Making drop shipping work for you Drop shipping is the way that many small and niche businesses get their stock to the customers.
When you go to a car dealership and test drive a brand new car you may find that they dealership has one or two models in stock, but they don't have a yard or back lot full of them.
You will most likely buy the car from the dealership that will then have the car shipped or sent to your house.
This is drop shipping.
As the customer, you may think that the stock has come from the dealer when it has actually come from a manufacturer.
After you leave the dealership they will call the manufacturer to send you the car.
This works in small businesses and a lot of online stores because they can sell items and make a profit without having to worry about handling or shipping the goods.
To make drop shipping work for you, here are a few things to know and to consider.

• Avoid the temptation to buy or bid on drop shipping lists.
  A lot of con artists advertise a list of manufacturers and wholesalers but the list is often full of the same people or companies that sell overpriced goods.
  The purchaser of the list will often have to pay an ongoing membership fee.
  
• Come into it with the knowledge that you may have to spend money on start up costs such as setting up an eBay account or your own website.
  You may wish to invest in hiring a website designer to develop your site so you can focus on obtaining the goods rather than making the site look nice.
  Hint: send an e-mail to your local college IT department asking for students who want real world experience in exchange for a lower than normal payment.
  Many students will jump at the chance of getting the experience and they will be more interested in getting credit for their work rather than payment.
  
• You may need to register your business through your country's taxation department.
  This may depend on how much money you will earn per financial year, but every country has their own system and you don't want to be caught out owing thousands of dollars when you could have registered from the get go.
  One benefit of being a registered company is that many legitimate wholesalers will not interact with the general public.
  You will also be taken more seriously if you have set up everything like a small business rather than someone playing at making money.
  
• Focus on a niche and explore that rather than try to sell everything.
  Many wholesalers will drop ship just about anything you can think of, but that doesn't mean you should invest in selling it all.
  Pick something that interests you such as jewellery, clothing, or music and set your store around these.
  You can always expand your collection later (such as going from selling jewellery to sell all types of fashion accessories) or you can open up a second store once you get the hang of it, but to begin with you should start small.
  

Remember that knowledge is power and the more you read about drop shipping the more you know about making it work for you.