# “Drop Shipping”



## Funny Guy (Sep 13, 2021)

General discussion thread. Thoughts on longevity and/or viability? Drop Shipping shot up in popularity recently with “tiktok billionaires” shilling so much it’s become a buzzword.





For those uninformed Drop Shipping is going to a manufacturer and buying their products at “dealer price”, reselling it on whatever shit website you run, then paying a “Drop Shipping” fee for them to ship it out for you and make a 3.02$ profit.


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## (((Oban Lazcano Kamz))) (Sep 13, 2021)

its a low iq scam


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## NigKid (Sep 13, 2021)

Its bullshit, youre never gonna be making money doing it now, there was a time were it was profiteable but that time is long gone.
Depending on the country youre in youre also responsible for all damage caused by the cheap chiense shit youre trying to flip, so its double dumb

Also if you look at that tumbnaiil or tiktok and genuinly consider what youre seeing youre a retard


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## murdered meat bag (Sep 13, 2021)

when you drop ship, the manufuctor or their warehouse partners ship the item to the customer directly. saves you wareshouse space but also means you have no control over shipping. look at the 1 star reviews for CDW. their business is nothing but drop ship and pleb customers don't understand that. and with the current logistics nightmare, who knows if it will ever ship.


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## Saint Alphonsus (Sep 13, 2021)

Arbitrage has been full of these grifts ever since Amazon launched its Fulfilled By Amazon program. It is almost like Amway but without the actual multi level marketing, in that the suckers who think they're going to get rich are the actual customers.

Why is this being pushed on TikTok? Because it's a Chinese app and all of this eCommerce is driven by business whose entire manufacturing, supply chain and logistics are dependent on China.

Globalism makes things easier and efficient but reliant on a single point of failure. Not even a joint US-Chinese bioweapon attack has knocked us out of this stupor.


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## Thumb Butler (Sep 13, 2021)

Buy Chinese, buy ten times over and your house might even catch fire. I've learnt my lession.


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## Analog Devolved (Sep 13, 2021)

murdered meat bag said:


> when you drop ship, the manufuctor or their warehouse partners ship the item to the customer directly. saves you wareshouse space but also means you have no control over shipping. look at the 1 star reviews for CDW. their business is nothing but drop ship and pleb customers don't understand that. and with the current logistics nightmare, who knows if it will ever ship.


Oh man the reason I clicked on this thread was because I thought it was about the shipping fubar in China right now. Biggest logistical shit show in my lifetime.

You're trusting some 3rd party to ship these items and not get screwed by customs or VAT. I don't see how you save money with this.


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## Long-Nosed Fish (Sep 13, 2021)

Drop-shipping is now a regular trend not only for cheap chinese shit, but is also rising in popularity with secondhand items.

There's a plague on clothes reselling sites where people pretend to live in another country and will list things from that country's flea market sites, and only buy it if someone on the US site wants it. They have "storefronts" with thousands of items just scraped from Mercari that half the time are sold by the time the guy goes to buy them and they just cancel the transaction and refund the buyer. And these are usually marked up 2-3x their original listing.

It's an absolutely disgusting practice that taints the entire market, especially for legitimate sellers whos items are immediately pushed off the "new listings" sections. But the site owners don't care because they skim 10% off the top.


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## murdered meat bag (Sep 13, 2021)

Analog Devolved said:


> Oh man the reason I clicked on this thread was because I thought it was about the shipping fubar in China right now. Biggest logistical shit show in my lifetime.
> 
> You're trusting some 3rd party to ship these items and not get screwed by customs or VAT. I don't see how you save money with this.


it's like those "earn 6 figures selling on ebay! buy my book to learn how!" ads from the 90's-2000's. and it you did was buy dollar store ceramic chintz and sell it on ebay. 


For real logistics, SE Asia is still shut down right? i'll take at least 6-8 months to get the factories back to regular production levels. I still can't anyone with name brand car amps. it's all boss and knock off shit.


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## themasterlurker (Sep 13, 2021)

If you go on Instagram there are thousands of pages run by Indians who just repost stuff from major accounts, with the second slide of the post being a product they try selling. The problem? There are thousands of other people selling the exact same product at the same exact price, meanwhile I can go on ebay and get the same dumb gimmick product for a quarter of the price, and shipped from an American warehouse.


