I get a lot of questions from people asking me if they can drop ship if they live in India or in South America and all sorts of other places.
Since it’s one of the most frequent questions, let me address it.
From a technical stand point, you can run a drop shipping business from anywhere in the world as long as you have a laptop and an internet connection. You could be in Thailand, fly to Brazil the next day and then spend a week in Norway and it wouldn’t matter.
Here’s why:
When you drop ship you don’t have your own stock. You don’t need to send out or ship products yourself and you don’t need to be physically present in your drop shipping business to make the whole thing work.
Heck, you could be in the North Pole and drop ship.
As long as you have an internet connection and a laptop.
However, many people confuse technicality and legality. While it’s possible to drop ship from anywhere in the world because that’s simply the nature of the drop shipping fulfilment model, that doesn’t mean you can legally drop ship as a citizen of any given country.
If you live in a country with a dictator and that dude decides to forbid drop shipping as a fulfillment mode, I guess you can’t drop ship.
But that’s the case for anything.
If you live in Colorado it’s legal to smoke weed, but if you’re in Malaysia you’ll get the death penalty for 200g of Cannabis.
When it comes to drop shipping, it’s unlikely that it’s explicitly forbidden in your country. But there might be tax and accounting laws and regulations that make it illegal to run a drop shipping business.
The only way to find out for sure is to speak to a legal adviser, a lawyer, a tax person or an accountant and check these things.
In many cases, you can still run a drop shipping business by setting up a company and a business bank account in a country where drop shipping is no problem. That’s also a good solution in case you are struggling to find a good payment processor in your country.
Usually, if we set up a legal entity (official company) that’s separate from us as a private person, then the taxation and accounting laws of the country of the company will be applied. The reason why is because your company has nothing to do with you as a private person, it’s a separate legal entity dictated by local regulations.
Now that’s a possibility, but not a guarantee. So once again, you always have to check with a lawyer and legal advisor if that works.
Anyway – To answer the question posed at the beginning.
Yes, it’s technically possible to drop ship from anywhere as long as you have a computer and internet. But if it’s legally possible to drop ship as a citizen of a country, or as a business in a country, that’s something I can’t answer for you. Check it with a legal advisor.
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There is a huge problem with drop shipping from anywhere that nobody seems to want to mention. it’s not all beaches and exotic countries.
When you have had problems getting your credit card verified by Aliexpress to make the purchases to fill orders (In my case it is three times in the last month for one card and if you search Google you will find loads of other people having the same issue).
Filling your orders from multiple IP addresses and somewhere other than your home country could, and probably will, flag Aliexpress’s fraud prevention system.
This is a huge problem if your say from Australia and trying to fill orders while, and to use the example all promoters of drop shipping like to use, sitting on the beach in Thailand.
Having to jump through Aliexpress’s hoops to prove your identity and card details is far easier, but still very frustrating, to do from your home address.
So, before you decide to “live the drop shipping lifestyle” make sure that you have back up systems in place that will help you get through the inevitable crisis that dealing with Aliexpress involves.