Let’s Get the Dropshipping vs Amazon FBA Battle Started!
E-commerce business has taken its roots in our reality for many years. More and more people prefer to integrate with the e-commerce field, since it is considered to be one of the most profitable ways of earning money in today’s reality. Today’s e-commerce seller is equipped with lots of innovations for running a comfortable e -commerce business. All you need is a laptop or a smartphone, and you can easily handle all the aspects within your business…in theory. Buy and sell the product, find suppliers, and send your inventory from point A to Z point, just by using your gadgets. Again, in theory, all of this sounds way too easy. But it’s not. We’ll get to that in a bit.
Today, we are going to talk about two main alleys of e-commerce: Dropshipping and Amazon FBA. A lot of Amazon sellers prefers to use these methods, so let’s find out which one is a better option for an Amazon seller.
Round 1: Dropshipping
Dropshipping is one of the easiest ways to start your Amazon business, since you do not have to invest a huge sum of money in your new-born business. With dropshipping, you do not have to have a storage for keeping your products; plus, you do not have to buy products in bulk. All you need to do is to put the products in your listings, and take the orders from your customers. The rest of the process will be taken care of by your supplier. Pretty simple, isn’t it? This is probably why it’s risky. You should be extra careful in choosing the suppliers with whom you are going to work. But let’s consider all the pros and cons of dropshipping on Amazon. At first, let’s try to understand all the benefits of dropshipping on Amazon:
- You don’t need too much capital to get things going.
- There are no risks involved with getting wrong products; you can choose another supplier’s product whenever you wish.
- Your supplier will take care of the fulfillment process instead of you.
However, there are also several disadvantages with this business model. Actually, there’s one major problem:
- Amazon hates traditional dropshipping! And that’s enough to ruin any dropshipper’s day!
Even though Amazon claims that dropshipping is allowed on its platform, it’s not traditional dropshipping which Amazon is talking about. In traditional dropshipping, which many people do, you don’t have to be identified as a seller of record on the products you sell. On Amazon, this is a requirement!
This Brings Us to Play Number Two: Amazon FBA
If you decide to launch a wholesale business on Amazon, then Amazon FBA is what you really need. You just have to find an authorized wholesale supplier and buy your inventory. After which you have to send your goods to Amazon’s warehouses. Now, you can relax and have a cup of coffee, since Amazon will take care of such crucial aspects like picking the orders, packaging them, and sending them directly to your customers. Sounds great! But let’s try to consider all the pros and cons of this model as well:
Of course, by choosing the Amazon FBA business model, you get access to all the goodies, such as Amazon taking care of all the prepping and shipping process, as well as customer returns and similar issues. Plus, it’s all validated by Amazon.
That being said, there is a dark side to the FBA moon, and the dark side is usually dependent on the seller. If you sell counterfeit items, unauthorized products, or anything on Amazon’s no-no list, you can get in trouble even if you are using FBA. Other than that, you need to pay Amazon’s fees for storing and fulfilling your products and orders. But the fee is not that high.
Our Two Cents:
Got Suspended? has seen sellers that have been suspended on Amazon time and time again because they resorted to traditional dropshipping. So, it’s our recommendation that you stick with Amazon FBA instead, or at the very least follow Amazon’s version of “dropshipping” even though it’s barely what we know dropshipping to be!
If you even find your Amazon account suspended because of a dropshipping violation, we’re right here and you know how to find us!
