In researching drop shippers for my wedding accessories website, I paid $69.95 for access to Chris Malta’s Drop Ship Source Directory (Disclaimer: this is an affiliate link). This directory is amazing. It contains listings of drop shippers for almost any product you might want to sell. This is where I found drop shippers for the wedding accessories you see on www.elegantweddingshoppe.com.
I can imagine using this directory to create multiple retail storefronts for multiple streams of income. Even if each site only earns $500 a month, with 10 sites, that’s $5,000 a month! Almost enough for me to quit the 9 to 5 job.
I’ve learned how to use Zencart to the point where I can get a storefront up and running in less than a day. So between this directory, Zencart and PayPal, it is almost trivial to get an Internet storefront up and running. In fact, I already have another retail website in the works.
The hard part, though, is choosing products that sell and the marketing of the website. That I still have to work on. I bought an eBook, Yahoo Store Profits, that addresses this issue (Disclaimer: also an affiliate link). This eBook is also excellent and although I’m not using Yahoo Store, I will write about it and why I bought this particular eBook in another posting shortly.
- Thanks for reading
- Car Buying Tips
- Automatic Millionaire, Implemented!
- Get your financial house in order before quitting your dayjob
- Carla Blazek, free from 9 to 5
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July 12th, 2005 at 11:01 am
While I don’t exactly agree with your logic of “If I open up ten sites…” I am glad you have found how easy it is to open online stores.
I’ve been using Shopsite for the last 5 years in all my online ventures. Backened gets VERY important with added products, customer tracking and especially the shopping cart/payment system.
You can get your store up and running in no time, but your greatest challenge will be:
1.) Getting visitors to your site.
2.) Turning visitors into customers.
My favorite (and longest lasting) e-commerce business I’ve started is House Of Rave .com
Goodluck!
-Nev
July 23rd, 2005 at 3:19 pm
Hey,
Now that you’ve had a chance to check out the drop ship source directory, have you found it worthwhile? Have you contacted any of the drop shippers listed? Have you had any negative experiences with the process yet?
Also, how is the wedding site doing?
Best,
Scott
July 24th, 2005 at 10:20 pm
The drop ship directory is very worthwhile. The number of items you could sell via drop-shipping is amazing. I have contacted some wedding suppliers and they responded in a timely manner, but I am reconsidering selling wedding supplies. It is a very competitive market and I may not be able to compete via drop-shipping; I would have to buy in bulk direct from manufacturers in order to survive. I started the wedding website because my fiance was successful in selling her crafts, but it doesn’t translate well to website sales. I am looking into more niche products now.