Drop shipping - Anyone have experience and willing to share advice?

[evernoob]

I know this is mostly a meme business for webpages, but I have an idea that might be able to start with 'drop shipping'. I can't manufacture what I want but I think a niche exists where marketing would be the primary factor in success. Does anyone do things like this?

There are a billion webpages about 'drop shipping' on the internet, and I'm reasonably familiar with the process, but I was wondering if anyone runs or has run a business where they market stuff on the internet and have it physically made elsewhere. I thought a few of you had made comments about this before.

 

[mrblaine]

I know this is mostly a meme business for webpages, but I have an idea that might be able to start with 'drop shipping'. I can't manufacture what I want but I think a niche exists where marketing would be the primary factor in success. Does anyone do things like this?

There are a billion webpages about 'drop shipping' on the internet, and I'm reasonably familiar with the process, but I was wondering if anyone runs or has run a business where they market stuff on the internet and have it physically made elsewhere. I thought a few of you had made comments about this before.

DS in general is a reasonably sound business model. Places like Rock Auto and similar have no physical inventory and simply drop ship their orders from the various entities they develop relationships with.

Getting something manufactured will be somewhat different in that you will need to develop the packaging and shipping distribution. Most manufacturers will not want to be your warehouse and shipping center.

 

[DMG]

It is considered a somewhat lazy business model but that isn’t always a bad thing. We have a business that is part dropshipping and part selling from inventory. https://highpointoutdoors.com it is mainly used to get deals for us and our friends and for practice for my wife. She works for an Shopify app developer.

To really make money you have to get into something early and know when to quit. Fidget spinners, vaping stuff, all the big fads.


the one thing that sucks is you are responsible for delivering the right item in a timely fashion but you have outsourced all of that to someone that doesn’t care about your reputation or your standards nearly as much as you do. Also, beware of scammers. There are always scammers trying to use stolen CCs or some other fuckery to screw you.

 

[TheCopperCowboy]

That's 75% of Amazon's business model. :rolleyes: