In my last post I introduced the idea of affiliate ecommerce stores, otherwise known as dropshipping. In this post I’ll be continuing with this model and going into more detail by providing some dropshippers reviews, so help you all source good products.
I’ll be referring to a few different places that you can use to source products to dropship, however before I do that, I want to first explain a few important points that you might want to think about when it comes to dropshipping. Also there was a lot of great comments on the last post “how to make money dropshipping“, so it’s worth reading what other people have to say about this topic too.
The first thing that’s important to understand is the supply chain, because you can drop ship from different stages in the chain. A simple supply chain will go like this – Manufacturer – Distributor – Retailer (of course there can be much more complex ones than this). In some cases you can contact the manufacturer and they will dropship, but this is not usually the case with larger brands, as you would need to go through the distributor for that. Then of course you can go to the distributor to dropship, and finally in some cases you can go to the retailer and they will dropship for you.
If you go to distributor you’ll have more room for profit as you’ll be buying the products at a lower rate, and they’re usually much more setup to dropship, especially in the USA. In other countries dropshipping isn’t as advanced, but it doesn’t mean you can’t do it, it just means it might take a few more phone calls and a little more explaining. However with that said, I called a few Australian distributors last week, and spoke to them about drop shipping, and a few referred to it as ‘direct shipping’, and they were set up and happy to do it.
I mentioned above that you could also dropship from the retailer, but in order to get someone to agree to do this, you ideally want a retail store that has no online presence hardly at all, so this way you are not a threat to their business. For a retailer in this situation it’s a good deal, as you’re driving more sales for them, for no extra work required from them. The profit will be lower for you, but the advantage for you, is that you can rank your ecommerce store for a lot more keywords when you are dropshipping a large range of products, and you don’t have to worry about stock.
The next thing you need to think through is where the supplier or distributor that’s potentially going to dropship for you is located. Remember that to have a happy customer, the quicker they get their product the happier they will be, and more likely they’ll be to recommend your store and come back themselves. If the drop ship company you work with is located in China, it could take three days to get to your customers.
You also want to make sure you have a good relationship with your drop shipping company, so you know what they have in stock. You don’t want to sell items to people in your store, only to find out the drop ship company is out of stock.
With all that said, this is where having a relationship with someone locally, whether distributor or retailer can be really helpful.
Reviews
Below are some of the popular drop shipping companies that you might want to look into using. The advantage of going through a drop shipping directory, is that they do a lot of the hard work of sifting through the legit companies and the garbage fake companies, so you have a quality list to work with.
I’m not going to pretend to be an expert with using all of these companies, but will provide a brief overview, however it would be great if people that have experience with any of these companies, comments below, so we can all share our knowledge and help each other out.
World Wide Brands
World Wide Brands are by far the largest drop ship directory out there, and they do a great job. The check all suppliers carefully and make sure they are legit before recommending them to their members. They have a huge range of providers, over 8000.
They also provide training and tools for their members, such as tools to see what is selling hot on ebay, how difficult a product would be to make a profit on and other market research tools. These guys have a very good reputation, and the directory is high quality.
Here’s a success story for you:
Salehoo
Salehoo is another quality drop shipping directory. These guys are not as large as Worldwide Brands, but they do have quality companies in their listings, and also excellent support and a large and growing forum.
The support at Salehoo is one of the great things about these company. I know a friend of mine who uses them, had trouble sourcing products that he could be profitable with, and the support compiled a list of suppliers for him!
Here’s what there major categories are in their directory (there are loads of sub-categories inside these)
Salehoo has a very active forum of likeminded folks, which can help immensely if you are starting out, and the cost is a lot lower then World Wide Brands.
Doba
Doba is popular, but slightly different, in that you actually buy the products from the Doba site, much like shopping on Amazon. The downside is that the prices tend to be high, and room for profit is smaller, and I’ve read a fair amount of complaints about this.
They do however have a lot of products, and are one on the eBay’s Certified Service Provider Program.
