"It's bullshit": Inside the weird, get-rich-quick world of dropshipping

If anyone is thinking about dropshipping let me quickly tell you about a guy I know who makes a bit of money from it (not "rich" money! but definitely easy money).

He sells "kits" for upgrading bikes. He has basically done a load of research and worked out which components on common bicycles can be upgraded for cheap. He puts together a nice instruction booklet and some great marketing material and sells it as an "Upgrade Pack". The components themselves are obviously drop shipped (he actually has an uncle in China who sorts out the sourcing and putting together of the kits for shipping) but his markups are huge. It's one of those the whole is greater than the sum of the parts things.

So yeah. I've seen dropshipping work if you are smart about it and you try to create value on top of the cheap items you are selling.

It’s written in a pretty snide way. Journalists get very petty when they see people ‘skipping the gatekeepers’ and having success in new ways without paying enormous amounts of time and money on the University path. I read a book last year on Hubspot and the journalist/author’s contempt was practically jumping out of every page.

That said, I’m not a huge fan of drop shipping. Still, it’s not the worst and there’s definitely methods of doing it in a more virtuous way, like the bike example in these comments.

I used to also be pretty anti-dropshipping, "Oh it's just internet BS", "Everyone and their family are millionaires because of it". I'm not involved but I watched a few tutorials and read a bit. It's just business when it comes down to it; you look for a product you think people will like, you market the product, and you sell it, and you either make money or you lose...

I'm not quite sure why people get so much hate for it (besides the heavy marketing and "masterclasses" and courses etc. sold by people to get into dropshipping).

Even big retail stores are doing the exact same thing; design or look for a product they think people want, they get it manufactured in the east almost always, the only difference is they handle the shipping and logistics.

I think the article was upset ex-pats were setting up in this tropical island and not sharing the wealth with the locals. And upset people inflated their self worth and success by selling courses.

I started dropshipping a couple of months ago when COVID-19 started, when shopify gave a free trial and Oberlo gave a free course. I gotta tell you, the article is spot on about Facebook Ads and how you're balancing on a knife's edge. Just because you don't have inventory doesn't mean you're home free. Creating ads, targeting, and praying for sales - then hoping those sales don't turn into cancellations and refunds when the product "you've never seen" turns up at the customers door and isn't what they expected. And keeping your profits above ad expenses. With enough capital, I too could have $1 mil in revenue, but I would probably have spent 99% of that on ads.

Prior to dropshipping, I tried Amazon FBA private label and had varying degrees of success with that model, but you're still spending a lot on Amazon ads (PPC) and product giveaways to rank your product.

We're all here scraping for crumbs.

Begs the question: What percentage of Shopify users are dropshippers? 🤔

Alternative title:
"How to give Westerners, back packers, digital nomads and drop shippers a bad name in one easy lesson."

Dropship is a pyramidal business structure. Do you remember the financial pyramids? Now it's not money, it's a commodity. But I don't think it's going to be possible to make a profit all the time.

It's not easy and get rich quick schema and dropshipping isn't BS !

Great read!!