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## Jamal McGucci (Sep 13, 2021)

Yeah, I don't really get drop shipping. Just buy your stuff directly from Aliexpress.


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## Kosher Dill (Sep 13, 2021)

This is hardly new. Drop shipping has been a plague online as long as marketplaces have been developed enough to support it. I saw it happening in the mid-'00s at least, and it probably goes back even earlier.

Part of the issue is the criminally low subsidized international shipping rates China gets courtesy of the UPU. (This is one of the many things Trump called out but then never did anything about) Once people realized that it's possible to get _one_ individually-packaged chunk of chinesium drop-shipped to a customer for pennies, the rest was history.


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## L50LasPak (Sep 13, 2021)

Please sign up for my brand new and revolutionary Yeet Shipping technique. We can afford free shipping on every item, as our delivery drivers save 30% more time throughout the day by catapulting your package right on to your doorstep without even having to get out of the truck. Like, subscribe, please donate some shillcoin and remember to turn off that pesky adblock.


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## TheBeanz (Sep 13, 2021)

L50LasPak said:


> Please sign up for my brand new and revolutionary Yeet Shipping technique. We can afford free shipping on every item, as our delivery drivers save 30% more time throughout the day by catapulting your package right on to your doorstep without even having to get out of the truck. Like, subscribe, please donate some shillcoin and remember to turn off that pesky adblock.


I'm in. Please send me your copy-paste templates for my mandatory social media posts about 'building my business'

I'll send you the bitcoin next week, promise


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## Red Hood (Sep 13, 2021)

I bought a drop shipped t shirt once. Took a month to get to me and tore the second time I washed it. Never again.


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## Stoneheart (Sep 13, 2021)

Its a fools business.  The only people who make money from it are experts in small fields full of people who dont wanna deal with the chinese directly.
there is stuff people want that cant be found on chinese websites without chinese language expertise.

If you know what stuff is wanted by your niche, can speak and read chinese and are willing to do the leg work, you can make a living off it.
but thats nothing new,  this model has been around for centuries,  the internet opened up dropshipping for millions of idiots who hope to become rich by selling a million fidgetspinner on their shopify page...


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## Pissmaster (Sep 13, 2021)

Soula Boy's "Souljagame" console thing was basically an elaborate dropshipping scam.  That's the kind of person that does dropshipping.


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## Win98SE (Sep 13, 2021)

The only way to make real money in dropshipping is to sell the "courses"/e-books that teach people to dropship. These "gurus" get tens of thousands of YouTube/TikTok followers, then start advertising their mentorship programs and pay-to-access Facebook groups with $100+ price tags. I've read a few accounts of people who have taken these courses/paid for the mentorships and it's very basic fundamental knowledge of e-commerce with maybe a handful of product recommendations/etc. Big MLM vibes.


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## A Gay Retard (Sep 14, 2021)

Drop-shipping on sites where it's against the ToS for sellers is a great way to get fucked by buyers. Whenever a seller drop-ships a product to me when I order from a site, like Amazon for example, that doesn't allow sellers to drop-ship, I could in theory just claim I never got the product and the marketplace forces the seller to refund me. If the seller wanted to prove it was shipped and I was lying they'd be forced to reveal the product shipped from a Wal-Mart warehouse or something. If you're drop-shipping on eBay and having packages sent from Amazon, as I've seen done by morons, a disgruntled customer can out you to both eBay and Amazon and get your seller accounts banned.

Don't drop-ship, all it takes is one customer who knows how the system works to fuck you over.

edit: it's also a great way to get screwed on returns when somebody claims there's something wrong with the product. Ask them to send it back to the third party you had it shipped from, _if that third party would even accept it_, and the buyer can still escalate to customer service for the marketplace where they bought from you and fuck you that way too. Then they might not even send it back and claim they did. How are you as a drop-shipper going to prove it either way? What recourse do you have? I mailed a box full of dirt and gravel to Target returns once because I was sick of a Pajeet drop-ship scammer's bullshit. Wonder what they said to him when they opened that package.


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## kittyfucker (Sep 15, 2021)

A Gay Retard said:


> Drop-shipping on sites where it's against the ToS for sellers is a great way to get fucked by buyers. Whenever a seller drop-ships a product to me when I order from a site, like Amazon for example, that doesn't allow sellers to drop-ship, I could in theory just claim I never got the product and the marketplace forces the seller to refund me. If the seller wanted to prove it was shipped and I was lying they'd be forced to reveal the product shipped from a Wal-Mart warehouse or something.


