Dropshipping what is it anyway, now that’s a good question if you live in the US you might well of heard of it but much of the rest of the world hasn’t caught on to the idea yet.
This is a quick summary of Dropshipping for those who don’t know. What happens is instead of you ordering a huge pile of stock and then after you sell it you ship it direct to your customers with dropshipping the supplier send out your orders for you. Once you make the sale you send the dropshipper your customers details and they send out the goods. They even use your shipping labels so your customer won’t even know or care you aren’t supplying them.
I find that a lot of eBay sellers like the idea of dropshipping as it takes a lot of the tedious work out of selling on eBay which is one of a few pluses to using a dropshipping service. But the less experienced eBay sellers needs to be wary of the negatives also.
Lets look at some of the dropshipping positives first:-
1.You don’t need to fill your home with stock or for bigger items pay for storage or warehousing.Obviously this is not that big deal for smaller items but for larger items such as treadmills this is probably the only way to sell them in volume.
2. You won’t have to pay for a supplier to ship goods to you. But instead your dropshiper will charge you or your customer to deliver the goods plus a fee to cover their increased labor costs.
3. A large number of eBay sellers find the worst part of running an eBay business is the sending the items to their customers (packing and shipping). When you use the services of a dropship company they deal with all that for you.
4. There will be need to buy expensive packing materials, such as bubble wrap, boxes and the like which take up a lot of space and can be very inconvenient if you live in a small home with limited space.
However as with most things in life there is always a downside and dropshipping is no exception to the rule.
So here are the dropshipping negatives:-
1. You’ll find that the dropshipping costs can add quite a bit to the overall cost of the product as you need to pay for the suppliers staff to send out the product on your behalf. On occasions these might be five dollars or even more and then you need to factor in these costs as well as shipping if you want your customer to swallow them. You need to be careful when working out your profits that you take these costs in to the equation.
2. Shipping issues can still be headache don’t forget the customer purchased from you so they will expect you to resolve any disputes for them. Also be wary of the fact that much of this part of the operation is out of your control so choose your dropshiper wisely.
3. People contact me telling me they found a great product they can sell but can’t find a company that will supply on a dropship basis so give up. Remember not all companies want the hassle and paperwork involved that providing a drop shipping service and prefer to only sell in bulk to retailers.
4. Dropshippers may not have stock of products when you need them. If you find a hot in demand item you may find others have also found it and ‘out of stocks’ may lead to unhappy customers. If you have sold products you have to put on back order this can mean you have to apologise to customers and may receive negative feedback if not handled correctly.
Lots of ebay sellers find that dropshipping works for them while other just can’t seem to make it work. I always find that when things go wrong it is usually down to not having done thorough enough research. Do this and you should find dropshipping is another great way of selling.
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