EVERY WEEK, WE bring you a round-up of the best longreads of the past seven days in Sitdown Sunday.

For the next few weeks, we’ll be bringing you an evening longread to enjoy which will help you to escape the news cycle.

We’ll be keeping an eye on new longreads and digging back into the archives for some classics.

Inside the weird, get-rich-quick world of dropshipping

In places like northern Thailand and Indonesia, dropshipping has emerged as a fast-growing get-rich-quick scheme for the modern age. Using online storefronts and Chinese retailers like AliExpress, people are making huge amounts of money acting like internet middlemen.

Dropshippers will advertise products on platforms like Facebook and Instagram and when they make sales, buy the products from Chinese retailers and ship them directly to the buyer. With one seller reporting 1.5 million in sales in his first year, is there something to dropshipping or is it a fluke for a select few?

(Wired, approx 20 minute read)

Dropshipping is a “fulfilment” method. At one end of the supply chain, an entrepreneur identifies a product – usually through Chinese e-commerce platform AliExpress – which they think they can sell to European or American consumers. They create a website using Shopify, and identify and target buyers, typically using Facebook ads, although you will find dropshippers on other platforms, including Instagram, or selling through marketplaces such as online homeware store Wayfair.

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