I'm seriously considering starting my own business. I've got a few niches that I want to get into, I have researched them well and apart from one the rest are quite in demand with not much competition. Anyway, I'm looking at starting an e-commerce website and selling products. The problem i've got is do I use a dropshipper or buy from a wholesaler? I know of some good wholesalers for the products i'm going to sell but the idea of buying in bulk and then having to make sure you sell everything kinda puts me off. Has anyone ever dropshipped on here before, and would you recommend it over buying from wholesalers? Another question i've got is, how easy are e-commerce sites to set up? I'm going to use Zen Cart I think but am not very good at the building side of websites.
ecommerce sites are relatively easy to set up providing you have the technicals skills.. i would recommend using dropshipping as a start as you do not need to store the goods..
The advantage to buying wholesale/bulk is the savings you make. BUT on the other hand you have to factor in the cost of storage, insurance and shipping. Drop Shipping takes those factors our, so it is the easiest solution, but depending on your market, you may have trouble competing price wise with the people who do stock.
Jeccles has it right: the issue of buying wholesale versus drop shipping cannot be discussed intelligently unless you provide a lot more information. Price, Product, etc. Howevrr, I will advise against starting up a business based upon eBay and drop shipping. The price competition on eBay for popular products (which, by definition, are what drop shippers deal with) is brutal and not for the faint of heart or for small players (I am a Powerseller on eBay.)
If you've not done ecommerce, I might suggest yahoo. They update it, host it and those stores index well. A client of mine has 5 yahoo stores and they do well.
Right, got a domain, got someone whos going to dropship for me, just need to set up the store now. I was going to use Zen Cart but is there anything that might be easier to use or better?
It really depends on where you're comfortable working at. Maybe you have stronger skills in dropshipping or in wholesaling. I also agree with webgal.
We use OSCommerce for our clients. No particular reason other than it is pretty easy to setup and customize if you have basic PHP skills.
If you're looking for fundamentals of drop shipping, here's the link - http://dropshippingessentials.com
I had a fairly large ecommerce site and was doing ~4000 packages per day a couple years ago. We bought from several wholesalers. The thought of dropshipping did enter the picture, but with the rates and fees it just made sense to use wholesalers. They make money in several different places other than simply the product price. However, the difference was not soooo significant. I would recommend starting out with a dropshipper and see what happens. I would not really think of eBay as a marketing avenue. We did a considerable amount of business from the Amazon Marketplace and hardly any of it translated into more sales at our stand-alone site. Admittedly, we did not push it as hard as we probably should have. Another alternative is to use a wholesaler and just order as orders come in. You will probably not get quite as good of a deal and there will be a shipping delay, but you don't have to store any product overnight and you will still, most likely, get a better deal than using the dropshipping angle. If you have a "day job" I would stick with that and try the dropshipping angle and see what happens. At least if you decide you don't really like it you can easily walk away, regroup and analyze the situation, and fight another day.
One other thing to take into consideration, no matter what avenue you decide to take, give yourself 2-3 years. Most sites that fold do so because they could or would not stick it out. 2-3 years is the accepted average time for a site to really show potential (unless you have a unique niche).
A well planned, with due consideration of the possible outcomes, stretegy always help in growth of a new business. spend as much as time you can spare in planning. because when it comes to implementation stage, most of the time you don't have time to evaluate the policies...
I'll take that on board, was hoping to have the site up by now but can't seem to decide whether to use Magneto or OSC. My niche isn't too competitive but is in demand so i'm hoping that I can see some results within at least a year.
I would go for using a dropshipper or buy in bulk your self to save costs but having products yourself means more work and if there are returns you have to deal with it.