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The drop ship scam
10 posts
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I like many of you have spent many hours, and way to much money on dropship companies. My advise is beware. There are hundreds of drop ship companies out their, and only a hand full which are actually real. Most, even the ones that seem legit are bogus. For example, DO NOT buy dropshipdirectory.com. It is full of small businesses who say they will drop ship. The problem with many of these dropship companies isnt that they wont dropship, its that they are not the REAL source of your product and so you are not getting the deal you could. I personally do not find dropshipping worth my time and effort if i only make 1-5 dollars per product. In my opinion the people who are making the millions in this new "drop ship craze" are the ones who advertise the drop ship directories. They are making thousands if not millions off from people by giving them sites which will drop ship. The truth is that you are getting nothing more or nothing less than contact information for a middleman who will mark up the wholesale price and sell it to you. Sadly, thousands of people fall for this capitolistic trick. If you want my advise, it would be far easier and you could make a hell of a lot more money making up a drop ship list than you could drop shipping products on ebay. Granted their are a few good companies out their, they are just hard to find.
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The problem is that dropshipping has been made out to be a "get rich quick and easy" opportunity by many unscroupluous directory/service sellers.
The truth is that dropshipping has been around for a long time but it takes just as much hard work and dedication to make it work as it does any other real business. Also, contrary to what many say, it does takke some initial capital to get started in this business. After all, how are you supposed to pay for the comuter fees, ecommerce software, ebay fees, advertising fees, etc.
Furthermore, finding real dropshippers with decent pricing and (even more imprtant) good service are hard to find. However, there many mediocre dropshippers out there that are good enough to get started with and if you are successful and you sell alot of their stuff, they will drop prices and treat you better as their customer.
This is the cold truth and if this is what these directory peddlers would tell you, no one would ever buy their directories, even if the directory is a good one.
If you think that all you (not you personally, imfunkymonkey) have to do is list product on ebay or just put up a site and VOILA, you're making money, forget it and get a job because there is no business that requires no investment of time and/or money.
BUt the fac tis that dropshipping works, if you do it correctly, but unfortunately there is no blueprint to buy for dropshipping success. You have to know what you are doing and to get that know-how, you must research and learn from others' mistakes and also learn from your own by just getting into it. If you do not have enough capital, though, you will quite before you are successful, that is if you were on the track to becoming successfull in the first place.
Good luck. -
So what do you do if you sell an item, go back and the drop shipper is out of stock? I am just curious because Ebayers are not going to be to forgiving.
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0ropshupping is not for ebay. Ebay wanrs you about it. You will dropshippers, like any other business, when getting an order ofr "all you've got" of a certain item ship them all. Imagine that! They buy goods to sell and then they sell them! Wow! What kind of business people are they, not holding back something they could sell out of, just so they will have something in the wild chance that you happen to sell ONE on ebay.
Dropshipping is a great way to sell from a storefront type site that you can control, it's great for going out and working local retailers and it works just fine for many people that sell in the party plan mode. Many a college student has made money selling shoes, books and other items through dropshippers.
But, it sucks as a source for ebay.
Keep in mind these people don't owe you anything. Unlike you, they make a real investment in inventory that they purchase to resell just as quickly as they can, so they can make some profit and buy some more inventory.
Inventory. That's what you need. Buy some and quit your bitchin'. -
pete. you are right on, except, notthing is black and white.
You can, in fact, make money on ebay using a dropshipper. There isa method to it, and like anything else, it isn't guaranteed. I know of a couple of powersellers that do this. They sell so much that they are favored BIG TIME by the dropshipper. the dropshipper gives them great discounts and when an item is going out of stock, the dropshipper gives them priority over the sock.
But besides that, how they got to that point with the dropshipper is what one needs to figure out. And it isn't that hard. but it DOES take time, money, and real dedication as well as good organisation skills. heck, one of these sellers does not even use any auction management services because he is so organised.
