Debate: Drop Shipping vs. Amazon FBA
Updated on June 1, 2022
The field of eCommerce has blown up over the past few years, with manufacturers allowing a growing number of dropshipping distributors and Amazon FBA becoming a more viable option for those with the capital to buy their own stock.
In fact, we JUST talked about this ourselves, on the latest Empire Flippers podcast.
But which eCommerce path is best? Should you be investing your hard-earned money into product stock that may or may not sell or should you play it safe by selling someone else’s inventory?
To answer the question of dropshipping vs Amazon FBA, we’ve brought in some guys who do both for a living to hear what they have to say.
On the Drop Shipping front – Meet Anton Kraly
Anton has built an empire helping others dive into the world of eCommerce with his online training course, Drop Ship Lifestyle, where he’s taught and mentored thousands of students worldwide on getting started building profitable drop shipping sites.
He has over a decade of experience in online retailing and took his first eCommerce business from $0 to over $1.8 million by the age of 24. Impressive, right!
Learn more about Anton here.
In favor of Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) – Meet Mark Brenwall.
Interestingly enough, Mark started out with dropshipping but made the swap to FBA after creating a product that he wanted to put his own branding and label on, WOD Nation.
We spoke to Mark in November 2014 about how he built his brand from scratch, so be sure to have a listen to that as well.
To learn more about Mark and his brand, read here.
Rather than debate over which is better, we’ve asked Anton and Mark to answer four questions that will really give you insight into each platform so you can choose which model is best suited for your needs.
Before diving into the meat of it all, let’s quickly cover what dropshipping and FBA are so there’s no confusion.
What is Dropshipping?
Dropshipping is a retail fulfillment model which means you purchase goods individually from a wholesaler and then they handle the shipping.
You create a website featuring products from your partnered wholesalers and sell them for retail pricing. When you place your order with the manufacturer you only pay wholesale, which is how you make your profit. They typically ship under your brand name.
For example, if you were selling dining room tables for $200 and the wholesale price was only $150, you would profit $50.
One of the main attractions of owning a dropshipping store is that the entire supply chain, from warehousing, to order fulfillment, to the shipping process, is all handled by your dropshipping suppliers. This makes dropshipping an ideal business model for beginners looking to break into the e-commerce industry.
What is FBA?
FBA stands for Fulfillment By Amazon. As a retailer, you send product inventory to one (or more) of Amazon’s fulfillment warehouses, then advertise your products on Amazon. The main benefit of FBA vs dropshipping is that FBA sellers cut out the middleman, selling their own products directly to consumers.
When a sale is made, Amazon’s warehouse staff handles the packaging, shipping, and any returns that may happen. You determine the price so you are in control of your profit margin. Your products are eligible for Amazon’s free super saver shipping and Amazon Prime as well.
Theoretically, this model is set up so you send, sell, then sit back and relax.
Okay, so maybe it’s not as simple as that, but you get the drift.
Here is an outline of what we will be covering:
- Why did you choose Drop Shipping or FBA over the alternative?
- What are the pros and cons of dropshipping and Amazon FBA?
- What do you wish you knew before choosing your ecommerce platform of choice?
- If you could do it all over again, would you go the same path – Why or why not?
Note: Anton submitted his responses via email so we have done our best to edit his responses as little as possible, outside of formatting. However, as Mark’s responses were shared through conversation, we have done our best to capture his message as clearly and true to his voice as possible. Both Anton and Mark have had a final review of this before publishing, so it’s safe to say we did good.
Now – over to them!
Why did you choose Drop Shipping or FBA?
Anton
I’m not even sure if FBA was a thing back when I started my first eCommerce store in 2007. If it was, I was unaware of it at the time, so the decision was an easy one.
I started my eCommerce journey via importing. By the time I started a dropshipping business, I had actually already been importing for about three years, and I had already brought in dozens of product containers from China to the States.
Our transition from importing to dropshipping actually happened when brands who sold products similar to what we were offering asked if we were also willing to list their products for sale on our online store.
We decided to give this a try and quickly saw the potential. Our profit margins were smaller than when we were importing, but we were able to sell thousands of more products while serving many more buyers. It also led to our workload going down and overhead costs of a warehouse literally disappearing.
After about two years, we had completely transitioned from an importing company to a business that only sold other people’s products (aka drop shipping).
