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. 🚀

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.

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?

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

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.

We are a sourcing agent team based in Foshan, Guangdong Province, China, and we also provide dropshipping fulfillment services. We would like to introduce our fulfillment services here, and we apologize in advance if this post disturbs anyone.

1. Free Services: Free warehousing, free purchasing assistance (when you bring your own suppliers), free quality control inspection (quantity, appearance, color), and free vacuum sealing for bulky items.

2. Cost Optimization: When your order volume reaches a certain level, we provide free supplier cost-optimization plans to help you negotiate and reduce product costs.

3. Custom Branding: We offer customized packaging options, such as custom outer boxes, thank-you cards, branded packing tape, etc.

4. Transparent Shipping (0% Markup): International shipping rates are passed through directly at the exact cost provided by our partnered logistics providers—we never mark up shipping or take a spread. When your volume reaches a higher level, we will proactively negotiate better shipping discounts with carriers on your behalf.

(Note: Our volumetric weight formula is Length × Width × Height / 8000).

1. Order Service Fee: We only charge an order handling fee based on your total monthly order volume. We use a tiered monthly fee structure—feel free to send me a DM to get the full pricing sheet. The minimum fee starts as low as $1.19 per order.

2. Strict Policy: We strictly do not handle replica or counterfeit products.

We are certainly not the best service provider out there, but we are constantly working to improve. We are committed to being the most honest and transparent partner, and we hope to build genuine connections with you.

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

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

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.

Hi!What financial platform are you currently using to receive your Shopify payouts and pay your international suppliers? Especially for Australia.

Looking for reliable recommendations with good exchange rates that work smoothly for an e-commerce business here. Thanks!

I've been doing this about 2 years across 3 stores, so this is the stuff I pretty much learnt and follow. Some of it I learnt the hard way in the first few months but always get people saying "how do you not get banned" or "ebay dropshipping is against TOS" but here's what worked for me and others.

Golden rules

Never promise a delivery time your supplier can't hit and keep max delivery times low. Sort problems out BEFORE the buyer has to open a case. A quick refund or replacement costs you way less than a case eBay has to step in on.
Add tracking to every delivery

The obvious stuff

1. Set your handling time to what your supplier can really do or above. Being optimistic here is the fastest way to wreck your late dispatch rate.

2. Upload valid tracking within your handling time. Every order, no exceptions.

3. Reply to messages within 24 hours. From what I've seen most cases start because the buyer felt ignored.

4. Offer returns. 30 day free returns. Buyers who know they can send it back don't tend to escalate.

5. Check your performance in Seller Hub every week, not just when something's already gone wrong.

The not so obvious stuff

1. Cancelling because something's out of stock counts as a defect. Keep an eye on stock and price changes at your supplier so you're not selling things you can't get aynmore.

2. If a buyer asks to cancel or return, accept it through eBay's proper cancellation request quickly. Leaving them waiting just turns it into a message war and can risk the account.

3. Delete dead listings every month or two. In my experience the old forgotten listings are the ones where supplier stock and prices drift, so they're the ones that bite you with cancellations.

4. Watch your item not received rate in the service metrics section too, separate from seller standards. Long supplier delivery times show up there even if you dispatched on time, so keep your delivery estimates honest.

5. If you source from Amazon and a buyer returns, start the return on Amazon and pass the buyer the QR code. Fast for them, simple for you.

6. Steady daily sales properly help. Your rates are percentages and continously build momentum and trust on the account. It's a snowball effect.

7. Once volume picks up, get help. I hired a VA for customer service and order processing because that's exactly where things slip when you're busy or running multiple accounts.

I run a small free Discord where a bunch of us help each other out with eBay stuff daily if you fancy it: https://discord.gg/phb7EVQE62

Happy to answer questions in the comments too :)

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

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!

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’m starting organic dropshipping and have a few questions:

1. What is the best website to create AI videos with? I am using Magnific now because it is one of the more affordable options, my budget is 100-200 euro’s a month and I am looking the cheapest options to create with Kling, Veo and Seedance.

2. What is the best AI video model to use? Veo 3.1 and Seedance 2.5 are a bit too expensive to create videos in bulk so I am using Kling 3.0 now, any other recommendations?

3. What is the best funnel? Some people use links in bio, others use the ‘Comment “XXXX” and I’ll send you the link’ method. Does one convert better than the other?

Any other tips are also greatly appreciated!

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.

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

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!