Dropshipping is an online business model where sellers do not have to have warehousing inventory. Rather, dropshipping store owners will instead work with third-party suppliers, like sellers on AliExpress, to ship products directly to customers.
Running an online store is hard, and it’s a lot of work. However, dropshipping can ease the burden of the manual work involved compared to traditional online selling. With the power of automation, you’re free from the hassles of inventory management and shipping logistics.
Imagine running a business where you don’t have to worry about stocking products or dealing with suppliers. That’s what automated dropshipping brings to the table. It’s a game-changer, offering you the chance to focus on what really matters – growing your brand and boosting your sales.
Our guide will explore the ins and outs of automated dropshipping and walk you through everything you need to know to get started.
What is Automated Dropshipping?
Essentially, automated dropshipping is your brand, run on autopilot. It’s where you pick a targeted niche, choose your product lineup, and let your dropship automation software handle the rest.
When an order comes in, your dropship automation platform purchases the product from your supplier. After that, it’s out of your hands. The supplier ships the order straight to your customer.
You’ve still got marketing to handle, customer service to provide, and—most importantly—a brand to grow. That’s where the beauty of automated dropshipping really comes into play. With the physical logistics taken care of, you’re left to focus solely on scaling your brand, your way.
You might immediately think automated dropshipping requires technology to speed up tasks, but that’s only half the truth. Picking and setting up your dropship automation software may actually be the easiest part.
At its core, automated dropshipping is about simplifying an entrepreneur’s life. It’s the key to removing tedious back-end tasks.
While you can use technological tools, applications, and software to help with automated dropshipping, outsourcing parts of the process can also be considered automated dropshipping. For example, if you hire a freelancer to take care of your dropshipping business’ digital marketing campaigns, that’s also a way to get started with automated dropshipping.
Types Of Automation In Dropshipping
While there are multiple ways to approach automation, automation in dropshipping can be categorized in 2 ways:
1. Using Technology to Automate Tasks
Using technology to speed up manual processes can involve using tools like automating emails and tracking details. We live in a digitally-driven era, so make sure you harness all the tools available for Shopify dropshipping store owners like yourself to equip your store with the power it needs.
2. Hiring Contractors or Freelancers for Automated Dropshipping
There are many benefits to hiring contractors or freelancers to take care of different aspects of your Shopify dropshipping business. Why waste time figuring out how to execute a task perfectly when you could hire someone who’s an expert in the task to do it for you?
Part of being a successful business owner is knowing how to scale your business and when to hire help, especially if your business needs demand greater attention in other aspects, such as changing your business strategy or optimizing certain campaigns. Hiring contractors or freelancers frees up your time easily, so you can focus on the things that will help you generate more revenue and profit faster.
How is Automated Dropshipping different from regular dropshipping?
When you look at the e-commerce landscape today, there’s a marked difference in the dropshipping model as we knew it. Traditional dropshipping and automated dropshipping stand at opposite ends of the spectrum.
The era of traditional dropshipping was characterized by manually managing orders, tracking inventory, contacting suppliers, and every other operational task. This business model involved a lot of time and effort. Mistakes were common given the high scope for human error. Suppliers could easily run out of stock without you noticing, leaving you in a difficult position with your consumers stuck waiting indefinitely.
Your entry into the world of automated dropshipping, however, revolutionizes this process. You’re introduced to a dynamic, efficient, and responsive business module.
With automated dropshipping, the inventory updates are real-time, making it virtually impossible to sell a product out of stock. This dropshipping automation also allows for automatic orders. As soon as a customer places an order on your site, your dropship automation software alerts your supplier. This means you don’t even have to be online when orders arrive – the system takes care of everything.
Dropshipping in itself is already a huge time-saver for many Shopify business owners all over the world. It reinvents traditional e-commerce by cutting out the need for inventory and storage space, and sellers do not even need to handle the logistics of shipping the products to customers on their own. This is why it has remained a relevant business model, even in 2024, and 1 in 4 stores on the internet are actually dropshipping stores.
