Shiny*Things, seller of this beast, claims:

"I believe this is biggest Petrol Twin V8 14ltr SUV you will find, and will easily make Humvee's look like tiny dinky toys."

At least he's honest.

1. Balance - You want to find a directory rich in many different categories of products rather than quantity of products available. Many of directories try to advertise how many products are available in their directory (i.e. 500,000 products). Why is number of categories important? A directory will not serve you well if it has hundreds of thousands of products, and none of them are in your product interest category. A directory with a good balance has focused on their categories of drop shipper products rather than quantity. This gives you a better chance of finding something for your line of business.

2. Uniqueness - You will want a directory with uniqueness amongst it's drop shippers. The drop shippers should offer a wide array of unique products that are not necessarily mass marketed. Why? Web sites offering unique and unusual products often do well on Web versus sites trying to sell big brand name products that you can find with a mega retailer such as Wal-Mart. A directory offering a bunch of big brand name product drop shippers could land you in highly competitive commodity market against mega retailers.

3. Selection - A directory with a good selection of drop ship categories is important. The number of drop shippers or number of products a directory carries should not be goal. The goal and question should be, "Do they have a drop shipper that would fit my line of business?" A common mistake for many folks is getting fixated on quantity of products a directory might offer with it's drop shippers. The question they start to ask is, "A directory with over 1,000,000 products ought to have something for me to sell." Wrong! Be sure to remember first parameter we mentioned. Balance.

4. Search Method - The directory must explain methods they use to find drop shippers. Be careful of directories that do not publish their search methods. If they do not explain their search methods, they may not have a solid search methodology. The directory could be full of a bunch of middlemen. At that point, directory would be worthless to you. Directories using search methods such as trade show searches and foreign government agency searches are preferred over directories only focused on Internet searches. Why? Not all drop shippers and importers have a Web presence. A directory based on a bunch of Web searches could be missing some of best hard-to-find drop shippers.