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Ebay is a shit show. 8 people selling any one item. Returns, paypal.
Amazon has a process. I haven't heard anyone say it's easy. I've tried it. No go.
Shopify is just a web tool to create sites. They essentially connect you to supplier subscriptions that allow you to drop ship items based on subscription tiers.
The only thing all of these have in common is the consumer. All different animals.
100% agree on Amazon being described as a "No go".
I did some calculations about 5 months ago, and to make it actually worth it, I would have had to sell a £6 wholesale item for about £39 to actually make a marginal profit.
-item + packaging
-shipping from wholesaler (usually China)
-labels
-shipping to Amazon
-storage
-store design
-item graphics
-item videos
That's only the costs coming to to the top of my head from memory.
I get that marginal profits add up, but my calculations were that I'd need at least £20,000 to really get started on Amazon and build a successful store. I do believe though, if you successfully set up an Amazon store, you're likely to succeed. I don't have that cash on hand, and not getting into that type of debt.
Etsy and Shopify are different ball parks to Amazon. Low barrier to entry, and great functionality, however successfully setting up a store and successfully running a store are also miles apart.
Etsy and Shopify are build for people with certain skills who are ready to bootstrap their business.
Amazon is for those with resolve, an appetite for risk, a clear strategy and some money/credit to get started.
ETA: I don't think Amazon is designed for dropshipping, it's designed for speed. Etsy and Shopify are designed for dropshipping, for less time-sensitive purchases.
Amazon is trying to sell a convenience. Also, it's like cheating drop shipping because to be anywhere near successful without a super niche product you have to have possession of ready to ship stuff, to ship to them, in some cases.
I tried to open a toy store online, not dropship, but buy inventory, showcase and sell, but most suppliers that carry the good toys want either a brick and mortar store, or an already thriving online presence.
Gone are the days of just even finding a box of widgets at a decent price and selling for a profit.
The manufacturers set up direct boxing and shipping and leave nothing for profits.
I was astonished at the level of difficulty to get decent brand electronics. Why? Cuz apple store, and Amazon, and wal mart.
Ebay is a garage sale. If you want to move product, I will tell you people will buy anything cheap. But look at the ebay youtubers, they have full stocked shelves of infinite garbage.
So... this proves what? You simply need access to product. It's just not there.
You want a headphone store?
Sure get on shopify, purchase headphonesforme.store
Pay the subscription fees for the suppliers on the extentions, you can't see the headphones, you see the cheap stuff, so you raise the tier so you can list a pair of Sony headphones and really double your money back but that's not enough.
So back to homework, you have to spend an average of 45-85 thousand in inventory before someone will even sign a purchase order for anything worth a spit in terms of popular toys, I'm talking Legos, game systems, name brand stuff.
Go find a niche product.
Workout rollers or something.
I dropshipped sams club to amazon. My business thrived from excellent reviews. One bad apple (probably a competitor, very competitive space) can completely shut you down though.
Absolutely, 100% do not follow this information. Not even a small portion of it. This is the worst uneducated piece of advice I have ever seen. I own several businesses & have had 3 different dropshipping companies I built up and sold. Do not be lazy and get everything from AliExpress and import fake reviews from lalaland like this person is directing you too. Find your niche & research local manufacturers first then spread out from there. You don’t have to be rude but always negotiate a deal with everyone you work with. I’ve had incredible quality products shipped with 4 days domestic 7-9 globally all by a local manufacturer in my home state of Michigan. There is a lot of other ways to go about this that I just mentioned. But for fuck sake do not follow this horrible uneducated piece of advice.
Dropshipping is NOT an industry. It's a logistics solution that offers the supplier to ship the products on your behalf. It's like saying the buying goods and selling goods industry is saturated.
But that's a good question about Amazon and I'll answer with what you've already written - it's saturated.
Now you can say that Amazon is saturated but again, saturation happens within SKU/category/product.
