Posts Tagged ‘drop shipping’

Dropshipping Dos and Don’ts!

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

What is drop shipping?

Drop shipping is when the product distributor takes care of all the shipping for you. Rather than ordering stock in bulk, the stock remains with the distributor. Then, when you make a sale, you send an email to the distributor and they pack up the item and send it straight to the customer with your company label on the box.

Drop shipping is a very popular option with sellers because it takes a lot of the grunt work out of selling on eBay. However, there are some major downsides to drop shipping – especially for new sellers.

Here’s a list of the pros and cons of drop shipping so that you can make the right decision for your business.

Drop shipping Pros

1. No storage room required

You don’t have to fill up your living room with stock and packing materials! This is particularly useful if you are selling large items such as kit-sets, furniture, sporting goods, and so on.

2. No shipping costs getting stock delivered from the distributor

Drop shipping means you don’t have to pay a carrier to bring stock from the distributor to your own storage area, which can mean big savings in the long term.

3. Spend more time on other areas of your business

You don’t have to organize the packing and postage system, nor do you have to drive to the post shop each day to post your packages. This gives you a significant increase in time to spend on other tasks such as marketing and communicating with customers.

4. No packaging required

You save money by not having to order and store packaging materials.

Drop shipping Cons

1. Costly

You have to pay for the cost of the labor and materials involved in drop shipping. Generally this is between $2 and $5 per item. Many new sellers find that the additional costs of drop shipping greatly reduce their profit margins and sometimes nullify the whole operation. This is the main reason why drop shipping is not a viable option for some sellers.

2. You are still responsible for any shipping problems

So the item arrived damaged? Was there a shipping delay? You’ll get the flak for anything that goes wrong with the shipping even though it is technically out of your control.

3. Hard to find a distributor who will do it and do it well

Many distributors will not drop ship because of the extra paperwork involved. Then there is the matter of checking up on quality standards to make sure your items are being packed correctly.

4. Low stock levels may cause unhappy customers

Your drop shipper won’t necessarily tell you when they are running low on stock. If they run out and have to do a back order, you may end up spending a great deal of time making a bunch of unhappy and impatient customers.

Drop shipping is a very appealing prospect for many sellers; however it is not always a realistic one. Despite the hassle, ‘doing it yourself’ can often be a more sensible option financially, especially for new businesses.

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Wholesale FAQ: All About Reselling Items

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

How can I find customers for the items I’m reselling?

It is best to have a hierarchy of categories on your site for items you are selling. For example, if you are selling soap, you may have a sub-category named “soap.” However, in order for people to find that item, you may need to also list the same item in a more general category such as “cosmetics” or “skin care.” Think how you can help people find items in your online store.

Should I charge a certain percentage above my wholesale price for items I resell?

What you charge for your items depends on the price of the items when you purchase it. One of the biggest mistakes people make is to try to resell an item for a small amount over their cost of purchasing the item. There are many administrative costs involved in sales, and you’ll shoot yourself in the foot if you do not have a sizable increase.

With that said, for low-priced wholesale costs from only a few cents to $20, plan on at least doubling the price. For costs above $20, a 40% increase is common. And, for high ticket items above $100, anywhere from $20 to 40% is a commonly-used percentage increase.

If you cannot increase within those ranges for a sizable profit, you should either re-negotiate the price with the wholesaler or ask them if they will drop-ship for the price, thus avoiding your overhead costs.

Where can I find pictures and descriptions of wholesale items?

Your wholesale can usually provide you with images. However, they will not necessarily be included, and you may need to request them. Call the support phone number or use the support email. Most of all, get to know your sales/support person. You will often find that you are able to acquire images and other perks due to your relationship. If you belong to an online wholesale membership, they are usually included in an online catalog. When you request images, your wholesale supplier will usually send you a CD containing images for your use.

