Many of you will probably remember the days when the only way to start a successful home business was to join some sort of multi-level marketing program or sell makeup at parties. In those days, people would have to buy a membership in the program along with an inventory of sample products that they would then sell to friends and coworkers at parties. Most people were not very successful at this and made very little money and usually alienated their friends and family. In the 1990s however, all of that changed for the better with the advent of the Internet and a retail delivery method called wholesale drop shipping.
Wholesale drop shipping is when a wholesale distributor or manufacturer agrees to send out single unit products to customers for a retailer. Many will also even include the retailers name on the invoice so that the customer is never even aware that they got it from anyone else but the retailer. This, along with the Internet has changed the whole dynamics of home businesses in America, making it easier and more cost effective to start your own business.
Home business owners are now able to launch a business without purchasing any inventory up front and are able to open a store without ever having to find a place to setup shop. Millions of Americans have setup ecommerce sites on the internet selling everything from Personal Computers to lawn care equipment all using wholesale drop shipping. As a matter of fact, according to eBay over forty thousand people make their full time living on their auction site alone; many of these are using drop shipping as their main method of product fulfillment.
The only problem for todays small business owner is how to find wholesalers to drop ship. In general wholesale distributors dont make it a habit of getting out there and advertising; obviously the whole reason they are in wholesale and not retail is to get away from doing all of that work. So it makes it very difficult for someone who has little or no business experience to make contacts with distributors when they arent even sure where to start looking.
To help out those small business owners Id like to offer some advice for finding wholesale distributors:
However, if you want to get up and running fast, or just dont have the time to go on a search
for wholesale distributors much less ones that drop ship, then the way to go is drop ship directories. These are usually pay services that search out drop shippers for you then give you access to their contacts; there are many of these on the Internet today, and many are very good. As with anything on the Internet you must be very careful of the scams out there. Many drop ship directories will end up giving you an outdated list of wholesalers, or when you contact them you will find that they are a true wholesale distributor but they do not drop ship.
Here are some pieces of advice when looking for a quality drop ship directory:
However you choose to find wholesale drop shipping, keep in mind that as with anything else in this world knowledge is power. Try and find out as much as you can before you jump in to get your feet wet. It will make your startup smoother and help you get the profitability stage much faster.
Tony Keeler is the founder and publisher of The Drop Ship Connection www.dropshipconnection.com - The webs only drop ship directory with a step by step guide for the home business owner. He is also the owner of MAR Services which publishes these great sites:
tony.keeler@dropshipconnection.com
Written By: Tony Keeler