Tag: Salehoo

Drop Shipping Reviews

0

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.

DropShipDesign Review

0

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

DropShipDesign is your classic drop shipping middleman.  I fell for this one way back in the day when I first started out in drop shipping.  Like other middleman operations, it claims a very simple and profitable solution.  Like their slogan says: ‘You Sell, We Ship, You Profit!’

And it’s only $50 dollars to get access?  What a great deal!  Sorry to break it to you, but just like Doba and the dozens of other interchangeable middleman drop shipping companies, you won’t make any money here.  You’re getting marked up “wholesale” pricing and you’re competing with thousands of other merchants who are getting these exact same products for the exact same inflated prices.  You will never beat a seller who has a real wholesale connection.

It’s tempting to take the easy solution.  They offer a turnkey website, they handle payments for you, they handle the sales tax, they do everything!  All you do is load up your store and watch the money roll in right?  Unfortunately, you’ll never win with a cookie cutter solution like this.  Why?  Because everybody else is doing the exact same thing!  Are you seeing the trend here?

If you want to get ahead, you can’t just throw up a store and expect people to find it.  You need to choose a niche, get original products, and get legitimate wholesale pricing.  This is the ONLY way to succeed in drop shipping.  So step away from the cookie cutter site, and stroll on over to Salehoo or WorldWide Brands and get yourself some real wholesale products to drop ship.

DHGate Review

0

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.

Build an eCommerce Store

0

October 23, 2010 at 2:49 am Filed in:Uncategorized

When starting your drop shipping business, you need to decide where to sell your products. Many people like eBay because it’s a highly trafficked marketplace with lots of hungry buyers. Unfortunately, theres also tons of competition and they charge ridiculous fees that hurt your margins. Other people like to sell on Amazon because they don’t charge listing fees and offer a similar amount of traffic. But again, they charge high fees and have very strict rules. The third option is to build your own online store, and that’s what we’ll discuss here.

Building an online store may sound intimidating, but it’s actually a lot easier than you’d think. There are lots of premade shopping cart solutions available to you that can be customized to your liking with minimal programming experience. Shopping cart software is a type of script that allows you to easily add products, add descriptions, options, pricing, and more. They also should include an integrated shopping cart and payment processing options.   All you have to do is populate it with products, descriptions, graphics, and features.  Here are a few of the best solutions for building an online store:

Yahoo! Merchant Solutions

Yahoo offers a shopping cart solution that is highly customizable and gives you everything you need to start selling as fast as possible. This includes your web hosting, software, payment processing, marketing tools, and more.  They even help you customize it with detailed tutorials and support.  Plus your store automatically gets listed in the Yahoo shopping directory.  They charge $39.95 per month for all this, but it’s well worth the simplicity it delivers. If you want to build your own online store but don’t want any of the hassle that comes with it, this is a good option.

Zen-cart

Zen-cart is a free open-source shopping cart software that is a spinoff of the popular osCommerce software. It’s highly customizable, it comes with hundreds of free add-on modules, templates, marketing tools, and most important of all, its free! This solution is a little more difficult, and requires you to have your own web hosting, but is fairly easy to learn. Most of the modules and add-ons you need are already premade and available for download.  It’s cheaper this way, but requires more work on your end. On the plus side it’s much more customizable. This is how I build my online stores.

Whichever solution you choose, you will already be ahead of most other dropshippers. Many people rely completely on eBay to sell products. Having your own website allows you to utilize tons more marketing tools and get a lot more customers. Plus, you can always sell on eBay as well. I highly recommend building your own store if you want to stand out from the crowd.

Of course, the most important part your drop shipping business, as always, is finding the right products.  Check out Salehoo for a huge directory of legitimate wholesalers and dropshippers.

Best Dropshippers

0

October 23, 2010 at 2:36 am Filed in:Uncategorized

Looking for the best dropshippers? We all are. Unfortunately, finding the best dropshippers is no easy task. Most of the companies you find in the search engines are not legitimate companies. Most of them are middlemen that give you marked up wholesale pricing and sometimes charge monthly fees on top of that. Many times they will offer you a premade online store or other cookie cutter solution.

It sounds like a great deal. A premade store packed with products just ready to sell? Sign me up! Unfortunately, these sites will NEVER make you any money. They sucker thousands, sometimes millions of people into these deals, and the only one who makes money is the middleman.

Think of it this way. If there are thousands of other people selling the same products in the same basic store with the same wholesale pricing, why would anyone buy from you? Don’t try to answer that, because i’ll tell you right now, they won’t! You can’t win with a generic solution like this. Even though it sounds so easy and so profitable, it really isn’t.

Search engines hate cookie cutter sites and duplicate content. Your online store will NEVER have any authority in a search engine if you go this route. And forget about selling on ebay or Amazon. You’ll never be able to beat the pricing and product selection that a real dropshipper supplies. The only one who wins in this relationship is the middleman.

If you’re trying to find a real wholesale or dropshipper on the internet, you’ll be sorely dissapointed.  The best dropshippers and wholesalers do not advertise in search engines.  All you will find in the search engine are middlemen and scammers.  To find the best dropshippers you’ll need to either start looking in offline business directories, making phone calls, driving to their locations, writing letters, etc.  Either that, or use a wholesale directory.

So if you really want to know where the best dropshippers are, forget about using a search engine. Take it from me, nothing good will come from it. The best dropshippers are found in wholesale directories like Salehoo or WorldWide Brands.

I have already been scammed, ripped off, and generally disappointed by many of the most common wholesalers and dropshippers. Check this out to see what I got out of it.