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can dropshipping get you a decent income ?
 

it seems like a good way to make money but its dammm hard to find good products to sell,

The problems are as follows:

1. Quality of Product
If the product your gonna dropship is below customer standards, your going to get negative feedback and low DSR.

2. Time of product arriving to Customer
Customers might complaint about either non receipt or long shipping times which leads again to negative feedback and low DSR.

3. Returns of items
Who does a customer return bad items too? Who pays for return postage? You, your dropshipper, customer?

4. DON'T DO IT!

Not worth it at all.

Yes Do not dropship it is way more of a hassle then doing it the regular way. Dropshipping got my first account suspended. Stay away from it!

Stay away from Drop Shipping...it is a terrible business model and no one can make a massive income from it. :snicker:

Too many middlemen in the equation.

Plus everyone else and their brother is selling the same thing.

Not worth the hassle unless you have a direct contact and not someone who is huge and out there for everyone to get to.

thanks guys,
but if im not dropshipping, what do i sell then ?
where i will get my products from ?
all of my sources are dropshipping sites,

Start to try sites like dhgate.com perhaps.

Plenty of great unbranded goods.

Some "branded" well..... supposedly :boink:

so should i get the products to my house first , and then resell them on ebay and deliver it my self ??

Find you a niche high demand product with few sellers.
Source the product.
Set up a resale account with the company.
Become rich.

Yeah comes to your house and then send it from there.

This avoids slow shipping, makes it easy for returns if its required and you can also see the quality of your products before sending them - 100% better than dropshipping!

You make it sound easy.

You must be stinking rich :eek: ha.

Wait there's a nich with high demand? WHERE????? lol.

Everything I have heard is you work your ass off to break even.

Dropshipping can make you over 10 grand in 1 week after you build up ebays trust, good feedback, fast shipping, have account in good standing for 6+ months,etc then you can do whatever you want, but don't start off dropshipping, sell items that you only have in "hand". I've done it numerous times in the past, now I've moved on. Ebay has changed, and I'm not up to game on how they operate now. Look up some my first post when I first joined, I made so much money pp and eb both shut me down within a week, and it was well worth it.

it won't work with the latest eBay system. The 21 day holds will kill your business before it even gets the chance to start.

You took the words right out of my mouth.


Guess I will have to rely on those baby boomers who want their past back.

:cheer:

There's so much conflicting advice in this thread.

I guess I should add to the confliction.

DROPSHIPPING IS EXCELLENT. IT IS THE BEST WAY TO MAKE MONEY BECAUSE YOU DON'T HAVE TO HAVE THE ITEM YOURSELF, NOR DO YOU HAVE TO SHIP IT. EASY MONEY! :bounce:

dropshipping only sucks when combined with ebay or amazon(that includes only using paypal. if your going to dropship, start your own site with a merchant account. customer have too much leverage with paypal/ebay or amazon. if you insist on using ebay or amazon build feedback rating to powerseller status or close customer will be less likely to complain so quickly. but to be honest buying the stuff wholesale and shipping is the safest bet. the main idea is to controll as much of the transaction as you can.

my 2 cents

Dropshipping is the death of all accounts.

This is very true!

Dropshipping is not recommended for obvious reasons - mainly control - but the reality is if you can get the right supplier who will work with you then it can obviously be a way of earning money. The thing you have to ask yourself is why would this person let you sell it when they could do it themselves and keep all of the profit.

There are many sites around the web offering dropshipping and I'm guessing they are all con merchants - I certainly haven't been able to find anything good said about any of them.

The main problem you have is delivery - from outside your country it is going to be a nightmare.

I operate a kind of dropshipping site and it is reasonably profitable. It is for a very specialist item. The person concerned cannot operate on the UK platform for various reasons and so I run the sites for him but - and here's the important bit - we both know the rules - I take the orders, I collect the payment, he ships out same day and the customer gets their item in the time they expect. He doesn't get paid until the item is signed for and the customer is happy.

Most dropshippers want paying up front before they ship out and are not prepared to wait 10 days or so for their money, can you blame them?.

You are then left holding the baby if something goes wrong.

If the item doesn't arrive or is damaged you are the one left to refund - very dodgy - especially if you have already transferred the money to the supplier!!

Unless you can find the right person to work with I suggest you forget it - they are out there but they don't advertise - or keep at least two of the items in your possession at all times so that you can handle the shipping.

:ranger:

This is very true. However, it is for the "traditional" form of drop shipping.

You have to think outside the box...reach out for the hidden treasure under the rainbow until you say AHA!

Then, you will realize the true power behind arbitrage. :twisted:

No argument from me on that statement nebuspp

:ranger:

How to really dropship..
 

I have done it successfully for about 1 year now..

Here is likely the best way to dropship:

There are two ways to do it, but this is how I have been doing it.

1. Use some download program such as superbot and goto a website such as amazon and datamine the top sellers.
2. Get all the product pages downloaded and then use MS-DOS to extract lines of relevant data, such as the item name, retail price, mfg description, etc.
3. Use only the non-copyrighted information or the copyrighted by the brand name that would allow you to sell it (don't take amazon copyrighted materials to use, I mean).
4. Put it all into a Excel Spreadsheet and use that to create all your pages on your website.
5. Then, use Excel to do some price formula games, so that you can have say 10% to 20% over the amazon pricing.
6. When you sell an item, just go buy it off amazon or use google shopping, bing shopping or shopwiki to find the lowest price.
7. Only buy from those who have good feedback. You can use sites like resellerratings.com, etc.
8. When it is not some mega company like amazon.com call them up to confirm they do indeed have the item before you buy it from them online. That is often the number #1 complaint about companies online (not in stock, though it says in stock).
9. Make sure to have good turn around time, and to tell the customer that you processed their order (you can use scripts that work with paypal to do some of this).
10. Any order that is the wrong pricing, just refund the customer and fix your page so it doesn't happen again.


