There are many reasons to get into dropshipping. There is a lot of money to be made from it, and the barriers for entry are low.
It’s easy enough to set up an account on a website like Shopify, choose which products you want to sell, and start getting orders in minutes.
This post will help answer these questions by explaining the dropshipping myths in detail !
Table of Contents
My 9 years dropshipping roadmap in short
Before talking about the scam, please let me briefly talk about my dropshipping journey.
I started my dropshipping journey in 9 years ago. My first dropshipping website is created by WordPress – Woocommerce selling home gadgets, like designer LED lights.
After a few years later, I had the opportunity to work with Korean companies and I started to switch my niche to Korean Cosmetics and being the dropshipping suppliers, to supply genuine Korean cosmetics to the Western market.
In 2020, I started a tech startup – Super Chain, we aim to use AI technology to find the winning products by data-driven approach.
The “Myth” of Dropshipping
During my journey, I have met a lot of fast-growing dropshipping stores and their owners. However, most of the dropshipping store dies in 3 months. As they are unable to make profit.
Being dropshipping supplier and platform, offered me the chance to talk with my customers (dropshippers).
Dropshipping is $0 cost ?
“Dropshipping has no upfront cost in purchasing stock” , this is absolutely true with conditions.
Condition
Your customer is paying in cash or your supplier is willing give you credit terms, if not, you should expect and reserve an amount of payment to pay for the purchase.
As you can expect the online payment gateway will on hold your customer payment to verify the transaction. Probably, the payout terms is T+7.
In fact, dropshipping is a retail fulfilment model, after you get the order from your customer, then you place the order to your supplier.
The exemption
There is no strict definition of the selling channel, for example, if you are a KOL in certain industry, you can use your Instagram account to dropship.
So, you don’t need to spend on setting up an online store or spending on marketing promotional.
The costs in setting up a dropshipping business
If you are just like me, a normal person with 700 instagram followers, I can be sure that you will need to invest some money to start your dropshipping store.
Domain
Starting your online store, you will have to purchase a domain, just like www.super-chain.tech, it could be cheap as USD$10 per year.
Hosting
Then, an online hosting, most of the time, the hosting company give you a package, to purchase domain and server at the same time, the online competition of online hosting company is quite intense, so you can expect a lot of hosting plans available in the market.
If you are using Shopify, they provided the hosting service in the Shopify plan (Basic $USD 29/month), so you only need to purchase the domain name.
Online marketing cost
Not going to go to deep on marketing cost, I think its very easy to understand.
Apps & plugins
If you are looking for automated way to run your dropshipping or e-commerce store, I would say the apps and plugins are compulsory.
As most of the e-commerce engine, like woocommerce or even shopify, they are not covering every part of e-commerce, but community developer can develop apps based on the customer need.
Purchasing Online Mentorship ?
Personally, never purchase any online mentorship and course for online marketing. I love Youtube, tons of online resources teaching you step by step on how to build up your dropshipping stores.
I have seen a lot of advertising talking about USD $3 million profit by dropshipping per month. I am not trying to accuse their marketing message or strategy.
But, everything can be found on internet.
Unless, there is a 100% accuracy equation to tell you, how to sell a product and providing the ingredients to you, and there is no fail rate. (If you found an online mentor can guarantee that, please refer to me as well, I want to be rich too…).
If not, I suggest you to learn from the fundamental of the concept of e-commerce, this is the bedrock of your e-commerce strategy. There is no short-cut.
Dropshipping Is Illegal ?
The notion that dropshipping is a fad has been debunked many times.
However, dropshipping is a real business model that has long existed and been used by many people.
Consider how door-to-door salespeople operated in the past.
These individuals served as intermediaries or middlemen who marketed a firm’s goods to potential consumers, much like dropshippers function as intermediates between suppliers and purchasers today.
Dropshipping is legal, but you must follow the rules established by the online platforms on which you wish to operate. Just like Amazon, they accept dropshipping, but they also have Amazon policy for dropshipping to dropship on Amazon.
It’s crucial that your company’s terms of service are in accordance with any and all product quality or consumer satisfaction regulations that may be enforced by internet sites, as well as any other regulations that apply. You’ll also have to follow the laws and regulations of the countries you’ll do business in.
Dropshipping produces significant earnings quickly?
You’ve undoubtedly come across YouTube videos or comparable material that promise quick money by selling on Amazon.
This material is dangerous, and what they teach is frequently incorrect. Dropshipping necessitates a thorough study and testing of tried-and-true methods, but doing so swiftly is difficult.
I’ve discovered that while there may be exceptional overnight success stories out there, they are rare.
I’ve had rapid and spectacular triumphs in several of my dropshipping businesses, but I don’t think all of my brands will achieve the same degree of success in a very short amount of time.
Conclusion
To conclude, dropshipping is a real business model that has been used by many people and there are of course the negative side as well.
Dropshippers must be informed of what they can achieve, but also recognize their constraints when selling online.
I hope this can help solving the mystery of dropshipping.
How can Super Chain help you ?
Knowing the current selling trend
Get latest market price and design your product price
Integrate product data to your online shop
Find Next winning product by customer reviews
