In this post, you’ll learn how to start a dropshipping business in Nigeria from the comfort of your home.
Quick one;
Did you know that the dropshipping industry is expected to reach a market valuation of $557.9 billion before 2025 according to statistics on dropshipping?
This is just to show you the profitability of this business model!
The idea of dropshipping in Nigeria is a great idea, only if you know how to run it successfully.
The reason I captioned this title as “How to start a dropshipping business in Nigeria” is because it’s a whole lot different scenario when it comes to Nigeria.
Starting a dropshipping business in Nigeria means you have to think of the payment gateway for your business. Also, you need to know how to deal with suppliers and have your products shipped faster.
What kinds of products should you dropship?
And if you’re thinking of dropshipping internationally, then you should be aware whether or not you have to pay tax or register your company.
Lastly, you need to understand if you are going to pay a customs tax on all the product you’re dropshipping in Nigeria especially if you’ll be importing them.
These and more, are the reason I made the title “how to dropship in Nigeria”, because of the economy uniqueness and some rules and regulations guiding e-commerce business in the country.
So sit tight and let’s do justice to this together. If you are not subscribed to this blog, please do, to get more of this and join our new community on Facebook.
Let’ s get started shall we?
Contents
What’s Dropshipping & How Does It Work In Nigeria?
In the simplest form dropshipping is selling products without buying or having them.
This is how it works; after you’ve created an online store and added your product to it. When I mean product I mean pictures and descriptions of the product.
This is because you don’t have to have the product stock in physical.
And after this, once you made your sales, all you have to do is contact your third-party supplier (owner of the product) and send your customer address and pay the supplier from the initial money paid to you by your customer.
The supplier, in turn, makes the shipment to your customer. While you and your customer returned home happy.
However, if you are going to be using AliExpress to source for products, you don’t need to contact the seller.
All you simply need to do is go ahead and pay for the products and fill your customers’ details on AliExpress as the buyer.
Without questions asked the seller on AliExpress will have the product packaged, processed and shipped to your customer without them knowing it’s from AliExpress.
Pros and Cons of Dropshipping in Nigeria
Since we’ve been able to unravel how dropshipping works in Nigeria, now let’s talk about the good and bad side of the business.
This will help you to know what you’re getting into and how you can use them to your advantage to run a better dropshipping business.
Pro of Starting a Dropshipping Business In Nigeria
- Starting a dropshipping business requires a low start-up fee compared to other ways to make money online in Nigeria.
- You can test as many products online to find a winning product without incurring much cost
- You can work with multiple suppliers and sell different kinds of products in your store. All you need do is create a new category for the product and you’re good to go
- There’s no need to buy the product or stock inventory with dropshipping
- Your supplier handles shipping of products and all you have to do is receiving and forwarding orders to your supplier
Cons of Starting a Dropshipping Business in Nigeria
- You’re responsible for your customers
- Customer can be annoying when their product is delayed
- You are not in control of your product quality your supplier is
- The easiest way to get traffic is to run adverts
- Profit on each product can be small compared to buying them in bulk
- Selling directly to Nigerian might not be feasible
- Long shipping time from China to Nigeria
The key to success here is finding a good product and finding the right interest of buyers then scale your marketing to make the most of it.
But keep in mind, there could be one or two failures along the line but once you’re determined and consistent you’ll have a profitable result from your business.
Also, you might want to target international buyers instead to selling directly to Nigeria which is going to take longer shipping time.
Having said that, now let’s proceed to how we can start the business the right way.
How to Start a Dropshipping Business in Nigeria
Before we start let me quickly answer some of the frequent questions commonly asked about drop shipping in Nigeria.
- Do you need to pay tax dropshipping with AliExpress in Nigeria? The answer is NO! Paying of Tax is for residents in the US.
- Will you pay tax duty on products shipped to Nigeria? Still NO! Whatever amount you are to pay on a product will be clearly written on your supplier website. The shipping cost covers the tax duty.
- Do you need to register your company as an e-commerce business? The answer is NO and YES! When starting, you don’t necessarily need to register just to save the cost. But when your business starts booming and growing momentum then you should consider registering your business.
In addition to this, some payment gateway might require you to have your business register before you can start making use of their services. A good example is Paystack. and Stripe for receiving dollar payment.
That’s that about that.
So let’s look at the steps on how to start a dropshipping business in Nigeria.
- Choose a Product to Sell
- Find a Reliable Supplier
- Choose a Selling platform.
- Market your business.
- Start making money.
Step 1: Choose a Product to Sell
The first step to this is choosing the product you want to sell. Many people are often tempted to start selling anything they can think of. You should have this at the back of your mind that drop shipping is a business.
And like every other business, you need to do thorough research and have a business strategy on how to be profitable in your business.
One of the ways you can do this is by looking for winning products to sell.
Another thing you should have in mind while choosing your product is that you can’t just start selling any product you see. Try as much as possible to check the demand over-time for such products through the use of Google Trend.
It has to be on the market trend. That is, demand for it must be relatively high or at least very stable and the competition for it should be minimal.
You don’t necessarily have to have tons of products on your website to be successful in this business model. Your emphasis should be on hot products around a particular niche.
There are two actual ways to find product to sell. The first is via manual product research while the second option is using winning product research tools, some free and some paid.
#1: Manual Product Research method
There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, and I personally go with something that’s working already. The same thing goes for winning products.
Most people say it’s bad to sell what everybody else is selling but what they fail to realize is that, why is everybody selling it if they are not making profits?
There’s no need to be a product pioneer because most times you’ll be losing more money than you ought to make pushing a new product to the market.
But with already selling products, you can quickly plug in and get your own share of the market real quick.
So how do you find what’s selling already?
It’s very easy…
Just look for popular eCommerce store bestseller lists and you’ll be provided with goldmines worth of products.
Here are a few examples of popular e-commerce stores with a public bestseller list where you can use a winning product for your store.
Amazon Best Sellers
This should obviously be the number one on your list because Amazon happens to be the number eCommerce store out there.
Amazon has a huge list of best sellers literally for any category you could think of and the best part is that they are updated on an hourly basis.
This list includes branded and unbranded products you can explore as inspiration to find winning products to sell on your eCommerce website.
Wish Winning Products
Wish is another huge eCommerce platform you can use to explore winning products to dropship on your website.
One of the best ways to do this is to look for products with extremely high numbers of orders. Now, you shouldn’t need anyone to tell you that a product is doing well when they are having a huge amount of orders.
Let’s take a look at the product below. “Stainless Steel Grater” this product is over 300,000 orders already and counting.
This obviously is a great product to sell. So while browsing through the popular list on Wish be on the look for products with high numbers of orders and review.
AliExpress Dropshipping Center
The AliExpress Dropshipping Center is created for the main purpose of dropshipping. Inside the centre, you’ll have access to top-selling products on AliExpress.
From there, you can also find products you’ve found on other platforms like Amazon and Wish using the image of the product.
You can also analyze products by the seller and their logistic rating. This will provide you metric of how well a supplier on AliExpress is doing before you start selling with them.
#2: Winning Product Research Tools
This research method involves using winning product tools to find products that are hot in demand. What they do is they curate these products and provide it access to their users.
The most important thing here is they save time and most of them also provide ads insight on how to promote the products via social media.
Let’s talk about few of them;
AliDropship Premium Products
The AliDropship premium products are a list of hot selling products tested by the AliDropship team on their own dropshipping stores.
They pick potential winning products and run test adverts to find winners amongst these products using different ad copies.
Once they find the winner they then add it to their premium products list on a weekly basis. So users subscribed to it will be provided access to the products and the winning ad copies to promote the product.
Finally, these products are made available inside your WordPress dashboard, so you can easily publish them with a push of a button.
Ecomhunt
Another popular dropshipping product research tool is Ecomhunt. Unlike AliDropship, Ecomhunt allows auto import of these winning products to Shopify stores while the former works with WordPress.
Ecomhunt also provides a list of hot selling products for their users on a daily basis. They provide at least 2 winning products on a daily basis.
And these include ad video and ad insight like interest, demography on how to promote the products on Facebook.
Dropship Spy
This is another winning product tool that provides products to users on a daily basis.
It also provides a tool that lets you download real users reviews of products on Amazon that you can upload as product reviews on your website.
Dropship spy pretty much works the same way with Ecomhunt, so they are both similar tools that can be used to hunt products to sell.
Step 2: Find a Reliable Supplier
The place of suppliers cannot be over-emphasized in the dropshipping business. This is because they are the owners of the products you’re selling.
So, it’s safe to say the quality of your supplier determines the success of your business.
Trust me without a reliable supplier there won’t be a product for you to dropship. So you might as well take them seriously.
