What is drop shipping?

Drop shipping is when the product distributor takes care of all the shipping for you. Rather than ordering stock in bulk, the stock remains with the distributor. Then, when you make a sale, you send an email to the distributor and they pack up the item and send it straight to the customer with your company label on the box.

Drop shipping is a very popular option with sellers because it takes a lot of the grunt work out of selling on eBay. However, there are some major downsides to drop shipping – especially for new sellers.

Here’s a list of the pros and cons of drop shipping so that you can make the right decision for your business.

Drop shipping Pros

1. No storage room required
You don’t have to fill up your living room with stock and packing materials! This is particularly useful if you are selling large items such as kit-sets, furniture, sporting goods, and so on.

2. No shipping costs getting stock delivered from the distributor
Drop shipping means you don’t have to pay a carrier to bring stock from the distributor to your own storage area, which can mean big savings in the long term.

3. Spend more time on other areas of your business
You don’t have to organize the packing and postage system, nor do you have to drive to the post shop each day to post your packages. This gives you a significant increase in time to spend on other tasks such as marketing and communicating with customers.

4. No packaging required
You save money by not having to order and store packaging materials.

Drop shipping Cons

1. Can be Costly
You have to pay for the cost of the labor and materials involved in drop shipping. Generally this is between $2 and $5 per item. Many new sellers find that the additional costs of drop shipping greatly reduce their profit margins and sometimes nullify the whole operation. This is the main reason why drop shipping is not a viable option for some sellers.

2. You are still responsible for any shipping problems
So the item arrived damaged? Was there a shipping delay? You’ll get the flak for anything that goes wrong with the shipping even though it is technically out of your control.

3. Hard to find a distributor who will do it and do it well
Many distributors will not drop ship because of the extra paperwork involved. Then there is the matter of checking up on quality standards to make sure your items are being packed correctly.

4. Low stock levels may cause unhappy customers
Your drop shipper won’t necessarily tell you when they are running low on stock. If they run out and have to do a back order, you may end up spending a great deal of time placating a bunch of unhappy and impatient customers.

Drop shipping is a very appealing prospect for many sellers; however it is not always a realistic one. Despite the hassle, ‘doing it yourself’ can often be a more sensible option financially, especially for new businesses.

Written by SaleHoo.com © All Rights Reserved. About SaleHoo – one of the fastest growing product sourcing portals on the internet. It contains a database of drop ship, wholesale, closeout and manufacturing suppliers offering thousands of product suppliers to consumers! Located at Salehoo, visitors are allowed to sign up for unlimited and lifetime access to the completely searchable database of products and suppliers. The database is regularly updated, ensuring that the latest retail products are always available for purchase and SaleHoo carries the BBB Reliability Seal! Join SaleHoo Today for their Special Startup Offer!

With Keyword Elite’s project 2 you can uncover untapped niches and long tail keywords by analyzing your competitors pay per click campaigns in Google, Yahoo, Miva, And Enhance.

Keyword Elite’s project 2 allows you to:

• Uncover mega high paying Adsense keywords!

• Fully integrated to pull in keyword lists created from project 1, quickly and easily.

• Find low cost advertising keywords you can exploit via Adwords.

• Analyze your Pay Per Click competition deeper than anyone ever thought was possible!

Watch this video, by Keyword Elite’s creator Brad Callen, to see just how quick and effective the keyword analyzer tool is. Click here to watch Project 2 demo video.

Don’t forget to check out the video of project 1 – see my previous post. But that’s not all that Keyword Elite can do. Click on the Keyword Elite link to the right, for more info on the other 4 functions or subscribe to my blog feed by clicking on the Subscribe button on the right above, as I will be writing about the next 3 projects of Keyword Elite very soon.

There are 5 main functions to Keyword Elite which for me makes Keyword Elite the most powerful and comprehensive keyword software. The first function or project is the powerful keyword research tool which enables you to:

• Quickly and efficiently create HUGE effective keyword lists in seconds.
• Select the sources to use to create your keyword list including Ask, Google, and Yahoo.
• Choose to include misspelled keywords to uncover hidden keyword gems – tapping into profitable keywords where there may be less competition but high search volume.
• Easily edit, sort, filter and extract keywords to your computer.
• And also create and upload your Adwords campaigns and groups straight into your Google Adwords account.

Watch this video, made by Keyword Elite’s creator Brad Callen, to see just how quick and effective the keyword list generation tool is. Click here to watch Project 1 demo video.

As you can see this keyword software is so easy to use and very flexible allowing you to select the sources for your keyword lists and then simply manipulate and edit the output to suit your keyword requirements. And then by integrating it with your Google account to create and upload your Adwords with ease, allows you to set up your pay per click campaigns quickly and effectively.

But that’s not all that Keyword Elite can do. Click on the Keyword Elite link to the right, for more info on the other 4 functions or subscribe to my blog feed by clicking on the Subscribe button on the right above, as I will be writing about the other 4 projects of Keyword Elite very soon.

