How to Start a Drop Shipping Business

Many people shy away from starting an online store because of the initial start-up costs.
But imagine if someone offered to pay your up-front inventory costs on thousands of items
and manage all your shipping and fulfillment operations for you. It'd be much easier to
get started, and you could run your business from anywhere in the world.
Sound too good to be true? Well, it's not, if you know about drop shipping.
In this video, I'm going to explain exactly how drop shipping works, show you how to find
drop shippers for your products, and give solutions to some common problems associated
with drop shipping. And if you stick around until the end of this
video, you’ll get access to “The Ultimate Guide to Drop shipping” a free bonus guide
that shows you exactly how to start a drop shipping business. Alright, let’s dive in.
What is drop shipping? Well, drop shipping is a retail method in which you don't keep
products in stock. Instead, you partner with a wholesale supplier that stocks its own inventory
- you transfer customer orders and shipment details to them, and they ship the goods directly
to the customer. The biggest benefit of drop shipping is you
don't have to worry about fulfillment or inventory issues. Also, most customers don't know you're
drop shipping, since "private label shipping" lets you ship from the wholesaler with a return
address and invoice customized to your ecommerce store. Let’s quickly go over a few other
benefits of drop shipping. One - You don’t need buckets of money. Drop
shipping makes it amazingly easy to get started selling online. You don't need to invest heavily
in inventory, yet you can still offer thousands of items to your customers.
Two - Convenience and efficiency. Successfully launching and growing an ecommerce business
takes a lot of work, especially if you have limited resources. Not having to worry about
fulfillment is incredibly convenient and frees up your time to concentrate on marketing,
customer service, and operations Three - Mobility - with all the physical fulfillment
issues handled, you're free to operate your business anywhere you can get an internet
connection. Four - It’s a trusted model. You might be
thinking that this sounds like some sketchy, fly-by-night model – but it's not. Plenty
of online stores, and even major retailers use drop shipping to offer a wider selection
of products to their customers without having to deal with increased inventory hassles.
How do I find drop shipping wholesalers? Well, first off, in the United States, most suppliers
will ask you for your business EIN number and a copy of your state sales tax and/or
resale certificate. So you may want to consider having your legal ducks in a row before contacting
suppliers. However, this isn’t always the case and there’s no reason why you can’t
start contacting drop shipping suppliers immediately. Now, if you already know what products you'd
like to drop ship, contacting the original manufacturer is the easiest way to find qualified
distributors. Not all distributors will be willing to drop ship, but it will give you
a list to follow up with.