How Dropshipping Ruined Online Shopping
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- Опубліковано 18 тра 2024
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Edited by: / dk.art.777
Some things I read for this if you're interested in learning more:
www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...
ilsr.org/fact-sheet-how-break...
press.aboutamazon.com/2023/5/...
www.vox.com/money/23992696/te...
selectcommitteeontheccp.house...
www.washingtonpost.com/techno...
www.junglescout.com/blog/doll...
www.junglescout.com/blog/amaz...
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━CHAPTERS━
00:00 what is dropshipping
06:07 food
07:22 etsy is a he*l hole
15:11 practical guide on discerning dropshipping
16:20 why it sucks for other sellers and customerz
18:00 girl complaining waah waaah waah goo goo gaga
20:27 amazon luvs dropshipping
25:51 temu is a dropship marketplace
27:52 DROPSHIP ALPHA COURSES!!!!!!!! LEARN HOW TO DROPSHIP WITH 3 EASY STEPS
28:55 STEP ONE: CHOOSE A WINNING PRODUCT
29:37 MAKE WEBSITE AND ADD ITEMS TO STORE
29:49 GO VIRAL BY COPYING OTHER PEOPLES VIDEOS
30:00 dude there's now AI that adds items automatically to your store, they dont even try at all
30:04 STEP FOUR: PROFIT!!!!
31:16 the dropship guru farce (more like farts am i right)
39:36 conclusion
tags: #dropshipping - Комедії
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Hey Gabi I have a question. Do you have a set posting schedule or is it more like, posting whenever the video is finished? I use youtube on my laptop not my phone so I don't get post notifications so I'm trying to figure out when to look for new videos. Love your work! Have a great day
Gabi, I'm a disabled jewelry artist. I (actually) handmake all of my jewelry and use properly hypoallergenic materials, and I would love to send you a PR package with freebies! Etsy is an absolute warzone unfortunately.
Love your videos but not your choice of sponsors. Factor is owned by Hello Fresh and to say they’re a problematic company is an understatement.
qq00
I. F. S. M. I. T. I. L. M. I. A. M. N. I. F.
sounds like an instant UA-cam classic.
When you make the merch for it, go a pair of teeshirts for a couple, starting on one shirt and ending on the other.
It’s especially ruined Etsy. I can’t buy much from there anymore because it’s mostly drop shipped crap incorrectly labeled as hand made.
once i find a real shop on etsy i save it immediately. The number of times my ass tried to just get 3 yards of linen like my god.
Literally! I stopped shopping on Etsy once I saw that my entire purchase history was straight off of Temu!
There are some extensions which tell you where a company is based, where the seller is from, and if there are similar products out there. The one I use is called Cultivate, but I'm sure there are more out there.
I guess we need a new Etsy. Then the cycle will start again
It's absolutely infuriating. It's also Not Just handcrafted Things, Vintage items are also really difficult to find now. A few years ago when i searched "Vintage Ring Art Deco" i would get alot of those and a few abspired ones, now i only find cheap Rings that have nothing to do with what i search for and all Look the same
My mom is obsessed with Temu and it was obvious all of our Christmas gifts were bought from there. Everything was so cheap and broke within a few weeks. I dont even want to think about how 99% of this crap is going to end up in a landfill. Its disgusting consumerism and it should be illegal to sell this crap.
Nooooo :(
Fuck dude. That's rough :(
I’m so glad my mom is forced to use technology at work to keep her sharp on these things. I’d be so upset if she spent a crapload of money on one of these sites.
A lot of it is illegal to sell, there's just so much going through borders now that nothing gets checked
It's the thought that counts?
I tried. Sorry.
Something that also has happened is that these factories will find actual hand made high quality products that are doing well on Etsy or another site and then make cheep replicas and even use the same picture. Which is even worse because you get all the normal issues mentioned in the video but also now the actual person who created this product is having their business stolen and being labeled as a drop shipper when they are not
I have seen this happen with some plush and clothing I liked on etsy from actual small, independent artists. After they started to have success, someone in an overseas factory stole their design and their photos and started selling the same item for much cheaper and end up out-competing them in search results with a stolen, cheap, unethically made version of their own item. It's so messed up.
What the fuck
Remember Segways? Those futuristic two wheeler things that would read your body's movements and turn it into motion? The Chinese clone of that sold so well that when Segway tried to sue them the Chinese just bought Segway, which is crazy
Bernadette Banner has an AMAZING video entitled something along the lines of "Buying my own dress--an educated roast." It's hilarious, because this is exactly what happened to something that she made (though she wasn't selling it, just showing how she made it).
Safiye Nygard has a whole video in which she ordered the same floral dress that influencers were wearing from a bunch of different sources and it became clear they were stealing the high-end manufacturers photos, and stealing influencer pictures as well, and selling really bad, cheap copies of a high quality dress.
My own creative work got dropshipped out from under me. I design 3D printable toys which are available as free downloads. Some company started printing them and put them on AliExpress (without attribution or permission of course). Now multiple different stores have popped up, all rebranding my designs and aggressively marketing on social media.
I've tried to take down some of them but they keep multiplying and I don't have the resources to lawyer up. I've effectively written off the idea of regaining any ownership of my own designs. It sucks because I could probably be supporting myself full time on the income from selling these designs and developing new ones... if that money were actually going to me.
Open source plans! Those bad actors are the reasons we can’t have nice things 😡
YES I JUST MADE A POST ABOUT HOW IF YOU TRY ... They can , even if forced to stop sales during the proceedings (unlikely) they can fight you with the funds they'd continue to receive from buyers who bought from them on credit , who would be able to continue to market their copies of your goods indefinitely, even if you win & shut down the manufacturer or the ' thief ' corp , IF the actual ' thief ' can even be traced!
Sadly enough im sure that sometimes the first ' passing off/ handing off ' of the pertinent info required for the theft to become a done deal isn't actually' spies ' but rather a friend or associate offered $ for the info or an item although it is easy for them to just buy one to copy as well if the material & process is basic enough.
If you had a clause for personal use only and not commercial, you can actually go after them legally since it's your intellectual property. Also, whenever making anything such as toys get a patent and/or trademark, that way if it's ever used in the future you can go to the legal system and be like "This is actually mine. Here's proof. I want those taken down and/or royalties from all sales, thnx"
Dream on, almost nobody can make money from plastic toys, certainly not in the first-world countries. Only a few well-known brands can more or less survive (Lego etc). Anything that has the slightest success will be copied or a tiny bit modified to evade copyright issues. If you really think you have a good idea, keep it for yourself and try to sell it to a large brand or maybe sell it as hand-made in local shops. Once it finds a minor success on the internet you will have lost.
Hey @SnowieShiba ! Op just said they can't afford lawyers, which is what you need to uphold set clauses. And getting a patent is not something a lot of small businesses can do, because of the huge cost.
I hate how Etsy isn’t how it was before. I can’t trust that everything is a small business
edit: fixed the typo since there was such a discourse over it
I remember when Etsy was born. I was selling vintage lingerie, really gorgeous nightgowns, on eBay. But eBay started making life very hard on vintage sellers. Etsy came along promising to be a comfortable place for vintage and handmade sellers to thrive. And it was, until the company went public. When that happens, the only thing that matters is shareholders.
I feel like it's been this for a while now. I once looked for antiques and got page after page of brand new stuff from a single seller.
I feel like it's doing what eBay did: prioritize high volume sellers at the expense of everyone else, essentially dooming itself to stagnancy and mockery.
enshitification FULL STEAMER AHEAD
Closed my store there.
Why is it a bad thing that there are small businesses selling boutique products on etsy?
The absolute guts of UA-cam to show me an add of a guy selling a dropshipping course in the middle of your segment on dropshipping courses is baffling
youtube shows you related ads, so like, lets say your watching some video about an IT subject, you'll get an ad about a vpn, so its not really all that baffling to be honest.
@@blackstar9481 It is baffling how they're still relying on failed strategies. Those algorithms pushing "related" content clearly aren't sophisticated enough to tell whether the content they're relating something to is supporting, or opposing to the thing they're pushing. And then they blame the users for blocking ads.
