There are many facts out there about dropshipping, how does it work, how complicated it is to start an online store and others like this.
Some of them are facts, but many are just myths, things that are completely false and have caused many people to back down and never start a dropshipping business.
Well, we hope this article will change a few minds about dropshipping.
Through this article, we want to take 6 of the most common myths and set the record straight, are they only myths or there is, in fact, some truth behind them? Let’s see.
Table of Contents
What in fact is dropshipping?
Before we jump into the most common myths, we wanted to start by stating what dropshipping is.
Dropshipping is a business model where a store owner or retailer can sell products without having an inventory of their own or a distribution center to store their items.
The products they sell come from a supplier or a manufacturer, who is also the one who ships those items directly to the customer. In other words, we can say that these retailers sell products only by posting beautiful images on their online stores, but the suppliers are the ones who actually fulfill the orders.
1. It’s too difficult to start a dropshipping business.
MYTH!
Starting a dropshipping business where you only dropship products from a marketplace like AppScenic is the easy part of the whole process. The difficult part comes before when you need to do your research and see what products you want to sell and where, and after you set up your online store when you need to think of ways to get your products in front of the right people.
Setting up an online store includes only 3 steps – choose your marketplace with the right suppliers, set up your actual online store (aka the ecommerce website where you’re going to sell your products), and begin selling!
Not at all complicated and quite straightforward, don’t you think?
2. Dropshipping works only if you sell cheap or low-quality products.
MYTH again!
Nowadays is exactly the opposite, to have a better chance to succeed in dropshipping you actually need to sell premium, high-quality products that are not at all cheap.
These common beliefs actually come from the past, that’s how dropshipping used to be, but times have changed and now dropshipping has become more popular. Online business entrepreneurs understood that in order to gain more customers and keep them, they need to offer high-quality, unique items from all over the world.
Another reason things have changed is that many suppliers finally understood that dropshipping can help their business and chose to sell their range of products through retailers and their online stores. And so the news spread and many more suppliers did the same, seeing that the most efficient path to gaining distribution online is through dropshipping.
3. If you don’t know code or something about setting up an online store, then this is not for you.
Yes, this is another MYTH!
Again, it used to be like this, but no more. You don’t need extensive coding skills or even need to hire a professional developer anymore. We live in the century of user-friendly tools and platforms that can help even a tech newbie build a great ecommerce website.
Just do a single search on Google and you will find multiple platforms out there that will allow you to start an online store with only a few clicks. Some of the best out there are Shopify, WooCommerce or Wix.
What’s more difficult in our opinion is finding products coming from reliable suppliers. Actually, that’s why we built AppScenic, so we can connect retailers with great suppliers all over the world.
4. Suppliers are easy to find and all you need to do is ask and they will be thrilled to be featured in my store!
MYTH, unfortunately!
Reliable and fast suppliers with a unique, high-quality product catalog are not easy to find. This is probably one of the biggest problems when you start a dropshipping business, it’s hard to get access to the right suppliers that will allow you to sell their unique premium products in your store.
Suppliers, and we’re talking about the very best ones, are quite picky when selecting the distribution channels for their products. So, of course, if you as an online retailer don’t seem to be serious about dropshipping, for example, you don’t have a professional ecommerce website or you don’t actually invest in promoting your products or your customer base isn’t what they are looking for, then suppliers won’t be ok with all these and will probably say pass.
But again, if you don’t start dropshipping just for fun, and are actually quite serious about this, then you have a great chance to find the best suppliers out there.
5. Once I launch my site, I can quit my job, sit back and make millions just by dropshipping.
MYTH!
Of course, that’s the dream, isn’t it? And you can get there but it takes time. And so we don’t recommend quitting your job if you just started dropshipping.
First, you need to understand there is more and more competition out there, so that means you need to first find your audience and see what type of products they are looking for. After that, you have to find high-quality products from suppliers that can ship fast in the country of your choice.
And, on top of everything you need to promote your products and your store constantly so you can gain and retain customers. The most difficult part when dropshipping is to have a customer base that is loyal to your store and will always come back for more products.
In time, with hard work and constant dedication, you can definitely quit your job and do this full time, maybe even from a sunny beach with a cocktail in your hand.
6. The key to success is great customer service, high-quality products and fast delivery
This is a FACT and a really important one, not a MYTH at all!
As said above, the competition in the dropshipping business has now reached a record level, so you need to bring your A-game in order to succeed and make a name for yourself in this world.
One way to do that, and this is something dropshippers lack still, is to provide the best support to your customers and answer all their questions or find solutions to their problems as fast as possible.
It all starts with great products, true, but being there for your customers, 24/7, and giving them access to the delivery status of their items or information about the shipment requirements in their country, for example, is that x-factor that can help you reach new heights and fast.
To conclude, dropshipping is now so popular that it gets a lot of attention, and as expected this brings with it a lot of misinformation. Our recommendation is to take your information from trustworthy blogs and websites, from multiple sources and you can then be sure you get the actual facts and not some rumors or myths that don’t apply anymore.
