Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/11/11/dropshipping-sounds-like-a-terrible-way-to-make-money.html
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3 Likes
Maybe, but how else are you going to get your mechs down to the planet surface?
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This whole article is misleading, as it totally misrepresents what drop shipping actually is. It described it as “You buy something on the cheap, then sell for profit”. Drop shipping is actually a process whereby you sell something you don’t stock yourself — it’s when you have the product supplier ship directly to the customer. Nothing to do with price. It’s about product range extension.
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These kinds of online money-making ideas remind me of a gold rush-- the first people there find all the gold, and by the time others start arriving months later the gold is all gone.
I’ve read other accounts of people trying dropshipping and it always seems like the market is saturated for whatever product they decide to sell.
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It is obviously better to make money selling cheap crap found on Amazon.
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It seems like it is basically the Uber of advertising. You get a whole bunch of people to market your crap under the delusion that they are working for themselves.
11 Likes
Next time let the android pilot the thing.
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Looks like a parasitic business from end to end. I know professional dropshippers who make money, but they’re actual companies with multiple employees (vendor managers, merchandisers, marketers, social media managers, Web designers, bookkeepers, etc.) and not this scam.
Really what Mark and the article are describing is yet another shady “make thousands a day from your couch” scheme where the successful promoters actually make their money from selling courses and acting as influencers for hire while posting images of themselves next to cars they don’t own.
16 Likes
This is a legitimate “Drop Ship” - https://oksanaball.com/product/starry-night-pillow/ - this is a print-on-demand for printed versions of my wife’s artwork. What Mark was suggesting is basically looking at the inventory of thrift store and listing on ebay.
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I think he learned the lesson but didn’t put it in his conclusion: spending money on overhead in a business where you have no skillset is a terrible way to make money.
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Although remember why the pilot crashed here – she was being attacked by an alien. Bishop the android isn’t immune to alien attacks as we saw towards the end of the movie.
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If you’re worried your Android is vulnerable to attacks you could always try placing the order through an iOS device instead.
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How many customers are happy with 2 1/2 month long shipping times? Seems like there’s more money in selling people on dropshipping than there is in doing it.
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And there’s always a certain number of people who made all their money telling people how to make money finding gold, not by actually finding any gold themselves…
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If you want to make money in a gold rush, be the guy who sells the shovels.
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At least with the vendor we use at work(IT equipment, probably almost anything that can be used to accessorize a computer or runs on electricity and doesn’t qualify as ‘industrial’ or ‘janitorial’); the willingness to wait and/or plan ahead gets factored into prices and selection.
If you want something overnighted to you anywhere in the continental United States that can be arranged, for a price; and so long as you are willing to go with either the super-popular configuration they always have in stock because it moves or the configuration that didn’t quite meet expectations and so they are looking to get off their shelves.
If you want any configuration your OEM of choice offers, including special order/custom bid/etc. the vendor will be happy to sell it to you; but if it’s enough of an oddball it will ship directly from the factory and that will take longer.
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Wait a minute…this sounds too good to be true. I love stuff that’s too good to be true!
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Ok, fair enough. I’m thinking of this from the perspective of just some guy that goes on Amazon sometimes and gets frustrated that it’s impossible to find something I’m willing to order, with the price low-to-high feature giving me a bunch of $0.01 (+$35 s&h) listings and when I do find a decent looking listing it has a 4 month wait time. I hate that stuff and won’t order it.
Edit: Mostly I guess I hate Amazon. They could fix this if they wanted to.
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He never bought any product as far as I can tell from reading the article. It was in fact drop shipping. He was going to have a physical product sent directly from his AliExpress provider.
I’ve seen some other shady marketers selling get rich quick training touting Fulfilled by Amazon, where people import a product and then pay Amazon to warehouse it and fulfill the orders they think are going to come rolling in. And that is a great way to lose tons of money fast. Because you’re competing with people who actually do this for a living who are actually in China where the products come from and have a better understanding of how to work the market, and who are willing to cheat and create fake reviews and do all sorts of other sketchy crap that you just can’t compete with. All while Amazon is draining your account with monthly fees.
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Or shovel training, teaching how people can get rich shoveling. Then you don’t even need to to stock any products. 
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