Home Based Business

Selling drop shipped merchandise is a fantastic home-based business. There are no products to stock or ship - others do it for you!

Dropshipping is when the product distributor takes care of all the shipping for you. Rather than ordering stock in bulk, the stock remains with the dropshipper (product distributor). Then, when you make a sale, you send a message to the distributor and they will send the item directly to the customer with your company label on the box.

NOTE: A dropshipper is basically a wholesale supplier (product distributor).

You do not make any advance payment. First you sell the item and get the payment from the customer. Then you pay your supplier (dropshipper) for the same item (wholesale price) and leave the margin in your bank account. The supplier processes the order and ships the goods out to your customer.

Dropshipping is one of the easiest and most risk free ways to sell products on the internet. You advertise products provided by the drop shipping company on your own online store. A visitor to your store sees the product and decides to buy it. You receive the order and submit it to your dropshipper company, who ships the item(s) directly to the customer.

Here's how it works:

1) You post products for sale using online auctions (like eBay), forums, your own E-commerce web site or retail outlets. You may choose whatever medium you feel will generate sales, but I recommend at least owning an E-commerce website.

2) Once you have made a sale, you simply collect your customer's money for the retail price of that sale, including the shipping and handling charges you add to their cost. You can accept any payment method you would like - personal checks, money orders, credit cards, PayPal - when collecting payments from your customers.

3) After you have taken your customer's order and his payment, you submit the order and your payment to the dropshipper company and they will "drop ship" the merchandise to your customer directly. In most cases, you can place the order simply by visiting the supplier's website or emailing in the order. You just specify the customer's shipping address.

Your primary task is to find good and reliable dropshippers. They should offer a good selection of the products, brand new preferably, at competitive prices. It can be difficult to find the *best* dropshipping company in your particular business, and make sure they have sufficient stock, that products are of good quality, that they ship items in due time (correctly packed) etc.

If you don't want to do all the searching for dropship companies and testing their reliability yourself, I recommend you join SaleHoo. It's a dropship directory that have done all the research for you and represents a proven, trusted source of info with a 56-day money back guarantee.

The very easy way to starting a dropshipping business is getting a completely ready online store that you can load with products.  It is indeed possible to get a complete online store with all functionalities, taking payment included, ready for you to load with your own stuff - even for free! If you choose this option, you avoid all the work and hassle setting up shopping cart, payment solutions etc. and can start selling straight away.

The free store is sponsored by ads, so with this option your store will be cluttered with somebody else's ads (click here to see such a free store). Unfortunately the no ads version cost $29 - $45 per month (two versions with different features). The company providing this free ready made store is called 1FreeCart.

Easier still is to get a completely ready made, payment-enabled online store - stuffed with items ready to sell. If you have some money to spare you can buy such a store - loaded with thousands of items! There are several companies offering such turnkey stores, one very good among them being DropshipDesign.com.  

Besides selling from your own website (provided by them), they also have features making it easy to sell on auction sites like eBay and Amazon. They have different options at different pricing ranging from $49.99 to $199.99, so you'd better check it out!

To your success!

Kanute Fleming

P.S. You are welcome to email me at support@onlinehomebizniz.com if you want more information on dropshipping matters.