Archive for the ‘dropshipping’ Category

Struggling to Find and Manage Products You Want to Sell?

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

Are you wanting to sell products online to make extra income?  Are you struggling to find wholesalers who will sell to an online store?  When you find a wholesaler and the products you want to sell, are you struggling to organize the information and get back to it quickly when you need it?  What can you do to drastically reduce the time it takes to assemble product information and then make sense of it?

To sell products successfully online, you need some critical information for each product:
1. Market and product research information
2. Current Demand
3. Current Supply
4. Current competition
5. Competitive pricing in eBay Auctions
6. Competitive pricing in major Retail (Amazon)

Once you secure the information for EACH product you want to sell, you need to sort it and track it different ways. It’s a major task to try to set this up on Excel Worksheets. That’s why the team at www.worldwidebrands.com has developed a unique Product Sourcing Tool designed to meet the needs of active online retailers. 

Research

Using a keyword, the Research Tool provides a complete Demand/Supply/Competion Picture for you in one place using simple organized tabs.  For each keyword you use to search, the tool identifies the other keywords used by browsers to find such a product.  This way you can perform multiple product searches to help identify the niche you can possibly sell into.  Your searches can be saved for later to help with trending.  There is no risk of errors trying to cut and paste or re-key information into an Excel Worksheet.

Suppliers

For each keyword search, The Product Sourcing Tool identifies qualified wholesale suppliers willing to work with online retailers and supply wholesale products to sell via Amazon, eBay, Yahoo! Stores or customized websites.  It identifies the wholesale supplier that offer products for dropshipping, light bulk, large volume & liquidation.separately.  Searches can be saved by Supplier.  Suppliers can be located by city, state or country in the tool as well, so if you want to locate a supplier in your region, you can easily locate them.   You can save your Preferred Suppliers separately - Add To My Suppliers.  You can also list suppliers that you cannot review when you see them but want to come back to them - Preferred Supplier.  It’s a fast way of finding retail wholesale relationships and identifying drop ship products.  http://www.worldwidebrands.com/pop_taketour.asp

Saving You Time

Time wasting for new online retailers includes:

  • Keying and emailing your company information to multiple wholesalers to request the opening of an account with those wholesalers.   The My Account section of the tool allows you to update the information once and then send an accurate, up-to-date information sheet to as many wholesalers as you need.
  • Looking for specific products you don’t find listed.  With WorldwideBrands.com, you don’t have to do the work.  Just contact info@worldwidebrands.com, tell us what product/s you need to find and we will do the research work for you and find the right wholesale supplier for you.
  • Identifying what’s new.  You can select Show Only Last 30 Added from the Tools’ Dashboard and bingo, all the latest stuff is there for your review.
  • Wasting time researching products that eventually you determine you cannot sell on eBay or Amazon anyway.  The Tool clearly identifies these in the search result before you spend any time contacting the wholesale supplier.

 

Time is of the essence when you start to develop your own online retail business.  As Product Sourcing is an ongoing requirement to keep your business fresh and alive, and growing, it’s important that you have an organized and swift method of getting product information and being able to recall quickly it any time you need it.

Visit the WorldwideBrands.com Testimonials section to hear how many others have saved time finding and managing the products they want to sell. 

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When to add new products and find a wholesale supplier

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

Colette Marshall was just interviewed on eBay Radio by Griff.  He asked several great questions about refreshing your product lines and introducing new products to sell.  The main question is how do you approach coming up with those new product line ideas and finding the supplier for it , especiallly before the holiday selling season?

Here’s what Colette Marshall responded:

1) At what point should an online retailer start thinking about refreshing their product lines and introduce new products?

The answer is all the time.  As an ecommerce retailer, we’re always looking to provide our customers with what they’re looking for. You should be constantly looking at trends and trying new product ideas.  It’s best to do it before the Holiday season so that you know what are going to be some best sellers in the holiday season. Also in the holiday season,you’re going to get very busy so it’ll be a little more difficult to add on new product items. It’s best to introduce new products consistently throughout the year.