One of the ways to spot good supplier on AliExpress is by checking their seller rate. You wouldn’t want to go for a seller below a 90% score.
Most likely, AliExpress is this the best options for anyone interested in dropshipping from Nigeria. Except you have a reliable manufacturer or seller in Nigeria that’s willing to work with you.
In this case, all you’ll have to do is promote their products send orders to them, and they will be the one to handle the logistic within Nigeria.
Other than that, AliExpress is your best guess!
Products on AliExpress are relatively cheap giving you profit scalability on your business.
The good thing is over 80% of drop shipper use AliExpress so this might be your best choice in Nigeria.
However, using AliExpress also comes with its own challenges! Which of course is the issue of AliExpress long shipping time.
This is when questions like;
will your customer be able to pay before they receive their products in Nigeria? Or will they be able to wait over 30 days before they receive their package, will begin to pop up in your mind.
Then you’ll begin to wonder, is all hope gone for dropshipping in Nigeria?
Nah! You can always sell to international markets or delve in Mini importation business.
Step 3: Choose a selling platform
Now, this part is very important, because it determines how your website is going to look to your customers. And you know professionalism breeds reputation.
For this I’m going to list two platforms for building your store. They include:
- WordPress and
- Shopify
WordPress –
The good thing here is I already created an article on how to set up a dropshipping website with WordPress from scratch.
Click and open the link on another tab and read once you’re done and ready to create your dropshipping website.
There are several ways at which you can start your online store since there are several WordPress dropshipping tool.
This, however, makes the whole installation process very easy to do and straightforward. But before we start, there are other easy ways at which you can get started.
This includes getting a “DFY (done-for-you) dropshipping website” built on WordPress or get a duplicate of an already successful WordPress dropshipping store.
Which includes the same winning products on the website, product ads copies and also an installation package to install the site for you.
This is super great if you want to save time and stress of customizing and installing the new website yourself. Even great when you’re having little or no experience with WordPress customization.
Interested in getting a duplicate of the successful dropshipping website? You can learn more about that here!
Other than that, let’s begin with how you can start your dropshipping business with WordPress.
WordPress Dropshipping Set-up Requirements
For starters, you’ll need a self-hosted website on WordPress.org which entails a branded domain name and a web hosting account.
For this, you’ll need the following:
- Domain Name (The name of your website)
- Web hosting account (This is where your website data is housed online)
- SSL certificate ( To secure your website and makes it easy to accept payment online)
- WordPress Dropshipping Plugin (This is what makes your website a dropshipping website. More on this later)
- A Website Theme (This is what makes your website beautiful)
- Winning Products (This includes the products to sell on your store)
- Reliable Supplier (This is the supplier that owns the products you’ll be selling and they’ll be responsible for shipping of products to your customer)
Everything listed above can be categorized into TWO things which is the WordPress Platform and the Dropshipping Plugin you’ll be using.
#1: WordPress Platform
For this, you’ll need the first three requirements which are;
- A domain name
- Web hosting account
- And SSL certificate to set up your website on WordPress.
For more details, check my article on how to install WordPress on your website
Luckily for you, you can get both domain name and SSL certificate for free when you buy web hosting with Bluehost.
The Domain name usually costs around $12 upward and SSL certificate around $20 upward. But both are free when you buy your web hosting account with Bluehost which is usually less than $3 per month.
Why Bluehost?
Well, Bluehost is a large reputable hosting company that has been in business since 2003 and they are currently hosting over 4 million websites across the world.
They also have a special package with WordPress.org and WooCommerce which makes their one-click installation very seamless.
Bluehost has a 99.9% uptime guarantee, which means you can forget about your website slowing down.
Using Bluehost is going to save you time, money and a whole lot of stress. Below is the list of other reasons you should consider Bluehost as your hosting company:
- Great customer support 24/7
- Established hosting company
- Officially recommended by WordPress.org
- Free Domain name
- Pre-installed WordPress
- Free SSL certificate
- 30 days money-back guarantee
Now that we have that out of the way, the next step is to set up your domain name and web hosting account with Bluehost and use the one-click installation button to install WordPress on your site before we process to the next step.
For more details, check my article on how to set up your domain name, web hosting & install WordPress on your website
#2: Dropshipping Plugin
The remaining requirements like;
- Your website theme
- Winning product to sell
- And reliable suppliers…
Can all be categorized under the dropshipping plugin I will be introducing, which is no other plugin than the AliDropship Plugin For WordPress.
With AliDropship, you can create a full-fledged WordPress dropshipping website that is automatically integrated with AliExpress.
The AliDropship plugin helps you automate your dropshipping business by giving you access to winning and tested products that are killing it already in the market.
Not just that, they equally provide ads copies and interest targeting to promote the products on Facebook.
I mean… what could be more easier than that?
And once you start making sales the products are already linked to few of the top reliable suppliers on AliExpress.
Finally, the plugin also comes with free & paid themes that can be easily used to customize your dropshipping website.
For more details, check my article on how to start a full-pledge WordPress Dropshipping store.
Shopify –
Shopify is a self-hosted platform and a website builder that allows you to easily build a website under a few minutes. You can create a store under 30 minutes and start selling any kinds of products you want to.
This is one of the best platforms for dropshipping if you are a newbie or even a professional. It allows you to focus on your business by branding and marketing your products while they manage your store for you.
The good thing is they offer a 14days trial. You can set-up your store in a day and start marketing immediately for the first week.
With this, it’s possible to make profits within the 14days and pay your subscription even before the trial expires.
But then, just because I said so, doesn’t mean you can!
I will recommend Shopify for those with no experience with WordPress as Shopify is relatively easy compared to WordPress but more expensive.
That been said, let’s creat your shopify store.
#1. Create a Shopify Account
The first step in creating a dropshipping store is setting up an account with Shopify. It starts by visiting the Shopify website.
When creating an account with them, you’ll be asked to enter a store name. So before setting up your account, you should brainstorm and find a good store name.
And while doing so, also check if the domain name is available (go for .com TLD). Most simple domain names are already taken.
If you’re thinking dogtoys.com, it’s already taken. To find a good domain name that goes with your product niche, you can use the help of free domain-hunters like instantdomainsearch.
If you’re just playing around with it, you should get a generic domain name that you can use to test different product niche ideas.
But if you can’t still come up with an idea, you can add a name to it which you can change later on. However, you can’t change the Myshopify URL you get.
Your myshopify URL follows this pattern: https://yourstorename.myshopify.com. And it’s via this URL that you’ll be able to access the backend/admin dashboard of your store.
So once you’re done creating an account, you’ll receive an email to verify your account.
#2. Install Dropshipping Apps
Shopify in itself isn’t fun yet except you add a dropshipping app to assist you and automate the dropshipping process for you.
And here’s where it gets more interesting. There are a couple of dropshipping apps to choose from with the most popular being Oberlo.
Oberlo is an app owned by Shopify. And as expected, it works perfectly well with Shopify. Oberlo allows you to find trending products and also import these products into your Shopify store.
Instead of having to write your product descriptions from scratch, Oberlo imports the suppliers’ product descriptions into your store. All you have to do is to edit it to your taste.
The product images of the suppliers are also imported into your Shopify store so you have nothing to worry about.
It also suggests the price and average profit that can be made from the product. What’s more, it has a free plan to start with.
Here’s a breakdown of what you get from Oberlo:
- Unlimited product orders
- Oberlo Chrome extension
- Real-time order tracking
- Multiple staff accounts
- Free courses and coaching (a big plus)
Here’s how to install Oberlo in your Shopify Dashboard
- Log in to your myshopify dashboard
- Click on “Apps” and you’ll find Oberlo in the app store
- Click “Add App”
- Oberlo would request permission to import products into Shopify, accept, and Install the app.
#3. Add Products
Since we are using Oberlo as our preferred dropshipping app, you’ll need to add your products via Oberlo.
Right from your Shopify dashboard, navigate to “Apps” and click on “Oberlo”. This is after you have installed Oberlo on your Shopify dashboard.
This takes you to your Oberlo dashboard from where you can find products, add products, and import them into your Shopify store.
By now you should already have an idea of the hot product you want to dropship through the help of a product research tool.
However, if you have no idea, Oberlo has a “Find Products” feature that allows you to find trending and hot products in different categories. It also provides product statistics that show you the performance of the product for the past months.
To add a product, go to Products > Find Products
From here, you are directed to a catalog of products. Firsthand, you are welcomed by trending products.
These products are directly from Aliexpress and are automatically updated with their price. If you already have a product in mind, you can make use of the search box to find your product.
And if not, you can surf around and select a winning product based on the data provided by Oberlo.
Once you find a product of your choice, add it to your import list. You can add as many products as you want to your import list.
Once that’s done, click on “Import List” to get access to the products ready to be imported.
