Drop Shipping Tips & Techniques

Kevin’s Recommended Source for Drop Shippers!

Have you heard about drop shipping? Drop shippers are distributors that will ship individual items to customers for eBay sellers. Many sellers use drop shipping for business leverage allowing them to sell high-end products without the financial burden of having to actually stock the items. Instead, they simply list and sell the item on eBay, then contact their distributor to ship the item to their customer. The distributor ships the item and charges the wholesale cost to the eBay seller. The eBay seller collects the profit without ever touching the product!

Sound like a good deal? Yes it is as long as you do it correctly. There are some pitfalls with drop shipping that you need to clearly understand.

For example, what if you sell the item on eBay, then contact your distributor only to discover that the item is out of stock? Yikes! Bad feedback is coming your way. So you need a back-up plan if you are using drop shippers. There are two ways to accomplish this.

First, eBay sellers may have more than one drop shipper for the items they carry. If distributor one is out of stock, they go to distributor two to have the order filled. However, this does not always work. Sometimes, the manufacturer is out of stock and so are all the distributors.

The second backup method is the one I prefer. For every item I drop ship, I have one or two of the items in stock at my home office at all times. If my distributor runs out of stock, I simply fulfill the order myself from my own stock. I don’t list any more of those items on eBay until my distributor is back in stock.

So, while I do recommend drop shipping as powerful selling leverage for your eBay business, I suggest you do it correctly. The first step is to ensure that you are dealing with reputable distributors and second, that those distributors will indeed drop ship for you.

How do you find Reputable Drop Shippers? From Worldwide Brands!

I love these guys. They have made my eBay business so much easier. If you are searching for a drop shipper, how do you know if you are getting one that is reputable? Many things can go wrong when drop shipping. When I am looking for a drop shipper, I go to their site first. Worldwide Brands is the only drop ship and wholesale directory publisher that is certified by eBay. They charge a one time, very reasonable fee to join their site.

They also offer a “Light Bulk Wholesaler” service where they find low minimum order quantity wholesalers. This is very important to eBay sellers since most of us are “small timers.” When you contact major wholesalers, you may be surprised to find a required minimum order quantity that may total several thousand units or dollars. Worldwide Brand’s new service allows you to find wholesalers/distributors that have low minimum order quantities.

With their combined services, you can type the brand name or type of product you are looking for and they will find either a drop shipper or a distributor that have low minimum order quantities.

On Worldwide Brand’s site, they provide many helpful FREE e-books to help you understand drop shipping and eBay product sourcing. They also offer software seller tools including their very powerful “Market Wizard” which searches the Internet to provide you with sales statistics for any product item you are thinking of selling. In addition there are many other eBay and Internet selling goodies. Even if you are not interested in drop shipping, you should check out their site.

Here is even more good news. Chris Malta, the CEO of Worldwide Brands, has also agreed to give a discount to eBay students. If you use the link below, it identifies you as an eBay student and you are given an automatic $10 coupon off any purchase you make on their site. You will see that you have a $10 off coupon waiting for you when you use this student link to their site:

q       www.worldwidebrands.com/studentrate

  

Copyright 2006 Kevin W. Boyd at www.trainingu4auctions.com