cost of dropship type website

[thinkingbig]

i was planning on starting a dropship based online business. I hope to have around 5000 products on to my site. It is not an online store or anything of that store. How much would it cost to have a simple website with 5000-10000 products from different companies.?

I'm starting my market research this saturday.

cheers

comments appreciated

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Knightsman]

Depends on what your cost is. You can go the cheap route and use a ecommerce solution that is free, like zencart and oscommerce.

If you plan to pay someone that price will go way up and fast. at least $500 from a craiglist payee to $1000+ for a professional site.

 

[GuestAcct-10]

I don't mean to put a damper on things but 5000+ items sounds like a hell of a lot for a dropshipping website. I might be wrong but are dropshippers not normally used for niche products?

If you are sure about this then you will probably need some sort of system to process the orders through to the dropshippers due to the amount of products, I've never done any dropshipping myself so I don't really know how you will do this or how costly it will be. Are you planning on coding any of it yourself or are you planning on paying someone to create the whole thing? If you're paying somebody else to do it then you could pay them to edit some open source software like oscommerce to cut costs and if you are coding it yourself then use oscommerce to save time. Other than that, just do plenty of research, there is a fair bit of information on here if you do a bit of searching. Also remember to budget for marketing and other costs.

 

[biophase]

i was planning on starting a dropship based online business. I hope to have around 5000 products on to my site. It is not an online store or anything of that store. How much would it cost to have a simple website with 5000-10000 products from different companies.?

I have no idea what this means. :huh2:

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[thinkingbig]

sorry. I meant that it is not like a traditional online store.

I will try out the e-commerce open source aspect of it. What i was planning to do is get at least a 100 clients (names determined from market research i will be carrying out) and register on my website and ask them to pay $35 per month (is that reasonable, given that i will advertising on their behalf, should i charge more for clients for who $35 per month is nothing?.

I need to someone connect the clients products using an online link. So i have the clients products and services listed on my website and when the consumers are happy, they should be able to directly contact them. It is like a dropship type thing but not entirely. Was wondering if anyone can give my pointers?

thanks

 

[biophase]

So you are charging suppliers to be on your site? And the customers come on for free right? How do you plan to get your traffic?

 

[biophase]

I need to someone connect the clients products using an online link. So i have the clients products and services listed on my website and when the consumers are happy, they should be able to directly contact them. It is like a dropship type thing but not entirely. Was wondering if anyone can give my pointers?

thanks

So it sounds like you are charging them $35 a month to basically put products on your site. You will also not be handling any of the money right? A purchase would go through the supplier's site? It sounds less and less like an ecommerce site and basically like an affiliate site or a product aggregation site.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[thinkingbig]

So you are charging suppliers to be on your site? And the customers come on for free right? How do you plan to get your traffic?

Yes i am charging suppliers (would $35 be reasonable or should i look for more) and the customers come in for free. With regards to traffic, i guess spread the idea at Uni.

I think my idea has not been tried before. I have looked at amazon.com and other online shopping websites and their concept is different to what i have planned.

I was wondering how did facebook and other big online shopping sites initially get traffic. I know facebook spread by word of mouth at Uni, but what about amazon and ebay?

cheers

 

[WestCoast]

I think some of us are still confused (at least I am).

You are going to be drop-shipping goods - but in addition you want the people you drop ship goods for to pay you a monthly fee - for drop shipping their products?

Is this correct?

If so, you'll need to be selling a TON of stuff for them FIRST, before they will be willing to pay YOU, to list their product.

The reason there is the margin/markup in a supply chain is so you will have an incentive to sell someones product. That is the 'fee' you collect for the work you do, I'm not sure you can collect that fee, and also charge a listing fee? Haven't seen that done before in our business, but we're pretty niche in what we drop ship.
--
Maybe my brain isn't in gear here.

Also, marketing/promotion - you say you will talk about it uni (univeristy/college?) and such?

I think facebook worked at 'uni' because it was a social way for people to interact for free.