On the import list page, Oberlo allows you to make edits to the product title, descriptions, price, add it to collections, tags, and choose images to be imported.
Once you are done editing the product details and ready to import to your Shopify store, click on the “Import to Store’ button on the top-right as seen in the image above.
You repeat this same process for the rest of the products. You edit their product details, set your price and the rest of it, then import to store.
Between, to navigate to other product details like the description, click on the “Description” as seen below.
Interestingly, after importing the product to your Shopify store, you can still make further edits as well as re-edit your product details. To do this, click on “Edit Product on Shopify” to take you to your Shopify dashboard.
In your Shopify dashboard, you also get similar options for editing your product details.
#4. Create Collections
Collections are your best shot at making it easier for your customers to find similar products. With collections, you can group your product based on their category, type, availability, etc.
Instead of making it hard for your web visitors to locate a product, you add navigational links pointing to your collections.
For instance, here are some of the popular collections created by eCommerce store owners:
- Product category (dresses, shoes, electronics, etc)
- Customer (men, women, girls, boys, babies, etc)
- Availability (on sale, out of stock, etc)
- Season (Summer collection, winter collection)
So right after adding your products to your Shopify store, the next thing you would want to do is create collections for a good shopping experience.
Click on “Collections” which is under “Products”. From there you’ll find the “create collection” button at the top-right of the page.
Give your collection a name and you can also choose to add a description to the collection alongside an image.
Interestingly, Shopify gives you the option to either add your products manually to the collection or automate it by attaching a condition or conditions that guide Shopify whenever you add a product to the store.
There are already options and filters to guide you when creating your conditions. For instance, you can instruct Shopify to add products that fall under a tag name (maybe, “men”) or a “price”.
#5. Design your Store
Your store’s design can make or mar the success of your dropshipping business. By making a simple tweak in a store’s design, you can increase your revenue.
Little design details that you don’t pay attention to can cause you lots of sales. And that’s why there are Shopify design experts who focus solely on helping eCommerce businesses build a highly converting website.
However, it’s something you can do yourself. What’s more important is providing a good eCommerce experience to your visitors.
It all starts with your chosen store theme. Shopify offers some free themes to start with and you can also get a premium theme in the marketplace.
From the library of themes, choose a theme that would be a good fit with your dropshipping niche.
For instance, if you’re in the gaming niche, you need a graphics-oriented (and attractive) theme to match your audience’s taste.
#6. Customize your Theme
After selecting your chosen theme, the next thing is to customize the theme to your taste.
You have to customize the content, logo, and every other thing attached to the theme by default.
-
Edit your Header
One of the first elements you will come across is the header. Once you’re in the customization interface, click on “Header”.
At this point, you should already have a logo designed. Add your logo to your Shopify header. You can choose to add an announcement bar at the Header of your store.
The announcement bar is what you find at the top of most Shopify stores via which they promote their black Friday offers or discount promos. You can achieve that on Shopify with no code.
-
Edit Sidebar and Footer
Two essential sections you shouldn’t omit are the sidebar and footer. Depending on the theme you go for, there might be different elements under each section. Go over each of them and edit the content to fit your brand.
-
Add Social Media Accounts
Under the theme setting, there are a lot of other things you can tweak and edit like your social media accounts.
Shopify allows you to add your social media accounts to your store which makes it easier for your customers to find you on several social media channels.
If you don’t have a social presence for your dropshipping store, then you should add it to your to-do list and can always come back to include it in your store.
#7. Add Essential Pages
For every store or legit online business, there are some essential pages you can’t but create. Likes of your “About page”, “Contact Page”, etc.
However, for eCommerce stores, the list of essential pages also include “Shipping policy”, “refunds”, etc.
After customizing your store to your taste, before going any further, you need to come up with these pages.
An easy way to do this if you are stuck finding ideas is to look at your competitors or any dropshipping store in your niche. There’s no harm in seeing how their pages are wired.
Check out their shipping policy and modify it to suit your business. You can also do the same for the rest of the pages.
#8. Add a Domain Name
With all set, the next thing on the line is to add a domain name to your store. By default, your store’s address will look like this: storename.myshopify.com. It’s quite unprofessional.
For better SEO and branding purposes, you need to get a custom domain name to link your store to. For instance, torchbankz.com. Your domain name must be easy to remember and brandable.
Another benefit attached to adding a custom domain name is that it hides your MyShopify address which is linked to your admin login. It reduces the chances of hackers hacking into your dashboard.
So to do this, navigate to “Domains” under the “Online Store” menu as seen in the image above.
Once there, you can connect an existing domain (if you have one), transfer the domain name to Shopify, or buy a new domain from Shopify.
#9. Choose Payment Method
To set up your payment, click on Settings > Payments and find a suitable option for you. By default, Shopify pre-selects and displays PayPal as its first payment option.
But if this doesn’t work for you, there are a library of other options.
Shopify provides payment flexibility in case you are not comfortable with PayPal. There are several third-party payment providers like PayStack, CashEnvoy, 2Checkout Adyen, Bogus Gateway, Authorize.net, Airpay, etc.
While most of these payment providers have location-limits based on the country they operate in, Shopify does well by recommending payment providers based on which would suit you best.
Besides these third-party payment providers, Shopify offers alternatives like BitPay, Coinbase Commerce, PayGate, and PaySera.
#10. Choose a Premium Plan
Finally, at this point, if you’re using the 14-day free trial, you should be close to the end of it. And there’s a need to choose a premium plan for your dropshipping business.
Shopify offers you three paid plans to choose from; Basic Shopify, Shopify, and Advanced Shopify plan.
The Basic Shopify plan costs $29 per month and is best for beginners just starting with their eCommerce business. It offers you the basic features to start and grow your store.
The Shopify plan costs $79 per month and offers few features over the Basic plan. It’s best for fast-growing businesses that want more automation. This plan offers professional reports.
Finally, the Advanced Shopify plan offers all the features alongside giving you the least transactional fees. It’s best for businesses with a large team and big eCommerce brands. It comes at $299 per month.
Thinking of which plan to start with? You can choose between the Basic Shopify and Shopify plan.
To learn more, you can check my Shopify Dropshipping Guide
Step 4: Market your business
Obviously, without marketing, nobody is going to visit your store. You can’t just sit down and expect customers to come and buy from your store.
You have to take it to them. The best place to market your product is through Facebook and Google Merchant.
You can do this by creating a Facebook fan page after your domain name and create a Facebook business account to run your Facebook advert.
When running your Facebook ad, choose one of your cheapest products to drive traffic to store. Or use this method called Free Plus Shipping Model.
Once they make their first purchase they will naturally come back.
Other means is by collecting their emails upon sign-ups and send marketing emails on new products or discount offers on existing products.
Instagram ads and Instagram influencer do a good job in marketing dropshipping products too, you can as well check them out.
Step 5: Start Making Money
Like I mention earlier, to make the work easier, there is a dropshipping plugin called “The AliDropship plugin”. This plugin is specifically designed for dropshipping.
What it does is that it helps you to import product descriptions, photos, etc from your supplier website to your store.
This can be done with just a click and when a product is sold on your store, it automatically sends the customer details to your supplier. The only thing left for you to do is to pay the supplier.
After that, the supplier then ships the product to your customer address without questions asked and your customer won’t know the product is from a third party.
Dropshipping has proven to be a good residual stream of income when done the right way and following the proper channel.
So learning how to start a dropshipping business in Nigeria is not enough, you need to implement what you’ve acquired.
The Issue of Payment Gateway In Nigeria
The payment gateway is still the greatest hindrance to several online businesses in Nigeria. However, in the case of dropshipping, there are few ways around that. They include:
- Stripe
- PayPal and
- Paystack
Stripe – This is the most widely used payment gateway in the world even better than PayPal. Their seamless integration makes it easy to receive payment on your website in any part of the world.
By default, it doesn’t work in Nigeria. And to legally use it, you’ll need to register your business in the US. I’ve written a complete guide on how to register your business to use Stripe. You can as well check it out!
PayPal – this platform is one of the most widely accepted payment gateways but unfortunately it’s not visible in Nigeria. However, there has been a way around that. Which I’m sure few people are currently aware of.
If you’re not, I have a PayPal report on how to set up your PayPal account that receives payment in Nigeria. Although it’s going to cost you a fee, a tiny fee in that matter… You can check the price here!
Alternatively, you can use…
Paystack – this platform accepts payment by default only in Nigeria.
But if you want to receive payment internationally, you need to create an account with them and have your business registered with CAC and also have a corporate bank account in your business name.
After this, you can then send them a request for receiving international payment. If everything goes well, you can start receiving payments within 24 hours.
If you enjoy this post, let me know what you think in the comment section and do well to share with this with your friends and family.
