How to Sell on Shopify Without Inventory - 5 Best Methods

Want to sell on Shopify but avoid the hassle of managing inventory? There are several effective ways to run a profitable business without holding stock.

From dropshipping to digital products and affiliate marketing, these methods allow you to sell and scale your Shopify store with minimal overhead and maximum flexibility.

In this article, NextSky will show you the five best ways to do it.

5 Ways to Sell on Shopify Without Without Inventory

Sell Digital Products

Selling digital products has to be one of the highest-margin business models in the world. You don’t need to pay for costs such as packaging, delivery, or manufacturing.

Shopify stores that sell digital products don’t need an inventory. They can sell and distribute digital products to as many people as possible with little additional cost if any at all.

Digital products can include eBooks, courses, software, audio, video files, and digital art,.. People who buy digital products can get the products immediately and they can do that from anywhere in the world, as long as they have an internet connection of course.

However, selling digital products is not a business without challenges. The market is fierce as you are competing with people from all over the world.

And then there is digital privacy. People will try to get your product for free or they will even try to duplicate and make money from it.

Sell Dropshipping Products

Dropshipping is one of the most popular methods of selling on Shopify without inventory. You will act as a middleman, focusing on sales and marketing to bring customers to your suppliers. Your suppliers then take care of the rest of the fulfillment process. 

Anyone can start doing dropshipping. They don’t need to invest a big chunk of money in buying, storing, or making products. You only buy the product when you have an order comes in, which significantly reduces overhead and financial risk.

On the other hand, dropshipping yields a very low margin, unless you can get some really good deals with your supplier. Furthermore, you cannot control the quality and the shipping time of your products.

Sell Affiliate Products

Affiliate is another business model regarding products that you do not own. 

As an affiliate marketer, you will promote a company's product and earn a fixed commission based on the number of conversions.

The main difference between affiliate and dropshipping is that you sell dropshipping products under your own brand while you are merely promoting products as an affiliate marketer.

You can integrate affiliate links into blog posts, product pages, or reviews on your Shopify store, driving traffic to your partners’ websites.

However, you typically earn little commission for each sale so you need a huge amount of traffic to affiliate effectively. So if you are a content creator with a large audience base, affiliate is a great way to get additional passive income.

Sell Print-on-Demand Products

A Shopify store owner can sell print-on-demand (POD) products without inventory. POD products are varied, including mugs, photo books, T-shirts, posters, and more.

When a customer purchases a product on your Shopify store, the POD company you partnered with will fulfill the order and ship it to the customer. It is important that you choose a POD company that offers high-quality products and fast shipping.

You don’t have to worry about logistics with this business model and you can fully focus on creating stunning, unique designs to attract customers and get sales. 

Sell Services

Other than selling products, you can also sell services on Shopify, which doesn't require any inventory at all. 

A few popular types of services you can sell on Shopify include teaching, business, consultations, copywriting, fitness training, web design, and marketing.

Now, even though you are not selling a product, you still need to present your service as such with nice pictures, clear descriptions, and appealing offers. These factors will help you sell your services more effectively on a Shopify store.

How to Create a Successful Shopify Store

This article showed you how you can sell on Shopify without inventory. However, as I have pointed out, regardless of what you are selling, the most important factors are great user experience, quality products, and effective promotions. Here are a few tips:

• Improving your Shopify store and choosing the right partner for production and fulfillment will be the key to a great user experience.
• To make sure the products of your partner are actually quality, you can ask for a sample or buy their products to test them out yourselves before selling them.
• As for marketing, start out slow and focus on finding the best platform to do your campaign. This process is going to take a lot of time and effort so be patient.

>>>> Read more:

• Why Is There White Space In Shopify on Phone And How to Fix It?
• How to find Shopify stores: 8 Best Methods