Thursday, February 07, 2008

What a Free Dropship Wholesaler Means and How You Can Find One

Finding a reliable dropship wholesaler is half work done, when you are setting up an online reselling business. It spares you tons of efforts, time and money, bringing a regular flow of profit from virtually nothing. You never even get your hands on the products you sell, not to mention storage, packaging, shipping costs, and unsold leftovers. In other words, you are just a retailer who finds buyers for a manufacturer’s goods and benefits on the difference between the wholesale value and the final sale price.

Some resell business owners assume that free dropship wholesalers are those ones who don’t charge for shipping the goods to the buyers. If this is your idea of a free dropshipping company, then you may get disappointed – they simply don’t exist. A free dropship wholesaler is one that doesn’t charge you for utilizing its services; however, that doesn’t apply to shipping costs.

Bear in mind that not all distribution companies are free – many of them do charge an additional fee for using their services. As a result, this adds to your overall expenses, cutting from the potential profit. The fee may vary significantly and can be applied monthly, annually or per transaction, so in your search for good wholesale suppliers you also need to take this into an account.

Of course, ideally, your dropship wholesaler should be free. This can give you an opportunity to come up with lower prices than what your competitors offer and draw clientele in no time. Consequently, if your sales show a clear tendency to increase, the company may provide you with additional discounts, meaning more profit in the long run.

However, a free dropship wholesaler doesn’t always mean the best, and you have to estimate a lot of factors when choosing one. Don’t focus on money matters only – a good reputation, quality of goods and fast delivery are just as important. After all, your own reputation and the fate of your resell business largely depend on the supplier you choose.

To find a good distribution company that is also free may be really hard if you are just starting off. The Internet has plenty of resources, but to sort out which are genuine and which are just middlemen, waiting to chop off their share, can be daunting. By simply clicking on the top sites a Google search page returns you are very unlikely to find what you really need. You may have to rummage in hundreds of websites in order to find at least one dropship wholesaler that is a genuine company and not a middleman.

Online directories of suppliers may or may not be a good source. Almost all of them are paid and scam risks are plentiful. In case you don’t want to use the directories, you have no other choice but relying on somebody else’s experience.