That’s it on how to start dropshipping business in Nigeria.
FAQs About Dropshipping In Nigeria
Does dropshipping work in Nigeria?
Yes, dropshipping business works just like every other online business in Nigeria. You just need to know what works and what's not in terms of products and marketing
Does Shopify work in Nigeria?
Shopify works perfectly in Nigeria. You can use it to create your dropshipping store and at the same time sell your personal product.
Does Oberlo work in Nigeria?
Oberlo works perfectly with Shopify in Nigeria for starting your dropshipping business. You can get started with their free plan with your Shopify store.
Does AliExpress ship to Nigeria?
AliExpress ship to Nigeria. It can either be the free shipping or the paid shipping. The free shipping, however, takes longer than the paid shipping.
great article. This is one business u want to venture into. The question is how do i get a good and reliable supplier on aliepress?
Once you’ve decided on the product you want to dropship go to Aliexpress Create an account with them and browse the products. When you’ve seen the product, check the product reviews, 5star or 4star reviews is usually good and check the response rate of the supplier too. If it looks good click the product and contact the supplier that you want to dropship the product, tell them your location if they ship to that location and also negotiate price too. They may not reply immediately because of time Difference and if you don’t flow choose another supplier.
Thanks
One more thing. I just created a free shopify store but the issue now is that it’s store’s checkout is password protected,they say i need to pick a plan to disable the password. Meaning my customers can’t check out. Please help,how do i go about this?
Thanks for reaching out Emitheo, the password is to protect your store until it’s properly ready for selling so people won’t be able to access it in that state. You need to add product to your store, integrate your payment gateway, your domain name if you have one and test the check out process yourself before going live.
If you are ready login to your Shopify dashboard scrow down and click >> “Online Store” after that scrow down and click >> “Preference” after this scrow down to “Password Page” choose a plan, Mind you they won’t charge you until your 14days trial expired. So choose a plan and then disable the password and your store is live. But I will suggest you make sure your store is properly set-up and ready before you raise the password. Check this out for better understanding …https://help.shopify.com/manual/intro-to-shopify/initial-setup/setup-prepare-for-launch#step-by-step-place-a-test-order
thanks bro….it was super helpful.
You always welcome, if you have any further question don’t hesitate to ask me.
H
i thanks for the breakdown, please i want to know which payment gateway that can process USD is available for Nigerians using shopify or wordpress
Hi Becky, If you want to do international dropshiping in which you will be paid in dollars, I will advice you use a “PayPal business Account”,or “Shopify Payment” for Shopify platform and for WordPress you can use PayPal or stripe. There are more for WordPress.
I read your writeup which i find really helpful. Please I need more enlightenment on the payment structure I mean international dropshipping.. can I have your email address?
So much to read and learn from your blog.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for reading through
Thanks for this. My question is can I create an online store with aliexpress just like with shopify?
No you can’t. You can only be a seller just like how People Sell on Jumia and Konga. But you can create a WordPress website that can link directly to AliExpress through the use of AliDropship Plugin
Please you didn’t talk about the payment gateway for Nigeria while doing dropshipping in Nigeria.
Hi Maximus
it depends on the platform you want to use and your targeted location. For example maybe Shopify or WordPress and the country you to sell to. check this list for Payment Gateways in Nigeria and read this Review on shopify for their payment gateways. If you choose to target overseas country you can use PayPal or stripe, PayU etc.
Thanks for sharing, I will consider this dropshipping business but not until I’ve done a whole lot of researches on it.
Thanks for reading through!
Stripe does not have Nigeria.
Yeah, thats true and strive is not the only payment gateway in Nigeria. We still have PayU, Cashenvoy etc.
Please, how can one add products from aliexpress to shopify store?
Hi lexybar
You can do that by saving the products picture from AliExpress then re-edit it and also copy the product description also re-edit before you upload it in your Shopify. The easiest way to do that is by using the Oberlo plugin. Its helps you do that almost automatically and it has a 30 days free trial.
must there be an amount in my ATM card before I can choose a plan because it’s not verifying my card
Hello Bash
They’ve had a lot of Issues with declining MasterCards, so i believe that might be the reason. However, i wont suggest you add your billings if you are not ready to launch your business.
Hello Mr David,
What is the best way to receive my payments and buy if I decide to dropship to Nigeria and to US?
Which do you use that works best for you?
About the Payment gateway, My PayPal account is run by my cousin in US because PayPal does not receive payment in Nigeria. If you want to sell within Nigeria payment gateway is not an issue. You can use CashEnvoy,PayU, PayStack etc.
good day mr David,
Please if i want to do dropshipping on our Nigerian local food to people outside the country, how do i go about that? Thank you
Hello Joy
That’s sounds like a good idea exporting our local food abroad. it’s a two way thing. If you have a supplier of the local food already in Nigeria then you can drop ship from such person so far he/she agree to ship the food outside the country.
The second is, the product and your company has to be registered with CAC and get a Nafdac Reg for the product since you will be dealing with edible products.
If you have a ready supplier or you can easily get one, then its a doable business.
Feel free to contact me if you need my further help.
Great stuff you’re doing here. I must commend you.
This post really simplified the process. Though getting a list of payment gateways or a list of successful product for Nigerians probably in another post, would further expatiate on the topic.
All the same, many thanks brother.
Glad you find it informative. I believe i made a post on that already
I noticed you did not really expatiate on other ecommerce platforms like Jumia and Konga. Is the process the same on these platforms or totally different?
Any products on Jumia or Konga that takes over 20 days to be delivered is probably dropshipped. Because if it’s their product, delivery within Nigeria shouldn’t take that long. The beauty of dropshipping is that your customer will never knew it was dropshipped in the first place.
how many days will the product be shipped to Nigeria from Ali express… how many days do they ship to Nigeria
Products from China takes 21 to 45days to reach Nigeria. But most times 21days. You can check Jumia internation products and learn more about their shipping days to have a clue of it.
Is there a manual or video I can get on how to set up my shopify store. Please reply
I’m sorry i don’t have one to that effect at the moment, but will do something about it.
Hi David,
I really commend your article here. You are really doing a great work. Please how do I connect my PayPal business account to my GTB dollar account to receiving money through alidropship. I have this plugin for couple of months but could not even use it for just a second because I am getting stalked at payments gateway point.
Please assist.
Regards,
David
Hi Sake,
Thanks for the kind words, about the Gtbank domiciliary account, i currently don’t use it but have spoken with one of their agents on it before, and she said it possible to receive payment from PayPal with the dollar account but i don’t know how sure it is. She said one as to link the dollar card with the PayPal account. Am sorry i can’t be much of help, my own PayPal account is run by my cousin in the U.S
Hello good job.I approach Jumia for Dropship from overseas to Nigeria they refused.I have a company that focus on designer products.but will like to know any Nigeria ecommerce website that can accept Dropshiping I have over 10000 products to Dropship. Designer products authentic items.I want to create my own website for that but d money they are calling is much
Interesting! But most won’t be willing to deal if you don’t have a website. They need to know they can trust you.
Great work bro, very informative. I have the same issues as David and i’m thinking of letting my coz run my PayPal account from the US so that i can move on. I also have got the plugin for a month now.
I must commend your efforts here, well done sir.
Thanks bro
I’m glad i can be of help!
Great work here. My question is how do I tell people they will get their goods in 21 to 30 days. Im scared of nigerian mentality on ds issue.How have you been able to do it for nigerian market since most of ds goods are already trendy in nigeria.
Thats a Good Question, but take a look at Jumia international products and study their delivery span and people’s reviews about the product bought. If they can buy there, they can buy from you too.
Good research work David:
Please i will like to know how do you get your percentage of the money paid when you drop ship through aliexpress… because the supplier will get his/her own money paid before shipping it to nigeria.
Please explain as that area is not clear to me.
Thanks for your swift response..
Hi
Its a simple math.. Assuming you dropshipped a product for $20 and the actual price is $10 once you’ve collected your money from your customer… $10 will be the amount paid to your supplier while you keep the remaining profits for yourself.
Hello David,nice job you are doing here. Is it that the client pays to you first,before you pay to the supplier?
Yeah…that’s very correct.
It doesn’t work that way with Jumia, because jumia will put a call to them and the package will also include Jumia brand. Some customer might find it misleading.
Hi, Admin,
Thanks greatly for this. I am so glad and grateful.
The guide is well detailed. You have a good command of English too.
I will go on and try this out. If I have any challenge, I’ll get back to You.
Thanks once again. God bless You.
You always welcome
Wow! I find your site so educative. This will be my one stop site hence forth. Please I want to find out which payment gateway I can use with Woocommerce?
Thanks Nonso, I’m glad you find it informative. About your question you can use any of the payment gateway that works with WordPress.
