Is Drop-Shipping Dead? It Has Never Been More Alive Than Today

Lately, one of the most popular questions I have seen on forums and groups is: “Is drop-shipping dead?”

“Yes, it is dead”

“Not, it is not”

“Please buy my course!”

"Lol"

These are some of the most common answers you can find on various online communities, from Facebook groups to Quora to Reddit.

Well, I am not here to sell you a course. I am here to sell you a concept. How can a supply chain methodology created to lower your risks be dead?

Of course, if you planned to build a long term profitable business by drop-shipping products from Aliexpress you are in trouble. But we are talking about two different things.

Aliexpress drop-shipping has spread thanks to gurus selling courses about how easy it was to make money with it. To be honest, it has been working pretty well until the internet was not a user-oriented place being money oriented at the time. No one used to care about the user experience, it was just a matter of user-monetization, usually even a dirty user-monetization. I am not saying monetizing is wrong. If you don't monetize, you are out of business.

I'm just saying that as a drop-shipper, what you could do once upon a time was selling products, fulfilling your orders one week later, having your customers receive after 60 days and who cares. There are people that made millions out of this careless way of drop-shipping, but that’s not the way things are working nowadays.

The internet wants to become a safe place for users. Users cannot get scammed every time they scroll their newsfeed. If you are aware of this, you can build a long term profitable drop-shipping business.

Let's dive in.

Drop-Shipping is just a methodology (smart one), not a business (eCommerce is)

You have been sold that from gurus, but at the end of the day, Drop-Shipping is just "a way you use to manage your backend". Again, Aliexpress used to be okay in the past, because the internet was careless of the user experience.

What about now?

Aliexpress drop-shipping is dead, or at least, almost dead. Here's why:

• forever long shipping times (bad customer experience);
• too many unreliable sellers (problems for both you and your customers);
• sellers constantly changing product pricing (you cannot build a business model if today you pay X for a product and tomorrow, out of the sudden, you pay 2X for it);
• no invoicing (you are running a business, you need invoices);
• bad quality (there is no quality check which leads to bad customer experience);
• you don't have a 1-to-1 relationship with sellers;
• all the integrations between Shopify (or other CMSs) and Aliexpress suck and suck up a lot of your money and time;
• most likely you don’t get tracking numbers and when you get them, they are fake.

I could keep going, but I am sure you got the point.

What's the matter with customer experience?

At the end of the day, everybody is talking about customer experience but no business really cares about it.

Businesses want money, not happy customers. Happy customers are just a way to get more money so they are forced to focus on happy customers.

In other words, Facebook, Google, Paypal, Stripe and so on, have just one interest: making more money. Until they can, they play along with those that make them more money. I am talking about shady businesses spending a lot in advertising or making a lot of transactions. Maybe they don't know what these partners are doing, but they do not even care until they can profit on them.

Luckily, at some point, both users and governments started to complain. Just think about the users. If they get scammed every time they go on Facebook, would they keep going on Facebook? I don’t think so.

That’s why Facebook decided to focus on having happy users first and on having happy advertisers then. Happy advertisers and unhappy users equals to a declining business, happy users (and who cares whether advertisers are happy or not) means a growing business. It is as simple as that.

You can make the same reasoning with Google, Paypal and Stripe, just to cite the partner companies you need the most to build a successful eCommerce/Drop-Shipping business.

If you haven’t got that yet, I can repeat it: They all want happy customers/users.

That’s why building a drop-shipping business with Aliexpress is not an option anymore.

Is Drop-Shipping Dead Then?

Definitely not. Just the Aliexpress way of doing Drop-Shipping is dead.

You have better options. You can still leverage the power of Drop-Shipping while giving your customers an amazing experience. This will make Facebook, Google, Paypal and Stripe really happy to work with you.

Think about it. How amazing is to be able to sell (and market test) thousands of different products without owning them? And maybe just stock those that have already been tested?

What's the best solution out there? Simple, uDroppy.

Yes, I am the co-founder of uDroppy and if you think I am saying it just to sell it, you are dead wrong. I am not here to play games. I am here to build a multi-billion dollar company.

My business partners and I have joined forces to give drop-shippers a valuable solution. We believe that good entrepreneurs aren’t those who just find the fastest way to make money.

Therefore we also believe that good entrepreneurs who really change the world are those who solve big industry problems giving out the biggest value possible.

Let’s give you a couple of details. On uDroppy you find the same products you find on Aliexpress (and more), usually at a cheaper price. You get assigned to an e-com manager that helps you solve your operation issues. You get 7–15 days worldwide shipping time and have a quality check on each product before it gets shipped. You automated all these aspects of your business.

At the end of the day, what we have created allow you to focus the majority of your time on marketing, since everything else is automated with a couple of clicks through our platform.

What's Next?

Drop-Shipping is not dead, it has just changed, evolved. Quality and experience are the new keywords you should focus on. uDroppy can definitely help you here.

Moreover, you should focus on the strategy we have put together. It is called "The Touchdown Strategy" and has been featured on one of the largest entrepreneur publications.

You can download it by clicking here or on the banner below.

Do not forget to create your uDroppy account by clicking here, it is free to join!

PS: follow me and uDroppy here on Medium to get incredible content!