That’s all for my dropshippers reviews, like I mentioned above, please comment below if you have something to share on this topic, and if you liked this post I would greatly appreciate it if you shared it via the social links below. On that note, the last post I did a small experiment on social votes and rankings, and the post eventually hit number 1 for “make money dropshipping” where it is now, and I’m hoping I will rank for “dropshippers reviews” with this post, as that phrase is harder to rank, so it’ll be interesting to see how far the social push posts to the top.
Thanks
Matt
Related articles
hello matt, i am one of your regular blog reader and really want to say thanks for this dropshipping post. i am looking forward to do dropship business in the next year. I learned lots of new things from your blog but i have one question regarding link building because i am very slow in link building process .. how you can manage multiple websites and still build lots of links for each website?
Can u give me some basic steps how to do link building fast and if i am building mix (including all sources )10 links in one hour is that a good speed?
i hope you will reply for this message as i am expecting for your kind help boss.
Thanks
kuldeep
Matt Carter Reply:
December 3rd, 2011 at 6:38 am
Hi Kuldeep
You really need to move toward outsourcing your link building, that is the key, you don’t want to do it yourself. Odesk.com has some great workers
Matt
Kuldeep Reply:
December 3rd, 2011 at 4:12 pm
Thanks Matt you are really a helpful person i will test out odesk.com.
Lawofattracion Reply:
December 5th, 2011 at 12:15 pm
Hi Matt thanks for he info ,and about Odesk .com do they provide good pagerank links on do they just mix them up?
I tried to do it it is so exhausting and frustrating as some webmasters will publish the comment but break the link ecspecialy if the link is the same niche . that is sad really . thanks
Matt Carter Reply:
December 5th, 2011 at 1:36 pm
Odesk is an a place to hire workers, you need to train the worker to build the links the way you want
Matt
Hey Matt, thanks for sharing more information on dropshipping with us, I really appreciate it. I am definitely going to be exploring this when that course comes out that you mentioned last time.
I’m hoping that you will do one too at some point because I don’t know what it is but there is something about your teaching style that just makes things seem so easy! Any plans to do this?
p.s. Is anyone having issues with sorting results in seo quake using the up and down arrows because this doesn’t work for me. I am about to contact them about this but just wanted to know if anyone else noticed this and if not then what verision are you guys using and what browser type and version.
Matt Carter Reply:
December 3rd, 2011 at 6:36 am
Hi Brad
I’ll let you know about the drop shipping course when it comes out, and as for SEO quake, best to use Market Samurai now
Matt
Again thanks, really helpful. And yes keep me posted for a dropshipping course, really looking forward to get into this.
Matt,
Thanks for the in-depth information on dropshipping. I haven’t tried dropshipping before, but now that I’ve learned more about it, it’s definitely something I plan to explore more in 2012.
Matt Carter Reply:
December 4th, 2011 at 1:36 pm
Cheers Alan
Matt
Hi Matt,
To begin, thanks so much for working so hard to provide some great quality. I own Rapid Profit Formula and SEO Experts Academy. I’m in information overload, but am learning so much from you and Terry! You Aussies, Brits and Kiwis(Mark Ling) seem to know what’s up.
Also, let me apologize because my comment is not quite relevant to drop shipping per se, but I can’t seem to find another post that is relevant where comments are still open. So forgive me.
I have to challenge you to explain why off page article spinning is necessary. There is an enormous amount of logical thinking at the Warrior Forum about this topic and given my time and limited resources, I have to err on the side of saving time and resources. Besides, the whole idea of spinning articles to create “fresh” back links seems to be a bit of an annoyance to Google because it fills the web with re-purposed nonsense.
The argument is that spinning articles for off page SEO accomplishes nothing in terms of increasing the value of a back link. And, there is no duplicate content penalty for doing so as described in the google webmaster blog.
I haven’t been able to find a logical explanation that refutes these ideas.
I’m starting to feel a bit hoodwinked by the idea that spinning off-page content is useful in anyway. Can you please address this subject in some detail? I have very limited time and cannot afford to pay someone to spin x3 600+ word articles.
