What Is Drop Shipping ?
Drop shipping is one of those words that you will hear about once you have been selling on sites such as eBay after a few months. In fact if you do a quick search on eBay right now you will find people offering drop shipping guides and resources for silly money 0.99. Please be careful with these. I am not going to say stay away as you can find some useful information in them, but most of the information is rubbish.
Why Use Drop Shipping ?
One of the main reasons a person uses a drop shipping company is to save on money and also storage space. We all have room for a few boxes of DVD’s, CD’s, Postcards, but when it comes to things like Travel Systems for babies or hot tubs, how many of those could you store in your home. Not many I would guess. This is where a drop shipper comes in. The store, they ship, and some will even deal with customer returns. They allow you to sell unlimited stock and items without the expense of buying in stock that could sit there for months on end.
But when you are looking for a drop shipper please be careful. While there are good ones out there, there are many who just want to charge you an up front fee (Ok 9.99 is not a lot of money to loose not is 25.00 – these are average costs some drop shippers charge – but just multiple that number by 1,000 of people a year and you can see a huge profit for these drop shippers.
Another thing to look for when dealing with a drop shipper is they are a proper wholesaler, by this I mean, are they a retail site as well. If so very often you will have to compete with them when selling online. And as they hold the stock……………………….. they will win, you will loose.
When you have found a product range you like, pick up the phone, email or even visit them, and tell them what you do and ask if they will drop ship for you. You will be surprised as many will say yes and most will not charge you a penny to join. You may find the prices they charge are a few pounds more, but that is understandably as they are doing all the work for you. You just market, sell, and pass on name and address and the amount they ask for (wholesale price), what is left is your profit.
Tomorrow I will talk more about this exciting venture and profit model called drop shipping.
Andrew Milburn Is An eBay Consultant Based In Lichfield Staffordshire
