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What is the best way to earn money? Selling something for which you paid nothing, right? Well, here is an idea for those people who always wanted to own their own boutique but cannot (yet) afford to hold stock for their up-coming company: Drop ship.
Drop shipping is when someone orders something and it is sent to that person with your name tag all over it -- but it ships from the wholesaler and not you.
I wanted to have a boutique where I can also stock my own goods eventually, but I didn't have enough money yet to plunk down on products. If those products didn't sell, I would be out of money -- that's cash I could have used to pay off more of my debt. (We all think of that …afterwards!). I signed up with Go To Baby. They offer the ability to drop ship, and they are a really good start. (Check out their wholesale section -- it really gives you some good info before signing up.)
I have big plans for my store, but everyone needs a foot in the door, sort of speak. You want to start earning a profit before you have to spend any large sums of money.
The money you’d be plunking into an online boutique would be for the basics: Domain name, web hosting, templates for the store, and a resale certificate. I personally prefer to have a shopping cart on my server (even if I have to install a completely different one) rather than having it hosted somewhere else, if only fbecause I feel like I'd have more control over it. However, I have heard great things from a lot of companies about the merchant programs at Yahoo!. You can even set up your shop 100 percent through Paypal, if you want.
So you may just have to plunk away for some basic hosting and domain costs (that's why you should ALWAYS invest in a reseller), but if you really work your store, you can definitely make the money back.
There is one complaint I have heard about drop shipping: You can't send your customers your own papers in their order. But there's a way around that: You can send your paperwork seperately, or even prior to shipment with a little note saying, "Thank you, your package is on its way!"