In theory, couldn't you buy a bunch of shit off Amazon and, if they were all drop-shipped, pull that card?
I know lying about whether your order came in or not is illegal (at least where I live it is) but would they focus more on the seller breaking ToS or the buyer?
I'm not going to do it by the way. It just interests me  

IMHO I think the whole dropshipping thing is looking at it through the wrong lens when there's much easier ways to make money that won't get you in any trouble - relevant powerlevel, I love making jewelry and all these tiktok egirls are ordering charms from AliExpress, putting them on earrings and selling them for $15USD and they sell like fucking hot cakes. I know from experience that 1 pair of the earrings they make would cost about $2USD *(and that's being liberal) *, would take ~2 minutes to assemble and only a few minutes to print the label and ship. Everything you need to make it is dirt fucking cheap and in bulk on chinese websites - just say you're an "indie" business, say you're a black trans woman or some shit, and you'll have 12k followers on your business account in like 3 months. Seriously. Worst case scenario it doesn't work out - that's when you sell what you've made to _other_ people wanting to do that shit, and sell it at a premium.

Check some examples (link is to etsy) and take a gander at the shit they use, run to AliExpress and see how much those same materials run for. I guarantee you it is less than $5USD, free shipping.

There's also a guy I know that buys random shit from thrift stores, claims it's "vintage" and sells it for like $70 for a pair of $3 jeans he found. They're not even vintage.


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## Traditional Tet (Sep 15, 2021)

Drop Shipping is just the physical version of Arbitrage.


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## BelUwUga (Sep 17, 2021)

As a no-reputation, no-leverage, new business they are going to eat you alive with the drop ship fees. The way these scams work is to externalize their sales costs. They only need to realize them when the actual sale happens. Furthermore, you don't do enough business to work with true manufacturers. You're already losing margin being several steps further down the supply chain.

Successful strategies are closely guarded secrets. The sky is the theoretical limit on profits if you're willing to do the legwork. The systems scale well if you plan well. Why the fuck would anyone ever want to share that with someone else? These schemes are shared because the underlying business model isn't profitable. They need you buying in or paying a cut for their non-specialized "connections" to make their nut.

I cannot legally discuss the market I worked in, specific vendors, or other specific details but I can offer some generalized advice:


Manufacturers and high level distributors are infinitely more likely to authorize drop-shipping if you can warehouse a certain level of merchandise. A small warehouse or using a spare room will pay for itself if you keep the right inventory. These are your bread and butter earners. Don't stock fad items at all if you can help it.
Get your hands on the best earning SKUs and look for anything you can reverse engineer to see who your distributor is buying from. Brush up on your Mandarin, get some stimulants, and WeChat. If you work to their schedule and to their language most manufacturers have no loyalty to their distributors.
Get your own corporate logistics account. Freight discounts start at 80%, parcel is 20-50%. They also have good, reliable partners to refer you to for services. Lots of freebies for small firms. Most importantly this gives you control over shipments. Distributors can bill labels to your account, this is nothing new to them. It also removes one of their major reasons to demand a fee for drop shipping.
My former employer did six figures of orders every year for eight figures in gross revenue. I worked directly with our procurement and vendor teams and ran all logistics. If you have any questions let me know.


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## murdered meat bag (Sep 21, 2021)

Wasabi Bobbi said:


> As a no-reputation, no-leverage, new business they are going to eat you alive with the drop ship fees. The way these scams work is to externalize their sales costs. They only need to realize them when the actual sale happens. Furthermore, you don't do enough business to work with true manufacturers. You're already losing margin being several steps further down the supply chain.
> 
> Successful strategies are closely guarded secrets. The sky is the theoretical limit on profits if you're willing to do the legwork. The systems scale well if you plan well. Why the fuck would anyone ever want to share that with someone else? These schemes are shared because the underlying business model isn't profitable. They need you buying in or paying a cut for their non-specialized "connections" to make their nut.
> 
> ...


the point of the tiktok/shopify dropship is to make money doing very, very, very little work.  renting storage and holding inventory defeats the purpose because now youve got expenses and merch to unload.

at that point youd might as well go full on retail.


