Drop Shippers are basically retail stores for manufacturers. A website that is drop-shipping a product is not buying, stocking, managing inventory or anything. THey are simply an online "storefront" which sends the requests directly to the manufacturer. The manufacturer then pays that online retail store a percentage of the profit or sale. It's almost like one giant affiliate program. The benefit for the manufacturer is that they never have to worry about marketing or advertising their own products. They simply sit back and fill orders.

Most people usually have no clue that they are buying items from a drop-shipper because the manufacturer puts the label of the storefront on the box.

A good example would be Ink Cartridges. Type in "ink cartridges" on google. I would say 9 out of 10 of those websites are not actually stocking ANY inventory. They simply send the requests either directly to the manufacturer or a wholesaler.

It can be a very lucrative situation. The downfall is having to deal with customer issues in case anything goes wrong. Some drop shipping companies make you cover those types of costs. Be careful.

Be good,

PSEO

Yeah I am a reseller (dropshipper) for a car parts company. You are able to sell items for less than most competition but at the same time you have no control over shipping, whether the item is damaged, etc. If a customer receives a damaged item you have to pay for them to ship it back which pisses me off. Also a lot of distributors have very poor customer support so I suggest being knowledable about the products you are going to be selling before you start selling them. Lastly, obtaining tracking numbers for packages can take several days sometimes so you will have the occasional upset customer.

If this is something you are considering it can be very profitable, just be sure you know a lot about what you are selling and you have a good contact at the manufacturer/distributor.

Beware there may be some scammers out there. If you find dropshippers that require you to pay monthly fee then I would suggest you runaway as quickly as you can. They are basically making money from this monthly fee as they know you don't sell many of their items.

A true dropshipper will either invoice you (monthly basis) on what they have dropship for you or collect payment on every order you placed. There shouldn't have charge you any maintenance fee or whatsoever. Also check if they set any minimum orders/target per month/year. Some dropshipper only want to serve big business and drop any unhealthy one.

Do check you can use their marketing material (images and text decription) on your website and how long they will take to dropship your order.

Ah... no license is require unless you are dealing with drugs and restricted products (guns!)

Good luck.

Basically, a drop-ship business model removes the logistics of a business that would normally ship product. The 'traditional' online retailer would buy product, ship to their warehouse, then ship to their customers as orders are taken over the Internet.

In a drop-ship business model, you align yourself with companies who will do the shipping and warehousing functions for you. You drive people to your website, hopefully convert browsers into buyers and take orders. You then transmit these orders to your drop-ship supplier, and they ship the product for you. Typically, these drop shippers will stamp your name on the packing slip on the box and packing slip, so that to your customers, it looks like it came from you when the package arrives at their doorstep.

You, in essense become more like a marketing company, than an actual online store. Some of the facet's online retail, of course, still remain such as customer service.

The primary benefit of this model is that it removes much of the financial risk from the equation. You no longer have to worry about tying up a capital investment into inventory - inventory that possibly won't sell. There is no concern about paying warehousing people, who will possibly be just 'sitting around' if (or when) sales are slow. No rent to pay. You can probably see the obvious advantages.

The disadvantage, of course, is that if you can do it (i.e. find drop shippers), so can your competitors. That means that there is a high probability that a 'lot' of people will be doing what you're doing.

That means that in order to remain competitive, you must have a strong USP, better known as a Unique Selling Proposition. This USP may come in the form of low price, fast shipping, added bonuses for multiple item sales, free shipping, lightening fast customer service, etc.

I know this is an old thread but i wondered how you got on wih your dropshipping?

http://www.doba.com/dropshipper/home_intro_k.html
try this link and see if this helps you out. Hope it does.

To dropship most items you have to find a good reliable distributor maybe www.wholezilla.com might have something? haven't really checked it out. From there get all necessary business licenses (sole, LLC, or Inc.) and some states require a reseller permit as well which is around $75? I think...it's been a while. Anyways if you find something you can sell and actually make money that's the tough part...good luck.

hey stockmysite do you also stock fsc store? or di you just find 6 free affiliate programs and design your own website with their content? Or maybe your a gold member.

Hello, thank you for your interest, this is not an affilitate group of sites, this is a real site, we have a two sided coin thing going sort of, 1 you can list the items you wish on your own site or auction and buy what you need once you have an order...and also we have on our home page a #1 business opportunity where you can get the websites for yourself, and enjoy the super savings in the members area.You just need your domain own domain name and of course you choose the template you want...then you have the same set-up ready to go, you are then a wholesale dropshipper yourself.
The honest side is..you have to promote your own site and if you have any dealings at all on the net you know that can be some work. I will say we made the price of the sites back the 1st month, i am sure that will be different for everyone.Something we do for those who purchase the site for themself is we will submit the website to over 140 search engines free. We use a professional program, not one of the spam submissions or FFA stuff. We use IBP & Arelism this gets the site submitted to all the hard to find and out of thought search engines like google.italy and google france, yahoo,japan and so on.
We are really happy with our site and just want to spread the word.
You set your own mark up (from base members price,not my prices which are at a 10% mark up from the members price)
You can look us up on alexa.com we went from over the 6 million mark to the 700k mark in just 3 months, that is good.
I hope this covers what you were looking for, <snip>

Good luck!!
D