So many people say this, and then they try to get you to try a different business, usually one that they are involved with.
So, is dropshipping over? This is a very important question, and anyone who wants to try dropshipping needs to know the answer.
After all, it costs money to start a dropshipping business, and no one wants to waste money on a business that doesn’t work.
Even though you don’t have to spend money on stock, you still have to spend money on keeping up a website and advertising your products.
Let’s look at the history of dropshipping, how it has changed over time, and what the future holds for it. First, we need to talk about what dropshipping is, where it came from, and what makes it different from other types of businesses.
Once you know how the business works, you’ll be able to tell if it’s going to die soon or not.
Is dropshipping no longer an option? Everyone will tell you it’s dead so they can sell you a course on how to do something else. Dropshipping has been around for a long time, and online shopping is more popular than ever. Dropshipping isn’t dead. In fact, it’s growing by millions of dollars every year, but you have to do it right if you want to make money from it.
What does it mean to drop ship?
Dropshipping is a way to run a business in which you sell products that belong to someone else. When you get an order, you send it to your supplier, and your supplier sends it to your customer.
That’s how dropshipping works in its most basic form.
Some have made changes, such as asking a supplier to make products with their own private labels, but the item is still shipped by the manufacturer or supplier.
Some people also use Drop Surfing, which is a new method. You can learn more about it in this article.
Dropshipping is a great way to start a business because you don’t have to worry about shipping. You don’t even have to buy a lot of each item. You only buy a product when someone orders from you.
You pay your supplier with the money that you got from the customer. Your profit is the difference between what the customer paid you and how much the item you bought cost.
When did dropshipping begin?
This is not a new way to run a business. It’s been around for a very long time, even before the internet.
Before the internet, there were already businesses that were willing to ship their goods to customers; all you had to do was take orders.
Dropshipping has been around since the 1950s, when it was called “mail order.” At that time, people’s mailboxes at home were always full of catalogs. There were dozens or even hundreds of products in these catalogs.
The people who made these catalogs did not make the things that were in them. Someone else made them and got them out to people.
If a homeowner wants to place an order, he can do so by phone or by mail, along with his payment.
The company that made the catalog will order this from the supplier, and then the wholesale supplier will send it to the customer’s house.
Sometimes, the salesman will go from door to door to sell. He will come to your door and try to sell you an appliance or an encyclopedia. There was a time when Electrolux was the leader in this field.
The people who sold Electrolux appliances like stoves and ovens did not work for the company.
They sold the appliances for more than they were worth, and when someone placed an order, the Electrolux company sent the appliance to the customer. The seller’s profit is the difference between the price at which Electrolux was bought and the price at which it was sold.
In the future, will dropshipping work?
Because of the internet, dropshipping has grown more than ever. You don’t need phones and you don’t need to print mail-order catalogs anymore. You only need a website and a supplier to get started.
Amazon was the first company to drop ship.
On the Amazon website, it showed many products from different sellers. When a customer placed an order on Amazon, the supplier was notified. The supplier then sent the items to the customer.
The idea went over well. It made Amazon the largest online store in the world.
Because of this, a lot of companies decided to copy this model, which is how dropshipping came to be what it is today. Dropshipping will never die, and it can’t die either. There is too much money and demand, so the future looks good.
Because Amazon was so successful, a lot of people wanted to do the same thing. If Amazon can send packages to different parts of the world, anyone should be able to do the same, right?
But there is one problem: if you are from the United States, where would you find suppliers in Europe or Asia? Will you rent a plane or go there yourself to look for suppliers?
Then we have another problem: how would you make a store for this business to work? We didn’t really have any way to quickly set up online stores.
Many e-commerce companies, such as Alibaba, AliExpress, Magento, WooCommerce, and Shopify, found a way to solve this problem.
Why did people start using dropshipping?
AliExpress is a company in China that is very similar to Amazon in how it works.
Wholesalers and retailers can list their products on the AliExpress website, and the company ships all over the world. Make sure you read our buyers guide before you buy anything on AliWxpress.
The biggest difference between Amazon and AliExpress is that things sold in China were so cheap that it was hard to believe.
The first problem with the supplier was solved because they also ship products all over the world. People who used AliExpress to start a dropshipping business made their own website.
The process took a lot of time!
You had to copy the pictures from AliExpress, save them to your computer, type them back into your website, and then upload the pictures.
When you get an order, you go back to AliExpress and place the order there. You also have to ask a bank or other financial institution for a way to pay. How will you accept online credit card payments if you don’t do this?
Some of them used PayPal, and they needed an expert in technology to connect PayPal to their websites. Again, this takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money.
