Drop servicing is where you sell services you don’t fulfill yourself. So you sell a dentist a new website for $3,000. You then hire a freelance web designer to knock it out for $1,000. You pocket $2,000 and go do it again. Lovely. No wonder gurus are popping up left and right trying to get you to invest in their dropservicing course. It really does sound like the best business model ever. Do nothing but match buyer with seller, cash check, repeat.
But is it too good to be true? Like, is drop servicing even legal? Of course it is, as long as you’re not ripping your clients off and giving them products and services they’re unhappy with. And it can be pretty profitable if you do it right. So here’s my thing. If you start a drop servicing business and your marketing’s ethical and honest and you overdeliver for clients and pay your “fulfillers” well? I have no issue with drop servicing. What I do have an issue with? Is how it’s being presented.
Yes, it’s beginner-friendly. Sure, you can probably do it without prior experience, special skills, or even being good with computers. And yeah, if you’re doing free marketing methods, you can get started dropservicing with very little money. All accurate statements. But these drop servicing “experts” who want you to buy their course for $1,997? Some of the stuff they’re saying is just laughable. For example, they say it’s “brand new” and that “no one else online is talking about this.”
Truth is, while the term may be fairly new, the concept is not. This is Business 101. Get good at selling something, find other people who’ll do the dirty work for cheap, keep the difference, rinse, repeat, go snorkeling in The Bahamas, right? It’s just that, with more traditional offline businesses, the worker bees are called employees; whereas, here, with dropservicing, you call ’em virtual assistants or independent contractors or freelancers or gig workers, or whatever floats your boat, right? Point being, it’s not new.
But whatever. Of all the little white lies marketers like to tell, rebranding something to make it seem cool and trendy, in the grand scheme of things, is pretty innocent. What’s more maddening (and dangerous for you) is when these guys are all like, “Here’s how to copy and paste your way to $10,000 in the next 30 days as a drop servicer.” Dude. If it were that quick and easy, everyone in the world would be doing this. If not full-time, at least as a side hustle. Who wouldn’t want an extra $10k per month from copying and pasting?
The reality is more like this. You do cold outreach to 50 chiropractors, offering to run their Facebook ads, let’s say. Almost all of ’em ghost you or reply and say some not-so-nice things that make you wanna curl up in a ball and cry. Even if you get lucky and close one of ’em, they’ll haggle you on price to where you have to outsource it to the cheapest Facebook ads specialist you can find on Upwork. Naturally, you’ll get what you pay for, the chiropractor will spend more than he makes back, fire you after two weeks, and you’ll be back in the fetal position.
Getting clients is hard. Finding quality freelancers is hard. Managing everyone’s expectations and communicating and updating and constantly trying to keep everyone happy is hard. It just is. Business is hard. That’s why most people have jobs they hate. Which is why these course sellers will never run outta people to target with their YouTube ads, right? And this ugly cycle will continue to repeat itself. But again, drop servicing is fine. Courses are fine. Just don’t buy a drop servicing course from some sketchball, that’s all.
