One of the most common ways to make money online is dropshipping. To answer the second question first – yes, it can be profitable. Very profitable.
But – and their is always a but – that doesn’t make is quick or simple. Oh the process of dropshipping is dead simple, and has been further simplified by providers like Salehoo and HyperSku. (full disclosure – the HyperSku link is an affiliate link. If you sign up through it, it helps me out a little).
Dropshipping is just acting as a middleman between a warehouse or manufacturer, and the buyer. So a buyer orders a top hat from you (through your own website or one where you are a seller) you arrange to ship the hat directly from the warehouse or manufacturer to the buyer. You have no inventory, and make a profit on the transaction.
Sounds pretty simple. It is, except for that first part – finding the buyer. That is going to be the challenge in many online income generation methods. How do you get exposure? We will review a number of solutions in other posts, but understand upfront that this is the difficult part. It is also a part that may cost you some money in advertising. This can be money well spent though, and it can help you build an audience, which will pay big dividends later.
Once you have the buyer’s attention, if everything else is good, you might make a sale. And on that sale, you can make a profit.
It is easy to get excited about the prospect – after all, there are many millions of online sales happening all the time. If you could only get a fraction of a percent of those, you would be laughing! That is the appeal – you get to run a store, without the building, staff, or inventory. In essence, you become a mini-Amazon. Remember, when it got started, Amazon was an online bookstore with no inventory. Now, Amazon is not only one of the largest companies in the world, but it has become a vehicle by which many others sell their dropshipped goods.
You may not become the next Jeff Bezos, but let’s engage in a little thought experiment here. Imagine you found a product which you could get direct from a supplier for $50, and you could sell it for $70. Now imagine you make two sales each day. That is $600 per month – from two sales each day! What could you do with $600 per month? Even after taxes, that would greatly help with paying down debt, especially high interest credit card debt. It could also give your savings a real boost. And making $20 per day dropshipping isn’t some crazy, unrealistic goal.
Dropshipping is real, and it can change your life.