So you want to start a drop shipping business. Good for you. Drop shipping is a great way to sell products without the large upfront investment that a normal business requires. Since there are no inventory costs, drop shipping allows those with even the smallest budget to get started selling online. It offers the opportunity to make unlimited income with very little risk on your end. For obvious reasons, drop shipping has become a very popular form of eCommerce. But it’s not as simple as it sounds. The popularity of drop shipping has made it a prime target for scammers and middlemen. As with any business opportunity, there are a lot of people out there who want to rip you off. In this case, they come in the form of product sourcing scams.

When searching for a drop shipper online, you’re more than likely to come across a slew of middlemen and MLM product sourcing sites. Many of them are run by the same companies and operate under multiple aliases. They often claim to offer thousands of designer wholesale products that you can sell and make 75% or 100% profits. Often times, they will charge you a monthly fee to access inventory.

Here are some simple tip offs that you’re dealing with a middleman:
• They charge monthly fees
• They try to sell you anything other than wholesale goods
• They don’t ask for a tax ID or resale certificate
• They offer similar product lines as another site or operate under multiple names

If you’re looking at the first few pages of Google, almost every site will fall under one or more of these. That’s because real wholesale suppliers DO NOT advertise in search engines. Don’t fall for these types of scams.

Once you’ve found a real drop shipping supplier, how are you going to sell the products? You’ll probably go right to eBay. This is a common mistake among new drop shippers. eBay, while highly trafficked, is packed full of competition and charges tons of high fees to list and sell products. It’s very hard to make money on eBay these days. Plus, you’re bound to run into the dreaded out of stock issue. This occurs when you sell a product, then go to your wholesale supplier and find that the item is sold out. Your customer is expecting their item, and you have nothing to ship. When this occurs on your own website, you can often delay the shipment, or recommend a similar product. If it happens on eBay, you’re going to get negative feedback and possibly banned from selling.

Building your own eCommerce store is easier than ever thanks to all the free shopping cart software out there. Many of them are highly customizable and don't require any programming on your end. Try to find other ways to get your products in front of customers besides eBay. Think outside the box and you’ll achieve much better results. Don’t do what everyone else is doing. Come up with a solid marketing plan and follow through. Signing up for Doba and posting the products on eBay is not going to make you any money.