How to Drop Ship

Drop shipping is a science that requires a lot of research and trial and error to master.  The majority of people who attempt to get into drop shipping fail miserably within the first year.  It's a tough business, but can be very rewarding if you are successful at it.  So why do most people fail?  I think the easiest way to explain how to drop ship correctly, is to tell you how NOT to drop ship.  Here's a list of common mistakes people make when trying to get into drop shipping.  If you fall into these common pitfalls, you're pretty much doomed.

• Subscription services

There are a ton of subscription drop shipping services on the web.  Doba is the most popular, but there are dozens of others.  They usually offer access to wholesale products or will even build you a website and populate it with products for a monthly fee.  This is not going to make you successful in drop shipping.  These companies are middlemen who provide you with generic, marked up merchandise, and charge you fees on top of it.  They are totally saturated with other sellers, which makes the competition level huge.  You will not be able to unload this stuff without cutting your margins to nothing.

• Scammers/Middlemen

There are tons of middlemen, scams, and MLM companies that dominate the drop shipping industry.  They essentially source products, mark them up, and sell them to you as "wholesale".  This is not real wholesale merchandise and you will lose nearly all your margin to the middleman.  Some times they will have multiple levels of middlemen, which is a form of multi-level-marketing (pyramid scheme).  Other times, the seller will just take your money and run.

• eBay

eBay is the go to spot for people trying to sell online.  Why? It does have a huge amount of traffic which means more potential customers for you. Unfortunately, they charge huge fees to list products and even more when they sell.  Plus, its completely saturated with competition.  If you're trying to sell generic merchandise from Doba or other subscription service on eBay, prepare to fail.

Ok so I didn't really answer the question, how to drop ship, did I?  Unfortunately, it's way to complex of an issue to discuss in a simple post.  However, if you avoid these simple mistakes, you'll already be 10 steps ahead of most drop shippers.  Find a unique product source from a legitimate supplier and find new and interesting ways to market your products.