Have you ever purchased something online, only to find out it does not work once you receive it? This is termed as DOA or dead on arrival. DOAs are defective products that are broken and inoperable, as an electronic, appliance, or even a broken piece of furniture.

DOA frustrates customers

When a customer purchases something online they expect to receive it within a short amount of time, in new condition. Many buyers urgently need to use their new product right away. For example, Kevin orders a digital camera he wants to use it on his trip to Florida.

If Kevin's camera comes DOA his plans for holiday snaps are pretty much sunk. Even if everything goes smoothly with the return process without Kevin has ordered well in advance there's a good chance the replacement camera may not come in time for his trip.

Needless to say, a customer who receives a DOA product is frustrated. Not only are they inconvenienced from this, but now must take the time to return it. If this was something needed urgently, they must think of an alternate solution to their plan.

How DOA affects dropshippers and resellers

To a dropshipper a DOA product may mean their inventory may have been mishandled by its employees. Discipline and training may be needed to ensure this does not keep happening. If too many DOA goods are shipped, the dropshipper may lose the reseller as a client. The reseller in turn looks bad for a mishap that was not their fault.

Most likely, they will have to deal with an unhappy customer and either insure them another product will be shipped or honor a refund.

DOA is not a good thing for dropshippers or resellers, especially small ones. It can pose as a threat to the reputation and profits of either business if not handled properly. Here, dropshippers need to verify that goods shipped from their suppliers have no apparent damage from shipment (as smashed boxes). Their warehouses must be kept organized and employees must handle all goods with care.

Resellers are advised to research a dropship's background before setting up an account. If possible, the reseller should visit the dropshipper's place of business and interview them, finding out their DOA rate. A DOA rate of fewer than 3% is great.

Handling DOA's

DOA's are usually handled in the following steps:

1.The customer contacts the reseller to get an RMA # (return of merchandise authorization).

2.The customer sends back the DOA with the RMA # written on the package

3.The reseller receives it and notifies the dropshipper to send a duplicate item to the customer.

4.The reseller and dropshipper decide how the defective item should be handled. It will either be returned to the manufacturer for credit or a claim will be filed with the carrier (UPS, Fed Ex, etc) if allegedly damaged in shipment.

For better business, the reseller should offer each customer a choice of a reshipment or refund upon returning a DOA product.

Overall, this article informs how DOA products are handled. Any reseller should be aware of the possibility of DOAs but not be discouraged to use dropshippers.

You may have dreamed as a child in finding a “Treasure Map”, such as the one from Treasure Island. Such dreams can come true when hunting for an antique map. With a basic knowledge of history and an interest in finding a deal, one can discover some real “treasures” in old antique maps. There have been maps purchased for a few dollars that were actually worth the price of a house.

Even if you have been on the look out for the Treasure Map for as many years as I, you may not find it. However you may easily double or triple your money when you know what to look for in an antique map.

Finding the right map can sometimes feel like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. You should start your hunt by determining a selection of maps that have sold in the last two years between $500 and $3,000. Start to learn about the cartographers and editions of these maps. You will find estimates of the sales of old maps on major auction sites or even on eBay.

The key is knowledge, so you will need to learn as much as you can about the individual maps you are hunting for. I suggest you choose a subject of cartography or a historical period you may interested in learning about. Consider maps made during the American civil war, maps of the Republic of Texas, maps of Scotland if you are of Scottish ancestry or maps of Rome if you went there on honeymoon. For example, your adoptive child is from China then you can concentrate on maps of China. The options are limitless. The idea is that within each field there will be a few fairly rare and desirable maps that can fetch some good money when sold at auction.

When you have become acquainted with the current sale price of your selection of maps you will need to consider condition and editions. By this I mean a specific edition, of a specific year for a map in good condition with no tears, water stains, major repairs and has good color.

By the time you have done the things described above you will have a fair amount of knowledge about the world of antique maps. You will now be starting your hunt. In your hunt you should go to all the consignment shops and thrift stores in your area. Visit antique stores and old book stores and ask to see if they have old maps. By doing this you will get to handle antique maps and get a feel for them.

