 So the other day I received an order in my dropshipping store and one of my biggest fears when it comes to dropshipping came true and that was that I accidentally sent the order to the wrong customer. Now it might not seem like a huge deal but I lost both money as well as the customer. So for one, I had to replace the product and two, the customer had to wait an extra couple of weeks just to receive their item. Safe to say that that customer did not have much of a friendly experience, I tried to make it as best as I could for them so that way they wouldn't be upset but at the end of the day they did have to wait double the time than they usually would have to. So in this video I'm going to explain to you how you can avoid that mistake. In this video we're going to be talking about dropshipping fulfillment but first let's run that intro. What's going on everyone, Mark here with Out of DS and if you haven't done so already please make sure to hit that subscribe button as well as ring that little bell notification so you don't miss out on any future videos. On this channel we cover anything and everything dropshipping related starting from some of the best products to dropship all the way to some of the best tips and tricks to help you succeed. So if that's something that interests you just make sure to subscribe. Now if you want to learn a little bit more about order fulfillment whether it be dropshipping or in-house order fulfillment then just go ahead and check out the description down below. There is going to be a link to a relevant article down there. So today we're talking order fulfillment specifically in the dropshipping sector. Now before we get into that the first thing that we need to do is understand the difference between in-house fulfillment and dropshipping fulfillment. What's the difference? So in-house fulfillment is pretty much you packing up all of your different orders printing out the shipping labels packing the items and then taking them either to UPS USPS or whatever service it is that you're using to fulfill and ship out your orders. And when you do these things manually and you actually ship the items out yourself you're carrying inventory. And overall this gives you quite a bit of margin for actual human error. So you do have a higher chance to commit an error and potentially like in my case send the order to the wrong customer. Of course my end it was with dropshipping but it's the same concept. You mix up to shipping labels or you mix up a customer and the product ends up in the wrong hands. It's happened it can happen with both in-house fulfillment as well as with dropshipping fulfillment. Now ultimately in-house fulfillment does end up being a bit more challenging. It takes a lot more time and at the end of the day it's a lot more work. So for one unless you're extremely organized or maybe you're paying for some sort of software to keep track of your inventory. Inventory management itself is very challenging. It's really easy to lose track of one or two different items and throw off your whole inventory and accidentally keep selling items that are actually out of stock. Aside from that when you do carry your own inventory you also sometimes have to pay for overhead costs. If you don't have anywhere to store these products in your house or maybe your office you're gonna have to rent out a space or a warehouse to be able to store all the extra inventory. So that ultimately adds up to your costs and cuts into your profits. Now with dropshipping fulfillment it's pretty much the exact opposite. So for one while you do have a small margin for human error it's not as large as it is when you're doing things in-house. When you're doing things in-house you have too many things going on and again you have a higher margin for error. Also when it comes to the dropshipping fulfillment you don't have any overhead costs since you don't have any physical inventory you don't have to store anything you don't have to pay for storage you don't have to take up space in your garage or in a corner of your office. And at the end of the day when you're dropshipping and fulfilling your orders it's gonna be a lot quicker for you to get these things done and actually process your orders versus in-house fulfillment where you actually have to pack everything yourself. With dropshipping fulfillment all you have to do is place your orders with your suppliers and you're pretty much done. The supplier's gonna take care of the rest and you can just cake back and reinvest the time that you have extra back into your business. Alright so now that that's covered let's go ahead and cover the dropshipping supply chain. So this is to help you understand who you're sourcing from who's actually shipping out and fulfilling your orders and why sometimes some shipping and processing times are longer than others. So in the dropshipping supply chain there are three main players. There's the manufacturers, the wholesalers and then the retailers. Manufacturers are typically going to be the ones that actually create and produce the items. For the most part you're not going to be sourcing your items from them they usually end up selling their items in bulk to wholesalers. Now that doesn't mean that you can't purchase from them. You are able to buy from them but you're not going to be able to buy one item at a time and dropship it that way. What you have to do in this case if you want to purchase directly from a manufacturer is place an order in bulk. So you're going to have to order a large quantity of a single item and you're going to have to keep them stored. Now remember when we talked about in-house fulfillment this is where in-house fulfillment comes in. So you can make the