As discussed in previous posts, one of the main differences between dropshipping and wholesaling is that dropshippers will ship products for you, while wholesaling usually requires you to carry and inventory and ship products yourself.  Whichever method you’re using, you may have noticed that shipping costs take a hefty bite out of your profit margin.  So how can you conquer shipping costs?
#1: Use A Cheaper Method. When dropshipping, you don’t always have options as to how the product will be shipped.  If you do have that option, or if you are controlling the shipping process yourself, than you can send your product the cheapest way possible.  The caveat with this tack is that the products will likely not arrive as quickly, and you probably won’t be able to track them.  You have to consider the profit you’ll lose when you have to replace lost product.  You are also more susceptible to customer theft when customers do not have to sign for receipt of their product.  Using UPS or FedEx may actually save you money in the long run in security of product and customer satisfaction.

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#2: Sell In Bundles. Bundling products together can be a great way to sell multiple items and also attract and impress customers.  People love to buy gift baskets and value packs, and if they feel that the price of the pack is acceptable, they are not likely to actually calculate what each item is being sold for.  You can make a gift basket for almost any kind of product.  Camping accessories (freeze-dried dinners, a Coleman lantern, a pocket knife, army blanket, mosquito repellant, and fishing lures - sell it for Father’s Day!), baby shower baskets, pamper-yourself packages, the super nerd’s gift bag, gift basket for the Mother-in-law who has everything… the possibilities are endless.  Bundling is especially important with small items that usually are unsellable due to high shipping costs.

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#3: Evaluate Your Free Shipping Carefully. Shipping costs are the #1 concern of online shoppers, so keeping your shipping low or incorporating it into the price of your products is important.  Offering “free shipping” and simply raising the price of your product to cover it is a viable option, though it may lose you customers who simply compare prices without considering shipping costs.  However, if you do decide to go the “free shipping” route, make sure you have a minimum purchase volume to qualify, or only offer free shipping on items with a profit margin to justify it.  For example, don’t offer free shipping on a pack of napkins if you’re selling them for $1.25 and shipping is going to run you $3.50.  If you want all shipping to be free on your dropshipping website, you can also set it up so that small, cheap items are only offered as an add-on with more expensive purchases.  Or you can have these small items show up as a bonus.  People love free stuff, even if it’s only a stupid little rattle with their purchase of a crib, stroller, and carseat.  Bonus items can be a great promotional tool, and usually add little or no shipping costs.

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#4: Consider Shipping When Choosing Between Dropshipping and Wholesaling. The choice between dropshipping and wholesaling may end up depending almost entirely on the shipping costs of your desired product.  Before you jump into bed with a particular dropshipper, the very first thing you should check is their shipping costs.  Shipping charges are often the way that suppliers who offer dropshipping pad their profit margin and make the extra hassle worth their while.  But that extra profit is coming out of your pocket, so try to negotiate for a better rate or go somewhere else if the price is unreasonable.  You could also consider dropshipping most of your products, but carrying an inventory of certain small items that would be too expensive to ship otherwise.

So you’ve been searching for dropshippers, and maybe you’ve found a mountain of prospective suppliers, or maybe you haven’t found any at all.  What does that mean?  When trying to choose the correct market, the correct products to sell online, how do you interpret your search results?
Well, the trick is to find a market with demand that is not already saturated by big-name companies.  This doesn’t mean that you can’t sell successfully in a competitive market.  Take electronics, for instance.  This is one of the biggest on-line sellers, particularly on eBay. But you have to be very cautious when entering this market, because there’s a ton of competition and it’s not easy to find competitively priced dropshippers.  Your specific product is everything.  Let’s say you want to sell the iPod Touch on eBay.  Bad choice.  First off, Apple doesn’t dropship, so whoever you get your iPod Touch from is already a middleman, and will already be charging you an inflated price.  Second, get on eBay and see how many iPod Touches are up for sale.  About a thousand.  That’s because Apple gives one away free with every student-discounted laptop they sell, so every cash-poor student who got one free is trying to dump it on eBay for $20 pocket-money.