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A Wholesale Directory is Useful For These 5 Reasons

Monday, March 30th, 2009

Locating reputable, trustworthy wholesale suppliers can be one of the most difficult parts of selling online. You need to have a resource to help you locate suppliers that you can do business with. What you need to do is find a wholesale directory to show you which companies you should be doing business with.

5 reasons to use a directory of wholesalers can be found below:

1. Quickly locate quality wholesalers – There are a lot of wholesalers who you would be better off not doing business with. Using a directory will help you determine which wholesalers are safe to do deal with.

2. Low volume suppliers – You don’t always want to buy in bulk, so it is nice if you have a supplier that will sell small quantities to you. Use your wholesale directory to find the suppliers that will deal in small lot sizes.

3. Discounts for quantity purchases – If you are willing, and able, to purchase larger quantities of an item, you usually can get a fairy good discount. Use your supplier directory to find those wholesalers that offer this type of discount.

4. Liquidation merchandise – Buying brand name products from a liquidation specialist, and selling them to your customers, can be quite lucrative. Locating dependable suppliers of liquidated merchandise can be tricky, but not if you have a source list.

5. Products from trusted suppliers – Finding trusted wholesalers that can supply you with goods to sell your customers is the main reason to use a wholesale directory. If you don’t have a reliable, trustworthy source of products, you will never be a success selling online.

A good wholesale source list serves many purposes. You will use it to locate the wholesalers you need to supply you with products that you can sell to your customers. It can be really hard finding the right suppliers to help you be successful selling online, so it is important that you use a reputable wholesale source directory.

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Consider These 5 Things When Looking for a Free Dropshipper

Thursday, March 26th, 2009

Using a drop shipper is a great alternative to stocking inventory yourself. However, you need to make sure you are using a free dropshipper, or one that does not charge a dropshipping fee. This will help protect your profits and is just one more fee you should not be paying.

When deciding on the right no-fee dropshipper, consider the following:

1. No fees, really! – There are many ways to charge fees, including charging a monthly fee for the privilege of spending money with a supplier. Do some investigating and make sure you are really not being charged to have a supplier dropship to your customers.

2. Integrity – Any company you do business with should be reputable and have integrity in the way they conduct business. This is just as important with the dropshipper you choose, as you are trusting them to do what they say they will do.

3. Slow fulfillment – The fulfillment time for orders should be minimal so that your customers get their orders in a timely fashion. Your business is the one that will gain a bad reputation if it takes forever to ship orders to customers.

4. Returns – There should be an efficient system in place to handle returns, preferably directly by your dropshipper. If your supplier makes it difficult for customers to return products, you will end up with people who will never do business with you again.

5. Shipping paperwork – Any paperwork that is included with a customer’s order should not indicate that the order was dropshipped. Instead, it should either not contain any company information, or have your company logo and information on it.

Picking the right drop shipping wholesalers is a vital component to the success of your online retail business. Reducing the fees you pay to use drop shipping is important as it directly impacts your profit. Find a drop shipper that you can trust, who doesnt charge you to use their services, and you stand a better chance at being successful selling online.

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Sell Online? Try Using a Wholesale Drop Shipping Company

Monday, March 23rd, 2009

If you sell online, then you can either keep a stock of your product on hand to fulfill orders, or you can use the services of a drop shipping wholesaler. By utilizing dropshipping, you don’t have to maintain an inventory of the products you sell, which has some very powerful advantages over the alternative.

Below you can find 5 of the many reasons to consider using a dropshipping wholesaler with your e-commerce business:

1. No products to stock – A dropship wholesaler maintains stock of product so you don’t have to. Once you receive a paid customer order, you in turn place an order with the drop shipper, meaning you never have to spend your own money to purchase product.

2. No need to ship – The wholesale drop shipper handles shipping the product to your customer so you don’t have to concern yourself with this step. Shipping can be a real time suck, so by not having to deal with it, you can concentrate on selling more product.

3. Inexpensive startup costs – There is very little money required to start up a dropshipping online retail business, because you can do it from your home and you do not have to buy any product. Using a dropship wholesaler is a great way to see if selling online is right for you.

