 So in this video I wanted to give you a true insight into actually what it's like to be a full-time dropshipper and I think it's easy nowadays to go onto YouTube, go into Facebook and see dropshipping as this like really quick and easy and kind of like a shortcut way into making money really quickly when that just really isn't the case or at least it hasn't been for me for the past four years. So I wanted to do this video to kind of paint a true picture of actually what it's like day to day living and breathing dropshipping and basically just go through the good, the bad and the ugly really. I'm going to start with the bad and then finish on the good because last thing I want to do is give people a sour taste or have people leave in this video with a sour taste in their mouth thinking or I don't want to stop anybody from starting a dropshipping business because ultimately it's still a great business model and the potential it offers people with low budgets pretty much anybody to get started. It's still a really amazing dropshipping business model and given all the heartache and stress and pressure I've been through over the past four years if I had a time machine to go back and I had the option to do all again then I still would ten times over so by all means I don't want to put people off I just want to paint that true picture of what it's actually like so people know what they're getting into because when things are going good they're going really good but then the flip side of that is when things go bad they go really bad too and I mean proper bad like there's been times where I've been lying in bed between kind of like midnight and four a.m. just like literally sick to the stomach because I'm so stressed and so worried about something that's happened whether it's increasing the budget of an ad set to say five hundred pounds for the first time and not knowing whether it's going to work or not is it going to flop if it is going to flop then how am I going to pay myself this month then how am I going to pay my bills etc. I mean that kind of come down to money management which is another video but still it's something that you need to consider and keep in mind so to get started with the bad then it's not something you hear a lot of people talking about but it's important that you hear this and the first thing I want to cover is the reliability so when it comes to running a dropship in business then not everything is within your control so for example then PayPal even to this day I think it's I can't remember I think it's about 70% of my orders still come through PayPal being a third party company if for whatever reason they choose to shut me down then essentially I could lose up to 70% of all my orders in fact I'll put a screenshot up somewhere so you can just see so that's something you have to keep in mind is that not everything is within your control the same thing with Facebook ads as well if they turn around tomorrow and say hey we're banning your ad account then essentially that'll be pretty much 80% of my revenue just gone the other 20% coming from other things like Google ads and just organic traffic basically and then the third thing is suppliers whether you're dropshipping or ordering in bulk again with it not being the same company something being completely out of your control if they for well to give you an example then I ordered this product with a certain supplier for it must have been at least 18 months and I tend to place orders every couple of months so we're talking about nine different orders and then all of a sudden they start sending me these products made out of a different material a cheaper less high quality material it was a poorer material basically so basically they tried to pull a fast one on me to reduce their costs even though I was paying the same amount so we're talking probably about 2000 units that were completely gone to waste and yet they were sitting in my house in the UK and this supplier was five six thousand miles away so that was an issue I had to sort out something completely out of my control so just be prepared for things like that or for people to let you down basically number two is customer complaints when you get to the point where you're doing 100 200 orders per day then you're probably going to be looking at half a dozen to a dozen complaints every single day from customers chasing their orders saying they want refunds I've had it many times people threatening to take me to trading standards because they think I'm ripping them off when that just isn't the case and when you're dealing with that level of criticism on a daily basis it can be really difficult to keep going and it can make you doubt the business it can make you doubt yourself and I would be lying if I said that I'd never considered giving up drop shipping for that reason so again just keep that in mind you do have to have quite thick skin if you're going to be running a drop shipping business that does any kind of sort of decent volume the next is the profit margins the profit margins aren't great anybody who says they are is is lying the reason being is because when you're buying one unit of something at a time versus 2000 units of something at a time then there's going to be a huge cost saving there so drop shipping in itself the profit margins aren't great or at least they're not for me there may be people out there that'll be able to make 40 50 drop shipping but I would highly doubt it to be honest unless you're bulk ordering something in in bulk then you're not going to be making that profit to give you an example then I thought the cost saving there's a few products that are important bulk