Dropshipping Vs Mini Importation Business: Which is More Profitable?

You may be longing to see a detailed comparison of Dropshipping Vs Mini Importation or mini-importation as they call it.

Dropshipping is gradually becoming a thing in the Nigerian atmosphere and other countries and that’s really a great deal!

First, I’m going to be detailed as possible and explain to you how they all work, the pros and cons and how they’re all better than the other.

You should also know, the both are profitable businesses and with some success stories and my experiences in dropshipping and importation respectively, you can make good money from any one, but one business always have an upper hand and we’all find the winner together.

For your interest, you can add the following to your checklist:

• How to Start a Dropshipping Business in Nigeria.

Dropshipping VS Mini Importation: Who’s the Winner?

I’ll start by saying mini importation and dropshipping business do the same thing, but there are slight differences

They’re just opposite of each other and I’ll explain in a bit.

Dropshipping is a cool business model and easy to start. Apparently, this is when you setup a dropship store using any dropshipping ecommerce platform.

A popular place to dropship from is Aliexpress. Aliexpress is a wholesale store filled with super cheap products including the ones you’ve seen or never seen. Depending on your dropshipping platform, you’ll know how to import products Aliexpress to your dropshipping store.

An example is AliDropship WordPress Plugin, they automate your dropshipping business for you and do almost everything in auto pilot, you can read our post on AliDropship review for more clarification.

Meanwhile, we’ll both find out who the clear winner is.

Important Links (Table of Contents)

• What is a Dropshipping Business?
• How to Start a Dropshipping Business.
• What is Mini-Importation Business?
• How to Start a Mini-Importation Business.
• Comparisons of Dropshipping and Importation.
• Which Business is Preferred?
• Final Thoughts.

What is a Dropshipping Business?

Dropshipping business is an incredible business model which everyone is talking about.

We recently made a guide on setting up a dropship store on a budget and I’m quite sure, you’ll love it.

In e-commerce, there’s been a lot of talk about drop shipping.

If you are not familiar with drop shipping, it’s a business model where you, as a store owner, don’t need to buy products in advance. You just add a necessary product to your site (images and price) and when someone purchases it, you buy it from supplier who ships this item directly to your customer.

So, when starting an online business, it lets you easily avoid the hassles of things like developing products, tracking inventory, setting up warehouse space, and maintaining a confusing shipping/receiving infrastructure.

Dropshipping is considered a low-risk business model making it great for new entrepreneurs.

Are you ready to start a dropshipping business?

As soon as it’s done, you can start marketing to get your sales.

How to Start a Dropshipping Business?

As you probably know, AliExpress is an extremely popular retail platform, whose order volume exceeds that of Amazon and eBay combined. And AliExpress’ prices are so low that you can multiply them by 10 and still have the best offers in your market.

No wonder that so many online entrepreneurs are keen to start a drop shipping business with AliExpress.

And today starting this kind of business is easier than ever. Because there is AliDropship Plugin! It’s the unique WordPress based solution to assist with the creation of AliExpress drop shipping stores and easy importing of Ali products. You can have your own webstore built in minutes. This tool is so easy to manage, that even a kid can launch a drop shipping store with its help!

Key benefits of AliDropship plugin:- Affordable price with no limitations.

– Fully compatible with WordPress.
– Fully compatible with WordPress + WooCommerce.
– Simple and user-friendly interface.
– Easy product search and instant upload.
– Live stats and auto updating.
– Built-in themes optimised for high conversions.
– Free lifelong support and updates.

You can have your AliDropship plugin forever now.

And in case you want a 100% hassle-free start, you can order a turnkey custom drop shipping store from AliDropship professional team, and begin getting revenues right away.

Told you it was easy. It’s also really fun!

Starting a drop shipping store shouldn’t be a pain rather a gain, thus we will be recommending the easiest way to setup a super doper dropshipping store.

For this guide, we will be recommending you start your dropship business with WordPress and to do that, you’ll be needing the AliDropship Plugin.

AliDropship is the best dropshipping platform which doesn’t rip your pocket or budget apart.

One of the incredible features I love about AliDropship is the possibility to import reviews to your dropshipping store. What I mean is, assuming 5 (five) of the products you imported to your store has 102, 99, 1300, 451 and 29 products reviews respectively on Aliexpress.

You can still import the reviews to integrate with the products on your store and that’s an amazing feature.

This helps for visibility and social proof!

This is something Shopify doesn’t have!

The Alidropship Aliexpress dropshipping plugin costs only $89 and it’s a one-time fee, when you buy it, you use it forever. No monthly fees or annual fees.

Would you rather pay monthly fees of about $29/mo to host your store and risk not making money?

If yes, then you can check out other alternatives like WooDropship, Dropified and Dropshipme etc.

Having wild thoughts? You can read our AliDropship Review and read the features and your benefits.

A 25% discount code awaits you if you act fast.

Go to AliDropship here, click on the buy button on the page, on the check out page, locate the coupon code, enter “WOO25” and click on Redeem!

… and you have a 25% off your purchase!

You’ll need a WordPress website to install your Alidropship plugin.

For your interest, check the following guides:

• AliDropship Review 2019.
• How to Setup a WordPress Website/Blog on BlueHost.
• How to Install AliDropship Plugin on WordPress Site.

What is a Mini-Importation Business?

This is not a new thing to you, is it?

With the word “Import” or “Importation“, you already know, it means buying things from another country and have it sent or shipped to your own country.

