 In today's video we're going to be talking about the good, the bad and the ugly of the most popular dropshipping platforms. Now that sounds a bit dramatic so let's just go with the pros and the cons. Now there isn't anything inherently bad about any of these platforms, it's just some work better for other people depending on the needs of your particular business. While we are going to be covering the pros and cons to these different selling channels the majority of this video is going to be focused on being able to inform all of you the key differences between the different channels. The reason for this is so you can make a better and more informed decision on which platform to go with. Now before we start our selling channel reviews let's go ahead and run that intro and then let's get started. Let's go down everyone Mara here with Out of DS and if you like informative videos on the dropshipping business and staying up to date with all of the latest trends and news 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. Since we are going to be dropshipping we do have a couple of different options to be able to choose from when it comes to the different platforms to be able to sell our products on. Now for those of you that don't know dropshipping is considered a retail fulfillment method. Pretty much all that means is we don't really have to have any stock we don't have to have any inventory. All we really have to worry about is getting a product to our customers. Now the way we do that is going to be by placing an order with our suppliers. Then our suppliers going to be the one that worries about shipping the actual physical item and providing everybody with the tracking numbers. Once that's done all we have to do is get that tracking number ordered to our customers and we're done. Now of course there's a few more things that go into it but you pretty much get the picture now that leaves us with the question is dropshipping still worth it even though there's a ton of people already in the business and the answer to that is 100% yes. According to Statista the global dropshipping market currently is valued at over 243 billion dollars and in about three years by 2026 it's expected to almost double. Now there's a ton of different benefits when it comes to dropshipping and honestly it's a great business model because it's just got a low barrier to entry. It's super easy to get started and you don't really have to put much money up front. There's not a lot of investing you have to do to get your store up and running. Since we are dropshipping we don't have to worry about keeping any inventory so we don't have to worry about spending money on inventory. Testing products is also fairly easy you can test it either with your customers by seeing what sells or just ordering a sample and checking it out for yourself and seeing how the quality is. Now another huge benefit to dropshipping is the fact that you're actually able to scale your business a lot more easily than you would a brick and mortar store let's say. Overall dropshipping really is a low-risk business model so ultimately if for whatever reason it doesn't work out or you decide not to continue with it you really don't have much to lose. Okay so before we get started let's define really quick what exactly is a selling platform so typically when it comes to places that you can sell on there's going to be two different types. You're going to have a marketplace and you're going to have your own customizable e-commerce store. When you have your own customizable e-commerce store that's going to mean that you have your own website so you're going to be able to customize it however you want. Now typically when it comes to having your own website you're going to be working with a platform like Shopify, Wix or WooCommerce. Now if you're going to be selling on a marketplace for the most part you're going to be selling on something like eBay or Facebook Marketplace. In this case you're not going to be really customizing almost anything of the website itself because you're going to be listing your items on their platform the way that it's already set up. Now on a platform like eBay you are able to customize the description. On there you can customize almost everything you want you can add different pictures and you can really make it the way that you want it to look but ultimately the website itself is going to stay the same. So let's start off by looking at one of the most popular websites to be able to host your own website to start selling and that is Shopify. Shopify is probably one of the most popular platforms to start selling on. Everybody knows about Shopify. Shopify is what they call a hosted platform which pretty much means that they're going to give you the bare bones of the website itself. So it's really up to you to start building your website around all of that. So pretty much the entire website is already going to be working. All you have to do is start customizing it to your liking and adding and changing a couple things here and there to just make it fit best for you. So on Shopify everything is pretty much customizable. You can customize the entire layout of your store and the best part is that they also give you a bunch of different professional looking templates to be able to design your entire store. Now those templates can be both free as well as paid. Shopify also has fantastic customer service. So if you're ever stuck on any part of the website if maybe you're having issues with customizing your website or if you're having issues with uploading a product for whatever reason you