It works. You can have even $4000 a day coming in. But its like $200 to $600 profit a day.

However, with Paypal you have to watch out a bit, because after like 4 to 5 months of doing this, they put a "rolling reserve" on my account of 10% for 90 days.

So, basically, I was having to wait for the profits 3 months!

Naturally, I switched over to Google Checkout. But, its not wise really to do that either.

So, probably the best bet is to just goto a new stealth paypal if they hit you with the 10% rollover.

They claim they only do it to 1% of those who have paypal accounts, so it should not happen often.



sincerely
Tony

Hey Tony sounds good, I thought of doing a varation of that but I got a question. but it sounds like you have to send the items to yourself first, the recieving it reship. how do manage delivery times & possibly complaints? or is there a way to ship it directly to the customer?

Tony, your method sounds expensive and time consuming. Why should customers buy from you instead of directly from the sites you source from? Everyone has Google so its not like you're finding good exclusive deals.

By the time eBay and Paypal tack on fees, and you pay for shipping to yourself and the customer, there will be little to no profit for you. And who uses MS-Dos??????? Sorry, doesn't make sense my friend.

To add to Laritha's comment, What customer is going to want to wait that long for an item? What if the "vendor" you buy from doesn't have items in stock, now you gotta inform your customer that there's a delay? Way too many variables that can go wrong in so many ways.

Unless you have a drop-shipper that can produce high quality items with extremely fast shipping no customer is going to be happy, in the long run it's too many headaches.

Buy your items from suppliers, and once you have inspected the quality of the merchandise then proceed to sell them.

Also, MS-DOS? lol come on, we do have windows software than can handle most task now a days. This isn't 1985!

Are you saying that none of your sources will sell to you directly? Sounds a bit shady don't you think? Any source should and would sell to you directly.

Not this again...doesn't anyone know how to use "search"?

If you have a reliable supplier and know them personally dropshipping will work out perfectly fine, even if you don't know them offline. You have to agree on some terms before making dropshipping to work. But then again, you are opening yourself to a ton of trouble with your dropshipping business like late delieveries, poor quality/packaging = bad feedback + Bad DSR = BAN

About three years ago I use to drop ship. I googled dropshippers and carefully perused companies. About a day later I signed with one with superb ratings. I posted some items with profit on Amazon. They ALWAYS shipped same or next business day. The account finally was suspended due to being linked to another suspended account (before getting amazon/eBay stealth).

I would get into it again. Just use common sense when researching companies. I was making an extra $400 - 700 dollars extra a week doing part time. The only complaint is that I constantly had to log into my account with company to see what items are close to being out of stock, and those that were out of stock. My account was temporarily suspended due to too many cancellations. With hard work, it can be pulled off.

It's funny, some say how awesome it is but yet none are still doing it and those that did do it aren't anymore! if it really worked that great we would all be doing it like crazy.

This is usually how it is done :brushteeth:

LOL ye and pigs can fly :shhh:

So if you made such a killing in one week, why did ebay shut you down? did you perhaps have to many cases for non delivery :suspicious:

Personally to avoid cases, if you specify a time frame for delivery one should always keep there buyers up to date if there are delays etc... this way the buyers feel like you care about them.

Exactly :D

Its not worth the stress in the end.

Not a lot of stress at all. Superb dropshipper who shipped out same or next business day. Just put in a lot of work. It can be done. I was making $400 - 700 bucks profit part time a week. I no longer do it because I can make more now selling what I do opposed to going back to dropshipping.

Red X was so correct. My profits were on average $500 but actual sales around $4000 - 6000. So that 10 grand a week is totally feasible.

So why wouldn't you continue to sell this way if you making around 10k a week?? Especially since its no stress at all and didn't take much of your time??something just doesn't add up... Personally I would not give up on an easy 10k. Because you could do both selling and dropshipping

I would only do drop shipping if I had no money...

A while back I used to list items from newegg and bumped up the price. Mostly hard drives stuff like that.... I would have the item shipped directly to customer. Never had any complaints cause newegg is an excellent shipper and products are great. Just not wholesale kinda prices. Business was not booming by any means, however there was enough sales here n there to get me started at buying my own stuff...

You're talking to the wrong person. "I" made the 10k In 1 week, not Recherche', even though dropshipping was successful for him as well. It was successful for me in the "past", and the item(s) I was selling at the time Isn't profitable anymore. My accounts were also in good standing for years, they were legit accounts in different names (before I knew about stealth) and I could do whatever I wanted with them.

Making this much money with "stealth" isn't possible, at least not right away. I could get back into this business at anytime considering that I have a dropshipper located in the USA who ships via First Class, but I have moved on from auction sites, I only sell online on Amazon now occasionally If there's games (I collect them),etc that I no longer need. I hope this answers your question.

Also, paypal shut me down first, but stated that they couldn't give me a reason why, and mentioned something about "credit", I can't remember, this was around 2-3 yrs ago. My ebay account followed weeks later. Since the other accounts had some of the same info,etc they were linked, and everything was shut down. I miss the accounts, but using my method I had the best Christmas you could ever imagine. It was well worth it.