Q: I'd want starting my own eBay business, however, I really do not want to invest in a heap of inventory until I can get a much better deal with on which might or click here may not sell. I read another column regarding dropshipping, although I'm still a little fuzzy on the way the whole process works. Do you feel using dropshipping is a great way to start an eBay company and when so, precisely how do I begin?
-- Candace M.

A: Dropshipping is an issue that I 1st answered in my column way back in April, 2003, that is many decades ago in Internet ages. However with the continuing expansion of eBay and it's positioning of itself as a viable method for any person wanting to launch an ebusiness, the subject of dropshipping is presently hotter than ever. It's also now more misunderstood than ever before.
Dropshipping has been around since Sears started selling goods from its mail order catalogs over a hundred years ago. Nevertheless, the notion of dropshipping currently confuses many individuals who do not understand exactly the way the process works.
By definition, dropshipping is a method of selling as well as distributing items whereby the distributor or perhaps supplier of the shoes (the dropshipper) ships the item directly to the end user (the customer) of yours on the retailer's behalf (that's you).
The process of dropshipping involves three parties who take a merchandise from manufacturing to market. They are a manufacturer, a reseller, in addition to a distributor.

Let us use a blue widget as a sample product to demonstrate the process: Blue Widget Manufacturing (manufacturer): This is the organization that manufactures bluish widgets. Blue Widget Manufacturing doesn't sell straight away to the public or perhaps provide the retailers who eventually sell the blue widgets to the end user. They choose using distributors to deal with the task of taking their bluish widgets to market. Blue Widgets sells blue widgets by the truckload to distributors who pay $5 per azure widget.

A1 Distributing (distributor/dropshipper): A1 Distributing may be the company that purchases bluish widgets in bulk from the manufacturer and supplies them to resellers in a price of seven dolars each. The distributor does not ship blue widgets to the reseller, but ships orders directly to the reseller's customers as the widgets are sold.
Big Bob's eBay Widget Store: Big Bob sells bluish widgets to the public from his eBay shop. Bob buys the blue widgets from A1 Distributing as he sells them (usually 1 at a time) and has A1 ship the azure widget directly to the customer of his. Bob carries bluish widgets to everyone for ten dolars each, meaning that for every blue widget offered he nets three dolars.