by: David Maddern
Everyone knows that bringing up children is expensive. It is also well known that a lot of business is conducted over the internet.
Parents often get onto the net in the evening, and there is now heaps of scope to join in this commerce.
In fact it may well be a way to excite teenagers to an exciting family dynamic.
Let me explain.
Drop shipping is a term that applies to a supplier having agents who obtain orders for the supplier to fulfil.
As an example I might set up an eBay auction page say binoculars for starting price $1.
I set my reserve at wholesale + $2 (unresearched amount to cover Bay fee and Paypal fees)
As an auction comes to its time, perhaps the final price is 60% higher than the wholesale.
I get the funds from the buyers, which is price +shipping and send the order with details to the supplier.
The supplier delivers the binoculars and bills me for the wholesale + shipping.
I send off the money to the supplier.
Note all my communications with the supplier are by email and money transfer through Paypal transactions over the net.
The result is here 60% or the wholesale figure times the number of buyers, and all I have out-layed a few dollars for eBay and deducted Paypal fees. No big out of pocket expenses at all.
Now that is a model. There is far,far more than binoculars and I can give you links to over 700,000 products, over two wholesalers.
The excitement that a teenager (or anyone else)could feel is in:
skills in selection of goods to sell,
skills in constructing eBay sites,
watching the bid development,
the reproducibility with extra products,
the profit and what options that gives,
sharing the knowledge with others.
There is incidental training in aspects of financial dealings,and setting up a wall chart could be a valuable tool for training in organization.
The areas of potential risk are (you may be able to see more):
losing passwords and web addresses
failure to set a reserve figure
spending the sale price without provision for wholesale payments,
no provision for tax put away for tax time,
delay in payment, incurring a bad reputation on eBay
lack of organization with multiple auctions
(over-trading is not a problem as you don’t buy the goods in the first place.)
These are easily preventable, and can lead to valuable structural lessons.
There is an eBook on eBay that you can download free from http://www.healthinsuranceplus.biz/ebayreports.zip (344Kb) fees that eBay charge are at http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fees.html
A Yahoo store is also a possibility but costs,while traffic to it will happen.
Credit card net processors
Paypal (an eBay company) is well received, sign-up free here http://Paypal.Opportunity.com
Clickbank http://Clickbank.Opportunity.com
Drop ship merchants are-
FreeStoreClub.com http://www.soy.freestoreclub.com
You can join this one for free, or pay $10 or$50 per month to lock in your place in a net work, and as people join under you, perhaps at your recommendation, you get payments.
Certainly the free option will be adequate for drop shipping.
Worldwide Brands is an operation that covers 120 makers and 700,000 products. http://Dropship.Opportunity.com
You will have to download their Directory which has a cost associated but the scope here is enormous.
So those are the tools from which acorns can produce oak trees. Start small and who knows where you will go.
In fact, since there is no loss if a reserve is set, and there is no outlay, I can’t see why you can’t cover all the walls with wall charts, but you would be the one doing it, not me!
If you build your own web page and wish to tune it for the search engines be aware that is a longer term option, even if you are destined for top spot, expect up to 6 weeks.
Look at my page which describes using free trials to optimize at
http://freetrial.opportunity.com
Free to distribute by any media as long as links are maintained