What if you could start a whole profitable online business from as low as $29/month? Wouldn’t that radically change your life forever? Here’s where the drop servicing business model comes into play!
To start a drop servicing business, you’d need:
- Perform market research
- Select a profitable niche
- Find a service you’d like to resell within that niche
- Secure freelancers to outsource their services
- Build a professional & well-looking website with a payment processor
- Create a customer acquisition plan
Make sure to read this post all the way through and if you find it inspiring and useful, share it with your friends, please! (Virtual high fives and hugs to all my sharers out there!)
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It seems simple right? Yes because it actually is!
In the last 5 years, people have been crushing it with the dropshipping business model, and the truth is that eCommerce has been killing the traditional retail industry so badly!
Today, drop servicing is becoming the new trendiest business model for entrepreneurs and the number one dropshipping alternative in the digital world.
Thousands of websites are being created on a daily basis.
Therefore, people are in continuous need of services like web design, content writing, logo, marketing, and many other services.
In this article, I’m going to teach you all that you need to know about this awesome trendy business model so you can ride the trend early and make a living online!
If you find this inspiring and helpful, don’t keep it to yourself and share it with your friends!
What is drop servicing
Drop servicing is a business model in which you sell other people’s services online without the need to provide them yourself! It’s really centered around becoming the middleman between the buyer and the actual service provider!
Similar to dropshipping, but instead of selling physical goods, you would be flipping digital services.
If you’re an eComDimes reader, you should now be familiar with the dropshipping business model because we talk much about it.
In this business model, you act as a connector or a middleman between someone who wants a service and someone who provides that service.
Online services are like anything else in life, controlled by demand and supply.
Therefore, if you’re able to connect both individuals A and B, you would end up making so much money leaving all parties satisfied and happy!
In this business model, your job is to connect (A) those online freelancers who sell their services online, with (B) those who need a particular service online and are ready to buy!
Drop servicing is like a “new baby born” business! And it’s going to be a big thing in the coming few months!
Don’t worry! No matter how overwhelming that sounds, I will teach you exactly how to find a promising service and how to flip it for profit!
Just make sure to read it to the very end as I have a special deal for you in the end!
Is drop servicing legal
It surely is! Drop servicing as a business model is absolutely legal! There’s nothing that makes it unlawful or illegal. The fact is that you will be shocked at how happy a freelancer can be if you resell their services!
However, you should be clear and transparent with what you offer and resell and never promise something you cannot commit to.
Drop servicing vs drop shipping
If you’re not sure what to dropship or have tried dropshipping but failed, seeking an alternative is a smart move toward your financial freedom and dreams!
Drop servicing is much similar to the dropshipping business model, but instead of selling physical products, you’re actually selling services!
However, it has multiple advantages over dropshipping. Here are some of them:
– Less overhead
The cool thing about the drop servicing model is that it requires very little investment to get started.
Even less than what dropshipping requires!
You don’t need to get fancy with overwhelming apps and features. All that you need is a service listed with a description and a checkout page.
Your real cost would be your monthly subscription to Shopify and the cost of the service when you buy it from a freelancer.
And I’ve not mentioned the advertising budget because it’s obvious that you need to advertise for your website to get sales.
– More flexibility
The drop servicing business model is way more flexible than the dropshipping one.
It even requires less time than dropshipping, because there’s no need to add or remove services continuously.
You basically can list hundreds of thousands of services, there’s truly no limitations.
By that time, you could be connecting with multiple professional freelancers so you can have more capacity and handle more orders.
With drop servicing, you’re much in control when it comes to orders and cash. Also, there are some services that you can get for a relatively cheap price.
– No long shipping periods
Now this is a really big issue that most drop shippers suffer from!
Sometimes it takes an eternity to get the order shipped and delivered to the customer’s door! This mostly happens when shipping from China to the EU and the USA!
And this is another problem that drop servicing has solved!
Since you’re selling services, there’s no shipping involved. The thing that makes the process faster and smoother for all parties.
