When dropshipping everyone talks about Shopify, but can it be done with WordPress? So what is the advantages and disadvantages by using WordPress? Read here to know more!
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My first dropshipping experience
The first time I did dropshipping was through a course named 100k Factory Ultra. The way it was taught in the course was by using WordPress. This was a course where they tried to do everything easy and free for beginners like me. That way they could also charge more for the course...
So what they did was giving us free hosting for 1 year (they owned the hosting company), a command center software where we could do some minor setup, push a button and there our WordPress dropshipping store was live. The command center was a website that connected everything similar to Dropified or Oberlo. Then we went to Aliexpress and imported the products we wanted with the command center. The command center also fulfilled our orders as Dropfied or Oberlo do.
At that time it was no software that you could buy that did the same thing as the command center provided in the course I purchased. This made dropshipping with Woocommerce hard and since you had to do many tedious tasks manually.
I used WordPress for a long time, and I liked it, but it was a reason for the course ended with a short training in how to move our store to Shopify. More about that later.
100k Factory Command Center
How to make a dropshipping website with WordPress
WordPress is a great platform to use for your website, also for dropshipping. WordPress is free to use, and this site is using WordPress. What is not always free is plugins, some are free, and some are paid. Some plugins have a free lite version, but with limited functions.
This is not a guide on how to create a website with WordPress, but you build your site similar to how you usually create a website with WordPress. What you also need is Woocommerce that is a plugin that adds the ecommerce part to your website.
With Woocommerce you can add products, set pricing and run your store. You also need a plugin that connects to a payment processor like PayPal or Stripe so you can collect the money when you receive orders.
You need to pay for hosting and your domain, but besides that, all this can be done for free. This is what many people love, and I have to admit that this is great for a beginner.
What also is great is that you own your store, nobody can take it from you. There will be no changes in terms of service that will restrict your use of the software or payments by using their software. Plugins can change their terms of service, but WordPress and Woocommerce is open source and free to use.
The issues with WordPress is that you need to maintain it. Plugins and the platform itself have bugs that need to be updated. After an upgrade, some functions can change that will make your site slightly different. With WordPress and Woocommerce will try to improve all the time and to do changes to enhance them self. This is something that applies for most websites, but in my experience, more with WordPress.
As I wrote above, you can run WordPress for free. Usually, you want to use plugins. There are many free plugins out there, but those with huge benefit also have a price. The same is with themes. You can use a free theme, but for added functionality, you want a premium theme. This cost money but overall less expensive than Shopify with add-ons.
Then you need to add products to your store. You can take your own images or “borrow” from Aliexpress and add your own product description. When you receive orders to your store, you and do the fulfillment at Aliexpress manually. This takes time and time is money. You want some automation.
Best WordPress plugins for dropshipping
Most plugins for WordPress is used to add functionality and make it easier for you. Very few plugins are for dropshipping only. When I used WordPress for dropshipping, I had access to the command center through the course I bought. At that time I think there was no similar software available for everyone to buy to WordPress.
Time has changed, and now you have software that can automate more of your work. With Shopify, I used Dropified that is the best dropshipping software. With Dropified you can:
- Import products with pictures and description from Aliexpress or other sources.
- Do order fulfillment.
- Track your orders.
- Export order information.
- Validate your orders.
Dropified made my life so much easier, and I highly recommend the software. Why I write it here, is that Dropfied also supports Woocommerce.
You also have Alidropship, a similar software as Dropfied. I have not used it, but I see a lot of positive reviews, so I assume it's great. You can test the two of them and see what you like the best. There is more out there, but this is the two that receive best critiques.
Oberlo and WordPress
Oberlo is one of the most known dropshipping software. When I was using WordPress, I remember Oberlo was planning to integrate with Wocommerce. Therefore there has been much talk about Oberlo and WooCommerce. This was a plan they had, and after some time Oberlo decided they didn't want to go further with this plan.
Oberlo is now owned by Shopify and is for Shopify only. I don't think this will change. I have used Oberlo, and it was a great software, but not as good as Dropfied. Just as a sidenote.
Pros and cons by dropshipping with WordPress
Pros:
- You own the store.
- Highly customizable.
- You can run your store for free (do the hosting yourself, then you need to pay $10 for a domain).
- Lots of plugins to add more functionality and many of them are free.
Cons:
- More technical and takes a longer time to set up.
- Need more maintenance.
- You usually need to tweak a bit the settings to have low page load time.
- WordPress is a platform you can do everything, but not specialized for e-commerce.
Conclusion about WordPress as a dropshipping platform
WordPress can be used to do dropshipping, and you will have most of the great functionality that users of Shopify have. The software and plugins available for Woocommerce and WordPress have been highly improved. It was not like when I ran my dropshipping store on WordPress, and I’m happy about that. If you are a bit technical, WordPress will most likely be the best choice for a beginner to test dropshipping.
Shopify is made for ecommerce and will run faster with less work. Your job is marketing and not to be a webmaster. Therefore I recommend using Shopify as your platform when dropshipping.
If you want to start with dropshipping, you can read my review of Ecom Elites. This a dropshipping course made by Franklin Hatchett. This course is using Shopify, so if you want to use WordPress, you need to figure out how to do the setup of your store yourself. If you're going to use Shopify, you will learn everything you need from how to setup Shopify to how to do product selection and marketing.
You can read the Ecom Elites review to see what's included and decide if this is something for you.
