where to get products from

[dreamer99]

I am going to start a website and I would like to sell books, dvd's, and other miscellaneous stuff. I don't know if I should buy the products first and store them and ship them out when people order? Or should I wait until someone orders and pays and then I pay distributor and they ship it out? What is the best way to handle this?
My gut feeling is I need to contact manufacturer of products I want to sell, get their permission to list their items on my page and then when I get payment, it gets shipped directly to the customer. I have a federal ID# already so I'm thinking I'll get wholesale prices with that.

[mint]

The book the "4 Hour Work Week" has a section in the middle that is about starting your own online business.

It talks about how in the beginning you should ship your product out yourself. Then after you are getting a certain volume of sales, you contract with a fulfillment house to do the shipping for you. Then after you reach a higher volume of sales, you contract out for a more high volume (second) fulfillment house.

If you just advertise for a manufacturer and then they do the shipping, that sounds to me similar to affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing may be the way you want to go where you are just the middle man advertiser for products and then you don't have to deal with the physical products at all.

You can find affiliate products on clickbank, I believe.

Digital Products Retailer: Affiliate Program & Sell Online - ClickBank

Good luck!

[Curtis2011]

Originally Posted by dreamer99

I am going to start a website and I would like to sell books, dvd's, and other miscellaneous stuff. I don't know if I should buy the products first and store them and ship them out when people order? Or should I wait until someone orders and pays and then I pay distributor and they ship it out? What is the best way to handle this?
My gut feeling is I need to contact manufacturer of products I want to sell, get their permission to list their items on my page and then when I get payment, it gets shipped directly to the customer. I have a federal ID# already so I'm thinking I'll get wholesale prices with that.

Ummm well depending on what business model you want, you could just use Amazon.com's affiliate program and sell their products with affiliate links.

I know that is not "ideal" in that you only get paid like 5% commission, but it saves you literally 100% of the work of managing inventories. And really, how much greater would your cut of the profits be if you bought wholesale and shipped products yourself? You'd have higher profits, but also about 1000x as much work cut out for you. Also, buying yourself then trying to resell products involves a lot more risk if you can't sell all your inventory.


I don't want to discourage you; just bring up a different business model.

[Porphyos]

You can contact companies if you find a product that isn't on the online market so they can drop ship it. However, the easier way would be using Clickbank, Commission Junction, etc.

[dreamer99]

Thanks for all the advice, I have so much reading to do-there is a lot to know. Just before I was reading a post which had a link to a blog and I got off course for about 2 hours... So glad I don't have work today...

[rawxstasy]

I have to agree with Curtis here. Shipping your own products is a huge pain the butt! I sold used books on Amazon, I had over 4,000 books stored in the garage. Then you have to buy the shipping supplies, then wrap everything, print out labels and take everything to the post office. Then stuff gets lost in the mail or gets returned and you have to deal with that.

I'll take affiliate sales any day! Let Amazon do all the work for me.

The other thing is, if you have a new website - most people are going to go with buying from a name they know and trust! ... which would probably be Amazon!