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Despite opinions to the contrary. Dropshipping is actually a brilliant business model - yes - I said it. It’s a great example of how you can take Physical Goods and scale them into a formidable money churning operation without all the hassles of storage and backend infrastructure but with ALL the hassles of running a front for a Online Retail Operation. I’ve had the privelege of working with people that are doing well with Dropshipping but it’s absolutely not what everyone that sells you bullshit Dropshipping (henceforth referred to as bullshipping courses) makes it out to be. I’m not going to convince you why Dropshipping is bad or good. However, I am going to tell you how it can be done well and how it can fail horribly at each and every stage starting with Stage 1 of every bullshipping course ever.Finding The Product and Supplier - Shakey Fundamentals and The RealityThe bullshipping courses sell you on how easy it is to find products."It’s so easy my cousin with Downs Syndrome did it blindfolded after drinking 2 shots of a heavy alcoholic beverage".They throw all the methods at you; Ali Express, eBay, Amazon, Local Dropshippers, Plain old Googling. The best bullshipping courses throw the most methods at you as is humanly possible because the more methods there are, the better you feel about your chances, and while you go through each method - it gives you less of a reason to ask for your money back.While I can’t fault their Capitalism - I like money too - the premise that this will be easy is horrendously wrong, it’s one thing to find a product in the comfort of your own home and theorize on whether that product would sell, it’s another beast all together to work with the supplier to have decent levels of stock in place, deliver in a good timeframe and not to mention; the time taken to enter the orders when you get to a large enough scale (which you will have a problem with if you actually want to make a decent living off of drop shipping). Products have a lot of criteria they don’t tell you about either - is it fragile (mirrors, vases, glassware), does it need to have an easy return policy and require on going support (clothing, warranties), does it have a good niche of people who would be willing to pay for it, will the advertising costs for marketing your super awesome product be enough to sell it at a profit and a very important one that I have never found a single one of them mention; can I actually sell it at a sustainable enough margin that will beat out my competition for a long period of time ?You did it, but did you ? COGS, CAC, LTV & AOVSo you jumped through hoops, did your research, got out your protractor, calculated the margins and finally, after a great sigh filled with exhaustion you exclaim victoriously“I FOUND IT ... ZE WINNING PRODUCT !!”.The bullshippers cousin smiles upon you. Now find 30 more products ! Despite what you think - Dropshipping doesn’t stop with just a single product. You might be lucky enough to hit the jackpot - but you better hurry and get more (related) things in to your store if you want to stay in this for the long haul. You can’t stop at one product. The secret sauce behind this lies in LTV and AOV BUT let’s start with explaining why the first product might not even be that profitable after all - what a plot twist.I’m going to assume you all know what Margin is. You really need to pay attention to COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) but what the bullshippers don’t tell you about is CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost). Initially you want to directly relate the CAC (Ad spend, promotions etc.) to each product you sell to figure out if the product you chose is profitable. The COGS by itself is not enough to tell you this. It will take a lot of testing, adjusting and hypothesising to get the CAC right but the COGS should be the same if not cheaper over time. If you don’t see yourself fantasising of numbers (My favourite is #6 hnnnggg) in your spare time and can’t be half-arsed putting together proper analytics and tracking for your Shop then find something else to do. Dropshipping isn’t for you. You will fail. Don’t buy "Bulllshipping Course 101 - How I Made 7 figures DropShipping with Oberlo on Shopify selling Dog Necklaces Ez Pez”. Hell, even if you DO fantasise about numbers and love sucking your Analytics dashboard off.. don’t buy it. My apologies for the profane images you may have in your head right now but back to COGS and CAC - After you are happy with the cogs and experiment with the CAC and you still feel confident in your product and how it sells then Congratulations ! You have surpassed most Bullshippers themselves. But you need to act quick, get more products and start thinking more about LTV and AOV and increasing those instead (below).Ahh LTV and AOV - The successful drop shippers who operate on a large enough scale sell more than just one item - they incentivise upsells and cross-sell other products to increase AOV (Average Order Value). They also keep their customers details and tell them about future promotions so they can buy more or tell their friends thereby increasing their