Some of you freelancers may be looking to lower your rates to be more competitive, or to work less hours, or to have something to fill in gaps while doing sales/marketing stretches before your next client project engages. You may be looking into dropshipping, where you hook up with a manufacturer or wholesaler to give you products, and then hook up with a fulfillment company to request products, ship them out as your name with their address, and you sit back and collect a percentage of the profits. You would build your own website for the products as a developer, plus run your ad campaigns and the costs with those, plus pay for your own market research initiatives. You would also need to do phonecalls and emails with the companies you rely on in order to make certain everything keeps running smoothly. And I'm sure it doesn't run even 75% smoothly, but it's possible.
My purpose: I'm trying to get some advice from someone who has experience here, who has actually done it. There are scams here, unfortunately, and I am seeking ways to get around that.
Hazards:
- Going with a dropshipper company. That's not what I want. That means they build me a website. I can build my own websites. If the barriers are so low that anyone can just put in a credit card, pick products, and *poof* they are a merchant with a pre-made website, then that market will be flooded and the dropshipper company just sits back and collects most of its money from suckers. But not me.
- Finding great products, but no manufacturer or wholesaler willing to deal with you because you're just one guy.
- Finding a company that pretends to be a company with an inventory, when in actuality they are faking it and are merely a middleman -- and that reduces your profit margin because those products already have a markup price on them.
- Finding a reliable fulfillment company.
- Bumping into Amway and Quixtar people. I don't want to get people to work under me in an MLM pyramid. I don't want to sell overpriced products that people don't want.
- Finding products that actually sell.
Passive Income - Dropshipping
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alex.barylski
- DevNet Evangelist
- Posts: 6267
- Joined: Tue Dec 21, 2004 5:00 pm
- Location: Winnipeg
Re: Passive Income - Dropshipping
I think using your own web site and simply drop shipping other peoples products is the best bet and most cost effective. The $1,000's you'd spend on setting up with an existing site/service you could spend on Google AdWords and get a nice head start on attracting what matters most -- clients.