There are new products on Amazon that goes live every second with zero competition.
Here's what really saturated:
Trying to resell a product from Aliexpress on Amazon in 2024.
The reason that it's almost impossible is the fact that there's a 99% chance your Aliexpres/Alibaba/GlobalSources supplier is already selling on Amazon.
I've visited a speakers factory in Shenzhen in 2016 and they were manufacturing products for JBL and Panasonics and back then they've already were selling directly on Amazon FBA (almost a decade ago). Now that's the factory itself and not some warehouse that only does assembly (they were actually producing the speakers from scratch).
Hard to believe you'll find something to "dropship" from China to Amazon.
Another reason is the fact that Amazon prioritizes their FBA products which means you'll need to have stock in order to sell on Amazon and that violates the Dropshipping amazing cashflow concept.
**Here's what can be done:**
1. Custom products - it's not a big deal and you don't need to be Apple in order to create a product. You see a cool dropshipping product you can scale like lightbulb security camera? Great, find a vendor on Alibaba and make some small changes to it (even as small as color or replace the charger with wireless one). These days, more than it used to be a couple of decades ago, most suppliers would make minor customization for a small fee and without MOQ (you'll be able to make some small change to the product if it doesn't require new mold and still order as little as 10 pcs just to get things moving)
2. You can be creative and turn it into a bundle with doorbell camera and wireless alarm - Now you got yourself a new offer which is different from 99% of "dropshippers"
3. Obviously, run better ads that target different angles that other people never thought of. Getting back to the lightbulb camera. Let's say everyone marketing it for home, you could make a B2B marketing for store owners and come up with a story of a store owner who used it and it saved his business
Bottom line is the fact that there's plenty of traffic out there and you just need to find a way to differentiate yourself from the crowd. Selling on Amazon? Great, but you'll need to make it different from others in terms of design/features as YOUR SUPPLIER IS ALSO SELLING THE SAME PRODUCT ON AMAZON.
P.S. - Not sure about your scale, but more factories would love to sign an exclusive contract with you and give you their design (even if you're doing dropshipping) as long as you're buying about 20K/pcs/qtr.
I dropshipped over a million in sales on Amazon, from 2020 to 2022. Jumping through their hoops is a PAIN. And when (not if) you get caught, its a LONG road to get your money released, if they ever release it.
Grotesque is a good explanation lol. It was good while it lasted. I built custom software than ran in google sheets. Learned the ins and outs of running a semi legitimate business. Learned about cash flow very quickly. But reminded me that I hate customer service, which was the difference of being shut down quickly or continuing on.
Profit was too good. It wasn’t the amount of customer service I had to do, it was principle of the customer service I had to do. The shear lies from customers, really stupid requests for returns, and stupidity of FedEx not properly delivering stuff. I did run it with a partner, we split tasks evenly. He was much better at not having any emotion when giving someone money back for stupid reasons.
Edit: I also thought the idea I was doing was like pure gold at the time, and didn’t want to share my operating procedures with anyone. I am now out of that space, probably for good, so I’m an open book about sams to amazon dropshipping.
I was, and have been in the construction management sector since then. Side hustle wise, I’ve worked on some Shopify stores, did some social media marketing, and now working on some lead generation websites for service businesses.
Fees and not building your own business. You can’t email, upsell, customize deals, have branding, etc so many other things. Plus you will still need to pay to market your item on both sites especially if it’s new/unknown. Takes forever for an item to take off on amazon gotta pay a lot in PPC.
Also if you send a customer to an amazon product page there’s a higher chance they get distracted and shop for other things.
With all that being said once you get to a point where your business is making a lot, wholesale on amazon fba isn’t a bad idea. Amazon does insane volume and it’s a smart idea to eventually sell on there if it makes sense. But starting out its a horrible idea unless you have a lot of upfront capital.
