There a lot of online business models out there that can make you a lot of good money and one of those is the drop shipping business model. In this article we'll discuss several methods for finding a good dropshipper.

Think of a drop shipping business just as you would any E-commerce store that ships actual products to customers homes. You need all the necessary things in place including a navigable website, shopping cart, merchant account, supplier and inventory. The cool thing about this model however is the fact that you can find suppliers who will ship the product to the customer for you. This is called "drop shipping". This takes away all warehousing costs and allows you to focus completely on marketing your website and maximizing for profits.

Aside from the obvious necessity of ongoing marketing the biggest thing you need to worry about is finding a good supplier or suppliers for your business, who will drop ship your products for you.

There are several methods you can use to find good suppliers for you E-commerce store and we'll review some of those here.

The most common, over-use and easiest way is to purchase a drop ship directory. The most prominent directory provider on the internet these days is WorldWide Brands. The have a lot of lists full of potential suppliers. The good news is you don't have to go digging too much to find them. The bad news is the barrier to entry is very small so TONS of people are doing the same thing, using the same suppliers which means no matter how you cut it you'll have a lot of competition.

Another approach to use that precludes having to buy a directory is to use a basic search query. I prefer to use an engine like AltaVista or AskJeeves for something like this because the big dogs like Google and yahoo will get targeted a lot more by spammers.

Type in your product name and then supplier. Make sure you put quotes around it to narrow your search and create the most relevant results. For example I just typed in "rice cooker + supplier" and the first result is a potential supplier if I wanted to build a small rice cooker drop shipping site.

Do this enough and you can build yourself a nice list of potential suppliers for your niche pretty easily and you don't have to pay a dime for a directory. As with anything though what you aren't willing to spend in money you'll need to be willing to spend in time.

The last method I like to use is that of contacting the manufacturer itself. Now I know this might sound intimidating but its probably the best way to get a great list of suppliers for your business. If you're not sure who the manufacturer is just search for it in conjunction with your product name and then look up their contact information online. give them a call and explain to them very simply that you're looking to sell their products and just ask if they do the distributing or if they have a list of distributors you can contact. Also you want to ask if they know which distributors drop ship and which don't. sometimes they wont know but more often than not they will and that can save you a lot of time. Never hurts to ask.

So if you're serious about getting an E-commerce website up and running then start implementing these proven methods for finding good suppliers.

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