People have been talking about automated dropshipping for more than half a decade now. But is it really possible to completely automate your online store?
That’s exactly what we are going to discuss today!
What is Dropshipping?
Dropshipping is an ecommerce fulfillment method where you don’t hold any inventory yourself.
Here’s how it works: when someone buys a product on your online store, that order is forwarded to your supplier, who then processes it and ships the product to the customer.
Since you don’t need to buy inventory in advance, launching a dropshipping store doesn’t require a large upfront investment.
Of course, you will still need to set everything up, which isn’t free. Plus, getting your dropshipping business off the ground will almost certainly require spending money on ads.
Still, dropshipping involves much less financial risk than going the white label or the private label route, which makes it particularly appealing for first-time entrepreneurs!
What is Automated Dropshipping?
We’ll be honest with you:
In our opinion, “automated dropshipping” is a misleading buzzword.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could launch a dropshipping store, automate it completely and then let it run on autopilot, making money while you sleep?
Yes, that would indeed be great, but the problem is that it is not possible at this point in time, nor is it likely to become possible anytime soon.
That being said, you can certainly use software to automate some tasks so that you would have more time to invest in growing your brand…
Automate Ideation With ChatGPT
It’s probably safe to say that when people talk about AI, they are typically talking about generative AI, specifically, about large language models (LLMs).
The most popular LLM out there is undeniably OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It’s an extremely versatile chatbot that can help you with a wide range of tasks, from writing essays to creating a custom workout program to figuring out what to pack for your upcoming vacation abroad.
We would argue that the best way to use ChatGPT in the dropshipping context is ideation: it can help you brainstorm ideas for niches, products, marketing campaigns, etc.
For example, if you know that you want to go into the health and fitness industry, you can ask ChatGPT to give you a list of 100 niche ideas.
And if you don’t like the result – say, if it gave you a list of 100 products as opposed to 100 niches – you can simply clarify your instructions and ask it to repeat the task.
Once you pick a niche, you can ask ChatGPT to suggest some product ideas. Then, once you decide what products to sell, you can ask it to help you brainstorm ideas for marketing campaigns.
Of course, not every idea that this large language model comes up with is going to be brilliant. Some may even be ridiculous. That’s to be expected.
However, it can generate so many ideas in such a short period of time that the sheer quantity means that there will probably be at least a few promising ones.
The general rule of working with LLMs is that the quality of the input is going to largely determine the quality of the output, so you might want to invest some time in learning prompt engineering.
This video by the productivity YouTuber Jeff Su can help you with that:
We recommend using the latest GPT-4o version for ideation. Both the free plan and the premium plan that costs $20/month include access to it, but the latter has higher daily usage limits.
Also, ChatGPT is not the only powerful LLM out there, Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini have similar capabilities. You might want to consider experimenting with all three to see which one you like the best!
Automate Content Production With Jasper
In theory, you can use ChatGPT to produce written content, but in practice, it’s much easier to do that with specialized AI marketing tools.
Our recommendation would be Jasper, an AI marketing platform that you can use to create product descriptions, landing page and sales page copy, ad copy, social media posts, blog articles and more.
In fact, it enables you to generate end-to-end marketing campaigns based on a single brief.
What’s especially great about this platform is that it allows you to create a company knowledge database with information about your industry, your niche, your target audience, your content guidelines, your brand voice, etc.
Whenever you ask AI to produce a piece of content, it will tap into that knowledge database. That way, you won’t have to repeat yourself every time you need something.
Here’s a quick overview of Jasper’s pricing plans:
- The Creator plan that costs $49/month/seat. It includes 1 brand voice and the core functionality of the app.
- The Pro plan that costs $69/month/seat. It includes everything in the Creator plan plus 3 brand voices, 10 knowledge assets, 3 instant campaigns, image generation and editing tools, collaboration tools and user management tools.
- The Business plan that has custom pricing and includes everything in the Pro plan plus a bunch of features that provide additional control and security. There’s also premium customer support.
We would say that if you can afford it, then going with the Pro plan might make the most sense because it includes the aforementioned knowledge database functionality. You can use the free 7-day trial to check it out.
Jasper is powered by several large language models. If you want to be able to effectively use this AI marketing tool, you need to be aware of the phenomenon known as “hallucinations”.
Basically, large language models sometimes make things up and confidently state them as facts, which can range from getting some minor details wrong to producing texts that are completely nonsensical.
At the time of writing, computer scientists don’t know how to fix this problem so you cannot blindly trust LLM output. Unfortunately, that is unlikely to change anytime soon.