but to give you an example then this one product that I used to drop ship cost about five pounds per unit to drop ship so that's delivered to the customer and important in bulk is cost me 70p so that's an extra four pound 30 just off the cost of the product so that kind of illustrates that was for 1200 units as well so that just kind of illustrates how much for cost saving there is to be had the final point I want to finish the bad reasons on is the fact that is lonely being an online business you could run your business from you could sit on the toilet for 24 hours a day and it wouldn't impact how you run your business at all because it can purely be done from a computer so you don't need to talk to anyone you don't need to mix with anyone and one of the things that I found difficult was when I quit my job then in terms of mixing with people it almost went down to zero because I was so focused on my business working from home now if I didn't go to the gym then there would literally be weeks on end in which I just didn't leave the house because I didn't need to you can get food delivered but I used to leave the house for the gym and I'll be mixing with people that way but another thing that happened as well is when I went drop shipping full time I lost a lot of friends because people I guess it's kind of pessimistic to say but some people don't want you to do well so when you do start doing well they kind of remove they stop talking to you or they treat you in a different way so that happened to me another thing to consider as well is that I'm still to this day but I don't think I've met anyone in fact that truly knows what drop shipping is or knows how the business model works so when it comes to looking for for somebody to ask advice from or to get feedback from it's really difficult to do because nobody understands the business model that way they can't really give a proper opinion or proper advice because you need to understand the business model before you can give somebody advice like you wouldn't give somebody advice on the gym if you've never been in the gym before if you've never been on a treadmill before if you've never lifted weights before it just doesn't work like that so for that reason then it can be quite a lonely business to run with that being said then like I said I don't want to paint a too bad a picture on drop shipping that are many good points number one thing being the freedom in my eyes this is probably one of the most beneficial things about it is the freedom that it offers you is just second to none like I said you can sit on the toilet all day long if you want and run your drop shipping business I'm sure you won't end up doing that but if you really wanted to you could you could be anywhere in the world you could be in any room in your house you could use any computer you can wake up at three in the morning 10 in the morning um two o'clock there's been times when I've woken up and it's been dark because I've just haven't needed to get out of bed or I've been up the day before or any social events I ever want to go to I can do those I don't have the book time off work I can go on holiday whenever I want but one of the biggest things um if I had to say something was the fact that I don't as stupid as it sounds when I used to work a nine to five um living in Northampton it's quite a kind of industrial town um pretty much everybody had a nine to five so traffic was absolutely horrendous and that is the number one thing that I love the fact that I don't have to ever sit on traffic I can pick and choose when I travel and I tend to kind of um go out in and between rush hour time so what the main thing or the best thing for drop shipping for me then is the freedom that it offers you can do anything you want whenever you want um because you can always run your business no matter where you are as long as you've got a computer and an internet connection it doesn't matter number two then is the scalability drop shipping because there's no kind of financial commitment up front there's no kind of limitations into how many products you can sell unless your supplier runs out of stock but even then you can just find another supplier and carry on as you are so you can scale things really quickly I've done loads and loads of videos on it in the past so I won't bore you now but in the first four months I was making someone like triple what I was working in nine to five um it just went crazy well in the first few months because I could scale it that quickly with most businesses it might take them two three years to get to the point where they're bringing in um decent money for multiple different reasons whereas with drop shipping there is kind of like no limitations you can really just when something's going right you can just double down on it and the only limiting factor for you is going to be pretty much how kind of resilient to risk you out because obviously the more you spend on marketing if it doesn't if it's not profitable then can you afford to lose that money so in terms of scalability it's really good the third point um it's not really a true point but I wanted to put this in here because this is based on my opinion at the end of the day um and to me drop shipping is a cool business to run like it's pretty cool like I mentioned earlier if you really wanted to you could sit on the toilet and run your business and it's really easy to get detached from what you're doing but if you actually think about it like you could be anywhere in the world buying products from China which at this point is like five six thousand miles away and then getting it delivered to your customers which could be down