Selling Products Online:

The Wonderful World of Dropship eCommerce

The figures for online sales are climbing year after year.  In the early days of eCommerce when selling products from your shopping cart platform the question was “How do I compete against the big box retailers?”, but now the question is one faced by the traditional retail outlets as they ask “How can I compete against the online stores?”.  After all, when you are selling dropship products from your website cart platform…you don’t have thousands of employees, huge expenses tied up in inventory on the shelves, or even bigger expenses with just owning a physical retail space.

So, why should you sell products online?  It should be obvious, but here are a few reasons to just get started on your goals of running a great dropship eCommerce website.

You can make money: We can all agree…this is one of the main reasons why anyone gets started selling dropship products online.  Online retail (eCommerce) is a billion dollar industry, and it has continued to grow, even during the down years.  Again….its a billion dollar industry.  You don’t have to be the biggest online website…many of us would be happy with some small percentage of the billion dollar pie.  There is plenty of room for more retailers…if you are smart.  If you spend your time on things that will make your website better and your money on things that give you more time to do this, like automating your product data, so you can focus on other aspects of your business (or so your business can run while you still focus on your current job if you are selling online part-time).

There are plenty of customers ready for your store: If you are listing items on a marketplace like eBay or Amazon, they are already full of customers, and millions of people are searching and surfing for items online every day to purchase.

It’s simple: Selling products online isn’t hard.  There are many great store platforms out there, like 3DCart, Bigcommerce, Magento, Zen Cart, Open Cart, CRE Loaded, Virtuemart, and many others shopping cart platforms which make it simple to getting started without needing to be a technical wizard or programmer.  If you know what a great store looks like and how it is organized and presented, then you can easily setup your shop in a similar way.

With any new business, there is a learning curve and you need to find things that will work best for you and your business, but here are a few important things to keep in mind:

1. To have a business, you need to be a registered business.  Each country has their own rules for this, but its particularly important for US based sellers.  You need a bank account for your business.  This is simple, and you can just open a second account at your current bank.  You can add this account online, or just walk into the branch and you will have what you need in a matter of minutes.

You will also need to register your business name with a Business Tax ID or Reseller Certificate, depending on your state.  This ID is what allows you to purchase products from a wholesale dropship supplier without being taxed, and it will be something you need when completing your application with a supplier.  This also can often be done online, and takes minutes.  If filling in this form is what keeps you from selling products from a real supplier and getting started as a real business, you should really think if eCommerce is the right place for you.  If you are serious about getting started and doing well, the few minutes to start right is worth it, you can’t get approved from a real source without it.  (If you have trouble finding out how to get started with this step, just let us know at Inventory Source and we can show you the steps.)

2. While the internet is great…there are also lots of scams.  Scams are all over when you search for potential business opportunities online.  Be careful about who you trust to help you with your business. Don’t fall for get rich quick schemes, they don’t work, and the only person that gets rich is the scammer who created it.  Be careful and do your homework!

One common type of scam is a website that pretends to be a supplier.  Just because they are on some directory of suppliers or in some paid list, does not make them legitimate.  Often times these websites or lists don’t do any vetting of sources that get added.  Just because they say “wholesale” on their website, does not mean that they are.  They often charge high prices or membership fees or other startup fees.  Often, they don’t even stock the items directly…they are just a “middleman” (one of the larger ones rhymes with “Oba”) pretending to be a source of the products while they are actually working with the real dropship suppliers.

Another common scam new store owners face is someone might call you up based on the number you registered with your domain name.  They will say they work with your host or another service provider you use and they have been asked to help you with your website.  They will tell you that you might need a whole new card because of some HTML change and will charge you $500 or more to help get you all set with a new system.

If you get something like this, hang up, and just call your host or service provider directly to confirm.  There will be nothing wrong with your site.  You are already online and thousands of people or more are already selling successfully from a website platform just like yours, so just because someone calls or emails you pretending to have some knowledge of your website or services that you use and tries to sell you some new service, does not make it true.   Would you believe someone that showed up at your home saying the walls all need to be updated and to trust them and just hand them $1,000 and they will upgrade it all for you?

So…how do you get started selling dropship products from your existing website or from a new website?

At InventorySource.com, we have been helping online sellers find legitimate and trusted wholesale dropship sources for their online store or marketplace for over 11 years now.  More than just helping you find sources for your store, we provide the IT support and tools to launch and to quickly grow.

There are various tools and features which can help you stay current with the thousands of product price, quantity, and status changes every day as well as controlling your category format, product filters, or new product additions.  However, without any integration costs or setup fees or long term contracts, getting started with an Inventory Source automation service for around $1/day is going to do much more for your business than that fancy cup of coffee at 4 times the price.  Can you try to manage your catalog updates manually?  Sure, but the hours you need to spend each day or each week are also worth much more to you than the cost of our data solutions.

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