Its the irony that is baffeling @blackstar9481
This just happened to me
Omg this just happened to me!! Was he ginger with a UK accent? It started around the 4 min mark 😂😂😂
One of the biggest problems with dropshippers & these unethical manufacturers is that they will often find an actual handmade small business, purchase a bunch of items from that business, mold them / recreate them, and then mass produce them. That's when you'll see the original small businesses' photos being stolen and used as product photos on aliexpress, shein, temu, etc. And it makes consumers think that the original handmade business is dropshipping their product because they were Stolen from!!
You know this should be illegal but i think many small crafters don't have any patent, or copyright etc. to protect their product & even if they did, Proving that such a thing was done is problematic & if you did, they'd get a slap on the wrist, a fine & you might get recompensation but the process would likely bankrupt you & drive you insane & potentially wreck any relationship, family, friends & coworkers because while you proceed to attempt to prosecute your case They will be doing all they can to sabotage your life if the $ amount is significant at all because if they force you to stop, then they can continue to make $ off the items which they have already got in stock even though during the case they might be restricted from selling the item/s
the subs they've already sold to likely won't be restricted & if said items were sold to said sub on a .. ' pay as you sell ' (sorry, i have brain damage due to effects of a coma, i lose words , i may mean a ' commission ' basis but it doesn't feel right) plan
then during the case, they can fund their harassment with the income from these outside subs sales! I hope I've said that clearly, point being that even if you hang in there & win it won't affect those sub'ses ( sorry, brain fatigue kicking in) at all in the majority of cases because they bought the merchandise (on credit! That's the term!)
in good faith & the most you could hope for would be for a settlement granting you all further sales profits for your item/s counterfeits ! There's more , but I'm tired.
Yup. Exactly my story. And just got tired fighting this endless battle with big corps
@@l.scales7516
Very true! And shows that a lot of copyright laws need lots of updates to fit our current societies.
Yeah, and it shows that a lot of countries copyright laws need a lot of updates.
The sad thing is that technically, American artists ARE protected by IP law- but lawsuits cost money! Lawyers cost money! Often these artists are getting by as they are but can’t take on the financial or time investment that fighting for their rights entails. :(
What we really need is stronger consumer protection and a massive crackdown on large-scale consumer fraud.
i'm an etsy seller myself and it's super depressing to see how much mass produced crap gets boosted in the searches while all my hard work is buried underneath, especially knowing that etsy themselves don't give a shit
thankyou so much for making this video!
Yeah Etsy and their BS policies and stupid bots shutting down vintage stores and truly handmade items for stupid reasons!
What do you make?
I’m interested in what you make? What’s your store?
what’s your store?
This is so sad, really. Etsy used to be such an awesome way to support small businesses selling *authentic* items. Now it’s all the same cheap Chinese things you see on Amazon 67 times in a single scroll.
It's disheartening to see genuine handmade products buried under mass-produced items, truly sad
Yeah, etsy doesn't really do anything to regulate. It seems like all you have to do is say "it's hand-made" and they are cool with it. Etsy had it's peek in the 2010s.
I agree. People are flocking to cheap sites bc you get them for less than at the dollar store. With free shipping...
i cant even find normal stuff that isnt these drop shipped brands. even when i am intentionally trying to filter them out. examples: hand vacuums, darts, thermal printer. 3 things i recently tried to buy and didnt mind spending a little more for a quality product. i literally couldnt find unless i went to brothers website and bought a super expensive thermal printer, or bought like 100$ professional level darts. there is no in between. its either the absolute shittiest chinese knockoff, or super premium name brand
As someone who can handcraft everything from a chair to jewlery I can assure you that youre very correct. Competing with robots and machines that take minutes to craft something is nearly impossible. And most of items that were handmade just vanished because makers just realized its easier to sell something from china and make a whole lot money. Plus its nearly impossible to make unique pieces because that price tag will be in hundreds or thousands
It's consumer demand. Only a ludite or an authoritarian opposes competition, innovation, and efficiency. The problem is fraud is involved in many cases with the product not being as advertised, or claims of quality being false, but that can happen even with individual producers and artisans. Fighting the fraud is very hard, because of governments getting in the way of private accountability being able to engage the same way in different places.
It's not often that I get recommended a 40 minute video from someone I've never seen and I watch the entire thing, but here I am!
Man, am I thankful to be running a small- not even small, tiny- business with my grandma where we make ceramics and sell them at a touristry resturaunt and gift shop in another town, because the landscape of online selling is looking more and more nightmarish :(
Same here. Watched, subbed and can’t wait to see more
Same!
That's the solution. Just buy the stuff you care about from local real people. Furthermore since I live in a small apartment I have no space to buy all the plastic junk. It's enlightening though that what you buy from Amazon is the same forced labor as what you buy from Temu, just more expensive to fund Bezos's space program.
If you get sucked in the nightmare of doing a social media marketing for your business, prepare cause every two days you have to drop content to express the spirit of your Company, pushit with Google ads, but contrary to these scammers you also produce and work on the product. One of my beat friend is surviving the nightmare, its orrible
@@natasspin3015 that sounds terrible, I do have a facebook page for the shop but I'm usually too busy to bother posting on it
The fact you could buy a 3 dollar ring at 100 dollars with no way of knowing, and the seller can just make a new account to avoid refunds is crazy.
I remember when etsy first announced they would allow mass-marketed items and not be exclusively handcrafted small businesses. People were rightfully pissed. But etsy didn't care.
"People were pissed, etsy didn't care" seems to be their slogan these days
Are there websites/apps that exclusively sell items from actual small businesses?? It's really sad to see all this mass produced garbage
@@pemex23 I’m curious about this too. As a small buisness, my shop gets no sales and barely any views because of the insane amount of wholesalers on Etsy now. I’d love to be able to just sell on a site that is HANDMADE only. It hurts that I have to price my items so low that I get paid less than minimum wage, for the sake of having the prices be some what understandable next to the wholesalers.
Regretsy died far too early.
@@TheTundraTerror RIGHT? April, you abandoned us when we needed you most!
what's funny about handmade jewelry is that it's SO EXPENSIVE to get legit handmade jewelry, that nobody would buy it. I have a few friends that make jewelry and most of them are backed up with work for about 6 months, and if they charged an amount that would make them paid fair, nobody would buy it.
Handmade ANYTHING is so expensive 😢
Specifically, it's labor intensive. I've had people ask to pay me to design and knit them sweaters or gloves or what have you, and I turn them down because I couldn't charge them a price that would pay me a fair wage, and charging less hurts people who are trying to make a living at it by training people to think 'this is what this should cost'.
(BTW, other knitters: You can thrift yarn by finding sweaters in thrift stores that are machine knitted as separate pieces and then stitched together. I have a couple of different sweaters that cost me about $5-10 in materials to make. There is more work involved because you have to unravel them, but if you're on a budget, you can make sweaters this way.)
@@kaylakthulhu8623yes, because you have to pay for a living human’s time and living is notoriously expensive.
@@purplecat4977great advise!!
My mom makes jewelry are her margins are super thin and she’s always working
Something I’ve found is emailing the Etsy seller to see if they can customize the product. If you get a response and they can, probably an actually small business.
2:27 it is doing something new: selling uncertified electronics that can and will burn your house down.
eBay does this also. My Chinese fairy lights caught fire within seconds and I nearly lost my house and life.
The problem is that Etsy does nothing to protect legitimate sellers and allows drop shippers to spoil the market and create unfair competitiveness. They don't care as long as they pay the charges.
The problem with the way Etsy works is that they profit more from fast drop shipped fake stuff, and so they can deprioritize actual artisans in search or punish them for taking a while to handcrafted custom products.
Simultaneously raising the fees for all sellers, to the point that it's less worth the trouble of selling on Etsy! And gamefying the algorithm, making more hoops to jump through just to be seen.
