Anyone using drop shipping suppliers ?

OU812

I find myself shall we say "between opportunities" presently & am looking into setting up something online to fill the gap (which will hopefully be short) & also to run as a sideline when I do get back into full time employment.

I'm thinking along the lines of a sales site (couple of ideas for product in mind), but don't have the cash for stock. I was thinking of doing drop shipping & was wondering if anyone on here has done or is doing this & how they find it (benefits Vs Drawbacks etc).

I have a little cash that I can use to get a nice site & domain together & was thinking of using paypal for payment under an old company plan I haven't used in years, (I believe it's quite difficult these days to get a merchant account).

Opinions welcomed.

Cianos

A disadvantage with drop shipping is that you're paying higher amounts for the convenience of it, and depending on the product this might leave little margin for you. If the product is one where people would scout around several sites before finding a good price, then your prices are going to have to be quite competitive which can be cut throat in the online world. If you have the luxury of time then you'd probably be better off taking a more hands on approach at least in the beginning, to be able to provide a better service to your customers, and build up a bit of loyalty and repeat business as another disadvantage of drop shipping is that your suppliers won't see customer satisfaction as their problem directly.

Rather than investing in loads of initial stock could just set up the site and run a short campaign to test the waters, with enough starting stock to do so. It doesn't matter if your initial margins aren't as good as they can be, in the beginning it should be about testing the site, testing the market, and then from there looking at ways to increase your margins, keep costs and work input low etc.

It'd be worth knowing what your options are for drop shipping anyway of course because if your circumstances changed it'd be nice to have the site still ticking away in the background with a lot of the process being automated.

Accepting payment through PayPal isn't a problem, it's not difficult to get an account.

ironclaw

I drop shipped stuff on eBay for a time in college. I'd often clear €60 or so in a lecture. But a second income it was not. As has been said the margins are really tight and buyers online are normally tech savvy. I was just lucky that I had something few online retailers had at the time (Unique Novelty USB keys) I'd say in a 3 month period I sold about 30 of them. Didn't really try all that hard but it ticked over all the same.

The biggest drawback, for me anyway, after margin is trusting another company to ship your product. Especially if your shipping from China. Be sure if you are that the person buying knows that its shipping from China to avoid a charge back against you because it didn't arrive in 3 days through An Post from Ireland.

Peterdalkey

Some good advice here. I think dropshipping has a more limited market that one might expect though it is very appealing in theory to middlemen such as the OP. The key is to have a source for goods that are “hot” and in short supply and are perhaps a fad with a short lifespan.

If it were that easy for regular stuff, everybody would be doing it!!