Thanks again
Vi with Truth on MLM Site Reply:
December 5th, 2011 at 1:49 pm
I wouldn’t waste too much time spinning articles. I think the last Google update ( Panda) punished some of us that did article spinning. I have several sites and only the one that I did article spinning on got hit hard… just a thought. I am not gonna do it anymore! Rather spend my time on adding new and valuable content to my sites, which is what Google seems to like anyways. 🙂
Tiffany Reply:
December 5th, 2011 at 7:17 pm
I think what Carl meant is off-page article spinning for backlink purposes. You DO NOT spin articles to be published on your sites EVER. it is only for building links.
For instance, you publish the same article (spun) to several article directories and web 2.0 blogs to build backlinks back to your site.
Now, if the content of all these webpages linking back to you are the same – word for word, Google will devalue all those links. True, google does say that there is no duplicate content penalty BUT when it comes to link building, it does matter. Otherwise, Google will think that you are gaming the system with all these links in different article directories and web 2.0 sites all linking back to your site and all WITH THE SAME CONTENT.
Now I did try to do that before (Ezine Articles accepts duplicate content as long as its published in other ADs under the same name so you’re not plagiarizing). But when I check Google (webmasters) and Yahoo (site explorer was still up then), Google is not counting them as links back to my site whereas Yahoo site explorer is only showing a couple of those links. So now I spin my articles first before submitting to ADs.
@ Carl – you can find people on Fiverr who will make your article spin-ready for $5, so you can create hundreds of articles from one base article. But you need to have a spinner (I recommend The best Spinner). I suggest you outsource the task of spinning (finding synonyms) coz it’s very time consuming (it usually takes me 2 hours when I try and do it all myself).
Cheers,
Tiff
Carl Reply:
December 6th, 2011 at 1:44 pm
Hey guys,
Thanks. The Fiverr thing is a great idea!
Matt
Love your blog and not sure how much time you spend on the warrior forum but somebody came out with something about drop shipping. He had a book, video’s etc. I believe.
I tried drop shipping in the past, and the fee was to high for me.
I only sold 2 or 3 items back then, and I think that it’s because I was new online. It was a good experience though.
Side Note: It’s always best to focus in one niche, and I learned this theory the hard way. Thanks for the post, really.
Regards,
Dev
Matt Carter Reply:
December 5th, 2011 at 10:36 am
Thanks Dev
Hi Matt,
When I first started importing over 8 years ago I actually bought watch sets from a drop-shipper in the U.S. There are alot of advantages to drop shipping. As I grew my business and got bigger and bigger I realised that the drop shipper could no longer feed my business that’s when I started to import direct from the horses mouth so the speak. I.e the manufacturer.
I think drop-shipping works best the in the USA. It’s not as effective in Australia where I am from for a couple of reasons. The population is not as big and people can order internationally just as cheap, if not cheaper than the price you can supply. Trusted sites like Amazon and eBay dominate the e-commerce skyline. You really have to niche down and get your products from a drop-shipper that specialises in a certain product if you want to succeed selling online buying from a drop-shipper because remember the drop-ship supplier is the middle man and you getting 2nd hand prices.
Off-line is a little easier because your supplying the local market and you can lock in your drop-shipper to the city your in. This way one other seller can sell the same product from the same drop-shipper for 100km, commonly known as distributorship.
I went the route of importing it directly from China where you would get the best possible price dealing directly from the manufacturer and using a site like Alibaba to reputable suppliers. This way your not running a business that’s totally reliant on what drop-shippers stock. If your business is dictated by what the drop-shipper has in they’re inventory you got a real problem. You will never grow.
Don’t get me wrong I think drop-shippers are valuable middle man in the e-commerce ecosystem and when your first starting out it’s a great way to go.
Nigel
Thanks for your insight Nigel
However I know quite a few successful drop shippers in Australia and NZ…over here Amazon is not big at all as there is no Aussie Amazon. so shipping is huge. Ebay does have a present in Aussie but not NZ, in NZ its all Trademe.co.nz, but there is plenty of room for dropshopping.
Hey Matt,
I really appreciate the diverse subject matter that you go into. I always open your emails immediately, because of the veritable fountain of information that will be waiting. I just started building an eCommerce site a few weeks ago and the hardest part is finding good vendors. My niche has a lot of competition but thanks to your tutelage, I have this SEO thing in the bag. I have two other sites with high competition keywords that are ranking 1st and 3rd on Google’s first page.
