I’ll admit, I fell for it. Just like everyone else who tried to get into the drop shipping game, I was lured by the idea of a get-rich-quick scheme. It preys on the hopeful just as much as those multilevel marketing companies – just spend a little to make a little, it promises! It’s passive income! You’ll get paid to work from your phone and it’s so easy! No stock, no storage, no shipping or handling the product yourself. Use third parties, make a fancy website, throw up some ads on Instagram and you’re golden! I was sold, hook, line, and sinker.

I tried to make it work, I really did. I had my cheap websites that were a dime-a-dozen, I spent the money on targeting advertising for generic merchandise from a factory in Bangladesh, I had my algorithms set to immediately buy from Alibaba if my wholesaler fell through. According to all the testimonials I had seen, I should have been rolling in dough.

Instead, I was flooded with complaints. I bought this, why hasn’t it arrived? When are you shipping me my product? This is defective! My customers were furious with me, and I couldn’t blame them. Then on top of it all, I had US-based agents calling me all the time trying to convince me to switch to their factory of choice in Indonesia or China. And then my bank started calling me because my business account had so many chargebacks and they were not happy. It truly was the most stressful time of my life – I knew I needed to get out of the game. The only people who were actually making money drop shipping weren’t doing it through being merchants of retail fulfillment, but through selling their classes and e-books and dumb schmucks like me who fell for the “Spend ten bucks to learn how I became a millionaire overnight!” live streams. I really should have known better.

When I hit rock bottom, the first thing that helped me see the light of day was being able to figure out who was calling me all the time. Absolute People Search was my lifeline! I could look through my missed calls and see which numbers had been repeats, and with a simple tap understand if it was an irate customer, a pushy salesman, or a firm warning from my credit card processor. Using their comprehensive databases, I was able to instantly know if I should block numbers from advertisers and B2B cold callers based on the information of where the phone number was registered and what addresses, names, and emails were associated with it. Their thorough search of public and private sources let me know instantaneously which branch of the financial industry was hounding me, or if I had a customer on a beach at the Atlantic ocean wondering why their necklace broke. I was able to save the important numbers thanks to reverse phone lookup and sort out a method for replying to angry clients. It was so easy and quick and affordable. I never could have gotten out of that hole had it not been for the trustworthy reverse caller lookup – it was the only thing that made my stressful situation less draining!