Drop Shipping Pros and Cons
When you decide to create an online business as a reseller, there will be many risks as well as positives that you will come across. You should look at both the pros and cons to figure out if this type of business is right for you, or if you should try a different way to run a work at home business.
Drop Shipping Pros
No Inventory – When you have a business, you will typically have to stock your store and wait for customers to come browsing before they buy something. With a drop shipper in your back pocket, you can create a store online, create it to show the items and products that a customer will be able to purchase and move on to bringing in traffic. You will never have to worry about getting a loan to buy thousands of dollars worth of products.
No Storage Fees – Without a huge inventory taking up space, you can bypass the need for storage and the huge fees that you will need to pay to get a storage unit or warehouse. The drop shipper will hold all of the inventory and ship out a product when your customer puts in an order to you. You will not have to fill your home with boxes as you await new orders.
Offer Wide Selections – Having a good selection of products to offer your customers would mean a lot of space and a lot of money, but in this case, you can fill your online store, website and auction with a wide variety of products without going broke. Companies like Shopster will have hundreds of thousands to over a million different items waiting to be purchased.
Old Products and Profit Loss – When you buy a lot of items in advance, you run the risk of having them lose value as fashion and electronic items can go out of style very quickly. In those cases, you would normally have to find a buyer to sell the low valued merchandise to and you will lose money as you sell them for a lot less than what you originally spent.
Drop Shipping Cons
Slow Delivery – A reputable drop shipper such as Shopster will offer good shipping times and your customers will get their products in a short amount of time. However, you are likely to find a long list of drop shippers who will promise fast shipping but never deliver on that promise. You customers could wait months before they receive a flimsy product or they may never receive their items at all. Since you are the seller, they will turn their anger towards you and your store front.
Disreputable Drop Shipper – Beyond the slow shipping, a bad dropshipper can show beautiful pictures on their website and catalogues but in truth, they may offer knock offs and other items that are of very poor quality. Once again, you will be left to face a lot of angry customers.
Sold Out Items – With the fast pace of the internet, products are likely to sell out, but the problems will arise when the drop shipper neglects to inform you. When your customers buys something and you go to order it that is the time you may find out that it is no longer available for sale. You will then have to go through the process of giving the customer their money back or trying to find a suitable replacement.