For example, if the entrepreneur’s expertise is in marketing, he could outsource the task of working with suppliers to virtual assistants instead. This would free up time for him to be able to focus on what he does best, so the business can benefit. He could also try out new tools and software to automate his business, eliminating tedious tasks from his workflow. After all, who likes doing tiresome Excel sheets and compiling data manually, when there are programs out there that could do it for you in literally seconds or minutes?
Pros and Cons of Automated Dropshipping
We’ve established that automated dropshipping helps save time, which is crucial for business owners who have other priorities to juggle. Are there other pros that could impact your decision to get started with automated dropshipping?
Let’s examine 4 of the reasons why you might want to try out this new way of building a dropshipping store.
Pros:
Automated dropshipping incurs fewer costs in the long run
What’s not to love about a way of doing business that’s not only time-saving but also cost-efficient? If you don’t have money to hire contractors or freelancers to optimize parts of your business but still want to reap the benefits of automated dropshipping, there are lots of online services and tools that will be handy. Plus, many of these solutions can range from a completely free price tag or a monthly to a yearly subscription, both of which will still cost less than hiring an employee.
In turn, you can put the money you’ve saved back into the business – whether it’s increasing your digital marketing ad campaign spending, working with better suppliers, or investing in a paid Shopify theme or paid Shopify apps to elevate your online store.
Easier to manage your dropshipping business
The best thing about technology is that it makes life so much easier. Once you’ve figured out what tools or apps you need to keep your business running smoothly, you don’t just save time and money but also take care of your own mental wellbeing. By freeing up tedious tasks that can cause you significantly more amounts of stress, you’ll feel less strained and overstretched, ready to tackle bigger challenges and help your business grow.
Easier to manage multiple dropshipping businesses
Once you’ve figured out how to get into automated dropshipping, you can apply the same tactics that work for you to create even more dropshipping businesses on Shopify! Replicate the same methods which helped you succeed to generate even more income streams. You can easily outsource most of the work to other freelancers or virtual assistants, and use the money generated to fund passion projects, hobbies, and other pursuits that may matter more to you.
Low risk
There really isn’t much of a risk in trying out automated dropshipping options, especially because there are so many tools available in the market for you to fall back on if things don’t work out immediately. If one tool fails, try out another, and you’ll soon find the method that works best for your individual needs.
Cons:
Now that we’ve covered the pros of automated dropshipping, what are some of its cons? There are some potential pitfalls to automated dropshipping that you should take into account when you decide to use plugins in your workflow. Here are some of them:
Customer service and customer experience may be affected
If you’re a dropshipping business owner who cares deeply about communicating with your customers, ensuring they get the best possible experience, and helping them get their money’s worth, then you may want to give automated dropshipping a second thought. While it’s a great option, automating your customer service may present challenges, especially when customers have complex needs that require individualized attention.
Automation tools may not work as intended at times
If you end up automating your dropshipping tasks, you’ll want to be mindful of the fact that the tools, apps, extensions, and services you use may experience issues as well. This may mean that some issues you experience may fall beyond your control and impact business in ways that are unpreventable.
For example, an email automation service may experience glitches and affect your promotional sale launch, which can cost you a significant number of sales. Always go with trusted tools and services that have glowing reviews, and preferably with a strong customer support system so you can reach dedicated service professionals to resolve your problems quickly and intuitively.
May not be beginner-friendly
If you’re still new to dropshipping, you might want to wait a little while more before trying automated dropshipping out. This is because you’ll want to make sure you get the basics right first – building a robust theme, installing the right apps, choosing the right product, and such before you automate the process.
Also, because some of the best tools available in the market can involve monthly or yearly subscriptions, this may not be the best option for beginners like you, who may benefit more from totally free options. At the very beginning, you’ll want to keep your costs low so you can turn a profit at a faster rate.
Is Automated Dropshipping right for me?
Automated dropshipping may not be for everyone – as we’ve covered in the above section, it may not be the best option for beginners who’ve yet to find the best tools, services, and applications for their Shopify dropshipping businesses. So how do you know if it’s the right solution for you?