4. Risk reduction – You are greatly able to reduce the risk involved with starting a retail business by not having to purchase an inventory of products that you hope to sell. Drop shipping allows you to not have a bunch of money tied up in inventory, which means you don’t have to worry about your products selling in order to get your money back.

5. Offer many products – A great advantage to using a wholesale drop shipping supplier is that they have a large selection of products for you to offer, without having to stock any of them yourself. You can offer many different products for sale and see which works best for you, all with very little risk.

Selling online can be exciting and is within reach of most people, due to the low startup costs when you use a drop shipping wholesaler. Use a wholesale directory to find reputable wholesalers to deal with and you may just be on your way to starting an online empire. Drop shipping has made it possible for many people to make a very good living by selling online, so there is no reason why you shouldn’t give it a try.

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Niche Blueprint: Modules 5 To 6 Reviewed And Declassified

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

Niche blueprint, a product by Tim Godfrey and Steven Clayton which gives anyone the knowhow and the resources necessary to set up and run a successful e-commerce business online, will be relaunched on 16 March, in this article we will go over modules five and six (part one) out of the nine available in the course.

Okay, let’s take a look at week three which is module 5 and week four, which is module 6 part1. By the end of week three you will have your niche blueprint e-commerce store up and running. Week four teaches you how to get people to visit your store for free.

Module five, aka week three, contains five PDF’s and eight video tutorials providing you with very precise and clear instructions on how to set up your very first e-commerce store.

A complete working Niche Blueprint store with a complete product catalog

The goal for module five, and this week is for you to have a complete understanding of how to implement the niche blueprint e-commerce platform. How to set up your PayPal payment gateway, produce a logo and toll-free number for your store.

The eight videos in this module are once again, very precise and clear and include:

- A brief overview of what you’ll be doing.

- Site hosting: how to go about it.

- How to create/outsource your store logo.

- Exactly how you set up the provided web e-commerce platform you will be using for your website.

- How you must configure your site in order for it to work correctly and optimally.

- Setting up PayPal on your store.

- Some additional elements related to paying and shopping carts.

- Just how one should go about creating a good and easy to navigate product catalogue.

- How to tweak the way your site looks to best suit your niche.

There are also five PDF’s, which if anything are even more detailed than the eight videos and give very precise step-by-step easy and clear instructions and examples. I doubt whether there is anybody who couldn’t have an e-commerce store up and running by the time they have watched the videos and PDF’s.

Traffic, Customers And Cash

At this stage you already have your store up and ready for business, however it is unlikely that you will have any visitors just yet. So it is time to get into the promotional stages of this whole process with the help of part one of module six.

You will find four videos and three PDF’s within part one of module six and they will teach you how to use search engine optimisation to get free targeted traffic visiting your site on a daily basis.

You are provided with a whole host of URLs from which to promote your site as well as search engine optimisation plans in the form of the three PDF’s. The 4 videos also supplied explain in great detail everything you need to know to put together an effective search engine optimisation website plan to attract all the visitors you will need.

In the first video he gives a very good understanding of SEO concepts, which for the beginner is a must watch, although seasoned pros may want to skip it.

In another video, he talks about how to use article marketing and as it’s a tactic that we use ourselves we can confirm its effectiveness. Although looking at the tactics and SEO plan of this course it isn’t something you will have to do to be successful with your Nicheblueprint ecommerce store.

As you can see at this point in the course you will already be ready to start making a profit. In the following modules you will be taught how to outsource the work and sell your successful websites if you should decide that that was in your best long-term interests.

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Will The Niche Blueprint System Call For A Lot Of Work?

Monday, March 16th, 2009

What you are about to read is a full review of the final modules eight and nine from the web e-commerce course and system from Steven Clayton and Tim Godfrey called niche blueprint. This course will be available once more on the 16th of March 2009 for five days.

Here we come to the final week of the Niche Blueprint six week e-commerce course. By now, we will have our own profitable, fully functioning and operational Niche Blueprint store. We have come a long way from a standing start to a profitable store in only five weeks.