Sorry to put this on a top comment but I really want people to see this: is gage beasley a dropshipping site? I brought this up with other people and they got extremely mad at me for insinuating it but like. A bunch of stuff in their store isnt from the same manufacturer and can be found on Alibaba. So wth. Why doesn't anyone talk about them bc theyre literally like, kinda huge? Theres ads for them everywhere and theyre always the first results for plushies of any weird creature or arthropod.
Back in the early days, Etsy actually did verify business addresses and went to some lengths to ensure you were ordering from small businesses. I don't remember when but Etsy abandoned all that one day and it absolutely flooded the website with cheap goods. I think Etsy was having a hard time verifying business information and decided to just give up.
unfair competitiveness, isnt a thing lol
The Etsy thing kills me. I've been struggling financially lately, but have also been wanting to invest in higher-quality items. So when I got some Christmas money I decided to finally treat myself to some jewelry. I spent hours choosing the perfect item on Etsy, hoping to get something high-quality that would support a small artist. The item I got ended up being a cheap piece of junk sold for $60. I went back to Etsy again thinking I'd be more discerning this time around, and bought my girlfriend a guitar strap that I thought was handmade. As soon as it arrived I could tell that it was also a dropshipped item. It's infuriating and I wish this shit wasn't so rampant
I relate
I remember thinking I did a good job purchasing an handmade item and supporting small business...just for me to see the exact same jewelery pieces on Shein for way less than what i paid for 😪😪😪😪
Now I stick to purchasing indie perfumes but even then, I'm still cautious
Etsy really ruined their site when they started to allow this.
Etsy is the worst!! A lot of these shops will make their storefronts look like indie brands or a one person homemade shop but then it’s drop shipped :/ it’s hours of sifting through junk. Gotta be even more critical these days
@@AC-rb9rlshein also steals small business designs as well. So the actual business suffers because people think it’s dropshippig too!
Please don't turn your back on Etsy! Those of us who are genuine handmade artists are here struggling to be seen among the rampant drop shippers. And Etsy knows there is a huge problem and is implementing ways to weed them out. Sadly. it will take time and I can only hope we will be able to hold out long enough to still have a business when they finally rid the platform of them.
As someone that manages a 7 figure amazon store at work, it’s CRAZY hard and nuanced. Thank you for calling out the dropshipper course-selling scammers! Unfortunately most of the people they “coach” will end up being indefinitely suspended or losing $$$ on the amazon store
This sort of shopping experience is even starting to affect irl shopping. Recently there were two art/craft fairs near each other in my area so I went to both. Obviously not everything sold was hand made but much of it was original designs by that seller (like fan art stickers).
I saw a pair of earrings at the first market and then at the second, exact same pair (they had a very unique design). Who knows where they came from but people are literally selling at small local markets shit that they did not design or produce.
I work at a small business and I can't tell how many times I've heard people say: but that's way more expensive than what I saw on the internet! after offering something handcrafted or at least made here in Europe. People just completely lost their sense of how much effort goes into making something...
It reminds me of something I heard that was like, being in your 30s is realizing that you would, in fact, pay $800 for shoes, so long as you could buy them from a cobbler! I spent a small fortune on some very nice black formal shoes when I started working, in a simple style that's held the test of time and will go with most outfits. The difference between them and the $30 sneakers I grew up wearing was so jaw-dropping I couldn't believe it. It's completely different from the materials to how it's crafted to the mentality that went into it. The shoes are designed in such a way and with such materials as not only last long, but be completely possible to repair by another person in 100 years.
They never had that sense in the first place, this is something artists know from early on.
If they say something like this then they are not your target customers anyway...many ppl are just happy with cheap functioning stuff. It would be unrealistic to say that they can't tell the difference between quality items or cheap items. They often do.
@@solitarelee6200 You don't need to be in your 30's to learn that, you just need to have access in your daily life to quality stuff. Coming from a small town with a proper butcher, multiple bakers, fish shops, former european champion of cobbling, tailor, and quite a few other small scale shops you notice quality difference quickly, on top of that it's generally not notably more expensive. Most of which are still the default shops to go to (thank fuck for my extremely conservative town where most are family ran business').
Having lived in a few major cities however I've notice that finding quality products is extremely expensive in major cities, probably due to finding people that can actually do the job becoming rare. And a lot of people simply buy goods based on sticker price rather than lifetime price.
Here in the Netherlands we have a saying (poorly translated): "Cheap is expensive". To give my own example I've had the same 200 euro leather jacket for 15+ years that I only recently replaced and not because it was worn but simply because I got fat and didn't fit properly anymore. Meanwhile I have friends that swear by cheap primark and aliexpress jackets they buy for 50 euro and last a few months at best. The amount of money I saved by not buying cheap jackets is probably in the thousands at this point.
On a side note, it pisses me of to no end when people say "aliexpress/chinese crap sellers makes it so poor people can afford products". You can't tell me people can't buy 20 euro for a good quality socks that last half a year or longer but can shell out 5 euro's every 2 weeks for socks that almost fall apart when you look at them funny. Those products help poor people to stay poor.
How do you respond to those people?
Edit: Thank you all for your likes and sharing your stories! Sending you all love.
Your whole section on Etsy made my heart sink. My small business totally flopped on that platform due to the floods of drop shipping and “fake” products like these. I finally shut it down because it wasn’t worth it.
My handmade soap business flopped because my product wasn't pretty enough, and since I made it from lye and expensive oils like olive and used essential oils for subtle scents, I couldn't compete with melt and pour crap scented with overwhelming chemicals and wrapped in that perfectly aesthetically pleasing manner people seem to prefer over actually decent soap. Maybe I should have just ordered ten or twenty kilo blocks of melt and pour, added chemical scents, and paid someone minimum wage to wrap it all pretty and nice. I found out that consumers preferred pretty soap that smelled nice to the options I offered like completely scent free 100% olive oil soap that contained only two ingredients: lye solution and olive oil. If I showed it to someone, they'd immediately sniff it and get immediately turned off by it, not understanding that some people need that kind of soap because usually "unscented" isn't at all unscented, and "hypoallergenic" does not mean it won't cause an allergic reaction in the highly sensitive.
Exactly! Same with me. It's been absolutely terrible since that started happening.
@briancrawford8751 Is there a chance you can try selling your soaps on markets? Like farmer's market, renfairs, bazaara, flee markets etc?
I know the fees for stalls and booths and the time you need to spend there are quite high and long. But I've seen more and more soap makers and medieval markets and some local markets during the last years. I don't know if it's just a European thing or easier be done here than the US. But I know from personal experience and peiple around me that they actually really like those self-made, traditionally made soaps.
@@briancrawford8751 I would definitely recommend doing local farmers markets and trying to get your products carried at mom and pop shops in your area. That is the best way to sell something like that. Also, reality is that looks matter. I'm sure there are ways you can brand and upscale your presentation without altering what the product is made out of. There is a market for artisan soaps of specific formulations, but you have to go to your customers and make the sale, they will not come to you. I hope you can still make your dream a reality. There are people out there doing it. Just look into your options and watch some video guides on marketing. You can do it.
This sucks. I love buying unique gifts on Etsy but it can take hours of browsing to find proper stuff, especially in jewellery
Bronax sounds like an acidic medication for heartburn.
"Got heartburn? Take Bronax."
Make sure to wash it down with Brawndo.
Or for when your ' bro ' is giving you bad vibes,' dude , take a bronax & relax ' lol
Im sure these names are generated by a dropship company name generator, sold in these bullshit courses. These fuckin lowlifes aren't even able to create a creative company name.
As a legit etsy seller selling hand made jewelry this video hits every trigger! But it's so nice to know people are starting to do their homework and work hard to support REAL handmade artists!
I agree with the video that if something is hand-made by some Asian or African women in a sweatshop, it is still hand made and probably by a person needing the money harder than you and me. I care for that women too. Still it is also nice to buy from local people around us or from specific countries. Maybe instead of "hand-made" we should write where it is made, by whom and in what quantity. Still if the many legit Etsy sellers would do that, the dropshippers would probably just put similar fake information. Maybe one could add a short hand-written letter to the future owner or a small email-exchange?
something especially heartbreaking to me is it's seeping offline. i see these cheap dropshipped products at FARMERS MARKETS ...
