The Real Scoop About Starting A Business on the Internet

By Tony Keeler
Posted Thursday, November 11, 2004

‘You can make a gazillion dollars!’ says the latest ad in the company of hundreds in my email box. There are folks out there who would lead you to believe that you can be an overnight billionaire on the Internet with absolutely no work at all. All you do is telepathically think about the latest MLM marketing scheme and the bucks will start rolling in. Well, for any person with any sort of common sense you have to know that this is absolutely, positively not true! There is no shortcut to success; It still takes hard work and determination. There are however some tricks that will make your journey a little easier, cheaper, and faster; Let me show you one of the biggest.

So, if you are like I was when I started in the Internet biz, you have very little capital to start out with, but you have a lot of determination and a lot of excitement. So how do you get things going without money? Dropshipping! There is no better invention for the low capital startup, Internet marketer! Dropshipping, for those of you that are not familiar is when you take orders from customers, be it on your website, online auction, or mail order, and the wholesale distributor ships it to your customer with your companies name on it. The customer never has any idea that it did not come directly from you, and you get to rake in a sizeable markup. The beauty of this form of product fulfillment is that is costs you nothing until the customer pays you, and you place the order! (It really is the best thing since sliced bread!) However, as with anything on the Internet, you must be very careful as to whom you choose to do business with.

As you may already know, the Internet is full of scam artists, thieves and outright wackos! It seems as soon as the Internet was born, the con artists were waiting in the wings to begin scamming people out of their money; and dropshipping is no exception! Here is the scheme, a person makes business relationships with wholesale distributors who actually warehouse and ship products, then they setup a website claiming to be a wholesale distributor and go fishing for unsuspecting people on the net. They usually charge you a ‘membership’ fee to get ‘GREAT’ wholesale pricing and will ship to your customer for FREE! The problem here is that you are not getting wholesale pricing, you are getting a sizeable markup from wholesale, and they are taking your membership fee. Then you have to sell the products at a measly profit margin of literally pennies on the dollar to stay competitive. And, to be honest with you, the so-called wholesaler could care less whether you sell anything or not, because they already got your money. So how does anyone know who the real dropshippers are?

There are several ways that you can know if someone is a REAL drop ship distributor. One, if they are the manufacturer of the product. Two, real wholesale distributors will not charge you a ‘membership’ fee. They are in the business of product fulfillment, not membership programs. Three, and probably the most important is they will ask you for your retail tax ID, or a copy of your business license. The point in this is that they want to make sure you are a real retailer, not just a customer trying to get wholesale pricing. True wholesale distributors don’t want to undercut their retail partners, and therefore will never sell directly to the public!

So here is my simple approach to making money on the Internet:
1.Get a local business license (call your county clerk to find out how)
2.Get a state retail tax ID (your state’s website should have information on how to do this)
3.Get wholesale partnerships with TRUE wholesale distributors who will dropship to your customers. (My site dropshipfinder.com can help you out with this!)
4.Setup your website or online auction and start marketing! (Again, my site dropshipfinder.com can help you out with this!)

While there is no easy road to the top, if you get a little wisdom on your side, you can make money on the Internet! Just don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that you can make it overnight with absolutely no work! The playing field has changed with the advent of the computer and the Internet, but the rules remain the same; Hard work and determination are going to help you realize your dreams, not MLM marketing!

About the Author
Tony Keeler has been doing business on the Internet for over five years with retail sites, site optimization, development, and now business services. His site, DropShipFinder.com is the Internet’s greatest, continuously updated directory of wholesale distributors who dropship for free.

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