Hey all - OP here. I know drop shipping sites tend to illicit some curiosity (as well as a lot of skepticism) online, so I'm happy to answer any questions as honestly as I can here in the comments.
Dropshipping can be a great compliment to an existing software business, offering a nice way of increasing customer lifetime value. My wife and I develop & market CattleMax, a web app for cattle ranchers to manage their herds.
A few years ago, we were approached by a manufacturer who asked if we would become a reseller for their animal identification tags. We thought we'd try it out for a few months so we setup a store so our customers could buy from us online. Several years later, business has grown beyond just our software customers and we have launched another dropship store with another manufacturer.
I have a business I'm interested in selling–possibly in a similar manner.
I assume you'll be doing a detailed follow-up post?
http://ecommerce.shopify.com/guides/dropshipping
I'd also recommend DrewSanocki.com for some solid eCommerce / drop shipping material. (Disclose: He's become a friend of mine). He started a drop shipping business in the early 2000s and grew it to mid to high 7 figures before selling. Writes a lot of great stuff about eCommerce in general:
For solid eCommerce, would also recommend Andy Dunn's Medium blog / writings. Great insights into eCommerce that I've really enjoyed recently:
Hope this helps!
I started with $1,500 (for my first site, not this one. This one I invested a LOT in early on - not all of it prudently!) so you don't need a ton to begin, especially if you're willing to invest a lot of sweat equity.
But you do need a little bit to fuel the fire.
Downloaded your ebook to hopefully get a better look at what it takes, thanks again!
I think bare minimum you need to register a company which costs $10 or so, dropshippers you want to do business with expect you to have that paperwork. That's enough to get you started dropshipping on eBay or something similar. You'd definitely be smart to spend a little more setting up a site with a logo, but it's not hard to get Opencart running and you could create a simple logo with open source editing software.
If you really did a lot of the work yourself I'd say you could get an eCommerce site up an running for $20-30 depending on the domain name and hosting options (many of the lower cost hosts expect you to pay a year subscription up front for the lower cost hosting options, so it would make more sense to pay more in the beginning to get the lower rate).