purchase, keep it in-house and then fulfill the orders as you go but that's not necessarily ideal because it leaves a big margin for human error. Now the other option you have whenever you want to purchase directly from a manufacturer is getting a dropshipping agent. A dropshipping agent can help you by being able to store these products for you and then whenever you get an order you just contact your agent and then they'll fulfill it for you. But when you're doing it this way at the end of the day you're still purchasing in bulk. So you do have to keep inventory and you are going to have some overhead costs. Then after the manufacturers you have the wholesalers. Typically the wholesalers are going to be the ones that sell the products either to retail stores or to dropshipping stores or dropshippers such as yourself. And finally we have retail suppliers which at the end of the day are going to be the most expensive but you're going to be able to purchase practically anything without any minimum quantity or without any problem. The only thing is is that you are going to have to hike up your prices quite a bit between the three different suppliers. The best one that you can ultimately go with is going to be the wholesale supplier for the most part they're not going to have a minimum order quantity and they are going to be dropshipping friendly. Now let's talk actually fulfilling your orders. Let's talk about order fulfillment and how you can get started doing that. So for one you have the manual way of doing it and this is one example of how you can fulfill orders manually. So let's say I received an order for these big belly wooden cups. Now the first thing I need to do is locate my item with my supplier. So as you can see I have it here and I have to check to see which variation did they order. Did they order color A, B, C, D or some of the others. I got to check that really quick hold on. All right they ordered style B. So now that we have that there all we have to do is click on add to cart and then view our shopping cart and then we have to proceed to the checkout. All right so once we're here we select the item that we want to purchase and then check out. So the next thing we have to do is instead of shipping it directly to our address we have to ship it to our customer's address. So this person is Jane Doe. Their phone number is 456-789-29 whatever. Address is going to be 1234 Main Street. That one right there. Let's go with that one and then we have to click confirm. So we're going to add that as new address and we're going to ship there. All right. So once we have this here we all we have to do is click on the address itself and then that's going to be the address that we ship to now from here all we have to do is actually check out. So put in our credit card details, pay through PayPal whatever form of payment that we're using. That's what's next. Now you can see how there is room for a human error. If you're typing everything in manually then you have the potential to either write a two instead of a one or a Northwest instead of a Southwest or even input the wrong customer's details like I did. And then that's when your problems start and you have to start explaining things to your customers and offering refunds or exchanges and it can potentially become a huge mess. So the other option that we have to do this is the automated way of doing it, which is my personal favorite because it pretty much eliminates room for human error. Another thing is that while this did only take a few minutes, it really didn't take that long. If you're only doing one or two different orders, it's perfectly fine. You know, it's not going to take that long, but once you really start scaling and you start getting maybe 10, 15, 20 different orders, it's going to take a long time for you to just place orders. You're going to spend maybe one or two hours checking how and that can get really boring really fast. Now with automatic orders, the risk for human error is practically eliminated. So what ends up happening is let's say you're using a software like out of DS. What ends up happening at this point after somebody places an order is out of DS. The system itself is going to take that order and it's going to log into your supplier's website using your customer details. So it's going to use your login details to log into let's say Ali express afterwards. It's going to use your credit card details or your banking details, whatever you have programmed to make the actual purchase. Once the order is fulfilled from your supplier, then out of DS is going to update your order and market as shipped. Then once your supplier provides a tracking number, then out of DS will take that tracking number and supply your customer with it as well as that, you know. So as you can see, it's very easy. It's completely automated and you really don't have to do anything whenever an order comes in. It's automatically fulfilled for you. Hence the term automatic orders. Now, how do you activate this? So for one, you need to be signed up to out of DS. And if you want to try that out, you can sign up right now for just one dollar for the trial period. Now, aside from that, once you're actually logged into the system itself and you're at your dashboard, all you have to do is go ahead and click on settings and then move on over to plans and add-ons. And then over here, you're going to see an add-on called order processor. Just activate that and you'll be able to start automating your orders. Now, aside from that, you also have the option to do fulfilled by out of DS, which actually has a lot more benefits. Check this out. Now, it's fulfilled by out of DS. It's pretty much doing the same thing that automatic orders