Mark
I started dropshipping first to test the market. I found a supplier on eBay for a jump rope, ran Facebook ads, sold it for $12-15 per piece which was profitable right away.
At the same time, I met someone here in Chiang Mai who was successful with FBA that encouraged me to try it. Because I knew I already had a market for it with my Facebook fan page, and my Facebook ads were working, I decided to go for it.
So, it wasn’t really a decision of one over the other. I always thought it would be cool to make a jump rope, and with dropshipping, you don’t have your own products, so I wanted to put my own label on something and make it my own.
Also, the hassle of how I was doing dropshipping in the first place was a real pain in the butt. I would take all the orders through Shopify and then manually put them in eBay and ship from the eBay seller. I felt too exposed if the manufacturer was out of inventory or unresponsive because I was holding on to these orders from people without being able to fulfill them.
What are the biggest Pros and Cons?
Anton
Dropshipping Pros
With dropshipping, the risk is very low. If you do things right, you can literally get approved with hundreds of suppliers and have access to sell tens of thousands of products within weeks.
If you know how to build a good website and if you know how to get products uploaded properly, you can be up and running in no time.
Dropshipping Cons
First off, there are a lot of scams out there. If you ever find a supplier by searching “your niche + drop shipper”, you are going to fail. The only way to drop ship profitably is to work with real suppliers (aka brands) who focus on creating great products and then have retailers handle the sales for them.
None of those paid drop ship memberships or eBay to Amazon dropshipping garbage works. There is only one way to be successful when dropshipping, and that is to become an internet-retailer for the best brands within your niche. Don’t even use the term “dropshipping” if you want to be successful with this business.
With that being said, this is still a super competitive game. For example, I find a lot of my suppliers and niches by looking at what successful people are already doing. Because there is a lower barrier of entry to dropshipping than with something like private labeling, my competitors can do this to me as well.
Mark
FBA Pros
The biggest pro is that once you are ranked in Amazon and things are selling, it’s pretty much hands-off. You can run external ads to your listing, send off press releases, have giveaway promotions, and do all the things people do to get higher rankings in Amazon. Or you can choose to not do any of that and just sit back and collect your money.
Building your own brand and putting your label on your products is another thing I really like about Amazon. I find it’s a much better business than selling someone else’s product. I also have my own Shopify store, the Facebook fan page, and all the social media channels, and Amazon is just one more extension of that.
Everyone has their own philosophy on Amazon. Some people say, sell what sells such as sunglasses, keychains, iPhone cases. They don’t need to tie together. If there’s an opportunity in one product, sell that.
I’m starting the other way. I started with a niche (similar to drop shipping) and I build all the products around that niche. There are pros and cons to that too.
I’m building a brand, so hopefully, people are searching for WOD Nation, but I may be going to market with products that are already saturated. For instance, I tried to sell the foam roller. It was a good product, but was super saturated and had a low-profit margin.
FBA Cons
The problem for me and a lot of Amazon sellers is that there’s not much you have to do. If I could hit a button and make a few more sales I would, but because Amazon doesn’t give you a lot of reporting, you don’t know what keywords are converting and what people are searching for. You can see your conversion rate, but you don’t know how they found your product.
Starting with an FBA product is very expensive. If you don’t have $5000 lying around you can’t get into Amazon. Even with the jump rope, the first order was about $3000 and that was a relatively small order. It’s a risk.
Also, it takes a lot of time to talk to manufacturers in order to figure out what their pipeline is like, how many units they can make, how long will it take once I’ve submitted an order to manufacture, and who will do the shipping for me.
There’s a brand called Amazon Basics and as soon as they see a good product they go with it. Amazon is now making their own jump rope and that’s listed at number one. Amazon Basics has videos in their listings, and pictures in their descriptions, which we can’t, We can’t have those things, so it’s definitely a negative. You’re definitely playing in someone else’s sandbox. It’s also a negative for dropshipping because you’re selling someone else’s product.
The pros far outweigh the cons though, or I wouldn’t be doing it.
What do you wish you knew before starting?
Anton
I wish I knew about the dropshipping model earlier on. While my business was thriving while on a 100% import model, I did not see the opportunity for growth via drop shipping simply because I was not aware that the business model actually existed.
