In the Financial Times today I read about 34 year old American Darius Gaynor who decided to set up a ‘drop service’ business so that he could escape his ‘cubicle’ job working at a casino resort in Pennsylvania.
Two years later, free from the cubicle job, he sold his drop service business for six figures.
Darius left Pennsylvania and moved to Florida to be closed to family where he runs another drop service business which is paying him a monthly net profit of $22,000 which at the time of writing is roughly £17,880.
I know what you are thinking, ‘what exactly is a drop service business John?’
Drop service is where you resell other people’s online digital services.
You become an online agency where you find clients for a specific service such as copywriting, website building, SEO and branding and you pass the work over to freelance workers.
The freelance worker deals with you and you deal with the client and make money on your mark up of the service.
Drop service is a play on the term ‘drop shipping’ where ecommerce websites sell items that they don’t stock.
They list and sell other people’s products for a higher price and when an order is placed they, or the system, orders it from the manufacturer or original retailer and has it sent to the customer directly.
It’s all very ‘hands off’.
The most they do once the website is up and running is marketing and administration such as processing orders and dealing with customers. Very often that is outsourced to someone else.
With drop service, you do something similar, you offer companies specific services then hand the work over to other people who you pay once you have been paid.
They do the work while you communicate with the client and process the order.
This is an ‘inbetweener’ or ‘middle person’ style business because you place yourself between client and freelancer.
Thanks to the shrinking world and the ease of access, the digital services market has exploded with people from all across the globe offering services.
The gig economy is booming.
It has allowed people in countries which some would consider underdeveloped or emerging to offer services and escape the poverty and hardship of their social and economic environment.
Those people can do quality work at a fraction of the cost freelancers in the UK can offer and so the people who offer drop services very often capitalise on that cheap overseas labour…
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There is a big love-hate relationship with some freelancers and those who run drop services because of the price differences.
Because the freelancer market is quite saturated, a lot of freelancers charge lower fees to land clients.
Those who are new and looking to get started will sell their services lower than seasoned freelancers. They charge less so that they find work.
The thought that they end up working for a few dollars when the drop service owners who hire them through websites like Fiverr and Upwork makes double or triple what they get paid doesn’t sit well with them.
They joined those platforms to find reliable first hand clients, not necessarily to be hired by an inbetweener.
Darius says that “the more you charge, the more your services are perceived to be premium value”, which I agree with, but the problem for many freelancers who are starting out, is that they are not being paid any more than the basic and they are not getting to make those important connections with the clients.
Freelancers rely on clients coming back and rehiring them. They need to nurture relationships with clients and eventually they can increase their fees.
Many freelancers feel that they are being ‘cheated’ by drop service providers.
This may be the case for a few drop service providers, but the fact remains, it is still a viable business model and you can make a lot of money doing it.
30 year old Moroccan Yassine Harouchi has run 10 drop services in the last four years and admits that he personally doesn’t find running drop service businesses fulfilling, it’s not what he ‘lives for’, he does it ‘for the money’.
The money can be incredibly good.
A drop service is basically an agency where you do work for paying clients but instead of having full time employees, you simply outsource the work to freelancers.
In the real world, this was known as sub-contracting.
When our techy guy Andi worked in the building trade, he dealt with many companies who hired trades people to do services which they had sold to clients.
He remembered once working at a joinery workshop where every now and then a guy would come in and order bespoke office furniture. He specialised in fitting out home offices yet he never did any of the actual fitting or design work.
He simply found clients through marketing and then ‘hired’ whichever sub-contractors he needed to do specific jobs. He hired designers, carpenters, painters, electricians etc.
When they had finished the work, he would pay them and then invoiced the client.
He was the ‘man in the middle’ and that is exactly what a drop service provider is except it is all done online.
It’s nothing new, it has been happening for years but now a lot of people are doing it online and making a lot of money.
Could becoming a drop service provider be the ideal business model for you?
If you are not one for managing numerous clients and freelancers and would rather make money offering a premium service where you work for one person at a time for a high fee then you should consider learning how to write sales letters.
Being able to write sales letters and sales material is one of those skills where you can charge the right clients thousands of pounds.
It is through the use of sales letters that we and many other businesses have made millions and so if you know how to write a profitable sales letter, your skills are going to be incredibly valuable to the right people.
If you would like to know how to write profitable sales letters which can have you earning thousands of pounds from the right clients go to:
One Letter From Retirement
Kind regards
John Harrison
PS… Knowing how to write a profitable sales letter is one of those ‘in demand’ skills and demand is growing. With more and more businesses moving online, the need for quality written sales letters is huge. The market is growing.
Industries, business methods and money making strategies may come and go, but companies will always need quality sales letter writers.
Here’s that link again: