I've been researching dropshipping and e-commerce, and one thing i keep seeing is people saying that dropshipping is saturated and that it's no longer worth getting into.

But i'm wondering if the problem is really saturation or if it has more to do with how people approach the business.

For example, a lot of beginners seem to follow the same strategy: find a trending product, copy what other stores are doing, run some ads, and hope to make sales. Naturally, when thousands of people do the exact same thing, competition becomes intense, profit margins shrink, and it gets harder to stand out.

So, for those of you who have actual experience with dropshipping, I'd like to hear your honest opinions:

Is dropshipping genuinely saturated, or is it just the low-effort, copy-and-paste approach that's saturated?

How much does success depend on the business model itself versus the execution?

If you were starting from scratch today, would you still choose dropshipping? Why or why not?

I’m genuinely trying to understand the current state of the dropshipping market, whether it’s still a viable business opportunity for beginners, and what someone would need to do differently to have a real chance of succeeding today. I’d appreciate hearing from people with real experience.

I’m looking into dropshipping and would love to hear from people who have actually done it. How much did you invest to get started, and how long did it take before you were making a profit?
If you’re comfortable sharing, I’d also like to know what you sell, how much you make in sales versus what you keep after expenses, what your biggest challenges were, and what you wish you knew before starting. Rough numbers are totally fine. I’m trying to get a realistic idea of what it takes, not just hear the success story.

Does anyone have experience with "Vox Nutrition" or know if they are a reliable partner for nutritional supplements? I’m planning to launch my own brand of supplements and am currently choosing a supplier. I would be grateful for suggestions as well!

I'm an independent developer researching inventory planning for small ecommerce brands. I haven't built a product yet, and I'm trying to understand how merchants handle this in practice before deciding whether there's anything worth building.

For those of you who hold your own inventory:

• How do you decide when to reorder a product?
• Do you use spreadsheets, Shopify reports, or a dedicated forecasting tool?
• What's the most frustrating part of your current workflow?
• Have stockouts or overordering caused you meaningful problems?
• If you use inventory software, what does it still get wrong?

I'm particularly interested in stores that order from suppliers with long lead times.

I'm not here to pitch a product. I'd appreciate hearing how you handle this today, including if your current setup works perfectly well.

I'm interested in getting into dropshipping as a trial, but I would say my main pain point is the long shipping from China. Are successful businesses just copping it or are you looking for suppliers with warehouses in your country?

I'm just curious if users are actually coming back with complaints of shipping times or have they accepted a longer wait as norm with brands like Shein and Temu having longer shipping times?

How can I get that page back where there are 6-7 checkpoints like change your domain, create a quick sale,design your store. Before it was there, but now it disappeared

Selling:

• Shrine Pro (Version 1.9.0)
• Ascendify Theme (Version 12.3.0)
• Elixir (Version 1.6.2)

Prices:

Shrine Pro: €100
Elixir: €80
Ascendify Theme: €70

Or get all three for only €150.

Whenever a new version is released, I will automatically update your theme and send you the latest ZIP file.

I also guarantee that your store will not be suspended or taken offline because of the theme. If this does happen, you will receive a 100% refund.

Discord: jorjasmith0224

When a customer wants to return something, refunding is the easy default. Offering a swap or store credit means checking whether the supplier still has stock, what the order was, and what your policy allows, before you even reply.

Do most of you bother with that, or is it refund and move on? If you do push exchanges, what does it take on your end?

I work on ecommerce software and I'm trying to understand how stores actually handle this.

Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend. I have noticed a big boom in ai dropshipping and there are a ton of these ai dropshipping store builders. I've tested them and generally they are all pretty bad lol. This gave me and a group of friends the idea to create an actual ai dropshipping store builder. You just upload a product link and the ai fully understands your product and creates the best offer for it. And drops a legit store that is high converting. Plus these stores are built using our own custom developed shopify theme. If anyone is interested check us out here: https://ecomhub.ai

Would also love any feedback. We are launching a feature in a week that allows you to just choose a niche and it finds products and builds a store around it. Bit more complex to develop but it's coming.