Afterwards I invite you to go online and start looking for you specific maps on the major search engines and try to find your maps. You should ask your questions about condition and editions before purchasing your maps. Try to buy them at half to a third of the price you saw them for at auction. When you put your maps up for sale at auction you will then be reaping the rewards and your Treasure!

The past year has seen a bunch of new brand names pop up in the smartphone arena. While most incumbents like HTC, Sony seem to be having trouble making a profit in the increasingly aggressive smartphone business, there are a bunch of startups from mainland China that think they can do one better. Companies like Oppo, Xiaomi and now OnePlus are doing a David and Goliath reenactment in the Android smartphone marketplace. OnePlus is the latest entrant into the ring and their first shot at a an Android smartphone was the imaginatively titled OnePlus One. The phone had a few rough edges but on the whole it was a shockingly good first product from a brand that no one had ever heard of even as later as the start of 2014.

This year OnePlus has started its second innings by launching the OnePlus Two. What the company lacks in interesting product names though it seems to have made up in its ability to design and manufacture a pretty compelling mid to high end Android smartphone. The pricing and specification list of the new phone means that the OnePlus 2 covers a broad range of the Android phone market, taking aim right at the premium mid-range to nearly flagship phones from other manufacturers.

OnePlus even plays this up by calling the Two a ‘ 2016 flagship killer ‘ meaning that it has specs that are equal to or better than phones that are going to be released in the next few months. So, is there any truth to OnePlus’ bombast? Well, yes and no. OnePlus operates on a unique business model where they sell incredibly low volumes in small batches, sometimes as little as a few thousand phones. They do this with a reservation system where prospective buyers actually sign up and wait to receive an invitation to buy the company’s phones. While many may balk at this somewhat unorthodox process, it isn’t to different from people physically queuing up for days on end outside and Apple store, waiting for the latest iDevice.

What this process allows OnePlus to do is sell phones with components that are not yet available at the scales necessary for giants like Samsung and Apple to put in phones that sell a few million units in a month. This means that for the price you pay for them, OnePlus phones are between a few months to almost a year ahead of the curve, technologically speaking, when compared to the competition.

While in the desktop space, innovation and even clock speed advances have slowed to an incremental pace, in smartphone hardware, a year is a lifetime. This means that OnePlus phones are technologically at least, as good as anything you are likely to be able to buy from the likes of Samsung or HTC in the next six odd months. The problem is that a high end phone is much more than just what’s inside. Build quality, fit and finish and materials also matter just as much, if not more. This is where the OnePlus falls down, with a plasticky body and tacky plastic back that is anything but high end. This can partly be remedied with the huge selection of OnePlus 2 covers but people who want a truly flagship feel from their smartphone will have to look elsewhere.

Many countries engage in some form of internet censorship, whether it is in the form of banning an online community or a full-blown censoring of popular websites such as YouTube or Wikipedia. Internet censorship is defined as "control or suppression of the publishing or access of information on the Internet." Countries vary in how strict or lax the control is over the Internet, but even the most lax countries still target certain websites such as religion-related sites or social networking sites, and ban them accordingly. The censoring of the Internet has brought about different resources for accessing restricted sites, mainly in the form of circumventors, such as anonymous proxy servers.

In 2006, Reporters without Borders published a list of 13 Enemies of the Internet including: Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. These countries practice the most extreme form of Internet censorship and often retaliate against citizens who violate censorship laws. The OpenNet Initiative (ONI) also uses a classification system and categorizes countries as pervasive, substantive, nominal, and watchlist. Pervasive includes countries that practice the most extreme cases of censorship, especially banning websites with political content. Many of the Internet users can be certain to face imprisonment for even visiting these websites. A partial list of nations in this category includes: Iran, Burma, and China. Substantial includes countries such as: South Korea, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia. Nominal countries include: Australia, Canada, and India. Watchlist countries include: Morocco, Norway and Russia.