LTV (Lifetime Value). If they were just selling one product to one customer for life then they would be out of business. When you see an Ad on Google and you think “they can’t be making money off that shit” - it’s because the advertisers are thinking of LTV and not just that first sale.Let's Skip Over this Important stuff - Suppliers, Customers & ProfitabilityBullshipping courses tend to just breeze past dropshipping suppliers and the large amount of moving parts they bring with them, it’s in their best interest to do so. Keep it nice and light so nobody runs away crying in the arms of their loved ones who weep with them - mourning and proposing a funeral for all the lost time they can never get back that was sunk into a bullshipping course. Let’s offer a few minutes of silence … RIP .. in peace.Shipping time is a big factor in the shopping experience (38% of people will not shop with you if you have shipping times over 8 days, 15% if over 4 days). If you are shipping from overseas then you know most dropshippers don’t deliver in a good enough time frame. Problem solving this brings a set of skills that takes much more than just sitting your ass in front of a computer. Shipping costs as well as shipping times overseas are easily skewed, you need to shop around to find a good courier, and even then, your supplier might refuse to work with them. Some dropshippers even violate some principles of dropshipping - they pre-order their stock and get it delivered to a Fulfilment Centre close to the supplier. The fulfilment centre then ships out the orders which also addresses another common problem with dropshipping products - a fragmented shopping experience.When a customer orders those super awesome products off your site, and when you have scaled to a big enough level you get to a point where each product that a customer orders can be from a different dropshipper. Leading to shipping being paid separately to each supplier and then packages arriving separately to the customer.Put yourself in their shoes for a second; you just received the $15 product on your $100 order. Do you immediately think; "looks like the retailer has shipped the packages separately, I will wait patiently and smile while I go about my day” or do you think “OMG SCAMMER M GOING TO RITE AN ANGREE EMAIL, AND UPLOAD BAD REVIW ON YOUTUBE”. Too severe ? maybe so but the consequences have to be dealt with. Both the extra shipping cost and the extra cost to you or your employee who is going to have to provide the emotional support to stabilise the Youtuber.The back and forth initially when deciding on a product with suppliers takes a long time and … Money. Bullshipping courses don’t mention that. They make it seem like you can just pick a product and start drop shipping it from your store straight away and only buy the product once a customer orders. Instead; You need to find a lot of products that meet your standards of quality, shipping times and price and ordering them takes money and patience.Basically, none of this stuff is very easy. It takes a while to get to stage of what I call "comfortable profitablity”. Where the audience for your products is large enough to ensure it’s continued survival, your low margins finally pay off, your support staff knows what they are doing and your processes are refined enough to deal with any situation. The Bullshippers will throw revenue figures at you, every one of their students will too, but the #1 reason to start a business is to be profitable - and unless you are passionate about what you sell OR you have something you are passionate about to put the money towards - DO NOT DROPSHIP. It’s not as easy as bullshippers will lead you to believe. It is still entrepreneurship and will demand a lot from you. Don’t mess with it. It will eat you for breakfast. It’s different to eating breakfast; you don’t want to be breakfast. You get what I mean.For The SkepticsI just want to say that I am not a dropshipper and never planned on being one. However, I do know what it takes to be profitable in it. I took a different direction with my life; one that focusses on my other talents and passions and that I feel is much more beneficial and scalable for me. That's the beauty of the interwebs and entrepreneurship, and that's what I'm trying to convey in these posts. Not every problem needs dropshipping to solve it and it's not as easy as rose smelling farts (or however that saying goes). There's plenty of other ways to make money.I am not selling a course so fu*& you for thinking that I have to be doing this for a reason. It's enough for me to know that people found this useful. There’s no link here. And I’d love to write more on Bulshipping if I can find the time. I got plans to write :Setting up your Shop - The only thing the BullShippers get right (Self Explanatory - so might skip it)Dealing with Customers and the Store Front - Why Dropshippers don’t DIYCompetition and the Price Equilibrium - Why Drop Shipping Will Die (Eventually)Ads are the BIG DARK Digital Hole where your money goes and how to place it in there neatlyThe Revenue Fallacy - How the Bullshippers and their Students Lube you up

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