Whatever you want to sell on the internet, you’re gonna want to keep up with the latest news as well as what your competition is doing in your chosen sector. With that in mind, you’ll find that most websites and blogs will have an RSS feed in order to allow their customers, visitors or readers to subscribe and keep up to date with their new articles and products.

Now you could subscribe to email alerts and receive emails every time your chosen blog or site has been updated. But it is a more efficient way to subscribe to feeds via a feed reader, this will aggregate all your subscribed feeds into one place. And the best feed reader (mainly because Google is the main search engine) is Google Reader.

It enables you to organise your feeds into folders, share your subscriptions on a public page, add notes and tags, and mark your favourites. The layout of the Google reader makes it easy to use and scan through loads of posts so quickly that it will save you so much time. So you can keep up to date with all the goings on on the internet every day and fast. By subscribing to RSS feeds in your field of interest including your competitors feeds you can easily see where the buzz is at, what other people are talking about.

Not only that but set up a feed in Google Alerts and you can get updated with any news articles or blog posts which contain your chosen keyword term. Which if you want to sell anything online is going to be a very useful trick in your keyword and market research.

In the Thirty Day Challenge, Ed Dale has provided a series of short videos showing how to set up a Google Reader account and how to create a feed from Google Alerts. Check out the first video below:

This is not only going to help you to keep up to date with the latest news in your chosen sector or niche but is a very useful tool in finding keywords and products to sell online. For further free lessons on how to use the best free tools on the internet, click here to sign up to the Thirty Day Challenge for free.

Pre-season in the thirty day challenge is all about getting the right tools for the challenge itself in August. And about having time to get use to using them in your daily internet marketing routine. But also it’s about integrating the best tools available and really get the most leverage out for your marketing efforts. With the power of social media tools like Twitter and Digg available for free, this is gonna be the best time to use the thirty day challenge to learn how to sell any product online and for free.

In fact, it maybe overwhelming as there are so many social media tools and services that you could use. But bulk bookmarking and promoting your site all over the net with impunity wont get you extra Google points (it may even get your site or blog sand-boxed for a time). Following the thirty day challenge, you’ll find that Ed Dale, the main man, takes you through step by step all the techniques you need to help you decide what to sell online, how to sell it and how to really boost your site or blog’s exposure with maximum leverage. And this is all possible because of the way the internet has become a community for sharing news, photos, videos and blogs etc – we can all get our message across to a larger global audience, like never before.

We have already done 3 weeks of pre-season training, and have learned some powerful techniques. You could just watch all of the videos on YouTube (you will need to search for user name ‘eddale’)- though firstly I would recommend that you start watching the videos from the beginning (the first pre-season video was posted 2 weeks ago). But if you want to get the most out of this challenge, do it the right way and sign up to the free lessons on the thirty day challenge website so that you can also get yourself on a team and keep up to date with questions and answers in the forum as well.

Teams are the key to this challenge – what one person can do with the social media sites to lever their site, blog or product will be 10, 100 or a 1000 times more effective if you’ve got a team of people helping you and promoting your product or site. So click here to sign up for the Thirty Day Challenge

Also there’s is a live Ustream TV show, usually every Sunday 8pm Eastern time where Ed catches up with the latest lessons and introduces what’s coming up in the next week’s lessons and there’s a show on tonight.

This is the video from the live launch of this year’s Thirty Day Challenge, which was broadcast live on 31st May 2008. Here, Ed gives an overview of what is to come in the next few months.

Pre-season is happening right now and will be continuing for the next 2 months. The main aim of pre-season is to get ready for the main challenge which starts 1st August. Pre-season allows everyone to get up to speed with the new developments of Web2.0 and Internet Marketing tools and techniques.

Pre-season is a very important step in learning how to sell online with the 30 day challenge. What is the pre-season for:

1. As everyone who is taking part in the challenge will be at different stages in their internet marketing paths – it gets everyone up to the same level.

2. You get time to learn how to use the tools and techniques that are going to be used in the actual challenge.

3. In pre-season it is recommended that you get yourself a team to work with and help you in the challenge – by checking out the forum you can easily find people to make up a team.

4. There are many tools for internet marketing; the thirty day challenge team advising on which internet marketing tools to use, you are already getting off to the best start to learn how to use them to market and sell products online.

All the challenge videos including the launch video above and all the lessons so far are on YouTube. But it is recommended that you sign up to the member’s area to get the full benefit of the challenge and also to get access to the forum where you can also get yourself on a team, so click here to sign up for the Thirty Day Challenge.

There are at the moment 7 pre-season video lessons, each very short and to point, and usually no longer than 10 minutes long. What you’ll find with the thirty day challenge is that they show you in easy to manage steps how to build your knowledge and skill in internet marketing and how to make the most of the excellent free tools and techniques on the internet to sell any product online.

Before Starting an eBay Business

Before starting an eBay business, it is important to research what products to sell on eBay. First research what are the best products to sell on eBay and online in general. And secondly, check out your competition to see who is currently selling these products. Market research is step one in any strategy in starting an eBay business.

