Drop Shipping Review Pros and Cons

If you are just starting out selling online you may soon find yourself confused about what to sell online.Not only do you have to figure out what to sell you will need to ask yourself this important question.Should I be using a drop shipping service.With drop shipping you sign up for a drop shipping service and pick your products to sell.Then all you have to do is list these products and when they sell you place your order with the drop shipper and the drop shipper fulfills the order for you.There are many drop shipping services out there to choose from,some you have to pay for some are free.

The problem with drop shipping is that you are at the mercy of the drop shipper.Your business reputation is at stake.What if the drop shipper ships the product to your customer and the item arrives broken.What if the drop shipper is slow filling your orders and your customer starts getting mad at you because their item arrives late.What if you list one of the drop shippers items and sell it only to find out that the item is out of stock because the drop shipper doesn't keep their online stock up to date.These are a few of the problems that you can run in to when using a drop shipper.Using a drop shipper can be less expensive than buying your products out right.If the item doesn't sell no problem just wait until it does.The only way this can get expensive is if you are listing these items on eBay where you have to pay a listing fee.Otherwise if you are selling the items on one of the other online auction websites or your own website it doesn't cost you a thing.If you are just starting out and don't have much money to invest in products drop shipping might just be the right way for you to go.But you have to find a reliable drop shipper.One way to do this is to actually order an item from the drop shipper.See how fast they ship the item to you.You can check out their customer service this way as well.

I actually tested a drop shipper one time and they advertised themselves as a blind drop shipper.Which is where the drop shipper takes the order from you and then ships the item to the buyer with your return address not theirs so that your customer doesn't know where the product actually came from.Well anyway I ordered an item using the drop ship method where the drop shipper was supposed to blind drop ship the item. When the package arrived they had put all kinds of their advertisements in the box with company name and even the original price of the item.So before you use a drop shipper be sure to test them and check them out before investing any of your time or money in them.

Typically when you use a drop shipper your profit margin is going to be very small.There are sellers on eBay that only make 3% to 5% profit on their drop shipped items.This is a very tight profit margin and leaves little room for error.These seller keep their prices low so that they sell more items and make less money on each item but they make sure that the only sell items that are going to move.Take Walmart for an example.Walmart is the low price leader.They probably only make a small percentage on a lot of their items but they keep their prices so low that they make up for the low price on the enormous amount of merchandise they are able to sell every day.This strategy works in online auctions as well.Keep your prices down to where you are making even a small amount on each item but make sure the item is priced to where it will sell.As far as drop shipping is concerned the main thing that I can stress if you are going to use a drop shipping company is make sure they are reliable because your time your money and your business is on the line.