So what now?

The most obvious thing to do would be to build more online stores, but obviously that would mean a lot more work on your part. Money is all good and well, but if you haven’t got time to enjoy it what’s the point? The course creators luckily have taken this into account and dedicated the eighth module of the course to this subject.

Unleashing the power of outsourcing with module eight

Stage door right enter, module eight, probably my favorite module. Of course, this module is not obligatory. You can, if you wish, just carry on with one, two or three stores whatever you are happy with.

However I believe that for most of us out there module eight will be like the icing on the cake. With this module you’ll be able to take a functioning and profitable store and outsource all of the work so that you have nothing to do for it. This is the way to create a lot of money without having to work very hard for it.

Making money for zero work?

But of course, you wouldn’t sit around in your pyjamas. No, you would build another store, and then outsource that, then do it again and again until you had a million-dollar a year business. That’s how fortunes are made.

This module includes one video, and 2 PDF’s which show you what to outsource and how and where to do it effectively and cheaply. It shows you in great detail, the different outsourcing models and introduces you to all the outsourcing resources necessary to make this a reality.

Module 9 – Selling your site.

The ninth module, again optional, can be great for those who for whatever reason don’t like running a particular store. It’s also great to receive a big payday every now and then and if you need money for something quick this can definitely make sense.

The ninth module comes with a video and three PDF’s that give you all the information necessary to successfully sell your websites for the most money. You will find all the necessary resources as well as a good number of professionally written sample website sale postings.

Having built, run and then sold a number of off-line brick and mortar businesses as well as online businesses, I can see that the Niche Blueprint e-commerce training programme is as complete as can be and as such, leaves nothing to chance.

The course is extremely complete and well thought out and for this reason I believe that it offers a great chance for first timers at business and the Internet to get going successfully in a short time span provided they are willing to put in some effort.

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Niche Blueprint Modules Five To Six Pulled Apart

Monday, March 16th, 2009

Niche blueprint, a product by Tim Godfrey and Steven Clayton which gives anyone the knowhow and the resources necessary to set up and run a successful e-commerce business online, will be relaunched on 16 March, in this article we will go over modules five and six (part one) out of the nine available in the course.

Okay, let’s take a look at week three which is module 5 and week four, which is module 6 part1. By the end of week three you will have your niche blueprint e-commerce store up and running. Week four teaches you how to get people to visit your store for free.

Week three is devoted entirely to module five, which is about building your Niche Blueprint Store and is very complete as it consists of eight videos and five PDF’s.

Getting that first site fully functional with its product list

Your main objective during module five will be to learn inside and out how to work with the niche blueprint website platform. In addition to this you will also learn to create your site graphic, set up PayPal so your customers can pay you and also get a toll-free number.

As we have come to expect from this course, the videos in this module are excellent in that they tell you what you need to know in a very clear and precise manner, they include the following:

- A brief overview of what you’ll be doing.

- How to get your sites hosted online.

- The creating of a store logo.

- Installing the provided e-commerce website platform.

- Configuring your niche blueprint store.

- Setting up PayPal on your store.

- Other things you will need to do to make the site ready for buyers to purchase products from you.

- How to set an effective on-site catalog.

- Other design considerations and techniques to achieve maximum sales and conversions.

The videos really are great, however there’s nothing like having the info in written form as well and that’s why there are five PDF’s also included. These videos and PDF’s have been put together in such a manner that even the least technical minded person could follow them.

Traffic, Customers And Cash

Okay, so now you’ve got your new shiny store up on the web, but now we need somebody to actually visit it other than yourself and your cat. This is what week 4, and module six (part one), will do for you.

You will find four videos and three PDF’s within part one of module six and they will teach you how to use search engine optimisation to get free targeted traffic visiting your site on a daily basis.

You are provided with a whole host of URLs from which to promote your site as well as search engine optimisation plans in the form of the three PDF’s. The 4 videos also supplied explain in great detail everything you need to know to put together an effective search engine optimisation website plan to attract all the visitors you will need.

