Drop Shipping- Any help appreciated

Hello,

I'm pretty new to the whole online store thing, but have recently become very interested in starting one. I've looked at it from many angles and figured that, for me, drop shipping may be the best alternative. I've been looking through the vast numbers of drop shipping companies that charge a "membership fee" to give you their drop-shipping resources. One in particular is http://www.dobo.com. They seem to be the most lagitamite, but you never know when it comes to online business. I was wondering if anyone here has had an relations with this company good, or bad. They offered me a membership for a fee of $225 for 15 months. This membership includes a placement with source wholesalers, ebay listing tools, search engine placement tools and a discount to an affiliate web host called turnkey. The web host would cost $150 with a monthly fee of $16.98. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

One question and don't take this the wrong way; why would anyone pay another company to drop ship their products to be sold? I can see charging $5.00 for extra effort it takes to drop ship but $225? What's the product? Service? More importantly, what is it that you want to do? I'd be careful with anyone who wants to charge a huge membership fee just to do a drop ship.

I run a online store, http://www.elegantunderwear.com, and I have distributors who will drop ship (should I need it) for $5.00 but I didn't have sign up for any membership. It’s their products; they want retail businesses to sell their products. The bare minimum that you would need to buy anything would be a business license.

As far as web hosting goes, you can get it cheaper anywhere (http://www.g4hosting.com). And there are plenty of free shopping carts out there i.e. zencart and oscommerce.

My red flag goes up on this one.

I actually just finished reading an article on Entrepreneur.com stating the same thing. Why pay people to drop ship products when you can do it yourself for little or no fee? The only thing that caught my attention is that they included the Ebay listing and major search engine que's. I'm by no means a professional web designer either and they offered a turnkey web host to do the work for me, but I was reading about how that can be a scam as well. I guess where I would have the most problems is finding a company that would be willing to drop ship my product and come up with a deecent website. I took a look at your site Elegant, looks great. Do you have your own inventory, or do you drop ship as well? Would I just contact a company about a product that I'm interested in and ask them if they would offer drop shipping? Would the majority of companies offer it?

Thanks again for the input.

Don't ever pay someone to sell their products....Think about it, you're going to make them money by selling their products so why in the world are they going to charge you to do this??
-The only relevant fees will be a "dropship fee", something like 1-5 bucks usually, which means they ship out your product to your customer and slap your companie's name on the box.

-Put your 200 bucks to a better use, subscribe to the drop ship source with Worldwide Brands Inc., find a supplier there for a product you want to sell, setup a drop ship account, Done. That's what I did and it works.

Thanks for the helpful info.

Brett,

We use WorldWideBrands. Lots of drop shippers listed and never a problem with any of them. You choose which ones you want. You can search their listings by product, brand name or drop shipper name.

Take a look at them, if you haven't already.

WorldWideBrands

I don't think you'll regret the money you spend.

Thanks Sarge. This all looks great. But, now steming back to my other question. Once I have a product in mind and a good target audience, how do I effectively develope a deecent looking website without spending a ton? I realize, like any buisiness opportunity, there's a financial obligation of some sort and a risk, but any recommendations as to what hosts/developers to use would be a good start.

I bought a "web builder" program that included hosting. I won't recommend it to you because I.m in the middle of switching to another right now. The original product is antiquated and the customer support leaves a lot to be desired.

Some of the others I've looked at seem pretty good, but, again, I will not recommend any. I don't feel I know enough about the topic to give that kind of advise or recommendation. Just do a Google search for "e-commerce web builder", or "e-commerce web site" ... anything similar. You'll get more results than you'll have time to review.

There are some basics to keep in mind though. You'll need a payment gateway of some kind, so I'd look for a builder that includes one, or at least makes provisions for one. PayPal is fairly common but a 'regular' gateway that lets you accept credit cards directly on your site is better, IMO.

To go with the payment gateway, you'll need a merchant account. Some builders/hosts have options built in and some leave it to you to find one and set it up. Also, you'll want a good shopping cart. Again there are numerous options. Personally, I'd go with a builder that had a cart built in rather than a separate cart. Just makes things simpler, especially if you're just learning.

