People often get the meaning of the term “drop surfing” wrong. Many people think that dropshipping is the same.
No, it isn’t! I want to help you understand how the two are different.
I’ll also tell you some important things about the way the business works. So, you can decide which one is better for you.
How does drop surfing work? You ride the wave of what’s popular and make money as quickly as possible. The best way to do this is to find multiple sellers of the same popular product, so you never run out of stock. You can move on to the next supplier when the first one runs out of stock or raises the price.
How do you drop surf?
First, we need to talk about what dropshipping is. It’s a way to run a business in which the seller doesn’t keep any stock.
When a customer buys, the seller just has to go to the manufacturer’s website, place the order, type in the customer’s name and shipping address, and pay.
After that, the seller will pack the item and send it. As a seller, you don’t spend money until someone buys something from you. This is also how drop surfing works, with one difference.
When a seller uses drop surfing, he gets an order, but he also has a system or software that shows him other sellers around the world who sell the same thing.
Basically, you want to find as many sellers as possible who sell the same products that are popular right now. You do this so you can quickly move on to the next supplier if you run out of something from one or if the price goes up.
He then looks over this list, compares the prices and shipping costs and times for each seller, and decides who to buy from. After deciding who to buy from, he puts in an order, and the maker sends the item to him.
Like with dropshipping, the seller didn’t spend any money. He doesn’t pay for a product until a customer has bought it. These two business models are like twins who are almost the same except for a few small things. In dropshipping, you only get a product from one source.
With drop surfing, you look at what many suppliers have to offer and choose the best one to meet your customer’s needs.
When you start drop surfing, we’ve found a great software that will speed things up and save you time.
This will help you get everything in order. If you decide to drop surf, you need to get yourself more in order. You should look at the price, the seller’s rating, how quickly the item ships, how much it costs to ship, and what other people have said about the quality of the item.
Use uDroppy To Find Drop Surfing Suppliers
Most drop surfers look for suppliers by hand before putting in an order. This activity takes a lot of time.
Before putting a product up for sale, you should have already done research on different suppliers. Then you need to write them down on a spreadsheet like Microsoft Excel.
You should be able to find out everything you need to know about the supplier on that spreadsheet. When a customer places an order, you look at that spreadsheet to figure out which supplier can best fill the order.
Keep in mind that suppliers’ prices can also change. Some will offer a coupon discount, so this supplier now has the lowest price of all of them.
The problem is that you don’t know this, and unless you are a computer programmer who knows how to write computer codes to make your spreadsheet collect data automatically, your spreadsheet doesn’t automatically update the prices or the availability.
One thing you can do is use uDroppy. It is a piece of software that gathers information about suppliers and the products they sell all over the world.
uDroppy is a tool for managing your online store that you can use with Shopify.
You will have the following things if you use uDroppy.
Shipping and deadlines are guaranteed.
If you only use one supplier or buy things from AliExpress, you have to do what they say. Some suppliers won’t even send the product, which is bad for your business.
Also, it can take up to 60 days for products you buy from China to get to you. When you use uDroppy, you can be sure that the items they list will be sent on time.
Notifications if prices go up or down
Suppliers won’t let you know if the prices of the things they sell change. This is hard because your customers will pay the price you listed, but then you’ll find out that the supplier raised the price.
This is very bad because you could lose money. Just imagine that you listed 50 products and didn’t know that some of them had changed.
A 10% price hike is a big deal, and you can’t tell your customer that the prices have changed and you want to cancel, or they won’t buy from you again.
Manually fill orders
For a drop shipping business to work, you usually have to go to the supplier’s website or an online marketplace and buy the product yourself.
How will you handle this if you get 100 orders every day? You will need workers, and if you have workers, you will need to pay them a daily wage.
With uDroppy, the customer’s order goes straight to the system, where it will be filled by your chosen supplier. You don’t have to type in the customer’s name and address by hand because the uDroppy company will handle all shipping issues for you.
The Good And Bad
Every way of doing business has pros and cons. Here’s a guide to help you figure out if you’re ready to start drop surfing.
PROS
- There are many places to buy the same thing.
- You’ll get the most for your money if you buy from the vendor with the lowest price.
- Orders are automatically filled, so you don’t have to log in and place each one by hand.
- Automatic sourcing with an ecommerce tool lets you choose from tens of thousands of suppliers and tens of thousands of products from all over the world, not just China or your country.
- You can focus on marketing instead of back-end tasks like shipping and taking orders.
- Pricing and updates that are done automatically, and you can set up your own pricing rules
CONS
- Membership to the software costs money, and different software providers charge different amounts.
- You can only buy products from the company that makes them.
- If you don’t know anything about computer programming, you can’t use the drop surfing app on all websites.
Building a store for drop-in surfing
You need to build an online store for both business models. This is how people will look for your product. Shopify is the most popular way to run a business based on drop shipping.
It’s a place where you can start from scratch and build your store. You can also add photos and text about your products. This article can help you learn how to build a store step by step.
If a customer buys, you buy the product from your source, and then your source ships it to the customer. Shopify also works with manufacturers whose products you can buy and sell directly from the Shopify platform.
Shopify also has great pricing plans, and it doesn’t cost much to use.
This tutorial will help you figure out how to build a store so you can start selling things.
Don’t go shopping online while you’re surfing.
If you want to save money, drop surfing is a good option. But running the software to manage everything will cost you a little bit more.
If you are new to drop shipping, you might want to start by finding products that sell well so you can start making money. When you start making money, you can look at info drop surfing.