Is dropshipping a good idea?

[mandinga]

Good for beginners and for limited amount of income, otherwise gotta source and stock yourself

[mandinga]

Drop shipping is a great idea but you should first order samples and be careful who you order from. Once you have build trust in the company it cuts cost for you and is very efficient because you dont have to carry the actual stock and buy it and invest all your money.

[doccheney]

Drop ship is an excellent way to make money with low cost, the most important thing we need to do is to build a good relationship with the supplier and master all of the information during the whole process.

[ola2009]

The Pros and Cons of Drop shipping
Written by SaleHoo.com/?aff=1supaff ? All Rights Reserved

What is drop shipping?
Drop shipping is when the product distributor takes care of all the shipping for you. Rather than ordering stock in bulk, the stock remains with the distributor. Then, when you make a sale, you send an email to the distributor and they pack up the item and send it straight to the customer with your company label on the box.

Drop shipping is a very popular option with sellers because it takes a lot of the grunt work out of selling on eBay. However, there are some major downsides to drop shipping - especially for new sellers.

Here's a list of the pros and cons of drop shipping so that you can make the right decision for your business.

Drop shipping Pros
No storage room required
You don't have to fill up your living room with stock and packing materials! This is particularly useful if you are selling large items such as kit-sets, furniture, sporting goods, and so on.
No shipping costs getting stock delivered from the distributor
Drop shipping means you don't have to pay a carrier to bring stock from the distributor to your own storage area, which can mean big savings in the long term.
Spend more time on other areas of your business
You don't have to organize the packing and postage system, nor do you have to drive to the post shop each day to post your packages. This gives you a significant increase in time to spend on other tasks such as marketing and communicating with customers.
No packaging required
You save money by not having to order and store packaging materials.

Drop shipping Cons
Can be Costly
You have to pay for the cost of the labor and materials involved in drop shipping. Generally this is between $2 and $5 per item. Many new sellers find that the additional costs of drop shipping greatly reduce their profit margins and sometimes nullify the whole operation. This is the main reason why drop shipping is not a viable option for some sellers.
You are still responsible for any shipping problems
So the item arrived damaged? Was there a shipping delay? You'll get the flak for anything that goes wrong with the shipping even though it is technically out of your control.
Hard to find a distributor who will do it and do it well
Many distributors will not drop ship because of the extra paperwork involved. Then there is the matter of checking up on quality standards to make sure your items are being packed correctly.
Low stock levels may cause unhappy customers
Your drop shipper won't necessarily tell you when they are running low on stock. If they run out and have to do a back order, you may end up spending a great deal of time placating a bunch of unhappy and impatient customers.
Drop shipping is a very appealing prospect for many sellers; however it is not always a realistic one. Despite the hassle, 'doing it yourself' can often be a more sensible option financially, especially for new businesses.



About the Author: SaleHoo is one of the fastest growing product sourcing portals on the internet. It contains a database of drop ship, wholesale, closeout and manufacturing suppliers offering thousands of product suppliers to consumers! Located at http://www.salehoo.com/?aff=1supaff, visitors are allowed to sign up for unlimited and lifetime access to the completely searchable database of products and suppliers. The database is regularly updated, ensuring that the latest retail products are always available for purchase and SaleHoo carries the BBB Reliability Seal!

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[eBaySellerForum.com]

Dropshipping is good and bad.

The reason why I say this is because usually there's always someone else, or a few hundred, dropshipping that same exact item. With the competition nowadays, people will undercut one another until you're making only 1$ an item, and even a hot item may only sell 10 times, at most a day! So that's 10 bucks, but also 10 seperate orders you have to fill out. Is it worth the time and money for just 10$ for a days of work? Take this for light, say you'd like to earn a good living online and you have to at least sell 175$ worth a day. Even with other people selling the same product it is possible, but that's 175 seperate orders to fill out, EVERYDAY, say each order takes 3 minutes to fill, you're looking at 525 minutes or about 8.75 hours of PURE WORK and that'd be constantly filling out with no breaks.

Another factor is finding a reputable dropshipper. Granted you're selling someone elses product but you're putting your reputation on the line. Not only that but you have to consider how many scammers there are out there and won't hesitate to rip you off. It's almost a lose-lose situation. You find a dropshipper doing little to no research and you find EVERYONE is selling those items. You do alot of research, find a dropshipper where no one is offering that product (MORE REVENUE) but you can't find any information about the site, it's brand new and etc. It could be a SCAM! Hundred of fake dropshippers open up everyday and scam literally millions of dollars a year off people like me and everyone else here.

The only good thing about dropshipping is, if you only have 50$ in your paypal and you don't have the money to buy bulk of 1 item. Then it's a good idea, risky, but a good idea.

Everything has it's ups and downs, i'm just warning you from personal experience and experience from others that have told me there stories.

Thank you,
Derrick VanderWall
eBaySellerForum.com

[Pete]

I have sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of goods from dropshippers before I got into doing the actual dropshipping myself.

There are a lot of people who make a lot of money and never see or touch the goods they sell.

Also, they do not end up with unsold goods on their shelves, as ANYONE stocking their own goods will do. Nobody is right 100% of the time when ordering for stock. But, no forums like this nobody mentions that part of buying for yourself.

Slow movers and dead sellers can eat those "better profits" up in a hurry. When you use a dropshipper, they are the ones stuck with the "dogs" and you don't have to worry about today's hot seller dying on your shelf next month.

And the way to avoid all those others on ebay is not sell on ebay. I've been selling online since 2001 and have never listed an item on ebay. There is other life on the net if you go looking.

Guaranteed Genuine Dropshippers and Wholesalers

[Pete]

ecrater stores are very risky