Then there's the easy way ... lol

Hire a web designer to do it right the first time. If you get a good designer, you'll get a very good, effective site. Ask a lot of questions and try to deal with people that will answer all your questions instead of puttng you off or repeating their sales pitch. The only down side to this route, as far as I'm concerned, is you still won't know how to build and run your own site like you will if you build it yourself.

I forgot to add ...

One of my biggest mistakes was not researching the competition before I signed up with drop shippers. Turned out I was trying to sell in saturated markets. After about 9 months, I switched to other products. Do your product homework FIRST. Search all the major search engines for the products you are thinking of selling. Find out how many sites already sell it and what their prices are.

Then there's keywords and search engine optimization. You know anything about those?

That would be my next question. How do you utilize search engine optomization tools?

I was also briefly browsing around and found a "web development" site that looks deecent(http://www.ebizwebpages.com). They offer a webstore developer, acceptance of credit card payments/paypal, etc and all hosting and updating needs. Anyone have any experience with this company in specific? If not, theres so many out there, which are the best?

Thanks again for the thorough input Sarge.

Glad to help, Brett. And I hope it WAS help. :)

The search engine optimization can wait until you get your site started. But when you get ready, you'll need a good tool like WordTracker to help you. Let me know when you're ready.

Do you think around $50/month for that development/hosting package is a deecent deal at ebizwebpages.com? I've been looking around, but It's really hard for me to tell. The $50 is for the bare minimum. If I want to accept credit card payments through them It's a little bit more. Can I just use something like paypal to accept various types of payments? I think where I would get into some trouble would be syncronizing everything to actually function properly.

Brett,

Because of the nature of our products that we sell and how it is packaged, we carry a small (about 200 items) inventory. However when a customer buys an items whether it be one or more we purchase any where from $50.00 to $200.00 just so that we will have that inventory. The companies that we deal with some do drop ship and others don’t. In any case, that wasn’t our game plan. Because there are many online companies that do what we do (I would imagine the same goes for you too) we wanted to be different meaning, why would anyone buy from us? You would have to ask the same question for yourself.

Do you know what Starbucks sells? They sell entertainment value. You can get coffee anywhere but Starbucks has bundled coffee with other entertainment values. So at Elegant Underwear, we set out to sell lingerie with a romance value. Think of it as a romance in a box; not only to you receive the item purchased online but we also add sample perfume, sample hand lotion, a silk scented rose, little bit of chocolate candy and depending on the season something of the season i.e. a heart shape lollipop for Valentines. You get the idea. We wanted to be different from the others; you have to be other wise you are just one of the other guys trying to sale the same product everyone else is.

You also mention a web site and that’s a very good point. Many people start their own online business believing to make extra cash on the side only to find out that it takes a lot of your time, demands your attention. They get motivated in building a site using tools you have mention or using yahoo stores but what happens is that they soon find out that the mass of people they were hoping for don’t come and isn’t worth their time anymore leaving the online store stagnant. It’s like reading the same month magazine every month at that point. Have a business plan. A lot of people don’t advertise as well; it’s one thing to have a web site and talk about it in forums and what not but that is about 1/8th that should be going into your advertising budget. Remember, there’s you plus another thousand others doing the same thing. Do the ad words, place an ad in the local newspaper and if possible talk about your industry where ever you can, especially on your web site. That’s content that gets indexed with the search engines plus you make the appearance that your web site is active. Have a newsletter people can sign up for and have monthly specials.

The bottom line is this: if you’re going to do an online store, remember this, “Do or do not, there is no try”, Yoda.

I agree with everything everyone said about finding drop-shippers. Additionally, consider the fact that when you buy a list there are a lot of others out there who have that exact list. You'll most likely be battling it out with a huge number of online stores. I'd be interested to hear what type of products you'd like to sell. Once you select what products you want to sell all it takes is a little research on google to determine who manufactures the product. You'd be amazed at how many of these manufacturers offer drop-shipping programs already. The one caveat to this is that you need to make sure you go through the process of creating a "real" business in the eyes of the law. Most manufacturers won't sell to you if you don't have at the very least a state sellers permit (or equivalent). Please keep me updated on what direction you decide to go.

