way they operate and now you’ll get access to a whole bunch of software and tools alongside the main directory. For example you can see the retail price vs ebay price vs wholesale price for certain products so you can pick ones that make profit.
They have a feature called Market ResearchLabs which will help you discover the best and most profitable products to sell. They also have a members forum where you can ask for help finding suppliers.
At $67 per year ($1 trial for 7 days) this directory is definitely worth the price tag and with a 60 day money back guarantee you have nothing to lose. You can check them out here.
There we have some of the best drop ship resources to suit every budget. Have you got something to add, please add a comment and I’ll add it to the list.
Last Updated on July 31, 2019 by Rhys Dale
Rhys is the owner and chief editor at Im Rhys and is living in Chisinau, Moldova. With over 15 years experience in eCommerce and Affiliate Marketing he has started many successful 6 and 7 figure businesses. After successes with USA and China dropshipping, he expanded into building 70+ micro affiliate websites in 30 different niches that generate money on autopilot. He now helps his wife to run her social media agency as well as travelling the world at every opportunity.
This is good content. Thanks Rhys! Do you know any wholesalers in Australia? I wanna do business there, I checked warrior forum but some of it are false advertising. Cheers!
Is this info still relevant in 2019? Just wanted to confirm
Yes of course, it will be relevant for many years to come.
Hi there, curious what you think about the state of Dropshipping in 2019? Discovering all of this very late and trying to figure out if it’s feasible. I saw a comment you made back in 2016 saying it’s gotten a lot more difficult. So I imagine it’s only gotten more difficult?
It definitely still works in 2019, I’m seeing more and more success stories from this business model. I think the cost for ads has increased but if you learn how to do this the best way then there’s definitely still money to be made with dropshipping.
Hi Rhys, I’ve been reading your reviews for a while now and I purchased all of Franklin’s courses because of your awesome reviews (Black Friday sale, therefore couldn’t use any of your affiliates)
These are amazing suggestions, do you mind recommending something similar to Salehoo and which other tools/software to use as a beginner?
Thanks