- ‘Drop shippers’ use social media ads to sell products at marked-up prices
- YouTubers promote it to thousands as they sell their own ‘entrepreneur’ courses
- Have YOU ever bought ‘drop shipped’ goods? Email [email protected]
Kamil Sattar is rich – and he wants you to be rich too, if his YouTube channel The Ecom King is anything to go by.
Sattar, 24, from Telford, Shropshire, said in 2020 he made more than £30,000 a month with his business and now claims his companies’ sales exceed $5million (£3.9m) a year. The best part, he says, is that you can do it as well.
In a recent video illustrated with videos of people looking stressed at work, he says: ‘If you’re watching this video and you want to see true success in 2024 and you want to quit your day job or your side job, you’re in the right place.’
He is one of many new-age entrepreneurs online purporting to offer a route into big income to hundreds of thousands of people seeking an easy life – and the secret, he says, is ‘drop shipping’, or selling goods you don’t own or handle.
It sees sellers taking orders for goods that they don’t actually have at a heavily marked-up price, before ordering them from a supplier or wholesaler, usually in China, at cost and sending them directly to the buyer, usually weeks later.
But warnings are being sounded by experts to both those tempted to sign up to find out how to make money and anyone considering buying products that could be drop shipped.
Consumer expert, Martyn James, says : ‘It has become something where people think they can get rich quick, but that house of cards can fall apart very quickly.’
They pocket the profits as a middleman. The practice has been enabled by the globalisation of e-commerce through the internet, allowing anyone to order just about anything from anywhere.
If you’ve ever bought clothes on Instagram from a brand you’ve never heard of that took forever to arrive and looked nothing like the photos, you’ve likely been taken in by a drop shipper.
Martyn James told MailOnline and This is Money: ‘It’s basically selling things that you aren’t producing or sending – you’re basically contracting out.
‘The problem with drop shipping is, by adding an extra link to the chain, what they can do is affect our consumer rights.
‘Online, you can be based anywhere. It’s really easy to rustle up a posh-looking website that can look very convincing. It’s easy to rustle up some fake reviews saying (the item you are selling) is fabulous.
‘If a company looks like it’s based in the UK and quotes three day delivery, it is subject to UK law and it should have a dispute resolution service if something goes wrong.
‘But a lot of these operations are based outside the UK and that means shoppers have to become really savvy.’
Companies that aren’t UK based, he warned, might not be adhering to UK consumer laws on complaints and returns – and could be flogging goods that aren’t safe.
He added: ‘We have to be incredibly suspicious of these companies.’
Drop shipping isn’t new: it laid the foundations for Jeff Bezos’ business empire in Amazon’s infancy; billion-dollar fitness brand Gymshark started out drop shipping gym supplements; it’s the model behind every mail order catalogue.
But thousands of so-called ‘ghost commerce’ websites now exist thanks to platforms such as Shopify, which allow flashy online stores to be made in minutes, and the ease with which adverts can targeted at people based on their age, gender and interests on sites like Instagram and TikTok.
Drop shippers even have a captive audience: the hashtag #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt has 80.8 billion views on the platform and is littered with videos of influencers sharing their purchases.
The TikTok Shop feature means viewers can buy the same items inside the app in seconds, feeding a self-sustaining cycle of videos and product sales – and users can receive commission for each item sold through their profile.
Through research and targeted adverts on social media, MailOnline found many examples of what purported to be premium priced items – except they were available for a fraction of the cost, with the same delivery time, via Chinese websites.
A ‘Ravesound’-branded Bluetooth speaker shipped to the UK free in 6-18 business days for $69.99 (£55.48) – but what looks like an identical speaker was available on e-commerce website AliExpress for £13.36.
‘Futurizta’ wireless chargers made to clip to the back of smartphones were being sold for £30.99, shipped from China in 7-16 days. What seemed to be the same battery, minus the branding, was available on AliExpress for under £12.
A retro games console advertised on Twitter to 3.9 million people for £40 could be purchased for a quarter of the price elsewhere. The ad was fact-checked with a ‘community note’ reading: ‘This ad is a dropship scam.’
