Thread: Dropshippers Advice Needed

Hey everyone! I have a question to those of you out there who use a drop-shipping method for your stores. Have any of you ever used shopster? If so, what has your experience been like? Secondly, what other drop-shippers do you use and how reliable are they? I've just begun to put together a business that will be selling books and other things, but I do not have the space to provide an adequate inventory so I thought drop-shipping would be the best bet. Will soon be putting together a progress/accountability thread. For now just looking for experiences/ advice. Thanks, much appreciated.

Honestly that looks like more of a Webstore Selling site than a useful hub for dropshippers. Like they pull you in with the dropshipping idea, then you pay monthly for a store, and the dropshippers are probably not that great.

Im sure they get kickbacks as well for whatever you order. If you can contact the dropshipper directly, might save some money.

What are you wanting to sell?

Your best bet is to create a website yourself. Setup everything. Find a "real" dropshipper. And your costs will be minimum and probably get some better profit margins. My dropship website all I was paying was roughly $50 or so per month to keep it up and running. I did all SEO. That can be easily reduced if you use a free merchant such as paypal or google checkout.

The reason I like shopster is because it also has ebay integration and you needn't pay for a store nor any monthly fees for the time being. It would be a good test hub to figure out a niche rather than dropping 300 or more for some dropshippers and begin a monthly charge without knowing if what you are doing will work or not.

I will be selling books and other things. I'm busy learning web design and programming so that I can more efficiently use Dreamweaver and such. Does anyone have suggestions for some good dropshippers that they are currently using and if they like their experience or not?

Haven't looked into it that much, but are you getting real wholesale prices from these dropshippers. It actually does look interesting because I "think" that the dropshippers are individual companies and not one large one, I may join and try a free store and let you know how it is.

I signed up and took a look around. I don't see how you can make any money with the free store.

If using ebay you got fees just over 8% and paypal fees of 3%. Then all your suppliers in the network have jacked up wholesale prices by 5-10%.

The best way to use this would be to pay the $5 and use your own domain name to set up a store. But they take 5% of the price from that too.

If you sell a product at $100, you would get about $89-$92 after the sale. If this product wholesaled at $80, you make $9-12 a sale. Whereas a person with a real store is probably paying $70 for the product and will pocket $97 from a $100 sale. They make $27 a sale.

I think its just to begin to figure out how to drop ship while making a small amount of money, even though your margins are rather low. For a person who's just introducing themselves into drop-shipping, I think it's decent. Least for the time being as I put together the actual site. I'd like to check out salehoo, doba, and a few other places for drop-shipping fulfillment. Salehoo is only about 67 dollars one time fee for a lifetime membership, if I remember correctly, but I'll have to get back to you on that. Doba is 49.95/mo for the first option and 59.95/mo for the second. Do you have any experience with either of those? Thanks for the replies, much appreciated.

Originally Posted by dnuge3

I think its just to begin to figure out how to drop ship while making a small amount of money, even though your margins are rather low. For a person who's just introducing themselves into drop-shipping, I think it's decent. Least for the time being as I put together the actual site. I'd like to check out salehoo, doba, and a few other places for drop-shipping fulfillment. Salehoo is only about 67 dollars one time fee for a lifetime membership, if I remember correctly, but I'll have to get back to you on that. Doba is 49.95/mo for the first option and 59.95/mo for the second. Do you have any experience with either of those? Thanks for the replies, much appreciated.

Don't pay for any dropshippers. They are not real suppliers and their prices will be too high for you to make any money. Check out DSDI, they are free and their prices are decent.

Please tell me your plan. Once you have a supplier, how are you going to sell your products? How will you promote your store?

What specific aspects about the plan are you looking for me to explain? The way I will be selling the products will be through online and offline marketing. The online marketing will be the most crucial because it will help this business to achieve critical mass quickly. The reason for this is because a major element to this business is a social involvement from people the world over. The reason for this is because the aim of the business is to be a for profit company that also has social ambitions. I started a thread here about the company. Though I don't go into great detail because it seemed to have died before I had the opportunity to do so. The store will be promoted through mostly web 2.0 sites such as Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, reddit, Digg, etc etc. Based on those sites alone, the traffic goals should easily be met and sustained and then increased as time progresses. Plus, coupled with the fact that people will be actively engaged in the social elements of my company we also have word of mouth.

Originally Posted by dnuge3

What specific aspects about the plan are you looking for me to explain? The way I will be selling the products will be through online and offline marketing. The online marketing will be the most crucial because it will help this business to achieve critical mass quickly. The reason for this is because a major element to this business is a social involvement from people the world over. The reason for this is because the aim of the business is to be a for profit company that also has social ambitions. I started a thread here about the company. Though I don't go into great detail because it seemed to have died before I had the opportunity to do so. The store will be promoted through mostly web 2.0 sites such as Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, reddit, Digg, etc etc. Based on those sites alone, the traffic goals should easily be met and sustained and then increased as time progresses. Plus, coupled with the fact that people will be actively engaged in the social elements of my company we also have word of mouth.

So you are going to have a site that sells stuff, but the people who come to purchase from you are in some type of social network with common beliefs. Because of that they may be willing to pay more to purchase from you vs. another store?

When you say promoted with social networks, what are you promoting? The store itself, its products or you common beliefs of your social network? You can't just digg pages in your store or articles about your products. That does not work unless you have an unique digg worthy product, which you won't if you're just dropshipping.

The traffic you are generating is going to your shopster store which you will be spending $5 to get a custom domain on.