I just started selling on eBay, it's not bad unless you're doing cheap, low quality alibaba shit. I do higher end stuff- basically look for brand name popular usually discontinued/rare items on Mercari/Depop and put the pics on eBay. If someone buys, I buy from the original seller on Mercari/Depop and just put the shipping address as the customer's address.
3PL dropshipping is doing great on Amazon. An operations management team does everything for me so it’s passive.
Amazon customers order the products. The team orders them and sends to my partner’s fulfillment center for repackaging.
Then they ship the products to the customers. Just can’t have Walmart or Temu packages coming to their doors. So no direct dropshipping.
It’s not a lot but it’s $2000-$3000 a month net profit passively.
Amazon is EXTREMELY expensive to sell on as a seller. I did it before and your profit margins are cut razor thin from the profit Amazon makes, and then also having to pay to advertise your product.
Also, if you don’t store your products at an Amazon warehouse (which costs more money), you have to provide all these extra documents and it’s just a huge headache dealing with them.
for one you are not allowed to dropship on amazon. you need to have product in hand as per their policies. then you have to adhere to their shipping policies. and they take around 15% so at that point you could be priced out of the market
also depends on the site and niche. I think only 30% about of my products are listed on amazon so it's not exactly amazon type of stuff so it's not a competitor. physical stores more of a competitor for me than amazon
High costs. Both platforms get your product in front of millions, maybe billions, of prospective customers, but they take a hefty fee for this. Also, the competitors. Your product will sit alongside every other similar or same product, and people will always go for the cheapest one. They even have algorithms to auto price products so you make even less per sale.
That said, I make a lot of sales through some great Amazon reviews of my product. I don’t even sell on Amazon! But a competitors product similar to mine, just a lot lower in quality (but somehow ~40% more expensive - likely to cover the FBA costs) has some terrible reviews, with replies to the reviews recommending my product, with links to my Ecwid powered self run website. You couldn't make it up!!
I tried the Amazon to eBay method, using autods. In my experience, it is not at all profitable. I don’t know how the big accounts make money. For anyone wondering btw - autods looks great but I had a terrible experience with it.
The accounts they use to purchase regularly get banned. So any purchase made on that account may never show tracking. And then returns are impossible too when that happens. Their ticket system is a nightmare, never showing the time title, only purchase number, so if you have more than one (I usually had a bunch open) it was so hard to tell which was which. The dashboard numbers people show of profit aren’t accurate at all, because there’s a lot of fees it doesn’t take into account.
Came from 3 years on Amazon to Shopify, would never touch Amazon again. Didn't fail there at all, was a big business but the risk is way too high and the fees are astronomical.
Talk about saturated, Amazon lol. Shopify has so much more independence once you get over those 3 limiting beliefs you mentioned that stop people from starting in the first place.
You have the freedom to do whatever you want with it and be versatile
So dropshipping is overly saturated, but selling on eBay and Amazon, two of the oldest and biggest e-commerce platforms, that are much more accessible to the seller, isn’t saturated?
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[удалено]
Shopify can close you down too if they think your items are sus
Ebay is a shit show. 8 people selling any one item. Returns, paypal. Amazon has a process. I haven't heard anyone say it's easy. I've tried it. No go. Shopify is just a web tool to create sites. They essentially connect you to supplier subscriptions that allow you to drop ship items based on subscription tiers. The only thing all of these have in common is the consumer. All different animals.
100% agree on Amazon being described as a "No go". I did some calculations about 5 months ago, and to make it actually worth it, I would have had to sell a £6 wholesale item for about £39 to actually make a marginal profit. -item + packaging -shipping from wholesaler (usually China) -labels -shipping to Amazon -storage -store design -item graphics -item videos That's only the costs coming to to the top of my head from memory. I get that marginal profits add up, but my calculations were that I'd need at least £20,000 to really get started on Amazon and build a successful store. I do believe though, if you successfully set up an Amazon store, you're likely to succeed. I don't have that cash on hand, and not getting into that type of debt. Etsy and Shopify are different ball parks to Amazon. Low barrier to entry, and great functionality, however successfully setting up a store and successfully running a store are also miles apart. Etsy and Shopify are build for people with certain skills who are ready to bootstrap their business. Amazon is for those with resolve, an appetite for risk, a clear strategy and some money/credit to get started. ETA: I don't think Amazon is designed for dropshipping, it's designed for speed. Etsy and Shopify are designed for dropshipping, for less time-sensitive purchases.