I have subscribed to wordwidebrands.com, have found a lot of companies that will drop ship. the companies listed there are either manufacturer or wholesale distributors. They do not require any membership but wordwidebrands.com require one time fee

I agree with Kashem...wordwidebrands.com also bring us many trafic as we already listed as supplier...

i dunno about world wide brands.. i cant say whether or not it is a worth while venture.. but i found plenty of drop shippers for my needs just by using the search engines and taking a look at competitor websites..i just feel a little unsettled about paying for info like that..

Does anyone have any info on ecommerce solutions..

i have my legal info taken care of, found willing drop shippers, and have a hosting company (servage; but im not sure if it was a good decision), but NO SITE! i have no idea when it comes to html..
ill probably use paypal for gateway and merchant needs, but where should i look for worthwhile software to setup my site and shopping cart.. HELP!!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The Don Namon

i dunno about world wide brands.. i cant say whether or not it is a worth while venture.. but i found plenty of drop shippers for my needs just by using the search engines and taking a look at competitor websites..i just feel a little unsettled about paying for info like that..

Does anyone have any info on ecommerce solutions..

i have my legal info taken care of, found willing drop shippers, and have a hosting company (servage; but im not sure if it was a good decision), but NO SITE! i have no idea when it comes to html..
ill probably use paypal for gateway and merchant needs, but where should i look for worthwhile software to setup my site and shopping cart.. HELP!!

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You can find dropshippers on your own, but the majority of the legitimate ones don't advertise that they dropship, so that's why a good, researched drop ship directory provided by Chris Malta and Worldwide Brands is so useful. Minimal membership costs that saves you tons of time and money.

Sitewise, do you want the ability for full customization?? Zencart might work well, or try ecommercetemplates.com for a pre-built, turnkey type site that you can just add products with. Depends on your needs.

Hi: I'm Michelle Megna, the new managing editor of ECommerce-Guide.com. James Maguire is currently working on a story about drop-shipping for Monday, so visit the site July 24th for more info.
cheers,
mm

Cube Cart comes to mind

dropshipman.. sure id love to be able to customize.. but remember im pretty much html illiterate.. i was beginning to instal cubecart but had second thoughts.. hows oscommerce.. anyone have suggestions??

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The Don Namon

dropshipman.. sure id love to be able to customize.. but remember im pretty much html illiterate.. i was beginning to instal cubecart but had second thoughts.. hows oscommerce.. anyone have suggestions??

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http://www.dropshipping-products.com

Eccommercetemplates.com seems to be a good way to start if you're completely html illiterate, this is what several people have used and it's not very expensive. Oscommerce/Zencart, these things take a while to setup, probably longer if you've had no coding experience.

thanx dropshipman.. ill have to look into ecommercetemplates

if anyone has further suggestions im all ears

THANX!

I'm my own opinion, dropping shipping is a total waste of time and money. Why drop ship, when you can use a program like Amazon Associates, sell everything that Amazon offers, and just get commisions. This keeps you from having to worry about order fulfillment, and payment processing.

Setup a site like LiveWebShop.com (which has a full shopping cart, and checkout taking place on the site, not Amazon's) , and just enjoy the commisions you get for when someone checksout their shopping cart on your site, or Amazon's.

This is really (for me at least) the best way to get into the e-commerce game, without having to break the bank and all the hassle. You don't have to own any products or pay anything to join. As a matter of fact, you can sell any of millions of products that Amazon offers and make great commisions on them.

This leaves you with the only task of focusing on your site design, providing customer support (if you choose, because Amazon handles that too), and enhancing your visitor's user experience. It's definately worth looking into if you are just getting started with e-commerce.

Hope this post was helpful.

Thanks,
PuReWebDev

I do not have any idea about the product that you plan to sell as well as the quantity of items which will get sold every day. But I would suggest that have a mechanism to keep track of the status of order since your customers will need to know the delivery date and various details about the order status… etc. A proper workflow to address customer queries pre as well as post sell will be very critical. I suggest to have a look at that aspect of business too.

Prasad
Managing Director
www.v2biz.com

Hello,

This article is helpful http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/solut...le.php/3622011

In case of drop shipment make sure that you have well defined systems and processes to transfer order(s) as well as get status of the orders back. This is very critical for satisfying customer queries.