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Maybe you want a market a little less competitive than electronics.  So you decide to sell meditation shrouds, or size 6XXXXXX swimwear.  You may have stepped into a market with not enough demand.  “But I’ll be the only person selling meditation shrouds”, you say, “Anyone who wants to buy one will have to buy it from me.”  Yes, that’s true, and maybe you could make some money that way.  But I hope you’re planning to sew the shrouds yourself, because manufacturers need a bigger market than you do.  You may be fine making $600 a month profit, but they need a larger margin.  So while you might actually sell quite a few shrouds, you won’t find anyone to supply them.  If you’re searching for dropshippers on the Wholesale Match database, and you’re not finding a single one for your product, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  It’s a hint early in the game that you picked a product with too small of a market, so instead of wasting your time trying to built the market, you can look for a product with more demand.

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So what if you find a product with a good demand and not too much supply, and there are four or five quality dropshippers you can use, but none of them want to work with you?  Well, this is where you need to get persuasive.  You need to convince them why they should supply you with product.  Don’t be afraid to call them multiple times, to send emails outlining exactly how you’re going to promote their products, and why you’re the kind of person they should work with.  Woo those dropshippers.  Show them that you’re persistent, motivated, hardworking.  Don’t send one little email, and then move on to some trashy supplier who may or may not have what you want.  Finding the dropshippers you need is only the first step: then building a relationship begins.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be a scary concept.  It wasn’t hard enough building a website and hooking up with your suppliers, now you have to market your online business.  Well, SEO is actually a lot easier than you think.  I’m doing it right now, just by typing up this blog.  There are a multitude of methods and a plethora of opinions on the subject, so I’m just going to give you a few easy tips that have worked for me in the past:
Tip #1: Blog It Up. Generate new content for your page.  Do it on a daily basis, if you can.  It doesn’t have to be a 1000 word opus like my posts always seem to end up being: you can make it as simple as a Tip of the Day, or Deal of the Day.  Just make sure you’ve got some key words in your content (like the words “party supplies” or “piñata” or “birthday decorations” if you’ve got a kids birthday-themed site), so people searching for those words will come across your content and be directed to your online business.  You can check your SEO success by running your content through a tool like SEOmoz.

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Tip #2: Don’t Spend Money Unless It Makes Sense. You may have considered using a pay-per-click service to direct people to your online business.  This is a viable option for some people, especially if you can afford the thirty cents or so that you’ll have to pay for each visitor.  But there are a variety of things to consider with this option, not the least of which is your looker vs. buyer ratio.  If your website sells lingerie or framed art, you probably shouldn’t use pay-per-click because you’re going to get a whole lot of lookers, and you’ll pay for each and every one.
Tip #3: Check Your Current Systems. You can pay a company like Omniture to do this for you, or you can check the main points yourself.  Are your keywords included in your HTML title?  Have you included metatags?  Is your site listed in all relevant directories and search engines, the biggies like Google, and the little niche directories that target your online business’ theme?  Do you have in-pointing and out-pointing links?  Links are an important component of SEO, and you want to make sure your content includes links to other locations, and that other locations include links back to your content.  But don’t make these links bizarre or superfluous.  There’s nothing worse than clicking around on a site and being sent back and forth between the same places.  The progression of your site is important, a clear path from home page to desired product to check-out cart.  So pay attention to the optimization of your links, but don’t let SEO overrule the basic facility, beauty, and logic of your site.

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There are about a hundred other ways to use SEO to generate traffic for your online business, and we’ll talk about some of the more complicated methods in future posts, but get these basic points in place first.  After all, it doesn’t matter how sexy your site is or how smokin’ your deals if nobody can find them.