That’s just so disheartening
Pretty much that and MLM tables now. Very rare to see people selling their handmade things now. Last time I went to one there was only three tables of handmade things and the rest were dropshipped items and MLMs like Pink Zebra. Makes it so I don't want to go to them anymore.
Ever since we legalized it here our farmers markets have been pretty wild.
And yet, the booths that I see frequented and bought from are those very same ones. Buyers don't have discernment or care about it either, sometimes. People will often ask me as an artist if I make my work and compliment me, but will often buy from people selling stuff you could get at Walmart. I don't get it. Why come to a farmer's market for Walmart stuff...? And why the coordinators let them in to begin with is beyond me. Well established events have no excuse.
I see them in shopping malls a lot. Like those pop up stores in the middle of the centre
I remember in secondary school we had a woman come in to tell us about her successful business and how she achieved it. we had to sit and listen to her tell us about her drop shipping 'business' for an hour 😭 she didn't even try to hide it
That sounds dangerously close to MLM.
why did you have to listen to them?
school assembly id assume @@smalltime0
@@smalltime0 it could be part of a 'career course'
There was this thing called “SMC” about 20 years ago, where it was advertised on TV how to make money at home. You could build a website and sell product… it was all drop ship crap basically. Everyone was selling the same cheap stuff from a catalog.
Coffee-up before watching. So much info compressed here.
Well edited. Concise.
No BS.
Fantastic essay/critique/lolz.
I'm reminded of my wife's foray into legit small business handcrafted quality niche jewelry stuffs...proper carefully sourced metals - niobium, silver, gold, etc...body safe adhesives, dyes, etc. quality control - every item had to be perfect....etc. People were only willing to pay about $5-10 bucks for items that took 20-60 minutes to make. We sold at cons and trade shows specifically tailored to the audience. When we saw our actual real handmade designs being made cheaply and poorly from unknownium metals (likely aliexpress jewelry kits and krazy glue) being sold for 1/10 the price we called it quits.
Dropshipping seriously killed the vibe of online shopping! You never know if what you're getting is legit or just a scam!
Check sales numbers and/or reviews. Or flip a coin.
What's really crazy is I didn't know if your comment was legit or just a bot
I'm not sure about other countries but when I see a generic white background photo of the product (or a bbl model for clothes) on a cheaply designed website with hefty prices it's 100% dropshipping.
Dropshipping has nothing to do with being a "scam".
The two are not really connected.
Dripshipping just means you can't guarantee the quality or safety standard of a product you buy domestically.
It also means you are paying more for something you could get cheaper direct.
Scams are not usually linked to drop shipping.
@NadezdaBeka in Brazil there is one of the biggest marketplace sites, both in terms in online traffic and actual marketshare numbers, that let people sell used goods (or as new but in small quantities), but straght up DEMANDS that the seller provide the main photo with that generic edited white background. That will be the thumbnail and first image of the product in your listing, and you can actually choose one that other seller already provided, so that your listing will be as close to everyone else's as possible.
The big data driven online marketplaces of today just want sellers to provide the most generic and identical information (and actual products) as possible, so automated tools can deal with the listings more efficiently, they can rank sellers (and actually deal with them) as easily as possible, pool up reviews for the "same products" and make them seem to apply to every listing of the "same" thing for every seller, disregarding individual care, quality, handling and/or delivery issues that different sellers might have. Even in this dropshipping world of ours, there are a lot of original and great products with decent quality, in spite of being mass produced whitelabel stuff, that is cloned by other factories across the street with worse components, tooling, parts, finishing or whatever else, and the marketplaces force sellers to make their listings as if those products were the same thing, and compete in price with even the same reviews applied to both.
Wow, thank you for that reverse search tip! Another way sellers on Etsy get around the "hand crafted" thing is by offering personalization, like adding engraving on a drop shipped bracelet.
I'm an Etsy seller and i haven't been getting many orders at all because drop shipping sellers are taking up the whole search results and are selling at a practically impossible price that I nor anyone else who makes their products handmade can match. it's so disheartening and sometimes gets me thinking if I should just shut down my shop.
What’s your name on Etsy ?what do you sell ? :)
@@lizahcjsk beadedbyblondie! i sell cute handcrafted jewelry! thanks foor asking!!
One of the worst parts is this muddies the water of people who actually do make handmade goods, have their images stolen and their 'items' resold on shein, alibaba, temu, and the likes. I know because I know an actual jeweler that constantly has to deal with this. They often have no recourse to try and take those products down, or even if they do it often gets relisted weeks later by someone else.
No joke. I have found my fiancé’s art being printed on stuff and resold on Amazon and on wish, shien, temu, what ever it’s going to be in the next 2 years. We tried to file a dispute on Amazon since we are a small business of two people selling on etsy and drawing stuff to share with other fans in fandoms being turned into someone else’s profit without even crediting the artist. Amazon just blocked me from seeing that seller but they still out there printing our art on coffee mugs, blankets, posters, phone cases everything. They even pay for my fiancé’s patreon to steal the art for their personal profit. So it’s tarnishing our work and names while also blatantly stealing and making us look like we may not be the original artists too since the artist is NEVER credited.
Id consider it a cyber attack at this point 😅
yes!!!! and then it makes the actual seller look less credible since “it clearly must be dropshipped”!!!
I know it sucks but girl, you GOT to watermark your images. I know it takes from the display, but it's better than having scammers use the photos of YOUR products to steal YOUR potential customers.. don't let them win!
Edit: maybe try to come up with a way that your products are always real. Like engraving tiny initials or a star into a product. Something a cheap manufacturer would never notice. Or maybe use a specific color in your photos that signify is YOUR product. For example, there's a baker on youtube who often has her videos stolen. So she started using bright lime green cake batter, so you always knew it was one of HER cakes being made. The batter is covered by the end of the video, but it's a permanently ingrained "watermark" of sorts
@@chattycatty3336 we water mark them all the time. Thieves will seriously crop it and or blur it that the watermark fades
My mom every time we go shopping she always says “well that’s gonna be in a landfill for the rest of our lives” and it just makes me SICK that so many people popularized over consumerism and flaunt it on social media because we are just killing our planet.
Yeah, BUT it also has to be acknowledged that corporations dedicate BILLIONS to encouraging that mindset.
*And they will NOT stop unless they're made to.*
*NOR will they stop making cheap, disposable, and plastic products.*
In the United States only, Oxfam research reveals that a person in the top 1% emits 25 times as much carbon pollution as a person in the bottom 50%. - it isnt just "people"
Both comments so true.
This is a really important comment, and I appreciate someone raising this. It's really upsetting to see this.
A small ray of hope: many large companies are being pressured to go Net Zero by 2050 by China, and they have a compelling initiative in place. I work quite extensively in this field and am impressed to see clients very rigorously working to achieve this (I work in HK and China). And with this pressure they are rapidly hiring energy and carbon consultants to help them achieve this.
OK zoomer
Amazon has essentially become AliExpress at this point. Dropshippers are also eating our lunch because of de minimus shipping from China.
At least you can still find deccent things on Amazon. You have to really pay attention, but you can definitely get through and find actual stuff.
Hit it right on the nail.
But expensive as shit. At least aliexpress has nice prices
The seller names and Chinenglish and photo shopped product photos superimposed onto stock photos is an easy way to detect garbage on amazon. It's pretty hilarious some times.
Its really sad because Etsy used be unique. That was their whole thing. Same as how Pinterest has gone to sht because of ai images
my pinterest feed is 60-70% ads. i don’t even get on there anymore because it’s gotten so out of hand
You mentioned Dollar Shave club and as someone who worked at the razor blade manufacturing plant for their "competition", ALL BLADES ARE MADE THE SAME. I tell everyone that the only difference between the premium brand and the generic brand is the handle and packaging. Please everyone save your money and buy the generic brand.