Thanks once again for all yoir help so far. Your site is the most informative Nigerian site I’ve seen on this dropshipping topic.
Please I just want to know, how can I dropship from Ali express to the US?
I have a site, I have bought the alidropship plugin I have set up payU, asides the PayPal issue, what other Co Verna are there dropshippinh to US, you talked about tax, how do o go about it? Also must I register my company?
And how do I launch it there? I’m just perplexxed.
What are the steps to actually follow please. Thank you
The US is the easiest country to sell to. My personal store targets US because products shipping is usually faster there (10-20 days). You don’t need to register your company before you start and about tax, you’ll need to pay if you are living in the US!
I hope that answers your question if you still unclear you can reach me I’m always happy to help.
My brother thabks so much. I’m super duper greatful
Hello David you doing a very good job, my question is since your main target is the US.How do you get your products visible to the US market .what platform do you sell on or link your site to in order for US resident see you products. Or do you just run ad’s strictly for the US market
Thanks
When I mean target I’m talking about ads. Normally, you get to enjoy traffic from any part of the world if your website is optimized for search engine. But when you run ads you decide the country you want to target.
Hi, please hw can i access my PayPal acct, i have a sister in US…
Accessing it from here may flag the account unless you have a vpn installed
Hello Mr David, you are really doing a great work here. I am really impressed with your work it is informative and current. God bless you.
Pls i have a question bothering me. Here it goes, now assuming i have an online store with shopyfy for example and my payment gateway is paystack and my customers pay me in Naira how will i pay my supplier in Dollars?
Secondly, can the process of receiving payment from my customers and paying my suppliers be automated to manage multiple orders.
Thanks.
Hello Mr. Naasir
Thanks for your Kind words… about paying your supplier, you can either do that through Paypal or via your MasterCard. The dollar equivalent will be deducted automatically.
About your second question… If you are using Shopify Platform you can do that via Oberlo App and if its WordPress, you can also use Alidropship Plugin
Hi David,
Great job you are doing. Pleasevfinding a supplier like Aliexpress means registering as an affiliate I suppose before downloading and importing products into my website.
Nope… Affiliate as nothing to do with drop shipping, all you need to do is register as a normal member and import products.
David thanks for this informative trend… My question is.. The money i recieve from the customer is it going directly to my Nigeria Bank account?…
It depends on the payment Gateway you are Using… If you are using MasterCard, Visa etc. to receive your money from customers the money goes first into your payment gateway account. Let’s say Paystack. It’s from there you can now withdraw into your bank account.
But in other to do all this endeavour you have a corporate bank account.
Thank you very much for the write up, it was very helpful and educative.
Thank you, Margaret.
Hi. David
Please can you put me through the shopify. Do you have a book guide on it. I will glady appreciate it.
Not for now…but working on it!
Hi David…This write up is straight forward and very educative
I have a question, if i want to target an international market. Can i still access my website and account from Nigeria here normally or must I use a VPN. Or what are the things to register or do to dropship internationally
You don’t need to change your VPN at-all. All you need is a Payment Gateway that can receive international currency, which of course is PayPal.
For those interested in a Business PayPal account that can receive and send money here in Nigeria without the use of VPN should contact me.
Please I am interested in the Business PayPal account and I would also like to chat with you privately, I have a lot of questions to ask
Just sent a mail to you with my contact details. Thanks
please I need your phone number
Have sent an email to you with my Whatsapp line. You can contact me.
Hello, a word write up. I wil like to discuss with you on phone.
I want your whatapp number too
Please I am interested in the Business PayPal account.Thank you
good day can I get your number want to start what do I need.i want you to help me gradually as it is been set up
Seriously, It,s straightforward! Set up your website and install the necessary tools, although depending on the platform you want to use.
And also, please reserve some change for adverts!
Pls can i use my paypal to buy on instant gold nigeria and get the dollar equivalent in naira, also pls send me your contact information
Most of them are only willing to sell PayPal not willing to buy, but you can give it a trial, please reach me through the contact page.
Hi, I am in Nigeria, and I warm the to start dropshipping on eBay to clients in the US and Canada. How can I do that effectively, without them knowing my exact location
Hello Petrollena
Sorry, not sure exactly how you can do that as I don’t currently sell on eBay! But why trying to hide your location?
You can reach me through the contact page though.
Hello, thanks for this invaluable piece, I would like to get ur contacts number, can this business PayPal process international credit cards for customers willing to pay with their card?
Hi Josh, PayPal only process PayPal payment. For credit card payment you’ll need a different payment gateway. As such you can add up to two different payment gateways.
But Hardly will you see a regular shopper online without PayPal account because most people prefer paying with PayPal instead of exposing their credit card details.
Thank you very much sire, I’m well relieved with the later part of the response.. Can I get your whatsapp.? Thanks again.
I might not be available to respond to your chat, but i”ll return your mail if you send one. Thanks
I have been able to set up a US PayPal account. I want to know if it’s necessary to to upgrade to a business account or leave that way.
That’s great, Yeah, please upgrade to the business account to enjoy seamless transaction. Here’s quick tip on how to spy on other top-selling dropshipping products on Shopify and add them to your own store.
Lovely aticle pls when starting a dropshiping can i employ someone as in IT guy to work on it as a staff for my drop shipping buiness for me while i face some other buisness.
Of course, That’s one of the reasons Daniel from Uganda was able to make $50k per month via dropshipping business.
Hello David, thanks for the info and I appreciate every post. I would like to know how customers get their delivery and how infective is GPS in Nigeria?
Same way you get your product when you order a product from AliExpress. I’m sorry I don’t really understand what you mean by GPS?
Ok really interested in drop shipping business but am outside the country. Am also considering bringing in locally made stock fish etc. I have a supplier. Pls how best can I navigate this
Am assuming the stock fish are to be sent from Nigeria. If that’s the case you don’t need to dropship them. You could list them online and sell exactly from where you are. Or you could rephrase the question.
How can I dropship on Jumia and Konga?
Depends on how long you’ve been on the platform. Your total sale and current product should determine if you can or not.
Nice article I appreciate this info, can paystack receive international payment lets say USD
Nah, not at the moment
Thank you David for the information. You are really doing a great job. Have 3 questions.
1. I intend dropshipping from Aliexpress (China) to USA and Nigeria. The currency selected on my website would be Dollar. Can you help me with a PayPal and Stripe account to be integrate on my site for payment.
2. I wanted to use paystack as my payment gateway, when I registered with paystack I was made to understand that that they accept international and local currency but you said that is not true. Please clarify.
3. The currency tag on my products is Dollar, will my products selling well in Nigeria as most people don’t operate a dormicillary account.
Hi Stephen
This was the response I got when I contacted Paystack if i can sell abroad with thier payment gateway…
The above quote was the response I got from Paystack. Meanwhile, you can make your currency setting display both Naira and dollar if you want to target more countries other than US.
But you definitely need a PayPal or Stipe account to target the Internation market. I currently use PayPal though, and you can contact me about setting it up for you when you’re ready.
I want to actually sell weavon but I don’t have pictures of the hair…so what should I do….
As a personal product or Dropshipping? whichever, do Google image search for the name of the Weavon you’ll see it.
Good day, I want to start drop shipping to Nigeria. Now the cheapest means of shipment to Nigeria takes a month which is not customer friendly and as a newbie with low capital, I cant afford the expensive with minimal delivery time shipping company. What do u suggest I do?. Thanks alot
If adding the shipping fee to the price of the product won’t be too high for the product, you could give it a try. If not i’ll suggest you target other countries with ePacket shipping option.
Pls how can you help me to set up a PayPal payment gateway.
Which of the payment gateway, and on which platform?
Shopify…paypal
Ok ma, I sent a mail to you already
Great blog and very informative. Just came across the word drop shipping very recently and I wouldn’t have gotten a better information. Thanks bro. I will like to communicate with you more on starting up. Thanks.
Thanks for your kind words Jude.
In fact,Only few still knows about the drop shipping business model in Nigeria.
Hi David,
Thanks for ther good work.
I am interested in a Business PayPal account that can receive and send money here in Nigeria without the use of VPN.
Reply
Thanks bro for this humanitarian service,pls i will like to have your contact am ready to setup a drop-shipping eCommerce business.
Thanks.
Hi Olushola, thanks for this writeup. I have been thinking of dropshipping from Aliexpress and you have just helped to make things a lot clearer. I will need further assistance with setting up my website and integrating a payment gateway. Please can I have your number or email ? Thanks
You can reach me here… olusola.david@torchbankz.com
Thanks so much brother for the information you share.
I have a woocommerce site, I have bought alidropship plugin for woocomerce and I have setup payU payment gateway.
I am currently putting g up my products from Aliexpress but I didn’t come tact the suppliers myself.
