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The arrival of the Internet has bought in a new breed of businessmen and women who do business from their virtual shops and offices. They do not have any stock in hand, but advertise the stock kept by their ‘drop shippers’ as their own. Upon receiving a customer’s order, your drop shipper will ship the product to your customer. In short, your entire business depends on the efficiency and quality of your shipper.
For your online business to succeed it is essential to find the correct drop shipper or wholesaler who can take care of the entire back end of your business without you getting worried over delayed deliveries or bad quality products. Before you start advertising on eBay or any other online stores, you will need to get a list of drop shippers or wholesalers from whom you can get your supplies. You can find a lot of sites on the Internet offering these lists. You have to pay ‘membership fees’ to gain access to the list of drop ship and wholesale ‘members’. However, some of these sites are just out to scam you by offering outdated data.
You might get into the site by paying the fees and later find out that the ‘members’ listed have closed shop or that the numbers and addresses of those ‘members’ have changed. It is therefore important to do proper research before parting with the membership fees. Check out the reputation of those sites by asking your friends or relatives who are in this business. If the site is advertising about particular brands of products, then contact the manufacturer directly and ask about particular drop shipper or wholesalers details.
Your drop shipper should have all the items mentioned in his online catalogue, in stock. Once you have received your drop shipper’s catalogue, check out the prices offered by him to you and then search for some of those items over the Internet and also in regular brick and mortar stores. Compare those rates. If your drop shipper’s rates are substantially lower than the retail rates, then you have a chance of earning some money. But if your wholesaler’s rates are the same as the retail rates then your wholesaler is probably just a middleman without any stock of his own and just trying to con you.
It will take some time for you to understand the finer points in this business, but being alert and using the Internet to the fullest will ensure that you do not just quote rates on the Internet, which are higher than what others are offering. Once you have placed some orders with the drop shipper, get feedback from your customers on whether he had delivered the product on time and whether the product was in perfect condition at the time of delivery. EBay has its own rating system and you could check out your rating on the site itself.
So, here is hoping that the above pointers have helped in pointing you towards the right drop shipper and wholesaler.
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