Is Print on Demand / Drop Shipping a Waste of My Time? In a word, yes.
There’s no easy way to put that. I’ve been in this game for 23+ YEARS now. I’ve seen it all.
Lemme help you save a ton of time, effort, energy, resources, and money!
Is Print on Demand / Drop Shipping a Waste of My Time?
First of all, MOST drop shippers are scams, okay. SCAMS.
If you don’t know what a drop shipper is, basically, they are someone who holds inventory on your behalf and ships for you.
They always get the products wrong and you end up spending so much time and energy cleaning up the mess THEY make. After all, it’s YOUR store, YOUR name is on the line.
Something breaks in the mail because they didn’t wrap it right, it’s on you.
They send the wrong product, it’s on you.
They don’t customize something or customize it wrong, it’s on you.
They send the wrong blogs promotional materials, that just sucks.
It’s all on you.
You deal with the cleanup.
You deal with the complaints.
You deal with the mess.
Likewise…let’s say you run a blog, and you have a store, and you come up with some random item like a tote bag or a mug that is branded to you that a drop shipper will do, that’s just dumb.
How many tote bags, t-shirts, and mugs does a customer need and WHY would they even CARE to buy a branded one from YOUR blog that is so incredibly overpriced?
Like $20 for a coffee mug??? Really? Go to Ross or Tuesday Morning! $2.99. Go to a thrift store. 50¢.
Your customers want to save money, not be gouged, and you want to treat others as YOU want to be treated.
Do YOU want to overpay on a coffee mug by $19.50? Would you feel ripped off? Hate the blogger that sold it to you? While I realize some won’t feel that way, some will and will never tell you.
These are all things to consider. Your name is on the line here. Your credibility. Your trust-worthiness. One bad sale…one slip-up by the drop shipper and that customer is not coming back.
You’re leaving your GOOD NAME in the hands of someone else.
In my opinion, that’s the worst mistake you can make in the blogging world. You’ve worked HARD to have and maintain a good name. Don’t blow it and give it to someone else.
The BEST way to make money in a store is to sell something you create ONCE and sell over and over without spending more time, energy, and resources to maintain it or make more of it.
I ship ZERO products in my store either myself or by someone else (a drop shipper). Everything is automatically given to the customer, which brings up another good point….
Your customers want stuff NOW. They don’t want to WAIT for shipping. We live in an instant age.
I tested this theory on my blog. On my newsletter subscribe forms that are an instant download (meaning, they sign up, they get an email to click a link and download the item NOW), I put in my verbiage “INSTANT DOWNLOAD.”
It tells people, hey look, I know you’re in a hurry. You can get this now.
Those email subscribe boxes convert WAY better than my other email subscribe boxes across the map!
People want instant. So, even putting something like, “Instant Download” in your ads, is a great idea because they know that once they order, they get the item instantly! It’s a perk of not having to wait for shipping.
There ARE times when shipping something may make sense for some businesses (say you sell essential oils for example) and I talk about that more in my course, Top 13 Things to Sell in Shopify, but not drop shipping or print on demand. Don’t waste your time with those!