I just used the alidripship plugin to pick up rated suppliers randomly. Please is that good enough?
Also is there any other thing I need to do before going live to dropship here to Nigeria?
Finally I want to know if Ali express wold ship the goods directly to my customer’s doorstep or they just deal with shipping to Nigeria while I have to find another way to get it to my customer’s doorstep? Or do they ship to post office instead?
These are little hitches I am still not clear on.
I’d so appreciate your feedback.
Thanks so much in advance.
Products will be shipped exactly to customer address added on your website. but you should know if it’s free shipping that will have to be the post office.
About going live! I hope you’ve re-written the imported product description from AliExpress because they usually include drop shipping in the description. Everything needs to be edited so as to be optimized for SEO and once all the required pages are ok you can launch your website.
Oh thank you sir. I’m really grateful
Please sir,
I have built a woocommerce based website for dropshipping. I also purchased the alidropship plugin which I have currently integrated into the site.
I have a few questions:
1. I have started adding products but I did not contact the supplies individually. I just used the alidropship plugin suggestions to add products from suppliers that had a rating of 90% and above. Do you suggest I start to call them one by one?
2. Also, is it okay to add products from different suppliers at random or to try to stick with one or two suppliers while I select amongst their various products? I need you advice.
3. How do I start selling to other countries? I mean asides payment integration, and tax concerns, is there any other thing I need to activate to make the website open to other countries, like registering the biz name under their own corporate affairs or something (eg in US for example)?
Thanks a lot for all teh wealth of information you bring us here. I am extremely grateful!
Hi Nonso,
I like your questions and I’m more than willing to help.
1. You don’t need to call the suppliers and about the rating, me I actually prefer 95% and above!
2. About adding products from various suppliers, you should know that if a customer buys more than one product on your store which is from multiple suppliers from aliexpress the products will arrive differently in a different package. My way of reducing this is to import more than one products from a single supplier so far the are good products. So if the product bought is from a single supplier they will arrive in one package. but that doesn’t mean you should limit your products to one supplier.
3. You don’t have to worry about the business name. but you do need to worry about registering your business in Nigeria in other to be able to use payment gateways. currently, I use a verified PayPal and Ravepay for my payment gateway. The “ravepay” was a new development I discovered lately, they can process dollar payment for you.
Wow. I’m so grateful bro.
Infact you’re a heaven sent. God bless you for your rich info you dish out here. Thank you.
Please, Can I contact you privately on olusola.david@torchbankz.com?
Yeah you can
Hhello David
Thanks for this article,just getting to know about dropshipping and I would love to go into it,pls I need your assistance. How do I reach out to you
You can reach me here olusola.david@torchbankz.com
Great post here and you have taken time to reply all comments and questions. I will want to start with the shopify option since i have a very low start up capital, but my challenges are the payment gateways I don’t have a current account and I also want to know if I can do it from my phone as I don’t have a PC now. I will also appreciate if I can get your whatsapp or phone line to contact you.
Hi Chris
You can’t run your dropshipping business via the phone, it’s very limited. I’ll suggest you until you get a PC
Please i am new to dropshipping, I had the interested and I was looking up to internet for it. Then I found the article. Please how can I contact you personally, I need assistance
You can reach me through my mail Address
Please I will need to have your whatsapp number so you can put me through as a newbies in the business.
You can reach me on my mail I’ll respond to every of your question
Thanks for advice, help me out shopify or wordpress woocommerce for a beginner like me
For a beginner with no prior experience Shopify is always better because it’s easier to understand for those starting for the first time.
But personally, I prefer WordPress+WooCommerce.
Thanks David for this post, It’s very useful to me. Please can you share with me your email so we can talk more. I have questions though majority have been asked by others and answered by you. I need your email so I can contact you as I begin the process. Thank you
olusola.david@torchbankz.com
Hi,
Can I send you a mail to clarify some things about dropshipping please?
I would like to start a dropshipping business and the fact that you’re willing to answer questions is amazing! Thank you for the help!
Please, you can!
Thank you very much for this wonderful post, please what payment gateway is most suitable for Alidropshipping when selling internationally?
For AliDropshiping, The payment gateway available for Nigerians is PayPal and RavePay(credit card)
But we don’t use PayPal in Nigeria or is there anyway I can use it?
Yeah, you can open the verified one that sends and receive money in Nigeria.
thanks for the breakdown
You’re welcome sir!
Hi david, although i have sent you a mail but i would love to get an answer to this questions
1) can I drop-ship and sell on jumia directly if I don’t want to run my own website
2) can I have my store targeted on multiple countries at the same time like US, Europe, Nigeria and so on
3) fro your experience is there a market in Nigeria for drop shipped products?
Yeah Danny, just like I replied to your mail you can target as many countries as you like so far you are using PayPal because it’s almost accepted all over the world.
You can’t drop ship on Jumia and about Nigerian market, it depends on your strategy and probably marketing skills but selling abroad is more preferably as you can use the ePacket shipping option which increases your time of delivery, unlike the normal long shipping.
Good day olu
Can i use payoneer as my payment gateway if so how do i integrate
Hi Donald,
You can’t at the moment
Mr, David
I have sent you series of Email but no response from you please try and drop your number lets be having a whatsapp chat with you please, i have a lot of clarification to make in respect of this issue of Paypal, i have not open a paypal account before this is my first time so for me to receive money in Nigeria, should i indicate my location when filling the forms which is Nigeria. also do i need to have a Dollar account from my bank? to link it into the paypal account?
Sorry about that sir, please message me again I’ll send you my phone digits.
Let me do a little clarification about the PayPal payment gateway.
If you are collecting money via PayPal do have in mind that you can only pay your supplier via PayPal if the products is to be shipped to US or some few other international countries.
There are some countries that you’ll have to pay your supplier via credit card.
For example someone bought a product on my store in Nigeria and Paid via PayPal, but I was only able to pay my supplier via my personal credit card.
Because the PayPal payment option is not available for product sold to Nigeria. However, I still make the normal profit.
You don’t need a dollar account to run PayPal you just need a valid credit card to verify it.
Mind you, if you’re talking about the normal PayPal account in Nigeria that one is limited. It can only send out and can’t receive money.
So what payment options do you advised i use on my shop because i actually needed a payment method that can receive payment from any part of the word outside paypal since paypal cannot receive payment in Nigeria.
Try RavePay. Although I haven’t have much success with it. I just started using it too. But they do process dollar payment.
Hi.
I just came across your post now. Very detailed! However I hope you wouldn’t mind answering some questions I have. I would really appreciate It!
I want to start an online store with the dropshipping business and even though I stay in the UK, I am a Nigerian and my target audience for sale of the products is Nigeria as I feel it will be the best market for the products. My concern is this,
1. Can payments be made in Naira using one of the payment gateways available as you have listed in the post so the funds go in my Nigeria account even if I’m creating the store from the UK
2. Will registering the business with CAC in Nigeria help with this
3. Will I still have to pay tax for the online business here in the UK even if its just the store running/management I do here but transactions/market is in Nigeria.
Thank you so much.
3.
Hi Tinu,
If you are using a payment gateway from Nigeria linked to your Nigeria Bank account then you don’t need to pay Tax to the UK government.
So far your payment is not passing through any of their financial institution I think you’re safe from paying tax to them.
If you are using Paystack as your payment gateway you can easily collect payment via naira currency from your customers.
And yes, before you use Paystack your business must be registered with CAC.
I hope that settles your questions
Hello Mr David, I’ll like to confirm something in private please drop a contact…
Send a mail to me!
Mr, David
I have sent you series of mails but no response can you drop your number lets at least have private access to you please
Tony
Sorry about that sir, I just replied your mail now you should see my contact details there.
Nice write up, please I’ve been trying to find out a way to go about the delivery time considering the fact that products from AliExpress take as much as 25 to 30 days to get delivered. What’s your best solution for this?
If your targeted country support ePacket shipping option then try and use it. That’s still the best means for now. Except you’re willing to pay for shipping fee at the expense of your profit which is not advisable.
Cool… I’ve downloaded the e packet extension already, but the price I’m seeing for delivery still seem quite high. Is there a way around it? Or am I getting something wrong?
If you are choosing products with ePacket some might be free shipping and some might not. Most I see is around $2-4 for ePacket if not free at all!
Probably the one you see are normal shipping.
Hello David,
Thanks for the pretty extensive write up on drop shipping and for taking the time to answer questions that further clarify questions on the matter.
I have a few of my own and hope you can help.
I am based in the UK and looking at setting up a dropshipping business in Ghana
1. Can one drop ship in Ghanaas your write up is about dropshipping in Nigeria?
2 I am aware paypal is not available in ghana, so what payment gateway would i use and how do i go about that receiving payment from customers in Ghana. Would they be able to make a payment to my personal paypal account or i have to set up a business paypal account here.
