One of the best kept secrets in online selling is the world of drop shipping. Drop ship suppliers are a seller’s dream, as while you make all the sales, they do all the work. Put quite simply, you act as a store front for the products, and whenever you make a sale, you instruct your drop shipper to prepare the item and have it sent directly to your customer.
The way that people make profit from this sort of Wholesale business is that they charge a higher price per item to their customer than the price that they are paying to their supplier. The beauty of this type of system is that the only work you need to do is to setup and market your business, and then advise the supplier when a purchase is made. You can forget about the skyrocketing costs of storing goods or what to do with products that simply don’t sell. All of the risk is taken by your drop ship supplier and you can simply reap the rewards.
In general, a drop ship supplier is also a wholesale supplier, meaning that the fees you pay them are much lower than the fees a product is available for in a regular store. This gives you the prospect to make a profit on every item you sell, and the profit level you choose is entirely up to you. You may wish to discount heavily and make more sales, or you may wish to maintain a higher price creating a wider product margin although typically selling less than a discounted product.
Because a drop ship supplier will offer a wide arrange of product choices, the hardest decision that you will have to make is which market you are going to offer products to. It’s easy to think that the best thing to do would be to offer mass appeal products that can sell to anyone, however this is a very competitive market and it is much more profitable that you choose to operate in a niche.
A niche is a smaller market that appeals to fewer customers, but when you specialize in a niche, you will find that your business makes far more sales than a indiscriminate trade would, simply because you offer a range of complementing products which means people often make several purchases.
For example, if you chose to market kitchen products, you will find that people who come to your store trying to find a set of knives, will very often buy the knives and then maybe a colander or saucepan that grabs their attention at the same time. The great thing about niche selling is that your customer already has a set mind frame in your store – and you can take full advantage of this. It’s far easier to increase your sales this way, rather than offering a arbitrary range of products, and hoping that there may be some cross-appeal.
Once you have established yourself in your business, there’s nothing to stop you emulating your success in another area – and a good drop ship supplier will be able to offer you such a wide range of products that the hardest thing you will have to do is choose!