For those of you who are just beginning, when you’re doing your product sourcing find a supplier with a wide variety of complimentary skus.  When you’re ready to start adding products to your eBay store, auctions, Amazon, or Yahoo! Store, then you’ll already be set up with a supplier you can work with. This is the fastest way.

If you already have a supplier, but their selection is not big enough or you’re not finding what you’re looking for then the same idea still applies. Try to find a supplier that has a wide range of skus to select from.

Now sometimes you’ll be focused in a micro niche where your product is very specific.  Usually in this case you’re going to be dealing directly with the manufacturer. There may not be a wider selection to choose from. There is no problem with this. You will just need to manager yourself so that you can deal with multiple dropshippers and wholesale suppliers.

2) Do you have any tips for sellers to help them identify what to add to their eBay store or add to their listing options?

The easiest place to start first is your eBay Store or your current Auctions.  Ask yourself:  what will compliment this product?  For example, if you sell a themed dog bowl is there a matching cat bowl.  If you sell a coffee maker, are you selling coffee mugs.  If you sell furniture, are you selling the products to keep that furniture clean or in its best condition.

From a product point of view, you can look at your current suppliers catalog or inventory and see what they provide that will compliment what you’re selling.   What you want to try to avoid is selling motor cleaning supplies next to kitchen appliances.  Focus on adding products that are within the same niche.

A great tip for the holidays is to see if you can make anything into a bundle. For example, the furniture you are selling - can you include the 1st months’ cleaning supplies?  Can you make a pet gift basket of a collar, bowls, a leash and a pet toy.

Most importantly keep an eye on trending. Now that’s a whole seperate conversation, but basically you want to keep an eye on what are people talking about in your niche. You want to be ahead of the game so that you’re one of the top sellers in the forefront when customers come looking for those product.

3) Is there a place to find out more information?

WorldwideBrands.com is currently running a free webinar series at www.Sourcingforindependence.com. We’ve got a great webinar coming up with Lisa Suttora about how to understand product trends and what’s different this year with sourcing for the holidays.  It’s free to register - just go to www.Sourcingforindependence.com and sign up there.

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3 Critical Dangers of Drop Shipping (Plus a Free Gift)

Friday, May 1st, 2009

Using Drop Shippers to send products directly to your EBiz Customers from the wholesale warehouses is an extremely popular way to sell online, since there’s virtually no cost to get started. However, there are three critical dangers in Drop Shipping that will ruin your business, and you really need to know what you’re doing if you’re going to use Drop Shippers.

I’m going to give you the solutions to avoiding these and LOTS of other dangerous Drop Shipping issues absolutely FREE & I’m going to give you Drop Ship Focus for Free.

Critical Danger #1: The wholesale price of Drop Shipped products is higher than buying them in bulk (several at a time). This is because the Drop Shipper does most of the work for you (packing, shipping, etc.) and charges for that extra work. You need to learn how to price Drop Shipped products competitively in the right markets; otherwise you won’t make any sales.

Critical Danger #2: You should only be using ONE Drop Shipper per web site. If you use multiple Drop Ship suppliers on your web site, you run the very real risk of your Customers ordering products from different Drop Shippers in the same order. The danger here is that since your Customer’s products are coming from different Drop Ship wholesalers, they (or YOU) will be charged for shipping several times over. If this happens, you WILL lose the sale.

Critical Danger #3: Drop Shipping is a low cost ENTRY POINT into a successful online business, but is not meant to be a permanent solution. Most people don’t realize this, and don’t use Drop Shipping correctly in order to advance their business to more profitable stages.

So, those are three of the Critical Dangers of using Drop Shippers. There are others. Don’t despair, though; there IS hope, and plenty of it!  I’m going to show you how to avoid those dangers and many more so that you can make YOUR EBiz as profitable as possible, and put the most cash in your pocket. AND, I’m going to do it for FREE.

