I made 36k without any ads but I am still not satisfied

★★ signal-medium r/dropshipping · ↑ 101 · 💬 91 · 2025-06-28 · kw: alternative to · open on reddit ↗

Tool

AliExpress, Amazon FBA

Issue

Dropshipper earning $36k annually receives daily customer complaints about slow shipping times (AliExpress default) and product quality, creating operational friction and burnout despite passive revenue model.

Cost

$36k annual revenue (gross, net margins unstated); time cost: 5 months initial content creation + ongoing daily complaint emails

Recommendation

AliExpress Local+ program (France warehouses); Amazon FBA with affiliate links to redirect orders; outsource customer email management to third-world contractor; explore local EU suppliers despite margin compression

Date context

2025-06-28; AliExpress Local+ recently expanded to EU/France warehouses (referenced as new program)

extracted with

anthropic/claude-haiku-4.5 · 2026-05-08

Body

I started dropshipping back in 2021 and learned SEO along the way. I put in around 5 months of late nights writing product pages and blog posts. The strategies I used ended up working pretty well — now I barely do anything, yet the website still keeps growing. I’m happy with the money I’ve made so far, but lately I’ve been thinking about quitting altogether. I get daily emails from customers unhappy with slow shipping or product quality. On top of that, it feels pretty draining to keep creating content for cheap Chinese products from AliExpress. I’m looking for alternatives, but I’m stuck. I don’t enjoy writing SEO content, and I can’t handle shipping myself since I don’t live in the country where I sell. I’ve considered trying Amazon FBA to let them take care of logistics, but I’m worried my customers won’t be happy being redirected to Amazon instead of buying directly from my site. Any advice or ideas would be really appreciated!

Top comments (5)

[score=24] Sufficient-Buy-2270

Send your stuff to Amazon, sell the products through your website and use affiliate links to buy your own stuff from Amazon and send to your customers for faster shipping times.

[score=6] Wild_Mention_8275

Can anyone teach me to make at least 1k a month 😅😭😭😭

[score=7] zed_sin

Outsource the basic stuff. Find someone in third world country to take care of emails. Find a way to focus only on stuff you enjoy otherwise you will burn out

[score=3] freyjauser

Congratulations for the 36K. Now, I don’t know about your net margins, but I’d say that your next logical step would be to try and solve the shipping delay issue. If you’re dropshipping from Aliexpress, depending on the products you’re selling, you can check for their new “Local+” program. They have settled in EU and they have warehouses in France now. They are very aware of the problem and you should take advantage of this. Now, if your whole business is getting boring to you, might be time to take that money you earned and slowly start investing into more “serious” stuff? Anyways, I also understand you don’t like SEO, and I get it. Honestly, with the current state of technology, writing an SEO article shouldn’t take you more than a few minutes. If even that gets to your nerves, just go for automation. You set a time-based web hook that will fire the whole workflow and then you have nothing to do, apart from verifying from time to time. For your customer support, set a chatbot. It’s an easy thing to do, and it will cut down on the workload for a good 50-60%, allowing you to focus on more urgent stuff. All of that takes time, but it’s a one-time thing. Hit me up, if you want to talk about it!

[score=1] paulgoogle

You say you're selling to France, do you state how long the shipping times are n your site? And are they correct? If so, i wouldn't dwell to much on that. if you're really bothered, have you had a look for potential suppliers in France? Will obviously dramatically cut into your margins, but if you're adamant on cutting shipping times down.... Quality wise, you'll need to look into that yourself, if you're selling 5$ tat, what do you expect?