The Internet is loaded with so-called "suppliers". Everyone who has a couple of wooden birdhouses or glass figurines to sell wants you to think they are a real, live wholesale
supplier. They use phrases like "Your Wholesale Source",
"Direct To You", and "This is YOUR road to Internet Riches!"
They use words like "Ultimate", "Central",
"Connection", and "Millennium".
If you let them huff and puff at you, they'll blow your house down.
I often am not sure whether I should be amused or horrified at some of the tricks that these people are using to take your money.
When you open an Internet Store or
sell through eBay Auctions, you obviously need products to sell. We've been
talking about Product Sourcing in the last couple of Chapters.
The most critical thing to remember
about Product Sourcing is that you NEED to be as close to the manufacturer of your products as possible. The more
"middlemen" you have to go through, the more fingers are dipping into your profit potential. The Internet is FULL of middlemen, and
they've all got their sights set on YOU!
Here are some of the things you should watch out for, in both Drop
Shipping and Bulk Wholesaling:
"We will drop ship thousands
of products for you!"
Ever seen a claim like this on the Internet? There are literally THOUSANDS of so-called "drop shippers" out there who are acting as MIDDLEMEN for ONE REAL
Drop Shipping Supplier. All of those thousands of so-called drop shippers lead back to the same supplier.
There is a big supplier of imported off-brand merchandise that does drop ship directly from their warehouse. They sell some decent products; I actually worked with them a few years ago. You won't find any well-known brand names there. Their line consists of several thousand widely varying gift-type products. Again, you won't recognize any of the brand names...it's all no-name, imported merchandise, probably mostly from China and the Pacific Rim. We'll call this company "XYZ Wholesalers", for the purpose of this discussion. That's not their real name, of course.
You can sign up with "XYZ Wholesalers" directly and sell their merchandise on your web site. They do charge an "account setup fee". I worked with them few years ago, as I said. However, I no longer work with them. I found the products difficult to sell, for one very good reason. As I said above, they have been around for DECADES, and have signed up TENS OF THOUSANDS of people, who are all trying to sell this exact same merchandise on the Internet, as well as through Catalog Sales, Home Parties, etc. That kind of competition, plus the fact that there are so many more people (millions of people!) already trying to sell giftware in general on the 'Net, made it impossible for me to make any real money.
Now, here's the problem: along comes Joe Reseller. He signs up with "XYZ Wholesalers" as a retailer, and has the right to sell their products on the Internet. Then he goes out on the Internet and claims that HE ACTUALLY IS XYZ Wholesalers! He tells you to sign up with his web site. He'll drop ship all those products to your customers and make you rich. What he's really doing is sitting in his bedroom in front of his computer, re-sending your orders to the REAL "XYZ Wholesalers", and making a profit from you that you should not have to pay. He's set himself up as a "middleman", and is trying to fool you.
List of Wholesale Companies, Only $3.00!
Ever see an ad like that on an auction site? So have we. We bought one. OK, we KNEW we were getting ripped off, but we just had to see it. A few days after paying our $3.00, we got two Xeroxed pages in the mail containing the most worthless information we've ever seen. If I thought I could make money on the Internet selling wooden birdhouses made in somebody's garage, I'd go into business with my neighbor.
These lists sell for anywhere from $2.50 to $6.00. Why do you think they're so cheap? Because nobody had to put any EFFORT into them! It's easy to hit a search engine, type the word "wholesale", throw the first 20 responses on a piece of paper, and sell it for $3.00.
Will it help you earn money? NO!
98% of all the Drop Ship and Wholesaler Lists and Sites on the Internet!
Yes, we bought them too. ALL of them. They call themselves "Ultimate", "Central", "Millennium",
"Connection", "Global", "Super", and "Incredible" lists and sites of drop shippers. Again, we knew we were being ripped off.
The overwhelming majority of these printed lists and online sites claiming to contain Drop Shippers
and Bulk Wholesalers have been circulating the same, tired old listings of cheap import companies and off-brand, cottage industry products around and around for years.
They claim to contain "hundreds", or "thousands" of companies who will drop ship for you. Some of them contain hundreds of listings, but that's easy. Either reprint the same old listings
you've been printing for 20 years (whether they're still in business or not!), or just go to a search engine, type in "wholesale" and copy the first 500 responses you get. Then slap them in a rag-print magazine or throw them on a web page and call it a "Directory". Same result.
