Buying dropshipping membership from dropshippers

Hello SaleHoo,

I'm new to the whole concept of drop shipping and selling online. I have been looking through the list of suppliers to look for a drop shipper with no particular items or products in mind. My question is I have come across a couple drop shippers on here that require you to open an account with them, usually with a fee, so that you can start drop shipping with them. Is this legit? Are they the suppliers or just the middlemen? Will I be making any profit selling their products? Please help me because I am trying to sell on Amazon through FBA, which means I would have to buy my first order out of my pocket to have them ship it to Amazon facility. I don't want to do this if there is not enough of a margin to put my money into...


Krishna Modak

Hi Krishna,

Yes, it is legit to answer your first question. Not every dropshipper charges and account fee, but more and more are doing it now to offset their admin cost.

Will you make a profit?

That's a lot harder to answer and to be honest, there is no way of telling. That comes down to the product, the price you pay for it, your competition and just general market forces themselves. What I can say is dropshipping WON'T give you the best margin on your product, wholesale is the best option for margin, but of course wholesale is volume buying, so requires an upfront budget.

With what you say, it seems to me that you do have some capital to outlay upfront, so I'm wondering why you would be considering dropshipping and not wholesale to give yourself the best chance of profit?

Hello Mark,

I do have some capital to lay upfront, but I don't have a storage or the manpower needed to order bulks and do it all by myself. That's why I am going the FBA route where the workload would be less on me.. Besides, most suppliers have a minimum requirement of order and I don't know that I would do with 3,000 toy dolls.

I am very confused and frustrated right now because I want to take the first step but I'm not sure which way I want to go.. It's not about the products because SaleHoo has great tools to determine that, but it's about either going with wholesale or drop shipping.

Probably more risky, especially if you are experienced in the surplus market, but maybe a mixed liquidation pallet or gaylord might be something worth considering. That said, I'm not sure Amazon would deal in loads like that, but might be worth finding out to give you another option to both wholesale and dropshipping.