Another method for classification is based on what content is blocked by certain countries. Sites classified as "political" include content that routes from the political view of the government. This category also includes human rights, religion, or other social causes that restrictive governments attempt to control. "Social" sites are related to sexuality, gambling, drugs and other subjects that could have been deemed as "offensive" by a nation. The "conflict / security" category focuses on sites that refer to wars / skirmishes, dissent, or other types of conflicts. The "internet tools" classification includes websites used to circumvent censorship, anonymous proxy surfing, language translation websites, or sites that promote the use of Instant Messaging or E-mail services. Countries may block some or all of these types of websites, depending on the content and the strictness of the statute.

Aside from restrictive governments, many companies censor and monitor the Internet in their offices. Most websites are blocked that are considered leisure, and not related to the employees' working environment. IT departments may block certain domains or track the Internet usage because employees have no reason to be using certain websites during office hours. Again, circumventors and other such software can be used to gain access to blocked websites, but IT departments are quick to act so that they can stop the more popular proxy sites from being used.

Internet censorship also comes in other forms such as portal censorship or online community moderation. Portal censoring is basically when a portal, such as of Google, excludes websites that would, under normal circumstances, be included in a search. The portals may censor sites for a number of different reasons, particularly when required by law. The censored sites are basically hidden and made invisible to an average user. The other from of censorship comes from moderators or administrators of online communities blocking content that they feel should not be posted in their forums, or that do not follow the forum's rules and guidelines.

While governments and businesses are restricting the way people use the Internet, new methods are always being created to circumvent restrictions and gain access to censored websites. With many restrictive laws using implicationment as a method to implement censorship, it is becoming more important to be able to circumvent the censors. A popular method for circumventing blocks is The Onion Router, also known as TOR. This service allows users to stay invisible against traffic analysis by bouncing the network connection over various gateways around the world. Users do not have direct access to the site they visit, instead they are sent through a series of connections, called relays. The relays are individually encrypted and sent along to the next gateway until it reaches the exit node and the user can then see the website that was requested. A third method for circumventing blocks is Java Anon Proxy, commonly referred to as JAP, which allows users to choose which network, run by independent organizations, to surf through. Once chosen, the data stream is scrambled and mixed with other users' data streams so that anyone trying to steal or restrict the data flow is confused by the muddled stream they see. Psiphon software was directly created to circumvent the tight Internet censorship of countries such as China and Cuba. The traffic between clients and servers is encrypted as the data is being transferred. Users in countries with tight censorship can log in and send a request to a server located in another country to gain access to blocked websites. Another method called sneakernets allows people to transfer electronic data, such as computer files, by manually carrying them on portable storage devices, such as USB drives or CDs. This method could also be used in conjunction with other methods, since the encrypted data can be sent as usual but the encryption keys could be delivered by sneakernet. Regardless of government restrictions and censorship, this data can be moved freely since it does not travel over a network at all. One of the most popular methods to access censored content is by using anonymous proxy servers . These are usually the easiest to find and use, since they can be found in abundance by doing a simple Google or Yahoo search. Anonymous surfing software and websites allow a user to hide their IP address and surf freely. A good proxy will also encrypt your connection so that anyone trying to spy on the flow of data will not be able to see what is being sent and received.

Internet censorship variations in seriousness depending on the country or business, but extremely a user's privacy rights are taken away by tight controls over Internet usage. Many different services are available to help a user take back their privacy and avoid being censored or spied on by restrictive agencies. A user should always be familiar with their surroundings and know how extreme or lax the Internet usage policies are before implementing any of the anonymous surfing services. Policies will be different and range dramatically depending on location so knowing the environment is important to staying protected while surfing the Internet.

In this eCommerce world, start up companies are appearing everywhere selling merchandising competitiveness with most brick and mortar stores. I thought I would take this time to evaluate an order management system called Shipstation to help eCommerce companies avoid many of the mistakes made in the start up phase of their small business.

What is an order management system? Order Management Systems allows companies to manage their product listings across multiple sales channels. For instance, if you are selling products or eBay, Amazon, and Rakuten you can manage all your orders through one system instead of managing your orders individually through each sales channel.