On Facebook, ‘Jishinman’ promoted a sale of its ‘harem-style pants’ for £33, reduced from £81. But what appear to be identical trousers, in the same colours, are available on AliExpress for $9.99 (£7.94).
Reviews of the ‘premium’ product are less than glowing. ‘Such bad quality I’d consider this a scam,’ one reviewer said, adding: ‘You’re bad people.’
Another added: ‘Took 3 weeks to arrive, paid custom fees, only received half my order and the quality is terrible.’
The list goes on: a novelty version of Jenga promoted for £28 was available on Amazon for £9.99; while a baby paddling pool offered by ‘Mommy Barn’ for £19.99 could be purchased directly from a wholesaler for £4.52.
In short, there’s a near-endless market of drop shippers trying to tempt less savvy shoppers. MailOnline contacted each seller of the higher-priced items for comment.
Dr Gillian Brooks, associate professor in strategic marketing at King’s College London, believes the ‘want it now’ nature of social media is fuelling the drop shipping market because people like to copy other people in order to fit in – an idea known as ‘social proof’.
Dr Brooks said: ‘You can be buying from someone who you think you know, and therefore trust is built in. And I think that’s why drop shipping is working so well – people don’t really look into the notion of a middleman.
‘They think they’re buying from their friend or someone who they trust. Or they think they’re buying from what could be perceived as a “mom and pop shop” where, in fact, it’s all a facade. That’s not who you’re buying from.”
It is also a cause of alarm among social media professionals who fear that ‘micro-influencers’ – TikTok and Instagram personalities with a few thousand followers – could incentivised to promote cheap goods.
One influencer manager, who manages a number of professional social media personalities with six-figure followings on TikTok and Instagram, told MailOnline she had seen a rise in smaller influencers promoting cheap goods to their followers.
She said: ‘These people don’t know what drop shipping is. They see a product they think they can make some money off of, they might think it’s from a little company and they promote it.
‘There are a large number of creators on TikTok doing this and people don’t know what they’re buying. It’s encouraging people to buy crap.’
Big names aren’t immune, however. In 2020, social media empress Kourtney Kardashian was criticised for promoting Magnetic SL, a drop shipped beauty brand.
The BBC reports that she was paid €170,000 (£145,000) for an Instagram ad, and that the company had generated fake reviews on Trustpilot to counteract complaints from genuine customers about the quality and delivery time of its goods.
Chloe Wilson, head of talent at creative agency 84World, said: ‘Influencers promoting companies that drop ship, or even creating their own companies using drop shipping methods, need far more regulation.
‘(There is) a discrepancy between creators that have an overarching mission and message and will only work with brands or promote products that adhere to that cause, and influencers who will promote anything for a quick paycheck.
‘Our job is to ensure we’re working with the former and that we’re always auditing brands, products and messaging, to not only safeguard our talent but ensure they are not diluting their authenticity.’
But there is another, less attractive side to drop shipping – the idea, sold to thousands, that they can get in on the act too, and live life as a self-made entrepreneur.
Hundreds of content creators on YouTube and TikTok share hints and tips on how to make it big by drop shipping – telling followers their life could be better if they just tried a little harder to make money.
This idea has several names – ‘hustle bro’ culture, chasing the ‘sigma male grindset’ – and it inhabits the same space as ‘alpha male’ internet personalities such as Andrew Tate – currently awaiting trial in Romania on human trafficking and rape charges.
Tate even runs his own course, Hustler’s University, which claims to offer the secrets to success for $49.99 (£39.80) a month.
They all speak to a single idea: any time you’re spending not working on making money is time wasted, prompting feelings of inadequacy among a disaffected audience of young men.
Google Trends data suggests the appetite for making it big with drop shipping isn’t going anywhere – fuelled by videos espousing a lifestyle of easy riches in a matter of days, weeks or months.
Kamil Sattar – who did not respond to requests for an interview – shares videos with titles like ‘I Made $400,000 In 30 Days’ in which, flanked by a Batman costume, he details the cash he allegedly generates through drop shipping.
