When you're a small business starting out on the Internet, or
even when you're an established 'Net business, you NEED drop
shippers...
Why? Because working with drop shippers eliminates the need for
you to carry expensive inventories. You don't have to rent a
warehouse, hire employees, establish accounts with UPS and FedEx,
etc. You can sell the best brand names on earth from your home
computer, and make good money at it.
Wholesale Suppliers who drop ship send the products you sell
directly from their warehouse to your customer, with your
business name on it. All you do it take the order from your
customer and pass it to the distributor. You keep the difference
between the wholesale price the distributor charges you, and the
retail price you sell to your customer for.
Of course, there are a lot of places out there that want you to
THINK they are wholesale drop shippers. They'll set up accounts
with, say, 10 real drop ship suppliers. Then they'll call
themselves something like "GetYerStuffHere.com", and claim that
THEY are the wholesale drop ship supplier. Then it'll go like
this:
1. GetYerStuffHere.com will place advertising all over the
Internet proclaiming to be the greatest source that ever
existed for all kinds of great products, and they'll drop
ship all those products to your customer.
2. You'll get all excited because YOU can actually place
everything from Sony electronics to Coleman Camping gear
on your web site and sell it.
3. GetYerStuffHere.com will charge you an account setup fee,
to cover their "processing". (Note: REAL Wholesale Suppliers
almost NEVER charge you an account setup fee).
4. GetYerStuffHere.com will send you a nice, shiny list of
products and show you where to get the product images and
descriptions to place on your web site.
5. You'll get all excited, and put all this great stuff on your
site, set your prices so that you can make a profit over what
GetYerStuffHere.com.
6. You'll launch your site, and you hardly sell a thing.
Huh? What happened? Nobody's buying! You can't survive on just a
few orders a month!
Disappointed and discouraged, you start to go out and check other
web sites that carry the same products. Maybe they have better
images. Maybe they have cooler descriptions. Maybe their pages
look nicer. You find that it's none of those things. So what DO
you find?
The other sites' PRICES are lower. A LOT lower.
You just got nailed by one of the most popular scams on the
Internet.
GetYerStuffHere.com took you for a couple of hundred dollars in
exchange for a CD full of product images. They may have even
locked you into a contract where you have to pay them every month
to be a "member" of their "distributorship".
Oh, GetYerStuffHere.com DOES ship the products they claim to. Of
course they do. It's just that when they get an order from you,
they turn around and place your order with the REAL Wholesale
Supplier, and take a profit. By the time YOUR price is
calculated, you're paying not only wholesale, you're paying
GetYerStuffHere.com's extra markup of anywhere from 10% to 30%.
In order for YOU to make a profit, you naturally have to mark up
the prices you get from GetYerStuffHere.com. By the time you do
that, you can't compete on the 'Net. Your prices are just too
high.
At this point, you can do one of two things:
1. You can lower your prices to the point where you're making
mere pennies on your products in order to compete.
2. You can bypass these jokers and go to the REAL sources.
I've been in Systems Engineering for 19 years. I've been involved
in ECommerce since it began. In that time, I've seen this
scenario played out over and over with companies I've done work
for.
The real sources can be hard to find. They don't market
themselves as Internet Wholesale Supplier. They are established
wholesale companies who have been supplying big chains like Sears
and Kmart for a very long time.
Many of them are now realizing that a good part of their future
lies in Internet sales, and they are establishing drop ship and
light bulk wholesale programs. There are even a few big name
manufacturers who are beginning to supply Home-based Internet
Businesses right from their factories. That's where YOU need to
be. In direct contact with the actual Wholesale Supplier or
factory source.
When you're looking for a drop shipper, here are a couple of
things to be careful of:
1. Any company that tells you that they'll set up your entire
web site AND PROVIDE THE PRODUCTS FOR YOU will NOT make you
rich. They'll make THEMSELVES rich on your setup and hosting
fees, and you'll piddle along with thousands of other small
sites all selling exactly the same things at the same prices.
(NOTE: Don't confuse this with companies who just offer to set
up your ECommerce web site. There are a lot of great places out
there that will build and host sites for you. It's when they
tell you that you HAVE to sell the products that THEY provide
that you should run for cover.)
2. Any distributor who wants you to pay a "membership" or
"setup" fee is probably not a true Wholesale Supplier.
3. If it sounds too good to be true, it's too good to be true.
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