Drop shipping is the test period, you should have made enough money by now if you’ve been doing it since 015 to have got your own brand going. Dropshippings not dead, it’s evolved. I and many other people are profitable. Once you find good products drop shipping, you know which products to focus your brand around. Try buying in bulk the products you got profit with through drop shipping to lower their prices etc. Answer from Browner555 on reddit.com
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Reddit
reddit.com › r/dropship › dropshipping is dead, does someone have experience in going branded /making a brand?
r/dropship on Reddit: Dropshipping is dead, does someone have experience in going branded /making a brand?
June 3, 2023 -

Hello Guys!

I think times have changed and it's no longer profitable to dropship... I started in 2015 and until 2019/2020 it worked well but now the ads are so expensive and we are getting banned on fb all the time for no reason. And if an ad is working then you make barely enough.. Its too well-known nowadays bc everyone does it.

So I wanted to ask if someone here made the switch to a brand and can help me with some Ideas. I just don't find good products to sell as a brand, it's either cheap plastic or cheap china quality.

How do you justify the higher prices of a brand when the product quality is not that good? And do you still dropship as of business model or do you ship from your home? And if you dropship it, what does the customer say when the package comes from China?

I think the business model of dropshipping is good but only as a brand.

Thanks so much!

Top answer
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So I wanted to ask if someone here made the switch to a brand and can help me with some Ideas. I just don't find good products to sell as a brand, it's either cheap plastic or cheap china quality. How do you justify the higher prices of a brand when the product quality is not that good? You don't. The point isn't to trick customers into buying garbage. If the business relies on bait and switch and cheating people, it's not going to last very long. A lot of folks follow guru "advice" to the T, and put in the least amount of effort in all areas of the store that actually matter - selling garbage products, barely crafting an image, not putting in necessary info for customers, and approaching it as a side gig, a way to earn easy beer money. They've been taught that ads are the most important thing in the world, and that success is based on how tweaked their campaigns are. Unsurprisingly the vast majority of such stores fail. They don't fail because they lack branding tho, or that they did something wrong with their ads - they failed because they don't bother putting in any effort into customer-facing parts of the business, and instead pushing all that effort into wrong parts of the business. The point of running businesses is to earn money. Ideally earning money over the long term. And for that, you'll need products that, at the barest of minimum, won't break down in a few days, and at least matches what was promised to them from the store's depictions. Dropshipping is an interesting fulfillment method, sure, but there are limitations and plenty of disadvantages that are sometimes inherent to it. Product quality is one of the most important ones. And if your business discovers an ongoing issue with product quality from dropship suppliers, your next move would be to find practical solutions to solve that, and not simply continue desperately sticking with dropshipping as a crutch. Solutions like finding better suppliers, switching products, doing self-fulfillment, and yes, even going beyond dropshipping. The problem here is the mindset. Too many people have been brainwashed by Youtube "bros", and keep making the same mistakes over and over again. Customers aren't numbers in an Excel sheet. Stores aren't an inconvenient means of magically extracting what they see as their money, straight into their pockets. Ads aren't the most important thing in the entire universe. To start the journey into success, all the garbage learnt from those videos needs to be tossed, minds needs to be completely cleared, so one can start back from scratch. It is audiences that determine the level of success your business will get, simply because they're the ones with the money. They're the very people that are buying from you. Ergo, to be successful, everything needs to be catered to them. The whole business needs to be based and built from an entirely audience-centric point of view. From products, to the name, logo, colors, copy, photos, graphics, the overall style of the store, the overall feel of the store, and so on. All of which are supposed to flow and work together as a whole, in order for audiences to find it appealing. In other words, the image, the brand. The brand image is the perception audiences and customers has of the store. It is the collective whole of all of the effort put into it. And achieving a convincing brand image, requires that you thoroughly understand both your audience and competitors, through deep research. Some folks here have a funny idea of what branding is. They assume it's just some fancy logo, sometimes slapped onto product packaging. But that's not branding. That's just a label... surface level stuff. People don't suddenly decide to buy just because it has a fancy name and logo, or because the packaging has that. People buy, because the store did an excellent job in convincing them to - all of the elements working together seamlessly, all for that one job. Successful businesses figured this out, and are raking it in. Hot takes from has beens, have not. This is why many of those businesses are able to charge higher prices. Because audiences and customers perceive it to be worth it. Dropshippers who follow guru advice however, have achieved the the exact opposite - essentially by filtering out high quality customers with money to spend, and filtering in low quality customers with barely any money at all. And then competing with the rest of the world for these meager scraps. As you've already discovered, that's a dead end. There isn't much left that hasn't already been tried, tested, and taken, from all those that came before you. Crafting a brand image however, now that can potentially be something new. So, put in the effort, aim a little higher, and know thy customer. And do you still dropship as of business model or do you ship from your home? And if you dropship it, what does the customer say when the package comes from China? Most of my ventures I eventually switched to self-fulfillment, because of increased margins, better branding coordination, faster shipments, and as mentioned, ensuring every products sent out actually works and have acceptable quality at the minimum. Only a few products I'll continue with dropship fulfillment. Because that ensures the highest possible quality for customers. They're not only okay with it, they desire it. Because hint: it's not from China.
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Drop shipping is the test period, you should have made enough money by now if you’ve been doing it since 015 to have got your own brand going. Dropshippings not dead, it’s evolved. I and many other people are profitable. Once you find good products drop shipping, you know which products to focus your brand around. Try buying in bulk the products you got profit with through drop shipping to lower their prices etc.
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