Has Anyone Tried Doing A Drop Shipping Business?

[BradClark]

My wife and I were talking about this the other day. She was telling me that during the day I'm teaching Oral ESL and in the evenings and my days off I'm just sitting about the home. She kept giving me grief that idle time is not productive, blah, blah you know how wives are when it comes to money management.

I know Etsy is an easy way to make a side income. My sister does that, she goes around to garage sales and gets cheap nick nacks, cleans them up or merges them into something different. She's pretty clever, lets just say the artistic gene in our family didn't reach my DNA, it stopped with her.

I did think about those cheap t-shirt stores where you can get touristy junk clothing, but by the time you add in shipping costs to send it all the way to a customer in America or elsewhere, you are at a minus. Kind of defeats the purpose of doing this in the first place. I guess the retail stores back home must be buying these cheap clothes by the container load.

Or they are making a loss on these items, but using it as a cheap thing to get more customers into their stores and up sell them on the more expensive quality items? I've no idea how big business works these days, I'm surprised more haven’t gone bust with the way everything is shifting to online.

I have an Uncle that does paintings, brush style artwork or what ever you call that, dunno as I said I'm not an arty sort of guy. He sells them from his studio which is a small shed down the back garden. He has a sign on the side gate and all the locals know he sells them. I phoned him up and asks if he sells them on the internet, he said nah too old to work out this young generation technology haha.

I did start to look into doing some Ebay & Amazon selling. I do know that the competition is tough on there but as we live in a developing country, I should be able to price stuff at a decent enough price that undercuts the other guys in theory. I'm following the video training course that is listed on expathomebusiness.com It's simple enough to follow for a dumb ass like me. I mean I understand computers and the basic concepts, but some of this internet selling stuff is pretty complex.

I'll keep on going with this, I know nothing in life is an overnight thing. Even with my real world job of Oral ESL teaching, I had to work my way up though the pay grades to get to where I am today. So there is no way in hell I'm going to be giving up that any time soon.

I am curious though, has anyone done anything like this before?

Or should I just tell my wife to bugger off and go play cards with the neighbours and leave me alone? Though if I go this route she'll be loosing even more of my cash. It'd be nice if she won a game once in a while, even enough to buy me a few cold beers would be great.

 

[EricLovesBA]

My wife and I were talking about this the other day. She was telling me that during the day I'm teaching Oral ESL and in the evenings and my days off I'm just sitting about the home. She kept giving me grief that idle time is not productive, blah, blah you know how wives are when it comes to money management.
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Have you researched shipping costs from here to your target market? If not you might be a little surprised how costly it is. I have considered this type of business before, but from what I've seen here on the forum, there won't be too many people cheering you on.

On a side note is your wife working? Hope she's at least doing that before she starts riding your butt. You'll have more energy for your business if it comes from your heart rather than from her nagging. It's not clear from what you wrote if any of these ideas are sincerely what you want to do with your time. If not, take a step back, take a deep breath, and give that some thought first.

 

[Juanito]

Ideally what you want is a telephone or internet based business where you don't physically have to move ''product'' - your ''product'' in effect is virtual - a service - that is where I would be looking I think...

 

[Gringoboy]

If it's any use, I have a computer shop and confess that I sell more online than in the shop by a very wide margin, something like 80/20.
I keep the shop on because it's somewhere to go in the mornings and I also do repair work.
What I sell are computer parts, mainly used on Mercadolibre.
This may not be much use to you Brad, but it's certainly an indication of how people shop nowadays.
I have an active website, but frankly, with the audience that ML commands, it would be stupid of me to ignore it.
As for shipping outside Argentina? I wouldn't even dream about it.