Automated dropshipping would be the perfect solution for you if:
- You want to start building multiple side hustles, whether it’s more dropshipping stores, getting into cryptocurrency ventures, trading, or freelancing. Automated dropshipping will save you time and money to help you get started on other things in your life.
- You’re tired of working on manual processes, which are a time sucker, and have started feeling like a chore to complete.
- You are ready to take your dropshipping business to the next level and embrace technology tools in your processes.
- You want to experiment with outsourcing certain tasks and delegating them to contractors or freelancers.
How can I start Automated Dropshipping?
Ready to start automated dropshipping? We’ve compiled a few simple steps to get you going, so you can start seeing results as soon as possible.
Start with installing Facebook Pixel
Facebook Pixel is a piece of code that analyses and measures how effective your Facebook ad campaigns are as it tracks the actions that visitors take on your Shopify store.
The Facebook Pixel you install can enable you to track the time customers spend on your page, the number of page views, scroll depth, add to cart feature, purchases, and more.
Installing the Facebook Pixel will be the best way to take your dropshipping store marketing to greater heights, as it can help you with running automated retargeting ads, optimize your ad campaigns and improve ad performance.
Automate emails
Not every Shopify dropshipping store owner may be privy to this useful feature that is completely free to use on Shopify. You can automate email drips in “Settings”, when you go to “Notifications” and have 20 selections to choose from for when you want to automate your dropshipping emails. You can automate emails for order confirmations, cancellations, refunds, and abandoned checkout – the options are truly endless!This feature prompts you with notifications right on your desktop whenever a sale comes in, so you can sit back, relax and let Shopify do all the work for you.
Automate tracking for Automated Dropshipping
Customers prioritize having visibility over their orders – they want to know how it’s being shipped, where it’s currently being transferred, and when it’ll arrive right at their doorstep. Give them peace of mind when you automate tracking details for easy accessibility! This is a simple process, where you just have to create a branded tracking page to check order status.
Automate inventory details
Do you find yourself frustrated having to check on your inventory every single time? Cut out this massive time waste through automation. You can receive updates on when products are almost running out of stock so you know when to stock up on certain hot-selling products and also so that customers know when an item is limited in quantity.
Faster checkout Process
Create the easiest and most efficient way for customers to select a product and checkout. You can streamline the checkout process using our Skip to checkout Shopify app, to maximise your profits and reduce churn.
What are some tools available for automated dropshipping?
Here are some of the tools that are available online to help with your automated dropshipping ventures!
AutoDS – Automated Dropshipping
AutoDS is the leading all-in-one dropshipping tool that helps sellers automate their dropshipping business, allowing them to dedicate their precious time to the things they love in life.
Dropshipping with AutoDS saves you time. Quickly find and import trending products, and monitor pricing & stock 24/7. Automatically process orders and more.
Spark Shipping
Spark Shipping touts itself as a dropship automation software that connects sellers with suppliers in mere minutes, a great time-saving solution considering how much time sourcing and contacting suppliers can take. If you want to start connecting with suppliers instantaneously, you might want to give Spark Shipping a go!
Spark Shipping features full product data integration, helps synchronize stock quantities, automatically routes orders to the best possible suppliers, provides tracking updates from your vendors, and sends your orders to suppliers automatically. That means more work is done in less time, which is a huge win for busy e-commerce business owners in the dropshipping space like you.
Etail Solutions
D2C E-commerce business owners are going to love Etail Solutions for its D2C order optimization. Etail Solutions promises 100% optimized order management, promising the best and most cost-effective shipping solutions for every order. Other customer reviews vouch for the service, because of its speed and high volume. If you want to minimize shipping time and get your products to reach customers sooner, it might just be the solution for your business needs.
Etail Solutions’ features include a centralized data repository, order optimization, sales channel optimization, network inventory optimization, and shipping optimization.
