by: John Lynch

One of the most frequently asked questions on the Net is:

"What should I sell online?"

Many people know what products they want to sell.

However, they don't know how to do this. Should they

physically stock the products themselves or promote

other companies through affiliate programs?

Drop shipping may be the answer for some website owners

who want to become stockless retailers, whereby they keep

no stock themselves. Instead they promote products on their

website and get a drop shipping company to despatch these

products for them.

Here are the steps involved in drop shipping:

1) You open an Internet Store with a shopping cart

and accept credit cards on your site. You can also

sell on Internet Auction sites such as eBay or on

Yahoo Stores.

2) You find a distributor who will "drop ship" the

products you want to sell.

3) You open an account with the "drop ship" distributor(s)

you choose.

4) You receive descriptions and images of the products you

wish to sell from the distributor and put them on your

Internet Store or Auction.

5) When a customer buys from your Store or Auction, they pay

with their credit card. Your Store or Auction charges their

credit card plus shipping.

6) You email the order to the drop ship distributor with the

customer's name and address.

7) Then the drop shipper despatches the product to your

customer from the warehouse with YOUR business name on the

package.

8) The drop shipper charges you the wholesale price plus

shipping. Remember you have already passed the shipping

charge on to your customer, so the shipping costs you nothing.

So that's how drop shipping works. You don't have to buy

products in bulk and store them, hoping to sell. You don't have

to pay to have it shipped to you, and then pay again to ship it

to your customer. All you had to do was send an email to your

drop shipper.

However, you must ensure you deal with honest and reliable

drop shipping companies or your business reputation will suffer.

(C) John Lynch

About The Author John Lynch For details of reliable drop shipping companies for your website: go to: http://www.merchant-account-service.com/drop_shipping.html.

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