the road from you so anybody who follows me on Instagram you'll know that I've moved into Lincolnshire area um and probably once every fortnight I drive past a place called RAF Scampton and I've sold maybe half a dozen different products into RAF Scampton and driving past there it's kind of I know I know it's stupid to say but it's weird that that place exists and there's actually people in there who have bought products off of me um because it is quite easy to get detached from essentially what you're doing but if you ask me I think it's pretty cool that you can work from a laptop buy things from thousands of miles away and then get it delivered to somebody next door to you and yet they're none to the wiser the next as well is the testing speed this is a really good part about drop shipping for a typical e-commerce business or any business if they want to test a new product or whatever it is they might have to commit say 10 grand up front for a bulk order they might have to take that risk on a new machine or whatever it could be whereas with drop shipping like within the space of 24 hours you can easily have a completely random products that you've literally just discovered that minute put it on your store and start running Facebook ads for it so you can test things really quickly and make a lot of money really fast um so for example fidget spinners um being a drop shipping business like I said within space of 24 hours when they kicked off and they started exploding you could get them on your store straight away and start capitalizing on that money same things with things like the masks recently because of coronavirus and hand sanitizer and soap things like that toilet roll know there's like a meme going around because nowhere is sending toilet roll at the moment so with drop shipping it allows you to capitalize on those trends because you can adapt really quickly the next thing as well is obviously low budget to start so with a drop shipping business to kind of give it a proper go um I'd say three four hundred pounds maybe a bit more depending on how aggressive you are how fast you want to do things but if you look at any other business whatsoever um it's going to cost you a considerable amount more than that probably like a hundred times more than that some businesses require thousands and thousands just to open just to get started before you've even had a customer come through the door whereas with drop shipping you can get your first customer onto your store for probably 50 pounds maybe even less and then the final good thing that I want to finish on a really important one as well many people forget about this is that by running the drop shipping business you're going to be developing universal and highly relevant skills so things like web development and web design are really important skills if you ask me pretty much every business in the world down needs a website or at least a facebook page or social media page which are skills that you will develop naturally the most important thing though is marketing marketing is a super relevant skill it's universal it applies to any single business if you get really good at facebook ads at social media marketing ads google ads whatever it is you will have a job for life and you'll be able to make a boatload of money too because if you can prove to somebody that you can make them money more money than what it will cost to pay you and run that ads you'll have a business you'll have a job sorry for anyone in the world you'll be able to walk into any business in the world and as long as you can prove those things they will pay you as much money as you want to be paid you could tell them any sort of figure and as long as you can make them more money than what they're paying you they'll pay you that all day long so the super relevant and universal skills plus they're not going anywhere anytime soon there's many kind of jobs in the past that require certain skills that are redundant now because they've been replaced by machines or cheaper labor whereas marketing is a skill that's been around for decades it will continue to be around for decades so to have that skill today puts you in a really good position for being able to make money and for a very long time and with that being said then guys that is all the bad and good points i wanted to go through in this video like i said i really hope i haven't put anybody off dropshipping because it's a really good business model it's provided so many opportunities for me despite all the heartache all the stress all the money i've lost at times if i had the opportunity to go back and do it all again i would 10 times over so try not to focus on all the bad points but just keep them in mind know that when you see a screenshot or a video on youtube or somebody who's made a hundred thousand pounds in their first month even with that success it's going to come a turn of heartache because they'll need the cash to fulfill those orders then there'll be all the customer complaints that come from that then there'll be the profit margins how much of that is actually profit so keep that in mind i hope you enjoyed the video if you're going to be starting a dropshipping business then make sure you let me know leave a comment down below and i'll help you any way i can i read every single comment too so if there's a question or a video suggestion you want to put forward just pop it down below please make sure you hit that like button too it does help with the organic growth of the channel and finally please do make sure you subscribe for regular content and with that being said then thanks again for watching and i'll see you in the next one