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A shady new side-hustle earning people $10K in a week
Who doesn’t want to earn extra money, especially during these difficult times? People have taken on side gigs during the pandemic or discovered new careers.
With remote work becoming so prominent, there are more ways to make money without leaving your house. From sitting on a virtual jury to transcribing audio, the opportunities are there if you know where to look. Tap or click here for some tips to get you started.
You may be aware of dropshipping, where retailers put items for sale that they don’t have in stock. When a customer makes an order, the retailer purchases the item from a third party, such as a wholesaler or manufacturer, which ships the item directly to the consumer. The retailer pockets the difference from the marked-up items. Drop servicing works much in the same way, but can it make you money?
Here’s the backstory
Dropshipping has gained popularity through social media as a fast and easy method to make tons of cash. Proponents promise that you can make money for doing very little work. As with any such claim, it’s not so clear-cut.
Dropshipping profits depend on many factors, including the length of your supply chain (the more middlemen, the less your profit), availability of products (you won’t always know when a supplier has an item in stock) and lack of control over customer service (you have to rely on the supplier to be expedient and act in good faith). You also have to figure out shipping costs and methods and the billing process.
Drop servicing works in much the same manner as dropshipping. And it has become a favorite tool for the hustle culture generation to get more followers to their social media.
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Service arbitrage
Drop servicing involves reselling a service rather than a product. The retailer sells services such as editing, writing, voice-over work, photography, marketing, website design, graphic design and more.
A customer purchases a service, and the drop servicer hires someone else to provide the service for less than the customer paid, generating a profit.
As with dropshipping, there are controversies with this practice. The client typically doesn’t know where the service is coming from, and they are charged more than they would pay for purchasing the service directly. The service provider, in turn, doesn’t know who they’re working for.
If a problem arises with the service, the provider could be out of luck. They will not have contact with the buyer, which means all communication has to go through an intermediary, which will cause more problems.
Watch out when looking for outside help
As with any viral trend, take caution. The social media influencers who are touting the too-good-to-be-true benefits of drop servicing may not even participate in the practice.
The goal for content creators is more views, shares and followers, and when a hot trend comes along, they’ll jump on it and talk about it until it fades.
If you’re running a business and seeking help from service providers, you can try online marketplaces such as Fiverr, UpWork, FlexJobs, PeoplePerHour and Guru, among many others.
While these agencies are outsourcing the work, you know it upfront. You will have access to dedicated customer service, which will work to solve issues that may arise.
Keep reading
Before you buy anything from a social media ad, read this warning
Scammers have a clever new way to trick shoppers into wasting money
Tags: editing, extra money, pandemic, photography, remote work, scammers, social media, TikTok, warning, writing
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