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## Pee Cola (Sep 22, 2021)

I'm old enough to remember when drop shipping was a legtimate process used by actual businesses as a way to manage inventory and/or working capital. Normally it would be either a manufacturer or their authorised importer/distributor who'd offer this service to their bigger resellers. This was nearly 20 years ago.

The upside to this for a reseller is that it'd save them from having too much capital tied up in inventory. It may also reduce shipping costs of the item to the end user if the manufacturer/distributor was getting a price break from their courier company (which may or may not get passed on to the reseller). YMMV.

The downside is that price breaks you'd normally get for buying items in volume may be non-existent if each drop shipped item is invoiced separately, irrespective of whether or not they're contained in a single order. That said, I understand why suppliers would do this, as it's obviously more work for them to organise delivery of 10 items to 10 different addresses than it is to organise delivery of 10 items to one address. Again, YMMV.



Spoiler: PL



In the early-mid '00s, I had a business specialising in selling network gear, along with installing broadband and VoIP connections. It was a part-time business, so I only kept my biggest selling lines in stock; anywhere from 10-20 units per month across several products, thus achieving a price break and keeping my supplier happy. For things I'd only sell 2 or 3 units of a year, drop shipping from my main supplier was really handy.



These days it seems like drop shipping means dumb fucks selling cheap shit from Wish to even dumber fucks that can't even spell "wish". I wouldn't go as far as to say it's a grift, but it does seem like the middle men selling this drop shipped gear add absolutely no value to the transaction at all.


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## The golden neckbeard (Sep 22, 2021)

I had my own business procuring shit for the government pre 2019. I did pretty good. Government procurement is way more profitable then just buying garbage on wish and reselling it...the only qualification is being the lowest bidder generally..

The key is to get on sites www.findRFP.com and read the proposal requests and try to subsitute it with something you could find on Alibaba and drop ship...send in your bid and hope to be the lowest. The best place ideally to start is find your local government bid lists at sites like Bidnet and Demandstarr. Heck maybe even check your county websites...thats how you start if you dont have alot to work with. You can  incorporate as an LLC which works best for the role because if you fuck up you can just dissolve and all liability ceases for you, you just a make a new LLC

For example I won awards for 20,000 dog bowls for an emergency agency on the west coast that manages tsunami preparedness...ive altered the details a bit as to not dox myself but anyway all my competitors used domestic sources while I went straight to India mart and got a quote myself for a full container of dog pails. They took care of every aspect including shipping, all i had to do was pay for the customs clearance. Anyway turns out my competitors were just getting it from the same guy i was getting it from but a 3rd party was importing it and add 40% on top of my price.

I made over $29000 on that deal alone.  I never saw the product, never inspected it. It went straight from Mumbai to Los angeles... Sent my invoice once i got the packing list.

Its alot of paperwork but its actually very easy if you are willing to constantly look. I think I made around 97k my first year. Covid sort of soured the business tho for me i let it die. Can't say i needed the money after buying Link

If anyone has any questions i would be glad to answer them. There are thousands of government opportunities posted daily. Ill go over anything you want, always here to help a fellow farmer


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## Gar For Archer (Sep 22, 2021)

murdered meat bag said:


> the point of the tiktok/shopify dropship is to make money doing very, very, very little work.  renting storage and holding inventory defeats the purpose because now youve got expenses and merch to unload.
> 
> at that point youd might as well go full on retail.


Agreed… while these are interesting insights, it’s not really relevant to the ““victims”” being targeted by these scams, because they don’t WANT to put in the effort. If they did, they wouldn’t be drop-shipping on Tiktok.


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## murdered meat bag (Sep 22, 2021)

Gar For Archer said:


> Agreed… while these are interesting insights, it’s not really relevant to the ““victims”” being targeted by these scams, because they don’t WANT to put in the effort. If they did, they wouldn’t be drop-shipping on Tiktok.







It's incredibly low effort, starting at 4:14 you can see all the steps to setup a "store" when you play it back quarter speed..  it's obvious that most people will use the same distros to sell the same shit with the same prices to the same group of people. 1 sale in 1 day and we don't even know if it's a real sale or the youtuber purchased it themselves.






this vid is from this year with the 4 stores being given away at the end.. dude had a loss of $900 or so after the trial run. but the comments are full of people hoping to win the store because the hardwork is over and the winner can coast out of poverty.


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## Fivehead (Jun 5, 2022)

Is POD t-shirts/merch pandering to niches still a profitable business venture in 2022? Anyone have success with this?


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