A 156,000-follower adolescent on TikTok wants to help you change your life, starting with making real money. He describes his journey from being destitute and working at Starbucks to moving into a high-rise in Miami and considering retiring at the age of 30 in his films.
“All right, dude…
Please be truthful with me. How do you manage to generate that much money at the age of 19? In a TikTok, he wonders. He argues that the solution is to start a “drop service” business. You’ll discover thousands of videos like this on TikTok if you search for Drop Service, with creators — typically young males – praising their business acumen and revealing their secret. The promises are well-known: It reads, “$10,000+ a week doing nothing.” « 13-45 years old Do you want to make a ton of money online? another inquires. “Side hustles that will make you RICH (with minimal effort)” or “side hustles that will make you RICH (with low effort).”
There are curious viewers who want to know more, indignant onlookers, and, of course, numerous success stories in the comments: “Guys, this stuff actually works; I’m 14 and I made $3,000,000.”
Drop-serving is another side business that promises greatness and has gotten a lot of buzz on social media. It is named after the more well-known practice of drop shipment. Drop shipping is when a merchant sells real things online without keeping inventory. Instead, the retailer orders directly from a manufacturer, who then distributes the goods to the customer. The markup is subsequently pocketed by the intermediary. Drop shipping is frequently viewed as unscrupulous or misleading by buyers who are unaware of the origins of the product.
Drop-service, also known as service arbitrage or service reselling, uses the same paradigm to offer intangible services and products like text editing, voice-over work, graphic design, or social media marketing strategy — a more specialized employment.
Everyone gets what they want in a perfect situation: the worker makes a sale, the client receives their product, and the person in the middle makes a profit to facilitate the transaction. However, this creates an odd situation: self-employed people don’t always know who they’re working for or how much their job is worth, and when issues develop, the individual doing the work can get burnt.
Before going into drop shipping, May Ng, a Singapore-based drop servicer, worked as a real estate salesperson. She discovered a YouTube video illustrating service arbitrage in 2019 and realized she might make more money delivering specialized services, such as video editing for real estate firms. She primarily seeks out local clients, and she believes that she has placed positions for between 50 and 70 businesses.
Ng employs from a pool of approximately 15 individuals, the majority of whom she discovers on Fiverr, an online marketplace where workers sell one-time jobs known as gigs. Gigs range from writing a 500-word frightening fiction to filing a tax return to making artwork for non-profits. Ng is an expert in reselling video editing and social media services.
It’s easy to see how deposit services that know how to juggle customers may make money when browsing Fiverr. Resellers may get a personalized logo for the price of a latte or a wedding video for less than $250. The cost to the original customer for video editing projects is at least twice as much as Ng’s Fiverr buy; other activities, such as social media management, where Ng arranges freelancer-produced material, might see a 500% markup.
Drop service is frequently portrayed as a get-rich-quick life hack on YouTube and TikTok videos, but Ng claims that being the middle manager is difficult. She’ll have to hustle to locate a (decent) replacement if a Fiverr worker abandons her. If a freelancer’s turnaround time is three days, the client will be given an estimate for five days. People, she claims, frequently misunderstand the abilities required to successfully execute tasks and are only looking for a quick method to make money.
Her TikTok wasn’t very popular until she started talking about her company. Ng’s content delivery business has now come full circle: she was just admitted into the TikTok creator marketplace and is now being approached by brands for brand partnerships. It’s another method for the stay-at-home mom to supplement her income, a means to further monetize her delicate balance of efficiency — a side hustle all the way down. Ng said that spending time with her family will be her top focus in the future. “It’s so easy to generate money online nowadays, thanks to the digital world.”
References:
- https://public.uk.com/2022/02/09/reselling-gig-work-is-tiktoks-newest-side-hustle/
- https://bonneinfo.com/2022/02/09/gig-work-drop-shipping-fiverr-tiktok/