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Back in college I started Alphalux, A men’s accessories mostly bracelets business. I was a full time college student and was working at a pharmaceutical company full time. I would custom order bracelets at Alibaba with my logo on it. Would pay wholesale price of $0.75 per bracelet and would sell it for $10-$30 dollars on Etsy and my website. It was fun while it lasted. I was making $3-4K a month until dropshipers ruined the market.

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Would you mind sharing how dropshipers ruined it?

I’m not a dropshipper myself, but I know a couple of people who have gotten into it.

Not OP, but I've done some work in the space. The market is just saturated now. It takes such little effort to start a dropshipping "business" that unless you have a really unique angle or spend absurd amounts on marketing, you'll probably make somewhere in the range of peanuts to beer money.

Even if you do find a successful niche market, it won't take long for a low budget clone to jump in, which invalidates a lot of the up front work in marketing and product validation.

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