Is Drop-Shipping Dead
3 min read
In case you’ve been living under a rock, drop-shipping is a method of selling goods via an e-commerce website without first having to stock up on the inventory or handle any of the shipping itself. The allure of drop-shipping resides in essentially allowing would-be entrepreneurs to get into the business of online sales without having to overcome the otherwise high barriers to entry. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it?
The question is however, is drop-shipping dead?
Saturation
I probably didn’t need to even explain what drop-shipping actually is, well simply because everybody and their grandmother seems to be doing it. You might have even tried your hand at it yourself, following all the instructions that came in the training course which you might have “fallen victim” to.
The truth is that drop-shipping and e-commerce in general have been saturated for quite a while now and even if your particular e-commerce site might be a custom built one which incorporates affiliate marketing, you only have to look at the battle the likes of Alibaba are trying to mount in a bid to steal away some market share from Amazon.
As far as drop-shipping itself goes though, you would have probably heard of or used platforms such as Shopify and Oberlo, only to find that yours is one of many e-commerce sites catering to what you thought might be a unique niche.
Not as easy as made out to be
So as it emerges, drop-shipping is not as easy as made out to be, but that’s precisely the reason why people are turning towards selling training courses about drop-shipping to make money from drop-shipping, in some or other way. If not that, people are building e-commerce sites that are fulfilled by drop-shipping and then selling those sites after recording some sales which they might have fabricated to a certain extent.
Drop-shipping is about marketing
What would like become apparent about drop-shipping is that it’s not really about the e-commerce site itself and the fact that your overheads are practically eliminated on account of you not having to handle inventory yourself. It’s not even about picking the right niche, because the business gods know how many people have followed those seemingly solid instructions contained in drop-shipping bibles to the letter and yet they still have no tangible results to report on.
Drop shipping is more about marketing. You have to master the marketing bit in order to make money, simply because as mentioned, the opening up of the game has allowed everybody and their grandmother to try their hand at it, populating the market with their own versions of e-commerce sites. Targeting certain demographics and designing your brand accordingly can help garner interest in your website and the products, in turn bringing more people to buy from you. Companies like Brandafy (https://www.brandafy.com/) constantly aim to provide such conversion-focused branding and design for businesses that are in different stages of their journey.
Drop-shipping businesses that succeed
The e-commerce space belongs to Amazon, despite what Alibaba may have to say, but there are some drop-shipping operations which succeed. These successful drop-shipping sites owe their success to one simple thing, which is their focus on an existing niche which they live and breathe and a niche in which they’ve already established a customer base. We’re talking here the likes of a scuba diving instructor selling diving gear to their students and clients, for example.
Infographic created by FMH Conveyors – flexible roller conveyor