This is a fundamental decision that everyone who wants to start selling products online has to make.  It’s like the basic choice between getting married, or spending the rest of your life speeding around in an Astin Martin, drinking your martinis shaken not stirred.  Both can be productive, but one requires a little more commitment than the other.  First, let’s get the definitions clear: dropshipping is where you post an item for sale, whether on your website or on eBay, and AFTER it sells, you purchase it from a supplier and have it delivered directly to the person who purchased it from you.  Wholesaling is a little bit different.  Sometimes wholesalers offer a dropshipping option, but often they require you to carry inventory, or to purchase in bulk or minimum cash amounts.  Both dropshipping and wholesaling are legitimate methods to make money online, but like the James Bond tux vs. the SUV full of soccer equipment, they have their respective pluses and minuses.

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#1: Initial Costs. When dropshipping, your initial costs are very low.  You don’t need to purchase any inventory.  You should have  a slush fund to cover returns in the case of canceled orders, but the only money you have to layout is whatever it costs you to connect with dropshippers and set up a venue to sell (be it your own site or an eBay account).  With wholesaling, you may need to establish a credit limit with the supplier, purchase inventory, and rent or buy a space to hold it in.  You may also need to buy packing materials, etc.
#2: Secondary Costs. In theory, you should be able to buy dropshipping and wholesale products for comparable prices.  In practice, buying wholesale often allows you to take advantage of bulk purchase prices.  Shipping can also be more expensive with the dropshipping route.  Dropshippers often require you to use FedEx, UPS, or other traceable services.  If you ship items on your own, you can chose the cheapest method, though of course this runs the risk of losing products in transit.
#3: What Is Your Time Worth? Dropshipping saves you time, and you have to calculate that time as an actual dollar amount, because every minute you spend packaging products and driving to the post office is a minute that you’re NOT spending finding new suppliers, updating your website, responding to customer queries, etc.  Wasting time really is wasting money .
#4: Liability. With many wholesalers, you’ll have to carry an inventory.  If you can’t sell that inventory, you eat the cost.  However, there is some liability with dropshipping, too.  Because you’re selling the product before you actually buy it, there is always the chance that the price will change in the interim period.  If you see a digital camera on sale for $128, sell it on eBay for $160, and then return to the website only to find the price has jumped to $170, then you just lost money.  You could buy the camera first and sell it after, but then what if it doesn’t sell at all?  Like the wholesaler with inventory, you’re stuck with the product.  However, losing money on one dropshipped camera is a lot better than purchasing wholesale 120 paintball guns you’ll never sell.  Dropshipping is particularly beneficial to e-commerce newbies, because it allows you to test the sales of a particular product before you invest in a large volume.

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Conclusion: Both dropshipping and wholesaling can make you money.  Dropshipping is less risky, but it may not provide the same volume of sales or as great a profit margin.  Ultimately, I would wholeheartedly recommend dropshipping to people just starting in internet sales, because you can try selling a variety of products with a variety of methods, and determine what works best.  Once you have a product that you’re sure you can sell for a good profit, you might want to consider switching to wholesale purchase to take advantage of bulk purchasing and cheaper shipping costs.  By this point, hopefully you can pay some lowly peon to do the packaging for you, so the time expenditure is equivalent to minimum wage.

As you may have noticed in your dropshipping searches, an increasing number of suppliers in China are offering wholesale and dropshipping services to American vendors.  You have to wonder, am I missing out on a great opportunity here?  Should I take advantage of the low production costs in China to secure dropshipping products at bargain-basement prices?  Well, there are a number of things to consider.

