Internet Store With Drop Shipping

Business Drop Online Shipping Start



Drop Shipping

In the recent years drop shipping has lead to an explotion of number of internet stores. It is easy to start an internet store with drop shipping but you have to be careful with the product selection. Sometimes you could purchase low cost readymade site like own your own herbal business  and be up and running with business. Here are some tips to start business drop online shipping.

Too many internet stores with drop shipping also has lead to more competition and too many stores having the same type of products. There are just too many online gift stores. This is because they all have the same drop shipper. Ebay Drop Ship Powerpack is one good directory which lists very reliable drop shippers in a wide variety of products and so you have a great choice with less competition. 

Also, with a merchant account service like Merchant Equipment, you have the ability to accept credit cards online. Accepting Credit Cards on Your Website can increase your sales by 90%! 

What is Drop Shipping?

Drop Shipping is an agreement where the manufacturer or the wholesaler/ distributor will package and ship items from their warehouse directly to your customer. So this is no hassle to you (the seller) because you are buying from the manufacturer/ wholesaler only if you have already made the sale!

For example, John owns an internet store and sells a cordless telephone for $125.00 plus S/H of $9.00. The customer pays $134 on the website. So, after John receives the money, he sends an email to the drop shipper to package and mail the telephone to John’s buyer. The drop shipper charges John only $80 plus S/H of $7.00. So John’s profit here is 134 – 87 = $47.00. 

Download the free ebook How to start an Internet Business Right for basics of drop shipping and how to avoid drop shipping scams. 

Drop shipping provides a lot of advantages like:

  • There is no Need to have an inventory. Therefore, there is no need to own or rent a warehouse.
  • You pay the drop shipper only if you already made the sale and have collected the money.
  • You don’t have worry about packaging and shipping it through USPS, UPS or Fedex. In fact the drop shippers will give you discounted shipping but may charge some handling fee. You can charge a little extra on shipping and handling to your customers.

Drop shipping online store business is very competitive. Most beginners fall into the trap of some middlemen. You may have seen many drop shippers providing home business opportunities for you to sell their bird houses, figurines, gifts etc. The internet is saturated with such items.

In fact some drop shippers provide you with a website and web hosting for a monthly fee. If you think about it, why would the actual manufacturer/ wholesaler ask you to pay them to sell their products. Chances are that he/ she may be a middleman (not the actual manufacturer/ wholesaler) or the product is so bad that he/ she is trying to make money by selling you the website and web hosting service. Building a website is not a very difficult thing to do.

A lot of times this so called drop shipper (the middleman) may be operating the business from a cell phone. He/ she may not have a warehouse and no inventory.

Real drop shippers don’t usually charge a monthly fee. They may charge a handling fee per item because they are offering you the wholesale price and it does not work out if he/ she does not charge handling fee for packaging single item for one customer.

How to find a good Drop Shipper?

Start researching from a manufacturer’s directories in the public library. Thomas register is great resource. In fact join their mailing list at Thomasnet.com. You can search online at Thomasnet.com. Many of them prefer to research in the public library.

Contact the manufacturer’s sales department by phone. Mention that you have an online store or are planning to build one very soon or just say you are an eBay seller looking for drop shippers of that particular product. A lot of times, manufacturers don’t drop ship but they are happy refer you some of their own distributors. In this way, you are sure that you will not be duped.

For example, you want to sell Seagate hard drives on your website or eBay. You have to contact the sales department of Seagate Corp. They don’t handle drop shipping but they will give names of some authorized distributors like ingrammicro.com.

One important suggestion is not to purchase an inexpensive list of drop shippers and wholesalers. These lists are not updated ever. Can you imagine that? A lot drop shipping businesses close, move out etc. etc. and you still have the old list. Also, if you pay a very low price, then you get what you pay for! Also read 2 ways to find a good drop shipper

There are some directories that are updated on a regular basis. The Drop Ship Source Directory is an ebaY certified list of drop shippers. This is updated on a regular basis. This drop ship directory is created by Chris Malta.

The other list that is updated on a regular basis is Ebay Drop Ship Powerpack. This drop ship powerpack is created by Tim Knox.

There are many more drop shippers and wholesalers. Some websites like wholesale411.com and gowholesale.com may provide some good sources of drop shippers. Always remember to research the company before you do business with them.

When designing an internet store, you have to give your customer the ability to pay with credit card. Use of a merchant account service like Merchant Equipment and CSI Charge gives you an unfair advantage over your competitors.

Finding a product to Drop Ship and profit.

This may be the most difficult part because you have to decide what to sell. You have to find out if the product that you want to drop shipped is in demand or not.

Research on overture.com’s keyword suggestion tool. Alternatively, you can go to nichebot.com; this website will give you research results from Nichebot, overture and Google adwords. This also returns results of analysis of number of sites that are competing for the same keyword. This data is very critical in determing a profitable niche.

On overture keyword suggestion tool, type in the keyword. Overture will return the number of searches for that keyword and the related keywords for the last 30 days. On Google type in the word and see how many websites are listed. In general the ratio of overture search results and the websites from Google should be higher.

More detail market analysis can be done using the tool Market Research Tool. This is not a free tool but you can research one product for free. Also, check out all the links on drop shipping. 

Web traffic is a major problem. If you are looking setup a web store with dropshipping without having to worry about web traffic and promotion, then eBay store provides a great option. eBay get millions of visitors everyday. 

Internet Store and Drop Shipping Resources

The best way to start is to just start small with one drop shipper and sell on an auction site before starting a full internet store using drop shipping.

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