E-commerce and dropshipping good or bad idea?

[Matt Seabrook]

I have been contemplating going into the E-commerce business and start drop shipping but i dont know if its a good investment or not. I was wondering if i could get some testimonies and insight from people on the BiggerPockets platform to help me figure out if it is a good idea or not.

[Heigo Protten]

Hi Matt,

A dropshipping business is definitely viable and a good opportunity to pursue. However, I do encourage you to think about whether this is something you really want to get into. 

Getting started is as always the hardest part - building out the logistics, legal bits (for import duties, etc), marketing (be it a website, direct b2b marketing or Amazon) and sourcing the right suppliers are all equally difficult (yet interesting) tasks. You have to be ready for setbacks (and a lot of them) along the way: be it lost shipments, faulty products or unexpected costs. 

In my opinion, staying highly organized and building systems/processes is the most viable part of dropshipping. Don't expect it to ever be a hands off machine before many years of hard work and even then if you want to keep higher margins, a lot of the heavy lifting will have to be done by you. 

As you're still on college and interested in the financial sector, I do encourage you to try to land your first job in the financial sector and start building the business on the side - this way you will be secured on your monthly paychecks and will be able to start to get the feel of what dropshipping really means. You might love it, you might not, but you will definitely learn a lot.

Cheers,

Heigo