photo credit: Dennis Wong
First: Quality Assurance. A lot of great products come out of China, but a lot of garbage does, too.  Working with a dropshipper or wholesaler on the other side of the globe makes returns a lot more difficult.  You’ll want to research the quality of your products very carefully, and your supplier’s policies.  Quality control has to be in place both at the factory level, and again at the supplier’s warehouse.  This should include some kind of product guarantee, like a 1 year return policy for defective merchandise.  Further, you’ll want to check if their dropshipping services include furnishing promotional materials, images, and copy for their products.  Even in a best-case scenario, you’ll probably have to edit these materials to format them to your market, but any photos or descriptions will save you time.
Second: Hassles. Assuming you can communicate quickly and comprehensibly with your China dropshipper, there are still other difficulties to consider.  Customs is a huge one.  You might have a hundred shipments go through without issue, but you could also get nailed on every other order.  Even without customs holdups, dropshipping from China usually takes a minimum of ten days, often longer.  Payment can also be a problem.  There are scam Chinese dropshippers just like there are scam American ones, and one of the biggest red flags is request for payment through an anonymous and non-traceable source like Western Union.  Make sure any and all funds sent are through verifiable sources.  The Escrow payment service is an excellent option, as the seller in China ships the goods to the customer first, only receiving the balance from the service after the goods arrive.

photo credit: eseering
photo credit: eseering

Third: Other Considerations. Depending on the venue from which you are dropshipping, you may or may not want your customers to know that you’re using a supplier in China.  You may want to consider whether the products will be sent in plain, non-identifiable packaging.  If your venue is eBay, make sure that your supplier is not already selling their products that way.  This is called “direct from the source competition”, and it will burn your business big time.  Selling on eBay is one of the main way suppliers in China dropship, and with the ease of price comparison, there’s no way you’ll be able to sell the same things at a mark-up.
There are plenty of people making money working with dropshippers from China, because the prices really can’t be beat.  But there are a lot of issues attendant with using an international supplier, and you should weigh your options carefully before taking that route.  Ultimately, using a local supplier is simpler, so make sure your profit margin justifies the hassle of moving further afield.

You probably didn’t think much about taxes when you started your online business, focusing on the thousand things you had to do to get your business up and running, and maybe fantasizing about the kind of money you were going to make.  But now you’ve made some money, and you need to pay taxes on it.  The very thought of managing forms and deductions may make you want to crawl under the carpet, but fear not, because owning your own business can be a real boon come tax time.
Tip #1: Get A TIN. Tax Identification Numbers are useful for filing taxes, and have the additional benefit of impressing dropshippers and wholesalers with the legitimacy of your online business.  When setting this up, consider carefully whether you want to be a sole proprietor or a corporation.  This is a complicated decision, and you may want to consult an attorney, but basically the difference is that a sole proprietorship is easier and cheaper to set up, but does not separate business assets from personal, leaving both liable to seizure.

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Tip #2: Take Advantage. Now that you’re a small business owner, you need to pay an additional self-employment tax of 15.3% on top of your regular income taxes.  How is that helpful, you may ask?  Well, you also get a whole new set of nifty deductions along with your taxes.  These may include home office deductions, the cost of your equipment, business/travel related expenses, training/educational expenses, and payroll (even if your wife is packing orders in your garage, you can pay her $12/hour and write that off).  Keep in mind with payroll that you have to send your employees a W-2 form at the end of the year, or, if they’re an independent contractor like the guy who designed the website for your online business, you need to send him a Form-1099 if he did more than $600 worth of work for you.
Tip #3: Don’t Wait Until The End Of The Year To Start Paying Taxes. You may owe more than you think, and even if it’s pretty much what you expected, shelling out $14,000 in one shot isn’t going to be fun.  So pay an estimated amount every month.  If you pay too much, you can always file a return at the end of the year, and it’s a lot more fun to get a check in the mail than a “request” for funds.
Tip#4: Keep Records Like It’s Your Job, Because It Is. Keep track of anything and everything.  Use accounting software, or if you must, a super-sized filing cabinet, but if there’s any possibility you’re going to need a receipt, form, or even an email, then DO NOT throw it away.  In the Wholesale Match office we have a mini-scanner, it looks like an umbrella when it’s in the case, and we use it to scan and digitally file absolutely every piece of mail we get.  Keep the records for your online business at least five years, preferably ten.

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These are a few tips to help you on your way, but laws differ state to state, and ultimately you should hire a CPA to look over your return, particularly your first year.  And remember, honesty is the best policy.  Fibbing to Uncle Sam to save yourself $800 is going to be the worst reverse-investment you ever made when the IRS rakes you over the coals.  Hell hath no fury like the taxman scorned.

