One of the most popular businesses that I see people run today are their very own online stores selling items they purchased wholesale or by drop shipping. Being a freelance web developer, I have been involved with several e-commerce sites and have installed shopping cart software. After these sites are up, it is amazing how many sales are produced on a daily basis due to great marketing online and offline. Now, of course the key is having a good product that brings back repeat customers. The online stores I have dealt with have exactly that. Their customers come back again and again. Luckily for them, they produce their own products, however that means more overhead costs. For the average person looking to have their own online store produces a lot of questions:
- I'm not tech savvy, how can I build an online store?
- What can I sell?
- Where do I find wholesalers?
- How am I going to store inventory?
- I don't want my cash tied up in products - what if they don't sell?
These are legitimate concerns but thanks to companies like eBay, PayPal, and OneSource, a bulk of those worries are gone! Let's take a look at how you can have your own online store up and running:
eBay & PayPal
The worry of not knowing anything about the web is not a problem. You can set up your own online store using eBay. You have the option of selling products via auction or their "buy it now" feature. Transactions can be handled securely through PayPal. The hassle of finding a merchant account is no longer an issue because it is already taken care of! The best part is, you will have access to millions of customers who visit eBay every day in search of products that you can dropship (we'll get to that in a second!)
What to Sell
One of the biggest obstacles for new online entrepreneurs is finding products to sell and real dropship/wholesale supplier lists. Most of the ones you come across in the search engines are bogus. Thanks to a company called OneSource, you have one central place to go to find a ton of products that companies will dropship for you! Dropshipping means you don't have to purchase products up front. You won't have your cash tied up in products that may not sell and you won't have to worry about storing them. When someone places an order from your online store:
- You collect the payment
- Submit the order to the dropship company
- The dropship company sends the product(s) to the customer
- You keep the difference!
If you were to set up an online shop the long way you would have to deal with finding a decent web programmer to set up shopping cart software, pay monthly fees for a merchant account (to accept online payments), web hosting, SSL (to encrypt sensitive data), storage fees (inventory), and buying wholesale products up front that may sit for months at a time.
Dropshipping is the way to go and utilizing it along with eBay and PayPal makes owning an online store a lot easier. Check out the OneSource web site. They offer a ton of free resources and you can have a store up and online in no time!
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I had no idea how popular it is for people to have their own online store until I started working for rockbottomprices.com. We offer really low prices, so I originally thought that people would want use our services for personal reasons, but as it turns out, we get most of our calls from people wanting to resell our merchandise on their personal site. By the way, we don’t make anything off of sales here. That’s the reason we do the membership thingy. Even wholesale stores mark things up a little to make extra money. As of now, we do not.
The sign up info is on the site.
Or feel free to call us.
Great article! A dropship business is indeed a very good online business model. You have to be careful though when choosing a partner as there are many scammers out there.
Cheers!
A drop shipping business can be great, just like any other business. However, it requires planning & work, also just like any other business. You can sign up for all the best wholesale directories, but if you’re not willing to put some work into developing a nice online store and actually promoting it — you can forget about making any money with this business. Many will think of it as a “get rich quick” scheme, however it is far from it. This is a way to establish a reputable, long-term business with a solid foundation. The only plus side is that you won’t be carrying inventory in-house. Nice post by the way..!