Posts Tagged ‘dropship’

Stuck in the Middle With You

September 8th, 2009

Most things are best done with a friend. A second set of hands to help with the work, a shoulder to lean on. Its a beautiful thing. However, where a good friend helps without thought of recompense, a “buddy” in the business world is not always the best thing. Especially when this “friend” hasn’t actually let you know his or her involvement with you!

I’m talking once again about the dreaded middleman, the proverbial whipping boy of the dropship world. These rapscallions get continually better at hiding themselves as wolves among the sheep, but as good as they are, they still slip up, and red flags can be raised.

While its easy to flag oneself as a wholesale dropship company, it can be pretty easy to find out just how true that statement is. Let’s examine it bit by bit. Wholesale? No brainer. Means you’re not buying at retail. Dropship? Its a wholesale company that ships a single product at a time, usually for some nominal fee if at all. Company? Company. Simple terms, simple rules to follow.

A middleman will try to muck up the rules, but being inherently simple, its a pretty easy task for you to see past the deception. When a “wholesale dropship company” violates even one of the three words, you know you have cause for alarm.

Wholesale is a big world, so sometimes you can see some discrepancy between one “wholesale” price and another. To be expected, but still something to watch for. If one wholesale price is precariously high above all the rest, perhaps caution is the way to go.

Next, we have dropship. If your “dropship company” requires a minimum order that is much higher than the cost of an individual item, you’ve got a problem. The concept behind dropshipping lies in single items, and if your company doesn’t know that, chances are they’re not quite on the level.

Stepping Stones to Bridge the Dropshipping Gap

September 4th, 2009

In dropshipping, as in life, there are stepping stones that must be placed along the way. Without the stepping stones, there will be little to no success in in dropshipping; it is not easy to build the bridge of stepping stones that will bridge the gap between failure and success in dropshipping.

Finding a product niche to drop ship can be the most difficult stone to place but it must be firmly placed before proceeding on in the dropshipping industry. Keywords revolving around your product niche should also be found. I would suggest using the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. The best keywords will have over one thousand searches per month and under five million search engine results.

Now it’s time to find a supplier for your niche product. If you need help doing this, you may contact GoGo Dropship who has a Product Research Team designed to find a supplier for you. Please visit GoGoDropship.com for more information.

Once you have a product niche, create a company name and a website revolving around your product and target market. You want your website to include images that your target can relate to. Your website should follow basic design principles and have some kind of call for action.

You should also have a dropshipping strategy which may revolve around the following questions. At what point will I expand my product niche? What complimentary products do I intend to sell with my niche product, etc

Just remember to get each stepping stone firmly in place and don’t get too ahead of yourself. Take it easy and don’t skip any steps and you’ll be able to bridge the gap.

A Glitch in the Niche

August 28th, 2009

Finding a niche is probably the hardest part of starting your online business. You’ve got your idea down pat, the margins look good, and you’ve got your wholesale dropship directory research team to work for you. Should be smooth sailing, right?

Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. There are often products that have high demand, but apparently very little competition. Sounds like the heavens have opened up, and you have found your manna from heaven. Often when something sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. These great numbers are almost always because there just plain isn’t a wholesale dropship company out there that’s going to be able to help you.

There are a variety of reasons why a product may just be unavailable. Perhaps its not a popular item on the internet; athletic shoes are a good example of that. Maybe someone else has a stranglehold on the market; big brick and mortar stores that have carved out a niche often don’t want to be sharing any piece of that pie with online stores.

Whatever the reason, you have to realize that such situations exist, and be able to plan accordingly. It can be frustrating at times, but you just have to keep your eyes on the prize, and keep on searching!

If at First You Don’t Succeed, You Should Have Contacted Your Dropship Companies

August 26th, 2009

Confucius once said, “success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure.”

In order to prevent such failure, always contact the dropship companies you intend to work with before assuming that they dropship the particular product you want to sell. When you contact wholesale dropship companies, make sure that you also ask about any fees associated with drop shipping with that supplier before you get in too deep.

Some of the fees associated with dropship companies are price mark-up, same price, and monthly fee. A price mark-up occurs when the wholesaler marks up the product after getting it from the manufacturer. A second way to charge a fee is by selling the product for the price they were able to get it from the wholesaler but then charging a fee for each time a product is drop shipped. A third way is to be charged a monthly fee and then you can sell the product as often as you wish that month at the price of the wholesaler, without any extra fee associated with it. The dropship companies you’re working with may use all or none of these fees. If they use all of them, the chances of making a profit off the products are very low.

I cannot stress enough, the importance of contacting the dropship companies in advance. You would never want to post something on eBay, for example, and make a sale only to find out that the dropship companies you are dealing with plan to charge you extra fees. For more information please visit GoGo Dropship.

What We Have Here is… a Failure To Communicate

August 19th, 2009

As we’ve touched on before, communication is a key factor in developing a successful relationship with your dropship companies. This is of particular importance when you’re setting up your account with the dropship companies, but what many people seem to forget is that it remains just as important all throughout the tenure of your business!

One of the greatest disadvantages to dropshipping is that because you do not carry any inventory yourself, you are at the mercy of the dropship companies you use as far as shipping and stocking is concerned. In a particularly bad case, you could even find yourself with an order you have received, paid in full, but have no means of fulfilling it… the very definition of crisis!

However, that doesn’t need to happen. Most of the novice dropshippers’ problems come from simply forgetting to stay in contact with the dropship companies you are using. If they’re overloaded with orders, you want to know this! You need to know just how long they normally take to respond, or ship out an order before you start getting business flowing to them. You may not be able to control how they operate, but you can keep in communication with them and even try having a few sample items get shipped out your way in order to have a good understanding of just what your customers will need to expect when ordering items.

There’s a little extra cost involved, and a bit more work, but it is better to know all that you can about how your dropship companies operate, and keep in constant communication regarding inventory levels or just general levels of business, rather than remaining in the dark and possibly out of luck should an order fulfillment hit some bumps in the road. Plan in advance and keep the communication lines open and active, and you’ll do well in avoiding many sticky situations!