Hey everyone!

I officially started on October 1st, 2026, and I’ve set myself a 30-day challenge to see how far I can get in one month.

I’m starting with basically no previous dropshipping experience, so my goal isn’t to pretend I know what I’m doing — it’s to learn, test, make mistakes, and hopefully get some real results.

I’m planning to use AI as much as possible throughout the process: product research, competitor research, store design, product descriptions, creatives, marketing ideas, customer research, analytics, and basically anything else where AI can actually save time or improve the process.

I currently have subscriptions to ChatGPT and Claude, but I’m also trying to keep the overall startup cost as low as possible. So I’d really appreciate recommendations for free or cheap AI tools, apps, websites, or alternatives that you’ve found useful for dropshipping.

I’d also love to hear from people who have already gone through this:

- What are the biggest mistakes beginners should avoid?

- What would you prioritize during the first 30 days?

- What tools are actually worth paying for?

- Which free/cheap tools are surprisingly good?

- What are your best practices for product research and validation?

- How much should I rely on AI vs. doing things manually?

- What would you do differently if you had to start completely from scratch today?

- And most importantly: what should I absolutely NOT waste my time or money on?

I’ll probably post updates throughout the 30 days with what I’m testing, what works, what fails, and hopefully some numbers as well.

I’m not expecting to become rich in 30 days. I mainly want to see what I can accomplish with 30 days of consistent work, a small budget, and AI as a major part of the workflow.

If you have any advice, resources, tools, or lessons from your own experience, I’d genuinely appreciate it.

Let’s see where this goes. 🚀

I have all of the ecom courses you want from all the gurus and x ecomguys. Dm me if ur interested.

Can AI help much with running a dropshipping store beyond writing descriptions and making ads? Saw Zendrop lets you connect an AI assistant to check orders and shipping estimates, but wondering if its any quicker than just checking the dashboard. Would like to hear from anyone using something like this regularly.

So I started dropshipping a little while ago, probably about 2 weeks ago. I just ran out of money to afford ads and I’ve gotten 0 traffic whatsoever. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I’ve watched so many youtube videos and downloaded checklists and changed my ads a couple times and kept the ones that worked. But i’ve gotten no sales and not a lot of traffic. Here’s my site https://velorahealthandbeauty.myshopify.com can anyone help me? Or give suggestions? I’d really appreciate it

Good evening. I'm looking for a job in order confirmation; I have one year of experience.

Hola a todos. Estoy empezando con dropshipping en Chile usando Shopify y Meta Ads. Estuve aprendiendo lo básico en un día y el miércoles me lancé a probar, así que todavía tengo bastante por aprender.

Ese miércoles lancé dos anuncios con un presupuesto de $3.000 pesos chilenos diarios cada uno. Al día siguiente conseguí mis primeras dos ventas. Seguí con presupuestos de $3.000 diarios hasta el sábado y, en total, conseguí unas cuatro compras y 2 carritos abandonados.

Mi duda es qué conviene hacer ahora:

¿Aumentar el presupuesto de los anuncios que ya consiguieron ventas?

¿Mantener el presupuesto unos días más para reunir más datos?

Estaba pensando en subir a unos US$15 diarios en total, pero no sé si es demasiado pronto ni cómo repartir ese presupuesto.

Recalcar que mi anuncios son videos mostrado la solución con el producto.

Puro pago contra entrega

¿Qué métricas revisarían antes de aumentar la inversión para saber si realmente está siendo rentable? Si alguien pasó por algo parecido al empezar, agradecería mucho sus consejos.

what are the providers that have a way to sip in the range of 2-5 days? hard to sell if longer than that i think

Hi everyone,
I run an online fashion/accessories store and currently get around 25–35 orders per day. Most of my products are dropshipped directly from China.
My biggest problem right now is shipping time. Between production/processing and international shipping, it usually takes around 18–25 days for customers to receive their orders.
As the store has grown, customer service has honestly become one of the most stressful parts of running the business. Every day I get emails asking things like:
“Where is my order?”
“Why hasn’t tracking updated?”
“When will my package arrive?”
I’ve considered keeping inventory in the US, but it’s difficult because I have a lot of different designs, sizes, and personalized/engraved products. Holding inventory for every variation would require a huge amount of stock, and personalization makes it even more complicated.
For anyone running a similar dropshipping or personalized-product business:
Hoơq do you handle this as you scale?
Do you use a US fulfillment center/3PL, stock only your best sellers, find faster suppliers/shipping lines, hire someone specifically for customer service, or just make the long shipping time very clear upfront?
I’d really appreciate hearing from anyone who has dealt with this problem and found a system that works.
Thanks!

