Dropping Shipping Videos From Youtube

Yoshitsune

I keep stumbling across videos and ads on Youtube by people advertising drop shipping as a way of making money. A lot of the videos have clickbait thumbnails, saturated content, and content creators pushing their online courses on how to make money. If anyone don't know what I am talking about this website should get you up to speed.

>>>>>What Is Dropshipping? Everything You Need To Know – Forbes Advisor<<<<<

My question is has anyone attempted to try get into eCommerace? Can people earn a good return or is it a farce? What do you think about it.

silliussoddius

It peaked a couple years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC_S-rjP_rE&t=310s

There is an Entrepreneurship thread here which i think would be better for your query.

https://www.boards.ie/categories/entrepreneurial-business-management

greencap

Dropshipping is an old business model, its not new. And it can work. But that doesn't mean its easy. And it doesn't mean it belongs to these shysters you encounter all over the internet.

Ive spent some time looking into the dropship model, and Ive sifted through many dozens of these arsholes that promise easy fast money, Ive found one or two channels which I would class as sincere, or at least mostly sincere.

Or they could just be doing the sincere act. They (course sellers) will go to great lenghts to get your money.

In any case Ive never paid a cent to any prick with a rented lambourgini and a snazzy ad and nor should anyone. If it looks in any way like a scam then it very likely is.

So the more likely to be sincere ones Ive found after digging through the mountain of bullsht are:

Donkecom.

Ecomking. (And his American mate with the glasses)

Sarah Chrisp (wholesale ted).

And the data tool 'zikanalytics'.

My conclusion was (2/3years ago) that, shockingly, there is no fast easy money for the average joe.

If youre getting in to dropshipping as a means to make any sort of serious money youre still going to need to invest capital, and plenty of time, and risk, and youre going to have to do all the normal business things like registering a company, getting an accountant, and being wary of insurance related issues (as even just facilitating the trade of products can implicate you). You'll have returns issues, bank issues, payment/paypal charges, 5 email addresses to juggle, ad charges. And more.

Back later.

greencap

And import issues, youll need an eori number, youll have to pay customs duties. All these things will cut away at your profit margins. Dropship often cant work for certain low priced goods. So in brief its a real business.

Many of the essential suppliers and services wont sell to you without those official numbers, and will only offer any worthwile price if youre ordering in a sufficient quantity.

And there are sharks on the supplier side of things, middlemen and con artists in distant lands.

You can try print on demand though, if you want to probably make just a few quid. I made a few sales in p.o.d.

One of them was a printed metal wall plate thing, used my design, i just got an email out of the blue saying your cut is €20. Very hands off. Way simpler than shipping goods. And the tax man doesnt care up to a couple grand iirc.

All that said you can pick out dropshippers on adverts.ie.

There are good and not so good ones. Ive scoped them out and deciphered the models of a couple of the better ones. The crap ones are easily spotted by people in the comments asking about delivery time only to be told delivery takes 3 weeks. Which just tells you theres some lad with an alibaba tab and an adverts tab open.

witnessmenow

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120465398#Comment_120465398

Buying on aliexpress would solve that as they look after that. I find with the increase in postage costs since covid and the fact that VAT is charged, buying from China at all is not as appealing as it once was. I find Amazon often has the same stuff for a similar price all things considered, and it will be here in two days.

But I think the main issue I see with drop shipping is explaining away the long postage times. People are generally happy to wait a few weeks or a month buying something knowing its coming from China, but you're not going to be happy if mySunglasses.ie takes 4 weeks to get to you.

To the original post, if these people were making a sustainable fortune with drop shipping, they wouldn't be doing more work to increase their competition

greencap

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120465441#Comment_120465441

Yeah i guess.

But iirc they take a bite out of the margin too.

I dont know, much has probably changed since 2/3 years ago.

Not the constant barrage of lies and bs and lamborghinis though. I dont even need to look.

Edit: then there are also the limitations on what you should sell, best to stay well away from categories like fragile goods, consumable goods (health regulations to satisfy), childrens goods, electronic goods. Although the dropshippers on adverts seem to like electronics.

After all that there are customers trying to scam freebies out of you, and competition looking to undercut you by a cent.

Edit edit: theres affliliate marketing too if you want to make a wee bit of cash. I made some pocket money out of affiliate marketing, but found it wasnt worth the time invested. Not to say others wont .