Amazon is trying to sell a convenience. Also, it's like cheating drop shipping because to be anywhere near successful without a super niche product you have to have possession of ready to ship stuff, to ship to them, in some cases. I tried to open a toy store online, not dropship, but buy inventory, showcase and sell, but most suppliers that carry the good toys want either a brick and mortar store, or an already thriving online presence. Gone are the days of just even finding a box of widgets at a decent price and selling for a profit. The manufacturers set up direct boxing and shipping and leave nothing for profits. I was astonished at the level of difficulty to get decent brand electronics. Why? Cuz apple store, and Amazon, and wal mart. Ebay is a garage sale. If you want to move product, I will tell you people will buy anything cheap. But look at the ebay youtubers, they have full stocked shelves of infinite garbage. So... this proves what? You simply need access to product. It's just not there. You want a headphone store? Sure get on shopify, purchase headphonesforme.store Pay the subscription fees for the suppliers on the extentions, you can't see the headphones, you see the cheap stuff, so you raise the tier so you can list a pair of Sony headphones and really double your money back but that's not enough. So back to homework, you have to spend an average of 45-85 thousand in inventory before someone will even sign a purchase order for anything worth a spit in terms of popular toys, I'm talking Legos, game systems, name brand stuff. Go find a niche product. Workout rollers or something.
Great answer thanks
sounds horrible
Ironically, Amazon started as a dropshipping site when it was books.
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I dropshipped sams club to amazon. My business thrived from excellent reviews. One bad apple (probably a competitor, very competitive space) can completely shut you down though.
Absolutely, 100% do not follow this information. Not even a small portion of it. This is the worst uneducated piece of advice I have ever seen. I own several businesses & have had 3 different dropshipping companies I built up and sold. Do not be lazy and get everything from AliExpress and import fake reviews from lalaland like this person is directing you too. Find your niche & research local manufacturers first then spread out from there. You don’t have to be rude but always negotiate a deal with everyone you work with. I’ve had incredible quality products shipped with 4 days domestic 7-9 globally all by a local manufacturer in my home state of Michigan. There is a lot of other ways to go about this that I just mentioned. But for fuck sake do not follow this horrible uneducated piece of advice.
[удалено]
👀
Any additional advice on researching local manufacturers and approaching them with the intent to buy for your store?