– No order fulfillment
In the dropshipping business, each and every order should be fulfilled and transferred to the supplier so that they can fulfil it, process it, package it, ship it and finally deliver it to the end consumer!
With drop servicing, you’re more in control over things since the fulfillment process is way too seamless and is done manually.
For example, if you’re listing service of “Book Cover Design” on your store, and someone has purchased it, you will just receive an order that contains their name, email and payment from that particular buyer.
All that should be done from your side then is to let the freelancer know about the new order so they can start working on, and you go and pay for it separately.
When the freelancer submits the work, it will be submitted to you, remember you’re the connector between them.
You’ll then send the final work to the buyer as you’ve done it. People don’t know that you’re a middleman.
They don’t know about your freelancer at all! So, in case anything happens, they know you, they will blame you!
This will give you the power to deliver your services in a matter of hours or a maximum of a day or two (depending on the service).
– No returns & refunds
This is a big problem in dropshipping that can lead to high losses and a bad reputation.
When people order something from the internet, chances are that the order takes way too long to be delivered.
So, some people may ask for a refund.
The same goes for the wrong product or variant. Mistakes just happen. The customer may receive a different color or size of the product that they’ve ordered.
In their case, a return is the solution!
However, returns and refunds can negatively affect your business, your reputation and your profit margins.
In fact, Shopify will eventually increase the processing fees on you if your return and refund ratios are relatively high!
This is absolutely not the case with drop servicing!
You’re not selling tangible goods and physical products based on its image and description!
In drop servicing, unless the customer is 100% sure of the service they’re about to purchase, they simply won’t!
So, as long as you illustrate and clear up everything on your sales page, there should be no problems at all.
Also, you should have clear and very straightforward privacy, terms and conditions, and refund policies to stay on the safe side!
These are just any business’s essentials!
– Set and leave
When you run a dropshipping store, you should keep an eye on the stocks, monitor the process of fulfilling orders and make sure to replace products that are out of stock.
Now, when a business grows, this becomes a very time-consuming part!
Therefore, if you’re looking for a set-and-leave solution, drop servicing will work better for you.
You only need to create an outstanding website where it can showcase your services and a payment processor where you can receive actual payments from people!
And That’s it!
It can even be fully automated in the future by hiring a Virtual Assistant who can fulfill your orders directly with the freelancer and keep your business organized.
Related: Drop Servicing Vs Dropshipping – The complete guide for beginners
What can you drop service
You can literally drop service anything! Anything!
You don’t need to be an expert in a particular service niche to be able to resell it. However, you should understand what it’s about and how it actually works.
Remember, you would be the connection link between both the freelancer and the service buyer.
Therefore, being a reseller for online services would at least require basic knowledge from your side about the service you’re planning to resell and flip.
This is important so you can be able to convince the client to buy from you and provide them with the needed information about what should they expect from you.
Having endless opportunities doesn’t mean not setting your own limitations for what to list and sell.
Selling is all about supply and demand. Therefore, you have to make sure that the services you’re listing are in demand.
In fact, there’s a very cool free online tool that you can use. It’s Google Trends!
If you head to Google Trends and search for this topic for a particular topic, it will give you interest over time.
Content writing, for example, doesn’t seem a good service to resell, because Google doesn’t lie haha!
Related: 23 Best Drop Servicing Niches For Monthly Recurring Revenue
If there’s no interest in that particular service in the past 12 months then you’d probably struggle in promoting and selling the service to your clients.
This tool can at least be a good indicator of the trend of that service. Just stay away from services that have a down curve.
On the other hand, it’s more useful to promote and resell services like Search Engine Marketing.
The biggest trend for 2020, especially after the Corona Virus Pandemic, is starting an online business, dropshipping particularly.
The searches on the “dropshipping” topic have increased and still do!
People are flocking towards starting an online business to reap the rewards of being their own boss.
With that being said, you can help people to learn how to start their very own dropshipping store on Shopify, or you can build them a store from scratch.
By the way, starting a Shopify dropshipping store doesn’t require any technical or coding skills.
