Drop shipping is the easy way to become an online merchant. The great thing about drop shipping is that you do not need to stock anything, you never need to send an item to a customer, and you never need to purchase a product before that product is sold. Rather, drop shipping usually involves forming a partnership with either an item manufacturer or distributor. Once you make the sale, you contact the manufacturer or distributor and tell them that you want to have such and such an item sent to so and so, and they handle it. You will be charged the wholesale price for the item and the actual shipping costs, and your profit will be whatever markup you choose to add.

Drop shipping is a step above affiliate marketing in this regard, for in affiliate marketing you have no control over what the markup is going to be and little say regarding which products you sell. In affiliate marketing, you simply refer traffic to an end merchant, and that merchant handles all the details of the sale and sends you a commission. The benefit of this is that it is very easy, affiliate marketers are not required to take credit cards, select product lines or handle customer service, they receive their commission just for building a site that generates traffic to the merchant.

Drop shipping allows for much greater potential sales, but requires quite a bit more work. The drop shipper does have to accept credit cards, which generally requires a Merchant Account, and does have to provide customer service. The benefit is that you can charge as much of a markup as you like and can also create your own affiliate program if you choose and have hundreds of other sites selling products for you.

The single best way to find drop shipping companies is through the Drop Shipping Directory. This is an online directory that keeps a list of drop shipping companies, that will show you where you can find thousands of products that can be drop shipped by about 100 different companies that drop ship.

One Drop Shipping company that we can recommend is Down Home Furniture. They specialize in bedroom furniture and will generally ship the items to your customers within 48 hours, with no additional drop shipping fee.

• Drop Shipping Directory
• Down Home Furniture