If you haven’t purchased Matt’s courses yet, I strongly suggest you do, if you actually use them, you WILL NOT fail.
Roland
Matt Carter Reply:
December 5th, 2011 at 11:09 am
Thanks Roland
Matt
Hi Matt,
Is there a particular supplier you would recommend for Australia? I have a number of affiliate sites and would be interested in changing to a drop shipping business model.
Thanks,
Gary
Matt Carter Reply:
December 5th, 2011 at 11:10 am
Hi Gary
The best thing to do in Aussie and NZ is to get on the phone and call companies and explain what you want to do, this gets the best results I have found
Matt
Love your post on dropshipping Matt. There are some good dropshippers around and I was close to giving dropshipping a go but decided that I’d start off with affiliate Marketing first and see how I go with that. First thing’s first for me. Too much distraction out there online.
Regards..Grant
Hi Matt,
I am an eBay powerseller and dont use dropshipping for one simple reason. I dont have control over how and when my products are shipped to my customers. This strategy can be great for tangible goods if you dont have the capital to invest in physically acquiring and stocking products as long as you are aware of some of the major pitfalls.
& always a order a sample to check the quality and reliability of the product and the supplier respectively!
Matt Carter Reply:
December 5th, 2011 at 1:36 pm
Thanks Anshul
Matt
You want a little insiders tip. Don’t use salehoo or worldwide brands. If you want to find companies that will dropship use google. Search for merchandise mart + directory or trade show + directory. Talk to the companies direct. Tell them you wish to sell their products and ask their terms. After talking for awhile then ask them if they dropship. Many will.
All that being said dropshipping is whole different animal from affiliate marketing or selling physical products as an affiliate. There are a lot more things that can go wrong than being an affiliate marketer
Have all your programs and learned alot about seo. Thanks.
I have been drop shipping for a long time. The best way for me is to go directly to the manufacturer. Many manufacturers will ship one item for you. of course buying in single item quantities is more expensive than buying in bulk, But it is still cheaper to you than most distributors charge. It all depends on your niche.
Matt Carter Reply:
December 5th, 2011 at 1:35 pm
Thanks Marty!
Hi Matt,
I was really happy you started blogging about dropshipping. That’s how I supply my online store at Sarongs4U. I was hoping you would blog about marketing for online retail stores using dropshippers. It’s hard to find good SEO info for those who have one and believe me, I’ve searched. I am using your RPF and that’s helped a lot.
Matt Carter Reply:
December 5th, 2011 at 1:34 pm
Thanks D
Matt thanks for the this great post
So problem with drop shipping that i have encountered
1) you are not in control for your order fulfillment and this many times leads to orders being canceled, some reasons, no stock, late shipping, wrong items sent etc.
2) In a competitive niche pricing is key , it is really hard to complete with sites that import directly from the manufacturer and then warehouse the items themselves, you land up making only 2-5 dollars per order, almost not worth the effort
3) For you site to make the sale, it needs to be well made, and well optimised, this can be cost prohibiting if you have to get someone to do the design and programming, for you
These are just some of the issues I have come up against, it can be really tuff to get going in oneline sales
Yehudah
Scott Reply:
December 7th, 2011 at 4:19 am
Just a quick to the above poster when lining up a drop shipper they need to have a online inventory available other wise you will have a lot of cancel orders. This way you no what they have available at all times.
scott
Wow really great resources Matt. I actually currently have 2 ecommerce SEO clients right now and I do see it WAY easier to rank their pages for my target keywords.
I started working on one page a couple weeks back and my clients say was no where to be found in Google. Just a few backlinks later and jumped straight to #6.
I can see how powerful this strategy can be.
Matt Carter Reply:
December 5th, 2011 at 4:34 pm
Great stuff Joshua!!!
Matt
Hi Matt,
Thank you very much for sharing this great information about World Wide Brand. I haven’t heard about this before but your review is really relevant to what I am looking for.
– Felix
Matt Carter Reply:
December 5th, 2011 at 4:34 pm
Thanks Felix
Hi Matt,
Thanks for this great information on drop shipping, and everything else that you pass on to us. I heard about you through a friend suggesting that I watch a good video on buying websites. It was you and it was great.