can always contact Shopify and they'll help you out as best as they can. A lot of times they're going to get your issue resolved fairly quick. Now another thing that you can do on Shopify that is actually kind of unique is the fact that you can actually purchase an already made drop shipping store. There's a lot of people that create their drop shipping stores. They get it to the point where it's already making sales and bringing in traffic and they decide to sell the store. So whoever purchases the store really skips the entire process of setting up the entire shop and just gets to the good part and raking in the profits. Now in that case you always do have to keep in mind that you are going to have to still put in some work especially when it comes to marketing. Now unfortunately there are some downsides to using Shopify but are they really downsides? When you really think about it this is going to apply to pretty much all of the others on this list. A lot of things that I'm going to cover in the cons section of each platform really is ultimately just a part of the business. Let's take for example fees. Shopify has credit card fees, transaction fees and your monthly fee or annual fee whatever you decide to go with. Now credit card fees do vary depending on the plan that you have on Shopify. To start they start off at 2.9 percent plus 30 cents. They also have transaction fees which can be avoided if your customer uses Shopify pay. If they're using something like PayPal or a Pay Later service then different transaction fees can apply. But when it comes to fees they're pretty much going to be found on any platform that you decide to sell on so as I said earlier it's just a part of the business. Also since it is your own website chances are people aren't going to know about it so you are going to have to bring in your own traffic. There is organic traffic depending on the marketing tactics that you use but you are going to have to put in some work into bringing in that traffic. Whether it be organic or paid ultimately it's going to be up to you to bring in traffic to your website to start making sales. Now let's say for whatever reason you decide to leave Shopify and you want to start selling on eBay or WooCommerce. Well it's going to be kind of hard for you to take your entire website with you. Unfortunately Shopify doesn't allow you to be able to download all of the information from your website to just easily repost on something else. So if you have a bunch of different products on your website then more than likely where you're going to have to end up doing is manually uploading all those products to the new platform that you decide to sell on. Now there is a way around that. You can use something like AutoDS's product importer to be able to easily import all the different products from your suppliers. While it doesn't fully transfer over your entire store it definitely takes a huge chunk out of all the busy work. Now I know that I said getting started with Shopify is super easy and it is. Getting started on Shopify is probably one of the easiest things that you can do because of how easily you can customize everything and just get everything started but with this next one it might be even easy. Before we continue I do want to quickly mention that if you want any more information on any of these selling channels just go ahead and check the description down below. I'm going to have a link to the article on there. In that article there's also going to be a few different links to each one of these different platforms and how you can get started selling on them. Okay so let's continue with eBay. Selling on eBay is actually fairly easy and the best part is that it's almost free. Notice how I said almost. It's free to list your items on eBay. Now the fee is going to come once the item actually sells. Once an item sells on eBay you are going to get charged a final value fee depending on what the item ultimately ends up selling for. Now unlike Shopify you don't have a monthly or a yearly fee to be able to get started selling on the platform. To start selling on eBay it's pretty much like I said completely free. The fees come after you sell an item. Now eBay is already a well known and very well trusted brand so people that go to eBay are already going on there with the intent to buy. Now another reason eBay is highly trusted is because they have their buyer seller protection program. If there's ever an issue on either the seller side or the buyer side you can easily raise the issue with eBay themselves and they'll take care of it. They'll reach out to both the buyer and the seller and see what's going on and see what they can do to fix it. Now something really cool about eBay is the fact that it allows you to be able to spy on your competition a lot easier than some other platforms would. So one way to do that is by being able to see what items have sold. If you're ever having issues trying to find how to price a certain item then you can look up that item on eBay itself depending on what it is or a similar item and then you can set the filter on eBay to show you only items that have sold. So now you can see what the items have sold for and you can get a better idea on how to price it. Once you get your 50th sale for the month eBay is pretty much going to tap you out and tell you you're done. But really that's not ultimately a huge deal because there are different ways to be able to increase your selling limit. For one you can just be a good seller, you can ship your items on time, ship them quickly, always update your customer with the tracking