The process of setting up a drop shipping business is pretty simple. It can be broken down into six steps:
# Source for an ideal drop shipper of your products.
# Design a website complete with a product catalogue and credit-card-processing functions.
# Apply internet marketing skills to promote your website – bringing in the targeted visitors and getting them to make purchases.
# Collect the orders and payment on your website.
# Forward the orders to the drop shipper, usually done through email.
# The drop shipper then ships the products to your customers and charges you the wholesale price of the products.
In this article, we will learn how to source for a drop shipper and how to do business with them.
Source For An Ideal Drop Shipper
There are several ways to find a drop shipper for your products. If you’re looking for a supplier based in the same country you’re living in, you can simply check the Yellow Pages or other business listings for wholesalers or manufacturers of your products.
Contact them by phone and inquire if they would like to enter a drop shipping partnership with you. Although many manufacturers and distributors are not willing to drop ship, some of them do offer drop shipping options. You may prefer to arrange face-to-face meetings with the drop shipper to discuss business issues like the wholesale prices of your products and also shipping. Face-to-face meetings build up an atmosphere of trust, which is beneficial for your business.
If the wholesaler or manufacturer of your products is based in a different country from where you live, the internet is the way to go for locating your drop shipper. Simply go to a search engine like Google, and search for ‘Your Product Keywords + Drop Shipper’ or ‘Your Product Keywords + Drop Shipping.’ Although there are indeed many drop shipping scams on the internet, you can still find reliable drop shippers if you conduct a thorough search.
In my opinion, the easiest way to source for a drop shipper of your products is by purchasing a Directory of Drop Shippers. The Drop Ship Source Directory by WorldWideBrands, Inc is the one I recommend. The company staff does research on the authenticity and reliability of the drop shippers, so you can be sure that the drop shipper you find on the Directory is dependable.
Doing Business With Drop Shippers
After locating a drop shipper of your choice, you have to decide on how you’re going to do business with your drop shipper.
First, most drop shippers require you to open a business account with them, and make an initial deposit with them to show your commitment as a retailer. The exact deposit value depends on the specific requirements of your drop shipper.
After starting an account with your drop shipper, you will then have to get your product images and descriptions, and incorporate them on the shopping cart of your website. Most drop shippers offer the product descriptions and images. If these are not available from the drop shipper, you will then need to write your own product descriptions, based on your own understanding of the product features, and also take your own pictures of the products.
Points To Note:
So far, you’ve learned the basic process of sourcing for drop shippers and how to start doing business with them. Apart from this, there are also several important issues you need to look out for.
One – be careful of ‘drop shipping’ scams on the internet. There are many ‘lists’ or ‘directories’ of drop shippers on the net that are actually padded with middlemen and resellers. They purchase the products from the wholesalers and manufacturers, and resell the products to you at a marked-up price. This can cut into your profit margin significantly, depending on how much they mark up the prices. Always be sure to choose a legitimate and established wholesaler/ drop shipper, and not a reseller.
Also, most middlemen or resellers are also ‘fly-by-night’ businesses. These are businesses that may disappear entirely when they run into slight financial difficulties, and are definitely non-dependable for the long term. This is another reason why you need to select a reliable and established wholesaler/ drop shipper, so that you can rely on them to continue supplying you with your products.
Thus, always select an established and reliable drop shipper for your products. You benefit from a higher profit margin, because the products come directly from the manufacturer/ wholesaler of the products (without any price mark-up in between). Your online drop ship business is also more likely to succeed if you have a consistent supply of products.
Ray Yee is the founder of Dropshipperscentral, a website that provides a wealth of informative articles, guides and resources on everything you'll need to know about setting up a Drop Ship Business and marketing it. Click here for the Drop Ship Directory from
http://www.dropshipperscentral.com.
