by Jellyn

Created on: January 22, 2007   Last Updated: April 14, 2007

I ventured into the world of drop shipping a year ago. If you're willing to do your research, it's not too difficult to get started. I found it more difficult to make significant money. (That is, enough money to compensate me for my time.)

After you've set yourself up as a business, such as with a Doing Business As (DBA) name, you need to find one or more companies that drop ship. There are many scams out there and many places that are actually middlemen taking a cut. This is where the research comes in. Read not one website, but many. You want to be working with the drop ship company directly, not a third party. Very often they will be the manufacturer of the product(s) in question.

Ultimately I did sign up with a service that maintains a list of drop shippers. This was my largest expense. I did successfully get set up with a couple of drop shippers as a result.

You list the products on your website or post them on auction sites. The price you set is mostly up to you. Some drop shippers say you can't sell it for below a certain price, to be fair to all the people they're working with. You're responsible for the listing and payment. Once you've taken an order, you pass along the order information to the drop shipper. They pack up the product and ship it to your customer. The address will look like it came from you and your company.

The advantage to this is that you don't have to maintain any inventory. This means less overhead costs for you and it's great if you're living in an apartment with no room for inventory. The disadvantage is that once you've placed the order with the drop shipper, it's pretty much out of your hands. If the drop shipper is out of stock or takes too long to ship the product, the customer is going to blame you. This can negatively impact your feedback rating if you're selling on a site with ratings.

Do your research. Make sure you're familiar with auction sites or running an online store. Be comfortable with the drop shipper(s) you're working with. Do all this and you can be successful.

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