When you’re just starting out in ecommerce or online marketing, you hear about dropping, wholesaling, but also about affiliate programs, and you’re wondering what each is, and which is the best to start into.

Dropshipping is basically selling items through Ebay or your store, items that once the buyer purchases from you, they will go out from your supplier’s warehouse. You don’t have to worry about inventory, about shipping, only about making sure you have a really good and trusted supplier that can deliver on time, and of course, worry about getting mney from your customer.

Affiliate, on the other hand, is an entirely different ball game. With affiliate marketing you are doing even less actual work, because with dropshipping, you really have to be sort of like a middle-man (to take the order from your customer, to place the order to your supplier). With affiliate marketing, you can even walk away, and the money is still rolling in, as long as you did your proper SEO and advertising promotions on your site.

There is, however, a great advantage on being a dropshipper: you get your own customers, you can build your customer base list. When they say that ‘the money is in the list’, they are right. Once you have your list in place (and growing), you can always contact them later on again and again with new and related products that you know they might be interested in, since they did buy already something similar from you.

Affiliate marketing is mostly for making money, but dropshipping is more for making money and building a strong business in the process (which doesn’t mean that you can’t build a business with affiliate marketing, but it is a very different process). And one thing the internet has notice recently, is that more and more those that originally started out in affiliate marketing, are moving to dropshipping. The phenomena appeared already in the UK and in the US as well

You have your online store and you’re selling your products (whether they’re yours or your suppliers). But at somet point it’s time to grow  your business, and to sell more products online. How do you do it?

Here are 3 tips to sell more of your products on the internet:

1. Let you customers build trust in you. You can achieve this in several ways. Have a blog as well, with a prominent link on your frong page that your customer can easily access. Make sure you regularly post on your blog. Have an About page, that has your real life picture, maybe with with and kids around you, happily laughing. Don’t post a passport photo, you will scare away your customers . Have a newsletter that your customers can subscribe to and send them useful information, regularly (but not on a daily basis). Don’t try to sell them right away in your first newsletter editions. Give them truly useful info that they can apply right away. Or give them tips on how to use the products they’ve bought (or are about to buy) from you.
2. Use Testimonials. Once you build up a customer base, it is important to be on a first name basis and exchange at least an email or two with each of them (or at least based on how much they purchased). If they are happy with your business, ask them for a testimonial. If they are truly happy with you, they will go over and above giving you that free piece of information, as they will feel that they are also doing something for you. Quid pro quo.
3. Use PPC (pay per click advertising) to be visible on the Google front page search engines. Use specific keywords that your shoppers are mostly typing in, so that they find you easily. Once they click on your link, your great shop will get them to buy (of course, this presupposes a great shop in the first place. You already have that, right?). But make sure you watch your spending. Cap the spending daily or weekly (or even monthly) limit. It’s very easy to forget that and you’re suddenly slapped with $5000 that you have to pay to Google for having shown your ads non-stop for the last weeks. Of course, you might purposefully go for it. But if you don’t really know much about ppc, take one step at a time, and go with caution.

These tips should help you gain more visibility with your customers, get new customers to sell more. Implement one of these methods asap, and once it’s working, implement the second method. And then the next. And if you have multiple online stores, repeat the process with each and any of them.

With affiliate marketing it’s not so important, but with dropshipping/wholesaling business, it is crucial that you have a solid business relationship with your supplier.

If you have any problems with your supplier, he is the only one that can help you. And getting fast and efficient help from him, depends on which terms you are with him. If you manage to build early on in your membership a strong relationship with your supplier, you can build up your own confidence in your supply and stocks. For example, you can talk to them about what your needs are, about your business, discuss with them about your plans for expanding your business. And if you grow your business, they will win as well, since you will be able to sell more of their products. It’s a win-win situation.

Of course, they will not be there all the time to hold your hand, this is not a Business 101 class. They will not do the marketing for you, the SEO or the advertising. But they will listen to you and help you out more often than not. It is always important to build up your networks in your business, as they will help you out in the long run.