WorldwideBrands.com has been teaching people how to use Drop Shippers for ten years, and is considered the best in the industry. Our product “Drop Ship Focus” contains a video series about dropshipping and over 20 hours of audio interviews with experts in the eCommerce and wholesale industry.   We’ve sold it in the past for $97, but now we’re giving it away FREE.

Through this special link, for a LIMITED TIME, you can have Drop Ship Focus ABSOLUTELY FREE!

Click Here Now to get your FREE copy while you can!

DON’T FORGET - WE LOVE FEEDBACK!!!  Tell us what you think
about Drop Ship Focus or ask your drop shipping questions here!

PLEASE SHARE THE GIFT WITH FRIENDS AND COWORKERS

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How to source and use Liquidations for your eBay Store or Auctions (Colette Marshall Interview on eBay Radio)

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009


Worldwide Brands are the official product sourcing experts for eBay Radio. Each month, Chris Malta or I will chat with Griff about some product sourcing techniques you should know.

Today’s show we talked about “How to source and use liquidations”
Here’s a link to the show: http://wsradio.com/internet-talk-radio.cfm/shows/eBay-Radio.html

Here’s a quick summary of a few tips that we talked about:
Griff asked: Before you start buying liquidations, is there some terminology that eBay Sellers should be familiar with?
When you buy liquidations (secondary merchandise marketplace) you’re going to buy in palette loads. They can come from a variety of channels, so lets go through some of that terminology:

a) Order cancellations, product surplus, overstock – Simply, a wholesale distributor or brick and mortar retailers have brand new stock in storage that they have to get rid of to make room for new inventory coming in. They’ll liquidate the inventory to keep it moving. This is a great opportunity for you to pick some great products to sell on eBay that are brand new.

b) Companies move or go out of business – This is big right now because of the slow economy. Retailers and Wholesale suppliers who are going out of business need sell off their new inventory.

c) Customer returns – This is especially big after the holidays. You’ll get a mixture of new and used when you buy a palette of customer returns.

Through all of these methods, you want to ask the liquidation supplier to see the manifest for the palette (if possible).

Remember, a large majority of secondary merchandise is actually new product. There will be refurbished product that you may have to deal with (especially anything that is electronic) but they come all categories.

Griff asked: Can you give us some tips about working with liquidators?
The first thing you want to do is determine whether a company is legitimate. At Worldwide Brands, we’re qualifying new dropshippers and wholesalers everyday including liquidators. Some of the things we look for are:
- Established reputation
- Good references
- Valid contact information

When you’re deciding what liquidation supplier to work with, check for Flexibility in order sizes, payment terms, and the product condition of the majority of their lots. The more product information you’re able to get the better. But keep in mind that liquidators don’t know what they’re going to have month to month so many times they’ll stick to “category” descriptions. Don’t forget to also Check their shipping and returns policies.

One of the key factors with working with liquidators is shipping. Remember you’re buying in lots so you’ll normally have to ship via LTL (less than truckload) or FTL (full truck load). Take steps to reduce the impact of shipping on your total cost of goods. Check to see if the liquidator you’re working with has Local and regional shipping or multiple shipping locations. Discounted rates with national carriers are also a good thing to look for. The purchases in one shipment that you can make will be the best in reducing your overall costs.

Griff asked: Can you give us some tips about selling liquidated products?

To source surplus profitably, you must have a plan – both when you buy and when you sell. It’s critical to understand both what you’re getting and what you plan to do with it (especially when selling on ebay ).

Tips:

  • Study the product history and information.
  • Look at historical listings to determine how much those items went for in the past.
  • Determine the resale value for your products on eBay – Consider the demand, the closing prices, and the current condition of the item. Also take into account the level of your competition. If you see that the demand is limited or the market is crowded, then you know it will be difficult to turn those products over in a short period of time.
  • Have a plan B for what you’ll do with the inventory in case it doesn’t sell.
  • Figure out your desired net profit.
  • Identify the total cost of goods sold – that means all the expenses involved in getting your goods market-ready: any buyer’s premiums, any special packaging materials required to ship your products to your customers, any cost of repairs, the cost-value of your time in getting these products in saleable condition, and, of course, your shipping costs.