You are proposing a business that costs people money to sell goods.... quite different.


---
Anyway, don't mean to be a wet blanket. Maybe you are on to something, but perhaps you can be more clear what you are offering to customers and how you intend to make money doing it.

 

[kwerner]

Westcoast makes some good points here.

Thinkingbig - What need will your website fulfill for the customer / distributor? Are you chasing money or fulfilling a need?

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[thinkingbig]

thanks for the replies for westcost and kwerner. Sorry guys, my website is not really dropship based one, after looking over my plan.

Essentially:

1. customers are free to browse my site and search for products and services
2. the clients are charged $35 per month, as the site acts as an online sales rep for the services.
3. any service used by a customer through my site, i charge the client 10% of total cost.

The framework is already in use by most online shopping ads, but the concept is different, which is what i am trying not to disclose yet. I hope that makes more sense.

And to kwerner: i am both fulfilling a need in that i my concept would make accessing services easier. My plan is for a website that focuses on my city and if successful, i can franchise into other cities. I have chosen to focus on one city so that my customer service and interaction is as high as it can be.

 

[kwerner]

i was planning on starting a dropship based online business. I hope to have around 5000 products on to my site.

Sorry guys, my website is not really dropship based one, after looking over my plan.

Okay, this is confusing me; probably others too. If you can be more specific with your questions, you'll probably get better, more helpful, feedback.

And to kwerner: i am both fulfilling a need in that i my concept would make accessing services easier. My plan is for a website that focuses on my city and if successful, i can franchise into other cities. I have chosen to focus on one city so that my customer service and interaction is as high as it can be.

So is your website concept basically an online yellow-pages for your city?? Either way, it sounds like driving traffic to your site is going to be the key your site's success. What's your plan for this?

 

[Inphinity]

So let me try to summarise this.

Product supplier pays to list products on your site.
Customers browse your site to find products.
Customer buys directly from product supplier.

So your site is just a product directory, that helps put buyers in touch with sellers?

How will you differentiate your site form the thousands of other such product directories?

Why will Major Manufacturer A want to pay you to let them put all the effort in to list their products on your website, given they still have to handle all ordering etc?

Is the fee they pay, a flat fee and they can list whatever they like? Is it per product?

How are you going to drive traffic to your site? How are you going to handle people who visit the site and want ot buy multiple products - from different suppliers?

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[thinkingbig]

So let me try to summarise this.

Product supplier pays to list products on your site.
Customers browse your site to find products.
Customer buys directly from product supplier.

So your site is just a product directory, that helps put buyers in touch with sellers?

How will you differentiate your site form the thousands of other such product directories?

Why will Major Manufacturer A want to pay you to let them put all the effort in to list their products on your website, given they still have to handle all ordering etc?

Is the fee they pay, a flat fee and they can list whatever they like? Is it per product?

How are you going to drive traffic to your site? How are you going to handle people who visit the site and want ot buy multiple products - from different suppliers?

it is like a product directory but specialised for discount deals, not just every product.

I will put all the manufacturers product on the site and advertise for them.

The manufacturer pays a flat fee per month.

Postage of products will be free of charge: i am not looking to make a fortune out of it.

Wrt to traffic, i guess word of mouth and pay some one to market it a bit. Any tips would be appreciated very much.

 

[biophase]

it is like a product directory but specialised for discount deals, not just every product.

I will put all the manufacturers product on the site and advertise for them.

The manufacturer pays a flat fee per month.

Postage of products will be free of charge: i am not looking to make a fortune out of it.

Wrt to traffic, i guess word of mouth and pay some one to market it a bit. Any tips would be appreciated very much.

How will you advertise for them?

Please explain the free shipping?

Who collects the money on a sale? How do you get 10%?

 

[thinkingbig]

i will advertise online

It will be a e-business for my city strictly, with free postage costs coming partially out of my commission of 10% per sale.

