Basically is a service where your store function as retailer but the products never pass through your store. As far the drop shipping process concerns, your store is something as a “virtual retailer” because you don’t have to keep any inventory. The only inventory is that the drop shipper give you images and descriptions of the products you want to sell from and you publish them on your webstore, the customer order thinking that you have the products in your warehouses, but you only have to send the order your customer place in your website to the drop shipper along with the customer’s name and address. Then the drop ship wholesale supplier send the product straight from their warehouse to your customer home, on your behalf. Your customer pays your retail price, and you pay the drop shipper your wholesale price. That’s the drop shipping process in a nutshell.


Since drop shipping offers an low-cost easy entry point into buying wholesale products, many people use this product sourcing method when opening their first internet store or even people who have experience with online selling use drop ship as supplement to their current product sourcing strategies. Now, many online sellers speak wonders about drop shipping for its ease; others don’t like it, because profit margins tend to be slim. Like every other product sourcing method, drop shipping comes with its own unique set of advantages and drawbacks to your online business:

Let’s start with the upside. Drop shipping give your business with numerous benefits and advantages:

1) There is no risky inventory investment. You don’t pay the wholesaler for an order until your customer pays you.

2) There are no storage or shipping issues. The costs that go into warehousing and shipping individual items can be tremendous and also it’s time you are not spending on this activities. You can use that save time in marketing activities for your web site and  attending your customers.

3) Allows you test new products. It gives you the opportunity for testing out new products and identifying what products could sell well without purchasing inventory that may not sell, this also lets you offer an extensive product lineup. Also you’re able to offer large items, such as furniture, without the hassle of trying to ship each piece.

4) No order minimums. The orders you send to drop ship wholesalers are based on your customers’ orders. You can order as many or few items as you need even possibly individual products.


Now let’s talk about the downside. drop shipping poses certain limitations as well:

1) Thinner Profit Margins. Yes you are receiving true wholesale prices with a genuine drop shipper, but they are wholesale prices associated to single items. Also due to the majority of the work falls on your wholesaler, the profit margins tends to be smaller than if you were purchasing in volume. So in other words, you are paying a drop ship fee, either per container or per unique shipping location, to cover the extra labor and material costs the drop shipper incurs when fulfill your order. If your business is growing and you have identified hot sellers, please consider light bulk wholesaling or even volume wholesaling. The more product you buy, the better your price per item will be.

2) Occasional Delivery Issues. Since the supplier is handling the shipping, you have less control over that area of your customer relations. For example, If your drop shipper is slow filling your orders, or does a poor job packaging them, that reflects badly on your business (remember that your drop ship supplier send the products on your behalf?), and as you know this could mean less customers, less repeat business, less referrals to your website, and finally less profit. For this reason, when you are using a new drop ship supplier, it’s always a good idea to test them out first. Place an order with them yourself, and see how quickly and competently they handle it. This way you will have an idea of what your customers will experience before listing their products on your website.


Now the question is where do we find legitimate wholesale drop shippers? there are a few reliable places where you can find them. One way is attend tradeshows, also you can check out industry publications like trade magazines or also, you can call the manufacturer of the product you’re interested in selling (use the label in the product case to find the manufacturer) and ask the manufacturer for a list of their factory-authorized wholesale suppliers. After you have some candidates on list, start calling the wholesalers to see which ones are willing to drop ship for your online business. You have to understand that many wholesalers don’t want to sell to online businesses, so don’t take personal, they make their money selling in volume, so generally they don’t believe an online store will place any large orders on a steady basis. Also ask if they offers single-item drop shipping or instead they set a drop shipping quantity minimum where you’re forced to require your own customers to purchase products a minimum amount (say three or four items), so it’s in your best interest have this in mind because you don’t want force your customers with minimum orders.


As you can see, finding and qualifying genuine wholesale drop shippers is a process that requires patience and is a time-consuming work. But if you get to know a legitimate supplier, that relation will provide you with a steady, reliable source of products you can sell through your home retail business, at prices that let you make a profit. Drop shipping is an excellent method for new sellers to start with. The immediate benefits of dropshipping are elimination of inventory costs, no shipping issues, and also lets you test new items to see how they sell before you purchase large amount of inventory, which means that it’s a cost-effective tool for your online store. Drop shipping provides a great complement to your other product sourcing methods that lets you maximize your profits and find the best deals for your online business every single time.


Could you get instant access to legitimate drop ship companies who are willing to work with home based online business? Yes, The best place on the Internet for this is WorldwideBrands.com, a company recognized as the best source for legitimate Wholesale Suppliers on the Internet giving you a DIRECT relationship with Dropshippers. Worldwidebrands it’s a company who has been successful in compiling the internet’s largest database of real wholesale dropshippers. WorldwideBrands.com have a full time research team who does all that work for you, so you can put your valuable time to better use. If you use the services of this company you will have instant access to more than 8 million of products on virtually every niche on Internet and immediate access to 8000+ Pre-Screened Premium Drop Shippers & Wholesale Suppliers, and they currently add 10 to 15 new Suppliers to the Worldwide Brands Product Sourcing Tool every business day. Also, they offer training on ecommerce, product sourcing and how to work with suppliers who will drop ship products to your customers.