Tips On Starting An Online Business With The Help Of Drop Shippers

The most common mistake people make when starting an online business is taking on too many things by themselves. Yes, it is true that many ecommerce solutions are designed to allow an individual to run an online store without any help but there is a limit to how much we can multitask before efficiency starts to slip.

Remember, once a store is set up, a lot of time will be spent marketing the store and its products. This process never stops as marketing is what brings traffic to the store. The more traffic, the higher the chances of a sale.

But with lots of traffic also comes lots of email inquiries, live chat, order processing and fulfillment. It can be overwhelming at times.

To hire someone to help out in the early stages of a SOHO business might not be affordable to many. But, for a small price, you can opt for the services of a drop shipper take care of all or part of your order fulfillment needs. Here are a few tips on starting an online business with the help of drop shippers.

The Plus Points
Many ecommerce software providers make starting an online business that much more affordable by already integrating themselves with at least one established drop shipper. This means a merchant need not pay any integration fees, which could cost a few hundred dollars. They only need pay monthly drop ship subscription charges which usually amount to about $50 a month and maybe a per product drop ship fee of a few dollars.

Another convenience most drop shippers offer is that they do not require a minimum order quantity. So you only pay for what you need. Nothing more.

Engaging a drop shipper saves you the time of fulfilling the order yourself. You do not have to search for the product, pack it and ship it off to the customer. Everything is taken care off. You also need not store inventory. That would save you space and money if you need to rent space to store inventory. One thing for sure is that you would not get stuck with dead inventory.

The Catch
Unfortunately, there are drawbacks with such a service. Firstly, margins might be as low as 10% in some cases. But it could be as high as 30% in others.

Secondly, while stock updates are usually done in real-time, they might not be up-to-date and this can cause a few problems post purchase. There have been complaints that customers have been told that their orders cannot be fulfilled because items were actually out of stock during time of purchase but the stock status was not accurately reflected on the site.

Thirdly, there have been incidents where wrong items or wrong quantities of an item were sent to customers. This might take a little while correct since there are more parties involved.

Lastly, you would have to rely on product information which your drop shipper supplies. Sometimes the information provided might be inadequate or not up to mark, such as blurry product images.

Final Say
To me personally, the benefits of using the services of a drop shopper outweigh the drawbacks. Drop shippers have come a long way in terms of providing quality service. But before you sign up for their services, always do some research first. And then follow the tips on starting an online business with the help of drop shippers above.

Harry Goldberg is a retired ecommerce entrepreneur who has built and sold over 100 online stores. He now shares his ideas and tips on starting an online business and where to obtain the most value-for-money shopping cart software package.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Harry_Goldberg

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7175454