Then, someone told us about Shopify.
Shopify is a website where you can start your own dropshipping business. The Shopify pricing guide shows how cheap it is to open a store.
Things you can do include…
- Set up an online shop.
- Set up a way for people to pay you online.
- AliExpress will automatically send items to your store
- If the supplier changes the price, the prices will be changed automatically.
- Put in the orders on their own
Shopify made a global system that changed how dropshippers do business and how they work. Today, there are many other companies that do the same things as Magento and WooCommerce.
Shopify isn’t free, but the monthly fee is well worth it because you get so many services for a fraction of what they would cost if you bought them all separately.
How Dropshipping Has Grown
Many people can now start online businesses from home because it’s easy to have a website that works and easy to find suppliers.
Affiliate programs offered by companies that make dropshipping tools made this possible. They gave people money if they could get other people to buy or subscribe to their software. You can tell people about Shopify, and if they sign up, you get a cut of their sales.
In the last few years, all of these things have helped the industry grow.
Statistics on Online E-commerce
E-commerce has grown by the trillions over the years. Below is a graph from Shopify that shows how much money is made around the world, including through the business model of “dropshipping.”
As you can see, sales keep going up from year to year and won’t go down. It is thought that $4.9 trillion dollars will be made in 2023.
This shows that no single business, not Amazon, not eBay, not AliExpress, could have done this. This happened because everyone out there tried to open an online store.
Also, if you look closely at how customers act, you’ll see that most of them want to buy things from outside their country.
This is also something that helped dropshipping become more popular. More than half of the people in the world want to buy things from other countries.
This means that they are willing to wait for the shipment and trust online sellers who aren’t even well-known global brands.
If you know that people in other parts of the world would buy from you, why wouldn’t you take the chance to get a small piece of the $4.9 trillion? You would, of course!
Is dropshipping over in the year 2023?
Dropshipping has become a hot trend because it has worked so well. People wanted to make money quickly. They thought that all they had to do was set up a website, list other people’s products, and sales would start coming in.
They gave up after a few months and said that dropshipping is dead.
BUT, is it true?
Dropshipping is a real business, if you think about it. It’s not as easy as setting up a stand to sell lemonade. Never think of it as a way to get rich quickly.
If you drop ship, you are competing with online stores all over the world. Shopify said in a recent article that it now runs more than half a million businesses around the world.
500 thousand! And that’s just what Shopify says.
If you think about other platforms like Magento and WooCommerce, you may be competing with more than a million dropshippers. People who failed at it say that dropshipping is dead because of this.
They started a business they don’t know much about. They didn’t bother to take a class. Instead, they just put up a website and tried to sell a product they thought was cute. They thought sales would come pouring in.
No, dropshipping is still going strong. It’s getting bigger, and that $4.9 trillion will go to someone else if you don’t join in. Will your store do well for you? Who knows? No one can tell you what will happen. Most businesses fail, whether they are online or not. That’s just the way it is.
Imagine if everyone who tried to start a business was successful. It would be a mess out there. But we don’t have to worry about that because it would never happen.
Is it still profitable to dropship?
Now that we know dropshipping is still going strong, what will happen next?
Google will tell us, I guess. The chart below shows that it’s not going to stop.
You should ask yourself if there are really business models that stop working. There must be businesses whose growth has slowed down. This is shown by networking and direct sales, among other things.
In a networking business, you get other people to sell, and if they make a sale, you get a cut of the money. Amway and Avon are two well-known companies that used to do this but don’t anymore.
When you do direct sales, you sell a company’s product and get a commission for doing so. This is shown by the company Tupperware. Even though these companies’ sales have slowed down, they are still in business. In 1886, Avon was started. Herbalife began in the year 1980. They are still here, as you can see.
Even though networking and direct sales slowed down, they just changed how they did things. Most businesses run online now, and they use business models like dropshipping and affiliate marketing.
Dropshipping will be around for a long time, and the future looks very good. You’ll miss out on this if you think it’s dead. People who don’t know better will miss this chance.
One Last Thing
People who failed at dropshipping say it’s dead. Keep an eye on these people. Anything they failed at is a scam in their eyes.
Instead of trying to find ways to get rich quickly, you should learn, research, and understand how a business works. Don’t be stupid and think that if other people did it easily, you can too.
If you build a Shopify store, your success will depend on how hard you work and how good you are. It won’t be because the store is a money-making machine. Dropshippers who make tens of thousands of dollars a month do so because they work hard.
They waste hours and months without making any sales. They worked hard at building their businesses, and it paid off.
If you learn from your mistakes, you’ll see that dropshipping is still going strong.