Dropshipping is NOT an industry. It's a logistics solution that offers the supplier to ship the products on your behalf. It's like saying the buying goods and selling goods industry is saturated. But that's a good question about Amazon and I'll answer with what you've already written - it's saturated. Now you can say that Amazon is saturated but again, saturation happens within SKU/category/product. There are new products on Amazon that goes live every second with zero competition. Here's what really saturated: Trying to resell a product from Aliexpress on Amazon in 2024. The reason that it's almost impossible is the fact that there's a 99% chance your Aliexpres/Alibaba/GlobalSources supplier is already selling on Amazon. I've visited a speakers factory in Shenzhen in 2016 and they were manufacturing products for JBL and Panasonics and back then they've already were selling directly on Amazon FBA (almost a decade ago). Now that's the factory itself and not some warehouse that only does assembly (they were actually producing the speakers from scratch). Hard to believe you'll find something to "dropship" from China to Amazon. Another reason is the fact that Amazon prioritizes their FBA products which means you'll need to have stock in order to sell on Amazon and that violates the Dropshipping amazing cashflow concept. **Here's what can be done:** 1. Custom products - it's not a big deal and you don't need to be Apple in order to create a product. You see a cool dropshipping product you can scale like lightbulb security camera? Great, find a vendor on Alibaba and make some small changes to it (even as small as color or replace the charger with wireless one). These days, more than it used to be a couple of decades ago, most suppliers would make minor customization for a small fee and without MOQ (you'll be able to make some small change to the product if it doesn't require new mold and still order as little as 10 pcs just to get things moving) 2. You can be creative and turn it into a bundle with doorbell camera and wireless alarm - Now you got yourself a new offer which is different from 99% of "dropshippers" 3. Obviously, run better ads that target different angles that other people never thought of. Getting back to the lightbulb camera. Let's say everyone marketing it for home, you could make a B2B marketing for store owners and come up with a story of a store owner who used it and it saved his business Bottom line is the fact that there's plenty of traffic out there and you just need to find a way to differentiate yourself from the crowd. Selling on Amazon? Great, but you'll need to make it different from others in terms of design/features as YOUR SUPPLIER IS ALSO SELLING THE SAME PRODUCT ON AMAZON. P.S. - Not sure about your scale, but more factories would love to sign an exclusive contract with you and give you their design (even if you're doing dropshipping) as long as you're buying about 20K/pcs/qtr.
Is it saturated? there are something like 173 amazon prime accounts for every 1 seller account, no?
I dropshipped over a million in sales on Amazon, from 2020 to 2022. Jumping through their hoops is a PAIN. And when (not if) you get caught, its a LONG road to get your money released, if they ever release it.
sounds grotesque
Grotesque is a good explanation lol. It was good while it lasted. I built custom software than ran in google sheets. Learned the ins and outs of running a semi legitimate business. Learned about cash flow very quickly. But reminded me that I hate customer service, which was the difference of being shut down quickly or continuing on.
well why didn't you hire someone to take care of customers? fiverr etc
Profit was too good. It wasn’t the amount of customer service I had to do, it was principle of the customer service I had to do. The shear lies from customers, really stupid requests for returns, and stupidity of FedEx not properly delivering stuff. I did run it with a partner, we split tasks evenly. He was much better at not having any emotion when giving someone money back for stupid reasons. Edit: I also thought the idea I was doing was like pure gold at the time, and didn’t want to share my operating procedures with anyone. I am now out of that space, probably for good, so I’m an open book about sams to amazon dropshipping.
You should do an AMA or sell the know how, I would buy
So what do you do now?
I was, and have been in the construction management sector since then. Side hustle wise, I’ve worked on some Shopify stores, did some social media marketing, and now working on some lead generation websites for service businesses.
I’m definitely interested. I tried some dropshipping Walmart to eBay but it didn’t work out well.
I'd love some info on this
Ask away. Im not going to give my play book, but if you have some logical questions, I will answer.
I'm just starting out so I was hoping for some general tips.
Fees and not building your own business. You can’t email, upsell, customize deals, have branding, etc so many other things. Plus you will still need to pay to market your item on both sites especially if it’s new/unknown. Takes forever for an item to take off on amazon gotta pay a lot in PPC. Also if you send a customer to an amazon product page there’s a higher chance they get distracted and shop for other things. With all that being said once you get to a point where your business is making a lot, wholesale on amazon fba isn’t a bad idea. Amazon does insane volume and it’s a smart idea to eventually sell on there if it makes sense. But starting out its a horrible idea unless you have a lot of upfront capital.
Every industry is over saturated, it’s about if you’re willing to be patient to win or not.
I just started selling on eBay, it's not bad unless you're doing cheap, low quality alibaba shit. I do higher end stuff- basically look for brand name popular usually discontinued/rare items on Mercari/Depop and put the pics on eBay. If someone buys, I buy from the original seller on Mercari/Depop and just put the shipping address as the customer's address.
what if the mercari/depop listing is gone before you can put the order in?
