Here’s a podcast episode about how thousands of people throw money into running their own shopping websites. You create your own online storefront but are selling items directly from cheap overseas warehouses like Alibaba (called drop shipping). It sounds like very easy money but it’s actually scammy in a surprising way*. It very much reminded me of the same mechanisms that make MLM’s go round and I thought this sub would enjoy.
Episode at link as well as transcript. Reply All Podcast
*Spoiler: the real (and only) easy money is from holding seminars on how to make the easy money. So the drop-shipping “community” preys on itself.
Meh, I’m kind of indifferent on this... It’s not so much an MLM and there are sleazy coaches in just about EVERY niche. That’s the one thing that bugs me - these friggin life coaches who have no idea what they’re talking about they just want some easy money...
I personally have done drop shipping, but not from Alibaba and while it’s not a huge money maker, it provides a few extra bucks here and there.
A boutique is a storefront where they do not make their own products (usually), they buy from China and artists and curate a selection. An online store that does not hold inventory in a warehouse is a middleman, they sell it but the manufacturer sends it. It feels sleazy, but stores that do not produce product are all essentially the same thing. However, in some industries, wholesale is only available to retailers. Meaning, you can buy and sell at a profit, only because the shopper can’t get it at the wholesale price. With Aliexpress, that opens everyone to a semi wholesale to completely wholesale price. It IS sleazy to find a product, that is available for $1.99 to anyone, and sell it for $25.99 on what is just a different website, and do nothing but place an order on the first website, and the customer has to wait for it to come from China. If you import it, and you have it available to ship on amazon prime, that would be worth paying more for.
But if your customers still have to wait 3 months to get it, because you’re working with dropshipping, your business is a jerk.
Example would be a site like www.cupshe.com - look at their Facebook comments on the most recent post here lol 100 some complaints in each post.
IMAGINE a world where you do nothing but push product and deal with terrible customer service issues because you aren’t in control of anything that the dropshippers are doing. No thanks.
Then these life coaches come along and want to teach you how to do this. They make 1 million a year doing it. So can you. Wrong. So wrong. It takes warehouses (or space of some sort - after all, sometimes YOU are dealing with importing, returns and management of product) and a whole lot of good relationships with suppliers.
It’s possible to do well. It’s not possible to do well super easily.
I have a friend trying to convince me that drop shipping is a good business to get into. It feels a little scammy to me. What do you all think?
Videos
Is this another scam, this dropshipping thing, promising to earn 90k a week, hahahaha. Are there going to be a lot of people fooled again? We're not even done with the era of online VAs / Coaches, and then there's this again.
Hey I've been recently researching about dropshipping and etc. I've come a across many YouTubers but I've seen so many gurus with all their courses that they wanted to sell me. I once attended one of this free seminars and they weren't even legit. The live chat was just bots saying random stuff and didn't even respond to me and at the end they all just tried selling me something. Can I even trust dropshipping?? Are all YouTubers and stuff to it even legit or are they just all scammers trying to sell me their courses and softwares and whatever?
And bashing it in general. Why? Why are yall here then? Geniunely wondering