And if you’re a woman just buy a man’s razor because pink tax is real.
@@iagas9Store brand food items come to mind. Oftentimes comes from same place the brand name ones do.
Or just buy safety razors. Much better shave at an even cheaper price.
Had a similar experience with those Estrid razors. I actually used them and found them rather poor in quality and their customer service wasn’t too helpful. Found the same blades in the men’s section in a drugstore for half of estrid’s price. Quality of the razor itself is much better, too. Immediately cancelled the estrid subscription and never looked back 😂
@@iagas9She doesn't
claim that it's dropshipping though, she claims it's white labelling, which is what it is
Nicely done!
It's remarkable how a minimalist search (responsible consumerism) yields the sleazy underbelly we all knew was there.
The irony is that the ad before I could watch this video was an online tutorial program on how to setup an online storefront for dropshipping.
Same 😂 Shopify
I love that dropshipping is essentially just those kiosks in the mall that nobody shops at taken to the nth degree
Plus a lot of those kiosks are drop shipped items too
@@snail8672I was walking around my normal mall today and I was thinking of this. The phone case booth there can literally only be profiting by getting them for cents on the dollar
It gets worse because my shopping mall is now full of stores that open for a few months, sell a warehouse of white label and dropshipped garbage and then close. They're bleeding into the physical world now. I absolutely hate it.
LOL. It's been like that for decades. All stores sell products that are made in China
@@nerychristian LOL no, selling stuff from China is not automatically dropshipping
I think stores like this often just look temporary. Blank walls, cheap looking shelving, and a bunch of junk inside
And bulk. Plus when you guve it more than a goance you can see the poor quality of the products and then you cant stop seeing it in every aspect of the store. It's so obvious they threw this all together in less than a week and BAM, they're gone @Zuzu22322
its unrelated but there is a pizza place in my shoop that changes ownership and name litearly every 6 months to a year
*eddit: the menu and the inside of the restaurant stays the same with no changes
As a jewelry maker, I feel this so so much!! I've discovered my love of selling in person, which really helps. Plus, having supplies so I can make earrings during the lulls really helps assure people that I'm actually making them myself!
I run off Etsy because a lot of the art I made I would either get "Oh I could totally make that at home by myself" or running into artists making something the same or similar but for slave labor rates. It's tight as is, just art supplies leaves little profit and that's not even factoring in labor and time. Its nuts!
I miss the days when Amazon sold decent quality goods, now it’s all dollar store quality with big box store prices.
And so much counterfeit! Don’t say that in a review though or they take away your ability to leave reviews. Most reviews are fake. Just look at the 3 stars
the natural outcome of capitalism. need people consuming! oh, and everyone needs to have a job regardless of how good automation gets.
@@Cara.314 think it has less to do with capitalism than it does the fact that so many people are willing to accept it. Even quality in stores like target and Walmart has dropped pretty drastically.
@@DJDrLandWhaleOfficial this is the function of capitalism, everything is about profit and beat out the competitors until you’re a monopoly. Literally like the game. We created antitrust laws during the progressive era to prevent this, but some of those laws have been relaxed or not enforced. We are basically in a second Gilden age, where we have a lot of unchecked capitalism.
Then why did sears go under?@@Cookie-nq9vv
Hello Fresh, a company known for it's unethical treatment of workers, owns Factor. I normally wouldn't notice the sponsor, but it stood out to me in the context of this video.
I thought that they were competitors, that’s really bad.
@@caranookHello Fresh has been making quite a few "competitors" as of lately
Hello fresh owns like 5 or 6 "separate" meal in a box programs
I looked it up and you’re right. But seriously, are there any ethical companies advertising on UA-cam? I’d wager no
@@dontgivetwothwips3615I mean most businesses that advertise on here aren't the greatest, but Hello Fresh is one of the really bad ones. Considering the fact that Gabi seems to be pretty passionate about worker exploitation, I think its fair to let her know that her sponsor is well known for exploiting its workers, so she can do some research and decide whether she feels comfortable working with Hello Fresh brands in the future.
As a Etsy seller myself it's so sad. Wish Etsy would have a big overhaul and make it for handmade only, but since they went public they've gone downhill.
I'm very skeptical about buying online products and do a lot of research before buying something. I look at materials used and where it ships from (which tells you a lot).
I’ve also noticed dropshippers at local craft fairs and farmer’s markets and it’s so infuriating! It feels almost impossible to find genuinely handmade products
Genuinely, one of the only things tiktok is good for, imo. I like finding smaller artists on tiktok because a lot of them actually film their setup/ creation process.
That’s not what dropshipping is. Dropshipping is specifically when people sell a product through a website without owning any of the product. A dropshipper will go on cheap wholesale websites like alibaba or aliexpress. They will find a product on that website they think will sell well. Lets say they picked a mug and that its price is $2. They will then take the images and information from that listing and post it on their own website at a markup, lets say $20. The KEY here is that they never ordered stock of that item. He will then advertise that item, and when someone buys the item from the dropshipper’s listing, the dropshipper is basically a middleman and buys the item for $2 and sends it DIRECTLY to the customer. He never receives any of that item. He makes $18 off of this.
What you’re talking about is just people buying stock of certain items and pretending they made it themselves.
@@andreat6882yes this is a very important distinction to make! Too many people don't make this distinction online. Dropshipping is when there is a middleman involved and the seller you bought the item from is NOT the one sending the item. Dropshipping has to involve literal shipping, which wouldn't apply to a live in-person market or fair. I totally understand what they meant though. It's a huge issue where some sellers at fairs are actually selling cheap crap from Aliexpress amongst genuine vendors.
@@andreat6882 There's also an entire industry of get rich quick scammers, encouraging people to buy courses to teach people how to drop ship , and they cherry pick examples of like one guy making a mil per year from dropshiping when the vast majority of people buying these drop shipping classes won't make it big
Yeah, not drop shippers. They don't physically have anything, they order off Alibaba or whatever and have it mailed to you.
The fact that this has spilled over to Etsy is such a tragedy. I try to be extremely careful when buying anything from that site these days, and always save/heart sellers who I'm 95% confident are actually small business owners so I can buy from them again in the future, but there's no way to know for sure anymore. Basically, online shopping is dead to me.
The other problem is the a lot of creators who sell printed products (greeting cards, books, playing cards, etc. ) have them printed in China and then shipped to the US for them to sell. Meanwhile, the manufacturer in China rips off the item, packages it in a cheaper format (thinner paper or whatever) and sells it directly for cheaper. There are lots of items on Etsy that are being sold by the creator and the same item in a cheaper format is being sold on Etsy for cheaper by the company that stole it. I used to report these to Etsy but they don't allow me to anymore. Now they only accept complaints from the creator.
But it is happening even IRL!!!! I was visiting some fairs this fall/winter and about 80 % of stuff there are the same sad chinese fakes all over again, marked as "handmade". I dont remember it being that bad even 5 years ago :(
@@robertawalsh2995Yeahh this. So many artists out there who sell cheap plastic keychains and stuff and like. I love supporting small artists whenever I can, but not when their merch is cheaply produced plastic waste with a character drawing slapped onto it lol.
Yes! It's heartbreaking. I handmake my earrings. But with these drop shippers it makes me want to leave etsy.
@@amandasdesignsss I feel like someone needs to make a website that shows sellers on Etsy who sell verified handmade/vintage stuff and are not dropshippers. Because Etsy won't do it themselves.
the jewelry one makes me sad bc i am So Allergic to nickel & i've ordered a couple of pieces that said "handmade" and "hypoallergenic" just to find out the hard way they were not, in fact, hypoallergenic
I feel your pain, I can’t wear any fake jewelry because of allergies and it is so hard to find a legitimate jewelry source
It's amazing that this young lady does better journalism than all of corporate media.