Image 1: Ecomhub AI Dashboard

Image 2: Fully generated store

Hey everyone,
I’m completely new to the rep community and want to get started with my first haul.
To keep things smooth and avoid long shipping times or customs hassles from Asia, I really want to source items strictly from EU-based sellers or suppliers with stock located in Europe.
I’m looking for reliable recommendations for high-quality (1:1):
Ralph Lauren (sweaters, quarter-zips, polos)
Nike / Jordan sneakers
General casual & streetwear essentials
Could you please recommend the best and most trustworthy sellers who hold stock in Europe or have EU warehouse options? Looking for good quality and reasonable prices.
Thanks in advance for the help!

Hey everyone, pretty new to Facebook ads and wanted to get some opinions from people who’ve been doing this longer.

I’m testing a new product at $100/day CBO, broad US targeting, optimized for purchases. The videos I’m using have already done really well on TikTok Shop and generated sales, so I figured they’d have a decent chance on Facebook too.

My first campaign had around a 16% CTR and $0.66 CPC, but after checking the breakdowns, I realized most of those cheap clicks were coming from Audience Network.

I ended up duplicating the campaign and testing Facebook and Instagram placements without Audience Network.

Now my CPM is around $112, CTR around 2.5%, and CPC around $4.50. I’m also noticing Facebook spends my budget pretty aggressively, sometimes $15 within the first hour of the day.

Still haven’t gotten any actual purchases, and most website visitors aren’t sticking around long.

I know it’s literally day 1, so I’m trying not to overreact or mess with the learning phase too much.

For those who’ve been doing this a while, is this pretty normal when launching a new product? Have you seen campaigns start out with expensive traffic and then improve significantly after a few days of optimization?

Would you let Facebook keep optimizing or would you start making changes?

Appreciate any advice.

Hey everyone,

I’ve been working on the China side of dropshipping and supply chain for about 4 years now, mainly helping stores source and ship to end customers.

Don't get me wrong, standard mass fulfillment platforms are great when you are just starting out or testing products. But as I've watched stores try to scale or build a real brand, I’ve noticed a very obvious bottleneck.

Because these platforms process massive volumes, they simply don't have the bandwidth to monitor individual stores closely. They can't do detailed QC on every item, and handling custom packaging (private labeling) is often slow and rigid. Also, shipping prices and actual delivery times fluctuate a lot. As we all know, going for the "absolute cheapest" option usually leads to trouble in the long run.

Over the past few years, I haven't found any "magical" top-tier factories, but I have slowly built a curated list of solid, tested manufacturers (mostly in apparel, shoes, home decor, lighting, food/supplements, and cosmetics) that I actually trust. I've also narrowed down my logistics partners to about 20 direct-line companies (like YunExpress, Yanwen, etc.) based on their stability and safety over time.

Through these years of hands-on experience, I’ve built my own internal supply chain system. It helps me quickly calculate quotes across these different channels so I can make objective, data-driven decisions on routing and pricing, rather than just guessing.

Where I’m heading next (After a year of reflecting on this industry): I’m considering moving away from the generic agent model to see if a highly focused approach works better. I’m thinking about a setup where a 2-person team handles strictly 1 to 3 small-to-medium Shopify stores. We would manage the entire lifecycle on the ground: deep product sourcing, private labeling, strict QC, customized packing, and most importantly—inventory scaling. Once you find a winning product, we can seamlessly transition the fulfillment from our China direct-lines to our overseas warehouses for 2-4 day local delivery, completely bypassing the headache of managing external 3PLs yourself.

I know this model isn't for giant enterprises, but rather for growing SMBs. Because this approach is so hands-on, it requires a mutual alignment period at the beginning to sync our workflows, regardless of the store's daily order volume. It's about building a real partnership, not just processing tracking numbers.

I'm not trying to sell anything here, just genuinely want to know: for those of you currently scaling your stores, is this kind of "Micro-Team" backend support something you actually need? Or is it easier to just stick with the standard platforms?