Dropified for Automated Dropshipping
Dropified is an automated dropshipping software that helps you find, import, and start selling products from popular marketplaces like AliExpress and eBay. It also helps you to sell more with promotional solutions available through video training and can automate your dropshipping process from end to end. It comes with advanced product research features and can even allow you to import product reviews, so your store gains credibility in no time.
With Dropified, you can also track your profits instantly at any time in the Profit Dashboard. Like many other automated dropshipping tools, it also helps automatically place orders so you no longer have to do it on your own in a manual manner.
DSers
DSers is an AliExpress-focused automated dropshipping tool that allows dropshipping business owners to process AliExpress orders quickly, and pay in bulk. It even provides round-the-clock customer service, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If you have multiple stores, it even comes with multiple-store management functionality – perfect for those who are looking to build up multiple income streams and diversify their dropshipping stores.
Spocket
If your customers are from the US or EU region, you’ll be delighted to learn about Spocket, which connects you with top dropshipping suppliers from those regions. This means products can reach countries within the region in lesser time.
Spocket is also free to try with no upfront cost, and you don’t even need to key your credit card details in. Try it out first for free to see if you like its features, including branded invoicing, locating the best deals on hot-selling products, and integration with huge platforms including BigCommerce and Shopify.
HubSpot Marketing Automation
Every successful business builds on strong, profit-generating marketing strategies. With HubSpot Marketing Automation, you can leave the heavy work to a trusty tool used by hundreds of thousands of businesses to reach more customers.
HubSpot Marketing Automation will be a great addition to your automated dropshipping suite of tools, as it can help with blogging, marketing analytics, lead management, landing page management, and launch, email marketing campaigns and A/B testing, Search Engine Optimization, Salesforce Integration, running ads and managing social media pages.
If you’re not sure how to go about running successful digital marketing campaigns, it’ll pay off to do some research into HubSpot Marketing Automation. It will make your life a whole lot easier, having a handy tool available to process most of the complex, manual tasks.
Moosend for Automated Dropshipping
Moosend is another marketing automation tool to help with automated dropshipping, but focuses specifically on driving powerful and successful email marketing campaigns. A results-driven platform, Moosend’s unique selling point is that you can reap all the pros of email marketing, but you don’t necessarily need to know how to code.
Moosend’s top features include advanced reporting features, a Drag, and Drop automation editor (which means you won’t need to code a single thing), email automation templates, and website and user tracking. The best part? You can even customize emails for customers – a feature that’s bound to drive your conversion rates, which means more money for your business.
ApiDrop
ApiDrop allows you to start dropshipping easily and sync your shop within a simple 5-step process. The tool also lets you import products all at once from a whole category, or an entire page of search results easily. It also promises to show you products that customers will certainly love, based on market data and trends.
Koala Inspector – A Must-Have Automated Dropshipping Tool
If you’re keen to start automated dropshipping, the one tool you cannot do without is Koala Inspector. Koala Inspector is completely free for life unless you choose to upgrade to higher-tiered plans that unlock more useful features.
Koala Inspector’s many selling points include a Shopify theme detector, which eliminates the tough work of having to look through many competitors’ stores to find a suitable theme, then having trouble identifying what that theme is. Koala Inspector also comes with a Shopify app detector that reveals the apps that your competitors are using, giving you actionable data at any time.
Koala Inspector offers you visibility into all of your competitors’ stores and even allows you to Export data in CSV format, a function that more than 80,000 users cannot do without. Enjoy the full experience with the Ultimate Plan for only $19.99 per month – a small price to pay for the jam-packed array of features you get unlimited Export CSV credits, find retailers credits, site traffic credits, and the ability to track up to 50 shops.
Conclusion
Dropshipping continues to be a widely-used and profitable business model even in 2023, and it pays to look into how you can get started, how you can automate parts of the process, and the best products you can sell to gain more customers.
Automated dropshipping is a great way to speed up your success in your e-commerce dropshipping journey, especially with handy tools like Koala Inspector. Download Koala Inspector today to start spying on your competitors and run a successful dropshipping store in no time!