Steven Clayton takes a moment with the first video to explain search engine optimisation to those who are not experience in any of these things, for beginners this video is excellent though I can see it may be unnecessary for most pros.

He goes on in other videos to talk in more detail about different strategies and ways to promote your site in the search engines, one of the methods being article marketing (something we ourselves have a lot of success with). Nevertheless he covers a lot of strategies here and article marketing is just one and optional at that.

Once you have carried out all the steps in the six modules up to this point you will have a website ready to make money. In the modules that follow you will learn PPC (paid advertising), how and where to outsource and how to sell your websites (naturally totally optional).

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Niche Blueprint Assessed-Google AdWords and Ongoing Maintenance

Sunday, March 15th, 2009

This article will be reviewing part two of the sixth module and the whole seventh module of the very popular web e-commerce course and system entitled niche blueprint that will be relaunching on 16 March.

Niche blueprint has been divided into nine modules, it is in the fifth week of the programme where you get access to part two of module six and also the complete module seven. The first part of module six taught free traffic generation. Around 70% of your traffic should come from these three sources so part two is optional.

Paid traffic and in particular Google Adwords are what part two of module six is all about and in order to teach you the strategies required two videos plus a PDF are supplied. If one chooses to implement the strategies here they will be able to pick up that left over 30% of traffic.

Expanding with paid traffic

All businesses throughout the world regardless of being online or off-line have a need to set aside some of their profits for continuous promotion. It is for this reason that it makes purest sense to leverage these paid traffic strategies in order to snatch traffic from as many places as possible.

But the difference here is that you will be directly adding to your bottom line, because if you follow these instructions you will gain more than you spend. Because once again it is superbly explained with an easy to follow step by step paid traffic plan for your new niche blueprint store.

Learning how to keep your store running smoothly

Module seven covers that other very important aspect of a successful business, the running of your store, 1 video and 2 PDF’s are supplied to take care of this so as you can see nothing is left out in this e-commerce training.

Planning and explanations of your work flow

The video tutorial in this seventh module goes into detail with step-by-step instructions and explanations to show you exactly what you will be doing and how to organise yourself.

This workflow will include such things as checking your voicemail, taking orders and communicating with suppliers and it’s all explained in the video.

You will find that the PDF’s included do a good job of backing up the video with written examples. All in all we would have to say that these modules and the entire course have been put together with a focus on quality and being complete, this really is all someone would need in order to get started with web e-commerce tomorrow.

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5 Considerations When Looking For a Drop Shipping Company

Sunday, March 15th, 2009

If you sell online, you should consider using a dropshipper. This allows you to not inventory the products you sell, which frees your money up for other things. However, not all dropshipping companies are created equal, so you need to some investigation before you do business with them.

Below are 5 things to look for when deciding upon a drop shipper:

1. No drop shipping fees – If you work with a supplier that does not charge a drop shipping fee, the better off you are. The lower you can keep your costs means that you have more profit in the end.

2. Trusted source – If you are going to trust a company to ship products to your customer, you had better be able to trust them. It is best to use a drop shipper that comes recommended so you reduce the chance of issues coming up.

3. Speedy order completion – The quicker your dropshipper can send out your order, the quicker it gets to your customer. A happy customer means a successful business, so pick your suppliers carefully.

4. Easy to check inventory – You should work with a dropshipper that has an easy system to verify what they have in stock. It makes no sense to sell a product that is out of stock at the drop ship warehouse, as it may take a very long time for the product to ship to your customer.

5. Good customer service – If you have questions about any orders or inventory items, you need to be able to easily contact a representative of the dropshipper. Easy and quick lines of communication are vital to the success of your business.

Being a success online depends on the companies you do business with. You need to carefully select a dropshipper to make sure they have the best interests of your company in mind. Your reputation as an online retailer depends on finding the best suppliers that you can, so do your research.

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