DropShipping - anyone know much about it?

[colly]

Friend of mine was at a franchising conference and heard a talk about "DropShipping" which he said might interest me. Dropshipping is selling products (online) - but the product is sent directly to the customer from the supplier - you do not have to handle any stock, you just pick up a commission for the sale. Its popular on ebay etc i believe.

Anyway with this website ([broken link removed]) - you pay between £100 and £500 per year, and you get access to their large product range. Their CMS builds you a custom website, or you can sell on ebay - but its up to you to market and promote it. This interests me cause I do have some knowledge around the online marketing area.

A quick search tells me that the above website gets mixed reviews, some complaints - as I expected - saying that their products are not always competitively priced. This does not surprise me because I buy a lot online and know how it works, yet many people will just use google to find what they want to buy and do it without too much comparison hunting. I'm guessing there are others companies/website that do similar to theselect, I can look into that later.

I'm wondering if anyone knows anything about this, I've always wanted to have an online store of some sort to try to make some extra cash out of and this might be a good way to give it a go.
Thanks

 

[Irishchappie]

This is a common enough practice with a lot of IT resellers, they have various suppliers around the country etc and do exactly this so its not a new way of doing business.. basically you're a middle man..

Customes order the product off you for price A, you order it off the supplier who usually in a different location for price B (a lower price than A) and they ship it direct to the customer saving you the cost of storage space, shipping etc..

Some suppliers will even customise packaging to use your company logo etc..

Its probably best to find a product yourself though cause they could be selling the same service to a thousand other people who all end up undercutting each other just to get the business but this company dont care as they have got their money and they just move onto the next person who is willing to hand over the cash as they dont want to do the leg work themselves.

Why not bypass them, look at what they are selling and try and find a supplier yourself.. build it up overtime and if it works out, expand your product line, there is no real risk involved, if you get orders you simply order from the supplier, if u dont, then no orders placed and nothing lost rather than handing over £500 per year to someone for no real reason.

I.C

 

[ButtermilkJa]

Sounds similar to Amazon Associates, or any of the other large stores. You can build a custom store which pulls in whatever Amazon products you specify and you claim a commission for each sale.

Lots of opportunities I would imagine. No problem getting access to large online stockrooms but it would all boil down to how well you can promote your site.