Drop servicing

Drop servicing: drop shipping but for a service

Shaan explains 'drop servicing' (a term from Ryan Beagleman): instead of shipping a product you don't hold, you fulfill an on-demand service through contractors, marketing it yourself and only paying when an order comes in. It's a low-capital way to start.

“So people have heard of drop shipping, which is basically like You market on Facebook or wherever else, you sell a product to a customer, but it's a product that you don't hold in inventory. As soon as you get the order from a customer, you place an order with your manufacturer, the manufacturer ships it directly to the person. So it's a way to do e-commerce without having to buy and hold inventory because you're just directly shipping to customers straight from the factory.”

Steal thisSell an on-demand service you fulfill with contractors, marketing on Facebook and only paying once an order lands.

Cartoon dog canvas: $150 product fulfilled by a $5 Fiverr job

Shaan describes businesses that look like one thing but are humans doing cheap work behind the scenes. His test case: customers upload a dog photo, you get a cartoon made on Fiverr for $5, put it on canvas for ~$25, and sell the finished product for $150.

“The first is I found a website online that you pay $150 and you get a cartoon dog canvas. And so what you do is, it's like, I've— and I made a website to test it. All it is is You upload a photo of your dog, they send it out to like fiverr.com, they get the cartoon made for $5, and then you can get it put on canvas for like $25. They sell for $150.”

Steal thisFind an impressive cheap deliverable, wrap it in a polished niche website, and resell it at a large markup while managing the contractors.

Build a business in 30 days by reselling and repositioning Fiverr gigs

Shaan's playbook: find the most impressive $5 work on Fiverr, build a beautiful website around it, and resell at a big markup, OR find a poorly-positioned gig and re-market it to a sharp niche. The whole company is just managing the contractors.

“What I think someone can do, and I think I personally— I don't want to do this, I think I could do this in a matter of 30 days— is build a company by going to fiverr.com, finding one of two things. One, the most impressive $5 bit of work, right? Something that like I would see this and I'd be like, are you kidding me? This is only $5, right? Then I would make my own website and make it look amazing and sell it at a massive uptick and then just manage the contractors to get it done.”

Steal thisScout Fiverr for underpriced or mis-positioned gigs, repackage them under a sharp niche brand, and capture the spread.

Productized services: turn a 'service' into a buy-button product

Sam names the pattern: take something normally sold as a custom service, package it so the customer clicks a button and receives a finished output, while you quietly farm the work to Fiverr/Upwork. You're paid to connect dots for people who won't go find the right freelancer themselves.

“Somebody called this, I think, productized services. Basically, it's something that's traditionally done as a service, but you productize it so it seems like, oh, I click this button and I receive this product back, I receive this end output. And underneath the hood, you, you're farming it out to Fiverr and Upwork, and you're just connecting the dots for people that don't know that that's where they should go look.”

Steal thisWrap a manual service in a fixed-scope, fixed-price product with a single buy button and handle fulfillment behind the scenes.

Drop servicing: be the marketing funnel, fulfill via Fiverr

Productized services applied dropshipping-style: build a slick brand (e.g. best logos in the world), market on Facebook, and fulfill every order by hiring Fiverr contractors abroad. The buyer thinks you have in-house designers in Manhattan; they're really contractors in Ukraine, and you keep the margin.

“So I built a website that's like, we make the best logos in the world. I go on Facebook and market my website, and then I go on Fiverr and I hire contractors around the world to actually fulfill the orders and provide that service., and I'm essentially this like middleman. But you know, the buyer doesn't know that. The buyer thinks that I've got, you know, my designers working in my office, you know, in Manhattan, but they're really in Ukraine and they're really just contractors.”

Steal thisBrand and market a productized service, then fulfill every order through Fiverr agencies abroad and pocket the spread.

Design Pickle and WP Curve: the productized-service playbook in the wild

Sam points to real proof of drop servicing: Design Pickle (founder Russ) does ~$15M/yr in on-demand subscription design, inspired by WP Curve (founder Alex), which publicly reported ~$120K monthly revenue fixing WordPress problems on subscription before selling to GoDaddy.

“So Design Pickle is started by this guy named Russ who I'm friends with. I think he does like $15 million a year in sales. They do what you're saying, which is like you need a logo, they make you logos really quickly, and then they do any like design work you need on demand, but through a subscription service. Well, when they started it, they were heavily inspired by WP Curve. It was started by my friend Alex.”