I already have dozen of dropshipping-related articles that can give you a clear idea about this awesome business model.
Check out this article to learn how to start a Shopify dropshipping store with 7 simple steps, and start selling online, anywhere!
And this free 8-video series course would be a great help for you too.
Where can you find drop services to resell
And this is just the easiest part… You’re determined about the niche and know exactly what you want to sell.
Now, where can you find the freelancers that you want to drop service from?
Truth is, there are multiple marketplaces and networks where you can find verified, professional and willing freelancers who are ready for making business with you!
Some of those platforms are:
And many many others.
You would have endless opportunities for the people that you can make a business with online, but you should be picky in choosing the right freelancer that is able to bring your clients the desired outcomes.
I would suggest starting to build a healthy relationship with the freelancer who you’d like to resell their services and run a test order to be familiar with the process.
Once you’ve got your first order from a client of yours, you’d already be having a free order that needs to be fulfilled.
This, for sure, happens upon agreeing with the freelancer and just be clear with them that you want to resell their service.
How to get started with drop servicing
At this point, you’ve performed market research, selected a niche, found service, and secured a qualified freelancer.
Your very next step is to set up and create your drop servicing website that you want to list your services on, and GET PAID FOR!
Shopify tends to be the best eCommerce platform in the world and the drop shippers’ best friendly and useful tool.
In case you don’t know, Shopify is an eCommerce hosting company that acts as your hosted eCommerce solution and allows you to start selling online with ease!
Their innovative drag-and-drop website builder has everything you need to start an online store you’re proud to own and promote.
In the drop servicing business, instead of listing physical products like in dropshipping, you will list services.
Below are some advantages of using platforms like Shopify for your drop servicing business:
+ It allows you to start a very professional and inviting storefront in a matter of minutes!
+ No server crashes since it’s a cloud-hosted solution for over 1M business owners around the globe!
+ No need to integrate or deal with any payment processors. Shopify will help you get paid and collect your money with ease!
+ Their innovative drag-and-drop dashboard allows you to edit and modify everything without having any coding or technical skills.
(You can edit things like colors, layout, collections, services, descriptions, prices, images, menus, and more.)
+ Shopify is supportive for people who want to sell online, and has everything they need to succeed!
+ Its plans are affordable! You can create a drop servicing website and start selling your services online for as low as $29/month!
+ It will just give you the peace of mind that there’s a very knowledgeable customer support that can help you with everything you may need or face 24/7/365 🙂
To get started with Shopify, you would need to grab your 14-day free trial and start familiarizing yourself with the platform (without even paying a dime).
>> Sign up for Shopify and get your 14-day free trial <<
If you want a step-by-step guide on how to start and create your online store using Shopify, this article can be a good help. It was written for dropshippers, but you don’t need to worry. The process is quite the same, all that you need to avoid is the product listing part.
Because you would be replacing physical products with digital services.
It will teach you exactly how to create your account, install a theme and customize it.
A 14-day trial is more than enough for creating a digital storefront and populating it with your policies, pages, and services.
Once the trial ends, you should be picking a paid subscription plan (varying between $29 to $299) to be able to receive actual orders and process payments online!
How much does it cost to start a drop servicing business
Chances are if you’ve decided to start and run a brick and mortar store, you’d need to buy or rent a place, right?
You’d also need interior design, the right types of equipment, and most importantly the inventory that you may not even sell!
Drop servicing, on the other hand, is non-risky, rewarding, more flexible, and requires less overhead to get started!
Your biggest cost would be paying for a professionally hosted eCommerce solution to list your services online and collect payments. Shopify tends to be the best solution around!
From as low as $29/month, you could start an awesome drop servicing business that you’re proud to own and promote and most importantly, make good money from!
You’re actually replacing the place or rent with a unique domain name and a storefront.
Tip: You can either purchase the domain name separately or purchase it from Shopify when you buy your subscription.
Optional: you can use one of the free themes that Shopify does offer or you can purchase a theme from another marketplace separately and install it to your store.