3. Can i set up the business ie shopify account here with the target audience for ghana?
Kind Regards
C
Hi Castim,
I believe you can sell to Ghana if you want to. About the payment gateway… Ravepay is available for Ghanaians on Shopify.
So with that, you can even sell outside the country if you want to. Because ravepay equally process dollar payment too.
You don’t need PayPal to receive payments in Ghana I’ll suggest you go for the local payment gateway.
And while targeting Ghana I hope you’ve put into consideration the shipping time.
Thank you so much for the wealth of information you make available to us on your blog and even your commitment to answering every question we put up in the comment section. We are super grateful.
My name is Nonso, I have asked a few questions on the comment section and gained new insights from your answers.
Like I said before, I have this e-commerce site set up on woocommerce with alidropship-woo setup by me. I plan of dropshipping specifically female underwear to Nigeria.
You’ve made me understand that how I do not need to call each supplier individually, how you choose more products from one supplier to make the shipping and packaging uniform, how that I can sell in US without tax issues since I am not Resident there.
Based on these:
1. I am thinking of changing my site from selling in Nigeria to selling in the US. To help with fast shipping too as well as profit margin.
2. On my Nigerian site, I try to compare my prices with Jumia’s “shipped from overseas” items are sometimes still cheaper than mine, despite trying to greatly reduce my profit margin to just 500 naira per item. Is 500naira to big a margin from your dropshipping experience what do you think sir?
3. Trying to be as cheap as possible was my market strategy however, in trying to be cheap, I have been settling for cheap products at 1 – 2.5dollars that I’m scared may turn out to be of inferior quality. These are bras, lingerie, panties just all that feminine underwear niche. What are your thoughts please sir? Is it better to go for more expensive items with higher profits or cheap items with lower profit margin but larger number of sales?
4. If I set up the dollar currency to sell in US, is it okay to just concentrate on US alone? So I can scale up the prices or go for better superior products because I’m afraid the US audience may not value goods that a too cheap and maybe they may write them off? Or do Americans too go for very cheap China products From your experience?
5. Finally you said you use a verified PayPal, does it mean PayPal now works with Nigerian accounts too? Or you refer to someone else’s PayPal over there which you use?
6. As for the “ravepay” I’m grateful for your info I will read up more bout it and see how to come up with one.
7. In summary I’m thinking of forgetting the Nigerian audience andfocusing strictly on US audience with this site. What’s your take sir? Is it worth it? Or I should run both with same the pricing formula and same cheap products?
8. Lastly I am also trying my hands on mini importation biz. Any good piece of advice please?
Thanks a lot bro.
regards,
Nonso
Hi Nonso
This is some serious load of questions. First thing first, don’t compare your market with Jumia you’ll end up losing. Personally, I prefer selling to the US and I believe the reason behind that is obvious.
I order a product from my store to test the shipping since last month the product is still in China… and paying for the shipping to Nigeria is going to rip you apart.
So it’s better you sell abroad using the ePacket shipping option with AliDropship Plugin. Then about the payment gateway i heard paystack now process dollar payment although i haven’t look into that. You could look into that yourself.
About the price settings use this plugin … Dropship.me its free with 50 free winning products. The plugin is a complementary plugin to AliDropship plugin.
Once you’ve downloaded the plugin use their recommended price. Then about adverts try and create social media accounts around your store, this way you’ll enjoy free traffic once they are authoritative. You Can use the Social Rabbit Plugin for that.
Finally, about mini importation … you can try it out too.
Good day David, I really do like this post. Very insightful. Pls do coonect via mail with your whatsapp I’d. I have a question.
I want to dropship in nigeria from from but my fear is the delay in getting the products to customers here in nigeria which takes about 21-40 days. Time is money and most customers can’t wait that long. How can I go about it?
Ok, I’ll reply your mail
Hi. Please how can I reach you for a practical guidance through this?
You Can send me a mail
Amazing write up. I am up for this.
Thanks, I’m glad you up for it!
You really did a great work here, thanks for the write up. Please i do need some guide, your email address will be of help.
olusola.david(at)torchbankz.com
With what have read so far in the comment section dropping shipping to Nigeria is not a good business or am I wrong
Not if you have a supplier close by!
How would I tell my supplier to wait for 30days or more
Your supplier or customer?
Good morning, I am so much bless to come across your write up, it really enlightened me on what I have in mind, which is dropshipping. First, I will like to have ur contact for further assistance from you.
Secondly, in ur response to a comment, you said ‘not if you have a supplier close by’. My question is, how close is aliexpress in this regard? Thanks.
Your contact is very important to me, please.
AliExpress is not close. Goods take up to 30 days to deliver in Nigeria with AliExpress.
I find this to be very informative, I’ll advice other readers to try and read through all the comments and replies to get even more insight about dropshipping.
I’ve been watching videos and equipping myself mentally to start this business. As easy as it sounds please bare in mind that the market is very saturated and it will do you more good to do a thorough research before starting.
It will also be nice to create a telegram support group for us to interact and discuss potential products to dropship. Thanks
Hello sir am having issues with my drop shipping business . have already build up my dropshiping business. And have lunch my website. I can show u my website if you want. But the challenges am having presently is that Facebook always block my account when it come to opening page and advertising . in fact have opened up to 10 Facebook account with the a of marketing my droppshipping business but yet Facebook do block them. Plz is the courses of it and the solution to it. My aim is to sell to USA and have already channel my contact to USA in my web and my droppshing account. Sir my coursing will handle my account. I will appreciate it if u can contact me to my email
I’ll suggest you read through the Facebook policy page. Because it seems there’s something you’re doing wrong.
Really wanna thank you for the write up.
Pls want you to walk me through, I want to start a dropshiping business.
Thanks
Ok bro
Please email your contact. Wish to contact you about dropshppin
olusola.david@torchbankz.com But, I’ll rather you drop your question here so others can learn from it.
I really every bit of your explanations on dropshiping pls i would like to have your number,since I would like to own a dropshiping business too.thanks
Hello David first I will like to thank you for giving this information I don’t know how to start am a student this especially with the 14days trial please also how will I start making aliexpress or other online my suppliers since am registered with shopify please
The Oberlo app will link you with Aliexpress
Plx reply to my question plz
send a mail to me at olusola.david@torchbankz.com
Nice work my question is this can you find suppliers on oberlo too? and if so which is better for a beginners aliexpress or oberlo
Both Oberlo and AliDropship connects you with Aliexpress.
It just that oberlo works on Shopify while Alidropship works with wordpress site.
hello can i dropship from ali express to my jumia seller acount? if yes how?
No… you can’t
Great work you are doing here bro.super proud of how you graciously gave detailed explanations plus well answered questions. God bless you bro. Not every1 can give this much information considering how saturated the market is becoming. I have learnt quite a lot reading word to word plus all the questions and answers. I would say I am 80% set to start up my ecommerce business.
Just a few things to clearify:
You talked about paystack as a payment gateway and I also read you need a gtb dollar account but the business have to be registered with cac to use paystack..well that is out of options for now. I intend to use PayPal but how can I open a verified business PayPal account that can receive international transactions with no limits. You also said I have to pay my suppliers with PayPal if I am getting paid wit PayPal. Can oberlo app automatically make all those payments without me doing them manually? Considering huge sales.
You said people in Ghana can use ravepay for international payment since it processes dollars. Will my customers pay with PayPal or credit card with that option?
Can I use both PayPal and ravepay as payment gateway supposed I am in Ghana?
How can I pay my suppliers automatically if I am being paid with credit cards for people without PayPal. Or I have to do it manually?. Many more on my mind but please answer this ones for others to learn. I will still mail you personally
Hi Jerry
About paying suppliers not all of them do receive PayPal, some receive and some don’t. However, the best solution to this is to have some money in your credit card in other to pay supplier at ease.
About Oberlo, the App works semi-automatically. Once you receive orders on your store, you still need to push the ‘Order Button’ before its sent to AliExpress. But this time you won’t have to write your customer details manually the app will do that for you.
For the Payment gateways, you can integrate both PayPal and Ravepay to receive payments on your website, and most times i do have access to my PayPal funds immediately after payments.
I’ll suggest you get my eBook on How to set up a PayPal that allows you to receive funds either in Ghana or Nigeria.
Thanks alot, you are so kind for giving out all these information for free. Your site is very educative, I have a lot to learn from you.
Thanks Destiny. I’m glad you like it!
Please how do I get PayPal business account in Nigeria.
You talked about cooperate account is it a domiciliary account?