You can use this information to develop an effective buying strategy: by working backwards, you should be able to determine the maximum amount you can bid and still make the profit you desire.

Griff asked: Where can you find a liquidator?
There are numerous ways you, as a buyer, can find quality sources of liquidated products:

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Unique Content & SEO - Additional Tips for Improving Your Yahoo! Store

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

The keyword relevance in your product descriptions is one of the key elements to getting customers to find and buy your products online.  If you understand what the search engines are looking for, you can create good, quality content on your own.  Colette Marshall, of WorldwideBrands.com, and Shawna Fennell, of 1 Choice 4 Your Store, explain how to create unique content and share ‘white hat’ SEO techniques that will bring your Yahoo! Store to the top of the search engine results.

Don’t forget!  If you’re a Member of Worldwide Brands, check our your special bonus in your Member Center for the first 6 months on Yahoo! Stores for free.

If you’re not a member yet, learn more about this special offer.

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Drop Shipping Issues and Customer Service

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

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Over the last few weeks, we’ve talked about the pros and cons of drop shipping. So far, we’ve covered the reasons that drop shipping is such a great product sourcing method for new (and experienced) online sellers, and gone over some techniques for overcoming the thin profit margins that drop shipping sometimes provides. This week, we’re going to cover the second-greatest challenge that online retailers face in drop shipping - losing control over their own customer service.

Let me explain what I mean…

(more…)

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Drop Shipping Has Limits

Friday, January 9th, 2009

istock_000004357489xsmall

Last week, we talked about the advantages of drop shipping, especially for new online sellers. I promised that we’d get to the limitations of drop shipping, and some techniques for overcoming them. The primary disadvantage associated with drop shipping is the slim profit margins. One of the biggest complaints I hear from new e-tailers is that their wholesale drop ship prices are as high as their competitors’ retail prices, so they don’t have any room to make a profit.

Let’s start by understanding WHY drop shipping profit margins tend to be thin. The explanation is simple: your wholesale prices on drop shipped products are always going to be higher than your wholesale prices on products that you buy in bulk. There are a couple of good reasons for this:

(more…)

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Drop Shipping and the New Year

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

istock_000003866498xsmallThis is the time of year that a lot of people decide to begin their own online business. New year, new resolutions, new chance for a fresh start.

With the current economy and high unemployment, many people NEED to start an online business, because they need an extra source of income to get by. That’s why, this month, I want to focus on one of the easiest ways to get started selling online - drop shipping.

Drop shipping, for anyone who doesn’t know, refers to purchasing products from wholesale suppliers, one-at-a-time, and having them shipped directly from your wholesaler’s warehouse to your customers’ homes.

Not every wholesaler will drop ship their products for you. The reason for this is that wholesalers operate on very thin margins and make their money by selling in large volumes. In many cases, wholesalers simply can’t afford to drop ship products and still make a profit. That doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t find dropship wholesalers who will work with you.

The first thing you need to know is that, in order to set up accounts with them, you will need to make your online business legal. Regardless of whether or not they drop ship, real wholesalers will require your business name and tax ID in order to sell products to you at wholesale prices. (There are legal reasons why they do this.) You can find out how to get a sales tax ID for your state inside our Resource Center.

*On a side note:* If a supplier tells you that you don’t need to be a legal business to work with them - run as far and fast as you can. No matter how much they may claim to be a wholesaler, a supplier who sells directly to the general public (a.k.a. anyone who is NOT a legal business) is called a ‘retailer’. And since YOU are the retailer in this scenario, you don’t want to be buying from another retailer. This will only raise your product costs and lower your profit margins.