numbers and you can even contact eBay to request an increase. If you do want more detailed information on how to be able to increase your selling limits, check out the article that I mentioned earlier. All the information that you need is going to be there. Now the fact that eBay is a marketplace itself means that you're not going to be able to customize it like you would your own website. But at least you're able to customize the description. So on the description itself you are able to customize it pretty much however you want. You can add any pictures that you want on there, any text, change the font, or even change colors. And you can have the option to add your own HTML. But remember that all of those changes and that customization is only going to be seen in the description. Also the fact that eBay is such a huge and popular platform means there's going to be a lot of competition on there. But ultimately if you have the right products, if you market your products correctly, if you have everything optimized and make everything just look nice, you're going to be okay. Next up we have Wix and Wix is somewhat similar Shopify in the sense that you're going to be creating your own website. While Wix does have its own templates that you can choose from to be able to customize, the customization on Wix is a bit different than it is on something like Shopify. With Wix you're actually able to click, drag, and drop different elements in your website. So you can position everything exactly how you want it to be. Now Wix starts at just over $20 a month so it is a fairly affordable platform to use. They also have the Wix app market which features a variety of different apps that can help you start growing and scaling your business. Now one really cool and unique feature about Wix that a lot of people probably don't know about is the fact that they have a multi-lingual tool. So you can easily translate your website to a few different languages to be able to sell worldwide. Now going back to the customizability of your website using Wix, as I mentioned it is a drag and drop platform so you're going to have to be dragging and dropping all of the different elements on your website to make it look the way that you want it. Now that can potentially be limiting depending on what you're trying to do but ultimately for people that are just getting started and to be fair the vast majority of us it is going to be enough to get your website up and running and just have it look professional. Now since it is going to be your own website remember that there's not going to be any organic traffic so it's going to be up to you to either run some Facebook ads or implement some different type of marketing techniques to be able to start bringing in traffic and start making some sales. Now as a quick note Wix is actually free to start using so you can get on Wix start building your own website and everything is going to be free. The only thing is is that you're not going to be able to have your own custom domain so you're going to have the Wix name before whatever your store name is and you're going to have the Wix watermark pretty much spread out throughout the entire website. In order to get rid of those limitations you are going to have to pay the monthly fee for Wix which as I said starts at just over 20 dollars a month so it's not that bad. Also you won't be able to start selling on a platform unless you have a paid plan so just keep that in mind. Now the last selling channel that we're going to cover is Facebook Marketplace. Now Facebook Marketplace is actually fairly new when it comes to being used as a selling channel especially for drop shipping. Even though Facebook has been around for a while now most people haven't really used it to start drop shipping that's something that people recently started doing. Now when it comes to Facebook Marketplace you're not really going to be customizing pretty much anything not even the description. When it comes to the description all you're going to do is literally just write your description and that's it. You're not going to be adding pictures to the description you're not going to be changing anything on there you're not going to be changing the font or anything. It's plain and simple and to the point. Facebook Marketplace is probably one of the most basic simple yet effective ways to sell your products. As I mentioned earlier people haven't necessarily been using it to drop ship so there's not really a lot of competition on there and just like eBay there really isn't any fees associated to it so you're not going to be paying anything until you make a sale. The selling fees for Facebook are only a mere 5% of what the item ends up selling for. That's really nothing especially when compared to most other platforms which charge anywhere between 15 to maybe 20%. Now unlike eBay you're not going to have any limits when it comes to Facebook. You can sell as many items as you want in a given month. Customer service on Facebook is also fantastic and I'm not talking about the customer service you get from Facebook. I'm talking about the customer service that you're going to be giving your customers. Reaching out to your customers giving them updates on their orders or answering any questions that they have is super easy because everything is done through Facebook itself through the Facebook messenger. Now one small downside to drop shipping on Facebook Marketplace is the fact that you're going to be limited to the United States. Facebook Marketplace is only available in the US so drop shipping to any other countries isn't really