Don’t forget, your suppliers is mostly interested in your success: the more you sell the more they sell, and to that end once you started a good business relationship with them, they will be there for you, to help.

You’re reading this, so obviously you are interested in starting your dropshipping, or wholesaling business.

Well, the short version of the story is this:

• Set up a site
• Add some products
• Add a lot of profit margin
• Sit back and watch the money rolling in

The long story is that if this is the way you see your new dropshipping business, you’ll most likely fail! There are a couple of more things in between that you need to pay attention to, and here are some of the top ones:

1. Find a reputable dropshipper – This needs a lot of research to do, simply because finding any dropshipper is not so difficult to do, but finding a good one, that’s a tough cookie. Once you found a dropshipper, you need to see what type of products they offer, what are the payment types that they want from you, how about their speedy delivery, what about customer complains. These things should be researched for each dropshipper you are looking into contacting. It might take you a bit more time at first, but you will save tons of grief in the process!
2. Possible membership fees – To be able to get products at a discount, many dropshippers charge you a membership fees. So shop around and ask them for their membership prices
3. Set up your site with the products from the dropshipper. It might be a nightmare, particularly if the dropshipper has let’s say 500 products in various categories. But it doesn’t have to be! You can build a very easy dropshipping site with this dropshipping starter pack. Very easy to use and saves  you again, a ton of grief!
4. So now you have a wholesaler, you have the products, you have your website, but how do you attract visitors (really buyers) to your site? You need to do some SEO on your site, you will need to advertise your site in as many ways as possible with flyers, signature in emails, word of mouth, business cards, link building, onsite SEO…and once you start, you cannot stop. Google loves those that always keep working on and advertising their site.
5. Now that your customers get rolling in, keep working on the site, and start the process from scratch (if you’re not already tired of it!) on a new site.

You have to keep in mind that starting a dropshipping business is not a get rich scheme. It will not make you rich overnight. But if you perserver at it, if you continue working at it and if you have fun, it will show and you will have success. Not today, not tomorrow but a few weeks from now, a few months from you might find yourself with a very profitable business that makes you some nice passive (or not so passive) income.

Did you know that there is a fast way to find dropshippers in your own niche in Google without having to do tons of research first? This tip is very useful particularly if you know what type of products you want to focus on importing in the future. Hopefully you will find it useful, do some research, use this quick method and find yourself a good dropshipping source.

Basically you need to use the trusted old Google search for it. What you do is this:

1. Go to Google.com (or your local version of Google)
2. Type any of the following in double-quotes (“): “drop shipper login”, “dropshipper login”, “dropship login”,”wholesale login” following +yourkeyword
   So let’s say if I’m searching for a dropshipper for watches, I’m going to type in:
   “”drop shipper login” + watches. If it didn’t find anything useful, then I’m going with my second option: “dropshipper login”+watches
3. Try these with and without quotes, different results might come up in Google depending on what you used

For example, you might want to sell perfumes. All you’d need to type in Google is “wholesale login” + perfume . Now have a look at the Search Results, quite a lot to chose from, right?

Instead of dropshipping, you can also use “distributor login”, “wholesale login”, “liquidation login”, “liquidations login”

So before you start your next Yahoo, Ebay or Amazon store, and you need some dropshippers, you know what to start your research with.

Everybody knows that China is the country of fakes Gucci bags, of replicas, of products without quality or value. However, in the last few years, China did start to see a change in improving their products quality. So now the main question remains – should you or should you not import goods from China?

Well, before anything else, you need to get yourself a quick education on the situation, so you know the ups and downs of importing from China.

