Dropshipping is a fulfillment model: you sell a product without holding inventory. A customer orders from your store, you forward that order (and payment, minus your markup) to a supplier, and the supplier ships directly to the customer. You never touch the product.

The honest margin math

A common beginner mistake is assuming dropshipping is free money. Walk through a real example:

• Supplier cost: $8
• You sell at: $25
• Ad spend to get that one sale (realistic for a new store): $6–$12
• Payment processor fee (~3%): ~$0.75
• Platform fee (if applicable, e.g. marketplace commission): varies

Your real profit on that sale might be $4–$10, not the $17 the naive “cost vs. sell price” math suggests. Every module in this course — product research, SEO, email automation — exists specifically to shrink that ad-spend line item and grow the margin that’s left over, because paid ads alone rarely make dropshipping profitable long-term for a beginner with minimal capital.