I will get into drop shipping in 2012 and hopefully you will have a great course on it. I took your Rapid Profit Formula and it was terrific.
My question is can I uses your WordPress theme from Rapid Profit Formula to promote a service such as an appraisal service and how many articles do you recommend. Finally what theme would you suggest if I wanted to do lead generation and how many articles should be used.
Thanks for all of your valuable assistance and keep it coming. We need it.
PJB
Matt Carter Reply:
December 5th, 2011 at 4:33 pm
HI Paul
I would use another theme now, as a lot of people have used my theme now, so best to be unique, head over to woothemes and there a lots. as for lead gen I always get the sites custom built and designed these days, elance has great contractors for this
Matt
for best FREE dropshipping info on the web check out storecoach.com
they have bought/sold dozens of niche dropship stores for big $$$ and were the guys who created the content for a previous popular dropship info course w/ steve clayton. They are honest, straight up guys and the info there is gold.
go direct to your manuf. and skip that whole worldwide brands junk and so many dropshippers arent in their directory….
Thank you very much for your great posts on dropshipping. It is something I will consider doing in 2012. It has also been very interesting reading all the comments thanks to your posts.
Thanks a lot for sharing such valuable information with us.
Regards,
Gerard
Hi Matt, nice review…
One of the biggest problems as I see it is global shipping… most of these drop-shippers only ship in the US (or other regions).. I like using China sites because they ship globally and they are generally cheaper. You can find some of these on
http://cfind.net/
and also search for products you want to dropship…
Enjoy!
Cheers Matt,
Excellent post regarding dropshipping. One key element you mentioned is the relationship you foster with your dropshippers. I have 6 e-commerce websites that I have been dropshipping from since 2005, once you show the dropshippers that you are serious and can sell their products most will bend over backwards to help out by providing updates, product specials and much more. Your readers need to understand that these dropshippers are bombarded with wannabes that do not follow thru and end up wasting their time, so it will require some patience and hard work to earn their trust.
Another idea is to research, research, research… the last thing you want to do is design a website around a dropshipper and then have them go out of business.
Thanks.
Matt Carter Reply:
December 6th, 2011 at 6:48 am
Good points here Steve!
Matt
Is it possible to have drop shipping business opened in USA though I’m from another country?
Hi Matt,
Great post as usual your right about Doba I spent a ton of money with these guys but what I found out I was completing with my dropshipping company, sure they have 1.2 million products listed but you are better off going to the manuf. trust me on this.
Hi Matt
Great to see World WIde Brands as one of you reviews. These are people I looked at a while ago when selling on eBay. Finding reliable drop ship partners is worth it weight in gold as there are so many companies out there that are really not worth wasting your time on. Great information as is something I will be looking at in the future.
Thanks
Jon
Matt,
As always, a very detailed and informative post. I had a question about affiliate datafeed sites. Have you had any experience with these? Seems like a great idea for physical product based sites however I am not sure how the SEO would work out considering others have access to the same feed.
Brian
Wow, this is one great online venture to discuss. I have been wanting to launch my own eccommerce site but have always wondered about dropshippers and the scammers who have burnt many newbies to a crisp.
I do believe that it is best to order straight from the manufacturer and it is enticing to buy from China. However, if you are wanting to start out and bypass the dropshippers route there are a lot of factors to consider before embarking on this journey. After five months of research, I found that it is not easy as it seems.
Design a sound business plan and realize that you may not see a good return immediately. That way you shouldn’t fail like the majority of businesses that do.
Hey Matt,
great info and thanks for sharing. I would like to try it out as soon as possible. Cheers.
Matt,
Thanks for the writing. I have been a member of Salehoo for quite sometime. Yes, they have hundreds of suppliers and manufacturers listing. Their forum is quite alive with lead by moderator.
I will try to see worldwide brands and doba as you suggested.
Hi Matt
Thanks for another great blog post. Just an insist to drop shipping I have been in this business for three years now and like you mention the best way to go is threw a direct manufacturer or wholesaler who deal with your specific product they seam to have the best quality items. I found that doba and the like wholesalers the quality of the products in just not there when dealing with a wholesaler who sell many different type of products. There shipping ok profit margin so so.
