How to Start a Successful Business for $0

If you've been on youtube lately you've probably seen the ads with the guys standing in front of huge mansions and foreign cars bragging about how they've found the pot of gold and they can show you how too. I'm here to save you a lot of time and money and let you in on a business model that requires no money at all to start. This business model is called dropshipping.

I mention dropshipping in my previous article on 5 tips for your first year as an entrepreneur.

So what the heck is dropshipping? Dropshipping is when you have a product that is completely made and shipped by a third party manufacturer.

Let's look at an example: Say you want to start a hair business but don't want to fork over $1,000s for inventory right now. I have my own company and we dropship, meaning your customers place an order with you, you then use that money and order with me and I ship the item directly to your customer for you.

You never have to worry about housing tons of inventory, paying a lot of money up front or shipping. That's all handled through your dropshipping company. Your products arrive with your company logo on them, so no one would ever know that their products aren't coming straight from you. How awesome is that?

Now before you start looking for a company let's discuss some of the pros and cons of dropshipping.

1. It costs next to nothing to get started.

The beauty of this business model is the cost associated with it. You could, in theory, find a vendor and get started selling asap! After you find a vendor in your industry who offers dropshipping all you need to do is advertise and get those orders going!

2. But you still need some sort of money to get started.

Now, there is always a catch. While it is totally doable to start a business with no money, that doesn't mean you should. Let me explain. Here somethings that may require money:

setting up a website (though you def set up a free site with wix or another free platform)
testing inventory (you should never sell something you haven't personally tested, imo)
marketing + advertising

These are things that aren't necessary to do, but I think you should at least invest in a website test your inventory. At the time of writing this, I use the free version wix and my other website is self-hosted using word press and bluehost, I only pay 2.95$/month for bluehost and wordpress is completely free. Check it out here.

Also, I firmly believe that you should test out your inventory before selling it to consumers. Unfortunately, vendors lie. They use others people pics and videos. What if your vendor sends your customers horrible products? That's your name and business reputation on the line and you dont want to ruin that simply because you didn't properly vet your vendor.

I order test samples from any new vendor I work with to make sure the product is what they say it is, the quality is to my standards and the shipping is fast.

3. Finding a reliable vendor is work.

As mentioned above, you have to vet and test out your vendors. Even if you purchase a vendor list from a reputable business (if you didn't know, a lot of companies like The Boss Palace will sell you vendors). The point of purchasing a vendor list is so you don't have to do all the legwork of searching for a vendor yourself.

I don't see a problem with purchasing a vendor list, especially if you have a product that's hard to find. But I personally dont purchase vendor lists. I do the work and research myself. Every vendor I have found has been all on my own with google.

4. You wont have to house inventory or worry about shipping.

This is one of the best reasons to dropship! When starting a product based business the cost of getting new inventory can range from the 100s to the 1000s. It isn't cheap to start a business. But with dropshipping your vendor will hold all your inventory at their facility and ship it out for you when you're ready to place an order.

This will also save you space in your office because you wont have boxes and boxes of inventory taking up space. Check out the new inventory I just received and how I organize it here.

I want to mention one caveat here which is, if your vendor doesn't have it then neither will you. It's hard to keep a good inventory count of products you dont have on on hand. If your vendor is out of stock on an item then you cant sell it to your customers. And you do not want to run into a situation where people have purchased an item and they wont be getting it anytime soon.

5. It can be a great way to get your business started.

When I discovered dropshipping I couldn't believe everyone wasn't doing this. It is SO easy to get started making money. Of course every business is different and you should use what model works best for you.

So what do you think about dropshipping? Would you use or recommend this business model? Let me know down in the comments below!