Do you want to become a dropshipper or have you never heard of the term before and you want to learn more? Maybe you are bored with your 9:00-5:00 office job or you need to supplement your income with some extra cash. Whatever the reason, it is a modern way to make a living online and as it involves very low risks and hardly any investment (both time and money); it can be a very lucrative opportunity.
So, what is dropshipping?
Much like the practice, the concept is fairly straightforward. Dropshipping is the term applied when products are purchased from a wholesaler by you and sent directly to your customer, which means you essentially act as a middleman between the supplier and the customer. You don’t handle the products, you don’t send the products and you don’t store the products – meaning you simply take the order from a customer and send it to the wholesaler who will take it from there. Dropshipping is a new way to get goods delivered and make money and a dropshipper is basically acting as an agent for the wholesaler by taking the orders and passing them on to be processed.
What are the benefits?
There are many benefits to being a dropshipper rather than running an online store selling your own products.
Here are some of the main benefits:
- It is virtually risk-free
The only thing that you will be investing in is an ecommerce website, as the stock will be managed by the wholesaler. This means that you don’t run the risk of having lots of stock that might not sell and you don’t need to invest lots of money into the rental cost of a warehouse or storage facility, not to mention staff.
- You can offer a huge selection of goods
Because you don’t have to store the goods, you can provide your customers with a wide selection of products to choose from and you are free to work with more than one wholesaler, so products can vary from specialist goods like electronics to clothing or jewellery.
- It is highly scalable
With any business module, it is vital to be able to build and grow and because you don’t have to process the orders yourself (including packing, shipping etc), you can scale your dropshipping business with ease.
There is very low capital involved in the setup of a dropshipping business for the following reasons:
- You don’t need to rent or buy a warehouse to store and handle the products
- You don’t need to pay staff to manage the goods
- There is no need to invest in lots of products that may not sell
How profitable it is will be determined by which products you choose to sell, the price, how visible your ecommerce site is and which suppliers you work with but it undoubtedly has the potential to be a very lucrative way to make a living off the internet with minimal risk.