is doing, except for the fact that instead of logging into your supplier's website using your account details, out of DS is actually going to log in using its own credentials. So out of DS has their own buyer accounts for all of the different suppliers. Now, this is fantastic because what this does is it actually helps you out with things like account suspensions. So on a platform like let's say Amazon, that's not too drop ship or friendly. It can help you avoid things like having your account banned or suspended or restricted. Now, another benefit to fulfill by out of DS is instead of using your credit card details, it's actually going to use a balance that you top up. So you're not going to have to keep track of how much you have in the bank in order to be able to make these purchases. Everything will be displayed for you right here in your balance. And of course, if you want to add more to your balance, it's super easy. All you have to do is click on load and you can choose your preferred amount. All right. So now that we understand everything about order fulfillment and the differences between in house fulfillment as well as drop shipping fulfillment, I'm going to give you a quick list of some of the best drop shipping suppliers that you can use for your drop shipping business that has some of the best quality products with some of the quickest order fulfillment. And the first one on this list is CJ drop shipping. Now with CJ drop shipping, you have the option to do prints on the man products, white label products, and you have the ability to source new products. So if there's a particular product that you found on a different supplier, but you don't want to purchase it from there for whatever reason and you actually want to purchase it from CJ drop shipping, you can reach out to one of the suppliers on here and have the item sourced. Another option you have is Ali express, which is pretty much everyone's go to, especially when starting Ali express is great to test out different items because they have a little bit of pretty much everything. Some suppliers have quicker shipping than others, but that's something you're going to have to keep a lookout on the product page itself. So for example, on here, all you have to do is check out over here where it says shipping and you have an estimated delivery date. Now, if you click on that, you also get a few more options to see if you have some quicker options. I'll express also ships globally, which is a huge plus so you can drop ship pretty much anywhere you want around the world. Another great option on this list with a massive variety of products is Ali Baba. Now with Ali Baba, there are some suppliers that are going to be manufacturers. So you're going to have to look through the different sellers on here and differentiate the ones that you're able to drop ship with versus the ones that you have to purchase wholesale from. So pretty much differentiate the wholesalers from the manufacturers. Banggood is the next option on this list and one awesome thing about Banggood is that no matter when there's always some sort of sale going on. So every single time I sign on as you can see here, you always have either some new promotion or some new user benefit something that helps save you money. Now that actually makes sense because Banggood itself is a drop shipping website. So this website was made with drop shippers in mind. So pretty much anything that you source from this website, you're going to source at one, a low price and two, it's going to be drop shipper friendly. So all of the sellers on here allow you to purchase just one item so that way you can drop ship it. Now if you're a drop shipper in the home and garden niche, then Costway is one that you do not want to miss. Costway has an awesome 90 day warranty. So if there's any issues with an order, you have up to 90 days or three months to be able to claim it and actually get a refund or an exchange. It's fantastic. Aside from that, you also get free standard shipping and you get cash back on most orders. So with cashback, you're ultimately able to save some money and remember that a dollar saved is a dollar earned. Now sticking to the home niche, you also have Wayfair as an awesome supplier. Wayfair ships globally and they have some pretty good perks with their MyWay program. Now the MyWay program is pretty cool because as a member, you get exclusive perks. For one, you get free expedited shipping and two, you get access to exclusive products, which I think is pretty cool. You're going to have access to a line of products that people that aren't in the MyWay club don't have access to. So that itself is a big advantage because you're going to be able to offer unique products. And that is pretty much everything that you need to know about fulfilling your orders through drop shipping or through in-house order fulfillment. So I want to know which one you prefer. Let me know down in the comments below. Let me know if you like in-house fulfillment or if you prefer drop shipping fulfillment. Are there any tips and tricks that you want to give me regarding order fulfillment? If so, let me know down in the comments below. Huge thank you to everyone for watching, especially if you made it this far all the way to the end. It truly does mean a lot. If you found this video useful, if you found it helpful, if you found it enjoyable, please make sure you leave a like and while you're down there, just make sure you hit that subscribe button as well and ring that little bell notification so you don't miss out on any future videos. Once again, my name is Mario with Out of the S wishing you all nothing but success in your drop shipping venture and catch you all next time.