Why is finding dropshippers so dang hard?  Probably because searching for dropshippers is something like looking for a date at your family reunion.  All you’re going to find is a lot of people way too much like you.  Simply put, when you Google  “dropshippers for pet products”, you’re going to get a list of people trying to do exactly what you’re doing: act as a middleman.  You want to buy products at a cheap wholesale price and sell them on the internet for a profit, but there’s no way you’re going to do that if you’re buying from someone who’s already marked the product up.  And middlemen aren’t always easy to spot.  They’re like your second-cousin twice removed with a different last name.  They appear to be legitimate dropshippers and wholesalers, but they’re not.   So what can you do to set yourself up with a legitimate supplier?


photo credit: The Iglesia`s

First: Avoid the Phonies.  Fake dropshippers and wholesalers can usually be determined by an examination of their website.  Check out their products.  A real wholesaler usually manufactures their products, and thus it’s unlikely that they could supply golf clubs, teddy bears, and umbrellas.  Legitimate wholesalers and dropshippers usually have a theme to their products.  Sometimes dropshippers will be able to provide you with a variety of products that you can sell for profit, but usually if the site looks like a general store, than that’s what it is.  And the proprietor of a general store is a middleman.  Further, if the supplier tries to charge you outrageous fees to see the price of their products, than that’s a huge red flag.  Real dropshippers do not charge large fees, and what fees they do charge are usually refundable once you’ve sold a certain amount of their product (this is to weed out people who are only establishing a dropshipping relationship so they can score a Prada purse on the cheap).

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Second: Find a Legitimate Source. Obviously, I’m going to advocate using the Wholesale Match database.  Now, we’re not the only database of legitimate dropshippers and wholesalers, but we provide something no one else does: we do the research for you.  Send us your research requests, and we will connect you with the best, most reliable dropshippers and wholesalers.  No middlemen, no phonies.  I fully support researching all your database options, but exercise caution, because some databases are middlemen fronts, existing solely to funnel you into specific websites.  Before you spend any money, make sure the database you use has a refund guarantee, or some other fail-safe to ensure they are really going to provide you with the service you’re paying for.
Finally: If you don’t want to use a database, and you’re hell-bent on finding your own dropshippers, you have three main options.  You can Google search, as mentioned above.  This is going to provide you with a mountain of turd to shovel through before you find anyone legitimate, but some quality suppliers can be found that way.  A more efficient use of your time would be to isolate which brands you want to supply, and then call the company directly.  They may be willing to set you up with a wholesale account, but the likelihood is that you will have to carry inventory, and other stipulations may apply, such as a hefty credit limit.  Your third option is to attend tradeshows to build relationships with dropshippers and wholesalers in person.  This is an excellent option, but rather expensive and time-consuming.  I recommend the upcoming ASD Tradeshow in Vegas, if you want to take this route.  You’ll probably see us there, as networking with suppliers at tradeshows is one of the main ways we continually update our database.

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Your dropshippers and wholesalers are the core of your business.  Their prices determine your profit, so don’t settle for second-best.  Even after you have suppliers you’re happy with, continue to utilize your search method of choice because someone even better may come along, and that means more money in your pocket.

The Daily Deals and $200 A Day programs on our site are an excellent way to make money quickly, and are also a good introduction to dropshipping and selling on eBay.  However, they’re not foolproof, and if you’re not careful, you’re going to end up losing money instead of making it.  And here at Wholesale Match we’re all about making you money, not supplying some dude on eBay with a cheap plasma screen, so before you start posting products willy-nilly, make sure you know what you’re doing.

photo credit: Logan Cyrus

Step One: Pick Your Product. Decide what you want to sell from the Daily Deals page.  Don’t just pick whatever you think looks interesting, do some research.  Get on eBay and search for your prospective product, check how many have been selling and what the final price was.  You can be pretty darn thorough with this, including utilizing a search engine like AuctionTouch that will allow you to see exactly what items are selling for, and even the best day of the week to post a particular item.