To make sure we’re all on the same page, let’s look at an example of how drop shipping works:

You decide to get started online and take advantage of the 2 months of waived ‘Selling on Amazon‘ fees that you receive as a bonus with your membership to ‘The Whole Sale‘. Inside the Worldwide Brands’ Members’ Product Sourcing tool, you find a dropship wholesaler of bread and cake pans, and you put up a number of their products on Amazon.

When Amazon notifies you that you have sold a set of pans, you immediately pass that order, along with your buyer’s information, to your drop shipper, who then sends the pans to your buyer’s address.

Your buyer pays you; you pay your supplier. The difference between your retail price and the total cost of listing and selling those pans is your profit.

That is the basic outline of the drop ship process.

There are several things about drop shipping that I want to cover with you, but there’s no way to touch on them all this week. So over the next couple weeks, we’ll talk about:

  • the drop ship fee
  • drop shipping best practices
  • drop shipping profit margins
  • drop ship suppliers
  • drop shipping logistics

But today, we’re going to start out by explaining WHY drop shipping is such a great product sourcing method for you when you’re a new online seller. There are several key reasons:

  1. Lack of start-up costs. One of the biggest reasons people are starting to sell online is that they need extra money. They don’t HAVE a start-up budget. Drop shipping is the only wholesale product sourcing technique that doesn’t require any sort of investment in inventory. In many cases, your buyers pay you before you even have to pay your supplier. This makes drop shipping an ideal arrangement for anyone looking for a low-cost way to start a home business.
  2. No risk required. Because there is no inventory investment, you don’t have to worry about spending money on products that might not sell. You don’t have any funds tied up; so you don’t stand to lose anything if a product doesn’t move.
  3. Ability to offer a deep selection. Since you don’t have any carrying costs, you can easily offer a deep selection within your product niche (which is a great way to ‘add value’ to your online store). You can become the go-to retailer for your particular niche market.
  4. Ease of test-marketing. There’s no cost to test market seasonal products, special holiday items, and new ‘trendy’ items. That’s not to suggest you shouldn’t do your market research; but if you make a mistake and pick a ‘dud’, you don’t have to eat your losses.
  5. No storage issues. With stockless retail (as drop shipping is sometimes called), you don’t have to turn your guest room, basement, or garage into a storage facility. And as your e-business grows, you don’t have to rent warehouse space or deal with warehouse staffing, handle inventory management and tracking, or worry about reordering products before you run out.
  6. No shipping issues. You don’t need to buy special packing materials or boxes; pull the right products to fill every order; or wrap, pack and address every order. And you never have to set up an account with a shipping courier, schedule package pick-ups, or take your packages to a shipping center.
  7. Recovered time. Tracking inventory and shipping orders can eat up a BIG chunk of time for online sellers. The time that you gain back by NOT having to repeat these tasks, day after day, is time that you can now spend finding new products to sell online and marketing your online business to the world.

As you can see, there are some very compelling reasons why drop shipping is a great way for you to get started selling products online. It affords you an opportunity to start a home business even if you lack the money to get one going. Online success is never an ‘easy’ thing, but drop shipping is about as easy an entry point into ecommerce as you can ask for.

Next week, we’ll cover the limitations of drop shipping and how to overcome them.

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Drop Shipping and the New Year

Monday, December 29th, 2008

istock_000003866498xsmallThis is the time of year that a lot of people decide to begin their own online business.  New year, new resolutions, new chance for a fresh start. 

With the current economy and high unemployment, many people NEED to start an online business, because they need an extra source of income to get by.  That’s why, this month, I want to focus on one of the easiest ways to get started selling online - drop shipping.

Drop shipping, for anyone who doesn’t know, refers to purchasing products from wholesale suppliers, one-at-a-time, and having them shipped directly from your wholesaler’s warehouse to your customers’ homes.

Not every wholesaler will drop ship their products for you.  The reason for this is that wholesalers operate on very thin margins and make their money by selling in large volumes.  In many cases, wholesalers simply can’t afford to drop ship products and still make a profit.  That doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t find dropship wholesalers who will work with you. 