I also wish that I learned how to cut certain suppliers earlier on. I would say that 95% of the time the suppliers that I work with are excellent. With that being said, I have run into issues with certain suppliers in the past and I’ve given them the benefit of the doubt too many times. I wish I would’ve realized that it’s ok to cut off suppliers who do not respect our business and our customer base as much as they should.
Mark
Everything about business is “learn as you go”. I would have loved to know how to manage inventory as that’s probably my biggest issue right now.
It’s also a super cash-heavy business. China doesn’t take credit cards so when I buy jump ropes or any of my products, I’m sending them thousands in cash via wire transfer. In order to get up to that, it takes some selling and some time.
You really have to think long game.
Starting over again, would you choose the same path?
Anton
Definitely! I’ve been at this for almost 10 years now and I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way, but I’ve also done a lot of things right and I am happy to say that I’ve never stopped learning.
I know I struggle with the same problem that most of us entrepreneurs do – the “Shiny Object Syndrome”. In business, there are so many paths to take, but I can 100% say that I am happy I chose eCommerce and have devoted most of my time for the past 10 years figuring out what works, and what doesn’t. Every day is a learning experience, and that’s what makes it worth it.
Mark
Yea, I would. It’s been super fun to build a brand of my own products and it’s been super profitable.
Of all the things I’ve done in my past, this feels like the most solid business I’ve ever created. I love the creativity side and the business side of the business. It’s amazing to see an idea come into fruition.
In closing
If you’d like to find out more about how an FBA business works, check out FBAExpert.com for more on the future of Amazon FBA.
A massive thanks to both Anton and Mark for taking the time to shed some light on Amazon FBA vs dropshipping.
Now, over to you!
Who do you think “won” our debate? Or are both clear winners? Dropshipping or FBA – which do you prefer?
If you want to know about the e-commerce business model in general, then check out our Youtube video explaining how it works.
Discussion
Hi Greg,
There has been a Debate on my website and I was a bit confused which is which.
I think drop shipping is better if you are just starting out and don’t have the capital.
On the other hand, though Selling on Amazon can be expensive, the profit margins will keep you smiling to the bank.
The Sky is the Lower Limit,
-Tony
Hey Tony,
I would say neither is exactly better than the other when starting out. I think it IS possible to get dropshipping started for cheaper than Amazon FBA, but that is only assuming you don’t make any costly mistakes. Dropshipping can have all the hidden costs that can make up the difference of what you would’ve spent on inventory for an FBA business. For example, you’ll need to have an ecommerce website, design that site, still find products with good deals, your email marketing automation and of course money to run paid ads (typically facebook) to sell the products.
All of that can add up rather quickly, especially ads if you don’t know what you’re doing.
On the flipside, Amazon FBA has many of these things taken care of for you. As long as you did good product research, Amazon will often do a lot of the heavy lifting for you in terms of moving your products. Both have ups and downs obviously.
For someone just starting without much capital, I’d highly recommend buying a course or finding a mentor that has really “been there, done that” to try to cut down on potential mistakes.
One thing I’ll note, the skills you’d learn from running a successful dropshipping store I believe are more valuable than what you’d learn with running a successful Amazon FBA business. That is because you’re building out your own brand, even if there is not a huge differentiator just yet between you and the other people selling the same product. It is also much easier to go into sourcing your own products with a dropshipping store, and slowly move all of your dropshipping offers into a kind of upsell that increases your AOV.
You can always expand those sourced products INTO Amazon FBA later too, and enjoy the benefits of all three (dropshipping, sourced product ecommerce, and the traffic benefits of Amazon FBA)
Shopify has an exchange program with already built websites and possible suppliers.
Some of these e commerce stores seem inexpensive, is this a good place to start.
This is all new to me but sounds exciting as well. I would like to try this but not sure what are the right questions to ask the sellers
Hey Yolanda!
The Shopify Exchange is still pretty new. I would wait until they iron out some of the kinks before going that route. Obviously, I’m a bit bias in saying I believe you should use a brokerage like us when it comes to purchasing ecommerce businesses.
One thing you can do is set up a call with one of our Business Advisors. They can help narrow down your criteria, and can also help you understand more about due diligence.
Check out our podcast here about due diligence too. It should help get you started on what kind of questions you should be asking sellers.
I learned a lot in this article, I might try drop shipping first, and when things go well, I will use fba instead.
