Drop-shipping a Great Way of Making Money Online

Using the Internet to sell products and services to ever increasing number of net users is a good way to start your own business. If you are not taking advantage of this great opportunity you are just missing the boat! Consider this: e-commerce, contrary to popular believe, is thriving and increasing at a double digit growth rate. According to Jupiter Research, Online sales during this holiday season in United States are expected to reach $21.6 billion, a 19 percent increase over the same period last year. Jupiter also predicts in the report that 86 million U.S. residents will make holiday purchases online this year compared to 73 million last year, which is an 18 percent increase. No doubt that this is the right time to get into online business. Building a website for selling products or services is no longer that difficult. You can make your own website by using available sophisticated but easy-to-learn-and-use programs like Macromedia Dreamweaver, Microsoft Frontpage, Adobe Go live, etc. There also exist various online web store builders similar to Rusbiz.com, which allow you to create powerful web stores using simple editors and numerous templates. You can also setup a store with E-bay and sell products through it. Finally, you can hire professional web designers to develop your website. So, the important question isnot how to get online, but what to sell on the Internet? In one of my articles - What to sell on the Internet? (What is drop-shipping? When a manufacturer, wholesaler, distributor or importer, after receiving an order from their retailers, individually pack and deliver the product to the customer of the retailer with retailers address as shipper, this selling technique is called drop-shipping. The advantages of drop-shipping include: - You do not have any inventory. So, there is no stock carrying expense involved. - You pay for the item only when it is sold and you got paid from your customer. You don't need to invest money in buying the product. - You can sell just one item at a time. No minimum quantity required. - Your drop-shipper will supply you with necessary product image and specification. You don't have to spend money on creating your own. - You fix your own selling price of the product. Convenient, when you know your niche market well. - You can offer various products on your web store from multiple suppliers. Select a product to sell Once you decided to go with drop-shipping you need to find products to sell and find drop-shipping suppliers for those products. According to the same report from Jupiter following are the most favorite categories for online shoppers: Books - by far the most popular category, after that comes clothing and shoes, music, toys, video tapes and DVDs, gift certificates, consumer electronics, accessories, videogames, bed and related items, and bath items. You should also consider that this year, total Internet sales of consumer electronics are expected to rise 32 percent to $7.5 billion, making it the fastest growing group among all retail sales categories online. The market research wizard developed by Worldwide Brand Inc. is a great tool, which shows in a probability scale whether it is worthy trying to sell your selected product online or not. You can find it over here. (Rusbiz.com. A Ph. D. in Information Technology, he has wide experience in Business Consulting, International Trade and Web Marketing. Rusbiz is a Global B2B eMarketplace with solutions to start and run online business.