Product Research – What Products to Sell on eBay

a. Use eBay’s Best Selling Product List

For initial research into what products to sell on eBay, I’d suggest using eBay pulse which lists the top 10 selling items on each eBay site overall and for each main product category and sub-category. eBay also lists of it’s top keywords and popular search terms. As this is based on user data it’s a useful insight into how people use eBay. It is also an excellent resource as it is updated regularly and it’s free. Remember the top 10 best selling items will vary between different countries.

b. Use Closed Listings to see how & why products sold

Once you’ve used eBay’s pulse, popular products and keywords lists to make a list of possible categories, sub categories and products that you want to target. Then look at what actually has been sold in your target categories by searching the closed listings (do this by searching for products and filter to show only ‘closed listings’).

By looking at these closed listings you can get an idea of

• The price people will pay for the items that are making money on eBay
• What products/listings got buyers bidding?
  
• How your competition is making money on eBay?
• What the average postage costs are.

eBay also has a paid service which provides more statistical data on popular searches and products, called eBay marketplace.

c. Extend your research to what products to sell on the internet in general.

Although eBay is the most popular shopping site in most countries, most people start their online shopping by using search engines, and 90% of the time that means Google. So although they may end up finding and purchasing the items they’re looking for on eBay, most of the time they’ve been sent to eBay by a search engine. So it’s important to continue your product research via Google (plus Yahoo and MSN).

And this is where keyword tools come into your market research. I will be comparing free keyword tools against paid tools, namely Keyword Elite in the next post. But for now, which ever keyword tool you use, they will have at least the basic function as a keyword suggestion tool. Put in the generic product names and terms that you’ve found using eBay pulse into the keyword suggestion tool and it will provide a list on related search phrases and the number of times a phrase was searched for say the last month. Again keyword tools can provide country specific phrases and search counts.

Save these lists of phrases as they will be a useful insight into HOW people search for a product online. But will also be useful when it comes to actually promoting your website, web pages or eBay listings as you’ll need to optimize you web content to encourage search engines to index them and drive traffic/visitors to them. But for now it’s the search counts which will be of use to you as you can see how many people actually search for products every month. Use these stats to determine the best products to sell on eBay and online.

d. Competition Analysis

Now that you have a list of products and search terms, look who else is selling these products by using these search terms in Google. How are these people or companies selling their products, what is their unique selling point (USP)? Think about how you could provide a better service or product or USP to beat this competition.

Search in Google with each of your chosen search terms in quotes to see the number of unique web pages which have been optimized for these terms. Keyword Elite has a function that calculates how effective the top ranked web pages in Google results are optimized for a given search term, using this data you can see how you can write your web pages and eBay shop listings to beat the top ranked pages. More detail on this later in the coming few posts.

In summary

1. Use eBay pulse to find the best products to sell on eBay based on popularity and what you are able to sell.

2. Closed listings – using past performances in eBay see what the potential is for making money from selling these things.

3. Use keyword tools like Keyword Elite to find what the potential volume of traffic is for these things online and on eBay.

4. Use search engines or Keyword Elite to determine the level of competition, how they sell, what you can do to stand out and what you need to do to optimize your shop listings to give them the best visibility.

As you can see from these steps you will be able to start building a good foundation for your eBay business strategy. From which you can realize the potential of how to make money on eBay selling these products.

Coming up next: Free keyword tools verses paid keyword research tools i.e. Keyword Elite

Keyword Research gives you an insight into what people are looking for in search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN. And the search terms or keywords they’re using to find products, services or information.

This data is readily available online and tools like Keyword Elite can quickly and easily extract these search terms and how many times these search terms were used over a specified period of time.

If you want to sell or promote ANYTHING on the Internet, whether it is a product, service or information, keyword research tools will help you:

• See what people are searching for online
• See how people search, what keywords they use
• See how often a search term is used online
• See how your competition are marketing their products and services, by showing what terms they’re optimized or targeted for
  • on their websites
  • in their pay-per-click advertising campaigns
  • or in their paid listings like Google Adsense

• See if your chosen product or service has potential, is there a sufficient volume of searches to make you money
• See if there are untapped niche markets waiting to be ‘exploited’, i.e. keywords with sufficient search volume but low competition
• Access keyword search data from anywhere for anywhere else in the world
• See which terms you need to optimize your web pages for, in order to get the best conversions.

Conventional, offline marketing, such as on the high street, in newspapers or on TV, there is no way to trace or research potential customers browsing and shopping habits in such detail. Using keyword research tools to access users search data means that is it possible for anyone to research what and how to sell online, it’s not just about the big corporations with their big ad budgets.

But you gotta do your research, if you don’t know how, where and why people search for your target product or service how can you sell it to them? How can you get them to your website or compel them to click on your adverts or buy your products? How can you tell them that you have the product, service or information to fulfill their requirements or solve their problem?

Keyword research is the most important aspect of marketing for any online business, in fact in my opinion, it is almost more important than the product itself! So having the right keyword research tool is essential for online success.

Coming up next: How to use keyword research tools to find the best products to sell on eBay.