A lot of people think that they can’t have their own website selling all manner of things because they don’t have the money to buy the stock, let alone find room to store it all.
But there is a way that you can sell stuff online without needing to touch a single item that you promote – and that is by dropshipping.
Not only is this one of the best ways to make money online, it also gives you the freedom to be able to sell a lot more items than you would otherwise be able to. Interested? I thought you might be…
So what exactly is dropshipping? Put simply, it’s a process whereby you promote a number of products that are sold by a specific company. You don’t stock them yourself though; what happens is that when someone places an order they pay you directly, and then you will generally place an order for that item through the company’s website.
But you don’t pay the full price for the item, you simply pay the net price that the company charges you, plus the postage costs to send it direct to the customer. You also give them your customer’s name and address details so they can send the package directly to them.
So if your customer pays $20 plus $2 postage for an item, they will send you $22. Once you receive that money, you send the net cost – which could be, say, $12 – plus the $2 postage to the company. This small amount of work leaves you with $8 profit. And that’s just on one sale.
A gift ideas dropshipping website would do well because it appeals to all kinds of people at all times of the year. Everyone always has an awkward gift to buy for someone, whether it’s for a birthday, an anniversary, Christmas or any one of a dozen other occasions. So if you populate your website with plenty of different gift ideas for people of all ages, you will have a great chance of starting to make some sales fairly quickly.
But where exactly do you find these dropshippers in the first place?
Well some of them operate a wholesale option as well, and it’s true that if you start looking for wholesalers you will often find dropshippers on your travels as well. You can start by looking on Google and Yahoo for gift dropshippers and other variations on that search term.
Alternatively, if you find a company whose products you really like, visit their website directly and see if they have a dropshipping option. If not, email them and ask! It never does any harm and you can actually make contacts with some good suppliers in this way, especially as most people won’t bother emailing on the off chance.