Does Dropship E-stores work? profitable?

[successramp]

Hi,

I just joined this forum. I have been sourcing for a way to setup an online business selling wholesale products by dropship.

The one I finally signed up for gives away FREE E-stores loaded with 100s of dropship products. Which can also be sold on Ebay. you can either sell using their free online store or order wholesale and sell through ebay auctions.

I have not upgraded to their premium membership which supposedly offers good commission payouts for people you refer to them.

Question : Does this sound feasible? Why would companies give away free stores?

So far, they seem to be all they promised. With an EXCELLENT backoffice to manage the store with. I can even upload my own products to sell, if I upgrade to their Gold member. Which is only $50 a month. Cheaper than setting up my own online store.

Appreciate advise from the experts here before I try it. Thanks.

In case you wanna check it out for me, they are at :

Free Store Club

[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 3:22 am (utc) on Sep. 18, 2004]
[edit reason] Removed URL [/edit]

[Essex_boy]

Why would companies give away free stores - Because its dead easy for them to do and cost them nothing or next to nothing.

You really need to compare their prices to the prices others are charging then and only then are you able to work out if its likly to be a success.

One matter to consider is that the cart isnt likly to spider well.

[kc0eks]

from my experience most (all?) of the sites that charge membership fees are just middle men selling you products they bought from the real wholesaler, therefore increasing the price you must charge.
I would just set up my own store and find my own products.
But this may be entirely different, I dont know cause the url was removed :)

[kc0eks]

after getting the url, the site looks very much scam like...not sure if you are just trying to promote it or not :P

[lgn1]

If you are going to drop ship, make sure you are working with a large distributer, or better yet, the manufactuer.

The big problem with distributers or manufactuers, is that many of them are still stuck in the 'pre-ecommerce' supply change management, and are not willing to ship directly to the customer.

The advantage we have, is that we have already done a large portion of business with our various distributers and manufactuers, and are willing to work with us, rather than lose our account to the competition.

It is more difficult when you starting from scratch, and have no buying history with another company. You may need to use a second tier distributer, until you get a good volume of sales. You can then approach the first tier distributer, and depending on your volume and the industry; the actual manufactuer.

Some manufactuers may also claim that they don't sell directly to retailers, but this is ussualy a front to keep the distributers in the supply chain happy. Once you are big enough, they will deal directly with you, as they know that they could lose a large account to the competition.

[hfwd]

You should also check the turnaround time - some companies will drop ship, but require too long of lead time. Some are not reliable, since they don't know how to handle frequent but small orders.

As a result, your customer would blame you for merchandize that takes too long to ship.

[SkyDog]

They're selling dreams not products. Get a bunch of people to sign up and they make money through subscription fees and sheer volume.

[hfwd]

Yes, there are those unscrupulous companies... there are also real distributors and wholesalers (whom we met at tradeshows) that are genuinely interested in getting new accounts. We've ordered at trade shows, only to get our orders months afterwards! Not a way to make customers happy.

[ogletree]

scam. If it made so much money why don't they just do that. Because they make more money getting money out of people. There is no such thing as reading an ad to make money at home with very little effort or lots of effort for that part. If anybody really has a secret like that they will keep it to themselves. I have secrets like that I would never tell anybody becasue if I did I would no longer make money doing it because the market would be saturated. Any system like that falls apart the more people that join it.

[feiman]

If you're looking to set up a real drop-ship e-commerce store, you need to set up your own drop-ship relationships rather than working with one of those companies that says they'll do everything for you. For example, if you want to sell books and dvds, you'd go set up a wholesale account with Baker & Taylor who has a solid e-commerce dropship program.

Once you're set up, as long as your margins are working you can make money. The place you get hurt with drop-ships as well is in the split shipments. Say you have relationships with 5 different drop-ship companies and sell a bunch of different lines. You get an order that forces you to source your items from 3 partners. Then you're getting hit 3 times for shipping while you're charging your customer as if everything was coming from one warehouse. Orders like that will make you bankrupt very quickly.

Hope this helps.

[lgn1]

Yes, make sure the drop shipper has plenty of selection, and set up a separate and independent web site for each drop shipper. Don't confuse your customer with mulitple shipping charges, from multiple drop shippers.

[BrewCrue]

Hey Successramp,
These products have been out for a least a year that i know of you can also go idropshipper.com.

Brew

[coolmacguy]

If you want good info on reputable manufacturers and distributors that support dropshipping and are not just middlemen, get the Worldwide brands catalog [worldwidebrands.com].

(Note: I have no relationship to this website, I just found it a valuable source of info.)