I have always gotten this question on How To Dropship In Qoo10. I have decided to write this article to benefit beginners who want a foot into an eCommerce business but do not have a huge capital outlay. This model is self-discovered by myself when I first starting doing dropshipping in eBay in 2016 and was thinking if it is replicable in the Singapore market.
To my disappointment, there is a total lack of information about how to dropship in Singapore as the most common method was using Shopify then. As I do not have a huge marketing budget to spend on paid ads, I was thinking of just tapping an eCommerce platform with the largest market share which is Qoo10.
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Qoo10 Business Model
Qoo10 business model is exactly the same as the other Business to Consumer(B2c) platforms you have heard of like Amazon, Shopify or Lazada. They spend millions of marketing dollar to market their platform to millions of users and have lots of different promotions and incentives to encourage buyers to come back to their platform for repurchase.
In order to get a return of investment(ROI), they will need to get sellers or businesses on board to sell their items to the bunch of hungry buyers. They will charge a small fee for every transaction that took place within their platform and will also encourage sellers to pay for ads to move their inventories in Qoo10. They rake in around US$60 million in revenue in 2018 from transaction fees and advertising income.[Source]
How To Sell On Qoo10 Using Dropshipping Model
So in this video, I am going to show you a rough overview of how to sell on Qoo10 using dropshipping model. What we are assuming here is that you have already created a store and have done some listings in your qoo10 store.
If you do not have a qoo10 store yet, you can register as an seller here. Do note that the cost of setting up a qoo10 store now is 10,000 qcash which is equivalent to 100sgd. You can use the qcash to market and advertise any listings in your store.
This dropshipping method is a bit different from the traditional way of doing the business. We do not stock up on inventories and is different from what you have heard of from other courses out there. The traditional manner is where you will have to find your supplier from China, US or South Korea, ship to your warehouse in Singapore, package them and ship out to your customers.
Qoo10 Inventory Management
However, in doing dropshipping, we cut away most of the above-mentioned process and get our listings from Aliexpress. They have a lot of sellers there. Most of the sellers get their products from wholesalers in China.
What we do here is that we get their listings and put into our Qoo10 store with certain markup. What is our advantage here is that we can have maybe 5000-10000 items. Traditionally, you will not be able to have so many items because you will not know what will sell and what cannot sell in the market. And you want to avoid them being stuck in your warehouse or in your house.
Topcashback
For dropshipping we will not need to worry about that as we only process orders when there are sales. We can put in 1000 of items or 10000 items whenever we like. How we process is we use cashback sites like Topcashback which you can sign up with them here.
I have used them since 2016 already so far and they are the best in terms of support and speed of payment. Normally when you request a withdrawal from them, it will only take less than 2-3 business days to receive the money in your PayPal account. If you are an Amazon fan, you can even exchange the cashback as gift cards for your online purchase.
Aliexpress
The difference here you notice is we do not do any shipping from our side. Aliexpress sellers will do the shipping directly to buyers in Qoo10. Our role here is we are like a middleman.
We provide excellent customer service and manage their expectations during the ship out process. Once they receive the item, we will receive the money from our qoo10 account in around 1 months time.
Benefits of Dropshipping in Qoo10
Now you know the overall concept of dropshipping in Qoo10, I would like to briefly share the benefits of this business model after doing it myself since Aug 2016.
Small capital Outlay
Honestly, this is one of the business model where maybe the only outlay you have is the 100SGD required to setup a qoo10 store for listings. I remember I only fork out 100SGD and credit card to kick start this business.
Side income with your Day Job
Unlike other gurus out there, I am not going to tell you to quit your day job and do this full time. However, this is a business where you can really run it with just a laptop and internet anywhere in the world. I slowly grow it from a 4 digits business to a 5 digits business during my spare time while still keeping my day job to cover my expenses.
You can use the extra money to reward yourself, save it or just invest in assets like dividend stocks to generate more recurring income for yourself.
Outsource to VAs
The beauty and flexibility of this model mean you can essentially outsource to someone to take care of the operations of the business while you just pocket the difference in profits. Personally, I have a great experience and working relationship with VAs from the Philippines. They speak good English and is very hardworking.
You will be able to engage their services for between 100USD to 300USD/month on a part time or full time basis. Check out the platform I use here which I feel have a wide source of readily available offshore Filipino talent for my dropship business
Dangers of Dropshipping in Qoo10
I am not going to tell you that this is all bed and roses and you expect money to just flush into your house with a few clicks of your mouse. Let me share with you the experience I had dealing with Qoo10 and their standpoint while doing dropshipping with them.
Because of the marketing dollars spent, Qoo10 like other similar platforms are very concerned about their branding among their pool of existing buyers. Unfortunately, they do not really favor dropshipping in their platform as the seller mostly does not own their inventories and cannot control the delivery times to the buyers.
Slow Delivery
It is a fact that delivery from Aliexpress or Bangood can take 2 or more weeks to reach the buyers hand. Do note that Qoo10 track closely the metrics and delivery speed of your store. There are already many instances I have seen that they either cancel my orders or just suspend my account. The great news is that they have not done an outright ban and you can just pay the $100 and start all over again
Lifestyle Business
I have to be honest if you are hoping that this business will be able to help you quit your day job and work on it full time. there is definitely still a limit on what you can earn for this business as you are still at the mercy of Qoo10. I do admit that the side income is enough to cover your monthly Cai ben, groceries and monthly bills if you are single.
But if your ambition is to bring home more than 10k/month, the only way to make it scale to become a full time business, you will definitely have to take on more risk and take on inventories and create your own brand. I would see this as a perfect side hustle for housewives to do it on their free time to bring in extra income for the family or retirees who are bored at home.
Cashflow Issues
Do note that for this business model to work, you will have to swipe your credit card and deliver the items first to the buyers.Qoo10 will normally only release the money one month after your buyers have received the item. You may still need to have a few hundreds of spare cash to pay the bills first until you are getting a weekly withdrawal from qoo10 and also getting recurring cashbacks from topcashback.