When I was in to Mini importation, I made some money before I got busier and advanced into other businesses.

Because there is a lot of work, such as promotion, delivery and shipping, inventory and much more.

And as a small single business entity, I do everything my self including delivery and shipping.

Speaking ’bout importation, this is when you buy goods in bulk and the supplier sends it to your agent in that country and in turn, your agent ships it to your destination country.

A lot of things goes on at that point and I’ll explain.

You pay for your shipping according to the shipping method you told your agent to use.

• Express (2-3 days): If the supplier takes approx. 3 days to ship the goods to your agent, then you’all get your goods in a week time after your agent ships it to your location in 2-3 days.
• Cargo (10-20 days).

Then, the goods shipping cost will be calculated according to your shipping method and the total KG of the package.

You only pay for shipping when your item has arrived in your destination country.

Meanwhile, importation haven’t made sense without a TRUSTED AGENT, it’s a necessity.

How to Start a Mini-Importation Business?

Like we previously said, your journey to start a mini-importation business without an AGENT is NULL and VOID!

However, three of the popular places to start an importation business in priority order are:

• Alibaba.
• 1688.
• Taobao.

When you visit Alibaba, search for products you wish to import which you know that will sell out faster in your country.

Chat up the supplier or seller and discuss price, the price he/she will tell you is directly propotional to the quantity of the product you intend to buy.

If the both of you reach an agreement, the supplier sends you an invoice to pay with your credit/debit card or if they accepts PayPal, you can pay with PayPal.

Let them know they will be shipping to your Agent in China and that’s it.

When they ship it within 2-3 days, it will get your Agent and your agent takes it up from there.

NOTE: Your agent doesn’t need your house address or anything, the only thing you can do, is tell your supplier to write “your name, phone number and shipping number” on the carton.

So, you won’t bother yourself texting your supplier on Whatsapp.

For a Comprehensive Training on Mini-Importation, do well to contact us at Joy@theprofany.com and we’ll get you started.

Comparisons of Dropshipping and Importation

Let’s do a little comparison by mentioning the pros and cons of dropshipping and mini-importation.

• Buying a Product.

In dropshipping, you don’t purchase any products, you only add price, use images and videos on your store, and when you get a sale, your supplier ships the product to your customer. If the product costs $25 on your store and $5 on suppliers store, you will make $20 in profit per sale.

In Importation, You buy the products in bulk before planning to sell.

• Delivery & Shipping.

In dropshipping, you don’t ship any products, because you don’t keep inventory, your supplier does that and the items you’re dropshipping is in their position. And when you make a sale and reorder the product on their store, they ship it to your customer.

In Importation, you’re in charge of shipping and delivery and all the hassels you may encounter.

• Developing Products.

In drop shipping, you are not in charge of developing or manufacturing product. Your supplier takes charge of that.

In importation, you still don’t develop or manufacture. You’re the wholesaler or retailer buying from the manufacturers in large quantity. Sometimes in mini-importation, you sell products as a wholesaler when you get customers willing to buy in bigger quantities and sometimes you sell as a retailer directly to consumers.

• Selling at Fixed Price?

In dropshipping, it’s surprising you can sell up to x1o of the price of the product on Aliexpress on your dropship store. You can sell at any price, funny enough you can also sell at a “greedy price” and customers will still purchase it if your marketing was done well.

I know of a store doing sunglass dropshipping and they’re selling sunglasses for over $70 and above and that really shocked me!

Like it really did! 😮

Sunglasses are in the range of $1 – $15 in aliexpress but majority of beautiful sunglasses are within the range of $1 – $9. They’re super cheap and a dropship store is selling at $69 – $110 with a discount code to entice buyers to think they’re doing them a favour.

Oh Mehn!!! 😁

In dropship business, you have full authority and can fix any price you want.

In Importation, you can also sell any price you want, but there is a limit and how far you’ll go fixing a price, so the product won’t be overpriced. Yes, it’s funny but that’s how the whole process works, it can be daunting at times and yes, I know! 😂

• Physical Product?

In dropshipping, you don’t actually see the product, although some drop shippers who has found a supplier do purchase just one piece of the product they want to dropship to know the quality and if it’s a good product for their intending customers.

But after that, they don’t see the products coming to their customers, but they have fate that the product is indeed of quality and very good.

In importation, of course you see, feel and touch the product and know what you’re about to sell or deliver to your customers.

Which Business is Preferred – Rolling the Dice!

Right now, some intending mini-importers and people who already import are also trying to have a taste of dropshipping business because they like the business model.

Are you one of them?

Dropshipping is just an easy and stress free business, its your supplier that does almost everything. Your work is just to create a “connection” to which customers go to you first which happens to be your dropshipping store and then you have to engage in store promotions to make a sale.

If you read our comparison of dropshipping and importation above, you will find out dropshipping had the highest points in terms of risk-free, stress-free and the most profitable.

Final Thoughts?

Would you choose dropshipping business over mini-importation?

Or …

Would you choose mini-importation business over dropshipping business?

I’m going to make a decision based on the profit margins, which business is most profitable and the business which has litttle or no stress including free from risk by stating my facts right!

I haven’t said anything yet, but I know you already know my mind and which business I was going to choose.

So, READ MY MIND! 😉

Drop your thoughts and suggestions below, and don’t forget to share if I satisfied you educationally.

Don’t forget to read mind! 😁😁