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The
other method of Product Sourcing for your Home-based Internet Business
is to buy "in bulk" from Wholesale Suppliers.
This means, of course, that you find a Wholesale
Supplier, and spend some money up front buying a few cases of products from
them. The Wholesale Supplier ships those products to you. You stash those
cases of products in your garage or spare room, and re-pack and ship each
product individually to your customers.
The advantage of this method is this:
- When
you buy anything in bulk quantities, you do get better Wholesale
Prices. This gives you a better competitive edge when you sell in
price-driven markets like eBay. Keep in mind that eBay is what is
known as a price-driven market. When people are buying
products on eBay, they're looking to spend as little money as possible
for those products.
So, many
eBay Sellers prefer to buy products in bulk, because they do get
better wholesale pricing, and have more room to make a better profit in a
price-driven Auction market.
The
disadvantage of this method is this:
- Most
real Wholesale Suppliers won't work with you.
It's unfortunate, but
true. Most of the real Wholesale Suppliers out there do not want to sell
bulk orders of products to small, Home-based Internet Businesses. Why? Because we don't
have the money to order thousands of dollars worth of
products at one time.
You see, a
Wholesale Supplier's business is based on volume sales. They don't
make very much of a profit on the products they Wholesale. That means that
they have to sell a lot of product in order to make money. So, a
Wholesale Supplier's main business is selling truckloads of products to
large retail chains, like Sears, Target, KMart, etc. They simply won't sell
to anyone who can't afford to place a minimum order ranging from $5,000 to
$25,000 or so. They don't consider it to be worth their effort!
Worldwide Brands comes to the Rescue!
Yes, I'm going to talk about my company again. I
know I've said it before, but I really want to stress that the purpose of this
EBook is to help you with genuinely free information. It is not meant to be a
commercial for my company.
However, what we do here is to create
real solutions to some of the problems you're going to face when
starting your Home-based Internet Business, and it would be silly of me to not
tell you about those solutions!
The Problem:
- Most real
Wholesale Suppliers will not work with Home-based Internet Businesses,
because as a small, Home-based Business, you can't afford to spend between
$5,000 and $25,000 to buy the minimum quantities of products required
by these Wholesale Suppliers.
The
Solution:
- Over the
years, my company has become very well known in the Wholesale industry,
because we've not only helped small business owners to connect with
Suppliers; we've brought a great deal of business to many Wholesale
Suppliers from small businesses.
Because
we have that reputation, we are able to go to large Wholesale Suppliers and
say, "Look, there are a lot of small businesses out there who want to buy in
bulk, but can't afford your high minimums. If you're willing to lower
your minimums to an affordable level for us, we will get your company's
name out to many Home-based Internet Businesses that want to buy from you.
Well, the Wholesale Suppliers know us, and they
like the idea that we can bring them your business without costing them
any advertising money on their end. It's truly a win-win situation for
everyone.
So, we've created The Light Bulk Wholesale
Directory.
"Light Bulk" Wholesaler is a term that we created to describe a real
Wholesale Supplier that will:
-
Sell New, Factory-Warranted Products, at Wholesale Pricing,
to you; the Home-based Internet Business Owner.
- Sell to you in Affordable Quantities,
with minimum orders under $500. That's why we call it "Light Bulk".
This Directory is made up of Wholesale Suppliers that will sell you small ("light")
quantities of products, while still giving you Bulk Wholesale
Pricing! That's what makes this Directory better for your
business than any other Wholesale Source information on the Internet!
- Our Research Team has spoken personally
with each and every one of the hundreds of Wholesale Suppliers
in this Directory. They are all willing to do business with you on the terms
above. Their contact information is updated constantly, and our Team adds new Wholesale Suppliers on
a daily basis.
Anyway, The Light Bulk Wholesale Directory is available on our web
site, so enough with the commercial. Let's talk some more about how to
actually pack and ship products from your home.
Using Light Bulk Wholesalers
- Once you find a Light Bulk Wholesaler you want to
work with, you'll call them and set up a free Account, so you can buy from them.
- You'll need to prepare your Packing and Shipping
workspace. A spare room, a basement or a garage usually work best, but many
people do this right in their living rooms. :o) You'll need:
- Some kind of organized shelving, where you can place your products and label the shelves with the product names and stock numbers
- Shipping materials, like properly sized boxes, shipping bags, shipping tape, some bubble-wrap plastic or Styrofoam "peanuts", etc. Your Wholesale Supplier will be able to give you the sizes of the shipping boxes or bags you'll need to ship each individual product.
- An Inbox and an Outbox, or something similar, so you can physically keep track of which orders still need to be filled, and which are already done.
- A Shipping Label Printer. The best way to go here is to contact UPS (at UPS.com) and set up a "Daily Pickup" Shipping Account with them. When you do that, they will supply you with FREE "UPS Worldship" software for your computer. That software actually connects to UPS over the Internet, and calculates your shipping costs for each item you send. You can ship by UPS Ground, Air, Overnight, any way your customer wants to pay for. It also keeps a record of your shipments, your Tracking Numbers, and much more. It prints all your official UPS Shipping Labels, too, so that all you have to do is slap that label on your package, and you're done! UPS will "rent" you a Shipping Label Printer for only about $4 a month, and provide you with all the FREE shipping labels and other supplies you need for that printer. Setting up a UPS account is cheap, and it really saves you a great deal of hassle.
- After you do some Market Research (explained in a later Chapter) you decide which products you want to sell Online, and place an order for those products.
- The cases of products arrive at your home. The first thing you need to do is inspect those products! Open the cases, and take all the products out. Do a quick inspection for signs of obviously broken or damaged products. Damaged products are rare, but you do need to find out right away if all the products you have are in good shape. If you do find one or two that are damaged, the sooner you tell your Wholesaler, the better. They will work out a replacement arrangement for you that won't cost you anything.
- Place images and descriptions (you'll get these from your Wholesaler) on your Internet Store or Auctions, and you're ready to go!
Remember that when you're shipping products to your customers yourself, you should never let more than 48 hours go by before you ship each product. Customer Service is very important in your Home-based Internet Business; you need to be sure to keep your customers happy!
There is more FREE information on this subject, and
all the other subjects in this EBook, available in our
Resource Center.
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