Another problem starting to occur is photos being stolen from true handmade business and then being used across other platforms
She mentioned that
I wonder if there's a way to have a hidden water mark or not so obvious. To help with this
@@asantepauwelsI feel like a big obvious watermark would be best at this point lol
I can’t stand that!!! It’s so obvious too
Yes I have seen that happen to another jeweler
As someone who recently started an Etsy shop for real handcrafted items, it can be really disheartening and frustrating to see drop shippers fill the search and home pages rather than real artists :/
I was trying to commission art and I had to spend hours checking listings for Ai use. It’s like 90% Ai now
@@Evelyn_Rose1151as an artist myself, it’s encouraging to hear that people who value actual art are still out there!
Etsy has sucked for a long time 🥹 it sucks.
@@Evelyn_Rose1151I draw cartoony styles (furries especially) if you want to check me out ^^ @panpanillustrations
Not for the sake of purchase, I just like talking about + showing off my work without the stress of porting it on social media ;v;
I think you go better selling locally and advertising in your town and area if you make handmade stuff. then people know that its really handmade and high quality
the enshitification of everything keeps on going
I hilariously got an ad for manscaped in the beginning and then another for Alibaba on this very video. I realize its because its mentioned in the video but i find it quite funny that they cant tell between good and bad mentions so they just end up adding some extra dystopia on to the video. How meta
I’m a small business owner who makes crochet plushies and sells my art. I sell on Etsy, so I’m glad that people are willing to scroll through the endless supply of drop shipped plushies to find mine. Especially when most of my shoppers weren’t specifically looking for crochet plushies in the first place.
I’m so grateful for my customers who are willing to pay for the time it takes to make everything and also appreciate the amount of detail I put into everything (especially customs).
Do you mind sharing your shop name? :)
@@kuru4467 I second this. I am interested
It’s Graveyard Art Designs on Etsy
I’m on vacation rn though, so my shop is closed this week
A good friend of mine is in simillar spot as you. She makes crotchet things and jewlery selling on Etsy so she has to market heavily on other platforms since swamped by dropshippers.
I do too and the reality is that AliExpress and Temu aren’t just coming up with these ideas out of nowhere. I’ve created several trends and am the top in what I do and getting knocked off is just a reality these days. Patent and Trademark office in the Us takes nearly a year while I’m knocked off within just a couple months. I’ve seen my stuff for sale across the internet. It sucks but you just have to keep innovating and it’s exhausting.
as someone who's been forced to listen to literal children talk about their dropshipping profits, thank you so much for this
Theres an entire industry of scammers selling drop shipping courses, a lot of dropshippers spamming Amazon are victims themselves of a scam, they wasted a lot of money on courses and they make Amazon banning them pointless as new dropshippers will just pop up and fill in the gap and start making profits
how do children even legally sell stuff? Don’t you need a bank account 😭
@@KingOfGaymes if your parents sign you up you can get a bank account
@@KingOfGaymes idk. i think that his dad helps him with it, so like maybe it's some sort of crappy allowance???
@@KingOfGaymes children can have bank accounts tho?
Showing the reverse image search to thwart dropshippers earned both a like and a subscribe. Looking forward to seeing more of your content (and commenting to tell the algo that this is good stuff, and it should show this video to more people!)
Thank you for your deep research into this matter. Its eye opening. Making sure that you buy the real thing dito the quality you’re looking for the one to one shopping experience is still the best.
I had no idea dropshipping/resellers were this big of an issue. A few months ago, I accidentally got under the skin of users on r/ebay. I asked how to avoid dropshippers/resellers, and I apparently raised a huge stink with the users. I wanted to know how to search for items from people just wanting to get rid of their stuff. Like an online garage sale. I ended up accidentally questioning their sacred cow with my question.
That’s so annoying, I’ve found the same- I only want to buy from on normal people getting rid of their unneeded things. I want second hand items that means less waste and normal people get some extra money! No way am I giving my money to drop shippers
Google estate and garage sales, you can get great items for such a low price.
right, or "small businesses", you ain't doing your own items, you buy in bulks? why would i spend money on them?
On Ebay sorting your search results by "distance nearest first" can be a tremendous tool as long as you dont live anywhere near "city of industry" CA
Not sure if you got your answer but on ebay you can filter by condition/ pre-owned !
GABI THANK YOU!!!!! I hate that they’re trying to rebrand greed as ambition. You can be ambitious and grateful
If Gabi is willing and so are you, both of you guys should collab.
Ah, someone i recognize! 😄
Holy fuck athenap
Well said!!
OMGG ATEENA HIIII I LOVE YOU
2:40 I've just read "Versatile & Kink-Free Retractable Hose:..." I stopped to read it because I couldn't believe what I've just read. I now want to see a versatile kinky hose.
This was do informative. Thank you.
Side note, your tone and voice and editing can literally make anything interesting. 🙏🙏
The enshittification of everything leaves no stone unturned.
Late stage capitalism, innit?
Whatever comes next'll be better, it'll just take a tonne of pain before we get there.
😂😂😂😂😂
@@jack-a-lopium late stage capitalism, things get to be $0, everything is shit, you can have everything at all, but its all trash. end game of capitalism = communism
Even entertainment has been affected
@@jack-a-lopium 😳
I dont buy from the "nameless" brands on amazon anymore. I look up the companies, their warranties and satisfaction guarantees, and when possible, I buy from that brand's website directly
And do you think every manufacturer has an IT department and engineers and webfarms? It all goes to the same place. Some smarmy company who hosts websites for smarmy companies who sell things that they actually get from smarmy places manufactured in china.
@@PhilDietzwhat are you talking about 😂
I agree same! Even name brands I buy in store or from the original manufacturer
We''ve come full circle
It’s usually cheaper directly off the website now too
I just wanted to say THANK YOU for making this video! This is really important info that people should know and I appreciate seeing creators talk about it.
Thank you for your work!
It’s an absolutely wild thought that we ship cheap products by land, sea, and air from the other side of the globe to solve problems as mundane as efficiently slicing an avacado
A lot of it boils down to "shipping things is too cheap" so it rarely makes financial sense to produce anything locally... it is depressing.
Because morons buy it
@@KjetilSeimHaugen Moving product cannot be _too cheap,_ that's just a great feature to have. The reason we get things from across the globe is more to do with labor costs, cheap labor in far-away counties.
Nice that we never factor the environmental or social costs of these products and business models.
@@kindlin it's really not a great future because the reason shipping is too cheap is that oil and even coal are subsidized to hell and back. which is also why it's so hard to move to energies with a better margin between production and productivity. everything is being cannibalized for the benefit of oil and coal producers, including the future.
People who think dropshipping is a legitimate business disgust me.
But Etsy is just a shame
There’s a way to do dropshipping that involves some bit of creativity
Ex. Designing notebook covers, creating graphic design for shirts/ totes
I mean it is if you're trying to sell unique designs. Not everyone can afford to set up production and shipping lines.
@@kiannasadeThat's not drop shipping. That's make on demand, or print on demand. One requires work to at least come up with original designs. The other is just a low margin middle man.
@@randomcharacter6501 To be fair. I've seen both terms used interchangeably.
Etsy would probably need to increase fees to be able to really fix their site.
I really enjoyed this highly informative exposé --- It's so packed with information, but also very interesting all the way through. Love everything, especially the sass.
Oh my goodness this woman is amazing. Not even really mad about the ad. Thank you for making this.
As a handmade Etsy seller, this is no longer just infuriating, this is killing my career
What's your Etsy page?
You are a different market segment. Keep doing stuff and make sure quality is top notch and you'll be fine!
Yeah and now it's going to be flooded with "artists" that will just be plugging your request parameters into a program to generate the art in seconds via AI.
I've already seen stores popping up of people selling art prints of AI art.
@@tsdobbiyess exactly this too, i was working with someone on a big illustration project and they decided to instead go with an artist on fiver that's charging $10 for a "full children's book illustration" claiming to do it himself but it's alllll AI. what's worse is at first the person i was working with expected me to recreate the ai art style, and i had to explain that that's not really attainable with traditional digital illustration methods. the whole experience was frustrating and it's disappointing that the culmination of my life's work has come to this yk
Same! 12 years of me destroying my hands wrapping my art jewelry and building my Etsy shop! And I have been obliterated by these places! 😢
My partner has an etsy shop for pins she designed and handmade dice and we've found those pin designs stolen and sold on the cheap and cheaply made on temu. We tried to reach out and they just don't care. We even found the cheap temu knockoff being sold in a comic store the other day! And she of course ain't seeing a cent of that. Absolutely ghoulish.
