Being an internet retailer or a storefront retailer with a website or a owner of a mail order or a catalogue company, you would find the concept of drop shipping quite attractive and enticing. This is because of the reason that drop shipping does not involve stocking expensive inventory and logistic shipping issues. In these categories of businesses, working with a reliable manufacturer or a warehouse company that also drop ships can work to your advantage and give your higher profit margins than normally imaginable. The most important drop shipping advantage is that it saves on one’s time and helps you to concentrate on your core competencies of marketing and selling.
The whole process of drop shipping happens in four simple steps:
– You advertising and sales efforts bring in an order for a product.
– The customer pays you money for the product.
– You forward the order, money and shipping details to your drop shipper.
– The drop shipper ships the product directly to the customer with you as the sender.
Drop shipping is a simple and efficient process until you are working with a quality, reliable and trustworthy drop shipper. But, if you end up get into a contract with an unreliable company or a scamster, your profits, your reputation and your entire enterprise may suffer and get destroyed. While deciding upon your drop shipping partner, be wary of the following points.
In a drop shipping business, you will find yourself working with many companies or one big company whose products you showcase and sell. You will be marketing a particular class of goods through which you will be making profits for your company, drop shipper and the original manufacturer.
While you are in the process of selling other companies products, there is no reason why you should be paying the company anything in form of any membership or subscription. The companies that charge such fee are in the order of saying that they have a complete array of products and are backed by a great marketing department. They are willing to include a free e-commerce website for you to enable selling their products. Such bug and turnkey businesses have a large setup cost, monthly membership fees, and other hidden expenses. You may be allowed to sell their products only, on your site.
Can you make a profit from such big companies? Or does anyone? Yes, people who can sell to unwitting or new retailers can make a huge amount of money. This is a scam. The only fee, you should be paying is for the cost o the product itself and the shipping cost. Some legitimate drop shippers may also charge you a fee which is refunded once you begin trading with them.
Never, ever pay a drop shipper for the so called “rights” to drop ship for you. It is ridiculous, and still people fall for it. It’s a major con. A drop shipper is already profiting from your efforts of selling products from him and there is no reason why you should pay him anything above it.
There are a few lists bogus drop shippers that are “sold” to potential retailers. A good and legitimate business may end up spending hundreds of dollars on such lists. These lists are nothing but the names of few scamsters who are posing as drop shippers. These will not really help apart from relieving you from a lot of money.
There are certain “cheap” lists also available. They are generally outdated and false, the reason why they are “cheap”. Most on the list do not exist or have already gone out of business.
Make sure, while contracting with a drop shipper that will not communicate directly with the customers through a written contract. All legitimate drop shippers and companies will agree to and honor such a contract without any problems.