The fact is though, that very few could do as these two powersellers I know of do. It takes what I stated above and it also takes marketing savvy and know how. If you truely understand how to utilize ebays resources to your advantage, there is no end to what you can acheive, even with a dropshipper.
But I have written aout this so many times that, frankly, it's gettin' kinda old. Most folks wanna just believe that dropshipping as a concept is a scam and there is nothing you can od to change them. Therefore, you can be sure that it is exactly this kinda person that will never make it as a dropship retailer and also, very possibly, may never make it in any other type of business either. -
BKenn01 wrote:So what do you do if you sell an item, go back and the drop shipper is out of stock? I am just curious because Ebayers are not going to be to forgiving.
YOu win some and you lose some.
Look at the powersellers out there. Most of them get a bad feedback every 30 or so. That's ebay for ya. You cannot please everyone and some folks can never be pleased. But if you are doing the volume, one neg feedback every so often won't kill you at all. In fact, alot of buyers do not look at feedback when you got that powerseller logo next to your ID anyhow.
Some folks are forgiving if you go about it the correct way, by the way. They are not all a bunch of scoundrels on ebay but there are enough to make it a hell of a place to make a living. Also, positively satting in your auction's TOS that from time to time an item may go out of stock before the auction ends. if it happens, you will be given the choice to cancel or wait for new stock to arrive if the due in date is not too far off. -
You cannot please everyone on ebay... seems like some people use ebay for the sole reason to nick pick. I've seen people clearly list shipping fees on auctions, then get a negative for overcharging for shipping. Duh.
Rich
cxm322 wrote:BKenn01 wrote:So what do you do if you sell an item, go back and the drop shipper is out of stock? I am just curious because Ebayers are not going to be to forgiving.
YOu win some and you lose some.
Look at the powersellers out there. Most of them get a bad feedback every 30 or so. That's ebay for ya. You cannot please everyone and some folks can never be pleased. But if you are doing the volume, one neg feedback every so often won't kill you at all. In fact, alot of buyers do not look at feedback when you got that powerseller logo next to your ID anyhow.
Some folks are forgiving if you go about it the correct way, by the way. They are not all a bunch of scoundrels on ebay but there are enough to make it a hell of a place to make a living. Also, positively satting in your auction's TOS that from time to time an item may go out of stock before the auction ends. if it happens, you will be given the choice to cancel or wait for new stock to arrive if the due in date is not too far off. -
The problem with the whole drop shipping thing is the good ones do not advertise. Their stance is “those customers who are worth my time will find meâ€.
And those merchants who KNOW the good drop shippers wont divulge their identity. Why would they, you are going to be potential competition for them.
That said, I do not rest with high hopes that this will pan out. However, I could use a lead on a good drop shipper carrying sports/recreation/outdoor goods.
So if anyone knows of someone I should consider it would be much appreciated. In fact, so much that if the lead were worthwhile, I would consider helping you in some way. I am involved in the internet marketing business and I would like to help anyone who could help me in return.
Thank you,
Aaron -
AaronR wrote:The problem with the whole drop shipping thing is the good ones do not advertise. Their stance is “those customers who are worth my time will find meâ€.
And that is the stance, I find, that many REAL wholesalers in general take on small buyers. They aren't going to advertise all over the place where everyone and their brother can find them, especially if they drop ship. they are much too busy to be answering the phone and emails from th 99% of those that really will not produce any sales for them.
Sad?? I don't know about that. But true, for sure.
I'm not saying there aren't good wholesalers and dropshippers that advertise to the general public on the net, but they certainly are few nad far between coinsidering the amount of legit wholesalers that do not. -
Dropshipping "can" work, BUT the seller has to be willing to put in alot of hours to make decent money. I got to powerseller status using different dropshippers for 80% of what I sold. Use them now every once in awhile. I learned one thing from my experience, whatever you are having dropshipped, buy one and keep on hand in case the company runs out. There is usually very little profit with this method though. I guess it really depends on what you are going to sell and how much effort you are going to put in it. If you sell on eBay and want to keep a 100% feedback rating, having a duplicate product on hand is a +++++
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