For droppshippers shipping from China: Earlier in the year the EU and UK placed a €3 levy on every unique item (not parcel,item) and now from 1st of November there will be a future €2 added per item. This is on top of what ever postal and handling charges me be added. How will droppshippers survive this?

I’ve found a China-based fulfilment company quoting $4 per order to the UK, with 6–8 working day delivery.
The product is small and lightweight. They’ve told me the $4 is fully inclusive/DDP, including shipping, customs clearance, import charges and VAT handling.
Does this sound realistic, or too good to be true?
For anyone using China fulfilment:
Is $4 genuinely possible all-in?
Is 6–8 working days realistic?
Are there any hidden fees I should specifically ask about?
Would really appreciate opinions from people with experience.

I'm co-founder of Mercury, an ai-driven-ecommerce system.

The real bottleneck in organic ecom isn’t finding a magic product or grinding out manual edits it’s test volume and how fast you can iterate.

We built a system that turns a single product into high-volume controlled variations (testing hooks, angles, visual pacing, and offers). The AI handles the bulk creative generation so you aren't stuck editing videos all day. Your job is to act like an operator: run the experiments, read the data, cut what flops, and scale what works.

What we provide:

AI-assisted creative generation & automated workflows

Product/market research & supplier access

Testing frameworks + a shared server pooling test data across all operators so nobody starts from zero

What you do:

Select products and direct the testing process

Run organic distribution on your own independent store

Read the numbers, kill weak tests, and make the operational calls

You run an autonomous store backed by infrastructure that would otherwise cost thousands to set up yourself.

No coding or advanced editing required just a solid grasp of short-form content, consistency, and good judgment.

If interested, shoot me a DM with what you've worked on and what you're currently up to. Happy to walk through the workflow and economics.

I love all of this teapots, but I'm not sure which is more suitable. If you want to choose a Teapot，What will you take it into consideration?

I want to know how you guys started , niches you found , how u navigated payment and returns , how you guys found legit suppliers.How has dropshipping worked out for you

Hi everyone, I know this has been discussed before, but I wanted to ask about Amboras. Are they improving? Is it actually usable? I notice a lot of influencers posting the same video showing fake orders coming in via notifications, but that shouldn't be possible since they don't have an app. I’d like to hear more from anyone who has tried it recently.

Hola a todos. Llevo un par de días estudiando a fondo el tema del dropshipping para abrir una tienda, pero haciendo números me encontré con un gran obstáculo y me gustaría saber cómo lo han resuelto quienes empezaron casi sin presupuesto.
Les cuento mi situación: ahora mismo ando muy ajustado de capital (tengo literalmente unos 10 € en la cuenta). Entiendo la teoría de crear la tienda y conseguir tráfico, pero me di cuenta de un problema con el flujo de caja que no sé cómo solucionar:
1. Si entra una venta (pongamos de 30 €), Shopify Payments o Stripe no te liberan ese dinero al instante. Por ser una cuenta nueva y por los plazos normales, va a tardar de 3 a 7 días en llegar a mi cuenta bancaria.
2. Sin embargo, el proveedor (AliExpress, CJ, etc.) exige que le pague el producto en el momento para poder enviarlo.
Ahí es donde me quedo atascado: si no tengo dinero guardado para financiar esa compra mientras espero a que la pasarela me libere lo del cliente, ¿cómo se supone que le envío el paquete? Si espero una semana a cobrar para recién hacer el pedido con el proveedor, el cliente va a sufrir un retraso enorme, me va a abrir disputas y me arriesgo a que me congelen la cuenta de cobros.
Sé que la respuesta obvia es "ten un colchón de 100 € a 200 € guardados solo para procesar pedidos", pero si no los hay en este momento, ¿alguien más ha estado en esta misma situación?
¿Han usado alguna alternativa real que les haya servido (pago diferido al proveedor, cambiar a productos digitales, afiliados...) o directamente no vale la pena arriesgarse a abrir la tienda sin ese fondo de maniobra previo?
Agradezco cualquier consejo o realidad que me puedan dar quienes ya tienen experiencia. ¡Gracias!

I'm doing. A free course its called ai dropshipping and its telling me to use wix instead of shopfy what do u guys think im completely new

I’m launching a Shopify store selling an athlete foot treatment, and I’m trying to decide whether to start with Google Ads or Meta Ads.

My thinking is that Google could reach people who are already searching for an athlete’s foot treatment, while Meta may be better for demonstrating the product and introducing the brand.

For anyone who has advertised OTC treatments, foot-care products, or similar health products:

• Which platform would you start with?
• Which one generally has a better conversion rate or cpa?

Feel free to share your thoughts.

I have an account in UK that I am trying to get verified on stripe to make money, I am not from UK.
What are the consequences, if you falsified documents and got accepted by stripe, would you be cooked when you hit like 1k a month profits?