The most popular Order Management System that I encounter daily in my business is Shipstation. Shipstation is an Austin, Tx based company. This system allows eRetailers to automate all portions of their fulfillment operation and create customs rules specifically designed for your company with minimal effort.

Sales Channels Supported

1) eBay

2) Amazon

3) Rakuten

4) Sears

5) Best Buy Marketplace

The above is a sampling of the more popular sales channels. They do service many more but just wanted to give you a flavor for the channels supported.

Shipstation allows you to continue shipping using your most popular carriers just more easily. The system will allow you to import all your orders into the system and print labels continuously for variable carriers with ease.

Shipping Carriers Supplied

1) Fedex

2) UPS

3) DHL

4) USPS

Pricing Plans for Shipstation

Bronze Plan – $ 25.00 per month

The Bronze Plan covers a company for 500 shipments per month, supports 1 selling platform, single user, provides standard labels and packing slips, gives you access to e-mall & community forum support, and has standard security and admin.

Silver Plan – $ 45.00 per month

The Silver Plan covers a company for 1500 shipments per month, supports 2 selling platforms, Two users, provides customized labels and packing slips, gives you access to e-mall & community forum support, and has standard security and admin.

Gold Plan – $ 65.00 per month

The Gold Plan covers a company for 3,000 shipments per month, supports 3 selling platforms, Three users, provides customized labels and packing slips, gives you access to Live chat & e-mall & community forum support, and has enhanced security and admin.

Platinum Plan – $ 95.00 per month

The Platinum Plan covers a company for 6,000 shipments per month, supports 5 selling platforms, Five users, provides customized labels and packing slips, gives you access to Live Chat, e-mall & community forum support, and has enhanced security and admin.

Enterprise Plan – $ 145.00 per month

The Platinum Plan covers a company for Unlimited shipments per month, supports All selling platforms, Ten users, provides customized labels and packing slips, gives you access to Live Chat, e-mall & community forum support, and has enhanced security and admin.

Advantages of using Shipstation

1) Ease of integration – Shipstation has an implementation team that will assist you in setting up your selling platforms with Shipstation.

2) Scalable Costs – Depending upon how many packages you are shipping you can have your costs manageable and grow with your business.

3) Consolidator Labels – Shipstation is one of the few systems which will allow you to utilize parcel consolidators. Parcel consolidators are critical to assisting eRetailers in lowering their postage costs. Without access to consolidator labels your competition will have access to lower postage rates than your business.

4) Customer Service – Shipstation provides excellent customer service regardless of the size of your organization.

5) Postage Reduction – Using Shipstation you will automatically have access to USPS Commercial Base postage rates saving you money on your domestic and international shipments.

Disadvantages of Shipstation

1) Access to sales channels limited for the entry level pricing plans

2) USPS & Consolidator labels are generated through their partnership with Endicia. An Endicia.com postage account is required for postage funding.

Software Review Rating

Overall I think that Shipstation is the best order management / shipping system on the market for eCommerce sellers. With the various pricing programs offered it allows smaller shippers to take advantage of the many capabilities offered by the software. Using Shipstation will automatically lower your postage rates by granting you access to Commercial Base pricing with the United States Postal Service right after implementation.

In conclusion, I would highly recommend that eCommerce sellers use Shipstation. It will allow you to use multiple carriers, rate shop your shipments, and give you access to reduced postage immediately after installation. Depending upon how many orders you are sending monthly, you may find that the reduced shipping costs pay for the program strictly.

It’s been a year now, since I started the online store business with my partners. We have gone through a lot of learn steps. I think it will be useful to put down the processes of starting an online retail business in Arizona. Who knows what will happen tomorrow. I may start a new business again.

These are the brief steps.

