When dropshipping from China, how do you get past the outrageous shipping costs?

I'm just starting to get involved with dropshipping and ecommerce, but shipping from china is ridiculous, and I see competitors offereing FREE shipping on all of their products! How do I go about finding, or creating deals like this? Am I supposed to just eat the shipping cost even when it's 40% of the product price? Any tips would be GREATLY appreciated.

 

Sadly I see it that you have three choices.

1. Eat the postage costs and lose money
2. Incorporate the postage costs into the total price and offer with free postage
3. Charge postage costs to your buyers

 

websites like dealextreme offer free shipping.

 

your product price is including cost shipping. to get lowest and best cost shipping, u need to make JV with shipping company.

 

I never thought about making a JV with shipping company... would you recommend to email them and propose cheaper shipping? haha i wonder if that would work but to the OP
You either charge a price and then charge shipping or you can incorporate the shipping into the product and say free shipping or you can jack up the price and say spend over 100 and get free shipping etc.

 

Get a better drop shipper OR find a way to incorporate the costs into the product(s).

 

what kind of things do you want to sell, i'm a ebayer in china, so i can help you, thanks

 

Dropshipping and calculating shipping cost is a difficult subject anyway but dropshipping from China and calculating shipping is a horror due to the extreme shipping costs.
It depends what items you are selling. You might be better off buying small bulk, get it shipped to your door and then take care for shipping yourself. In this case you maybe even can offer free shipping if the markup on the items will allow you to do so without you losing too much money. Otherwise you could charge a small flat rate shipping fee.
For the main carriers like UPS, FedEx you can create an account with and schedule pickups from your home or office. This will make the calculation of shipping much easier on you. Besides of that, ordering bulk will maybe allow you to deal with the supplier in China and split the shipping cost with him. I have seen a lot of trusted suppliers in China and other countries even offer a free shipping to your door if you order in bulk.
Good Luck
verdecove

 

Well, I suggest you look for suppliers that provide free shipping. That will save you a lot of money. You can try using dropshipping from brandsdragon.com they are also a wholesaler from china and best of all provide free shipping

 

Some dropshipper from china has low shipping cost because their postal service give them low cost shipment.

 

Your best bet is finding a balance between eating the cost and incorporating the shipping costs into your retail price.

 

Yep the best thing to do is eat the shipping if you are going to use Chinese dropshipper. Personally I wouldn't use them at all, find a USA based dropshipper they are out there trust me, but you have to look for them. Try Googling "usa based electronics dropshippers" and go from there.

 

Well, you may need to buy in bulk. I wanted to test out the quality of the products first, so I ordered 1 of about 50 items, and the shipping was around $40. I just ate that cost, and shipped more after that to me, and calculated that into the price of the item.

 

Hi, This is shirley from China, we always use China post and Hongkong post , the freigt charges are quite low .

 

Shipping from China to the US is like shipping from US to Europe same outrageous prices.

 

You can shipping via air mail
http://www.cheap-shippingfromchina.com/air-mail.html

 

I would not suggest drop shipping from china to begin with specially on eBay. If this is the route you must go then i would look for
some one that offers free shipping.If shipping is 40% the cost of the item then you dont want it because it is likely crap any way. The true manufacturers in china are not High on shipping costs and usually have it included in the per piece price at least i have only dealt with those who do. remember if one person is selling there are 20 others there too you may be looking at a sucker listing instead of his true listing. You have to watch them with that they list an item at 3 different prices since some dont pay attention.

All in all remember pay pal and ebay will not honor protection for the seller if a third party is used. You will have a 50/50 chance the sale will be good or even that it will clear customs. Buy the product then sale it or have them mail you a sample product and see if it is worth the markup or it is really worth selling.

 

I have dropshipped from china before and if you look in the right place, the shipping costs aren't bad. Also after selling a certain amount most sellers will give you a discount on every product ordered from there on.

 

Here is what I do...

I usually have some great leverage room. My shipping for certain items is between $20 - $40. I usually incorporate that into the price or I simply do 1/2 of what it costs me and charge the buyer. usually I can cover the charges and make a hefty profit.

 

Just buy alot of it at a time, take a bigger hit at the start. And then make your profit back from the cheaper shipping.