going to work at least not through Facebook Marketplace. If you do want to make sales in other countries there's a few different ways you can do that. For one you can join buy and sell groups and advertise your listings on there but you're not going to have the same tools and advantages that you will when you're using Facebook Marketplace. Facebook also has location filters which pretty much just means that your items aren't necessarily going to get in front of the eyes of everyone in the entire country. What's going to end up happening is Facebook is going to use your location or the location that you say that the item is in and it's going to show it to the people in its proximity. One way you can get around this is by listing multiple locations for the item so Facebook can show it to the people in the surrounding areas. Now remember that everything that I mentioned in this video isn't necessarily a con. None of these things are really bad it's all just part of the business and the platforms. Really all of this is to help you find which one of these is best for you and which one of these platforms despite its pros or its cons best suits your needs. When selecting your selling platform always take into consideration everything that I just spoke about. Take into consideration all of the fees, the customizability. If you want to have your own website or if you want to just list your items think about the different marketing techniques that you're going to have to implement for your store. There's a lot of things to take into consideration but ultimately there is one thing that all of these stores have in common and that's the fact that they can all benefit from automation. If you find yourself spending way too much time on either finding products or listing those products on your store, fulfilling orders, keeping up with your suppliers inventory, it can be a lot. It can really take up a lot of time and if you find yourself spending way too much time on these little tasks then you can really benefit from automation because AutoDS will make everything a lot quicker it'll streamline the entire process and you're going to get a lot of time back that you can reinvest back into your business to continue growing. On average our users save about 20 hours per week automating all of these little tedious and time-consuming tasks. Let's take for example finding products to sell. That in itself can take a long time to do some product research and just find what's trending. In this case you can go over the winning product section over on the AutoDS platform and right here you can see all of these proven winning products. All of these products are proven to sell and have been shown to be profitable. Then if you click into the product you're going to see a ton of different information to be able to help you start marketing that product. This in itself can help save you a ton of time in testing a bunch of different marketing techniques. And even when it comes to importing your products this saves you a ton of time. You can go ahead and click on add products and you can add either one product alone or you can add multiple products. Now if you have multiple stores this can help you save time by adding the product to all those different stores as well. So let's say you click on single product here you can choose all of the different stores that you want to add the product to. Now to add either one product or multiple products to multiple stores what you're going to have to do is just click on over to the multiple products slash stores and here you can add all of the URLs for the items you want to import and up here where it says publish to just click on edit and here you can choose all of the different stores that you want the items published to. Now aside from automating those tasks you can also automate your entire order fulfillment process. So whenever somebody places an order on your store AutoDS will automatically fulfill that order for you meaning AutoDS will go to your suppliers website place the order on your behalf for your customer and fulfill the order. You also have things like price and stock monitoring which keeps track of pretty much your suppliers inventory and their prices. So if their prices or their stock starts to fluctuate it'll make the necessary adjustments on your store to keep everything relevant. So if AutoDS notices that your supplier ran out of a particular item it'll make the necessary adjustments on your store to reflect your suppliers inventory. On that note the same goes for price fluctuations. If AutoDS notices that the price on one of your suppliers products goes up by let's say 5% it'll make the necessary adjustments in your store to reflect the 5% difference. Now remember that at AutoDS we love to see you succeed so in order to help you do that we have a bunch of different resources for you to take advantage of. For one we have this YouTube channel with a bunch of different playlists ranging from best sellers tips and strategies and what suppliers to use and we have on our website a dedicated blog section as well with a ton of different articles with relevant information as well. On top of that we have mentorship programs ebooks and a lot more. If you want any more detailed information on anything that I covered in this video including the marketplaces that I mentioned make sure to check out the description down below remember the article link is going to be there. Once again my name is Mario with AutoDS huge thank you to all of you for being here with me today I wish you all nothing but success in your trap shipping business