Hello everyone! These days i was thinking, and thinking... I buy the script, i buy the domain, i buy the host, but where to find the products? This is my issue, where to find those products? And resuming all that, how can we start an e-commerce?
Yes i know that. That's not a problem for me . The problem is: Where do I find the products for start the e-commerce site? I mean, let's say i want to make a e-commerce with Digital Cameras. How cand i do that? I haveto buy the cameras, or what? That's the point I don't get it..
There are tons of manufacturers out there that want to do drop ships for online retailers. What you have to ask yourself is what product(s) can you sell that you will be able to differentiate your site from the 10,000 other websites selling the same thing? Do you have a particular niche or sales angle that will allow you to grab customers from all of the other websites?
You're putting the cart before the horse. Imagine walking down your local high street and seeing a beautifully fitted out shop - with completely empty shelves. Research what you want to sell, find the price points, find the distributors, research the customers, DO SOME SUMS. Then think about getting an ecommerce site
My suggestion is get some hosting and then install Joomla. Then learn about the world of joomla... http://www.joomla.org. With the right plugins you can do anything e-commerce. Success, Sam
I know that Sam. My question was something else.. So basically, what I need are the products, right? Do I have to OWM those products? or how? I mean, let's say I wanna do a skateboards e-commerce site, with a lot of skates. Do I need to have those sk8s? Do I need to make a deal with an skate shop?
There are a number of commerce scripts out there both free and paid. I have heard good things about these, played with most of them but the only stores that are live are running avactis. Free: osCommerce - full featured open source cart ZenCart Magento - this is a newer cart I haven't had a chance to play with it much Paid: Avactis - very easy to integrate into any website template if you know basic html and php CubeCart This is just a partial list and in no specific order. I do like avactis but it is a paid solution their free cart only supports 50 items or so. John
You will find many drop shipping companies, but a good way to find a supplier is to call manufacturer and ask for there distributor. Get the number for local and the largest distributor to have an effective price comparison.
its easy to setup as long us you have your manufactorer script to do that job oscommerce - powerful script oscmax - same as oscommerce but template driven zent - php script with smarty codes on it i did setup more than 50 e-commerce sites now, i better recommend oscmax because its template driven
I think I understand your question now. There are two ways, that I know of, possibly more, that you can sell products through your site with. The first is buying the product in bulk from the manufacturer and then selling it through your website. The Pros? You make a bigger profit selling them. The Cons? You handle shipping and If you don't sell the products in your stock, you lose money. The second method is setting up an affiliate site. This basically means that you are a salesperson for other companies products. IF someone buys the product through your site, you get a comission. The Pros? You don't have to deal with shipping and its very low risk as you do not have an urgent need to sell inventory. The Cons? You get a smaller piece of the pie. My advice would be to start out with an affiliate e-commerce site, its very low risk and you can still make money. If it grows enough, you can then transfer the site to you actually selling products, and you already will have a customer base and infrastructure set up.
You can use some affiliate data feed thing to make an ecommerce website... When a user goes through your link and purchase items, you will get commissions... No shipping, no worries... There are some affiliate data feeds available for oscommerce script, but I did not found a free one... You can also check with this site: http://www.affilistore.com/ . They have a script to free download... From their website; I dont know much about this program and I decided to try it out... Also I am not sure about how to make money with affilistore website... Is anyone using affilistore here to tell more? I got a link: http://sageblogger.com/trying-out-affilistore-affiliate-website-in-3-easy-steps/
Thank you very, very much guys!! Sorry for this english, i didn't spoke english for about 2 years 'cause i had some familiar problems, but it is fine now. I'm gonna try that script and let you know what I think about it. Thank you very much!
Wow, there are a lot of people totally missing the question. You can find products to sell from a number of sources. Most of the posts above talk about starting an affiliate site. This is okay, but when you do this you aren't going to make a huge amount of profit. Most affiliate programs pay between 10% - 20% of the purchase amount. So if you just sold a skateboard for $100 you are only going to see $10, maybe $15 if you were able to find a decent affiliate program. Another method is called drop shipping. This is where a warehouse stores the products and ships them to your customers on your behalf and in your name. With this set up, if you sold the same $100 skateboard then you might make $40 - $60 depending on your mark up. Both of these ways do not require you to purchase any inventory before a sale is made so the overall risk is minimal. But where do you find the products? You'll understand that I can't simply tell you who I use, but there are several reputable sites out there specifically set up for drop shipping. When you have a product in mind that you want to sell, I think you mentioned skateboards, do some searches for that product with the business model of your choice as identifiers. You can also contact manufacturers directly and ask for a list of authorized wholesalers. Usually they are more than happy to give out this information. And one final way is to look at the major competing sites in the field, do they have a link that says "wholesaler login" or something similar? If so call them up.
Thanks, that has helped me too! +REP One thing though - for a beginner should i jump straight into dropshipping or join an affiliate to start?
1. buy cheap at ebay and sell at your web in advance 2. make your own product, like art, design ext. 3. sell your mum shoes or your girlfriend makeup 4. contact another seller to be their affiliate 5. Search any shop partner and do some dropshipping job will add some if im still awake later
To be successful with any site you are going to have to work on it and promote it, therefore why not make the most profit that you can from the start? Since there is virtually no risk (since you don't have to stock any inventory) you can learn the ropes by starting out drop shipping just as easy as you can with an affiliate site. Of course this is my opinion only. I know plenty of folks that have a small army of affiliate sites that generate more income than I do, but their key is volume. They have many, many sites. I guess it depends on what your end goal is and how good your site and the parent affiliate site looks. And of course you can do both. Both from the same site (drop shipping some items and being an affiliate for others) or start two completely separate sites. It is your world; the key is to just start something. Anything you do is a step ahead of where you were previously. And even if your first try is a strike out you hopefully will have learned something.
Without looking up all the other posts, I am sure others have already brought up dropshipping. I have a Worldwidebrands.com account if anyone is looking for a dropshipper. I enjoy helping people out. If you have a product in mind you would like to sell online, feel free to PM me and i'll try to look up a dropshipper for you. Note that you must have a sales tax ID and be a US resident to work with most of the wholesalers/dropshippers.
I also recommend starting out with drop shipping, plus I gave a few more tips in another similar message yesterday here (I'm new so link can't be live just cut and paste): forums.digitalpoint.com/showpost.php?p=7935856&postcount=8 WorldWideBrands.com mentioned above is another good resource for drop shipping and have a unique way of searching for merchandise to help you locate drop shippers. Ray