Would love to hear your raw feedback on this idea. Also, if you currently have any doubts or questions about your actual fulfillment shipping costs, feel free to drop a comment or DM me. I'm always happy to discuss and run some numbers for you!

Hello everyone, I am testing a product and I would like to evaluate procurement options by an agent in order to have better prices. The product is compression stockings if you think you can help me write to me below please.

Thank you

I run a fulfilment warehouse in China and see the backend of a lot of stores. The same pattern keeps coming up.

People spend weeks on product research, ads and store design, then pick a supplier in 10 minutes because the price looked good.

Then this happens:

- Orders take 3 weeks, customers chargeback before the parcel even arrives

- The product that shows up isn't the one in the photos

- A customer wants to return something and the only option is shipping it back to China

- Stock runs out mid-campaign and the supplier just stops replying

- The parcel gets lost and you eat the refund

None of that is a product problem. It's a supply chain problem, and it kills stores that had a genuinely good product.

What I'd do differently if I was starting today:

1. **Order samples from 3 suppliers before you run a single ad.** Compare quality, packaging and how fast they reply. The slow replier now will be the ghost later.

2. **Ask about returns before you launch, not after your first angry customer.**

3. **Once a product sells consistently, stop dropshipping it one order at a time.** Buy in bulk, hold it in a warehouse and ship from there. Faster delivery, better margins and far fewer refunds.

4. **Put your brand on the packaging.** Even a simple insert card. A plain parcel from China gets you a one-time customer. A branded one gets repeat buyers.

Curious what everyone else has run into, though.

**What's the worst supplier experience you've had, and what did you change after it?**

I'll reply to every comment.

Hello! I found a product that I want to sell but I can’t find the product in cjdropshipping so I went to alibaba and found a lot of them so I connected with multiple suppliers and they said they only do wholesale… the closest I got was a supplier could do cooperative freight forwarding. Is there anywhere else I can source my product? Autods has subscription so I didn’t look there. Or even any advice! Thank you!

Hello all,

Recently I get a lot of adds on Instagram of a shop selling replicas visibly with the brand names.

Its called lorenzia.co

How is it legal and not banned ??

Thanks in advance

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2 maanden geleden ben ik begonnen met een nieuwe winkel op de Britse markt. We besloten om wat sieraden te verkopen. De eerste maand maakten we niet veel omzet en we waren bijna gestopt, omdat we er gewoon geen toekomst meer in zagen.

Eindelijk, na nog 1 maand, begonnen we serieus omzet te draaien. We zitten nu al op 15K. Ons doel was om deze maand 20k aan omzet te halen. Alles leek perfect te gaan, maar vandaag is ons Facebook-adaccount geblokkeerd.

Dit is echt enorm irritant, want we moeten weer helemaal opnieuw beginnen. We hebben op internet naar alle oplossingen gezocht, maar alles leidt ons naar de support van Facebook, die natuurlijk niks zal doen.

Zijn er mensen die hetzelfde probleem hebben, of oplossingen wat we kunnen doen in deze situatie? Ik ben ten einde raad

Edit: someone gave me the solution through DM, and needed to go to https://hetsocialloket.nl which fixed it for me this morning

Following situation:

I have a dropshipping store in Australia. Sales have been going great, conversion rate sitting comfortably around 1.6%.

I’m using meta advertising mostly and towards the end of September I’ve seen an insane decline in traffic quality and also conversions, I went from 6-8 orders a day to now not even one in 2 days. As creatives are refreshed every 5-8 days with a variety of creatives for meta to test and use.

Anyone having the same issues? It’s pretty crazy to see a well performing store going down without major changes to the store. It it possible to fuck up a pixel ? I’ve removed a good chunk of products as I’ve started selling them separately through a different store, which accounted for 25% of sales. Does smth like that fuck the pixel up?

After removing the products I started fresh campaign to make sure the updated product catalogue reflects in the ads and Champaign!

Help!!!!

I would like to know if it is recommended to sell or try to sell towels, bathrobe and etc by getting from organic content. I haven’t encountered that’s why I am asking.