I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, right from a young age. What I didn’t know at the time, was that I would end up having major people anxiety to deal with for most of my life. I have done a lot of work to get over this and after 20 years, I can almost function like a normal human being. However, my preference will always be not to have to talk or even deal with people. I like spending time on my own and I enjoy nothing more than sitting down to either read or write a book. After 10 years climbing the corporate ladder in a fake it until you make it style, I decided to rekindle my dream of becoming an entrepreneur. But it had to be doing something I loved and something that enabled me to avoid people as much as possible.
So I tried pretty much all the regular ‘make money without selling’ businesses. Here is my account of what happened when I tried the dropshipping via Facebook business model.
What is Drop Shipping?
Drop shipping is when you sell a product through your website or social media channels, but you don’t actually stock that product or even handle the sale or delivery. You essentially act as a middle man between the product seller and the product buyer. People think they are buying from you, but once they place an order, you then place an order with the actual product seller and they ship directly to the customer. You can charge what you like for that product and get to keep the profit after costs.
Drop Shipping Basics
There are hundreds of so called gurus out there that are all trying to sell you into their coaching program with the promise of making millions through drop shipping. Most of them promote the following typical model:
- Use Shopify to set up an online shop.
- Use Aliexpress to find products from China that you want to sell
- Use a Shopify plugin, like Oberlo, that allows you to import products direct from Aliexpress into your shop
- Set the prices and shipping cost
- Set your shop live
- Promote your products using paid adverts of Facebook
I thought this sounds nice and easy, so I decided to give it a go. I bought the cheapest package on Shopify, around $39 and set up Oberlo. Thankfully I got a three month free trial of Oberlo before I was forced to pay out for it. I decided to try a range of different niche shops to see what worked best. I set up a pet products shop and a jewellery business.
The problem with drop shipping through Aliexpress is that all of your products take between 6 and 8 weeks to arrive at your customers address, so most of these coaches recommend that you add a disclaimer to your website saying that ‘due to demand’ products can take a while to arrive. I copied the exact wording for my Facebook advert that one of the gurus had given me as a free download from their website and I set my adverts live. I kept the budget small at just £5 a day for 5 days. I am a marketing professional by trade, so used detailed targeting to make sure that my adverts were only hitting pet lovers or fans of similar large scale jewellers.
So how did my business do after 5 days and following the so called gurus actions exactly?
ADVERTISING COST – 5 DAYS AT £5 – £25 TOTAL
SHOPIFY COST – APPROX £30
SALES – 1 @ £4.99
TOTAL INCOME – -£55.01
Some of these coaches are charging upwards of £3000 for their advice but it just doesn’t stack up.
Many of them advise actually giving your product away for free and just charging for shipping (heavily inflated so you make money). Again, this model doesn’t work as no one is going to pay £20 to ship a ring or set of earrings.
The drop shipping experience for the customer
Unfortunately, because the product is being sent unseen, direct to the customer, you have no control over the quality. This means that while the photo looks great on Aliexpress, it could be a pile of…well you get the idea. I ordered one of all of the products I was going to sell before they went on sale so I could check the quality and how long it took to arrive. I strongly advise you do this. It also means you can make videos or take your own more professional photos.
Also, you need to work out how you are going to handle returns. If a product breaks or is damaged on arrival, you need to decide how you are going to deal with it. It may just be easier to offer a refund without return, but then that requires you to put great trust in your customers to tell the truth.
Can you actually make money drop shipping?
As you can see from my stats above, I made quite a sizeable loss over just 5 days of minimal spend. While there maybe money to be made in dropshipping, you need to find a way to sell large ticket price items or find a cheaper way to actually advertise your products. You also need to find a niche that has not been done. Unfortunately, many of the so called gurus out there are pushing the same cheap and nasty AliExpress items which I have tried and tested above. You just cannot make money from selling small items like jewellery on Facebook anymore.
There are so many supposed gurus out there offering coaching programs to help you make money from drop shipping. In reality, you will end up paying out a large sum of money only to end up losing money when you actually try it out for yourself. If you want to give drop shipping a try, there is plenty of free information on the internet. You do not need to hire a guru. You are better off spending that money on getting some decent digital marketing training or outsourced help to ensure your products sell.
