Could a mod delete my post ^^ above, my keyboard was playing up lol well I say playing up I mean filled with rolly baccy and some of the keys weren't working so I had to shake it out lol
Clearly you have an entirely different set up to me. There are no time heavy members, no hosting, no forum or helpdesk to man, no live feeds, just plain and simply supply. The contact from members is almost always regarding their order, potential order, stock etc. Very little in the way of help is asked.
lol the level of service I offer at times is one of my greatest regrets
sometimes I wish I could just bag them and tag them!
That is why I don't feel it appropriate for us to charge a fee and far from the £s or even 5p per item some suppliers like to claim all free dropshippers charge, it's nothing like that for us. We simply haven't incurred those costs to date.
My suggestion wasn't that you intentional add 5p per item to cover admin/membership. You have an acceptable level of profit we all do, may it just be for personal wages/staff wages/running costs etc. it's horses for courses you will either achieve the profit you require by an admin/membership fee and low prices or via prices that have a high enough profit margin. It's all the same end result, earning the level you require per year.
of course there are those out there charging a membership fee and selling products at a high price either through greed or no real purchasing knowledge or buying power.
I personally could not sell at the low prices I do without a membership fee (most people would be shocked at how low my profit margin on individual items is I have to shift a lot of units a day to pay myself a very small wage I have experienced customers who hold their own stock and can't buy some of my items as cheap as I sell them from their current wholesalers and then they're required to meet minimum order levels etc.) if I dropped a fee I would have to increase my item prices or become wholesale only and only sell in bulk. The current method is beneficial for my customers that make a real go of it as they can sell many items over the period of a year buying at low prices for a very low fee which will end up costing point something of a penny per item.
They are of course supplemented by those that just don't do it, most people would be shocked by how many people join dropshipping companies on the spur of the minute without ever doing anything, they don't open a shop they don't list on ebay, it was just a good idea at the time, those people do help keep the prices low for active members so is life.
It really is down to simply is the service offered worth the fee and I would feel confident the most if not all of my active customers would say yes it is.
Even so, with the keenness of some suppliers (not you) who want to justify fee paid suppliers over free, we very often get smeared in the process and you can imagine how well that goes down here
It's entirely unfair and I don't want to feel pushed into charging a fee just to please this perverse idea that you get better service, goods and knowledge from a fee paid dropshipper ... it's a nonsense.
my main thing about the no or low fee dropshippers is that in reality the end retail customers could easily just buy direct from them and a fee does stop that from happening (a reasonable fee obviously £5 isn't going to), added by the fact that a great number of the low/no fee dropshippers simply aren't cheap enough to be profitable enough... of course it's swings and roundabouts on the latter as many that do charge a fee still aren't cheap enough.
During my research stage I joined 4 dropshippers, all were ones highly spoken of on the other forum, all were awful, didn't really hold stock, had prices that weren't profitable (often they were taking a bigger profit margin than I could get myself at full retail), orders were always taking up to 14 days to be despatched because they were only ordering stock in when they got about 20 customers orders etc. and could make their own suppliers minimum order etc. tbh I had nothing but bad experiences as a dropshippee and in all honesty would take the opinion that there are considerably more bad ones than good ones!
on a side note all the bad ones I used did charge a fee which proves that the mentality of only genuine dropshippers charge a fee is bull, I am aware of dropshippers that do and I know for a fact make money purely from membership fees and sell almost nothing as far as stock is concerned, 1000 customers paying your £30 a year membership fees each is a nice little earner, on top of perhaps £7 a month hosting from each one. I'm not a fan of the term "market saturation" but they do cause it, 1000 shops trying to sell the same things at full RRP (or even worse an exaggerated high RRP invented by the dropshipper) and none of them able to sell anything or ever have a remote chance of ever making a wage, because even if they were competitive (which their not because any real rivials are buying direct from the dropshippers supplier and selling at a lower price) it would be nigh on impossible for them to make a wage simply due to the number of identical sites selling the same things.
We will never have more than 100 customers, I made that promise to my members at the start and I will uphold it, I won't destroy their market which is already a niche by having too many people selling the same items.
I do sort of agree with you that the original point is really a non issue as far as the customer is concerned, irrelevant of fee or not they should be looking at: level of service, stock range, profit margins etc. But the original suggestion (and I've forgotten who by) that dropshippers that charge a fee are conning people got right on my goat (and he's a grumpy horny little bearded sod at the best of times)
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