The model, and the honest failure rate

Dropshipping means selling products you do not hold. A customer orders from you, you order from a supplier, and the supplier ships directly to the customer.

Why it appeals. No stock to buy, no warehouse, low starting cost, and you can test many products without committing money to any of them.

Why most people lose money. The honest figure is that the large majority of dropshipping stores never become profitable, and this is not stated by the people selling courses about it, because their income is the course.

Where it goes wrong, specifically.

Margins are thin and advertising is expensive. You are buying traffic to sell a product anybody can source, at a price anybody can undercut. A great many stores spend more acquiring a customer than they make on the order and do not notice for months.

Delivery is slow, frequently weeks from overseas suppliers, and customers who waited three weeks leave reviews about it.

You control nothing that matters. Product quality, packaging, stock availability and shipping time are all somebody else's, and every complaint is yours.

Returns are difficult when the item shipped from another country.

The model works for some people, and the ones it works for are almost always doing something specific: a product they sourced carefully, a market they understand, a brand they built, and margins they calculated before spending anything. It is a business rather than a shortcut, and it is presented as the second.