Thanks,

Prasad
Managing Director
www.v2biz.com

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PuReWebDev

I'm my own opinion, dropping shipping is a total waste of time and money. Why drop ship, when you can use a program like Amazon Associates, sell everything that Amazon offers, and just get commisions. This keeps you from having to worry about order fulfillment, and payment processing.

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Because everybody is going to do that, with dropshipping, you can start a very specific, product niched online store that's not a carbon copy of other people's wal-mart variety stores on the Internet. Setting up an online biz takes work, and that equals time, it doesn't happen overnight.

Who says that an Amazon e-commerce site needs to be Wal-Mart variety. You can focus on a niche with Amazon products, just the same way you could with drop shipping (example of an Amazon niche). Where the products come from is totally irrelevant to if you can focus on a niche or not, that's pretty short sighted to say that.

Quote:

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Setting up an online biz takes work, and that equals time, it doesn't happen overnight.

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I'm sure everyone else here already realized that a while ago. We're not disputing length of time for success. My argument is that drop shipping is a total waste of time and money.

If you don't have products of your own, exactly what difference does it make if the product comes from Amazon or some drop shipping company?

Here's a difference if you go with a drop shipper:

1. You have to pay merchant fees to process an order. Out of your own pocket.
2. Be on alert for fraudulent orders
3. Pay a drop shipper.
4. Ship products, worry/consider the logistical issues.
5. Provide customer service
6. The profit earned is the same as an Amazon Associate commision
7. You have to worry about order fulfillment and stock quantities.
8. Limited variety of product/brand names (not the total scope of Amazon)
9. I could really go on, and on with the negatives

Other then marking up a product to be more expensive, I bet there isn't at least 7 real reasons why drop shipping is better or more profitable then an affilliate type program, because essentially drop shipping is the same thing (you are an affiilliate of the drop shipper, selling their products versus another company like Amazon), except that you have the negatives listed above.

I welcome/encourage intelligent debate on the issue. I apologize if I'm taking the thread off course, I'm just contributing my 2 cents.


thanks,
PuReWebDev

hi,
i'm new here in the forum and also haven't started an e-commerce business yet. i wanted to do some research first and followed most of your links, they are all very interesting. especially this www.doba.com seems to be a big player in this whole business and even offers fraud protection, which is very useful for small fish like me. but the only thing what bothers me is the high monthly fee you have to pay and so i looked for some other sites offering this kind of services. i came across this www.sellerbox.com . at the first glance it looks pretty decent, what do the "old retailers" among think about it? is it trustworthy?
and maybe you have some more tipps for finding a good wholesaler as i don't want to have problems with fraud and faulty products.
thank you very much in advance.
flo

yes but dont u think the amazons associate program is a little different in that buyers eventually are redirected to amazon's site.. i buy a lot from internet stores and i think the redirect would come off as a little fishy to me as opposed to being able to complete your transaction on one site.. it also makes it hard to create brand loyalty with amazon buy now buttons and the redirect..

just a note, let me know what you think

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The Don Namon

yes but dont u think the amazons associate program is a little different in that buyers eventually are redirected to amazon's site.. i buy a lot from internet stores and i think the redirect would come off as a little fishy to me as opposed to being able to complete your transaction on one site.. it also makes it hard to create brand loyalty with amazon buy now buttons and the redirect..

just a note, let me know what you think

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That is a fantastic point you've brought up. Simulate an order on my site LiveWebShop.com , add a book or something to the shopping cart and hit checkout. You'll see that checkout actually takes place on my site, and not on Amazon's (no redirect). The best part about it, is that it's using Amazon's checkout process (best in the world to my knowledge). Many people redirect the visitor to Amazon's site, but then again many people don't know what they are doing.

Great point though, but I've kinda covered that issue.

thanks,
PuReWebDev

The only applicable fees will be a "dropship fee", something like 1-5 bucks generally, which means they send out your product to your customer as well as slap your companie's name on the box.

You'll most likely be combating it out with a huge number of online stores. I'd be interested to hear what type of products you'd like to sell.

You can checkout wholesale2b.com for a dropship catalog. Products from various dropshippers are gathered for you all in one place so its super easy to sell dropship products.

Five year old thread? seriously? wow..