Here’s what that means in practice: someone needs to proofread AI-generated content and manually verify all factual claims within it prior to publication.
Otherwise, you risk publishing misinformation, which can damage your brand image!
Automate Social Media Marketing With MeetEdgar
MeetEdgar is a social media marketing tool that allows you to schedule and publish content on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest.
It works especially well for evergreen content because you can create a content library and set up automated scheduling. You can use this feature to post links to your blog articles, YouTube videos, podcast interviews, etc.
Of course, if you have something time-sensitive to share, such as company news, sales announcements, product launch announcements, etc. you can schedule those posts manually.
This app also includes an AI assistant called Inky that you can use to produce written social media content. Alternatively, you can do it with either ChatGPT or with Jasper and then upload it to MeetEdgar.
Here’s a quick overview of MeetEdgar’s pricing plans:
- The Eddie plan that costs $29.99/month if you choose to pay monthly or $299/year if you choose to pay annually. It includes 5 social accounts, unlimited scheduled posts, 10 weekly automations, 15 monthly AI credits and 4 content categories. You can have 20 team members.
- The Edgar plan that costs $49.99/month if you choose to pay monthly or $499/year if you choose to pay annually. It includes 25 social accounts, unlimited scheduled posts, 1,000 weekly automations, 50 monthly AI credits and unlimited customizable content categories. You can have 20 team members.
It’s worth noting that both plans allow you to add more social media accounts for an additional fee as well as purchase extra AI credits.
There’s a free 7-day trial after after which you will need to choose a plan. Going with the Eddie plan probably makes the most sense, unless you are managing several ecommerce brands that each have their own social media profiles!
Automate Fulfillment With ClickFunnels + Zendrop
What is ClickFunnels?
Our software, ClickFunnels, is an all-in-one marketing platform that provides everything you need to launch, manage and grow an ecommerce business.
It includes an online store functionality, a library of store templates that have been optimized for conversions and a proven cart funnel template.
There’s also an email marketing functionality that you can use to collect customers’ email addresses and build your email list.
Having an email list will enable you to contact your customers directly whenever you want to promote a product, announce a limited-time sale or share exciting company news.
Finally, our A/B testing functionality can help you optimize your entire sales funnel for conversions and improve your profit margins.
By the way, building a cart funnel for your most popular product and then driving traffic to it with paid ads is the best way to grow an online store, so make sure to check out this video:
What is Zendrop?
Zendrop is one of the leading dropshipping apps that makes it easy for dropshippers to find reliable, US-based suppliers that process orders within 1-2 business days to ensure fast shipping times.
It has an automated fulfillment option. If you switch it on, the orders will be automatically fulfilled as they come in without you having to do anything.
There’s also the daily fulfillment option where you can batch incoming orders and fulfill them once a day.
Also, if you would rather fulfill orders one by one, you can do that as well. Fulfilling an order manually only takes a single click.
It’s also worth noting that the order data and tracking information are automatically sent to your store. Once the orders are shipped, the customers get an update.
Besides streamlined order processing and fulfillment, Zendrop also offers a bunch of other neat features.
For example, you can:
- Use product packaging with your own custom branding
- Add a Thank You card to every order
- Create bundles and subscription boxes
…and more!
ClickFunnels + Zendrop
We decided to partner with Zendrop to make it as easy as possible for our users to start dropshipping.
You can build an online store with our software and then add products to it via our Zendrop integration.
Some people say that dropshipping is dead but we would argue that there has never been a better time to launch an ecommerce business.
After all, the ecommerce industry has been growing steadily for a decade, consumers have gotten used to shopping online and you can learn everything that you need to know for free.
Dropshipping is the best way to get into ecommerce, though you should do it with the intention of eventually transitioning to white label and then finally to private label.
Is it as easy as YouTube gurus make it out to be? Of course not. You are unlikely to be able to afford a Lamborghini anytime soon, despite what their video titles and thumbnails might suggest.
Realistically speaking, if you launch a dropshipping store today, it will probably take you around a decade to build an ecommerce brand that you can then sell for seven figures, assuming that you are starting from zero with no relevant experience or skills.
But it is doable and that’s what matters. Time is going to pass anyway. So why not put it to good use?
Try ClickFunnels Risk-Free!
Let’s be real:
We are biased in favor of our software.
So we understand if you take what we say about it with a grain of salt.
Fortunately, we have a free 14-day trial, so you don’t have to take our word for it.
You can go and see ClickFunnels for yourself without any risk!
So what are you waiting for? 🧐