Have you ever heard about dropshipping? Or, in other words: print on demand platforms? It is very likely that you have, but maybe you did not know how it is really called. It is the online business model where you find a third-party company that produces, packs, delivers, and stocks items like t-shirts, mugs, caps, and similar for you.
But recently people have been talking that the dropshipping market is pretty much dead and there is no use to expect to earn big sums of more from a business platform that does not ask for you to invest anything at all. So is it really dead, or can it still be profitable and effective?
In this article, we are going to discuss this topic about the dropshipping market in more detail. Therefore, if you have recently learned about dropship custom printed products and would like to try it out, but you’re not sure if it is worth it, we hope this article will help answer your questions, so read on.
Why Is Dropshipping Not as Popular as It Used to Be?
Even though all of the internet and all of the online businesses are based on fast technology development, the whole eCommerce world is also very organic. It is because it naturally reacts to many outside factors that can affect it. Therefore, the world of online business is constantly changing, new business platforms appear, and the old ones become outdated.
The same is with the dropshipping businesses – some time ago, it used to be very popular, effective, and successful. But now there are many other forms and ways you can easily make money online, and often – faster and more effectively. Given all that, people who want to begin a startup, choose other types of platforms, then dropshipping platforms have a lower budget, and as a result, can offer less appealing conditions and pricing.
What Does Google Say About Dropshipping and Its Relevance in 2020?
One of the most popular platforms to dropship your goods used to be AliExpress. If you did not know that it is one of the biggest platforms for dropshipping, you definitely know AliExpress itself. So one of the best ways to see if this platform is finished as a dropshipping platform is to search its trend on Google Search to know the truth.
Google Trends is a specialized feature that lets you search and see how popular a certain search term is on Google. This way, you can figure out if your chosen trend is declining or rising at the given moment. Google Trends will also show you related topics, demographic insights, and related queries that could be helpful for your research.
So if we look at the AliExpress dropshipping trend, we see that it had its moment of declining, but it is still a pretty solid and strong trend at the moment. The data also shows that dropshipping via AliExpress is more popular in the USA than it is in the rest of the world. This means that according to Google Trends, dropshipping is still very relevant, especially in some parts of the world.
Is It Worth to Start a Dropshipping Business in 2020?
We would say that dropshipping is worth starting if you want to have an online side business for additional income. Let’s say – if you already have a full-time or half-time job, if you are currently studying, or raising a baby, and want to make some additional money.
Surely it will not bring millions of dollars each month. Have it in mind that dropshipping takes up to a few weeks to deliver the products to the customer, which is very inconvenient for today’s modern customer who knows that he can have the same item the same day that he ordered it somewhere else.
Of course, you can always juggle with the quantity and the price. If someone wants to order a huge amount of mugs for a company, it is very likely that no local shop will have such an amount of mugs in their warehouse to print the company logo on them. It is normal because nobody wants to keep their money frozen, sitting in a warehouse, especially when such big orders do not happen every day.
So this customer might turn to a dropshipping business because the waiting time will be similar, but the price will be much lower.
