How to Drop Ship

October 23, 2010 at 2:56 am Filed in:Uncategorized

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.

Drop Shipping Reviews

October 23, 2010 at 2:55 am Filed in:Uncategorized

As a successful online business owner I know it can be intimidating to get started selling on the internet. However, the idea of financial freedom and working on your own terms is enough for some to press on. Your first, and most important step, is finding a quality supplier.

I’ve been in the drop shipping business for 4 years now. When I first started, I wasted months dealing with fake ‘wholesale’ sites, middlemen, scammers, and every other lowlife you can think of. Your product is the cornerstone of your business, and with a poor product comes poor business. I can’t stress that enough.

What I slowly found is that real wholesalers and drop shippers do not advertise on Google. In fact they are the ones supplying products for the middlemen that you do see on Google. Middlemen are people or companies that source wholesale products and have you sell them at their marked up “wholesale” cost. This eats into your profits heavily, and it’s also why most people fail at drop shippping. In this relationship, you do all the work and they make all the profits. To succeed in eCommerce you need original products and real wholesale pricing.

When looking for quality drop shippers you basically have two options:

OPTION 1:
Do it yourself. This was how I started out. I’m smart and extremely web savvy, I thought it would be simple to find products to sell. WRONG. I bought into some middleman cookie cutter dropship sites. I got scammed by Chinese wholesalers. I tried selling generic ‘wholesale’ products on extremely small margins. The end result was almost a full year of utter failure. It’s possible to succeed in this fashion, but I advise strongly against it.

OPTION 2:
If you don’t have that much time and money to burn, skip straight to business. Use a wholesale directory. When all is said and done, this is where you’ll end up. You need true wholesale pricing to be able to compete with the thousands of other eBay sellers and website owners.

If you’ve spent much time looking at drop shipping and wholesale sites online, you probably know that the sites you find in the search engines are middlemen. They offer ‘wholesale’ products and even offer to build and populate your website for you, usually for a monthly fee. They will sometimes refer to themselves as “Dealer Networks”. They make their money by getting in between you and the real wholesale companies. It’s really a great deal for them. They’re actually charging you to let you sell products for them! Been there, done that. It doesn’t work.

So How do I Find a Real Wholesaler?

I’ve tried many wholesale & drop ship directories in my time. Most of them don’t deliver, some do. So here you go, my drop ship review:

WorldWide Brands

· Price: Currently $299 dollars

· Good selection – around 8,000 wholesalers

· Video lessons for beginners

· A members forum

· Live support

WorldWide Brands is one of the leading wholesale directories on the net. This is where many of the products that get sold on eBay come from. In fact they are the only eBay Certified source. You can be sure you’re dealing with legit suppliers, but the downside is that you also have a lot of competition from all the eBay sellers that use it. If you’re looking for real wholesale and dropship companies, it’s a great source. Overall, it’s one of the best.

Doba

· Price: Currently $49.95 – $59.95 per month

· Roughly 250 suppliers

· All drop shipments

· eBay and eCommerce training for beginners

Doba is a popular site for beginners because they make drop shipping easy. However, there are several major drawbacks to their service. First of all, you won’t get true wholesale pricing. Your margins will be small, making it difficult to justify the $60 dollar monthly payment. Second, you have a lot of competition. Doba is a popular site, which means you are competing with thousands of others to sell the same products at the same cost. Finally, there have been many complaints of products going out of stock without notice. Because they are a middle man between you and 250 companies, they have trouble keeping track of all the stock. This can cause serious problems when your eBay auction ends and you can’t deliver. If you’re looking for an easy solution, it’s not bad. If you are serious about succeeding in eCommerce, it’s not the best way to go.

DHGate

· Free access

· Suppliers come from China – BEWARE OF SCAMMERS

· Many products are counterfeit

DHGate is a community of Chinese suppliers that advertise their products on the website. DHGate tries to deter scam artists, but they don’t do a very good job of it. The products are mostly fakes as well. In the end I was just too worried about getting ripped off from a Chinese supplier and never ended up ordering anything from DHGate. I’ve heard too many horror stories. Be aware that your product is probably counterfeit if you ever even receive it.

Alibaba

· Free access

· Suppliers from all over the world

· LOTS of scammers

· Suppliers do not drop ship and often require large bulk orders

Alibaba is a good source if you are looking to buy large pallets of product, but is jam packed full of scammers. You need to be very careful doing business on Alibaba. Many suppliers are from China and will request a money transfer via Western Union. Once they have the money, you can’t do much but cross your fingers and hope they deliver. I did get ripped off once using this site so be cautious.