The money is collected by the store using a shopping cart system. I recieve 10% per cent commission for every product a customer buys through my website.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[biophase]

i will advertise online

It will be a e-business for my city strictly, with free postage costs coming partially out of my commission of 10% per sale.

The money is collected by the store using a shopping cart system. I recieve 10% per cent commission for every product a customer buys through my website.

I'm trying to get you to think about these things in detail, but your answers are so vague.

What do you mean by advertise online? PPC? Banner ads? Email?

The website is city based. It sounded like you were service based and now you sound like its product based? What kind of online store sells to their own city?

Who is collecting the money? Is it your site with your shopping cart using your merchant account? Then is your plan to place an order on your dropshippers site for the product at 10% less than you sold?

Can you give me an example of one dropshipper or type of store that you would target? I just can't imagine this store or business? How will you keep it city based? What if someone from LA comes to your Chicago site and buys something? Can they do it? BTW, shipping costs don't fluctuate that much anyway within the US. Also you are not going to find many dropshippers per city to fill up a site.

I hate to be so negative, but this site just doesn't sound right.

 

[thinkingbig]

nah, that is alright

the site will be an e-business where stores that are most frequented by customers (something which i am currently finding out via research) will be added on to the website. Customers are able to go through different stores and select items they like. Kind of like ebay for my city, but with a retailer and consumer transcation rather than consumer to consumer transaction.

I have chosen my city only because from the preliminary market research that i have conducted, people like the idea. BTW, i am in Australia, where there are only 5 major cities, unlike the US.

And forget about dropshipping. I made a mistake.

 

[sparechange?]

It is not an online store or anything of that store.

The first thing I thought of was "LOL troll".

Anyways, I don't know much about dropshipping or I'd help you, sry.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[stlsmoore]

The difficult part is going to be where your traffic is coming from. Not only traffic but targeted traffic for the products you're selling. I would really write out exactly how you're going to drive traffic to your site. You will most likely need thousands of hits a day to generate any decent amount of income. If you're converting 5% of the traffic coming to your site that's considered doing pretty good in the internet world. It's not uncommon for websites to convert 1% or lower traffic just a fyi.

I'm making a few sales on my first internet project but what's killing me is traffic. I'm finally in a place where I know exactly how I'm going to generate traffic and I'm working on a full scale SEO campaign to bring in that traffic. It took 4 months after my site was made to learn exactly what I needed to do. I wish I woulda thought more about it in the earlier stages, I think I would of been a lot further than I am currently.

You'll probably need 10-100k hits a day to convince suppliers to pay you to add their product to their site I would imagine. I say this because if you look at the websites at buysellads.com, the most popular sites have a ton of traffic coming to them that affiliate marketers are dying to pay them to display their ads.

 

[Inphinity]

Sounds like you're just going to make a regular online store, where people order products, except you want the suppliers to pay you for you to sell their product.

Why is a supplier going to pay you to let you make money by selling their product, when most other online & physical stores just take their profit on the sale and don't expect to be paid a regular fee to stock products?

Maybe I'm still not understanding your idea.

 

[biophase]

nah, that is alright

the site will be an e-business where stores that are most frequented by customers (something which i am currently finding out via research) will be added on to the website. Customers are able to go through different stores and select items they like. Kind of like ebay for my city, but with a retailer and consumer transcation rather than consumer to consumer transaction.

I have chosen my city only because from the preliminary market research that i have conducted, people like the idea. BTW, i am in Australia, where there are only 5 major cities, unlike the US.

And forget about dropshipping. I made a mistake.

This sounds like an online mall which has been done many times already. So let's say I make a webpage and stick a link to zappos, amazon, borders, rei on there. How is your site different than that? I assume you're going to say that you will put smaller less known online stores on your site. If this is the case, these lesser known stores are basically paying you are an ad at $35/mo which is not unreasonable. However, if I was paying for an ad, I would not be allowing that ad to be an affiliate link also.

Are they no major online stores in Australia? Can you order products from the large US retailers over there?

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.