For pin designs (assuming it’s enamel pins), sadly the culprit is most likely your manufacturer, or another manufacturer you reached out for quotes for
Best way I’ve seen is to always send and post with watermarks until you finalize stuff
@@Fragamitakeunfortunately most watermarks can easily be removed nowadays using simple AI 🙁 I’ve seen with my own eyes an artists genuine piece (with watermark) and then the exact same image being used by these scummy sites without the watermark, they just edit it out
I never buy off of temu, and I die a little on the inside when people recommend it or show off cute items they got on there. Sadly design theft is pretty common :(
Hopefully you at least reached out to the comic store! If you haven't, I'd recommend doing so. Temu won't care a whit about selling stolen designs, but an independent comic shop might, especially since the artist in this case is local to them. At the very least, you alerting them to the stolen design might get them to stop selling the knockoff version.
It's the same for EVERYTHING and I hate it so much. I like buying quality Items I really do but it has become so damn hard to find them. I used to buy a ton on amazon. this year I made ONE order when usually I ordered atr least once a week.@@rat_in_a_bucket
“Professor Balls” earned my subscription. You’re content is hilarious and extremely educational ❤
Engaging, dynamic and witty. I didn't really expect this video to be a journey, but I'm glad it was.
It especially pisses me off how people will flock to the cheap shit, think that's a normal price to pay, and then attack actual legitimate businesses for being ToO eXpEnSiVe
Which happens all too often. And partly why small local businesses die 😅😐
Consumerism and wanting things cheap created this Market. And people don't even consider the amount of plastic produced keeping this market alive. Same as wanting things quick creates mind numbing bs like TikTok or AI content. Sigh..
I'm really pissed that store where I buy a bread they buy it from baker for $1 and I'm pissed that the store sells it to me for $5 :( how dare he
I witness on a daily basis on forums where people are looking for specific items.
Person A will suggest a product from a maker.
Person B will say boo, and proclaim "it's like $0.80 on AliExpress, that seller Person A recommends is probably just drop shipping..."
People are now blaming the creator/maker of a unique product of drop shipping, and suggesting to "get it from the source". The source being, the people that ripped of the original design but can mass produce a sub-par version of the product, destroying the actual small business owner in the process...
I kinda don’t blame them. Wages are pretty low for damn near anyone who isn’t in some high managerial role, so objectively, a product that cost what it needs to generate enough revenue to pay its workers 80% of a living wage, will be expensive to most people. It’s what it should cost, but it is expensive because it takes up more of your disposable income. I can’t blame people being upset about that. The only other option is to not buy the thing. Which is good, except now small businesses go out of business.
Exactly my biggest problem with shopping clothing online. I see a unique shirt, pants or other on some super cheap and sketchy website, but finding the ACTUAL company that makes theses clothes is soooo hard. I dont even care if its a secret expensive brand that I can't afford, I just want to know where it even stems from! Those cheap website piss me off more than the fact that its a scam, its more the fact that i'll never know where this unique piece of clothing is actually sold from😭😭
Try doing image search on google, you can find the location of the image
Safiya Nyggard did a video on that recent enough, in buying the "same dress" at a couple different price points. She went out of her way to find the original item that is being duped, often with the original pictures and videos being used for the cheaper knock offs.
i've bought some super cute stickers on aliexpress and it's so sad that i have no idea who the original creator is :((((
@@axdonat the reverse Image search she explained in the video should be able to help 🫶🏽 I think ;v;
And don’t even bother if you have to return the item. You’ll never get your money back!
I appreciate how much fun you had making this! The making it rain with the fake money - BRILLIANT!
Explanation of Temu app interrupted by an ad for Temu app ::chefs kiss::
Helping my sister plan her wedding DEFINITELY opened my eyes to the amount of bullshit going on on Etsy. Like every damn item we tried to look for on there had us sorting through seller after seller with the most shady shit, whether it was dropshipped physical shit or AI digital shit, it was all *shit*. Finding real handmade sellers on a site /designed for handmade sellers/ should not be as hard as it’s become!
It's so sad. I remember when it wasn't absolute garbage.
@@cannibalvegetableyt oh same. I’ve found some really cool artists on there over the years. It’s so disappointing to see how it’s gone downhill
That's exactly my experience, I kept hearing about Etsy, and when I finally checked them out, it was full of cheap looking items selling for a lot of money
I think we need an Etsy replacement, and it'll need to be artist-owned so the same thing doesn't happen all over again. A co-op, something like Nebula, where the creators all own a share of the company. No CEO shaving millions of dollars off the top. Nebula is invite-only, which I think helps keep the content high-quality.
We probably need a new site where sellers have to confirm their identity by ID and are only allowed to sell x amount of something per month as to ensure nobody is selling suspiciously high quantities that indicate mass production. Maybe let them apply for higher quantities until they're able to sell so much per month, it's considered a large business and they have to sell on other sites.
My boyfriend and I were really excited to go to a local flea market hoping to get some antique secondhand furniture for our new apartment, and the entire market - probably 100+ booths - were all drop shippers selling cheap garbage. We bought a mirror, thinking it was the one seller with actual secondhand furniture, and when we asked for the mirror on display, they went into their truck and brought out the same mirror in an Amazon return box.
This is in person shopping. The problem is everywhere
That's crazy! Honestly what a smart hustle from the guy, but shame on them for clearly misleading everyone! Also, if it was a returned item that means they most likely got it off Amazon Warehouse where they sell Amazon returns for heavy discounts. I used to buy up all sorts of things from there and resell them when I was in school
Lol I was kinda the opposite, I always thought of the flea market as the place you went to get this stuff before Amazon got really big.
Holy sh*t that is depressing
For second hand furniture cheap check out estate sales
As long as they are upfront about it, I don't have any issues with liquidators selling Amazon return merchandise. Hopefully, it keeps some of it out of the landfill.
Things I love about this video: you shamed Dollar Shave Club instead of having them as a sponsor. The best part is that you just filmed this in you spare room as the background!
Thank you for this video. I am extremly small artist on Etsy and I basically gave up on this site 'cause buying ads on etsy costs me more than I earn... I hand paint on mugs, pet portraits and basically whatever you'd like... And Etsy is flooded by this cr ap from China... Not only jewellery, but art supplies to make it, bundles with art (for example book illustrations) - mostly created by AI (I've seen some cute aquarelle mouses with 8 fingers, YEAH... definetly AI), printed mugs with digital graphics labeled as hand made... I think I don't know what handmade means now. Sorry, I am frustrated. I feel like its a lost battle vs this dropshipping nightmare.
But for everyone in the same situation as me. I feel you. It's depressing, but never stop creating. Don't let that ruin your joy from creating. Hugs
I remember when etsy was a great place to get handmade and vintage stuff
Nowadays the only thing it feels like you can trust are taxidermy enthusiasts and luthiers
Never thought I'd read the words trust, taxidermy enthusiast, and lutheirs in the same sentence, but man do i love the sentence
unfortunately a lot of taxidermists aren’t even safe on there! there are sellers who have loads of readily available specimens (esp bats and snakes) that often have so many in their inventory bc they source them through poachers. i’ve heard that even some folk who think they r sourcing their taxidermy ethically r often tricked into buying specimens that were killed via poachers
@@nickoifish..or weird, annoying TikTokers stealing human bones from old graves they found in some Louisiana swamp and reselling them on Etsy..
There are so many still great items
I work for a small family jewelry company (only 5 people) and we are no longer on etsy, we are on shopify with our own website. We also sell wholesale to museums like the Smithsonian and some local native museums.
I was actually watching while working!!! It took me 20 minutes of your video to make 1 pair of pearl earrings. So idk how long it should have taken to make 3 million orders if they really were a small business.