Salehoo

· Price: Currently $67 dollars

· 8,000+ wholesalers and drop shippers

· A large community of members who have experience selling

· Members can rate experiences with suppliers

· Support from experienced professionals

· Free training

· All types of suppliers and all types of products

· Top name-brand products

Salehoo is my go-to directory for wholesale suppliers and drop shippers. I am currently running two eCommerce sites using sources from Salehoo and I make my living off of them. Plus the price just can’t be beat for this kind of information. The best part is that you can interact with other members and get reviews, ratings, and advice on the suppliers in the directory. It’s the best of the web, I guarantee you that.

Dropshippers for eBay

October 23, 2010 at 2:54 am Filed in:Uncategorized

Drop shipping on eBay is certainly popular. It allows sellers to sell many items without having to purchase them up front or stock a lot of inventory. This means less overhead for the seller. Unfortunately, there are also a lot of problems with drop shipping on eBay.

Many people try to use popular services like Doba to sell on eBay. The problem is that the products are very popular and thus there is a lot of competition. You will find tons of others selling the same products, often for less. You’ll lose a lot of your profit margins if you want to compete with the thousands of other sellers.

Another major issue is that these products go out of stock frequently since so many people are selling them. This happens without warning, and can leave the seller high and dry when they make the sale. This will get you negative feedback and can get you banned from selling on eBay or Amazon. That’s why many people do not recommend drop shipping on eBay.

If you’re looking for a good dropshipper for eBay, find yourself a private manufacturer or wholesaler and negotiate a drop shipping program with them. This ensures that you’ll get good pricing and will have more control over the stock.

You also should focus on only a small number of niche products when selling on eBay. eBay charges a lot of high fees to list and sell products, and those fees can really add up if you sell a lot of items. You’ll want to find a few specific products with large profit margins so you can still make money after paying eBay their cut.

Doba Review

October 23, 2010 at 2:53 am Filed in:Uncategorized

Is Doba a scam? Well… sort of. Doba isn’t necessarily a scam, but it also isn’t a real drop shipper. Doba is a middleman business that sources products from real drop ship wholesalers and then charges its customers monthly fees to access the products. Doba products have a reputation for being expensivne. You will often find these products selling for less than your “wholesale” price on eBay.

The other disadvantage of using Doba is it’s popularity. Since its the most popular drop shipping service on the net, there are thousands of people trying to sell these goods. This means thousands of competitors for you selling the same products at the same high wholesale costs. It’s a very simple program, which makes it desirable for many newbie drop shippers, but you really can’t make much money with this stuff unless you have an incredible marketing plan.

Unfortunately, most people just head to eBay to try to sell this stuff and are sorely disappointed when they can’t make money. The problem is that these products are just saturated plain and simple. There are so many people selling the same stuff at the same price its almost impossible to get noticed. I would always advise that you find your own drop ship wholesaler and source original niche drop ship products.

So is Doba a scam? No. But I would definitely not call it a good drop ship source. Check out Drop Shipping 4 Idiots to learn more.

DHGate Review

October 23, 2010 at 2:52 am Filed in:Uncategorized

What is DHGate? DHGate is a Chinese marketplace, kind of like eBay, that allows Chinese ‘wholesalers’ to post products for sale. Sometimes they will ship one product at a time, sometimes they only ship in bulk. DHGate itself is not a wholesaler or dropshipper itself. It simply gives other Chinese wholesalers a place to sell their products.

So is DHGate a scam? Well, yes and no. DHGate itself is not a scam. It does its best to prevent scammers and rip off artists. However, many of the dropshippers on the site are indeed scam artists. Many times, you will get your product, but it won’t be what you expected.

You’ll notice that the prices are extremely low and seem too good to be true. And for good reason. The products that are sold on DHGate are counterfeit. They are not original products, so don’t expect them to be. If you want knockoff products, this is a good place to look. However, DO NOT attempt to sell these products on eBay or Amazon as you will be immediately banned. Also, DO NOT attempt to sell these items as the real thing at all as you can get in serious trouble.

If you are purposely selling knockoff items, and claiming them to be so, then DHGate is a decent source.

If you want real, authentic wholesale and drop ship merchandise, use a wholesale directory like Salehoo.

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