Lists and "directories" such as this sell for anywhere from $7 to about $30.
One of the newer ones has the nerve to charge you $59 and change for a very
small amount of useless information! They're rarely ever changed; even if they contained any worthwhile information, they would be outdated very quickly. Some of them are online or downloadable, but contain the same tired old junk and dozens of middlemen that the print directories do. Again, we've bought copies of EVERY SINGLE ONE, and continue to do so, and never found ANY of them to be worth anything.
Super Drop Ship and Wholesaler Information CD!
You've probably seen these on auction sites as well as web sites. Tell you what, we'll make this one short and sweet. Read the warning above this one, dump all THAT junk on a CD, and sell it for six bucks. Same thing.
Complete Internet Business Opportunity!
Have you ever come across a "Internet
Business Opportunity" like this: (?)
- They'll
create a storefront for you!
- They'll provide you with THOUSANDS of products that they'll drop ship for your store, and allow you to sell only their products!
- They'll provide you with Merchant Services so you can accept credit cards without having to open a bank account!
- All for a ONE TIME PRICE of just $50!
Wow, doesn't that just seem too good to be true?? That's because it IS too good to be true. Oh, sure, they'll do what they say. It's a legal business. But tell me this...just how much money do you think you'll make?
Think about it for a minute. THEY establish accounts with wholesalers. THEY mark those wholesale prices WAY up. They force you to buy products only from them. Then they get YOU to put in all the time and effort to SELL those products to people, at a VERY slim profit margin for YOU.
Congratulations! You've just become a commissioned salesman for someone else's business!
Um, not quite what you had in mind, was it?
For a Mere $149, and $50 a Month;
Run across one of these yet? A company who claims to be a "drop ship distributor"
or a Bulk Wholesaler, but has a "setup" or "membership" fee?
Let me say this very clearly:
A REAL WHOLESALER DOES NOT CHARGE YOU A FEE just to set up a wholesale account!
ANY company that wants you to BUY YOUR STORE'S PRODUCTS FROM THEM, and wants you to pay an "account setup fee", should be AVOIDED at ALL COST! Almost without exception, these companies are middlemen. You will never make any real money with them. They take your "account setup" fee, and that's all they really wanted in the first place. Good luck trying to get a refund!
Wolves in Distributors' Clothing
These places spend a great deal of effort trying to convince you that
they're real suppliers. We spend a lot of time sorting these profiteers OUT of OUR lists of Directory candidates. Here's how they operate:
- They put up a site that contains all kinds of unrelated product lines, and tell you they'll
Drop Ship for your Internet business.
- They may charge a small "account setup fee".
- You sign up with them, thinking that they are an actual
wholesale supplier, and you place their products for sale on your site.
- Your customer orders a product from you, and you send the order to this fake "drop shipper" (middleman).
- The middleman, in turn, places the order with the REAL drop ship
supplier, and has it sent to your customer.
- You end up paying a lot more than you should for the product, because the fake "drop shipper" is marking up the price to YOU.
- You lose profits that should be yours.
Free Drop Shipping and Wholesale Information sites
Sounds pretty good, doesn't it! FREE sites giving you the names of all the drop shippers
and bulk wholesalers you'll ever need! Ok, let's back up and think about that for a minute. Free? Hmm. Remember the Number One Rule? If it sounds too good to be true, it IS too good to be true.
Yes, we've checked these people out, too. Again, just take all the junk information I talked about above, and slap it on a free web site.
Why do they do it? Simple. They hope they'll get enough people coming to their web sites so that they can charge OTHER companies for advertising space. While you're out there chasing your tail and wasting your time with useless information, they're making money by selling ads to someone else. How nice for them! Doesn't do anything for YOU, though. In fact, it hurts you. Wasted time equals lost profits.
In Conclusion
Many of these people are very clever. Their sites look legitimate and they present themselves well. All they really are is just another middleman that is sponging off of your hard work. All they will do is waste your time.
At
Worldwide Brands, Inc., we will not waste your time! We publish only genuine, verified
Drop Ship Suppliers and Light Bulk Wholesalers!
NEXT >> The Real Business World
