Better Than Sliced Bread...Drop Shipping The New Home Business Craze

Written by Tony Keeler


Many of you will probably rememberrepparttar days whenrepparttar 108793 only way to start a successful home business was to join some sort of multi-level marketing program or sell makeup at parties. In those days, people would have to buy a membership inrepparttar 108794 ‘program’ along with an inventory of sample products that they would then sell to friends and coworkers at ‘parties.’ Most people were not very successful at this and made very little money and usually alienated their friends and family. Inrepparttar 108795 1990’s however, all of that changed forrepparttar 108796 better withrepparttar 108797 advent ofrepparttar 108798 Internet and a retail delivery method called wholesale drop shipping.

Wholesale drop shipping is when a wholesale distributor or manufacturer agrees to send out single unit products to customers for a retailer. Many will also even includerepparttar 108799 retailers name onrepparttar 108800 invoice so thatrepparttar 108801 customer is never even aware that they got it from anyone else butrepparttar 108802 retailer. This, along withrepparttar 108803 Internet has changedrepparttar 108804 whole dynamics of home businesses in America, making it easier and more cost effective to start your own business.

Home business owners are now able to launch a business without purchasing any inventory up front and are able to open a ‘store’ without ever having to find a place to setup shop. Millions of Americans have setup ecommerce sites onrepparttar 108805 internet selling everything from Personal Computers to lawn care equipment all using wholesale drop shipping. As a matter of fact, according to eBay over forty thousand people make their full time living on their auction site alone; many of these are using drop shipping as their main method of product fulfillment.

The only problem for today’s small business owner is how to find wholesalers to drop ship. In general wholesale distributors don’t make it a habit of getting out there and advertising; obviouslyrepparttar 108806 whole reason they are in wholesale and not retail is to get away from doing all of that work. So it makes it very difficult for someone who has little or no business experience to make contacts with distributors when they aren’t even sure where to start looking.

To help out those small business owners I’d like to offer some advice for finding wholesale distributors: §Look for trade organizations and magazines to help you make contacts. Many trade organizations out their produce some sort of listings of their members, many of whom may drop ship. §Contact manufacturers. People don’t realize that if you callrepparttar 108807 manufacturer they will provide you with a list of their distributors; so if you are looking for a particular product, askrepparttar 108808 manufacturer. The down side of this route is that they may have hundreds of distributors that you may have to contact before you find one that is willing to drop ship. §Find wholesale chat rooms and message boards. There are many message boards onrepparttar 108809 Internet today that are devoted to a wide range of discussions. You may find boards on wholesale, distribution, supply chain, etc. All of these may lead you inrepparttar 108810 direction of a wholesale distributor.

Simple Changes To Make Your Web Site Sell

Written by Steve Shaw


Copyright © 2004 Steve Shaw

So you have a web site, you have traffic, but it doesn't ... well ... sell? But what can you do about it? Often some very simple changes to your web site can meanrepparttar difference between success and failure. Based on my own experience and extensive testing of what works and what does not, here is a quick list of simple changes you can make to turn your site around and rapidly improve your profit levels.

1. Are You Grabbing 0pt-Ins From Every Corner Of Your Site?

It is as true now as it ever has been - a large proportion of your profits will come from a list of subscribers that sign up at your web site. Very few people buy first time - that's why it's so important to attempt to initiate some sort of ongoing relation with them. And that's where email usually steps in.

Without some sort of ongoing contact, they are unlikely to visit your site again. But if you maintain contact via email, you are much more likely to maintain a presence in your visitor's brain, and they are much more likely to revisit your site and, at some point, purchase from you.

Without their email address, they visit once, and are gone forever.

On my sites, I often use three different overlapping methods that give me a high chance of capturing their name and email address:

A. I use an 0ptIn0ver (usingrepparttar 108792 software at http://popupmaster.com) when they first arrive, and they simply have to click Okay to subscribe. This makes it as easy as possible for them to subscribe (they don't even have to type), and this method capturesrepparttar 108793 name and email address of a large proportion of my visitors.

B. I use a prominent subscription form onrepparttar 108794 web site itself, preferably on every single page.

C. If they still haven't subscribed, I display an exit popup - but without disruptingrepparttar 108795 order process. Again, usingrepparttar 108796 http://popupmaster.com software, I can preventrepparttar 108797 popup from appearing ifrepparttar 108798 visitor clicks on my order link.

Some marketers have claimed that by using this type of technique, they manage to convert up to 97% of their visitors into subscribers. Even if you don't convert at a similar level, you can be sure that you are capturing a large proportion of your visitors.

Of course, it is also very important to make your visitor an attractive offer, in exchange for their email address. The offer needs to be relevant to your web site, and valuable to your visitor. For example, I often offer some trial software, or a valuable ecourse, in order to capture their details.

You should also continually test and tweak your 'offer' to maximize your response.

Once you've got their email address, you need to use it. Plug them into an autoresponder campaign - I personally use http:/ akanomi.proautoresponder.com to manage all my mailing lists - and follow up with them, several times. If you can, don't stop atrepparttar 108799 now fairly standard seven email follow-ups - plug in message after message, up to 30 messages or more. Send them more regularly to start with, and gradually space them out until they are sent say once a month. Using an autoresponder, you can set all of this to work on auto-pilot.

2. Do You Use An Effective Headline?

The headline on your web site is one ofrepparttar 108800 most important elements in making a sale, andrepparttar 108801 only real way to test its effectiveness is to test out different headlines and continually improve your conversion rate.

A good headline, in comparison to an ineffective one, has been known to improve sales levels by up to 21 times! Imagine what that could do for your sales levels. If you are barely scraping $1,000 a month, a good headline could bring you instead a whopping $21,000 a month - or $252,000 a year.

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