Step Two: Copy And Confirm. Follow the Daily Deals link to the ORIGINAL source of the product, the place you’re actually going to buy it from.  This is important for two reasons: first, you need to make sure the price hasn’t changed.  You can go so far as to contact the company and inquire when their deal will expire, so you don’t post the item and then find out the price has jumped back up to normal (you probably want to leave out the fact that you’re reselling their product when you do this, because not all suppliers like that).  Second, you need to determine if there are coupon codes or rebate information you should save.  Make sure you also save the URL of the place you’ll be buying from, because when we add new items to the Daily Deals page, the old ones are gone.  Selling something on eBay, and then realizing that you don’t remember where you’re supposed to buy it from is not a pleasant sensation.

Step Three: Post The Item On eBay. You want to start small here.  Most people won’t buy from a seller without positive feedback, especially if the item is pricey.  You need to build your customer satisfaction rating with small, easy sales.  Plus, if you do make a mistake, it’s better to lose $10 than $250.  So build your base, build your experience.  Also, it may seem obvious, but make sure you put a reserve limit on the item so it doesn’t sell for less than you’re paying for it.

Step Four: Do NOT Screw Over Your Customers. Let’s say you do make a mistake, you forget to check the expiry date on the deal for a sweet Airsoft gun.  The deal is over before your product sells, and you’re stuck paying an additional $50.  So you think to yourself, “Well, I don’t really have to buy this.  I can just tell the bidder I ran out.”  Bad idea.  Your success on eBay hinges entirely on your customer satisfaction rating.  It’s better to eat that $50 loss now, so you can make hundreds or thousands on future sales.  Make sure you promptly respond to queries, ship immediately, and have a slush-fund to cover any and all possible refunds.  Bend over backwards to keep your bidders happy, or they will burn you big time.

photo credit: Nesta Vazquez

Finally: Call Us. If you’re ever in doubt, use the livechat email or the customer support number to contact us.  The resources are there to help you, and we’re happy to answer any and all questions, even stupid ones.  In fact, those might be our favorites.

photo credit: TheTruthAboutMortgage.com

Few things can make or break your dropshipping business faster than your website. Basically your website is the sexy salesman who could sell a ketchup Popsicle to a lady in white gloves.  Clarity, simplicity, and layout are all important, but people are visual creatures, and ultimately the perception of the professionalism of your company and the over-all desirability of your product is going to rest on the aesthetics of your website.  This is important whether you’re selling homemade birdhouses or dropshipping Adidas windbreakers.  Your products may bear the brands of reputable companies, but you still have to build an image of professionalism and security for your own business before anyone is going to supply a credit card number.
Tip #1: Make it Easy. Pretend you’re designing a website for a five-year old, because frankly, most five-year olds can shop online more comfortably than my 54 year-old mother.  Not everybody is a computer whiz, and even people who are don’t want to take the time to figure out your clever little button hidden inside your logo.  If a shopper can’t figure out how to find the product they want, they’re going to zip on to the next website.  Contact information, shipping prices, etc., should all be easily accessible.  Graphic signposts like bullet points and icons can be simple and visually pleasing methods to direct your customers.  To check the facility of your website, get your most techno-illiterate friend to have a go at it.