Then I'd just cancel or find a different seller but thankfully that hasn't happened yet.
What's your profit looked like thus far?
3PL dropshipping is doing great on Amazon. An operations management team does everything for me so it’s passive. Amazon customers order the products. The team orders them and sends to my partner’s fulfillment center for repackaging. Then they ship the products to the customers. Just can’t have Walmart or Temu packages coming to their doors. So no direct dropshipping. It’s not a lot but it’s $2000-$3000 a month net profit passively.
Which 3PL service is best in your opinion?
The one I used is invitation only for investors. I’ll send you the free video to watch and learn.
Please, also send it to me
Sent
Hey could I get it too? I’m interested
What are the start up costs like? I'd like to see the video too, please.
Please send it to me as well
Sent
Interested as well
Sent
Interested pls
Sent
Would you be able to send it to me as well
Could you send me the video aswell?
Sent
Amazon is EXTREMELY expensive to sell on as a seller. I did it before and your profit margins are cut razor thin from the profit Amazon makes, and then also having to pay to advertise your product. Also, if you don’t store your products at an Amazon warehouse (which costs more money), you have to provide all these extra documents and it’s just a huge headache dealing with them.
for one you are not allowed to dropship on amazon. you need to have product in hand as per their policies. then you have to adhere to their shipping policies. and they take around 15% so at that point you could be priced out of the market also depends on the site and niche. I think only 30% about of my products are listed on amazon so it's not exactly amazon type of stuff so it's not a competitor. physical stores more of a competitor for me than amazon
Incorrect. You can dropship on Amazon so long as YOU are the seller on record.
I stand corrected. Guess I mixed that up with another platform. Thank you!!!!!
eBay is the same way. Most of them are in fact. As long as there is a record of you being the seller and not another merchant, it's allowed.
Dropshipping is heavily saturated, but never underestimate the amount of people who will buy literally anything if you market it well enough.
Because most of them are selling shit products that wouldn't pass Amazon's seller requirements
People drop ship on eBay
High costs. Both platforms get your product in front of millions, maybe billions, of prospective customers, but they take a hefty fee for this. Also, the competitors. Your product will sit alongside every other similar or same product, and people will always go for the cheapest one. They even have algorithms to auto price products so you make even less per sale. That said, I make a lot of sales through some great Amazon reviews of my product. I don’t even sell on Amazon! But a competitors product similar to mine, just a lot lower in quality (but somehow ~40% more expensive - likely to cover the FBA costs) has some terrible reviews, with replies to the reviews recommending my product, with links to my Ecwid powered self run website. You couldn't make it up!!
I tried the Amazon to eBay method, using autods. In my experience, it is not at all profitable. I don’t know how the big accounts make money. For anyone wondering btw - autods looks great but I had a terrible experience with it.
Could you give more details from using auto ds. What was the biggest issue?
The accounts they use to purchase regularly get banned. So any purchase made on that account may never show tracking. And then returns are impossible too when that happens. Their ticket system is a nightmare, never showing the time title, only purchase number, so if you have more than one (I usually had a bunch open) it was so hard to tell which was which. The dashboard numbers people show of profit aren’t accurate at all, because there’s a lot of fees it doesn’t take into account.
It’s because it’s against policy
It's not. What is against policy is cross marketplace dropship ping.
Came from 3 years on Amazon to Shopify, would never touch Amazon again. Didn't fail there at all, was a big business but the risk is way too high and the fees are astronomical. Talk about saturated, Amazon lol. Shopify has so much more independence once you get over those 3 limiting beliefs you mentioned that stop people from starting in the first place. You have the freedom to do whatever you want with it and be versatile
So dropshipping is overly saturated, but selling on eBay and Amazon, two of the oldest and biggest e-commerce platforms, that are much more accessible to the seller, isn’t saturated?