Summary.
- In drop-shipping, online store owners do not stock the products they sell. Rather, they purchase them from a manufacturer who then ships them directly to the customer.
- According to side hustle expert Kathy Kristof, it allows you to spend more time developing, marketing, and selling your products.
What Is Drop-shipping?
Drop-shipping is an eCommerce business model where products are sold without stock being held. Products are from the company’s own designed range or other brands, but none of the stock is by the company.
Most common types of drop-shipping are when goods are imported,usually via Ali Express and Oberlo.eCommerce store advertises and takes payment for the goods. They are, however, shipped directly from overseas suppliers.
In the second popular scenario,a print-on-demand supplier sells clothing items based on pre-set designs by eCommerce store owner directly to customers, but only produce once that has orders.
With side hustles becoming increasingly popular, people continue to seek out ways to make some extra money. Some people run errands for extremely busy clients, others dog-sit and others create online lessons to teach languages, bakery, and content creation among others.
The sale of items online — such as drop-shipping — is another way to earn money online. A seller creates an online store but does not have the inventory they’re selling on hand. Instead, they buy the items directly from suppliers and send them to the buyers.
“Dropshipping can be very lucrative,” says Kathy Kristof, founder of Sidehuls.com. “It removes all the back-office duties from you. By doing so, you as an entrepreneur can devote more time to developing your products and marketing them.”
“Their Sales Grow Into The Hundreds Of Thousands.”
Recently, Kristof spoke with a couple who went from selling LGBTQ-themed clothing at events to dropshipping it online. “With an in-person event, it is impossible to forecast the number of products that will sell, so you end up with too many or too few,” she explains.
Changing their business model allowed them to shift their focus to building a community around their products, and this saw “their sales grow into the hundreds of thousands.”
Benefits Of Dropshipping As A Side Hustle
- If done right, dropshipping can be a very rewarding venture and can help one launch a much more lucrative and invest-able business in the long run.
- Dropshipping offers the “entrepreneur” the much sought-after extra income that goes a long way in complementing the main income, income really doing the heavy lifting associated with most jobs.
- It’s a fantastic way to launch a new business without the stress of worrying about huge capital.You will need a website and a hosting fee to start
- The buyers have the products shipped to them directly being it is an all hands-off production
- It’s one of the most suitable ways for testing the viability of a business idea before choosing the to set up actual stores if the demand for your products increases.
Challenges Of Dropshipping As A Side Hustle.
- A lot of people that sell products through drop shipping do so on eCommerce platforms such as Shopify. The site offers tips on how to begin, but cautions about the challenges associated with this type of business.
- One challenge is stiff competition. If you aren’t making and selling your own original products, sourcing for unique merchandise that only you can offer becomes extremely difficult. Therefore, means there is a higher likelihood of someone else selling the same products as you.Buyers will go where they pay less, Eventually, you will be forced to compete with other sellers in terms of pricing.
- Challenges with a supplier, like long shipping days, and the quality of the products can frustrate the business. Since you’re not the one shipping the products,control on what happens after an order has been placed is limited. Customers are mostly concerned with reputability of services so they may not understand one bad experience.
Tools Like Facebook Audience Insights May Help.
If you’re thinking about dropshipping business as a side hustle, Shopify advises you start by finding a unique, niche product. The site also suggests using tools like Facebook Audience Insights and Google Trends to examine what people are searching for.