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Tip #2: Keep it Simple. Why does anyone shop at Macy’s when the same stuff is at Target for a cheaper price?  Because they don’t want to spend three hours wading through the racks.  Organization is everything, and visual overload is death.  If you’ve got a thousand different products and pop-up boxes and links all over your website, people are going to book it out of there because they feel like they’re shopping in Times Square.  No one likes to be overloaded.
Tip #3: Be Creative, But Not Too Creative. Of course you want your website to stand out from the pack.  You want it to be eye-catching and unique, but there are some tried and true website standards you shouldn’t try to buck.  Before building your own site, you should check out your competitors (both dropshipping sites and direct suppliers) and note the layout.  Shoppers are used to certain standards, such as contact info at the very top or bottom of the page, and if you get too crazy, your website will seem bizarre or confusing.
Tip #4: Color Speaks Louder than Text. Aesthetics go far beyond a clean, simple website.  From the moment your shopper gets on your site, they’re judging your company and your products from visual cues as subtle as the color of your backdrop.  You should carefully consider who your target audience is, and then determine what kind of colors, graphics, and fonts are most likely to appeal to them.  Millions of dollars have been spent on this kind of consumer research, and you can profit by a quick survey of the kinds of colors your favorite brands and wholesalers use.  As a brief overview, bright, bold colors can excite your shopper and get them in a spending mood.  But if your product is aromatherapy candles, you are probably better off with soothing pastels, which, incidentally, appeal to more to women.  If you’re dropshipping cribs and Baby Einstein products, use primary colors and cute graphics.  But don’t go over the top with themes.  Just because I’m buying an electric drill doesn’t mean I need a harsh black-and-red scheme and Metallica music blaring in the background.  As a rule, limit your palette to two or three colors that complement one another.  Blue remains the most popular commercial color, for a reason.  It denotes professionalism, freedom, intelligence, and security.  It is the most commonly listed “favorite color”, but beware, it’s also considered an appetite suppressant, and thus is not suitable for your caramel-apple boutique.  Red indicates energy, strength, and passion, and often appeals to men.  Green is associated with wealth and also relaxation.  Purple is considered sophisticated and luxurious.  Black equals authority, elegance, and drama.  Two warnings about color: first, color will date you faster than a mullet and a pair of fuzzy dice.  If you pick a trendy scheme, be prepared to update your website if your turquoise-brown combo goes out of style.  Second, if you’re dropshipping internationally, consider that color has different meanings in different countries.  White is the color of death and sorrow in many Eastern countries, not the indication of purity and serenity it is in the good old US of A.

photo credit: JoVivek
Tip #5: Invest in a Logo. Your logo is the distillation of your website.  Your website proclaims who you are and what you can provide in clear visual terms, and your logo condenses that information into one simple, memorable point.  There are many tutorial programs to teach you how to design a logo, like Alleba, or you can hire a graphic designer on the cheap from an arts school or website like Craigslist.  A logo is particularly important if you plan to expand your business in the future.  Consider the cache and force of logos like Apple and Nike’s.  The key is to make it recognizable and attractive, but above all, readable.  Don’t use some crazy gothic script that even Robert Langdon couldn’t decipher.  And unless your name is Prince, you’re probably not cool enough to have a symbol logo just yet.  So stick to text or combine your symbol with text.  And personally, I hate businesses with crazy-spelled names like All-Starzz Shoos.  I’m sure your mom told you it was cute, but it makes it difficult to find your company on a Google search, to refer it to friends, or even to remember it for future visits.  One final thing to consider with logos: beside the visual appeal of simplicity, you may use your logo on letterhead and brochures in the future, and the simpler your logo, the cheaper it will be to print.

So get your girlfriend, your possibly-gay brother, or anyone else you trust to look over your website, because your aesthetic is just as important as the fact that your camping gear is $3 cheaper than your nearest competitor.

Most people are aware that the failure rates for new businesses are astronomical: 50% of all new businesses go under in the first year, and after five years, a depressing 95% are nowhere to be seen.  Now, you might be saying to yourself, “But those are mom and pop stores, and people who try to start lawn care businesses.  I’m starting an online business.  That’s totally different.”  Yes, online businesses ARE different than businesses in the “real” world, and it’s important to recognize and capitalize on those differences.  But online businesses are no less subject to failure if you don’t work scrupulously to protect your investment.  Whether you’re building a website to sell your own homemade toffee, or you want to join the ranks of dropshippers selling Blue Ray DVD players and Inkjet printers on eBay, you need to plan carefully before taking your first steps, or if you’re already in business, analyze your practices to maximize your success.

