1st lets review each step needed to get a dropship website up and running.
The first thing you are going to need to accomplish is research which kind of products you prefer to sell online. This's important because preferably you should choose a sort of product that you are by now knowledgeable about. For instance, in case you have a passion for skate boards and you have some great information about these items then this may be best product line to focus on.
When you have chosen a product line, in this situation we've chosen skate boards, you are going to need to start looking for a supplier which can present you with good wholesale prices. Below you have the possibility of looking for wholesale suppliers or maybe dropship suppliers. Wholesale suppliers are able to offer you lower prices however they require that you buy in large quantities. This typically requires that you've sizeable sum of money available to warehouse the products therefore I strongly recommend searching for dropship suppliers alternatively. Prices from dropship suppliers will probably be higher compared to wholesale suppliers however you'll still be in a position to make a bit of profit without having to think of a huge sum of cash to pre purchase products up front.
On the lookout for a decent dropship supplier is not hard providing you understand what things to look for. Certainly you can use some search engine to uncover a supplier that can supply you with skateboards however you have to apply some essential criteria when doing your search. For instance you should always utilize dropship suppliers that just cope with real companies and not straight with the public. This can be best indication that the supplier is truly reserving their general prices to those that have a registered business just. You can additionally utilize third party services that can offer you a list of names of suppliers that can give you dropship services. One more criteria is picking suppliers that are physically located in the same country where you prefer to advertise the internet site of yours. For example if you're located in the USA then only choose suppliers that have a physical warehouse in the USA. This's to insure you are going to get fast and affordable shipping which is incredibly vital for the business reputation of yours. You additionally want a supplier which can Blind Dropship products to the buyer of yours. Blind Dropship means that the supplier will not reveal their name on the packing slip and so they will not include any reference to the wholesale cost of yours. This is very important because you don't want your buyers to learn the cause of your products.
When you have noticed a supplier that can give you the wholesale formula complaints (look here) type of things you wish to promote you need getting started with a company. Most online entrepreneur choose an LLC since it's very affordable and very easy to setup. You are going to require a TAX ID when applying for a reseller account with your selected suppliers so you have to see to it that you have all your LLC license setup before applying for a new reseller account.
Upon approval of the reseller account of yours, you will need to request that the supplier give you their product data. This information should include data such as item number, item name, item description, retail price, wholesale price, category name, large and small images as well as the quantity in stock. Typically suppliers can provide this data via a CSV files or XML files or with an FTP access to the server of theirs. Please try to remember that each supplier is different and is likely to provide you with different ways of getting the data of theirs.
When you gain access to their product data you are going to need to obtain this info to your computer and import it to your shopping cart software. Usually shopping carts have an import feature which could read a CSV file in a certain format. You might have to edit the file using Microsoft Excel making adjustments to meet the requirements of your shopping cart import feature. Bear in mind items can still come in/out of inventory so its important to refresh your shopping cart on a regular basis to avoid selling products that happen to be no longer available.
The next task is building the internet site of yours. I advocate you develop your website solely after you've purchased a proper supplier fitting the product needs of yours because this might have a direct impact on the website name you will choose for the site of yours. Now, in our example, we have picked a skateboard supplier and we have successfully gained access to the product data of theirs so we're ready to proceed in creating a site dedicate to selling skateboards.