1. Search availability of the new company name at Arizona corporation commission from the link below.
2. Filing the required documents to register the company as s-corporation. If you prefer to start as LLC, you can do so by choose different corporation type and fee schedule.
3. Download the filing forms from the link below
   • Covert Sheet
   • Articles of Incorporation for Domestic Corporations
   • Certificate of Disclosure for Business Corporations
   • $95 check write to Arizona Corporation Commission
4. If the document is filed with Expedited process ($60 + $35), it will take about a week to get the Article of corporation document return ($5/each). Otherwise, it will take about 55 days.
5. Once received the article of corporation, publish the article in 60 days. AZ capital time can complete the whole process for about $91, including mail the published copy to AZ corporation commission. Of course, there are many public newspaper can do it for you. Find the best one for your need.
6. Once the process is completed, call IRS.gov to get a new EIN (employee Identify Number)
7. Download and file the 2553 S-corporation election form to form the s-corporation
8. Apply the Arizona retailer license online at AZTaxes.gov
9. Apply a new business check account with bank
10. Apply a new business credit card
11. Find a good company to buy the startup package (including bylaw, minute book, etc)
12. Register the desired domain name at Godaddy.com, which contains reasonable price.
13. Find a good hosting company.
14. Setup open source shopping cart from Zen-Cart.com. It’s FREE!
15. Customize the logo and layout
16. Input the products
17. Setup Paypal business account and link to the shopping cart (Paypal IPN)
18. Get a SSL certification either on your own or with your hosting company. Without SSL, Paypal won’t accept your credit card processing request.

The time to complete the entire corporation filing is about a month. Now. It’s up to your to run the business. Few notes to remember.

AZ requires to file the tax return monthly. Fedral requires to file tax return quarterly. Do well research on your product supplier. Many drop ship companies charges your extra amount if want to cancel your relationship with them. Also be aware of where the product was made and shipped. If the product is made in China, most likely you can find different shipper carrier the same product with different brand name. You can bargain the price.

To succeeded as online business, your customer services and quality of your products are both important. Ignore your customer’s feed will cost you a lot more to recover the damage your did.

The biggest secret in Internet marketing is not to “provide value.” The biggest secret is “HELPING.” Helping your customers, helping your subscribers, helping your visitors.

You may provide valuable information, but that information must help your audience solve a problem they face.

This concept has been in the back of my mind for a long time. So when I searched for a sub-headline for my IM website header, it came out as “Helping You Grow to Financial Freedom.”

Helping my customers and visitors is now my core thinking. I believe it is a powerful force that drives my Internet marketing business, and should be the driving force of your business as well.

If people come to your website for information, they really want answers to specific problems. If they need to solve specific problems, they need help. You can be the one who provides that help.

Hopefully, you can provide the help they need for free. But you may have to sell them a product so they get the exact solution to their problem.

It shouldn’t be about the money first. If you provide abundant help, the money will come.

Helping for free is about giving. If you give freely of yourself, your knowledge and expertise, you will eventually be paid back 10 fold.

When you do this you build trust and respect. Your name becomes known far and wide. People will gravitate to you and your business.

Therefore, by helping people for free, you are investing in yourself.

This concept is not new. I didn’t invent it. Many successful entrepreneurs have used it to achieve incredible success.

Jack Ma, who is reported to be the wealthiest man in China today, started Alibaba some 15 years ago in his apartment.

Today he heads an eCommerce business that is fast catching up with Walmart in worldwide sales. His most basic strategy is helping his customers first.

The basic premise is that people do not come to you for your products, no matter how good they are.

First and foremost, they have a problem and they are seeking a solution. Plain and simple! Your opportunity lies in helping them solve their problem.

Before you can provide specific help, you have to get to know the people in your niche.

You can begin with the safe assumption that most if not all your prospects and customers are going to be beginner online entrepreneurs.

So you can create content aimed at beginners. They are likely struggling to find a niche, or build their first website, or create their first few pieces of content.

If they are farther along the way, they will need help getting steady traffic to their newly minted website.

Soon enough they will need help building their first email list, setting up an autoresponder. You get the idea.

So if you set up your business to provide this much-needed help, you will have no lack of customers.

If you are smart, you will offer tons of free help in the full knowledge that you will soon be earning a handsome profit from the massive goodwill you will have established for yourself. You will be trusted. You will have a solid reputation.

So, there you have it. The biggest secret in Internet marketing finally revealed: provide help.