As always love to read your posts and insights.
Scott
Matt Carter Reply:
December 7th, 2011 at 7:30 am
Thanks Scott
Matt,
Another great follow-up article on dropshipping. I’m seeing so many different opinions expressed here, about who to use and where to go, I am confused to say the least!
We really need you to put together another great course, this time on how to best go about creating a dropshipping business.
I’m looking forward to that announcement!
Cliff
Matt Carter Reply:
December 7th, 2011 at 7:29 am
Hi Cliff
I know a great course in the making now, and I’ll let you know when it’s ready
MAtt
Matt and readers,
In my 10 years of experience running a drop-ship business, here’s a priority list for sourcing:
1. Manufacturer – you get the best prices with more room for markup.
2. Exclusive distributor for your country – they will have the best stock and shipping is quicker. You don’t want to deal with a regional distributor as they are taking a chunk of the markup, leaving less for you.
3. A regional sales rep – this person or company has a vested interest in setting you up and making you successful and they get only a small commission.
As for a niche, it’s best to choose something you know something about since you’re going to be the customer service for your customers and believe me, they WILL have questions about what to order. And it’s a good idea to handle more than one brand, too. As someone commented here, sometimes companies go out of business, or their service gets too bad when another company takes them over. I’ve had both happen to me. Or they’re out of stock on something. So you need a backup.
And in choosing a niche, make sure you’re selling products with high enough prices to make it worthwhile, similar to affiliate sales. If you sell something cheap, often the shipping cost equals the price of the product.
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned in this discussion is payment processing. You’ll need to set up a credit card processing account and meet their qualifications. Pay Pal is probably the easiest way to go. And NEVER have your preferences set to close a transaction immediately, only close them after the item ships, just in case it’s out of stock or doesn’t get shipped right away. Just today I had someone in another country try to order 15 items at about $125 USD each using a stolen card number and I didn’t care because I have control over the transactions.
Someone asked if you can sell in a country different from your own with drop shipping. Sure, as long as you’re dealing with a distributor in the country you’re selling in or one that ships internationally. I sell in the US and a little in Canada and I’m about to move to Mexico, without a burp in my business.
Matt, I think it’s great that you’re introducing your readers to the idea of drop shipping. It can be highly profitable, even though it’s a lot more work than affiliate marketing.
Owen
P.S. I don’t mind if people see the niche I’m in or what’s worked well for me. Click on my name and it’ll take you to my site (totally unrelated to anything discussed here)
Hi Matt,
Thanks for plugging SaleHoo! Drop shipping is an exciting way to make money and certainly a good way to test a market, without any risk!
Because there are little or no start up costs, it’s a very popular form of product sourcing among new online retailers who are just getting started.
In saying that though, some SaleHoo members and eBay PowerSellers who make over $100,000 per year strictly through drop shipping, so it can work on a large scale also!
Thanks again Matt 🙂
Great info as always Matt. I used to drop ship products back in 1998-2001 but the suppliers and distributors wouldn’t white label; they insisted on putting their logo and details on the packaging so we’d lose a high percentage of return customers. Are things different these days?
Hats off to you again Matt on some great info. One I do question is using Andy Jenkins as a ‘poster boy’ for drop shipping. I know he’s had a lot of success but he’s also been slammed for his involvement in a number of dubious schemes.
Anyway, keep up the good work.
Your information flow is perfect Matt. Sincerely speaking, I have not heard of drop shipping before but you provided the richest insights to the concept. Thanks for that.
Ecommerce sales are growing in larger proportions and if you know and understand a particular niche as you said, you will make money form ecommece business.
Thanks for the advice. Dropshipping is great because no physical product handling is involved. You have to have a very reliable dropshipper though to make it happen. I go the way of storing product myself and later likely getting an outsourcer. Click on my name to visit my new onlineshop, Inspired by the seo academy by Matt and Terry.
Matt I ordered the Afiliate copy and paste and do not hIave a clue what Iam doing! Iam new to all of this Istarted out with powell seller college and kept searching for other things and ended up here here lease help.I not not haave a website yet.