What To Expect On Building Your First Dropshipping Business
By: Yan H.
Tags: Entrepreneurship, Dropshipping, Case Study, Ecommerce, Online Shopping

Four — Expect no-control over your Facebook Business and Ad account

This is something I find so few drop-shippers out there emphasized in terms of the risk involved. Advertising costs are one thing but the other thing that can really hamper your growth is that Facebook can disable or ban your account indefinitely, with no reasons cited, other than the standard “ You have violated one of our terms or policies.”.

When your Facebook Business or Ad account get banned permanently, it is almost impossible to get it back, or so I heard. Everyone I know of in the community may face these similar situations, even if they have spent more than ten thousand dollars to date on advertising with Facebook. No one actually knows the actual reasons, except that it’s a combination of their AI algorithm and perhaps some random glitch in the humans.

And when your Facebook Business or Ad account get banned, it also means you cannot run ads again, unless you have a second Business account and/or using a friend’s or family account. But still, one cannot worry about the likelihood of being banned again, since no one knows for sure when the Empire strikes back.

Besides, advertisers know the value of the Facebook pixel and the data it brings, if one has to start running ads again, it also means spending ad dollars all over again to retrain the pixels.

Yes, my business account got completely banned and I don’t know why even though I have followed all the best practices and use copyright-free images and music.

Fifth — Expect no-control over product quality

Truth is, drop shippers often have no control over the quality of the product. Unless you have some $50–100k in capital to private-label or custom-design your own product, there is no way the manufacturer-supplier will improve their qualities just for you.

Some may go as far as buying just one quantity to test the product, but it is by no means any guarantee that the future products that are packed and shipped are of the same quality.

Sixth — Expect language barrier with suppliers

It is also yet another no-secret that a large majority of manufacturers who supply to drop-shippers come from East Asia, whose lingua franca is not English. This can pose a significant language barrier in communication and significantly affects the mutual expectation of working together.

Seventh — Expect zero-control over the supply chain

Suffice to say, drop-shippers also cannot control much of the supply chain, from manufacturing to inventory warehousing, to packing and freight shipping. And customers want their items fast!

In a global pandemic such as now, the shipping and delivery times have been badly affected worldwide due to lockdowns all over, this drastically increased the waiting time of eager buyers, who now may suffer from buyer remorse and asked for refunds, which drop-shippers usually will have to give into, to try to maintain customer satisfaction rating.

Of course, even in the rosy world of no-pandemic days, shipping times are usually not within the grasps of most sellers, unless they own their own private label airplane as Amazon does.

Eighth - Expect to build a brand from scratch

The truth is dropshipping is basically a branding and marketing business. How can one build customer trust and loyalty within mere seconds?

We all wouldn’t part our money so easily unless we have a perceived idea that we can trust the company. That is why big FMCG companies such as Victoria Secrets, Sephora, Net-a-Porter, JD, Walmart, etc. all spend hundreds of millions annually on digital advertising to build their brand loyalty because they know it goes a long way when customers become repeat customers.

Ninth — Expect possible legal and copyright issues

Copyright issues are perhaps one of the biggest concerns for online sellers. Most drop-shippers use photos and videos directly from suppliers and/or other sellers who sell the same item and use them on their web stores and in their creative ads.

This is a highly controversial practice since manufacturers may or may not release the license right that you can use their photos. Furthermore, most competitor sellers also typically do not allow the use of their photos, however, also so few of them will spend the legal fees to crack down on the sellers who do take their photos.

There are also some products that are sensitive to copyright issues, especially if they are a spin-off of a trademarked design or product, such as Lego, D.C. Comics, etc.

Tenth — Expect a mental boot camp of your lifetime, alone.

I mean this is, by far, one of my biggest learning curves I have experienced in the past 4 weeks. (The 8-week UX design boot camp came out tops for me).

In a short span of 30 days, I have done nothing, except live, breathe, eat, and drink the process…

from product research, competitive research, supplier-relationship management, copywriting, video editing, image editing, setting up a store using premium themes and adds-on, to design and color theory, and of course, digital marketing strategies, to test and launch a product as fast as I can. (This process sounds extremely similar to the UX process that most UX and product managers go through.)

It was exhausting to be staring at the blue screen for hours a day working on the store, that I actually couldn’t find the energy to write the number of articles I intended for the month of October.

It can also be extremely lonely and solitary when starting out this online business.

However, I also came to realize how much I have grown in mental resilience and the skills I have picked up in mere weeks which prepares me when the opportunity arises.