The first thing you need to know is that, in order to set up accounts with them, you will need to make your online business legal.  Regardless of whether or not they drop ship, real wholesalers will require your business name and tax ID in order to sell products to you at wholesale prices.  (There are legal reasons why they do this.)  You can find out how to get a sales tax ID for your state inside our Resource Center.

*On a side note:* If a supplier tells you that you don’t need to be a legal business to work with them - run as far and fast as you can.  No matter how much they may claim to be a wholesaler, a supplier who sells directly to the general public (a.k.a. anyone who is NOT a legal business) is called a ‘retailer’.  And since YOU are the retailer in this scenario, you don’t want to be buying from another retailer.  This will only raise your product costs and lower your profit margins.

To make sure we’re all on the same page, let’s look at an example of how drop shipping works:   

You decide to get started online and take advantage of the 2 months of waived ‘Selling on Amazon‘ fees that you receive as a bonus with your membership to ‘The Whole Sale‘.  Inside the Worldwide Brands’ Members’ Product Sourcing tool, you find a dropship wholesaler of bread and cake pans, and you put up a number of their products on Amazon. 

When Amazon notifies you that you have sold a set of pans, you immediately pass that order, along with your buyer’s information, to your drop shipper, who then sends the pans to your buyer’s address. 

Your buyer pays you; you pay your supplier.  The difference between your retail price and the total cost of listing and selling those pans is your profit.

That is the basic outline of the drop ship process.

There are several things about drop shipping that I want to cover with you, but there’s no way to touch on them all this week.  So over the next couple weeks, we’ll talk about:

  • the drop ship fee
  • drop shipping best practices
  • drop shipping profit margins
  • drop ship suppliers
  • drop shipping logistics

But today, we’re going to start out by explaining WHY drop shipping is such a great product sourcing method for you when you’re a new online seller.  There are several key reasons:

  1. Lack of start-up costs.  One of the biggest reasons people are starting to sell online is that they need extra money.  They don’t HAVE a start-up budget.  Drop shipping is the only wholesale product sourcing technique that doesn’t require any sort of investment in inventory.  In many cases, your buyers pay you before you even have to pay your supplier.  This makes drop shipping an ideal arrangement for anyone looking for a low-cost way to start a home business.
  2. No risk required.  Because there is no inventory investment, you don’t have to worry about spending money on products that might not sell.  You don’t have any funds tied up; so you don’t stand to lose anything if a product doesn’t move.
  3. Ability to offer a deep selection.  Since you don’t have any carrying costs, you can easily offer a deep selection within your product niche (which is a great way to ‘add value’ to your online store).  You can become the go-to retailer for your particular niche market.
  4. Ease of test-marketing.  There’s no cost to test market seasonal products, special holiday items, and new ‘trendy’ items.  That’s not to suggest you shouldn’t do your market research; but if you make a mistake and pick a ‘dud’, you don’t have to eat your losses.
  5. No storage issues.  With stockless retail (as drop shipping is sometimes called), you don’t have to turn your guest room, basement, or garage into a storage facility.  And as your e-business grows, you don’t have to rent warehouse space or deal with warehouse staffing, handle inventory management and tracking, or worry about reordering products before you run out.
  6. No shipping issues.  You don’t need to buy special packing materials or boxes; pull the right products to fill every order; or wrap, pack and address every order.  And you never have to set up an account with a shipping courier, schedule package pick-ups, or take your packages to a shipping center. 
  7. Recovered time.  Tracking inventory and shipping orders can eat up a BIG chunk of time for online sellers.  The time that you gain back by NOT having to repeat these tasks, day after day, is time that you can now spend finding new products to sell online and marketing your online business to the world.

As you can see, there are some very compelling reasons why drop shipping is a great way for you to get started selling products online.  It affords you an opportunity to start a home business even if you lack the money to get one going.  Online success is never an ‘easy’ thing, but drop shipping is about as easy an entry point into ecommerce as you can ask for.

Next week, we’ll cover the limitations of drop shipping and how to overcome them.

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