Drop shipping should be easy,
right? It follows a simple rationale – it leaves you the role of the salesman,
while the wholesaler ships the products out to the customer. It should be an
efficient and straightforward process. You find a product that can be sold, and
then you market it through your website and leave the logistics to a third
party. Your excellent selling skills are used and all you need to do is find a
willing drop shipper. But that’s not necessarily going to be the easiest task.
When you start looking for information on drop shippers, you’ll find plenty of
websites offering supposedly comprehensive lists of drop shippers and you may
feel the job will be easy. Someone in the list has to suit your needs, right?
Again, not necessarily. There are plenty of scams out there and you’d better
beware.
Sellers who have done
extensive research on drop shipping find that the most common scams are:
·
Sham lists – It’s
unbelievable but there are lists full of completely false information out there
that businesses spend three or four digit amounts purchasing, only to find that
these lists have been created on purpose to scam sellers.
·
Cheap, outdated
lists – You will come across a number of cheap deals that seem too good to be
true. Well, they are. These directories will generally contain out of date
information and the creators of the list are trying to make the last few
dollars on them.
·
Middlemen – There
are a number of agents and intermediaries that pretend to be drop shippers and
make a commission that you are not aware of. This will eat into your profit
margin. Since you do not know that you can get this product cheaper from a
genuine drop shipper, you are being scammed out of your money.
·
The ‘full suite’ of
services – Some businesses will offer you a complete suite of drop shipping
services, from stocking, to shipping and packing, but you will pay heavily for
this service. They will often charge a large fixed fee that will leave no
profit margin for you. Basically, the service provider will be the one making
all the money that you earn.
·
Drop shipper’s
fee – You should never be asked to pay a drop shipper for the shipping service
provided. A legitimate drop shipper will be happy to sell more of his product
and will charge you the appropriate amount to cover his expenses in the price
of the product. This is a scam many unethical drop shippers use to make money
off new business owners.
·
No refund policy
– Some unethical drop shippers will refuse to give refunds on returned
products, even after promising initially to do so. This scam is hard to see
coming, unless you make sure to run a thorough check on your drop shipper.
·
Fake email
support – You will be surprised to find how many drop shippers provide fake
email addresses to businesses that depend on their services so that they cannot
be contacted with problems or queries.
·
Links that don’t
work or lead to sites that ask for money – Some lists will have links that
won’t work when you click on them. Others will lead to websites that ask for
money to continue to the page or information that you need. This scam often
comes in combination with sham lists and out of date ones.
Creating a business that is
based on drop shipping requires smart, careful and planned work on the seller’s
part. Be sure that you avoid one of the above scams and make sure you find
reliable directories and drop shippers.
William King is the director
of Wholesale Pages: http://www.wholesalepages.co.uk
,