Is $10,000 cash enough for to start any of this? But I would like at least 10% return at the end of the year after all the fees + income tax. Do I need to worry income tax? If you think I can start and earn money. Who do I talk to how do I start or which ones should I start. ?What anton and mark last name there is no information of their website or address will they teach ? I got good paid full time job I would like to do the least possible.
Any help ?
Hey Ben!
Anton is the owner and creator of Dropship Lifestyle. It is a training course specifically for dropshipping entrepreneurs. His last name is Kraly.
You absolutely can start a dropshipping store for $10,000. One thing to keep in mind though is your cashflow, you have to be good at managing that so you can make sure you can cover any of the expenses of the items you are selling. This is especially true if your supplier is going to be paying you on a net 30 or a net 60 pay schedule. Keep this in mind as you might want to actually “slow” growth a bit if you can’t put up the capital needed to survive those pay periods.
As far as income tax goes, that is a really individualized basis. Though, Mark Faggiano’s company over at TaxJar might be able to better answer that question for you.
As far as doing the least possible, I would invite you to expand that horizon. For your first store… you’re going to be doing A LOT before it gets easy. You’re going have to learn the ropes before you can delegate out a lot of the tasks. If you do the least amount possible, you’re likely to get the least amount of ROI and likely just to lose money.
Even with a full time job, there are always windows of time you can carve for the business. Create a schedule and stick to it and reward yourself with some easy to hit goals that are along the way to your larger, more ambitious goals.
Very good artcile with two very interesting people with a lot good advice. I tried fba it s really cool to have a strong partner like Amazon even if you can fine product with good margin their cut can seems a lot (arounf 15%).
For dropshipping, at the time i try with shopify i was not capable of having a nice shop i drop it. And as an affiliate i saw a lot people taking the 15 days free and they didn’t start i m sure because they ghave to design the site or paid someone to do it.
For the more experienced they can try on woocommerce, prestashop it s free but you have to design your boutique, your store either way.
Design is definitely important for dropshipping, and the partner with Amazon when you do FBA IS very strong.
My (very personal) recommendation is if you have the capital then do the Amazon FBA route because takes a lot of the work you have to do out of the equation. If you don’t have a lot of capital, thne I would start up a Shopify store most likely and bulk add a nice catalog from vendors to help me possibly rank for random long tail keywords to benefit from organic orders.
If you start off by importing shipments to Amazon, how do you go about have that inventory shipped to Amazon? Do you have it shipped from the supplier to Amazon? Do you have it shipped to you? Then you ship it to Amazon? If so, how do you set up your profit margins on how you want to sell it if it goes straight to Amazon? Sorry for all the questions. But I quit my job to do this full time. I really need to make this work for me and my family’s sake. My wife thinks i’m crazy and this will never work. I know it can, I just need to find someone that is willing to help the small guy out. Please help, Thanks
I believe it ships directly to Amazon. You can find out from the manufacturer or Amazon itself. I believe in you. You will be a success.
I’m jumping into this because I need to believe there is something better for me than what I have now.
Whoa, great interviews and article. I didn’t realize how much cash it requires to even get started with FBA… 3-5K (according to Mark) is definitely a risk.
It seems like FBA is a no-brainer for a brand that’s up and running and looking for 1 more channel to sell their gear. But as someone starting out in e-commerce it’s not as clear cut.
I see cons in either. Lack of control is one. With FBA, Amazon doesn’t show you how your sales and traffic are arriving at your products, as mentioned. That’s tough.
And in drop shipping you don’t have control over your suppliers.. inventory, availability, responsiveness. But you DO have control over which suppliers you work with I suppose.
Anyway, interesting interviews and it definitely helped me understand the differences between the two methods.
Hey guys, this article was really interesting.
Mark says he would “take all the orders through Shopify and then manually put them in eBay”. It would be helpful to know if he ever solved that problem or if it was one of the reasons he moved to FBA.
This article was very interesting to read. Thank you Anton and Mark and thanks EF for publishing it. It was helpful.
Hey guys!
I just wanted to thank you: Your recent FBA/niche site/drop shipping articles have been a huge help to me.
FBA has a lot of cons but I would choose it anyway simply for the fact that you can create your own brand and set your own profit margin / create a product with an USP.
I love the hybrid model even more though!
Keep up the great work with Empire Flippers and the podcast!
I enjoyed this article. I’ve been looking into FBA as well as Antons Drop-Ship Lifestyle. This helped clear up some questions I had.
Thanks,
Sergie