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Comment by gnicholas | Hacker News Reader

> Indeed during the recent dotcom mania a bunch of quack business writers suggested that the company of the future would be totally virtual — just a trendy couple sipping Chardonnay in their living room outsourcing everything.

Kind of funny to read this, now that the practice is no longer a fantasy. I'm thinking of devs who have outsourced their jobs, and Amazon/Etsy sellers who simply resell/drop-ship goods from Alibaba.

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> Kind of funny to read this, now that the practice is no longer a fantasy. I'm thinking of devs who have outsourced their jobs, and Amazon/Etsy sellers who simply resell/drop-ship goods from Alibaba.

One of the issues with being a middleman without a moat is that there's downward pressure on your margin over time until you are squeezed out of the market.

Given the amount of ads I get encouraging people to become a Amazon drop-shipper, I assume that making money doing that has got hard enough that selling shovels became more profitable.

I was doing it about 5 years ago, and it was mildly profitable without putting in a lot of effort. I see a lot more things dropshipped on amazon now, etc, so it would probably take a lot more effort now to make any serious money.

> the amount of ads I get encouraging people to become a Amazon drop-shipper...

In other words, it's more profitable teaching people to become Amazon drop-shippers than it is to be one.

Adding value propositions:

Find a cheaper way to do something Find a better way to market something

He wasn't wrong. End of the day, these kind of 'businesses' are merely exploiting a market inefficiency that won't last forever.

Isn't that the whole point of trading goods? Making the match between producer and customer? IMHO there is no added value in rolling shipping, or having inventory.

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