• Let’s say you do want to import from China. So how do you go about it? Just Google ‘china export’ and you’ll find a supplier? Wrong. You need to find some really credible companies in China, so you has to research quite a bit beforehand. Don’t go into contacting the first Chinese supplier you see at the top of the Google search results. They might be very good at SEO, but might be a big scammer too!
• Now you found your supplier and you need to know how you are going to pay them. When you discuss the details with them, don’t forget that their first language is not English, so you really need to make sure they fully understand (and not missunderstand) what you’re saying. Not that later on you’ll have some nasty surprises!
• Quality – Like I mentioned before, quality is still a big issue with goods imported from China. It is still a major tradition with Chinese businesses that they will cut costs to the minimum they can. Yes, you do want lost cost, but you don’t want the products to suffer from bad quality either. Afterall, you are importing them to your country, where the mentality is NOT Chinese!
• Language – Language is usually a strong barrier between you and the Chinese businesses. Obviously you need to understand their side of the bargain and they need to understand what the heck you want from them. And as you know, Chinese is a very difficult leanguage to learn, in fact, it’s one of the most difficult ones to grasp. So you need to somehow be able to communicate with them. Maybe have a trusted translator, or get somebody from their site who does speak English at a business level.
• Going back to quality – pay particular attention to edible (for humans and pets) products. A few years ago there were some horror stories around the honey import from China, I’m sure you’ve heard already about it. Or about the seafood imported from China. So while imported fakes is bad, imported products that can make people sick is dangerous.

This is not to say not to import from China. Many successful businesses do deal with China on a regular basis. But you need to do your research, you need to evaluate the facts and see all sides of the story before deciding whether importing products from China is a viable avenue for you.

When you’ve decided to go with your own importing business, here are a few tips to get you started. It is always good to know as much as possible way ahead, to avoid making mistakes in the long run.

1. There are several countries that have embassies or consulates in your country and you can take advantage of that. Pass by their offices and ask for industry directories, manufacturer lists from their countries. They will be happy to give you a copy. This way you can see what interest you from the list of products/manufacturers that the country has on offer.
2. Each country is different, but they all require a set of procedures, registrations that you need to follow. You have to enquire about these at your local tax department. Also you need to find out about licensing agreement for the products you want to import.
3. When trading internationally, you need to have a good knowledge about Letters of Credit, which are the most common form of payment when dealing internationall on a larger amount. You can ask at your local bank branch about it, they will be able to help you. The Letter of Credit basically will minimize your risk of having to pay in advance for goods.
4. Don’t forget about Duties. Do you have to pay any? Duties depend on the value or the quantity of the products you want to import, as well as on the product’s tariff classsification in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the US. You can buy this at the US Government Printing Office.
5. Another aspect is custom requirements. If you are an individual that you want the goods for yourself or for your business, you can clear your own imports through Customs. You don’t usually need a permit or license in this case. However, the imported products have to meet the same legal requirements that are available for domestic goods. You can obtain a lot of information on customs requirements for imports at your local customs office.

These are just a few of the manu things you need to be aware of when intending to import products. This list is there mostly to make you aware of them. It is by no means an extensive ist of completely accurate information, since that changes and differs from country to country, from year to year.

Sometimes imported products are cheaper than locally manufactured ones, particularly when it comes to the western world (US, Western Europe), so successful producers, who have to offer the highest quality at the lowest cost, will import goods instead of buying them locally. More and more companies are working this way in the last few years because importing will give the companies better profit margin, plus it will allow them to compete on prices with other producers. Many companies acknowledge that almost 75% of what they sell are imported products.

Here are a couple of tips that you need to know to have a successful business importing from outside sources.

1. It takes longer for imported goods to reach to your warehouse, so when ordering from abroad, keep this in mind. Make sure you have enough stock left until the products enter your location.
2. Order more than you’d order from within your country. Since it’s cheaper, you will get much more for your money.
3. You will have to pay shipping costs, so enquire in advance about the best shipping rates. However, even with that calculated in, you will save a lot when ordering from wholesalers abroad. So do not let shipping costs deter you from buying from them.
4. Avoid designer products. Seriously. Designer clothing from China is poor in quality and fakes, period. Designers are a whole different category alltogether. They make their clothing in France and Italy to make sure the quality is really good. So you will never find a good quality Gucci bag coming from China. You might actually end up being sued for selling fakes!
5. Going back to shipping costs. Unless you have your own established company, if you’re looking to import various products to make money, go for light and small items. You will save even more on shipping costs this way.

If you only follow a few common sense tips on importing, you will have a successful business in no time!