How Do I start Selling Products from Drop Shippers?

I used to work on a team in Motorola that sold $150 million worth of product per year drop shipped to the US from our exclusive supplier using our brand name.  Motorola ultimately sold that division, and I migrated with the team to the new owners.  Its not an easy business!

So when people ask me today, “How can I sell products online from a drop shipper?” I usually tell them, something along the lines of “More power to you if you can make money doing this, I’ve done it and its not easy.  There is a REASON why I don’t do it today myself.” 

As a former credit manager / contract manager (ie the guy that had to assess new retailers and distributors to see if they had the stuff to be successful selling our products), I also know there are two things that make a person selling drop shipped products successful.

1. They have to be kick ass sales people, &
2. They need a competitive advantage

Now, if you are a kick ass sales person, then keep reading.  If you are not, I advise you skip on to a different topic, because the people that are kick ass sales people will eat your lunch, and you will not be profitable, unless . . .

You have a competitive advantage so powerful that you can then afford to hire a kick ass sales person.

What’s a competitive advantage in drop shipping?

If you have an exclusive lock on a product or a product model that no one else can sell, you have an economic competitive advantage.  If you have the ability to sell a given product at a price lower than anyone else (even if you are using it as a loss leader or something), then you have an economic price advantage.

If you can make your customers feel better about themselves, make them feel cool for dealing with you, or get them to buy when you don’t have a lock on the product or the price then you are either a kick ass sales person (and maybe don’t know it) or you have some other business setup that emulates this (maybe like a Zappos.com that sells shoes, but answers questions on anything if you call them, or an Apple that sells MP3 players at a premium because people think they are cool).

“I’m a Kick Ass Sales Person, and I make my customers feel cool, Where Can I get drop shipped product for Free?”

So lets say for the sake of argument, you have 1 and 2 covered, maybe you have 50,000 followers on twitter that think you are the best thing since digg, and you are a kick ass sales person, all you need is something to sell.

Well that’s where Shopster comes in.

Shopster essentially gives you access to more products than you could ever hope to review and pick from.  They make it easy to organize and setup a drop ship connection and automate the setup of your online store.

The cool thing is that they do this for FREE now, for people just starting out.  They used to offer a free 7 day trial and then charged about $50 per month to sign up. 

No more free trials, they just have a simple free account.  The catch is that you can only sell up to 25 products, but guess what?

That’s a good thing.  The biggest mistake most people make when they set up an account with Shopster is that they try to add a thousand different products and fill up their online store like they are going to compete with Amazon.

Got a news flash for them and you.  YOU ARE NOT GOING TO COMPETE WITH AMAZON ON 1,000 DIFFERENT PRODUTS.

But you might just compete with them on a few! 

So start small, stay focused, and start for free.  Once you know what you are doing and this can be demonstrated by the fact that you have “MADE A PROFIT” Then you can start looking at growing and repeating your hat trick.

Maybe someday you will compete with Amazon, which just bought Zappos, but more importantly, maybe you will also become profitable enough that it won’t matter if you can beat Amazon.