Starting a Drop Shipping Site... with no drop shippers

SirKonstantine

SirKonstantine

Banned
Jun 15, 2011
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I've had planned on working on a new drop shipping site for the next 2 months before I start traveling. I wished to have the content, products, and everything set up so that, once I returned and once the rankings came in, all I needed to do was make adjustments and re-track my course.

Well, its been about 3 weeks so far and I've planned everything out and am ready to start writing/order articles but I'm running into a big issue: No merchants are approving my requests!

The niche I'm in is quite specific and I'm having a hard time finding suppliers.

My plan right now is to more forward and start dropping articles and, whatever suppliers I do get, I'll just stock their products on the site even though its not a perfect match. Do you have any tips on how to get my account approved? Is there any other ways to get suppliers? Are those $99 membership drop shipping catalogs worth it? I can PM you my niche if you wish.

PS its my first time with drop shipping :338:
 
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Make your site at least appear like you're an established merchant & brand and you are looking to add to your range - not start with it. This also allows you to age/rank the site if you're going for organic traffic.

Since you aren't with a drop shipper yet, have you looked at what the cost is of the products? Guessing doesn't work. You then need to look at postage costs, advertising costs, CPA and all that jazz to make sure it's even worth pursuing.

Also, the more niche the product the more protected the supply chain will become. The distributors don't want to kill the value of their brands and products by giving everyone access to it.
 
Watching you post on these forums is like watching a mental breakdown happen before my very eyes.

It's quite compelling.
 
SirKonstantine said:
I've had planned on working on a new drop shipping site for the next 2 months before I start traveling. I wished to have the content, products, and everything set up so that, once I returned and once the rankings came in, all I needed to do was make adjustments and re-track my course.

Well, its been about 3 weeks so far and I've planned everything out and am ready to start writing/order articles but I'm running into a big issue: No merchants are approving my requests!

The niche I'm in is quite specific and I'm having a hard time finding suppliers.

My plan right now is to more forward and start dropping articles and, whatever suppliers I do get, I'll just stock their products on the site even though its not a perfect match. Do you have any tips on how to get my account approved? Is there any other ways to get suppliers? Are those $99 membership drop shipping catalogs worth it? I can PM you my niche if you wish.

PS its my first time with drop shipping :338:
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Perhaps a VA dating / video chat site is more of a fit with your particular brand of expertise?
 
My day job is for a very large e-commerce company and I help run one of the smaller sites. One of the things I've done over the last couple of years is get several drop shippers on board and the relationships I've built with them have been fairly successful.

I've found it possible to get the same net margins on dropship as you would with items you stock yourself, just your sales volumes are likely to be lower.

Some tips on finding decent dropshippers:

Look at your competitors sites and look for products they are selling in common. If they are decent, they will have different images and possibly different names, but if you know the industry you should be able to recognise they are the same product.

Then with a bit of Googling you find the manufacturer and email or call them. You're going to get a better response if you have a site up and running already and aren't emailing them from dragonslayer162@gmail.com but instead james.anderson@lampshades.com

Also I never ask about dropship outright, I usually say how I like their product because X, think it would make a great fit on my site and ask if they have a wholesale or reseller program (note I didn't use the word dropship).

After that you build a relationship and I find 5% of the companies I approach do have some kind of dropship program and of those 20% have good enough margins and not too many resellers to be worth going with.

Not one of the decent drop shippers I work with mention dropshipping on their site, and I highly doubt they are members of these "pay for dropship contacts" groups.

If all you had to do to find a decent dropshipper was pay $40, everyone would do it and because of the competition they would now be a shitty dropshipper for you the re-seller.

Also, try and hang out in the places the business owners who you're interested in re-selling hang out. Forums, message boards, even reddit.

There are contacts to be made, but you need to show you know the industry, take them seriously and aren't a time waster who read the 4HWW yesterday, but instead are a serious legitimate business who isn't going to damage their brand.
 
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Rule #1 In Sales: Have a product to sell.

You should probably get that figured out before you spend weeks of time planning out the other details. (Not being an ass - just saying you may not be using your time wisely at the moment).
 
Smeems said:
Watching you post on these forums is like watching a mental breakdown happen before my very eyes.

It's quite compelling.
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tumblr_mt6wop52vZ1qkljywo1_500.gif
 
Does this have anything to do with the creepy message you sent us about a source that sells wholesale GHB and/or Ether?

Because this sounds awfully familiar....
 
Ciaobella said:
No wonder you're not getting approved, you can't dropship rapists.
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no. I'm getting denied cuz: I can't prove I'm in the industry (i'm not, this is a different industry), their understaffed, etc.

Anyways, thanks for the people who helped me over PM. I'm going to launch the site and sell the products I did get approved for even though I'd rather sell the other ones.
 
SirKonstantine said:
no. I'm getting denied cuz: I can't prove I'm in the industry (i'm not, this is a different industry), their understaffed, etc.

Anyways, thanks for the people who helped me over PM. I'm going to launch the site and sell the products I did get approved for even though I'd rather sell the other ones.
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You are such a low life...
 
DonegalDanny said:
After that you build a relationship and I find 5% of the companies I approach do have some kind of dropship program and of those 20% have good enough margins and not too many resellers to be worth going with.
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Top post, brah. One question: How do you determine if a margin is worth going with? Is your 'acceptable margin' lower if the overall price of the product is higher?

And about those "pay to find dropshippers" kind of lists... obviously the dropshippers there aren't going to be worth doing business with. But the categories on WorldWideBrands do give you a lot of ideas.

When I was looking for products to dropship, I went on the free section on WWB's site (the one that just lets you search for categories, not dropshippers) and just wrote a small script that parsed all the categories they had (around 10,000). Gave me tons of ideas about niches that I had no idea existed before.
 
Rotalihinna said:
Top post, brah. One question: How do you determine if a margin is worth going with? Is your 'acceptable margin' lower if the overall price of the product is higher?

And about those "pay to find dropshippers" kind of lists... obviously the dropshippers there aren't going to be worth doing business with. But the categories on WorldWideBrands do give you a lot of ideas.

When I was looking for products to dropship, I went on the free section on WWB's site (the one that just lets you search for categories, not dropshippers) and just wrote a small script that parsed all the categories they had (around 10,000). Gave me tons of ideas about niches that I had no idea existed before.
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Thanks mate. As a rule I don't sell for under X% net profit. Net Profit being Selling Price - (cost price+shipping price+general business overhead +transaction fee).

However, if I've got a particularly high price product, I may consider a slightly lower net margin, but there isn't much leeway. As all the products are related, generally the products have the same return or defect rate and so you have to find out (the hard way usually) what net margin you need to be keeping to sustain these. A higher revenue product is likely to cost more to you in the event of a return.

Your drop ship niche identification method seems interesting. You're right there are so many niches out there, as they say the idea is 5% and it's 95% execution. Currently working on a clothing site myself on a sorta-dropship set up, it's fun stuff. Plus get loads of samples at cost.
 
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