A Paypal business account not a dom account here in Nigeria
Bro thanks a lot for a detailed information you have giving, I really took time to read every question and answers here I love your patience and you are kind hearted, a great teacher, God bless you. I never new biz like this exist just came across it yesterday, got registered with Shopify today it was on the process of making a research I came across your site. Pls sir my questions are how do I get a business pay pal account in Nigeria and how to receive payment from my pay pal to my Nigerian account. Thanks
Thanks for this detailed write up. I really learned a lot from it. God bless you.How can I get suppliers in US? Thanks.
Thanks very much for your time spent in writing about dropshipping.. I really gained from it. But please, is it possible to add dropshipping business together with selling my own products?
Of course you can
You did a great job in drop shipping made simple here, especially your time in answering or responding to messages. Thanks God bless you.
Please can I use my individual bank account as gateway for payment on paystack or on any online store as a beginner?
Thank you.
Paystack will do
Thank you so much for this well articulated info about dropshipping. As we all know the problems with dropshipping in Nigeria is payment gateway and delivery time for Nigerian buyers. I will be glad if you can help me in this area. You can drop your contact so we can talk more on this.
Mr David, I must commend your effort to enlighten the public on the potential of e-commerce business. I have learnt a lot from the article. God bless you bro.
PLS I NEED YOUR NUMBER OR WHATSAPP SO I CAN CONNECT WITH YOU PERSONALLY. THANKS!
Goodday sir,i found your site very informative,but i’lld love a one on one chat with you as somethings are still confusing
Send me a mail
Thank you bro. Very helpful. But I will need more guidance later. How can I reach you.
You can send me a mail
I hate reading long posts and I had no idea when I finished reading this all. I am really disappointed in myself for seeing all of this in 2019 instead of 2017 nevertheless I must commend you for the good job, your site is very informative. Thank you for the time-well-spent in writing all of this to educate people. I am going to bookmark your blog and also subscribe to your mailing list.
Nevertheless, I would like to know you in person, we can start with an email, kindly reply me via email so we can keep in touch.
Thank you once more…
Thanks for the commendation Victor.. ofcourse I’m always open to new relationships
Hi, i am really impressed with what i have read so far. i have a personal shopper account with AliExpress; while i was reading your write up, i was also going through my AliExpress account to understand better and other attached site too. but when i check my ship from column, i notice that there is no option of USA from the drop down. I only have the option to ship from Nigeria or China.
May i ask what the issue could be?
Question 2: How can i turn my personal account on AliExpress to a dropshipping account? do i have to open a different account for dropshipping?
The “ship to” US will be there, probably you should refresh your account and check again or if you have the AliDropship plugin you’ll see everything clearly with the help of the plugin.
You also don’t need to open another account on AliExpress for Dropshipping. The one you already have is ok.
Thanks for sharing this article, because it work for me, immediately I follow the instructions.
Thanks
Thanks for the depth of quality information you share on this platform. Please I’ll like to know how will it cost me or better still what is the budget for the entire drop shipping business I.e. cost of domain name, hosting account, WordPress or shopify and all necessary plug-ins to make the business realizable. Thanks again for the selfless effort
This will article will be helpful for that https://torchbankz.com/cost-starting-dropshipping-business
I have a business center where I do online registration for GCE, NECO, NYSC etc. Please can I create an ecommerce website for it?. Thanks
i don’t understand for your business or to start dropshipping?
Nice one bro… You’ve saved some of us a lot of research work with your resources. A lot is learnt. I would like to create a landing page and use the URL to some of your resources as a lead magnet if you don’t mind. Wish you the best.
Hello there, this is awesome! thank you so much for sharing your ideas in this article.
I am based in the US but I want to start a dropship business in Nigeria. I see a huge market for the products I have in mind.
Do you think its possible to have a dropship market in Nigeria without my presence? I also need your help to recognizing other avenues to market those products in Nigeria.
I will appreciate your response and further communication via email if you don’t mind.
Thanks,
Delightsome
It depends on the Supplier you’re going to be using.
If you have a perfect supplier readily fulfil orders for you, then you don’t have to be in Nigeria .
Thank you, I Really enjoyed reading this. My question is do you have a guide for dropshipping internationally
It’s the same process
How do I get you contact? I have like a dozen questions on my mind right now
You can ask them right here… I’ll attend to every one of them and others will learn from it too
Hello, thanks for this awesome message. My question is, if for example an item on my dropshipping store costs just #1500, and an order is made on that item(1 item), is the supplier going to produce and ship just that one item of #1500 to the buyer?
i usually advice international market
Please how can I get a supplier in Lagos. tanx
I really appreciate your for this post because is helpful and timely
By running adverts
I need a training on Dropshipping and Shopify. I need some with very good experience in this to teach me. Or if there is training center in Lagos. I will pay for the service. Thanks
Adeolu send me a message eejiofor30@gmail.com
Hello, thanks for this awesome message. My only question is this, if an item on my drop shipping store cost just #1500, and a buyer place an order for just one of the item, does it mean the supplier/manufacturer will produce, package and send just that one item which cost just #1500 to the buyer?
Please do you want the supplier to send what you didn’t place order for?
All of these is dependent on the type of store you have. When someone places order for an item on your website, does he pay for shipping? Or the #1500 includes shipping fee?
If someone has successfully placed an order on your website for an item for #1, you have to ensure the supplier delivers that item to the customer. As a dropshipper, you are the middleman between the supplier and the buyer.
Good luck!
I think you should clarify your question.
i think that is where we need how this thing works in practical considering every circumstances.Thanks.
Thank you for this guide sir please sir when you want to dropship internationally did you need to include your address there because if some one from united states see your address hope that won’t change their mind from buying on my store
You can use a virtual address for that.
Please do you really think I can fully depend on dropshipping to foot my bills??
Nice writeup sir..i am totally new to all this please do you have a practical class where there could be interaction and do you mentor people in this business sir.
Many thanks
Not yet, but working on it. Thanks!
Hello boss, please can you mentor me on how to start a dropshipping business …
I’ll do my best…
Hi. Thank you for this article.
I am finding it difficult getting a payment gateway. I’m about to launch an online store on a new platform (not listed in the article). The only thing left is how to receive payment. I registered with Paystack but my business isn’t registered yet so I’m not sure if I can get International payment.
What payment gateway did you use while starting and which is the best for start ups?
You can use Paypal or stripes for international payments
Great Article,
Please in Nigeria, how do you get the ordered products straight to the customer?
I understand that AliExpress has different shipping method to Nigeria…eg FedEx, etc. Using FedEx to ship an item of 10$ might cost 100$ or more..
Can you advice of a practical way to get this product to Nigerians who placed order on website at the cheapest and shortest time…
Thank you..
If you want to dropship in Nigeria using AliExpress, it’s better you buy the products upfront… using the mini importation model
Guy.
You’re on point…where have you been all the while I’ve been waiting time on YouTube trying to figure out what to do with drop shipping,
God bless you.
Would like to know you more.
Thank you again for work.
What’s the different between dropshipping and mini transportation
Dropshipping requires no Upfront while mini importation requires you buying products upfront
I want to say a big thank you for saving me a lot of headache. I want to start dropshipping in Nigeria but the reputation as a country and the payment gateway as been my concern. Your article has done justice to that. I will definitely follow your page for subsequent info. Thanks a bunch 🤓
Thanks for your blog on dropshipping.
I would need your advice on importing products.
I want to dropship products from China and would like to know how I can use AliExpress to get the products from my supplier to the warehouse of the 3PL (Third party logistics service provider) i would be using.
Please advise and respond as soon as possible.
Thanks and best regards.
FRANK
That’s where dropshipping tools and plugin I talk about comes into play.
Thanks David, you are a wonderful teacher. i followed you up and started a blog. you are presenting another clear coaching here on dropshipping. I appreciate this article, go over it again and think about starting just as i followed your steps on how to start a blog. Thank you.
How many hours does it takes for the supplier to deliver the goods within Nigeria?
Usually long… around 3mnths if it’s free shipping
I really love your writeup its very very educative….but I have a question…let’s assume okay now I have starttwd my own website with shopify…I have everything arranged and settled including the aliexpressplugin….I am able to advertise my products on Facebook ad and then I get customer who orders a product… The customer pays and I go back to aliexlress to dropship… The question comes here….most of these products take at least 10-20 days to ship…won’t that be very inconvenient to the customer…it may even make the customer to think my products are scams as it takes too long too deliver
Not if you’re selling to Nigeria. Shipping is usually faster over there compared to Nigeria
Nice write up!
Kindly help clarify my questions?
1. Can I build a dropshipping store to sell to the Nigeria and Us market from one website?
2. I understand the shipping time takes time here in Nigeria, is the shipping from china door to door… Like that in the US?
Thanks!
Your best guess is to sell to the US. Their shipping is door to door.