Dropshipping Is It Really That Much Of A Headache?
February 13, 2008 – 4:09 amDropshipping and Dropshipers what the heck are they anyway. Well unless you’ve been hiding under a rock and live in the United States you probably already know but for the rest of the world, now that’s a whole different story.
This is a quick summary of Dropshipping for those who don’t know. What happens is instead of you ordering a huge pile of stock and then after you sell it you ship it direct to your customers with dropshipping the supplier send out your orders for you. Once you make the sale you send the dropshipper your customers details and they send out the goods. They even use your shipping labels so your customer won’t even know or care you aren’t supplying them.
Drop shipping is a very popular option with sellers because it takes a lot of the grunt work out of selling on eBay.No need for shipping goods or buying stock. However, there are some pretty big negatives to drop shipping it’s not all plain sailing especially true for new and inexperienced ebay sellers.
I will look at the positives of using a dropshipping service first:-
1. There is no need to hold huge stocks of goods or pay for storage or warehousing of goods. While not as important for less bulky goods it can be very useful for bigger items.
2.There are no shipping costs getting stock sent to you to sell.However the dropshipping company will charge you or your customer to send out the goods plus a handling fee for saving you all that work.
3. A large number of eBay sellers find the worst part of running an eBay business is the sending the items to their customers (packing and shipping). When you use the services of a dropship company they deal with all that for you.
4. There will be need to buy expensive packing materials, such as bubble wrap, boxes and the like which take up a lot of space and can be very inconvenient if you live in a small home with limited space.
However as with most things in life there is always a downside and dropshipping is no exception to the rule.
So here are the dropshipping negatives:-
1. Dropshipping isn’t cheap and can add a few extra bucks to the overall product costs as you are paying the suppliers labor costs. These on occasions can be as much as an extra $5 or even more. Not forgetting of course actual shipping costs are then added on top. This means you need to calculate carefully if selling a certain product that it can still be done profitably when taking these costs in to consideration.
2. Shipping issues can still be headache don’t forget the customer purchased from you so they will expect you to resolve any disputes for them. Also be wary of the fact that much of this part of the operation is out of your control so choose your dropshiper wisely.
3. Some sellers find that they locate a perfect product to sell but are unable to get a dropshipper to provide it for them. Some companies would rather just deal with bulk sales and don’t need the extra work involved with dropshipping the goods themselves.
4. On occasions you’ll find your dropshipper runs out of stock especially with high demand items. This can lead to unhappy customers who may feel agrieved that you sold a product you can’t supply.Usually with some careful handling you can keep most customers happy and avoid negative feedback.
Many people find dropshipping works well for them and others never really get it to work for them for various reasons. My advice is check the company you intend to use for your products well and you should avoid most of the difficulties people experience.
Tags: Auctions
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