One of the most frequently asked
questions on the Net is: "What should I sell online?"
Many people know what products
they want to sell. However, they don't know how to do this.
Should they physically stock the products themselves or promote
other companies through affiliate programs?
Drop shipping may be the answer
for some website owners who want to become stockless retailers,
whereby they keep no stock themselves. Instead they promote
products on their website and get a drop shipping company to
despatch these products for them.
Here are the steps involved in
drop shipping:
1) You open an Internet Store
with a shopping cart and accept credit cards on your site. You
can also sell on Internet Auction sites.
2) You find a distributor who
will "drop ship" the products you want to sell.
3) You open an account with the
"drop ship" distributor(s) you choose.
4) You receive descriptions and
images of the products you wish to sell from the distributor
and put them on your Internet Store or Auction.
5) When a customer buys from your
Store or Auction, they pay with their credit card. Your Store
or Auction charges their credit card plus shipping.
6) You email the order to the
drop ship distributor with the customer's name and address.
7) Then the drop shipper despatches
the product to your customer from the warehouse with YOUR business
name on the package.
8) The drop shipper charges you
the wholesale price plus shipping. Remember you have already
passed the shipping charge on to your customer, so the shipping
costs you nothing.
So that's how drop shipping
works. You don't have to buy products in bulk and store them,
hoping to sell. You don't have to pay to have it shipped to
you, and then pay again to ship it to your customer. All you
had to do was send an email to your drop shipper.