#1: You’re in the Matrix Now.  Like I said above, online business is different than “real world” business.  So you better do your research before you start.  The products that sell on websites are different than those that fly off the shelves in stores, and the products that dropshippers can successfully unload on eBay are different again.  When you’re selling from a personal website, consider selling consumable products that will allow you to capitalize on return business.  Products purchased in bulk or high quantities are a good idea, as are items that will lead to the purchase of more expensive items.  Knowledge-based or information products are always in high demand, and involve little or no shipping costs.  For eBay dropshippers, do your research before hand, check what’s selling on eBay for a price that will allow you to make a profit, and do some keyword research using resources like the Google adwords tool.

photo credit: rick

#2: Websites Don’t Promote Themselves. There’s no “If you build it, they will come” Field of Dreams moment with your website.  You need to actively work to promote your website on a regular basis.  One of the best ways to do this is through search engine optimization (SEO).  A few  things help you to get a good ranking on search engines.  One of the biggest is continually providing fresh content.  Update product descriptions, add new pages to your website, and easiest of all, write a blog related to your product(s).  If you can hardly write a shopping list let alone a blog, take advantage of all those starving would-be-JK Rowlings out there.  But really, SEO is easier than you think.  Just make sure to run your content through an SEO tool like those on SEOMoz to ensure you’re hitting all the points necessary to get your website top ranked.  Fresh content is important anyway to ensure that return visitors to your website have something new to look at.

#3: Online Business Works on Incentives.  Why do people shop online?  Because they see some benefit they’re not finding in the real world.  Whether it’s the ability to shop at 2 AM in the buff, or because it’s the only way to find an original 1977  Han Solo action figure, you need to make sure there is an incentive for shoppers to buy your product online.  For dropshippers, this incentive is usually price.  You need to be the cheapest, or at least in the ballpark of the cheapest.  Ultimately, the number one reason people shop online is convenience, so make it easy for them.  Don’t give them the runaround: be prompt in your service, easy to reach, and use the fastest shipping options.

#4: We All Want to Feel Safe.  An image of security is absolutely integral, both for websites and for dropshippers who use other venues like eBay.  You need to show that you’re trustworthy and reliable.  Some of the best ways to do this on a website are to have plentiful contact info and posted comments from satisfied customers.  If you’re using eBay, then your customer satisfaction rating is everything.  A guy called me yesterday freaking out because he’d been dropshipping products on eBay and some of his orders got cancelled by the company.  (This happens when you try to dropship 20 products at once from a company that doesn’t allow resale, and because they’re not idiots, they know what shipping to 20 different addresses means).  So the orders were canceled, but the refund took two weeks to process.  In the meantime, his eBay customers had no product and no refund.  Obviously, his approval rating suffered.  So don’t be like Stupid eBay Man.  Before you dropship a product, check the company policies.  And have a slush fund for these kind of  exigencies.  Why was this guy dropshipping $2500 worth of product if he didn’t have the money to cover it?  Not smart.

#5: You Can’t Do Everything Yourself.  Why do new business owners believe that if they try really hard, they’ll suddenly know how to design a beautiful website, or find the perfect dropship supplier?  Be aware of your skills and use them, but you’re going to have to invest a little money.  It’s inevitable.  In fact, you’re going to waste a lot more money spending 112 hours trying to update your website, than if you’d paid some techie kid $400 and all the pizza pockets he can eat.  Dropshippers, bite the bullet and pay for access to a supplier database.  You may find one or two suppliers on your own, but they won’t be the best ones, and you’ll waste a huge amount of time.  Here at Wholesale Match, for a small fee, you get unlimited access to the best supplier database.  You also have unlimited research requests, so instead of searching through the database yourself, you send us your request and we find you the perfect suppliers to match it.  We even offer a money-back guarantee, so there’s no risk to your investment.  So basically, you have no excuse for not using professionals to do what you can’t, so that you can make the maximum amount of money in the shortest amount of time.