If you’re tight on budget you can definitely still use a free theme, but a professional paid theme will be more inviting and well-looking with much more functionalities and features.
At that point, you’re just paying less than $30 to run a super profitable business.
However, that’s not enough. You should set a marketing strategy that you’re going to promote your store in order to get some sales and end up profiting.
SEO (search engine optimization) tends to be the best tactic to go with since it brings in Google’s organic traffic and has sustainable growth in the long term.
If you’re not sure where to find an SEO campaign with competitive monthly fees, feel free to go to the contact us page and drop us a line.
We would be more than happy to handle this for you since our team has 3 SEO experts that are ready to kick your business to the first page of Google search in the next couple of months.
What are the best services to flip
The best services that are mostly worth flipping and reselling are the ones with recurring payments.
What does that mean?
It means that you acquire the client once, and they will keep paying you for months to go.
Services like a logo design, for example, are a one-time order. Someone who’s looking for a logo for his business won’t be looking for another logo next month!
I guess you’ve got the point now!
However, marketing, on the other hand, is a continuous service that you can offer for months or even years if your client is satisfied with the outcome.
That said, below are some of the drop services with monthly recurring payments:
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
- Digital Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Content writing
- Virtual Assistant
- Video Editing
- Backlink Building
- Guest posting
And opportunities are just countless…
Is Shopify the best platform for drop servicing
A HUGE YES! And there’s a reason behind this!
Shopify is a platform that was designed for eCommerce purposes!
They literally have everything you need to start selling online, anywhere, and most importantly, it’s a very affordable solution for beginners and experts alike!
Alternatively, you can also start your drop servicing journey on WordPress. I’ve also written a step-by-step guide that can help you get started today!
Is there any drop servicing course around?
As this is a brand new business model, you barely can find someone who talks about it, so there’s no enough information about it.
The thing that allows you to ride the trend from the very early beginning.
It’s going to be a big thing in the next few months.
There are some helpful drop servicing courses, but, is there a real all-in-one and comprehensive drop servicing course?
Yup! We’ve recently released the eComDimes ultimate drop servicing blueprint that goes through the business model from A-Z.
It starts with picking a niche and a name for your business and ends up with generating quality traffic to your business.
Below is a screenshot from the inside of the course dashboard.
Enrol Today And Take Your Business To The Next Level!
This course will equip you with all the necessary starter tools that you need to get yourself positioned to start and grow your own eCommerce business!
Conclusion
If you’re not sure whether to dropship or not, you can look for an alternative.
Drop servicing is a GREAT business for beginners because it doesn’t require as much as a brick-and-mortar store and a dropshipping store.
It’s basically about connecting people who sell services online (freelancers) and people who are looking for services to buy (business owners and entrepreneurs).
Thanks to platforms like Shopify, they make selling online a piece of cake process and allow you to start your online store from as low as $29/month!
Shopify does provide a 14-day free trial. Get inside, test its water, and see if it’s something you’d be interested in!
Did you find this article interesting and useful? If so, don’t forget to share it 🙂
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Cheers,
Odeh Ahwal
Drop Servicing Frequently Asked Questions
When it comes to starting an online drop servicing storefront, there are two main approaches; the static website approach or the sales funnels approach! For starting a drop servicing website, WordPress and Shopify tend to be the ultimate solutions. For funnels on the other hand, Clickfunnels is the all-in-one marketing toolkit for building sales funnels that convert!
The cost of starting a drop servicing business really varies depending on the platform you end up using! For Shopify, you should be prepared for at least $29/month. For WordPress with Bluehost an average of $90/year and for Clickfunnels, $97/month!
Freelancing marketplaces is the optimal place for finding trustworthy freelancers and drop services. Those platforms act as a connector between services providers and business owners who need a particular service.
A drop servicing course will not just give you all the tools and resources needed to get started, but will also break down the process into sweet little actionable chunks that you can start implementing right away and show progress! Enrolling in a paid course will incentivize your brain to take action, and eComDimes Drop Servicing Blueprint is just a great example!