Id personally say the difficulty levels are 1. Print on demand (easy). 2. Affiliate marketing (still pretty easy). 3. Dropshipping (tough). 4. Own brand amazon selling (tougher still).

noahungry

It seems to me that dropshipping and affiliate marketing earned a bad reputation, and are vastly perceived as “fast money-making schemes”. The truth is, half of the people with this perspective actually tried one of the two, did everything wrong, and consequently failed, and the other half have no idea what either industry is about and are just negatively biased. First of all, there’s no “easy” money, but yes, there are a lot of scams out there. Both are serious industries, and it takes time and effort to succeed in either of them.

Now, I've seen dropshipping websites having product pictures obviously downloaded from other websites, with Chinese characters right there or displaying pictures of very bad quality. Such a lack of effort. I can't stop wondering how these people imagine anyone buying their products when the website screams scam, even if it isn't necessarily. If possible, get the product you're selling, and ask a friend with a good camera to take some good-quality photos of it (high-resolution, in a well-lit space, removed background...). Photography is quite a popular hobby, so chances are you know someone (or at least someone who knows someone) who's into it. At the end of the day, take 15 minutes to check your competition or watch a tutorial with recommendations. Anyway, it can be done, but I would still vote for affiliate marketing, to be honest.

When my friend started with affiliate marketing, this article was his guide. He started it more or less without any upfront investment. Of course, for example, spending some money on a piece of software or paid ads, or even a course, will speed up the process, that's just common sense. I'll share what I know about the process as a reference point. So he created a blog with WordPress, as they offer a decent free plan, and researched his competitors, to see which social media platforms to focus on. He uses this affiliate dashboard for tracking, basically to see what works well and where he needs to adjust his strategy. Oh, and he used Jasper (now switched to Chat GPT) for creating content for social media and his blog articles, but I have to add that he edits a lot and spends hours testing prompts. Otherwise, as we've all seen, it would be: "Starting a business can be a daunting task..." The type of content we see everywhere around, you can spot AI from the first sentence.

hoodie6029

If someone is selling you a way of making easy money etc. it is a scam. If it is that easy they would be employing people to do this method at scale and keeping the profits for themselves.

I regularly get a Forex Trading guy’s ads on YouTube. Fabulous lifestyle in the background every time. ‘Just done an hour on the computer, that’s me done for the day’ etc. etc. If he was making the millions he says he is, he’d have an office doing it for him and making him multiples of that.

Grayson

Years ago I worked for eBay and had a customer call to complain that something they had bought was drop shipped. We asked what the proof was. Generally it's because there was a long delay. Not in this case though. It was delivered very quickly in a tescos van. The guy was listing items from the tesco website at slightly inflated prices. When someone bought, he'd order it for delivery from tescos and use their delivery address. :)

He was banned. Dropshipping is against ebay's rules. You generally need to have the item when you list it.

Mister Vain

I tried it for a while but its such a slow process if you're ordering products from China. Customs are a headache too. I just sell digital products now. There's no waiting time or upfront costs. Everything can be downloaded instantly.

alexago

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120583814#Comment_120583814

You've hit the nail on the head! Dropshipping and affiliate marketing often get a bad rap due to misconceptions and misguided attempts by some individuals. Succeeding in these industries requires dedication, knowledge, and hard work. However, modern tools make the process easier. I've recently looked through the AutoDS reviews and understood that people have more possibilities to work without addressing professionals today. While scams exist, it's important to recognize that both dropshipping and affiliate marketing can be legitimate and lucrative business models when approached with the right mindset and strategies.

Ubbquittious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120586049#Comment_120586049

I am taking a chance 3d printing a few things on demand for ebay. If something goes wrong with the printer or I run out of filament I'm phuqqed

Grayson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121252829#Comment_121252829

You should be ok. If anything happens, just remove existing listings and communicate immediately with any existing buyers. Ask them if they want to wait or get a refund. But if you get a negative feedback, then it's probably not removable.

I said "generally" in my post. because I know there are certain things that are either excluded or let it slide. There was one caller when I worked in the call centre who made custom latex fetish gear. Gimp suit type of things. Each one had to be customized according to the buyers specific measurements. He kept getting low feedback because of delivery time even though he made clear in his listing that there was a delay. Thing is that although he technically had everything in stock, he didn't have the delivered product in stock since he had to customize it.