The mobile phone reselling business is a lucrative one and with the right kind of decisions and investment, you could end up making profits to sustain you, your family and possible create some job opportunities all together. The demand for mobile phone is ever rising with the already established markets of Europe and America still having the demand despite the huge supply. There are prospective markets like in Africa where demand is slowly rising with the evolution of the world into a digital one.

Before you decide to embark on a wholesale business, then you need to establish a couple of factors. Wholesaling like any other kind of investment has its risks and you do not want to end up with unclear stock in your warehouse. You need to have a drop shipper so that you can have a greater access to the market and potentially grow your business. Your drop shipper will take the role of putting out your good name and marketing the products and then referring all the customers to you since you will be having the devices in stock. At this point you have already gathered that you need to inculcate drop shipping into your plans if you want to record any success and absolutely any profits in the long run.

So how do you get to include drop shipping into your plans? You need to find good and reputable drop shipping providers. Honesty and reliability are some of the two major qualities that you need to look for in these kinds of providers. Their reputations should precede them. One with all these qualities can not stay hidden. The internet has made it possible to outsource for drop shippers from overseas. In such a case, you lack the useful ingredient that is face-to-face meeting which can help you learn something about them. But whatever the case, it would be wise to go through their track record and see if they have any customer complains in their past. If they do then you obviously have to look for someone else with better credentials.

Testing your drop shipping provider would be wise in establishing how good they are. Make the order or have a friend do it and then monitor the steps and the progress that the drop shipper makes in ensuring that the customer receives. Find out how much they charges for cell phone drop shipping. Since you are going to be possibly handling china mobile phones [http://www.wholesalediy.com/mobile-phone-c-6.html], their pricing should not be too high. While doing this, find out the methods of payment that they accept- the more the better.

Thanks to the miracle that is technology, you can be able to find providers who will do mobile phone drop shipping with expertise from anywhere in the world. You always have to remember that in the end, the kind of drop shipper you go for will make or break your business so you need to invest time and energy in finding a reputable one.

It may take Western retailers a while to feel the pressure of implementing the use of robots and automated distribution centres, but their Chinese counterparts are already taking speedy measures to ensure fully automated stores are in place in 10 years’ time.

JD.com’s big boss Richard Liu said the reason being is that shoppers in China have ever-changing demands, whilst those in America and Europe tend to be more loyal to retailers who provide them satisfactory service.

Chinese customers are always looking for something new, which when matched with speedy delivery becomes all the more attractive to them.

Putting loyalty aside, though, the reality stands that there’s no stopping the rise of the robots. In fact, they have already infiltrated various industries-auto, healthcare, gaming-including retail.

Whether consumers and retailers accept it or not, they are bound to witness a robot-driven industry before they know it.

That is clearly evident in the method of expansion online retailers are utilising. And we’re not just talking about Amazon and JD.com whose fulfilment centres abound with mechanical workers, as numerous online shops are in the process of integrating artificial intelligence (AI) platforms into their businesses too, such as machine learning, speech recognition, and chatbots, among others.

“Sooner or later, our entire industry will be operated by AI (artificial intelligence) and robots, not humans,” were Richard Liu’s words at the annual World Retail Congress in Madrid, Spain.

He was quick to add, though, that it’s going to take another decade to prepare the industry and consumers for stores powered by machines as the future of retail rests on a lot of ceaseless innovations. This, he said, will eventually lead to cost reduction and improved customer experience.

Coming from the head of a company that owns a fully automated warehouse and uses drones and robots to deliver packages, that statement doesn’t seem to require further convincing documents.

However, whilst there are big retailers who shared Liu’s point of view, such as Shop Direct and Marks & Spencer, who have in fact announced staff layoffs, as they’re poised to automate their distribution centres, others were vehemently against it.

Among them is Tom Athron, group development director at John Lewis, as he believes one cannot function without the other. He stressed that nothing can make the industry stronger than it already is than the combined powers of robots and human beings.

“Humans and machines together will always be more powerful than machines on their own or humans on their own. If consumers don’t want the human touch in retail then we are in real trouble as an industry,” he remarked.