The unique selling point of this company is that fact that it's model is similar to TOMs Shoes' model of 1 for 1. But, my site will focus on books and providing them to school districts, schools, people, etc etc that are in need of updated reading materials.

I will not be doing the 1 for 1 as I do not feel that to be economically feasible. It will more likely be 2 for 1. The one book being a used book in good condition of various subjects viewed as essential to one's overall education. This list of 25 or so books is agreed upon by college professors, high school teachers, elementary school teachers and various other academics. As these tenets of education are more or less ubiquitous the profit margins can easily be high since they will be relatively cheap to buy and will, more or less, act as loss-leaders.

I do not intend to use shopster as the official place for the store as I am working on building the site with a friend who is more skilled in designing and creating sites. There will be a social network element added later but, for the time being, that's on the backburner. So just as TOMs Shoes' movement is giving a needy child a shoe that they don't have, my business will be providing help in achieving an education needy children might not have the opportunity to pursue. This is what will create, motivate, and sustain the movement. Eventually, the business will branch off into a larger selection of products. This will not happen till a little later though.

For drop shipper sourcing, check worldwidebrands.com. They sell a high quality, constantly updated directory of drop shippers. It's the best resource I've found for sourcing product with regards to drop shipping.

Also, I don't know why more people interested in drop shipping don't explore affiliate marketing. It's another way to source product and earn a commission without having to manage inventory yourself. With affiliate marketing you usually don't even have to process the order.

If you're looking for physical products, look into commission junction. fyi, good resources are not free, but they're worth it. You can spin your wheels for months or longer trying to source product for your business, or you can invest in quality information and get on with your life. My two cents for the day

True, but I think some people prefer seeing the physical product move as opposed to most affiliates which are electronic products. Not really as satisfying maybe? As for affiliate programs, I have tried them in the past without much success. Reasons are varied but I would imagine it's lack of traffic and people shying away from affiliate links. If you have experience in this area I would very much appreciate any advice, rxcknrxll. Thanks for reply.

Originally Posted by dnuge3

True, but I think some people prefer seeing the physical product move as opposed to most affiliates which are electronic products.

Somewhere you picked up the wrong idea. Affiliate marketing can be anything. Think of it as a sales position for a retail store, you dont own the product you are just promoting it and receive a commission. This can be real products or electronic does not matter. Drop shipping is the same thing only you control all the information now. whereas before you just needed to give a user a cookie in their browser to let the store know you reffered them. Now you are controlling what they buy just not handling inventory or warehousing/shipping logistics.

Both take traffic, affiliate marketing can be easier to use to learn the ropes simply because you can make money while learning, dropshipping you can sink a lot of money into and still have no clue.

Originally Posted by LightHouse

Somewhere you picked up the wrong idea. Affiliate marketing can be anything. Think of it as a sales position for a retail store, you dont own the product you are just promoting it and receive a commission. This can be real products or electronic does not matter.

True, but I think I have seen the most in promoting electronic products. There are certainly other physical product affiliates out there. For example, Amazon and its affiliate program for books. I guess what I have the most trouble wrapping my head around this is the scalability of promoting physical products. It seems that those who do take this route tend to focus their efforts on one product rather than multiple. Do you have experience with promoting multiple physical products and deriving a decent income from them? Because I have looked into it before and it seemed very hard. Thanks very much for the input.

Originally Posted by dnuge3

True, but I think I have seen the most in promoting electronic products. There are certainly other physical product affiliates out there. For example, Amazon and its affiliate program for books. I guess what I have the most trouble wrapping my head around this is the scalability of promoting physical products. It seems that those who do take this route tend to focus their efforts on one product rather than multiple. Do you have experience with promoting multiple physical products and deriving a decent income from them? Because I have looked into it before and it seemed very hard. Thanks very much for the input.

via affiliate marketing? I do affiliate marketing and only with physical products. I don't touch digital at all. most of it converts poorly and i like to know customers are getting something tangible. my main experience is with drop shipping though.

Yeah, sorry, via affiliate marketing. Because I think similarly and prefer to know customers are getting physical, tangible products. What has your experience been with affiliate marketing? Also, might I ask what types of products you drop-ship and if your experience has been positive with it?

I have had experience in doing both and would prefer the affiliate route if the margins were high enough.

When I was selling kayaks, affiliate sales were actually making just a little less or even money compared to dropshipping. If I sold a $2000 kayak, I made $200-$240 with a 10-12% affiliate, whereas if I physically sold this kayak I only made $300 and had so much more work. This was due to the high shipping costs and 2% credit card fees. It didn't make sense. This manufacturer obviously had their numbers messed up or would rather do affiliate sales than wholesale. In this case, I just changed all the pages on my site to go to the affiliate's site.

I just looked into getting some firepits for winter and found out that on a $250 sale, a dropshipper would make $20-$60 (depending on shipping). But I can get 10% commission on their affiliate program. So I would rather make an affiliate store and pocket the $25 and do no additional work. This firepit store either gets better dropship wholesale rates than me or does high volume or actually carries inventory.

But, if you are looking at Amazon's 6% affiliate rate. That makes no sense if you are selling a $200 product to make $12 whereas a real dropship store can make $80-$100 on the same sale. True you have to deal with the product and customer and paperwork but the margins are huge. How do you think a retail dropship store can afford a 10% affiliate payout to you?

Biophase, with your affiliate promotions was it easy to put multiple products on the page? And, did you have decent conversions, meaning not too many were scared off with the affiliate links? I think that's the thing I have the most problem with. It seems people tend to shy away from the affiliate link and just move on.