He never reveals the identity of his website operation. He tells viewers: ‘I am not revealing our store or product, because I want to keep them private’.
When he isn’t sharing videos offering the secrets to wealth, Sattar posts motivational messages on social media, telling his followers to ‘Embrace the Hard Work Ethos’ in a recent post on X, adding: ‘It’s about the grind, not just the gifted mind.’
He offers a free course in getting started in drop shipping – an eight hour YouTube video – but he also runs $3000 (£2,388) seminars through E-Commerce Mentoring Ltd to help would-be drop shippers ‘grow your business to six figures’.
And he’s making money from it – a lot of it. E-Commerce Mentoring Ltd, of which Sattar is the sole director, boomed in value from £140,000 in 2020 to over £400,000 as of September 2022, according to Companies House filings.
However, one of his companies is not enjoying the same level of success. Sattar is listed as a ‘person of significant control’ at Sole Et. Al, a clothing company of which he describes himself as co-founder on LinkedIn.
Companies House records show it owed creditors more than £137,000 as of April 2022 and reported a negative balance of -£129,500.
But Sattar isn’t the only one espousing the lifestyle of the independent entrepreneur. Zain Shah, 29, from Barking, posts videos with titles like ‘How I Make £12,000 EVERY MONTH by working 3 HOURS’ with flashy graphics of spinning pound signs.
As well as drop shipping, he also engages in ‘retail arbitrage’ – buying discounted products from a retailer and reselling them at a higher price. Many of his videos see him snap up discount goods from Poundland and selling them for a profit online.
Shah offers a course on selling items on Amazon – and his secrets to ‘passive income’ can be unlocked for £1,000. He did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.
There are countless other creators sharing similar videos with identical dreams. Another YouTuber, Elliott Prendy claimed to sell €2,650 (£2,271) of portable clothes irons for €9,100 (£7,801) – suggesting a 243 per cent markup.
After subtracting costs – including paying an influencer to promote it on social media – Prendy purportedly made a profit of €3,652 (£3,130). He did not respond to requests for an interview.
But there is an inconvenient truth to drop shipping: there’s only so much room in the market, and not everyone will succeed.
As Kamil Sattar notes in a disclaimer at the foot of each of his videos: ‘There is no guarantee as there are many variables that will impact your success.’
And message boards such as ‘r/dropship’ on Reddit are littered with frustrated users for whom the potential of easy money isn’t being fulfilled.
One wrote: ‘Is anyone actually making a profit? I’m coming to the conclusion drop shipping is mostly crap!
‘I’m flopping over and over again… I’ve made sales but for the time I’m putting in, paying for ads it’s just not worth it.. getting super frustrated..’
In response, another would-be entrepreneur said: ‘The only people who seem to be making money from dropshipping are the YouTube “gurus”, course sellers, spy apps etc..They’re selling shovels for a gold rush that ended years ago.’
He added: ‘The main issue is that people…are savvy enough to just go to AliExpress, TEMU, Wish etc to get the same junk item for a much better price.’
Another wrote: ‘I have been trying for so long but sadly I am losing hope. I have spent so much money to get everything nice and perfect and make the ads work.’
Dr Brooks of King’s College London believes creators promoting the dream of making thousands of pounds a month via drop shipping are tapping into a ‘vulnerability’ that people have about their own lives and personal finances.
She continued: ‘I think in this economy, everyone is looking for a side hustle. But this is tapping into this vulnerability where consumers think, “Maybe that could be me, maybe I could start a side hustle”.
‘There’s a hopefulness to it – and they get scammed by signing up for anything showing them how to have a “passive income”.
‘It’s ripe for someone to be taken advantage of, because they’re trying to do the best they can in an economy that is very tough for a lot of people.
‘All that is going to be left is a bunch of these get-rich-quick gurus saying, “Oh, you know there’s still money to be made in it, please, please buy my course.”
‘People are going to have to keep their wits about them.’
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Robert Johnson is a UK-based business writer specializing in finance and entrepreneurship. With an eye for market trends and a keen interest in the corporate world, he offers readers valuable insights into business developments.