Whilst automation can get mundane tasks done faster than with humans, hence their consideration in the day-to-day operations of a business, it’s missing a quality which only resides in the human heart-empathy.

Speedy delivery isn’t the lifeblood of retail, but customers are. So the absence of human interaction is likely to kill retail in cold blood and there’ll be no one to witness its death but robots.

Do you think the world is ready to witness that?

What Is A Wholesaler?

A wholesaler is essentially the supplier who buys directly from the primary distributor. Wholesalers typically buy products in excessively large quantities, which they then sell to retailers or online store owners in smaller quantities-even in quantities as low as one item at a time.

However, you can also access wholesale prices directly from some vendors. For example, a small business may still be so small that they offer direct wholesale pricing to both retailers and online store owners.

What Is Drop shipping?

Drop shipping is an innovative order fulfillment method, ideal for ecommerce stores. It allows you, the online store owner, to place items on your website for sale-without the need to keep any inventory on hand. When an order is placed, you send the required information to your supplier, and they ship the order directly to your buyer. Most often, they make it look as though the order was shipped from your fulfillment center and they will never print their name on the packing slips. This is referred to as Blind Shipping.

How Are Drop shipping And Wholesalers Connected?

If you launch an ecommerce website with the intention of keeping only minimal, or no inventory at all, on hand-then you will create a partnership with a wholesale supplier who offers drop shipping services. When a customer places their order with you, you pay the supplier their wholesale price-and you keep the profits. Since you only pay wholesale prices, you are free to determine the markup for most products. Remember to always consider the shipping cost that you will have to pay the supplier to ship your order.

What Are The Advantages Of Drop shipping?

The reason that many ecommerce website owners choose drop shipping, is because it allows for a much lower overhead-and saves a lot of time. Here are some of the advantages instead of buying bulk wholesale stock:

• Sell a wider variety of products, without an increased financial investment and without having to pay for any products up front
• Eliminate the time required to ship products
• Sell hundreds of products at a time, without keeping any inventory on hand
• Manage your business from anywhere with Internet access

Will I Get Good Wholesale Prices With Drop Shipping?

This is a very common questions asked by many people. Most people that are not familiar with drop shipping might expect to get the same lower wholesale prices when buying in bulk which is not the case.

When you buy from a drop shipping supplier, the wholesale price will be a little higher than the price when buying in bulk from a wholesaler or manufacturer.

For example if you buy a large pallet of electronics, you may spend $5,000 up front for the whole pallet, but if you buy from a drop shipping company you will pay for each item one by one as you sell them over time. These companies will typically increase their wholesale prices to cover their overhead costs for warehousing the products and for handling and packing the products to ship to your customers.

Comparing Your Drop Shipping Price With The Market

The best way to determine if you are getting good prices so you can make a decent profit, is by comparing their wholesale prices with listings on eBay and Amazon.

When you are comparing your wholesale prices, always keep in mind that you are not the one subject to the overhead cost. You should also always take into consideration the shipping fee. Some suppliers offer free shipping, and some may charge more shipping fees than others. Add up the selling price + the shipping fee and then compare the total cost with your supplier wholesale price + shipping fee. This will give you an accurate result.

Furthermore when comparing your wholesale prices, you should always compare them with the average prices you find on eBay or Amazon. The reason being that not every seller uses drop shipping. Some sellers might be buying products in large bulk at a cheaper price or they might be buying replicas or cheaper similar products from China.

Most inexperienced sellers will compare their wholesale costs with the absolute lowest prices found on eBay or Amazon and jump too quickly to a conclusion. You must always compare your prices to the averages, and don’t quit before you even begin selling.

Remember that the quality of the products is extremely important and will directly contribute to your long term success with your online business. Focus on providing great quality products, and great quality service, and your business will thrive.

Can You Still Buy In Bulk?

Most sellers use the drop shipping method only, but the choice is up to you. If you come across a rock bottom bulk order price that is too good to pass up, make the purchase-and load your product to your website. When that specific product sells, you will of course be responsible for shipping. Unlike drop shipping, you will also have to pay for the entire order upfront.