Don't Get Taken by a Fake Supplier!
by Chris Malta
Published on this site: January 6th, 2006 - See
more articles from this month
When you're a small business starting out on the Internet,
or even when you're an established 'Net business, you Need
drop shippers...
Why? Because working with drop shippers eliminates the need
for you to carry expensive inventories. You don't have to
rent a warehouse, hire employees, establish accounts with
UPS and FedEx, etc. You can sell the best brand names on earth
from your home computer, and make good money at it.
Wholesale Suppliers who drop ship send the products you sell
directly from their warehouse to your customer, with your
business name on it. All you do it take the order from your
customer and pass it to the distributor. You keep the difference
between the wholesale price the distributor charges you, and
the retail price you sell to your customer for.
Of course, there are a lot of places out there that want
you to Think they are wholesale drop shippers. They'll set
up accounts with, say, 10 real drop ship suppliers. Then they'll
call themselves something like "GetYerStuffHere.com",
and claim that They are the wholesale drop ship supplier.
Then it'll go like this:
- GetYerStuffHere.com will place advertising all over the
Internet proclaiming to be the greatest source that ever
existed for all kinds of great products, and they'll drop
ship all those products to your customer.
- You'll get all excited because You can actually place
everything from Sony electronics to Coleman Camping gear
on your web site and sell it.
- GetYerStuffHere.com will charge you an account setup
fee, to cover their "processing".
Note: Real Wholesale Suppliers almost Never charge
you an account setup fee.
- GetYerStuffHere.com will send you a nice, shiny list
of products and show you where to get the product images
and descriptions to place on your web site.
- You'll get all excited, and put all this great stuff
on your site, set your prices so that you can make a profit
over what GetYerStuffHere.com.
- You'll launch your site, and you hardly sell a thing.
Huh? What happened? Nobody's buying! You can't survive on
just a few orders a month!
Disappointed and discouraged, you start to go out and check
other web sites that carry the same products. Maybe they have
better images. Maybe they have cooler descriptions. Maybe
their pages look nicer. You find that it's none of those things.
So what Do you find?
The other sites' Prices are lower. A Lot lower.
You just got nailed by one of the most popular scams on the
Internet.
GetYerStuffHere.com took you for a couple of hundred dollars
in exchange for a CD full of product images. They may have
even locked you into a contract where you have to pay them
every month to be a "member" of their "distributorship".
Oh, GetYerStuffHere.com Does ship the products they claim
to. Of course they do. It's just that when they get an order
from you, they turn around and place your order with the Real
Wholesale Supplier, and take a profit. By the time Your price
is calculated, you're paying not only wholesale, you're paying
GetYerStuffHere.com's extra markup of anywhere from 10% to
30%.
In order for You to make a profit, you naturally have to
mark up the prices you get from GetYerStuffHere.com. By the
time you do that, you can't compete on the 'Net. Your prices
are just too high.
At this point, you can do one of two things:
- You can lower your prices to the point where you're making
mere pennies on your products in order to compete.
- You can bypass these jokers and go to the Real sources.
I've been in Systems Engineering for 19 years. I've been
involved in ECommerce since it began. In that time, I've seen
this scenario played out over and over with companies I've
done work for.
The real sources can be hard to find. They don't market themselves
as Internet Wholesale Supplier. They are established wholesale
companies who have been supplying big chains like Sears and
Kmart for a very long time.
Many of them are now realizing that a good part of their
future lies in Internet sales, and they are establishing drop
ship and light bulk wholesale programs. There are even a few
big name manufacturers who are beginning to supply Home-based
Internet Businesses right from their factories. That's where
You need to be. In direct contact with the actual Wholesale
Supplier or factory source.
When you're looking for a drop shipper, here are a couple
of things to be careful of:
- Any company that tells you that they'll set up your entire
web site and Provide the Products for You will not make
you rich. They'll make Themselves rich on your setup and
hosting fees, and you'll piddle along with thousands of
other small sites all selling exactly the same things at
the same prices.
Note: Don't confuse this with companies who just
offer to set up your ECommerce web site. There are a lot
of great places out there that will build and host sites
for you. It's when they tell you that you Have to sell the
products that They provide that you should run for cover.
- Any distributor who wants you to pay a "membership"
or "setup" fee is probably not a true Wholesale
Supplier.
- If it sounds too good to be true, it's too good to be
true.
Chris Malta Worldwide Brands, Inc.We provide sourcing
for legitimate Wholesale Suppliers on the Internet. For more
info, please visit the Wholesale Trading Club: http://www.WholesaleTradingClub.com
We provide a "State Sales and Use Tax ID" Resource
Page here:
http://www.WholesaleTradingClub.com/state-tax-ids.html
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