Does anyone have any experience in reselling/ecommerce/dropshipping etc?

[autogunner]

Hi guys,

I'm looking for a side gig to earn some extra money and diversify my skill set; in case my academic career doesn't pan out :)

I've started learning some basic programming, but I've also been seeing these adverts on youtube for oberlo, basically you pick some tat off ali express, dress it up in a nice digital storefront, then price it higher than the wholesale price on ali. Oberlo handles the ordering and supply backend, and once your order volume goes up they start to take a fee every month. You never seem to have to deal with the actual product or the stock, it all gets ordered through ali express from china, just at a ...higher markup for ordering through your fancy store... Can't hurt to try I guess?

They have a marketing email chain disguised as a tutorial to set up your first shop and get your first orders. Life permitting, I'll give it a go over the next few weeks and write up my experiences if anyone is interested.

I think it's similar to online reselling. Has anyone tried this? I'd be interested to know your experiences, or thoughts on other side gigs.

Cheers!

[tallen]

Sounds like Oberlo created a business model where all the risk is mitigated to you and they are the only ones guaranteed to profit. It takes quite a bit of research and a dash of luck to find profitable items to sell online. I went through 4 or 5 duds that looked good on paper before I found a winner that actually sold at a price where I'm making a decent profit, and that is something I had custom made (to to compete with another low competition good selling item) since everyone and their brother is buying widgets off alibaba to resell on amazon and ebay.

There is money to be made in commerce still with the right items, but the easy money in that field is in "helping" others for a cut of the profit (like what Oberlo is doing). If you really want to get into ecommerce then I suggest cutting out any middle men (other than sales platforms like amazon/ebay of course), finding items you think will sell and rolling the dice. You'll probably find many more losers than winners though, so don't get your hopes up about an item until it starts selling at a profitable price!

[autogunner]

Sounds like Oberlo created a business model where all the risk is mitigated to you and they are the only ones guaranteed to profit. It takes quite a bit of research and a dash of luck to find profitable items to sell online. I went through 4 or 5 duds that looked good on paper before I found a winner that actually sold at a price where I'm making a decent profit, and that is something I had custom made (to to compete with another low competition good selling item) since everyone and their brother is buying widgets off alibaba to resell on amazon and ebay.

There is money to be made in commerce still with the right items, but the easy money in that field is in "helping" others for a cut of the profit (like what Oberlo is doing). If you really want to get into ecommerce then I suggest cutting out any middle men (other than sales platforms like amazon/ebay of course), finding items you think will sell and rolling the dice. You'll probably find many more losers than winners though, so don't get your hopes up about an item until it starts selling at a profitable price!

Thanks for the response, its good to know that real people are doing this and making scratch.

[cchrissyy]

it's not a terrible idea, except that you're a dozen years late to the party and the market is saturated already.

I'd say that about ecommerce in general and more especially dropshipping.

[rachael talcott]

I've spent a LOT of time looking in to this, but selling through Amazon not Oberlo.  There are clearly people making money at it, although the vast majority of people who try lose money.  I get the impression that the successful people have a gift for marketing.  You need to be able to convince people to buy the thing you bought from Alibaba when lots of others are selling something similar. 

[biffwhipster]

I do this on a small scale (a few K/year) with certain types of jewelry and use eBay. Try to find something that people are interested in but seems to only ship from China. People love paying a premium to avoid waiting the 3 weeks it takes to get an item from China.