Finding Dropshippers

So you’ve done your research, you have an idea of what you want to sell online. Now comes the problem of finding a source for your products. Well, one option is you could go with the old wholesaling approach. In other words, you buy the items in bulk and then ship them out yourself. This actually isn’t a horrible option because it gives you a little more control over your inventory. But the one downside is where to store the items and also coming up with the immediate capital to buy the initial inventory. Most of the people that I talk to on a daily basis just don’t have the funds (or the space) to make this a realistic option for themselves. So the next option would be to look for a dropshipper.

Before we talk about how to find a dropshipper, let’s first clarify what a dropshipper really is. Basically, a dropshipper is a supplier that will do the shipping for you. You just have to sell the product on your site, and then process the order with the dropshipper so that it can be sent out.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say you have a website that sells shoes. I as a customer come to your site and see a pair of shoes that I’m interested in. I then buy this pair of shoes from your website for $50. At this point as the customer, as far as I know I have purchased these shoes from you and you’ll be promptly shipping it to me. But on the back end, you would go and contact your supplier and say “Hey Mr. Supplier, Dan ordered this pair of shoes. Here’s his address and here’s the wholesale cost for it.” So you pay the dropshipper the wholesale cost of let’s say $30 and they ship it to me. That’s the basic idea. Of course, this is a very simplified example, but I hope it gets the point across. You process the orders through someone else but keep the profit.

Alright, so how do we find this suppliers? Let me give you a few methods you can use:

- Google (or any other search engine)
This is probably the hardest and most time consuming way to do it, but you can just go to a search engine and search for “(product) + dropshipper” and see what you come up with. For example, if I was looking for a supplier for tents, I might search for “tent + dropshipper” and see what I come up with. The only problem with this method is that a lot of the dropshippers out there don’t necessary advertise themselves as dropshippers. But its worth a look!

- Big Dropship Sites
There are several companies out there that you could consider in one way or another as Big Dropshippers. These are the sites that claim to have hundreds of thousands or even millions of products. These sites are not necessarily your best long-term option, but they can be very good for getting started. One example is Doba. Doba basically goes out there and finds a bunch of suppliers and then lists their products on their site for you to get access to. But of course they are going to charge you for access to this information (as they have a right to do since they took all the time to find these suppliers!). You can sign up for a trial with Doba by clicking this link. There are other companies out there that follow a similar process. Feel free to check them out.

- Dropship Directories
Rather than going through one of these big dropship sites, another great way to find some potential dropshippers is to use a dropship directory. These are sites that instead of trying to sell you the actual products, they will give you a list of known dropshippers and tell you how to contact them. Two of the big players in this industry are The Shipper and World Wide Brands. Both of these sites give you a good starting point for finding suppliers to get started with. One thing that I really like about The Shipper is that they will also give you information to teach you how to go out and find suppliers on your own as well. This can be very valuable information that could put you ahead of your competition as far as what products you are able to provide.

- Other Methods
There are some other things you can do to try and find suppliers. One would be to contact some local companies and see if they would be willing to work with you. This has its benefits because then you’re working with someone that you can create a personal relationship with. Another thing you’ll want to be doing once your site is established is going to any trade shows that are related to your topic. If you come to a booth that has products that would make sense for your site you could approach them about setting up some type of relationship where you would sell their product on your site. Who knows, you could be the first person to do this and for a while at least have an exclusive online relationship. Not a bad thing to have!

So there you have it. These are several ways that you can go about trying to find some dropshippers if that’s what the goal of your site is. Remember, if you’re trying to sell a product but you don’t have access to it, it kinda makes it hard to sell :-).

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