Thank you so much for shining a light on this topic!
I just did some math and if you worked non stop, I think it's 114 years to make 3 million but that might be too low of a time frame.
Omg I love pearls is there any way non museum humans could buy this??
I had to stop selling handmade on Etsy and moved onto selling vintage because people were stealing my designs and then. Making and selling the item cheaper. I have been considering moving back to my own website again. I used to have one…until Etsy put me out of business when they first opened!
Mind dropping the name of your store/site? Would be interested in cheking it out :).
haha same, im also making handmade earrings while watching
oh my god ive been thinking about this !!!!!!! thank you for putting it into words
My first video of yours that I've seen. Just a minute in, I see how much effort you put in. Subscribing!
My wife was interested in dropshipping and wanted to take some online course for it. I sat next to her for the pre-interview and they guy just straight up admitted to doing multiple crimes; fake reviews, fake discounts, false advertising. Told her no way are we doing this.
Your advice happened to be good but your tone is weirdly controlling
@@bubblegumplastic how the hell is “let’s not do something illegal” controlling?
@@Otori6386 replier's prolly the pre-interview guy
@@bubblegumplasticno....when you're married, you share finances. So her doing drop shipping would be a financial risk for both of them, and could risk one of them going to jail (which, if they have kids, is super not good)
@@Otori6386I think it’s 1) the thought of you looming over your wife telling her what to do. 2) the fact that your wife doesn’t have control of her own finances and needs her husband’s permission to do things. I wouldn’t go into this business either, but you asked why the above person thinks you sound controlling, and that is the answer
I have a handmade jewelry business that I started on Etsy in 2020, it's become SO HARD to compete with businesses selling products that aren't handmade. They can sell things for so much cheaper, ship things way faster, and they straight up lie about how it's made and what materials they use. It's extra frustrating because Etsy promotes these people, meanwhile my listings get buried. I have to price things lower than what I think I actually deserve just to keep up. THANK GOD I started selling in person too, otherwise I'd have to find a new job lol.
Handmade things are priced so high almost nobody can buy them. There's a super cute moss rug with all types of different color and textures of moss but for a very small size it's like $400. I wish I could afford that.
@@julianlaresch6266if you’re willing to invest some time and energy into it, you can definitely make a rug like that for less. I taught myself to spin wool on a handmade drop spindle and dyeing wool yarn is pretty simple. Crocheting is a little trickier but it’s much easier than it looks.
Sincerely, a textile and fiber obsessed wierdo
so random but what’s ur business link!
maybe you could send a link to your business? I’d like to check it out :)
Send link!
Loved getting Temu and AliExpress ads back to back at the end of this video
Nice job combining this all. It’s a rabbit hole!! Hilariously, aliexpress was the ad for your vid. Pft!😂😂😂
Etsy shut down my account when they suddenly changed something in their policies and banned the term 'roach clip' but I guesssss they're supportive of misleading shops with unethical practices n underpaid workers...totally solid morals💖
A shame really cause I need one
@@darkninjafirefox lmao etsy lost a customer to this stupidity
Ughh I keep hearing these stories from my jewelry pals who are still on there! Etsy used to be so great, and they absolutely suuuuck now :'( I got out a few years ago and sell almost exclusively on my website now, but I still have to buy some supplies on Etsy. Always hope the people I'm buying from are okay :'(
Dropshipping is against policy too, not allowed on Etsy. But Caitlyn makes lots of money, so....
Buying something, and reselling it on a much higher price, pretending it is higher quality is a tale as old as time.
In my home town there was a local farmers market, where there were higher quality locally produced vegtables and goods.
Some scheming people bought cheap vegetable bundles from the supermarket, repackage them, and sold it for 3x the price saying it's organic/locally grown.
With the Internet it's so much easier to do this.
The farmers markets where I live do that too. They get their produce from a mainland distributor and then try to sell it off like it's their own. You'll have a dozen people selling the exact same produce from the exact same place for wildly different prices. There will be someone selling bananas for $5 while right next to them is someone else with the same ones for $3. Disgusting.
You have to basically have to know the farmer and buy the stuff off of his tractor with the dirt still on it.
Even the actual farmers do this, I've got a guy at my farmer's market who grows mushrooms, but in order to expand his business he started buying excess eggs from hobby owners and repackaging them and selling them at a higher price. I know this is like business 101 but it pisses me off to see it at a farmer's market. I'm suppose to be free of your business 101 bullshit here! If I'm paying $9 for a dozen fucking eggs at a farmer's market, I'm doing so out of a sense of trust that this is how you need to price them to turn a profit on your free range chicken farm. I'm not doing it to pay you a 25% markup for bothering to gather the eggs into a box for me.
Dropshippimg is basically that, except you're selling things you don't own.
Reminds me of the cafe I worked at. The owner wanted to start selling bagels and muffins, but no bakery in the area wanted to work with him because he was a total cheapskate piece of shit. Eventually, he settled on just driving to Costco once a week, buying their bagels, and selling them individually for $5 a pop and claiming they were fresh even if they were several days old. Even the coffee was sourced from another cafe right up the street that had better prices and selection AND roasted all of their beans in-house so they'd always be fresh.
I know I'm a bit late to the party but I just always love your videos. They are the wholesome but gonzo content that always makes me laugh. Thanks!!
Genuinely entertaining! And eye opening. Makes someone wanting to start a small business intimidated 😢
Another problem is that buying from a small website and not amazon is no guarantee that you won't be scammed. A friend of mine was very idealistic and resolved to only order from small, local and environmentally sustainable businesses. After her products failed to arrive a few times, she went back to amazon. It's really crazy: It doesn't matter whether it's a big mega corporation or a small shop. Everyone wants to scam you.
That’s one nice thing about eBay. Lots of mom/pop shops on there (lots of dropshippers, though). Just check seller ratings first before buying.
Disclaimer: Am employee of said company.
That really sucks that the one seller did that. I think that's more reason to buy irl instead of online, though. Shopping irl, you get to hold the product, inspect it, and leave with it same-day. I agree, buying online usually delivers trash. I've pretty much never walked away with trash when buying irl.
Profit to effort ratio is generally the highest with fraud.
My product didn't arrive from Amazon, and there was no one to call. That was the last time
If only there was some way to actually GO to a store to buy a product in person and ensure you received what you spent money on?! Can you even imagine what that would look like?
Fun fact: Amazon has so many weirdly named brands because at one point they made it so that everyone with a US trademark gets higher search rankings to increase quality.
Of course this backfired and dropshippers are just registering random 6-7 letter word combinations.
S N O Y
In reality, it's because unless you have a trademark, you can't stop other people selling from your product listing.
So you could be the first to introduce a product to Amazon, and put in work to gain traction and get a good volume or orders, then someone with the same product can list the same product under the same listing you use.
So, in order to avoid other people hijacking your listing for a product, you get a registered trademark and then are able to restrict anyone else from selling under your listing.
Amazon doing that also almost singlehandedly broke the US Patent & Trademark Office, too.
@@zeruty Yeah, but what I'm talking about is that oftentimes they're the exact same products but with different names since they're dropshipped from the same factory.
@@Problematist that's overusing the term dropshipped.
If multiple people buy the same products to sell on Amazon, then send the same products to Amazon to be sold, that's not dropshipping. If the products are shipping prime from an Amazon facility, that's not dropshipped.
There are lots of items where there are multiple different listings(ASINs), either generic or with trademarked names. If those listings don't have trademarked names and they're not part of the Amazon brand registry, then pretty much anyone that can find the same product to buy can sell it on the listing.
The reason there are lots of listings with different trademark names is: because those people don't want their listings highjacked, so they have to be part of the brand registry, which requires a trademarked name.
Without the brand registry there would be quite a bit fewer listings overall and individual listings would be used by more sellers.
Search for Amazon selling videos on Amazon brand registry.
Stepped away to do some dishes while listening - Literally got an ad for drop shipping and thought it was a part of your video lmfao I’m 1 minute in and I’m just now realizing
I just found my new favorite UA-camr. Loved this.